At the ward level, there was further possibility of escape, for fines could also
be paid there, and an alternative candidate elected. The usual course at the
wardmote, however, was for a nominee who wanted to avoid service to propose
a substitute—or to accept a substitute suggested by the ward leaders—and to
pay that man a gratuity to act for him as his ‘deputy’. Hiring a deputy was
cheaper than paying a fine, certainly cheaper than paying a fine to be relieved
for life from the obligation to serve in all local offices; only the richest inhabitants
would be likely to contemplate that. It was also the case, as we shall see, that ex-
perienced, and thus acceptable, deputies were readily available. Men seeking to
arrange for a substitute might propose someone with whom they had already
come to an agreement. But as deputies became more common in the first half
of the eighteenth century and as the ward managers came to control the process
more closely, the arrangement of substitute constables was increasingly left to
the deputy aldermen and the common councilmen who obviously had an
interest in getting the best possible person and who knew the available candidates.
The sums involved in either fining or paying for deputies varied from parish to
parish and ward to ward.^64
The ease with which service could be avoided by those who could afford a
fine or to pay for a substitute meant that deputy constables were common by the
late seventeenth century. They were to become even more common in the eight-
eenth. Such men were not necessarily inadequate: indeed, an experienced
deputy might have improved the policing forces. But the number of deputies in
service was no doubt one reason why the constabulary came in for such criti-
cism in the eighteenth century—criticism that would lead one to believe that in
fact most of the householders nominated as constables refused to serve and left
Constables and Other Officers 135next year or the one after and so could prepare himself, either to serve or to pay a fine, or, as we will see,
to find a substitute at the ward level (GLMD, MS 6848 / 1 ). See below, text at n. 107 , for the objections
raised by the churchwardens of a parish when their access to fines was threatened.
(^64) The amounts paid in fines or in premiums paid to deputies are not easy to discover. Wardmote in-
quest books have survived for only a handful of wards, and even those do not often disclose the levels of
fines paid. My guess is that fines at the ward level ranged from about £ 20 —paid in Cornhill in the late
seventeenth century (GLMD, MS 4069 / 2 , fo. 400 )—down to about £ 8 , which seems to have been the
amount paid in Cripplegate Within in the same period (CLRO, SM 62 at January 1692 ). In Bishopsgate
the alderman declared in 1737 that he thought the fine ought to be raised to £ 10 because of a recent act
of parliament that had increased the duties of the office, so it is likely that the customary fine there had
been in the neighbourhood of £ 8 (GLMD, MS 1428 / 1 ). It is possible that at the precinct/parish meet-
ing, especially in very poor parishes, the fines were rather less than that. In the parish of St Katharine By
the Tower in the 1660 s, for example, it cost £ 8 to purchase freedom from all offices, £ 3. 10 s. 0 d. to avoid
serving as constable. Those sums changed over time and apparently could vary from person to person.
In 1700 one man paid £ 2 to avoid serving as constable, another man £ 5 ; in the first decade of the eight-
eenth century men paid between £ 8 and £ 16 to be relieved of all parish offices (GLMD, MS 9680 ,
fos. 135 , 145 , 268 , 273 , 289 ). I have found no reliable evidence of the amount elected men paid to deputies
to serve in their place. It is likely that it too varied from place to place and possibly changed over time.
A premium of about £ 5 seems a reasonable guess in most wards. In the early years of the nine-
teenth century, when substitution was very common indeed, Patrick Colquhoun said that premiums
then being paid were between £ 5 and £ 10 (A Treatise on the Functions and Duties of a Constable(London,
1803 ), xiv).