A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



earl's men returned, rescued the prisoners, and kept four of the Camdenites 

 till a heavy ransom had been paid. 1 



The offending retainers in this case should have been brought to justice 

 by the earl, in whose mainpast (or household) they were servants being 

 exempt from the general liability to be in frankpledge or tithing. 3 In spite 

 of such exceptions, and of the fact that many lords could hold the view of 

 frankpledge, the latter institution must have served as a check upon seignorial 

 power, not so much directly, as by promoting a non-manorial form of 

 organization among the villeins, and by bringing them into connexion with 

 the network of royal justice. Whatever its exact origin, it was connected 

 with the old Saxon principle that every man was responsible for police duties. 

 For this purpose he was placed at twelve years old in a small group whose 

 members were mutually responsible for each other's production, if criminal, 

 before the representative of the king's justice. The tithing was thus part of 

 a directly national system, and distinct from the older responsible unit, the 

 family, of which manorial justice continued to avail itself as late as the four- 

 teenth century. 3 The responsibility for its enforcement lay, not with the 

 lord of the manor (though he might receive its fines), but with the 

 township.* 



If a criminal were not forthcoming, the amercement would naturally fall 

 upon his tithing, unless the township had failed to place him in one, when the 

 fine would fall upon the larger body. The township thus occupied a step 

 higher in the scheme of local police, and had various other duties to perform. 6 

 It had to follow the hue and cry, to watch criminals who took sanctuary, 

 and to keep watch and ward by a stipulated number of men from sunset to 

 sunrise. 6 (Statute of Winchester, 1285.) In a thinly populated county like 

 Gloucestershire there were, it is true, many cases in which a township was 

 so small as to ' discharge its duty of having all its members in frankpledge 

 and tithing by being itself a tithing and a frankpledge.' 7 In 1221 the 

 township of Swell consisted of one tithing, 8 and in the fourteenth century, 

 in the manors of Cheltenham and Hawkesbury,' which consisted of several 

 townships, the two terms seem to have been quite interchangeable ; but this 

 confusion between two grades does not interfere with the fact that in criminal 

 as in economic matters the villein (for frankpledge soon became a pre- 

 eminently villein institution) was allowed to act as a ' townsman ' rather than 

 as a mere tenant. And while the long arm of the law thus stretched forth 

 a finger to maintain national institutions even amidst the manorial preserves, 

 the full strength of its clutch was felt by the lords in the courts of the royal 

 Justices. Here, before the whole community of the shire, criminals of every 

 rank were accused by the representative juries of the hundreds, and received 

 their due at the hands of the judge and the same juries. Even sheriffs were 

 called to account at the eyre answering for their own misdeeds and for the 



1 Hund. R. Glouc. 5. ' cf. Chelt. Ct. R. 175, No. 27, m. 6. 



' e.g. distraint of kinsmen of fugitive villeins at Hawkesbury ; Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 46. 

 4 For neglect of and performance of this duty see Hawkesbury Ct. R. portf. 175, Nos. 41 and 53. 

 6 See Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Engl. Law, i, 550. 



6 For neglect to obey this rule the watchmen and constables of Cheltenham and eight neighbouring 

 townships were distrained in 1333. Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 25, m. 9. 

 ' Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. i, 556. 



8 Glouc. Pleas of the Crown (ed. F. W. Maitland), No. I. 



9 Ct. R. portf. 175, Nos. 25 and 50. 



142 



