Copyright held by
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Further details of licences are available from our
Licences page. For more
information, contact the project director,
Born digital.
Most MoEML documents, or significant fragments with mol:
prefix and accessed through the web application
with their id + .xml
.
The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on MoEML’s OpenLayers3-based rendering of the Agas Map.
Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey
Links to page-images in the
The mdt (MoEML Document Type) prefix used on
The mdtlist (MoEML Document Type listing) prefix used in linking attributes points to a listings page constructed from a category in the central MDT taxonomy in the includes file. There are two variants, one with the plain _subcategories
, meaning all subcategories of the category.
The molgls (MoEML gloss) prefix used on
This molvariant prefix is used on
This molajax prefix is used on
The molstow prefix is used on
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
Constables were a form of law enforcement devised to replace an earlier
system of two count or officer of
the stable
(
Constables were ideally supposed to come from the yeoman class, but because
these men were tradesmen and small landowners, they usually refused to
serve. The end result was that constables were generally chosen from the
fourth and lowest class of people. Poor and usually uneducated, they
constitute a real historical basis for the comic bumbling of
In London, constables were chosen to serve the wards and parishes they lived
in, since there was no citywide police system. In
(qtd. in Evans 428). Many men chosen for the job refused it, however, as suggested inMary, syr, sayd he,I am Constable for fault of a better, and was commaunded by the Iusticer to watch
Escalus. Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master Constable. How long have you been in this place of constable?Elbow. Seven year and a half, sir.Escalus. I thought, by the readiness in the office, you had continued in it some time. You say, seven years together?Elbow. And a half, sir.Escalus. Alas, it hath been great pains to you. They do you wrong to put you so oft upon’t. Are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?Elbow. Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters. As they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them. I do it for some piece of money and go through with all.
Since no one wanted the job, those who accepted it were often inadequate for
the watch. In
Another example of the real-life inadequacy of Elizabethan law enforcement is
a letter dated plumps
(qtd. in Evans) of ten to
twelve men huddled together in towns he passed through, but he assumed they
were doing so because it was raining. When he came to a town and saw another
of these groups when it wasn’t raining, he recognized that they must be
members of the watch and asked them what they were doing. The men replied
that they were looking for three young men. When Burghley inquired how they would know these men, they
answered that one of the men had a hooked nose. Burghley was surprised to hear that they had no other
means of identifying the wanted men. He asked to see the head constable, a
man named Bankes, and told him the constables were not performing their
duty. No criminal would approach them if they were standing about in groups,
nor would they be likely to recognize the criminal from the vague
description they had been given (Evans
429).
After the Restoration of