When fish was wanted at Rochester, the tenants of the four hydes of Hedenham and Cuddington, near Aylesbury, were called out; two of the hydes brought the fish from Gloucester into Buckinghamshire, and the other two hydes carried it on to Rochester: it is likely that they were sent to fetch the dainty lamprey, still sought for at Gloucester. The _langerodes_, or long journeys, were very troublesome to the tenants, but could not be dispensed with while there were no regular mails, and no public conveyances. A person undertaking a _langerode_ either received some remuneration or worked out his rent by serving as a carrier; in general he was not inclined to leave his home and farm, and found it more convenient to pay the price of the service, which enabled the lord to find another carrier. No services were more frequently commuted than the duties of arriage and carriage, and a body of professional carriers was gradually formed by the habit of constant commutation.
The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry--with horn and voice--
"Swarming at his back the country cried."
We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at Martinmas, called _ward-penny_; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:--