adhered to that advice. He committed several offenders to trial who had been
charged merely on suspicion; one or two of them awaited their trial in gaol, but
Ashhurst treated at least six more leniently by allowing them bail.
If the magistrates in the 1690 s were as careful as I have suggested about pro-
cessing felony cases, it would seem to be something of a paradox that at the same
time they treated a significant number of theft charges in an entirely cavalier
way. But, as we have seen, they had done so over a long period by declaring some
such offences to be merely ‘pilfering’. Ashhurst was no exception. His Charge
Book records that he sent two dozen men and women accused of taking goods
to be punished in the Bridewell, simply on the evidence presented by their ac-
cuser and without any form of trial. The important point was that from the be-
ginning they were not presented as felonies. The truth of the charge was not
sworn to by the prosecutor, or even declared to be presented as a matter of sus-
picion. The magistrate did not enter into the procedure for dealing with the
more serious offence—taking depositions and examining the accused. Rather,
the accused were treated as though they had been charged with being idle and
disorderly—and many of them were so labelled in their commitment to the
Bridewell as well as being named as pilferers. It would appear that decisions to
treat offences as pilfering rather that something more serious was commonly
initiated by the prosecutors who brought the charges—in many cases against
their own servant or apprentice. The key may have been the prosecutor’s asser-
tion at the outset that the items stolen were of ‘little value’, knowing that the
magistrates’ long practice had been to distinguish some minor cases from the
general run of felonies.
Charges of robbery, burglary, theft in all its forms, and, very occasionally,
murder or rape or other serious violence, constituted the principal matters that
the lord mayor dealt with at the preliminary hearings in the Guildhall. Ashhurst
also heard complaints in 1694 , as did all his fellow magistrates, against several
dozen men and women accused of some other form of misdemeanour—fraud,
cheating in various ways, causing disturbances in the street, breaking win-
dows—most of whom were granted bail, unless they could not provide sufficient
sureties for their appearance at the next sessions of the peace, in which case they
would be committed to one of the sheriffs’ two prisons to await trial. Among the
misdemeanours he dealt with, Ashhurst heard thirty-three charges of assault.
But these were clearly only a fraction of assault complaints that must have come
before the magistrates who were active in the 1690 s; indeed, it would appear
that he heard only the most serious cases, since fully half of the men and women
charged before him were prosecuted by officials going about their duties—
constables mainly, but also watchmen and others.
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 97felony cases, see William Nelson, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace, 4 th edn. ( 1711 ), 272 (‘A Felon
brought before a Justice upon Suspition, tho’ it appear he is not guilty, yet he is not to be discharged with-
out a Trial’); and John Bond, A Complete Guide for Justices of Peace, 2 nd edn. ( 1696 ).