JCC AGENDA PAPER

SEPTEMBER 2007

THE OFFICE OF CONSTABLE: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE

‘OLD’ AND ‘NEW’ POLICE

As someone who is interested in all aspects of history in general, and certain aspects
in particular, including British Police History, I could not resist the temptation of
researching this topic and producing a paper, which I hope will go some way in
further understanding the historical background of the office of constable, and that
this appreciation assists the present debate that is taking place on the subject. After all
a closer understanding of police history reveals that many of the debates currently
taking place in policing today have been rehearsed in the past.

Introduction

On the Police Federation of England and Wales website Jan Berry, the Chairman
states, “The Office of Constable is sacrosanct”, and the Police Federation believe:

• The Office of Constable is unique because it is the duty of police officers to

protect life and property, preserve order, and prevent the commission of
offences and where an offence has been committed, to take measures to bring
the offender to justice.
• Entry to the service should be at Constable level for all sworn officers.
• A grounding in policing at Constable level is imperative to any rank and
enables officers to specialise and move between specialisms.

Why then is the office of constable in the legal system of England and Wales so
‘sacrosanct’? Is it because the office of constable has the additional legal powers of
arrest and control of the public given to him or her directly by a sworn oath and
warrant, rather than being delegated powers that he or she has simply because of
employment as a police officer. Technically, this means that each sworn constable is
an independent legal official rather than simply an agent of the police. It also means
that all sworn police officers of all ranks legally are constables, since it is from this
office that they derive their powers, although the term usually refers to a police officer
who holds no rank.

Patrick Colquhoun writing as far back as the end of the 18th century declared:
‘Everything that can heighten in any degree the respectability of the office of
constable, adds to the security of the state, and the safety of the life and property of
every individual’.

Today a constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law

enforcement. But what is the historical perspective of the Office of Constable in
England and Wales?

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The early development of policing

A constable was an officer of state in Western European countries from medieval

times and also responsible for certain legal functions in England. The title comes
stabuli is found in the Roman and particularly in the Eastern Roman Empire from the
5th Century AD as that of the head of the stables at the imperial court. The Franks
borrowed the title, and under the kings of Western Europe the comes stabuli was in
charge of the royal stud. In the 11th century the constable ( Old French conestable) of
France became one of the five great officers of state, with limited powers of
jurisdiction and command of the cavalry.

In England the office of constable was in existence during Henry I’s reign (1100-35);
the principal duty of the constable being to command of the army. The Court of the
constable, also known as the court of chivalry, came into existence at least as early as
the reign of Edward I (1272-1307). Lord High Constables are now appointed only for
coronations. Officers with important military commands were also known as
constables.

The origins of the English police system are to be found in the tribal laws and customs
of the Danish and Anglo-Saxon invaders. However, mediaeval policing was very
different to the function that we understand today as ‘policing’. In fact the idea of
policing did not really develop until the 18th century. What existed before then was a
form of governance through self-regulation that was based upon local community
units. It was a system that was not as alluring in practice as current interpretations
might suggest. The study of this period of police history raises a number of issues.

First, is the ‘historical sentimentality’ which many historical commentators adopt

when examining police history. The reality of life in mediaeval times, and afterwards,
was that it was violent and life was cheap. There was much summary justice.

Secondly, we tend towards a natural revisionism in so far as we use our personal and
modern ideas about policing to interpret the past, which is wrong. There were no
‘bobbies’ then; the British bobby was a nineteenth century political construct.

From very early times, the primary responsibility for maintaining the King’s peace
fell upon each locality under a well understood principle of social obligation, or
collective security. The basic unit of local government was a tything, a group of
about 10 families enrolled for police purposes, each member of which had a personal
responsibility for maintaining the law. If they came across a law being broken there
was an obligation to make ‘hue and cry’, and they, along with all other members of
the community would chase and capture the felon.

