These regulations, which formed part of the "Provisions of Oxford," were well conceived, and for the moment proved extremely popular. But they left little permanent impress on the future life of the nation because they were fraudulently put forth by the barons, who, as it soon appeared, were only scheming to win the populace over to their side in the struggle for power, and who were far more anxious for their own aggrandisement than they were for any object connected with the mitigation of the troubles that afflicted the people. The whole attitude of the nobles was so lawless, supporting, as they did, bands of adherents to prey on each other's lands and on the chattels of the defenceless commonalty, that no lasting good could be expected to follow upon their most specious actions, their very gifts were presumptive evidence of premeditated guilt, and their evil disposition was a matter of common knowledge. "Knights and Esquires," says the Dictum of Kenilworth,[27] "who were robbers, if they have no land, shall pay the half of their goods, and find sufficient security to keep henceforth the peace of the kingdom." Well might Hume exclaim, "Such were the manners of the times!" The practical disappearance of the decennary societies, followed by the failure of the Provisions of Oxford to restore peace to the State, necessitated the creation of some more effectual agency for the re-establishment of good order. Such a substitute was fortunately provided by the famous Statute of Winchester, which was passed in the thirteenth year of Edward I., of whom it has been said that he did more for the preservation of the peace in the first thirteen years of his reign than was collectively accomplished by the thirteen monarchs next succeeding. This Winchester statute is especially important to our inquiry, because it sums up and gives permanency to those expedients introduced in former reigns, which were considered worthy of retention for the protection of society; and because it presents to us a complete picture of that police system of the middle ages which continued with but little alteration for more than five hundred years, and which even now, though greatly changed in its outward appearance, is still the foundation upon which our present police structure is built. The Statute of Winchester is not here presented as a brand-new system of police extemporised in the year 1285, but rather as the definite product of a long series of experiments all tending in the same direction. Legislation hastily conceived seldom survives; and however the case may stand in other lands, or in other departments of government, every police measure which has won a permanent place in English history has had a gradual growth, now retarded, now accelerated--here something removed as old fallacies were exposed, there something added as new knowledge was acquired. A few well-known and representative examples of the process at this stage of its development may be enumerated.