This chapter investigates the impact of state formation, through the rise of the quarter sessions and the new responsibilities this gave village constables, on manorial governance structures. A county-wide case study of manors and quarter sessions’ records in Norfolk for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals that constables were fulfilling important roles for JPs in serving warrants, enforcing labour legislation and policing vagrancy. However, constables continued to be chosen in manorial courts and to be subject to the oversight of, and directed by, officials of courts leet. Examining the identities of constables at the case-study manors further shows that these individuals continued to serve in manorial office into the early modern period. Moreover, manorial courts since the fourteenth century ensured that constables fulfilled the requirements owed by vills to the crown, meaning that new obligations of constables to the state were underpinned by manorial structures. Therefore, the incorporation of constables into new county-wide structures of law and order was made possible through the local authority given to them via the manor court.

Honour was an important and enduring element in the moral economy and mattered as much to peasants as to the nobility. ‘Honour’ retained something of the Old English notion of weorđ , entitlement. Association with a lord or estate owner could bestow weorđ but so too could ownership of a full ploughteam. Local saints were often people who were valued for what their piety could achieve for the community. Age could command respect: ‘village elders’ and ealdormann , both have ‘elder’ as their root. Peasant elites also became consolidated as a result of the countryside becoming formally organised from the mid-tenth century for the purposes of dealing with local matters, mainly crime and its policing. Townships were the political worlds of the peasantry and the sphere in which peasant elites operated. A strong emphasis was put on inheritance, a value shared across society.