Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 84

The vill is most remarkable, however, for its place in the system of police and criminal procedure.

“It ought to attend the court held by the Justices in Eyre. It ought to attend the sheriff’s turn. It ought to attend the hundred and county courts whenever it has any crime to present. It must come at the coroner’s call to make inquest when a dead man’s body is found. It is bound to see that all its members who ought to be in frankpledge are in frankpledge. In some parts of the country the township is itself a frankpledge, a tithing... and in this case it is responsible for the production of any of its members who is accused of crime. Apart from this, it was bound to arrest malefactors; at all events if a person was slain within its boundaries during the daytime and the slayer was not arrested, it was liable to an amercement.... Again, from of old it was the duty of the township to raise the hue and cry and follow the trail of stolen cattle.... Moreover, it was the common practice to commit prisoners to the charge of the villata, and then if the prisoners escaped the villata was amerced. So if a malefactor took sanctuary, the neighbouring townships had to watch the church and prevent his escape. Most of these liabilities can be traced back into the reign of Henry II.”¹

The thirteenth-century statutes systematised the police powers of the vill; watchmen were to be kept throughout the night and the assize of arms enforced; in 1252 constables were to be appointed, and in 1253 vills were ordered to provide at their own cost the necessary weapons, while, as we have already said, the Statute of Winchester in 1285 consolidated these previous enactments for the rest of the middle ages. The vill was further under heavy obligations in the maintenance of roads and bridges and the cleansing and repairing of river-banks. From all this it will be clear that the vill could hardly escape being many times amerced, and it seems that the inhabitants were jointly and severally liable to find the money.

Finally, the vill had very important duties in the system of presentments. When a crime occurred within the vill it was the duty of the reeve and the four best men to report it to the hundred court and if possible to produce the guilty party, while on numerous occasions the King’s Justices would summon the vill where a crime was committed (together with four or more neighbouring vills, all appearing by their reeve and four best men) to pass upon the guilt or innocence of a prisoner accused of crime.

In the later middle ages the vill ceased to be of general legal importance. From the administrative point of view it was gradually replaced by the parish with which in fact it frequently coincided, and ever since Elizabeth’s poor law the parish has tended to become a unit of civil taxation.² Rules of pleading, however, continued to insist upon places being assigned to a particular vill, and so the vill for centuries survived as a troublesome anachronism. To make matters worse, the boundaries of vills were uncertain, and a good many places were definitely not in any vill at all.¹ At length it was enacted that the specification of the county should be enough.²