Castellans, Jailers and Guards

Abstract

This chapter attempts to investigate two questions: who might establish a prison, and who was responsible for the day-to-day guardianship of its inmates? Although there is little evidence on the second, it is relatively straightforward. The first question cannot be answered more than speculatively, particularly for the early part of the period, even if one takes the view that the proper definition of a prison is the narrower one offered by the Oxford Dictionary of Current English: ‘a building in which persons are consigned while awaiting trial or for punishment’, rather than the broader, initial definition offered, ‘place where person is kept in captivity’. If we assume a close link between prison and the criminal law, then the commonest answer to the question, at least by the later thirteenth century, was the one given by Alphonse of Poitiers’s officials to the abbot of Moissac when he asked to establish a prison: that provided he possessed the requisite jurisdictional rights it was proper that he should build one, despite a previous prohibition laid on such a course of action.¹ This answer, however, begs some questions.