The Statute of Winchester (13 Edw. I. st. 2, c. 6), ordaining every citizen to have armour according to his condition to keep the peace, requires that in every hundred and fran chise two constables be chosen to make the view of armour twice a year, and that the said constables “shall present before justices assigned such defaults as they do see in the county about armour, and of the suits, and of watches, and of highways; and also shall present all such as do lodge strangers in uplandish towns, for whom they will not answer.” These are the officers known as high constables; who are especially charged with the peace of the hundred, just as the petty constables are charged with the peace of the parish or township. They were appointed at the court of the hundred, or in default thereof by justices at special sessions (7 and 8 Vict. c. 33, § 8). By a recent Act, 32 and 33 Vict. c. 47, they are practically abolished, as the justices of each county are required to consider and determine whether it is necessary that the office of high constable of each hundred, or other like district, should be continued.

The petty or parish constable unites two offices—the ancient one of head-borough or tithing man, and the modern one, instituted about the reign of Edward III., of assistant to the high constable. Considering what manner of men were for the most part appointed to these offices, Blackstone thought it was well that they should be kept in ignorance of the extent of their powers. Besides their general duties in the preservation of the peace they are charged with the execution of warrants and the service of summonses. No action can be brought against a constable for any act done in the execution of his office unless within six months from the time of its being committed. By 24 Geo. II. c. 44, the justice who signed the warrant must be made a co-defendant in any action against the constable, and on the production of such warrant at the trial the jury must find for the constable, notwithstanding any want of jurisdiction in the magistrate. Petty constables were formerly elected at the court leet or, in default thereof, by two justices. But by 5 and 6 Vict. c. 109, it is .ordered that the justices shall annually issue their precept to the overseers of each parish in their county, requiring them to return a list of persons in such parish qualified and liable to serve as constables, and that the justices on special petty sessions shall revise the list, and select therefrom such number of constables as they may deem necessary. Every able-bodied man resident within the parish, between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, rated to the relief of the poor or to the county rate, on any tenements of the net yearly value of £4 and upwards, is qualified and liable to serve as constable for that parish. But large classes of persons are specially exempted from the liability to serve,— including peers and members of Parliament, judges, justices, clergymen and ministers, lawyers, physicans, officers of the army and navy, public servants, &c. Licensed victuallers and beer-sellers, game-keepers, and convicts are disqualified. Every person so chosen must serve; but those who have served already shall not be liable to serve again until every other person liable shall have served. Boroughs under the Municipal Corporation Act do not come within this statute. In .consequence of the establishment of a county constabulary it is now enacted, by 35 and 36 Vict. c. 92, that no such constable shall be appointed unless for parishes in regard to which the magistrates for the county shall at their general or quarter sessions determine that it js necessary that such appointment shall be made.

Special Constables are appointed to act on occasional emergencies when the ordinary police force is thought to be deficient. In the absence of volunteers the office is compulsory, on the appointment of two justices. The lord-lieutenant may also appoint special constables, and the statutory exemptions may be disregarded.

The Acts establishing and regulating county constabulary are the 2 and 3 Viet, c, 93, 3 and 4 Vict. c. 88, 19 and 20 Vict. c. 69, 20 Vict. c. 2, ar/í 22 and 23 Vict. c. 32. The police force of every county shall be under the superintendence of a chief-constable, who, with the approbation of justices in petty sessions, may appoint constables and provisional superintendents. The chief-constable has the general superintendence and direction of the force (including the petty constables where they still exist), and he may dismiss them at his pleasure, subject to the orders of Quarter Sessions, and the rules established for the government of the force. The salaries and other expenses under these Acts are to be paid by a police rate, to be made by the justices at Quarter Sessions. Counties and boroughs may consolidate their police force. The Crown appoints inspectors to report on the efficiency of the police, and whenever a certificate shall be granted by the Secretary of State that the police has been maintained during the preceding year in a state of efficiency as to discipline and numbers, the Treasury shall grant a sum in aid of the expenses not exceeding one-fourth of the charge for pay and clothing.