The nearest equivalent to the modern police constable is the Saxon tythingman. There
was no organisation as we know it. There were hardly any laws by comparison with
today, mainly local moral codes. The system relied on the principle that all members
of a community accepted an obligation for the good behaviour of each other. Groups
of tythings were formed into a hundred, the head man of which was known as a
hundred man or royal reeve, who exercised administrative and judicial powers
through a hundred (local area) court; and overall the shire reeve, or sheriff, had a
general responsibility under the king for maintaining the peace in the shire. In each

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tything a person was made responsible for taking felons to the hundred court. The
Tythingman wasn’t paid a salary. They got fees for the work that they did such as
taking felons to court. There did not exist the same notion of policing as there is
today. The decision to arrest and take before the court was basically a community
decision.

These simple arrangements were taken over by the Normans, modified and
systemised under the description ‘frankpledge’ – the most important police institution
of the Middle Ages.

When the term ‘constable’ first appears on the scene after 1066 with the Norman
conquest, it seems at first sight a welcome and familiar landmark, but examination
shows it not to have been a civic office at all, but a high military one associated with
the royal court (as described above). The early Norman constable bore no
relationship to the Saxon tythingman. Nevertheless, a century or so after the
conquest, we find a lower class of persons designated by the title ‘constable’ taking
over the tythingman’s duties; and from the marriage of Saxon tythingman and
Norman constable, and with the assimilation of Norman and Saxon titles and offices,
the English parish constable of the Middle Ages emerges as the direct lineal
descendant of the ancient tythingman.

The Assize of Clarendon 1166 celebrated the anniversary of the Norman conquest.
All villagers had to report any suspicions about each other to the sheriff’s people.
These reports were made by the tythingman to a jury of 12 men of the hundred, who
forwarded serious accusations to the sheriff. In this is to be seen an early use of the
jury system.

Towards the end of the 12th century the unpopular sheriff’s courts gave way to local
manorial courts, which under the lord of the manor took over the sheriff’s jurisdiction,
and administrative functions were added to it. And somewhere about this time the
Norman title of constable acquired the local significance it has held ever since. It had
descended the social scale from being an office of the royal court to the petty
constable of the tything, or manor.

As a consequence there is the emergence of the ‘office of constable’. There was to be

no complete break with the past. The ‘old’ Saxon principle of collective obligation to
maintain the King’s peace continued to be active. But the unit of responsibility under
feudalism, formerly the tything, became the feudal manor. And the manorial court
not only took over the supervision of frankpledge; it also elected annually the officers
who were to serve in their turn in assisting the lord of the manor to regulate the affairs
of the community. The court came to exercise three functions: it ensured
frankpledges worked properly, it awarded punishment and it appointed the principal
officers of the manor, of which the constable was pre-eminent as the principal
representative of the manor. Their superior position was acknowledged by the court
lawyers of the time in a statute of 1252, with the honourable Norman title of
‘constable’, which had equal authority with mayors and bailiffs.

So, by the end of the 13th century the constable had acquired two distinct
characteristics: as the annually elected representative of the parish, he was an

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executive agent, embodying the principle of collective responsibility established by
the Saxon tythingman, and duly making his reports at a court; but he was also an
officer recognised by the Crown as having a particular responsibility for keeping the
King’s peace by hue and cry and other means, and the use of the distinction
‘constable’ gave his authority a royal flavour which, marking him out from the other
local officers, would have established his ascendancy in the parish. From this the
common-law duties and privileges of the constable emerged.

The Statute of Westminster 1285 enshrined the principles of Frankpledge and

described as its object ‘to abate the power of felons’. It preserved and codified well-
tried features from earlier systems, and in particular it reaffirmed the principle of local
responsibility for policing a district. It also introduced the idea and practice of
appointing town watchmen to supplement (watch and ward) the duties of the
constable, who was referred to as the ‘Conservator of the Peace’. This gave rise to
constables exercising civil jurisdiction. Under this Statute the civil and military
organisations were linked.

Two high constables were appointed in every hundred with responsible for
suppressing riots and violent crimes and for the arming of the militia to enable them
to do so. Under him were the petty constables in each tything. These constables were
constituted in every hundred to prevent defaults in towns and highways. The high and
petty, or parish constables remained the executive legal officers in counties until The
County Police Act of 1839 allowed certain justices to establish a paid police force.

