when anxieties were running high about an increase of vice and immorality, and
about the temptations that might keep servants and apprentices away from
their work and waste their money.^43
Other holidays often created similar problems of crowd control and similar
trouble in the streets—the Easter holidays and ‘Whitsunweeke’ among them. A
particularly boisterous crowd always gathered to watch the procession on lord
mayor’s day, and commonly treated it as a day of ‘misrule’, stopping coaches
and exacting money from the quality, breaking windows, throwing dirt and
dead cats and dogs, letting off fireworks for some days before and after. The con-
stables were frequently ordered to prevent this carnival. Occasionally they were
told to distribute printed orders to the householders of their precincts to prevent
their children and servants taking part in such ‘disorders’.^44 The constables
were particularly encouraged in this effort when the influence of the reforma-
tion of manners forces was at its height in William’s reign. In 1697 the aldermen
agreed that inhabitants should be warned to ‘prevent their children and ser-
vants throwing fire-works in the Streets, or out their Houses, Balconies, or other
Places’. All the peace officers—the constables, along with the beadles and
watchmen—were to be on duty for several evenings before the lord mayor’s day
itself and prevent disorderly conduct. As a reward they were to receive ten
shillings for the prosecution and conviction of offenders, and were threatened
with prosecution themselves for ‘Neglect, Default, or Concealment’.^45
On particular occasions, the aldermen could turn out reasonably large forces
of City constables and watchmen, drawing if necessary on the men of several
wards. In 1710 , for example, the City was rocked over several evenings with
major riots in support of Henry Sacheverell during his impeachment by parlia-
ment. The constables and watchmen could do little to control crowds that num-
bered several hundred men determined to pull down dissenting meeting-houses
and make bonfires of their furniture, and on some occasions crowds of well over
a thousand. The government had eventually to turn to the soldiers guarding
St James’s Palace, including a troop of cavalry, to break up the demonstrations
and restore order. When, following his conviction, Sacheverell’s sermons were
ordered to be burned at the Royal Exchange by the common hangman, the al-
dermen assembled a force of constables and watchmen drawn from seven wards
‘for the preservation of the peace’. The constables were ordered to bring their
staves, the watchmen their halberds, and to remain on duty from 10 a.m. until
6 p.m. There was no trouble.^46 The constables of Cornhill were on duty at the
128 Constables and Other Officers
(^43) Jor 51 , fos. 15 , 16 , 22 , 25 , 28 , 102 , 110. For constables’ duties to keep order on the streets, see K. J.
Lindley, ‘Riot Prevention and Control in Early Stuart London’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
5 th ser., 33 ( 1983 ), 109 – 19.
(^44) Rep 104 , pp. 574 – 7 ; CLRO: London Sess. Papers, January 1694 (deposition of Charles King).
(^45) Precept of the lord mayor, 13 October 1697 (CLRO: P.D. 10. 99 ).
(^46) Jor 55 , pp. 167 – 8 ; Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell( 1973 ), 156 – 76 , 228 ; idem, ‘The
Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Past and Present,
72 (August 1976 ), 55 – 85. The reliance on constables to control crowds had almost certainly been