CONSTABLE, Archibald (1774-1827), the well-known Edinburgh publisher, was born in the parish of Carnbee, Fifeshire, on the 24th February 1774. Having been educated at the parish school, he was, at his own request, apprenticed to a bookseller in Edinburgh, named Peter Hill. From the first he took a great interest in books; and he obtained permission from his master to attend book sales, and purchase rare works, of which he drew up carefully executed catalogues. When not yet twenty-one years of. age he had married and commenced business on his own account. He took special interest in Scottish literature; the rare works in that department which he offered for sale soon brought him into notice, and from this and from his genial disposition and his unprecedented liberality towards authors, his business grew rapidly. In 1801 he became proprietor of the Farmers' Magazine and the Scots' Magazine, and on the 10th October 1802 he published the first number of the Edinburgh Review. Constable was for many years on the most intimate and friendly relations with Sir Walter Scott. In January 1802 he had a share in the publication of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and afterwards published a large proportion of Scott’s poems and novels. Besides these, he published the Annual Register, and the works of Dugald Stewart, Brown, Playfair, and Leslie. In 1812 he purchased the copyright of the Encyclopa-dia Britannica, to which he added the supplement to the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions (1815-1824), extending to six volumes, and containing the celebrated dissertations by Stewart, Playfair, and Brande. Not the least important of his undertakings was Constable’s Miscellany, projected in 1825, consisting of a series of original works, and standard works republished in a cheap form, the earliest and one of the most famous of the attempts to popularize wholesome literature. In 1826 pecuniary difficulties in which the firm of Constable and Co. became involved (its liabilities exceeding £250,000) obliged it to stop payment. From this time Constable’s health gave way, and he died on 2lst July 1827, having, by his generous dealings with authors, his literary enthusiasm, and his efforts to promote the diffusion of standard literature, gained for himself one of the most distinguished names among British publishers.

See Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents, by bis son, Thomas Constable (1873).

CONSTABLE, Henry, one of the most considerable of the Elizabethan sonneteers, was born about 1556, in Yorkshire, as it is supposed, and certainly of a Roman Catholic family. He was sent to St John’s College, Cambridge, where in 1579 he took his degree of B.A. In the same year there appeared a volume entitled The Forest of Fancy by H. C., which has been attributed to Henry Chettle, but may with far more probability be assigned to Constable. This is a black-letter romance in prose and verse, of some slight literary value. Until 1592 we lose sight of the poet altogether, but in that year appeared his principal work, the book of sonnets called Diana. The only sonnets in the Italian form which had preceded them were those of Sidney, printed the year before, and as Constable had been writing those poems for many years he deserves credit as being one of the first to introduce this elegant form of verse among us. His sonnets are not merely quatorzains, like Shakespeare’s; he preserves the exact arrangement of rhymes, except that he usually closes with a couplet. So popular was Diana that in 1594 a second enlarged edition appeared. But all this time a cloud was gathering round the poet. As a Catholic and a pronounced admirer of the queen of Scots, he came under suspicion of plotting treason against Elizabeth. Almost immediately after ushering Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry into the world with four magnificent sonnets, in 1595, he was obliged, in October of that year, to fly for his life to France. After a short stay in Paris, he wintered at Rouen, and then set off on a long pilgrimage to Rome, Poland, the Low Countries, and Scotland. In 1600 we find him still an exile, this time in Spain. About the year 1601 he could endure the growing home-sickness no longer, and returned to England in disguise. He was discovered at once and committed to the Tower, where he languished until 1604, when he was released. Of the date of his death we know no more than can be gathered from the fact that he is spoken of as alive in 1606, and as apparently not long dead in 1616. Besides the Diana he was the author of four important poems which were printed in the 1600 edition of England's Helicon. Two of these, the exquisite lyric of “Diaphenia like the Daffadowndilly,” and the charming pastoral song of Venus and Adonis, hold a prominent place in our early literature,—the latter especially being believed to precede Shakespeare’s epic in date of composition. Some very fine Spiritual Sonnets of Constable have been printed in our own day, and it is understood that certain compositions of this “ambrosiae muse,” as Ben Jonson styled it, are still awaiting an editor. The style of Constable is fervid and full of colour. Mr Minto has well said that his words flow with happiest impulse “when his whole being is aglow with the rapture of beauty.”