The Statute was the only general public measure of any consequence enacted to
regulate the policing of the country between the Norman conquest and The
Metropolitan Police Act 1829. The Statute, embodying a fusion of Saxon and
Norman ideas marks the end of the first police ‘system’ in England, which can be
seen to pivot largely round the part-time constable, a local man with a touch of regal
authority about him, enshrining the ancient Saxon principle of personal service to the
community and exercising powers of arrest under common law. Within this system it
was a duty of everyone to maintain the King’s peace, and it was open to any citizen to
arrest an offender, however, the unpaid part-time constable had a special duty to do
so, and in the towns assisted by the inferior officer, the watchman. The Statute made
no mention of frankpledge, and it can be assumed that compulsory enrolment of the
population in tythings as surety for each other had by this date become obsolete.

The Justices of the Peace Act 1361 created justices to preside over the courts. It
marked the transition from pure Frankpledge to a fundamental policing system by
establishing the working partnership (at least in principle) of constable and justice.
The constable became the executive arm of the justice and an agent of the parish. In
common with all other parish officers he was unpaid. The office was filled in rotation
among all qualified parishioners, and refusal to accept office was punishable by a
fine. His staff or baton was his symbol of authority. He wore no distinctive uniform
of any kind. Whilst this could only be loosely described as a system, it lasted for
about 500 years.

Over the fullness of time the constable went from being an officer of the tything and
manor into an officer of the parish. This was as a result of the growth of the parish as
the unit of local government, with the parish taking over some of the functions of the

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remnants of feudalism. In the final stages of the process we find the constable as the
most important official of the parish; and it was through the constable that this new
civil unit were linked up and subordinated to the organised rule of the justices of the
peace. This system reached its height under the Tudors and progressively
disintegrated during the 17th and 18th centuries

Post-Tudor Developments

The advent of the justice of the peace degraded the office of constable but during the
15th and much of the 16th centuries he was still pre-eminent among the four principal
annually elected officers of the parish; and he held this position in some small town’s
right into the 18th century. In most areas, however, a decline had set in by the Tudor
period. Within a short period the office of constable was commonly regarded as
appropriate only for the old, idiotic, or infirm.

The reason for the change is to be found in the reluctance of the wealthier elements of
society of the 16th century to serve their turn in undertaking the onerous and unpaid
duties of the office, and their general resort to the practice of paying deputies to act in
their place. Hence the office sank lower and lower in public esteem as the old
principal of personal service died out. This was at a time when a constable’s duties,
originally based on common law, were later extended by Acts of Parliament, and
taking a sworn oath which varied from place to place. Even though the system fell
into general disrepute until the 19th century there was little to put in its place.

The office of constable was gradually going downhill. For the most part the system
simply adjusted itself, with local variations, to meet the pressures and needs of
changing economic and social conditions. One consequence was that the office
persisted long after the original function had lapsed or altered out of all recognition,
giving an illusion of permanence. A far more reaching consequence was that, just as
the outward forms lost their original meanings and became confused, so the nature of
the office of constable became a matter for learned dispute due to successive edicts of
the royal courts and Acts of Parliament. Was it a local office, or an office of the
Crown? What powers attached to it, and where was its authority derived?

With Crown-appointed justices of the peace exercising authority over the parish
constables, the whole stemmed ultimately from the sovereign, and the periphery
derived authority from the centre. But in the 17th century the pattern of policing
became even more confused, owing to the advanced state of decay into which many
of the courts had fallen, and questions were asked with renewed insistence. What
kind of office under the law was the constable, and what was his authority.

On this point the swearing-in of constables by justices of the peace was far reaching,
as it was considered that the administration of the oath to constables by the justices of
the peace was considered as the characteristic mark of the final subordination of local
to central government in rural areas, of the conversion of a local administrative officer
into a ministerial officer of the Crown. As more laws were passed to protect property
and the person, the office of constable became more established and with it went
increased powers and responsibilities. However, it would be wrong to think of these
officers as police officers.

