hold that deputy aldermen and ward common councilmen were acquiring in
the early eighteenth century on the management of local policing resources.
Even victuallers became acceptable as constables if the ward leaders gave their
approval in writing.^98
How much the aldermen’s efforts at centralized supervision had been polit-
ical in intention in the years after the Revolution is difficult to say. But it is clear
that political considerations came to play some part in the selection of deputies
when control over the process reverted to the local élite—and it may indeed
have been political circumstances that encouraged that reversion to those in the
wards who are likely to have known the candidates well. For London was deeply
and violently divided by the consequences of the Revolution, by religious con-
flicts—typified by the Sacheverell affair—by the wars and the making of peace,
by the succession crisis and the establishment of the Hanoverian monarchy.^99 It
is hard to judge what role, if any, threats to security and social order arising from
those conflicts played in the changing procedures surrounding the appointment
of deputy constables. But there is no doubt that political trustworthiness became
one qualification for employment once the whigs were securely in charge of the
City after 1714 and anxiety about a Jacobite rebellion and a foreign invasion in
support of the Pretender were all too real possibilities. The fact that a prospect-
ive deputy constable was ‘known to be well affected to his present majesty and
Government’ became for some years an attribute that was thought to justify
appointments.^100
How many and what kinds of men were being admitted as deputy constables
in the process controlled by the aldermen and then, more certainly, by the ward
élites is an important question since the burden of criticism of the constabulary
of the metropolis in the eighteenth century so often came down to allegations
about the character of the men who were allowed to serve in the place of re-
spectable householders. It is useful to try to get some sense of who the deputies
were in this period. The intervention by the Court of Aldermen in the process
of appointment helps to make this possible in the period after the Revolution
since the names of deputy constables began to appear in the court’s Repertories.
144 Constables and Other Officers
(^98) Rep 117 , p. 98. Not everyone thought that this reversion to local control would make for more
effective supervision of the officers responsible for keeping order. In December 1712 the newly elected
mayor contemplated returning the control over the appointment of deputy constables to the aldermen.
He was troubled by excessive violence on the streets of the City at night, violence he thought being per-
petrated by ‘Night Walkers and Malefactors’, and he blamed the poor quality of deputy constables—
their ‘Inability and Corruption’ in general, and their failure to supervise the watch in particular (CLRO,
Papers of the Court of Aldermen, 15 January 1711 – 12 (two letters); and a draft precept of December 1712
that went no further (CLRO, Misc. MSS 38. 25 ).
(^99) Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne( 1967 ; revised edn., 1987 ); idem, Trial of Doctor
Sacheverell; idem, ‘The Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early Eighteenth-Century Lon-
don’, Past and Present, 72 (August 1976 ), 55 – 85 ; De Krey, A Fractured Society; Rogers, Whigs and Cities; idem,
Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain(Oxford, 1998 ), ch. 1 ; idem, ‘Popular Protest in early Hanover-
ian London’, Past and Present, 79 (May 1978 ), 70 – 100.
(^100) CLRO, Misc. MSS 64. 4 (letters concerning the appointment of constables, 1709 – 65 —letters, for
example, ofJanuary 1723 andJanuary 1728 ).