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This is an overview of policing and punishments in the medieval period. You need to know what the key methods of punishment were and how these laws were enforced. It is important to note that most Trials By Ordeal had ended by the time our period began, and we really see the reliance on both local juries with their knowledge of the offender, local groups of men called tithings who would be bound to bring their members to justice, the hue and cry to raise a chase, and also the increasing use of king's officials to maintain his peace; from the sheriffs who maintained the King's Highway to the Foresters who upheld the Forest Laws, to the Coroners and later the Justices of the Peace who would become the cornerstone of the British judicial system.

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