"At your Assizes, Sessions of the Peace, or Leet, you shall present all and every the offences done contrary to the Statutes made 1 Jacobi, 4 Jacobi, and 21 Jacobi Regis, to restrain the inordinate haunting and tippling in Inns, Alehouses, and other Victually Houses, and for repressing of drunkeness: you shall there likewise true presentment make of all Bloudsheddings, affrays, outcries, Rescous, and other offences committed or done against the King's Majestie's Peace within your limits: You shall once every year during your office present at the Quarter Sessions all Popish Recusants within your liberty, and their Children above 9, and their servants, (_scil_ their monthly absence from the Church).[113] You shall well and duly execute all precepts and Warrants to you directed, from the Justices of the Peace of the County or higher Officers: you shall be aiding to your neighbours against unlawful purveyances: in time of Hay or Corn Harvest, upon request, you shall cause all persons meet to serve by the day for the mowing, reaping, or getting in of Corn or Hay: You shall in Easter week cause your Parishioners to chuse Surveyors for the mending of the Highways in your parish or Liberty; and you shall well and duly, according to your Knowledge, Power, and Ability, do and execute all other things belonging to the Office of Constable, so long as you continue in the said Office. So help you God." If the obligations here enumerated had been effectually carried out, the King's Peace might have been a reality instead of the meaningless formula it had become; but High Constables were not professional police-officers like our Chief Constables, nor were they county magnates like the High Constables who once had superintended the police of the shire. The status of the office had steadily declined: instead of the great noblemen who, as we have seen, occupied similar posts under the Plantagenet Kings, and instead of the "Yeomen of the better class" spoken of by Lord Bacon, we find ale-house keepers and petty tradesmen, hardly less ignorant than the petty constables they were supposed to instruct, undertaking the office for the sake of profit, without any special aptitude, knowledge, or experience of their important duties, and without any serious intention of learning their work; for as no inducement or encouragement was held out to tempt or stimulate them to exertion, they were as inefficient when they relinquished their task as they were when they undertook it.