d., the Beer came to 14s. 10d., or 3s. 8 1/2d.
each man, and, as the price was about as now, each man drank 22 pints
of beer!

That this little weakness was not peculiar to the parish of Barkway is
clear from the accounts in other parishes. Yet the account was allowed
and passed without any Government auditor!

The duty of keeping watch and ward in most places during the last
century, and a part of the present, was almost as important a civil
function as were the police functions of the old constable, if only for
the reason that fires were extremely common, and the buildings of
materials which led to fires of a destructive character when they did
occur.

[Illustration: DOGBERRY "ON DUTY."]

In the village constable were merged some of the functions both of
policeman and beadle. The function of "watch and ward" had, however,
no official representative in the villages, where in times of special
risk, when incendiary fires were too common, the principal inhabitants
took their turn in keeping watch. To find the Parish Beadle in the
full-blown dignity of his office we must therefore go to the towns, to
Royston for instance, where we shall find Mr. Bumble in all the stately
pomp of cocked hat, great coat with a red cape, and gold lace, breeches
and hose, and a staff with the royal authority of Georgius {53} Rex
emblazoned thereon! A full figure, and an interesting character,
worthy in every way of the old Georgian era; in a corporation, as
important in his own estimation as Mayor and Corporation combined;
elsewhere, as we shall see, he was sometimes reduced to the humiliating
condition of having to be "generally useful."

To our modern notions it must, I think, seem strange that it was
necessary for him to unburden his official conscience every hour of the
night by the ringing of his bell and calling out the hour and state of
the weather! We have no right, however, to laugh at our forefathers
about a matter of this kind, who might, I daresay, very well laugh at
some of our modern customs. We must bear in mind that there was no
policeman on beat at that time, and, considering how much one may get
reconciled to by the force of habit, it is quite possible that the
people of the Georgian era slept the more soundly for these nocturnal
interruptions--rested more peacefully upon the assurance which was thus
conveyed, however indistinctly, to their minds, that while they slept
their town and property were safe from the ma