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THE CONSTABLES. 165
judgment, " on simple inspection of fact." He was to act as the King's
vicegerent, without appeal, and with power to inflict punishment, fine, and
other lawful coercion, notwithstanding any statutes, acts, ordinances, or
restrictions made to the contrary. By this supreme and irresponsible
Lancastrians were doomed. The Earl of Oxford and his
judicature many
son, and four others, were beheaded by Tiptot in 1462. Twelve of the
prisoners taken at Hexham, in 1464, were condemned and executed in
the same summary manner at York ;
and Sir Ralph Grey, the defender of
Alnwick, was in the same year tried
by Tiptot, and beheaded in the King's
presence.*
As such multifarious duties multiplied and developed, the constables
were empowered by their patents to appoint deputies to act for them in the
Exchequer and elsewhere, and eventually throughout England. In the reign
of Henry III.,
1252, constables were nominated to hundreds and townships,
to secure the conservation of the peace ; and amongst the eleven Articles
presented by the Parliament in 1309 to Edward II., in reply to his demand
of the constables of
for money, was a complaint of the illegal jurisdiction
Castles in common pleas. f
the Royal
Ralph de Mortimer, who accompanied William, Duke of Normandy, to
and his
England, and took Edrich, Earl of Shrewsbury, lands and castle of
Wigmore, was the first constituted constable of England by the Conqueror,
and the office remained for the most part hereditary amongst his
descendants until the i3th year of the reign of Henry VIII., when Edward,
Earl of Stafford, was attainted and beheaded, and the office of Constable
of England reverted to the Crown.
The office of marshal was in like manner hereditary. In 1138 Gilbert
de Clare, lord of Striguil, w r as made Earl of Pembroke by King Stephen,
and also seized in fee of the office of Marshal of England, and it continued
amongst his descendants until 1297, when Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk,
dying without issue, it reverted to the Crown. In the gth of Richard II. it
was conferred on Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and continued
amongst his descendants until the death of Richard, Duke of York, second
son of Edward IV., when it
again reverted to the Crown, and was granted
in succession to many, until the reign of Charles II., when on Oct. igth, 1672,
Henry Howard, Baron Howard of Castle Rising, and Earl of Norwich, was
constituted hereditary Earl Marshal of England, with whose descendants
the office and title still remain, though
patronage of Heralds' College, and some special offices
the duties are confined to the
at the Coronation.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say what were the original duties
of the deputy constables in their several spheres.
Probably at first arbitrary
and powerful, with responsibility only to their chief; but when the office
X
* 1
Stubbs Const. Hist., vol. iii., p. 302. t Slubbs, vol. ii., pp. 296-351.