A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



justices of the peace soon followed. When constables first appeared in 

 Durham is uncertain, but the office seems to have been created by Henry Ill's 

 writ for enforcing watch and ward in 1252. According to this writ there 

 were to be in each town or village one or more constables who were to 

 raise the hue and cry after suspected persons who resisted arrest, and to 

 deliver them to the sheriff. The men of the village who had been sworn 

 to arms were bound to assist the constables. 



The Halmote Rolls supply us with many instances of the election of 

 constables, presumably by the villagers. Their number varied from two to 

 six. Their position was a difficult one, for the villagers often showed no 

 inclination to assist them or to follow the hue and cry, despite the orders of 

 the halmote, 1 and there are several instances where the villagers refused to 

 supply the stocks which the Statute of Labourers ordered to be set up on every 

 village green for the punishment of offenders.* 



Serious crime was rare in Durham before the Black Death, and the 

 various brawls that occurred did not directly concern the halmote so much 

 as the justices. These were the bishop's officials, and the prior's claim to 

 pit and gallows resolved itself into the right to half the felon's goods if one 

 of his tenants. 8 In other cases the bishop took all. Then it was the coroner's 

 duty to seize the goods for the bishop, and the constable's to see that none of 

 them were spirited away before they had been valued.* However, the 

 halmote did act as a kind of police court at times, especially in minor cases 

 of assault. Offenders were fined or bound over to keep the peace. On the 

 whole, however, the halmote was unsatisfactory as a court of justice. After 

 the Black Death the peasants were more inclined to defy than to assist the 

 officers of justice. The constable became more and more the agent of the 

 central government. Juries refused to present criminals and vills to arrest 

 them. In one case, at Aycliffe, we actually find entered on the Halmote Roll 

 an agreement among the tenants for mutual support against the authorities. 

 It runs : 



Whenever it happens that a villager is taken and imprisoned on suspicion or for any other 

 reason or any other crown case (sic) comes up on account of which the tenants of the vill 

 ought to keep watch or go to Durham or work elsewhere, every tenant shall contribute 

 his proportion of the cost under a penalty of 40^.' 



However, this attitude belongs to the period after the Black Death 

 when the old order had been ruined. The peasantry were not of old so 

 decidedly opposed to the central authority, and it seems from the rolls that 

 attempts were made to graft the constable on to the halmote system ot 

 government. He was certainly a useful agent in suppressing offences not 

 specially concerned with rural economy, and he had the reeve to help him as 

 ex-officio guardian of public morals. 8 



Incontinence was an offence that had to be purged by a payment to the 

 lord, and the jury's duty was to present such offenders to the halmote. As we 

 have only the vaguest information as to the population even of the bishop's 

 vills apart from the list of landholders, it is perhaps unfair to say that the 

 halmote rolls disclose a particularly low state of morality, but it is certain that 



1 Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 73, 75. ' e.g. Ibid. 115, 135. 



' Feodarium (Surtees Soc. Iviii), 252 ; Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 132. 



4 Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 149. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 74. 



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