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The Collapse of the ‘Old System’ – 18th Century demands for police reform and
origins of the police idea

The era of parish constable and justice as an effective police system did not long
survive the Restoration, and from around 1689 onwards its decline in urban areas was
rapid. There were three main causes of this:

1. The Corruption of Constables – The contempt in which the office of constable

had fallen. The principle of constables appointing deputies developed. Some
offices of constable acquired lucrative financial advantages and incumbents
cultivated the practice of employing deputies. In extreme cases the deputies
would employ deputies and so to a point where it was conceivable that the
people whom the laws were designed to operate against were the very people
who actually performed the role.

2. The Corruption of Justices – The contempt in which many justices of the

peace came to be held. There were a number of documented occasions where
justices were found to have been open to favours and bribery. The law was up
for sale.

3. Growth in population, wealth and expansion of towns – The early stages of the
Industrial Revolution multiplied the opportunities for crime, while at the same
time undermining the stability of society and destroying the principal of the
universal obligation to serve as a constable on which the only available means
of maintaining law and order still relied. In 1780 the Gordon riots sent shivers
through the establishment. During the riots much of London was a no-go area
and in the aftermath there were many calls to introduce a police ‘force’ to
prevent further disturbances of the peace.

In 1785 Pitt tabled a ‘Police Bill’ to encourage the employment of a body of full time
peace keepers. The Bill failed. One of the main reasons for its failure were fears
circulating in Parliament that the proposal would lead to a repressive ‘French style’
system of police.

During the mid to late 1700’s a number of ad hoc policing arrangements were
introduced. For example, Henry Fielding’s Bow Street Runners. Largely hailed as
the precursors of the Metropolitan Police they were in fact little more than a group of
private security guards, come bounty hunters.

It was John and Henry Fielding, who developed the idea of a police and also of
policing. They built upon and articulated the ideas and techniques of their
contemporaries who, in turn, had largely imported their ideas from France. “What
was new” states Phillip Rawlings, “was their systematic publicising of the notion that
social control was attainable – and worth attaining through an organised institutional
effort”. The Fielding’s believed that social control would be achieved by introducing
a pro-active system of crime detection that would be directed by a state bureaucracy
working under the justices of the peace and also by the rigorous regulation of the poor
“by means of the criminal law, poor law, administrative regulation, institutions and
philanthropy”.

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Whilst the 1785 Police Bill failed, the idea of a full-time police gained increasing
currency. A decade later Patrick Colquhoun, a Magistrate, studied the potential for a
full-time police and published his Treatise on the Policing of the Metropolis in 1797.
In it he argued that the benefits of having a full-time police (in the dock area of
London) would greatly outweigh the costs in terms of the prevention of the thefts of
cargo.

Further demands for Police Reform in the 19th Century

Thames River Police – Colquhoun’s Treatise led to the creation of the Thames River
Police in 1799.

Royal Irish Constabulary – In the first decades of the 19th century Peel introduced a
full-time police force into Ireland. The RIC were in fact an armed force whose
primary role was the maintenance of order.

Peel’s attempts at further police reforms – The installation of the RIC was largely
regarded by central Government as a success but Peel’s attempts to introduce a
similar model in mainland Britain failed.

Arguments for and against a full-time paid Police

The case for a full-time paid police arose because the streets of industrial Britain were
becoming congested and dangerous. The lure of attractive employment brought
people from the rural areas into the cities. There was little employment and much
street crime.

Peel reformed the criminal code. The number of capital offences was drastically
reduced from 211 in 1811 to about 10 by the 1820’s. To make the law work a
mechanism of enforcement was required. Within this framework a force of full-time
police officers patrolling the streets would perform the three fold task of:

• Bringing law breakers to justice

• Suppressing disorder and keeping the peace
• Deterring people from breaking the law

A few local boroughs had experimented quite successfully with employing a body of
full-time officers.

The arguments against a full-time paid police were fears of a repressive police that
was expensive, which was a major concern; also, it would create a new power base
that could increase the power of central government.

