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Updated: April 30, 2025
Ten neighbouring householders were formed into one corporation, who, under the name of a tithing, decennary, or fribourg, were answerable for each others conduct, and over whom one person, called a tithingman, headbourg, or borsholder, was appointed to preside. Every man was punished as an outlaw who did not register himself in some tithing.
The administration of justice, in particular, by the courts of the decennary, the hundred, and the county, was well calculated to defend general liberty, and to restrain the power of the nobles. In the county courts, or shiremotes, all the freeholders were assembled twice a year, and received appeals from the inferior courts.
If he fled, either before or after finding sureties, the borsholder and decennary became liable to inquiry, and were exposed to the penalties of law.
And beside these monthly meetings of the hundred, there was an annual meeting, appointed for a more general inspection of the police of the district; for the inquiry into crimes, the correction of abuses in magistrates, and the obliging of every person to show the decennary in which he was registered. Leg. Ethelstani, cap. 2. apud Wilkins, p. 58. LL. Ethelr. § 4.
But Alfred took care to temper these rigours by other institutions favourable to the freedom of the citizens; and nothing could be more popular and liberal than his plan for the administration of justice. The borsholder summoned together his whole decennary to assist him in deciding any lesser difference which occurred among the members of this small community.
But however true or untrue his own account of himself may have been, certain it was that he spoke three languages with the same accent, and that a decennary or so after landing at Castle Garden his name was familiar to everyone connected with banks and banking.
When any person in any tithing or decennary was guilty of a crime, the borsholder was summoned to answer for him; and if he were not willing to be surety for his appearance, and his clearing himself, the criminal was committed to prison, and there detained till his trial.
He considers that Robin Hood was one of the 'contrariantes, or malcontents, of the reign of King Edward II., and that he was still living in the early years of King Edward III.; but that his birth must 'be carried back into the reign of King Edward I., and fixed in the decennary period, 1285 to 1295; that he was born in a family of some station and respectability, seated at Wakefield or in villages around; that he, like many others, partook of the popular enthusiasm which supported the Earl of Lancaster, the great baron of those parts, who, having attempted in vain various changes in the government, at length broke out into open rebellion, with many persons, great and small, following his standard; that when the earl fell, and there was a dreadful proscription, a few persons who had been in arms not only escaped the hazards of battle, but the arm of the executioner; that he was one of these; and that he protected himself against the authorities of the time, partly by secreting himself in the depths of the woods of Barnesdale or of the forest of Sherwood, and partly by intimidating the public officers by the opinion which was abroad of his unerring bow, and his instant command of assistance from numerous comrades as skilled in archery as himself; that he supported himself by slaying the wild animals which were found in the forests, and by levying a species of blackmail on passengers along the great road which united London with Berwick, occasionally replenishing his coffers by seizing upon treasure as it was being transported on the road; that there was a self-abandonment and a courtesy in the way in which he proceeded, which distinguishes him from the ordinary highwayman; that he laid down the principle, that he would take from none but those who could afford to lose, and that, if he met with poor persons, he would bestow upon them some part of what he had taken from the rich: in short, that in this respect he was the supporter of the rights or supposed reasonable expectations of the middle and lower ranks a leveller of the times; that he continued this course for about twenty months April 1322 to December 1323 meeting with various adventures, as such a person must needs do, some of which are related in the ballads respecting him; that when, in 1323, the king was intent upon freeing his forests from such marauders, he fell into the king's power; that this was at a time when the bitter feeling with which the king and the Spencers had first pursued those who had shewn themselves such formidable adversaries, had passed away, and a more lenient policy had supervened the king, possibly for some secret and unknown reason, not only pardoned him all his transgressions, but gave him the place of one of the valets, porteurs de la chambre, in the royal household; which appointment he held for about a year, when the love for the unconstrained life he had led and for the charms of the country returned, and he left the court, and betook himself again to the greenwood shade; that he continued this mode of life we know not exactly how long; and that at last he resorted to the prioress of Kirklees, his own relative, for surgical assistance, and in that priory he died and was buried.
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