The following is Robert Chamber’s history of the custom in his Popular Antiquities.
Civilisation, in its slowest progress, may be well illustrated
by a glance at the past modes of guarding and lighting the tortuous and
dangerous streets of old cities. From the year 1253, when Henry III established
night-watchmen, until 1830, when Sir Robert Peel's police act established a new
kind of guardian, the watchman was little better than a person who
Disturbed your rest to tell you what 's o'clock.
He had been gradually getting less useful from the days of
Elizabeth; thus Dogberry and his troop were unmistakable pictures of the tribe,
as much relished for the satirical truth of their delineation in the reign of
Anne, as in that of her virgin predecessor. Little improvement took place until
the Westminster act was passed in 1762, a measure forced on the attention of
the legislature by the impunity with which robbery and murder were committed
after dark. Before that year, a few wretched oil lamps only served to make
darkness visible in the streets, and confuse the wayfarer by partial
glimmerings across his ill-paved path.
Before the great civil wars, the streets may be said to have
been only lighted by chance; by the lights from windows, from lanterns
grudgingly hung out by householders, or by the watchmen during their rounds;
for by a wonderful stretch of parochial wisdom, and penny-wise economy, the
watching and lighting were performed at the same time. The watchman of the
olden time carried a fire-pot, called a cresset, on the top of a long pole, and
thus inarched on, giving light as he bawled the hour, and at the same time,
notification of his approach to all thieves, who had thus timeous warning to
escape.
The appearance of this functionary in the sixteenth century will be best understood from the engraving here copied from one in Sharp's curious dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries. A similar cresset is still preserved in the armoury of the Tower of London. It is an open-
barred pot, hanging by swivels fastened to the forked staff; in the centre of the pot is a spike, around which was coiled a rope soaked in pitch and rosin, which sputtered and burned with a lurid light, and stinking smoke, as the watchman went his rounds. The watch was established as a stern necessity ; and that necessity had become stern, indeed, before his advent. Roger Hoveden has left a vivid picture of London at night in the year 1175, when it was a common practice for gangs of a 'hundred or more in a company' to besiege wealthy houses for plunder, and unscrupulously murder any one who happened to come in their way. Their 'vocation' was so flourishing, that when one of their number was convicted, he had the surpassing assurance to offer the king five hundred pounds of silver for his life. The gallows, however, claimed its due, and made short work with the fraternity ; who continued, however, to be troublesome from time to time until Henry III., as already stated, established regular watchmen in all cities and borough-towns, and gave the person plundered by a thief the right of recovering an equivalent for his loss from the legal guardians of the district in which it occurred; a wholesome mode of inflicting a fine for the non-performance of a parish duty.
The London watchman of the time of James I., as here depicted, differed in no essential point from his predecessors in that of Elizabeth. He carried a halbert and a horn-lantern, was well secured in a frieze gabardine, leathern-girdled; and wore a serviceable hat, like a pent-house,
to guard against weather. The worthy here depicted has a most venerable face and beard, shewing how ancient was the habit for parish officers to select the poor and feeble for the office of watchman, in order to keep them out of the poorhouse. Such 'ancient and most quiet watchmen' would naturally prefer being out of harm's way, and warn thieves to depart in peace by ringing the bell, that the wether of their flock carried ; 'then presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave,' as honest Dogberry advises. Above the head of the man, in the original engraving from which our cut. is copied, is inscribed the cry he uttered as he walked the round of his parish. It is this : 'Lanthorne and a whole candell light, hange out your lights heare!' This was in accordance with the old local rule of London, as established by the mayor in 1416, that all householders of the better class, rated above a low rate in the books of their respective parishes, should hang a lantern, lighted with a fresh and whole candle, nightly outside their houses for the accommodation of foot passengers, from Allhallows evening to Candlemas day. There is another picture of a Jacobean bellman in the collection of prints in the British Museum, giving a more poetic form to the cry. It runs thus:
A light here, maids, haue out your
light,
And see your horns be clear and bright,
That so your candle clear may shine,
Continuing from six till nine ;
That honest men that walk along
May see to pass safe without wrong.
The honest men had, however, need to be abed betimes, for
total darkness fell early on the streets when the rush-candle burned in its
socket; and was dispelled only by the occasional appearance of the watchman
with his horn lantern ; or that more important and noisier official, the
bellman. One of these was appointed to each ward, and acted as a sort of
inspector to the watchmen and the parish, going round, says Stow, 'all night
with a bell, and at every lane's end, and at the ward's end, gave warning of
fire and candle, and to help the poor, and pray for the dead.'
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