The land was thin, then as now, and the only real way to create value was to raise cattle. Carlisle had been tossed between kings for centuries – Edward I himself died at Burgh-by-Sands at the end of one campaign with the Scots – but as time went on the real problem was increasing poverty in areas around the borders. From the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), long-standing poor relations between Scots and Cumbrians deteriorated into a pattern that would last for three hundred years. As a result, communities broke down and re-formed, and traditional communal obligations became looser.Ĭumberland – the northern part of Cumbria – had an additional problem. Villages disappeared, not only because they failed to function when half the agricultural labourers, the miller and the baker had died, but because those people who survived realised that their labour was now so valuable that they could flog their skills to the highest bidder… likely in the next village or two down the road. This is probably connected to the de-population of the country following the first major Black Death, when perhaps as much as half of the population died in a few years. The hue and cry system worked well until somewhere around the mid-14 th century. But there seems to be plenty of evidence that finding and turning in criminals was a legal responsibility in the pre-Norman version of the feudal system and in all truth, likely represents the way wrongdoing was managed for millennia.
If someone killed your pig, abducted your wife, stole a fork or murdered your aunt, you yelled very loudly and neighbours, friends and passers-by were all equally required to chase after the felon, apprehend him/her and hand them over to the constable, who would then turn him over to the justices for punishment.Īny historical dictionary will tell you that ‘hue and cry’ comes from the Anglo-Norman phrase, ‘hu e cri’ and from that, people can assume it was an introduction of the Norman Conquest.
Before that, law for ordinary folks had been kept by common agreement enacted via an elected constable and the ‘hue and cry’ system.
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