simply refused to serve after being elected were ordered to do so by the Court of
Aldermen under threat of indictment at the sessions of the peace.^92
In the two decades after the Revolution the aldermen also paid a good deal of
attention to preventing men from becoming constables who might have used
the office in a self-interested way. Victuallers posed the most obvious and fre-
quent problems of this kind. There was a general rule prohibiting men who op-
erated drinking establishments from acting as constables, no doubt because one
of the constable’s tasks was to ensure that such premises were licensed and that
they obeyed the laws governing drinking hours. To be the only constables in
their precincts would have been ‘an advantage to themselves’, as an alderman
said in 1711 , but ‘cannot be of Service to the publick’.^93 Opposition to men who
ran alehouses acting as constables was likely to come most vociferously from
those who sympathized with the societies for the reformation of manners, and
that is likely to explain why there was particular concern about this among the
aldermen in the reigns of William and Anne. On the whole, when such cases
came to light during the twenty years in which the aldermen were making some
effort to control the constabulary, victuallers were prevented from serving, or
had their licences revoked.^94
The aldermen’s close supervision of the appointment of deputies lasted less
that two decades. Although they continued to record the names of deputy con-
stables in their Repertories, they drew back from scrutinizing every candidate.
In 1708 they were still anxious to know who was being appointed before they
were sworn,^95 but two years later they agreed to allow deputies named by the
wardmotes to be sworn into office without first obtaining the court’s permission,
‘any former order to the contrary notwithstanding’.^96 Thereafter, control re-
verted to the political leadership of the wards—the alderman himself, but par-
ticularly his deputy, in association with some of the common councilmen. They
are likely all along to have influenced the choice of constables at the wardmote,
including deputies named there,^97 but after 1710 they came more directly to
manage the whole process. The registrar of the lord mayor’s court still required
authority before swearing in a deputy constable, but after 1710 the word of the
deputy alderman or the other members of the ward leadership was sufficient.
Their control over the naming of substitute constables further tightened the
Constables and Other Officers 143(^92) Rep 99 , p. 338 ; Rep 104 , p. 88.
(^93) CLRO, Misc. MSS 64. 4 (William Ashhurst to the Lord Mayor, 5 January 1711 ).
(^94) Rep 101 , p. 76 ; Rep 104 , pp. 116 – 17 ; Rep 106 , p. 68. This was a continuing problem, not easily
solved, since victuallers—or some, at least—were clearly anxious to become constables. The advantages
were such that some were willing to give up their licences for the year in order to do so—perhaps
reckoning that they could operate with impunity in any case. See, for example, Rep 114 , pp. 101 – 2 ; and
CLRO, Misc. MSS 64. 4 (letters of 8 February and 24 January 1710 – 11 ).
(^95) Jor 55 , fo. 15. (^96) Rep 114 , pp. 60 , 65.
(^97) The deputy aldermen and ‘some of the common councilmen’ ofTower ward were summoned to
attend the Court of Aldermen in 1699 to explain ‘why they have chose Mr Michael Mitford Constable’
when he had served very recently. The aldermen simply assumed that the men who made up the Com-
mon Council of the ward had made the decision (Rep 103 , p. 90 ).