One begins to understand the fury with which robbers and thieves were pursued. Mr. Freeman says most justly, “In our settled times we hardly understand how rigour, often barbarous rigour, against thieves and murderers, should have been looked on as the first merit of a governor, one which was always enough to cover a multitude of sins.”[8] To the same cause we may, no doubt, ascribe the singular fact that ecclesiastics, forbidden to shed blood, yet hanged men by the hands of their bailiffs.[9] An abbat, for example, had two parts to fulfil. As an ecclesiastic he gave shelter to thieves, as lord of the manor he hanged them. The abbat of Westminster had his servants waiting in Thieving Lane to show thieves the way to sanctuary: on the other hand, he had sixteen gallows in Middlesex alone.[10] The contradiction is placed in the strongest light by the charter of Glastonbury, granted by Edgar (A.D. 958-975). The charter concedes “infangethef and utfangethef,” the right to try and assuredly to hang thieves. But the very same charter grants that, if anywhere in the kingdom, the abbat or one of his monks should meet a thief being taken to the gallows, or otherwise in danger of his life, he could stay the execution of the sentence.[11] The insight into the state of the country in the late thirteenth century, given by the two publications of the Records Commission, Rotuli Hundredorum, and Placita de Quo Waranto, is so valuable that it may be permitted to glance at them. The preliminary to the first of these is the Act of the fourth of Edward I. (1276), the statute for assigning justices to the work. The statute, called “Rageman,” a term of doubtful etymology, enacted that justices should go through the land inquiring into, hearing, and determining all complaints and suits for trespasses within twenty-five years last past, as well by the king’s bailiffs as by all other persons whomsoever. These commissioners did their work with a thoroughness amazing when we consider the difficulty of travel in the times. The results are recorded in the Rotuli Hundredorum. On the evidence furnished by the Rotuli Hundredorum was passed the statute of Gloucester, in the sixth of Edward I. (1278). This Act put the burden of proof of lawful claim to franchises on the persons exercising them. The statute enacts that whereas prelates, earls, barons, and others of the kingdom claim to have divers franchises, persons may continue to exercise these franchises without prejudice to the king’s rights until the next coming of the king into the county, or the next coming of the justices in Eyre, or until the king otherwise order. The sheriffs are to make proclamation that all who claim to have any franchise by charter or otherwise shall come at a certain day to a place assigned, to state what franchises they claim and by what title.