The Normans naturally substituted French or Latin names for Anglo-Saxon ones; headborough became præpositus, and shire-reeve or sheriff became vicecomes. Of these foreign titles, the former is now never used, and the latter[57] has acquired a new meaning totally distinct from its original sense. "Constable," on the other hand, survived, although at first it was used only by the Normans, and in official documents, the people continuing to employ the native words according to the custom of the different parts of the country; thus in Middlesex there were Headboroughs, in Kent Borsholders, and in the West of England tythingmen. It is not necessary to pursue the matter further except to say, that when the Justices of the Peace, owing to the increased amount of work thrown upon them, were in want of subordinate officers, advantage was taken of the staff of tythingmen already existing, some of whom were given new functions, _e.g._ the execution of the Justices' warrants and the service of summonses, but without prejudice to their duties in connection with peace-maintenance; in short, the titles of tythingman, petty-constable, parish-constable, and finally police-constable, are the various names applied to the same office from the time of Alfred the Great to that of King Edward the Seventh. We do not know enough about the social distinctions of the period to say what the precise status of the early constable was. His position was without doubt an honourable one, superior in every way to that of the parish constable of later years, who only served because he could not help it, or because he was poor enough to bear another man's burden for a paltry pecuniary consideration. The local competence of the officer has always been insisted upon, and his incapacity to exercise any powers outside a particular area was one of the causes that contributed to make him the useless nonentity that he at one time became. So close was the connection between constable and parish that the Court of King's Bench decided, in 1734, that a place that did not employ one constable at least must be considered merely as a hamlet, and was not entitled to the privileges that belonged to an independent township; and whenever similar questions arose, the decision invariably turned on the existence or the non-existence of a parish constable. The qualifications that a constable ought to possess are thus tabulated by Coke:-- i. Honesty: to execute his office truly without malice, affection, or partiality. ii. Knowledge: to understand his duty, what he ought to do. iii. Ability: as well in estate as in body, that so he may attend and execute his office diligently, and not neglect the same through want or impotency.[58]