The build up to the Metropolitan Police Bill 1828

A public outcry developed in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in

1819 (11 killed and 400 wounded). The practice of using the army and yeomanry was
heavily criticised. Arguments were put forward for a non-military force to keep the
peace

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The Metropolitan Police Act 1829

In 1828 a Select Committee considered the possibility of introducing a full-time

police force and accepted the idea. Within twenty months the Metropolitan Police
Act 1829 was passed and the first police officers stepped onto the streets of London

The Metropolitan Police

Composition – Initially about 4,000 men (women could not join until early in the 20th
century).

The first police officers – Drawn from the lower working classes. The upper ranks
were drawn from army non-commissioned officers. There were four main reasons for
appointing from the working classes:

• They were cheap to employ

• They understood those they policed
• The upper classes actively distanced themselves from the lower orders
• The idea of policing was felt to be distasteful to the upper classes

The function of the Metropolitan Police – To police the working classes by keeping
the peace and bringing felons before the Magistrates in the (police) courts

Managing the Metropolitan Police – The first commissioners of the Metropolitan

Police were Richard Mayne, a barrister, and Col Rowan, an army officer (a study of
police history reveals that outsiders were regularly recruited into the higher ranks until
the Second World War). The combination of a lawyer and a military man established
the link between the law, the military and the police.

The Metropolitan Police Model – The Metropolitan Police provided a basic

organisational model for a police force, as a full-time force of this type had never
existed before. The organisation of the Metropolitan Police was used as a model for
provincial reforms

The Provincial Police: The Borough Police

• Attempts to revitalise the old system – the Lighting and Watching Acts
1830/33 and Special Constables Act 1831 were designed to revitalise the
unpaid, part-time ‘old’ police.
• Reform in the Boroughs: Municipal Corporations Act 1835 – Police reform in
the Boroughs was achieved through this Act. It was part of a parcel of
municipal reforms during the 1830’s and, amongst other Municipal reforms,
the Act created local police forces. The borough police reforms were driven
by the need to maintain order and detect and prevent crime.
• Take up of the Act – The Act was not too popular at first due to its financial
implications for local government (some things don’t change), but other
benefits were soon realised. By 1853 155 out of 178 boroughs had fully
installed a force. Only 6 failed to do so completely and the rest had installed
at least part of the Act.

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 • Managing the Borough forces – Management of the borough forces was,
unlike the Metropolitan Police, carried out by a watch committee of local
councillors. They had control over the appointment and dismissal of officers
and, importantly over the operation of policing.

The tradition of policing and the doctrine of constabulary independence had not yet
developed.

The Provincial Police: The County Police

• The County Police Act 1839 – Reform of the police in the counties was driven
by the need to maintain order. Initially rejected by the quarter Sessions the
Act was accepted in the face of Chartist unrest. Take up was initially
voluntary.
• Take up of the Act – By 1856 only 25 out of 55 counties had established
police forces.
• Managing the County Police – The Quarter Sessions (until 1888) AND
Standing Joint Committee (from 1889) were charged with appointing chief
constables. Once appointed the chief constable had great powers over the
force and the SJC’s powers were minimal unless the chief constable messed
up.

Further Police Reforms

The Report of the Constabulary Commissioners 1839 – Edwin Chadwick wanted a

national police force. This was not a very popular idea with the legislature for many
of the reasons put forward to scupper previous attempts at police reform.

Further police reforms – The Birmingham and Manchester Police Bills 1839.

• Policing in the 1840’s – If you stood outside Piccadilly Station in Manchester

and shouted for a police officer you would find that the local borough police
were wearing brown whereas the county police were wearing green tunics.
There might also be some men with truncheons and arm bands and they would
be the early railway Police.
• Like the early Metropolitan Police the provincial police were an unstable
group. One of the most important characteristics required of a constable,
especially in the counties, was an understanding of their own place in the
social order.
• Social changes and demands for policing – Fears about Chartist unrest and
also a countryside awash with ex-servicemen at end of Crimean war plus end
of transportation as a punishment made for further police reform.

