Kings Peace and English Peace-HIagistj'acy. 31 



antiquity of tiie various steps in the procedure are not . . . 

 difficult to detect. Nothing can be more archaic than the 

 picture presented by its more venerable details. The seizure 

 of the cattle, the rescue, and the counter-seizure belong to the 

 oldest practices of mankind. . . . Here, not in a city-com- 

 munity, but among the ancient legal forms of a half-pastoral,' 

 half-agricultural people, we come upon plain traces of a foray. 

 But the foray which survives in the old Law of Distress is 

 not, like the combat of the ancient Roman Action (the sacra- 

 mentum), a mere dramatic representation. Up to a certain 

 point it is a reality, and the most probable account of its ori- 

 gin is that it is a genuinely disorderly proceeding which the 

 law steps in to regulate." The king, through his tribunals, 

 was as yet unable to take the whole proceedings into his own 

 hands. ^ 



II. RISE OF LOCAL PEACE-MAGISTRATES. 



{a). — • Old English Police Administration. 



Thus far we have been concerned primarily with the origin 

 and nature of the public peace. Incidentally we have seen 

 that the clan-chief, the house-father, was the original peace- 

 officer. Indeed, the patriarchal authority would seem to be 

 the germ from which all the magistracies of the world, from 

 the constable to the king, have been evolved.''^ Let us now 

 trace the history of the agencies gradually called into being 

 by the unfolding state for the purpose of maintaining her 

 authority and administering her jurisdiction, particularly in 

 the local communities. 



From the settlement in Britain the folk-moots were the 

 only police and justice tribunals. In the tenth century these 

 were the hundred and shire courts, composed each of town- 



^ Maine, Early Hist, of Inst., 265, 26S. 



- " Es ist zweifellos, dass der indische rajan, der italische rex, der griechische 

 basileus eine historisch zusammenhangende altarische Institution sind. Des 

 Konigs Stellung ist bei alien diesen Volkern die erweiterte des Hausvaters " : 

 Leist, Alt-Arisches yiis Gentium, 342. 



265 