CONSTABLE, John (1776-1837), landscape painter, was born at East Bergholt, in the Stour valley, Suffolk, June 11, 1776. Under the guidance of a certain John Dunthune, a plumber, he acquired in early life some insight into the first principles of landscape art, together with a habit of studying in the open air that was afterwards of much service to him. His father, who was a yeoman farmer, did not care to encourage this tendency, and set him to work in one of his windmills. The incessant watchfulness of the weather which this occupation required laid the foundation of that wonderful knowledge of atmospheric changes and effects of which his works give evidence. From an introduction to Sir George Beaumont, an amiable man but a poor painter, he became acquainted with the works of Claude and Girtin. In 1795 he was sent to London with a letter to Farington, the landscape painter. Farington encouraged him with predictions of coming eminence; and for two years he plodded on, drawing cottages, studying anatomy, and copying and painting, sometimes in London and sometimes in Suffolk. His progress, however, was not encouraging; and in 1797 he returned home, and for some time worked in his father’s counting-house. In 1799 he again went to London to perfect himself as a painter; and on the 4th of February he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy. The lights and shadows of his studies from the antique at this period are praised by Leslie, but they were sometimes defective in outline. He worked from dawn till dusk, and was an untiring copyist of such masters as he had sympathy with, as Wilson, Ruysdael, and Claude. Drawings from nature made during the next year or two, in Suffolk or in Derbyshire, were of no great promise. Being naturally slow, he was yet groping blindly for something not to be found for many years. In 1802 he attended Brookes’s anatomical lectures, exhibited his first picture, and, refusing a drawing mastership offered him by Dr Fisher, gave himself wholly to his vocation. He exhibited a number of paintings during the next eight years, but it was not till 1811 that he gave to the world, in his Dedham Vale, the first work in which his distinctive manner and excellences are evident. In 1816, having inherited £4000 on his father’s death, he emerged from a painful state of poverty with which he had been struggling, and married. In 1818 he exhibited four of his finest works; and next year he sent to Somerset House the largest picture he had yet painted, the landscape known as Constable’s White Horse. In the November following he was made associate of the Academy. His power at this time, though unrecognized, was at its highest. In 1823, however, after the exhibition of such masterpieces as the Stratford Mill, the Hay Cart, and the Salisbury Cathedral, he did not disdain to copy two Claudes. In 1824 two of his larger pictures, which he sold, were taken to Paris, and created there a profound sensation. Allowing a great deal for the influence of Bonington, who died four years afterwards, much of the best in contemporary French landscape may be said to date from them. Constable received a gold medal from Charles X., and his pictures were honourably hung in the Louvre.

In 1825, he painted his Loch (“silvery, windy, delicious” is his own description of it), and sent his White Horse to Lille for exhibition. It made, like the others, a great impression, and procured the painter a second gold medal. Other great works followed; and in 1829 he was elected Academician, to the astonishment and ill-concealed displeasure of many, and began to devote himself, in conjunction with Lucas, to the preparation of his book of English Landscape Scenery. Hard work brought on ill-health and low spirits; rheumatism laid hold of him, and for some time he could neither write nor paint. In 1832, however, he exhibited his Waterloo Bridge (painted, said his enemies, with his palette-knife only), with three other pictures and four drawings. In 1834 he painted his Salisbury from the Meadow’s, more generally known as the Rainbow, a picture he valued greatly; and in 1836 he delivered a course of lectures on his art at the Royal Institution. He died suddenly on the 1st of April 1837, leaving his Arundel Castle and Mill wet on his easel.

The principles on which this great painter worked are not far to seek. He himself has said, “Ideal art in landscape is all nonsense;” and this sentence may be said to sum up the whole of his theory and practice of painting. Turner’s pictures to him were merely “golden dreams;” Both and Berghem were only fit for burning; if he proclaimed the greatness of Claude and Titian, it was that he recognized their truth. Truth in its broadest and finest sense was his only aim. He studied the country untiringly and intently, sacrificing mere detail to the larger necessities of tone (“tone is the most seductive and inviting quality a picture can possess ”), reproducing to an eminent degree the sentiment of what he saw, flooding his canvas with light and shadows as one finds them, and faithfully translating such glimpses as were revealed to him of the geniality of nature. His range was limited; he sue-ceeded best with the county familiar to him from his boyhood; but his repetitions of manner and subject are in reality so many tentatives towards perfection. His merits were recognized in France; but his studio was full of unsold pictures at his death, and it is certain that he could not have earned a livelihood by his art without abandoning his theories. Since his death, however, his pictures have greatly increased in value; and his influence on contemporary French and English landscape is recognized as both great and good.

See Leslie, Memoirs o∕ the Life of John Constable, R.A., London, second edition, 1845; and English Landscape Scenery, a Series of Forty Mezzotint Engravings on Steel, by David Lucas, from pictures painted by John Constable, R.Λ., London, folio, 1855.