The County and Borough Police Act 1856

1853 Select Committee on the Police – The Select Committee examined the
effectiveness of policing arrangements.

• Crime was found to have reduced in areas where police forces were
introduced.

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 • The attempts to revitalise the old system were accepted to be a failure.
• The fundamental idea behind the new police was seen as good and any
existing problems were due to low staffing, fragmented organisation and
unhealthy rivalry between counties and boroughs.

Police Bill 1853 – The Bill proposed central control with local management, and to
reduce all the smaller borough forces. The latter point killed it. However, it was re-
introduced without the abolition of smaller forces clause and passed through
Parliament.

The County and Borough Police Act was very important:

• It made the introduction of police compulsory in both counties and boroughs.

• It introduced an Inspectorate of Constabulary to regulate policing.
• It enabled the treasury on certification by the inspectorate to pay half of the
costs of running a local police force (it also encouraged crime record keeping).
• It forced the very small boroughs to amalgamate with the local county force
thus reducing overall number of very small independent police forces.

Conclusion

It can be seen that the origins of policing in England and Wales are to be found in the
tribal laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Norman invaders, and that
mediaeval policing was very different to what we understand today as policing; the
idea of policing not really developing until the 18th century. What existed before was
a form of governance through self-regulation that was based on local community
units. There was no organisation or hardly any laws, nor did there exist the same
notion of policing as there is today. The term constable first appearing on the scene
after the Norman conquest, and towards the end of the 12th century acquiring the local
significance it has held ever since. As a consequence there is the emergence of the
office of constable; the constables superior position being acknowledged by law in a
statute of 1252.

By the end of the 13th century the constable acquired two distinct characteristics; the
executive agent of the parish and an officer recognised by the Crown for keeping the
King’s peace. From this the common-law duties and privileges of the constable
emerged. The justices of the Peace Act 1361 marked the transition to a fundamental
policing system by establishing the working partnership of constable and justice. This
system reached its height under the Tudors and progressively disintegrated during the
17th and 18th centuries. Even though the system fell into general disrepute until the
19th century there was little to put in its place.

As the office of constable was gradually going downhill, so the nature of the office
became a matter for learned debate. On this point the swearing-in of constables by
justices of the peace was far reaching and of great importance, as it was considered
that the administration of the oath to constables by the justices of the peace was
considered as the characteristic mark of the final subordination of local to central
government in rural areas, of the conversion of a local administrative officer into a
ministerial officer of the Crown. As more laws were passed to protect property and
the person, the office of constable become more established.

10
By the 18th century the arrangements for policing, which had existed since mediaeval
times, were felt to be inadequate methods of dealing with the social and economic
pressures that industrialisation had created.

Demands for police reform after various public disorders failed, yet the Metropolitan
Police Act was part of a series of legislation largely due to the efficient Parliamentary
management and political strategy of the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel. Through
the reform of the criminal law he had prepared the way to the introduction of a full
time police force to ensure that the new criminal laws were impartially and effectively
enforced.

The introduction of the ‘new police’ was not simply the product of the Metropolitan
Police Act 1829. Whilst it was influential in that it provided a model for the
expansion of policing to the counties and boroughs of England and Wales, it took two
decades for the ‘new police’ to become compulsory throughout England and Wales.

The Metropolitan Police Act’s greatest legacy was its model of organisation. The first
Metropolitan police officers were working class people who were chosen to police the
working classes. This principal established the relationship between the police and
the community

After the Metropolitan Police were formed there followed provincial police reforms
driven by the need to regulate crime, apprehend offenders and more importantly to
maintain the peace in the face of an increase in civil unrest. The Metropolitan Police
experience provided an organisational model for a police organisation that was copied
by provincial police authorities.

The 1856 Act went beyond making police forces compulsory, as it also introduced the
basis for a program of police standardisation which reinforced the status of the office
of constable.

Recommendation:

That the JCC note the contents of this paper and give consideration to it being
used to inform the current debate surrounding the history of the office of
constable.

John Giblin

No.7 Region Sergeant’s Representative

August 2007

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