offenders that helped to make prosecution procedures more complicated.
Statutory rewards, created in the 1690 s and in Anne’s reign, and huge add-
itional sums offered by the government after 1720 for the conviction of robbers
in London introduced a new element into the prosecution process; and the gov-
ernment’s offer of pardons to offenders who confessed and gave evidence
against their former associates, added further complications to the work of magis-
trates, since it was left to them to select offenders whose lives would be spared in
exchange for testimony. Rewards and pardons introduced complexity, and
forced magistrates to make more choices and to become more engaged in the
details of offences than in the past; the corruption and malicious prosecution
that massive rewards gave rise to could only have made the work of the magis-
trates nastier and messier.^67 Given the complaints voiced by the City grand jury
about the corruption that had infected criminal procedure and, in particular,
the allegations that the clerks of aldermen Billers and Brocas—the two men
carrying the load of the magistracy—were manipulating the system to their
own benefit, it is not perhaps a surprise that fewer and fewer magistrates chose
to become involved in the early stages of criminal prosececution.^68
We will return at various points in the book to what seems to have been a
changing culture of prosecution in the early decades of the eighteenth century.
I introduce it here because it seems likely to be one element, and perhaps an im-
portant element, in the City magistrates’ withdrawal from the criminal side of
their work. Some of the growing complexity at the preliminary hearing can be
discerned in the lord mayor’s Charge Book by the 1730 s. Unfortunately, there is
a twenty-three year gap in the Charge Books between 1705 and 1728 , over the
period in which the magistrate’s work appears to have changed in some signifi-
cant ways. The entries in 1705 show the lord mayor dealing with criminal
charges in much the same way as Ashhurst and Lane had done a decade earlier;
the next surviving volume, that for 1728 – 33 , reveals some differences, or at least
apparent differences, which can be disclosed by examining the work of the man
we met earlier as an exceptionally active City magistrate through the 1730 s, Sir
Richard Brocas.
Brocas’s engagement in magisterial business began in earnest during the year
he served as lord mayor, 1729 – 30 , as his Charge Book makes clear.^69 Having
dealt with 104 complaints of various kinds in his first six months of office, he
heard 529 in the second half of his term—close to five on average for each day
he sat. Lord Mayor Brocas seems to have developed an interest in and taste for
magisterial work; at the very least, one can say he devoted himself to the work,
to the extent that in July, August, and September, 1730 , he sat for magisterial
business almost every day, including Sundays.
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 103(^67) For rewards and their consequences, see Chs 5 and 8.
(^68) For the grand jury’s complaint about the corruption of these magistrates’ clerks, see below Ch. 8 ,
pp. 398‒400.
(^69) CLRO: Charge Book, 1699 – 1705 , 1728 – 33.