more than a hundred houses.^33 The ward structure was also overlaid by the ec-
clesiastical divisions of the parishes—ninety-seven within the walls in the 1690 s;
thirteen without. As in the country generally, the churchwardens and overseers
of the parishes were crucially important in the management of the Poor Law.
The boundaries of the precincts and parishes were coterminous in only a few
cases; indeed parishes were generally not all to be found within the same ward.
On the other hand, because they were often roughly the same size and were
each a focal point of local identity, there was a close working relationship be-
tween precincts and parishes—between the meetings of the precinct house-
holders and the vestry of the local church.^34
From the point of view of policing, however, the precincts and the wards were
the most basic and the most important units. They formed crucial links in the
highly articulated political structure that made the City a unique municipal in-
stitution in England, and that made it possible for the discussion of issues
important to the community at the local level to have some influence in
decision-making at the level of the Common Council and Court of Aldermen.
At an annual meeting, all the householders of the precinct had the right to
choose their constable for the following year. Those names went forward to be
confirmed (or to have substitutes accepted) at the meeting of the ward house-
holders, the so-called wardmote, an assembly held every year on 21 October,
St Thomas’s day. The wardmote also elected the inquest jury, a body that had
the duty to take stock of affairs in the ward and to report irregularities that
needed correction in a presentment to the Court of Aldermen. It also had the
duty to name the slate of officers for the coming year, from the common coun-
cilmen, to jurors, the ward beadle, the bellman, and other, more ceremonial
officials, as well as the constables.
By the late seventeenth century, however, the wardmote had lost much of its
resilience, and in practice the leadership of the ward was passing to the men who
made up what was known as ‘the common council of the ward’: the alderman,
who represented the ward at the highest level of City affairs; his deputy, gener-
ally the senior of the ward’s common councilmen, to whom fell much of the de-
tailed work; and the rest of the men who represented the ward on that important
institution of City government. There is good reason to believe that these men,
almost certainly without the alderman being in regular attendance and perhaps
only a few of them in practice, were coming to exercise a decisive leadership in
the wards’ affairs. By the early eighteenth century (at least) they were meeting
every few weeks—generally in a public house in the ward—and taking on more
90 City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution
(^33) As Valerie Pearl has said, the ‘minuscule area’ of the precincts of the City and of its parishes ‘has
not been fully appreciated’. Precincts, she calculated, were on average under 3 acres (‘Change and Sta-
bility’, 15 ). On the relationship of precincts and parishes, see Alice E. McCambell. ‘The London Parish
and the London Precinct’, Guildhall Studies in London History, 11 / 3 ( 1976 ): 107 – 24.
(^34) Webb and Webb, Manor and Borough, 587. The precinct meetings in the parish of St Helen’s, Bish-
opsgate, were held in the vestry room of St Helens Church (GLMD, MS 6848 / 1 ).