2. Sheppard:

Offices and Duties of Constables.

Page 17.

And if because the common course is everywhere to put these offices upon the meaner sort of men, the more able sort do think themselves thereby exempted, they are therein much deceived.

Page 87.

None may purposely, by word or deed (as by talking, laughing, hemming, or the like) without authority, disturb a Minister in his preaching of the word, [or in any church service]; and if any do so, any one of the constables or churchwardens of the place may of his own authority presently apprehend him, and carry him to a justice of peace of the same county. . . .

Page 128.

If any person without lawful license take upon him . . . to keep a common alehouse or tippling-house, or use commonly selling of ale, beer, cider, or perry, he shall forfeit for every such offence 20s. to the use of the poor of the place. . . .

Page 205.

If all this labor appointed by the statutes to be bestowed on the highways be not sufficient for the amendment thereof, the parish must supply it; for the parishioners of every parish are to look to their highways that they be well repaired and kept at their peril. . . .

Page 219.

No man is to be put out of the town where he dwelleth, nor to be sent to his place of birth or last habitation but a vagrant rogue. . . . And if they be not able to work, they must be relieved there [in the parish of their legal residence]. . . .

Page 226.

When officers are to make any rates, they shall do well first of all to give public notice in the church of the time and place, when and where they intend to make the same (for this in the case of church-rates is necessary) and then if the parishioners will meet, they may; if not, the officers and those that do meet, may make the rate. The rates must not be extended beyond the parish, neither may the overseers rate other parishes towards the rates of the poor of their parish. . . .

Page 232.

In some special case a man may be rated beyond his ability; for if a parishioner for his own gain or otherwise, shall bring into the parish without the consent thereof, a stranger who is, or is apparently like to be burdensome to the parish; in this case the parishioners (because they have no other remedy against him) may rate him not only according to his ability of lands and goods, but according to the damage he bringeth, or is like to bring to the parish by his folly. . . .

Page 281.

[Ministers] must upon every Sunday and holiday, before evening prayer, for half an hour or more examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of their parish in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Belief, and in the Lord’s Prayer; and shall diligently hear, instruct, and teach them the catechism, set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. . . . And every man is bound to send his children and servants, and they are bound to come, being sent, to be catechised. . . . The Minister is every Sunday to set down the names of all that are christened, married, or buried, the week before within his parish. . . .

Page 314.

It is thought also, that they [Ministers] ought to have (and may recover where they may have not) a competent allowance and maintenance out of the tithes of the parish wherein they serve. . . .

Page 326.

They [churchwardens] are to order the seats in the church and to appoint every man and woman where they shall sit. . . . [They may make rates] . . . [these] rates are not to be made for the raising of money, before there be need. . . .