Table 2 .1.Magisterial business conducted by Lord Mayor Ashhurst,
January–June 1694No.
Accused of felony:
Committed to Newgate or the Compters to await trial 56
Bailed 6
Accused of assault:
Committed to compter for want of sureties 14
Committed to Bridewell 2
Bound over 16
Excused 1
Accused of miscellaneous misdemeanors:
Committed to compter for want of sureties 17
Committed to Bridewell 5
Bound over 34
‘Pilferers’ or ‘known thieves’:
Committed to Bridewell 24
Idle, lewd; nightwalkers; keepers of disorderly or bawdy houses:
Committed to Bridewell or compter 25
Other ‘moral’ offences 16
Total 216
Source: Lord Mayor’s Charge Book, 1692 – 5The statutes afforded magistrates little discretion in applying these rules:
there was to be no room for their private judgement about the character of the
prosecutor or the strength of the evidence offered in support of the charges
being made. All allegations of felony were to be decided in court, and, since
strict limits were placed on the availability of bail in such cases, virtually every
accused felon had to be committed to gaol to await the trial of that evidence.
The severity of these rules had been perhaps tempered slightly in practice by the
opinion of a Jacobean judge (Crompton), who had suggested that magistrates
could exercise discretion in cases in which the prosecutor had made the charge
‘on suspicion’ rather than ‘on oath’—that is, without swearing to the truth of the
charge, but rather expressing his or her belief, or strong belief (‘violent suspi-
cion’) that the defendant had in fact committed the offence alleged. In such
cases, Crompton said, the magistrate might dismiss the charge and free the ac-
cused. That opinion was repeated in the literature addressed to magistrates in
the seventeenth century. But it was always hedged about with cautions, and the
best advice continued to be that justices should be wary about taking chances in
the way they dealt with all accusations of felony.^49 Ashhurst seems to have
96 City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution
(^49) For Crompton’s opinion as it was conveyed in late seventeenth-century texts, see Michael Dalton,
The Countrey Justice( 1666 edn.). For magistrates’ manuals cautioning justices against rash dismissals of