Proceedingsof the INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY

For 1967

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VOLUMEXXXI, PART 1 (published 1968)

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY BY W. E. HARRISON & SONS LTD • THE ANCIENT HOUSE PRESS • THE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

By CATHARINE PRESCOTT

Before 1839 Suffolk, like the rest of rural , had only the police system supplied by the high of the hundred and the petty of the parishes and townships.' The was divided into twenty-one hundreds made up of about five hundred parishes, several extraparochial places, thirty towns and about a thousand villages and hamlets.2 The high constable of the hundred was the officer directly responsible to the Justices of the Peace in the machinery of public order, it being his duty to keep the peace within the hundred as the petty constable did within the parish. He was appointed by the magistrates in Quarter Sessions, as, for example, was Robert Postle, farmer, 'appointed and sworn of the Hundred of Mutford and Lothingland in the room of Thomas Hunt', in October 1803.3 He had to be resident in the hundred for which he was appointed and service was compulsory, originally for a term of a year but later until discharged by the Justices on resignation or death. In the early years there was no legal provision for any remuneration. The Quarter Sessional Records show that the persons serving in this office were mainly the humbler gentry and small freeholders, but even for them it entailed loss of time and extra expenses, not reimbursed. The duties and functions of the high constable were like his social position, intermediate between those of a Justice of the Peace and the constable of a parish,4 and became more administrative in character as the nineteenth century progressed. He was the medium through which communications between the State and the parish were made, and through him the Justices gave their orders to the petty constables. For instance, at the Sessions of April 1809, it was ordered that, 'the chief constables of the several hundreds within this division be required to issue their orders to the petty constables of their several parishes desiring them to make out perfect lists of Pauper Lunatics and Idiots within their parishes

1 F. C. Mather, Public Orderin theDays of the Chartists, (1960), p. 75. 2 White, Suffolk, (1844), p. 15. Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office, ref. 105/2, Quarter Sessions Minute Book (hereafter referred to as Q.S.M.B.), 3 October 1803. (All documents, unless otherwise stated, are to be found in the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office). 4 S. and B. Webb, English Local Government,Vol. 1, (1906), The Parish and County, p. 491. 2 SUFFOLK INSTITUTE OF ARCH1EOLOGY describingeach of them, and that thoselistsmay be returned to the chief constables for the next sessions'.5As the authority of the Justices was enlarged by various statutes, it was the high constable who received the increasing commands and precepts to be distri- buted to the parish constables. Although the parish constableswere ordered and commanded by the high constablethey werenot subordinate to him and he held no authority over them by law. The Justices lookedto him for their supervisionand direction and therefore,as Burn points out, he was in a way responsiblefor their conduct as he was bound to notice their defaults, 'for neglect of which duty he is representable himself'.5 It was up to the high constable to see that the petty constablesobservedand obeyedthe orders of Quarter Sessionsand he was also responsiblefor paying them any expensesincurred