the work, or a dedication to advancing a vision of moral and social order that
deeply engaged them.^62 But there may have been some particular circum-
stances that discouraged the City aldermen from attending to the daily work of
the office—both as leaders of their wards, and, as magistrates, in dealing with
complaints of victims of criminal offences and the myriad other issues that were
likely to come to their doors.
For one thing the aldermen may have found it increasingly difficult to give as
much time as such men once had to the detailed work of the office. Most were
merchants or financiers, and it is possible that the increasing complexity of the
mercantile world and of finance required more of their attention. I do not know
that. It is clearer that being members of parliament would have added to the de-
mands on the time of a significant number of aldermen. Four members of the
court generally occupied the City seats in the House of Commons and several
other aldermen were also likely to represent other constituencies. A seat in the
House of Commons was much more demanding of the time of members than
in the past, since after 1689 parliament met regularly every year for the first time
in its history. There is a hint soon after the Revolution that the demands of par-
liamentary service were conflicting with aldermanic duties. In 1694 , for ex-
ample, the Court of Aldermen agreed to meet earlier in the day than they had
in the past; they resolved to meet at 8 a.m. and to adjourn an hour later ‘so that
the Members of this Court that serve in Parliament may dispatch the business of
this City and attend their Service in Parliament also’.^63
The work of the aldermen competed with other demands on their time, but
that may not have been the only, or even the most important, reason why fewer
of them were apparently willing to devote themselves to the process of criminal
prosecution. It is also possible that dealing with the problems that came to magis-
trates’ doors was becoming less compatible with the changing character of the
lives of these leading members of the wealthy bourgeoisie of London. One can
only speculate about this, but it is possible that the increasing wealth of the large
overseas merchants and of the financiers and wholesalers of the City—a change
signalled by the increase in the minimum level of wealth required by those who
wished to decline election as an alderman from 10 , 000 pounds to 15 , 000 pounds
in 173764 —so widened the social divide that the task of dealing with the petty
conflicts of the poor, with misdemeanors and minor thefts, became more dis-
tasteful to aldermen as well as time-consuming. Certainly, the social position of
the big businessmen of London was changing in the late seventeenth century
and the early decades of the eighteenth as the culture of the metropolis changed
with the increasing commercialization of leisure, the expanding number of
places of entertainment, and the growing availability of consumer goods of all
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 101(^62) For the tendency of magisterial work to become carried by a core of justices, see Landau, Justices of
the Peace, 318 – 32 ; Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 60 – 2 ; Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 70 – 6 ; and King,
Crime, Justice, and Discretion, 110 – 17.
(^63) Rep 100 , fo. 5. (^64) Rogers, ‘Money, Land and Lineage’, 439 , n. 8.