[scoofy]

One of the most interesting aspects of the policing power in the premodern era was the existence and split of a powerful church.

Religious institutions had some access to legitimate violence in a way that the state couldn’t control. Once authoritarianism gave way to more democratic governance, that effectively disappeared.

[make3]

not in the UK (or the US) since king Henry VIII made himself Pope of his new Anglican Church in the 1500s