The marshals’ authority and duties, as set out by the Court of Aldermen in
1626 , were largely policing in nature.^131 Their central responsibility continued
to be to take up vagrants, and they were commonly sworn as constables by the
late seventeenth century to bolster their authority for that task.^132 In addition,
the upper marshal was expected to exercise a general if vague supervision over
night-time policing by riding around the City several times a week to see that the
watches were being kept as they were supposed to be, to ensure that the beadles
attended to the lighting of the ward lanterns, to take up prostitutes, and to
search for vagrant children sleeping in the streets and under stalls and send
them to Bridewell. He was allowed 10 pounds a year to keep a horse for this pur-
pose. Instructions set out in 1603 and repeated in 1626 also included the duty to
see that those who kept the markets in the City departed at the ringing of the
curfew bell, and that the streets around the markets were properly cleaned—
indeed, to ensure that the scavengers did their work of street cleaning more gen-
erally. In a similar vein, he was instructed to prevent women selling fish and oys-
ters and other things in the streets unless they were licensed to do so, to check
that unlawful measures were not being used in public houses, and to report un-
licensed alehouses to the magistrates. The work of the two marshals and their
six men thus centred on policing the streets and, because they were appointed
by the central authorities of the City, it was a natural part of this duty that the
marshals early acquired the task of keeping the streets clear during important
ceremonial occasions—when the monarch came to the City, for example, and
along the route of the procession on lord mayor’s day.^133
A great deal in the way of general supervision over the policing of the City
streets had thus been heaped on this tiny force of two marshals and their six
men. It was unlikely that they would ever manage to fulfil all the obligations set
out for them, but after the Restoration their duties continued to expand.^134 Well
into the eighteenth century the Court of Aldermen asked the marshals from
time to time to oversee some new aspect of the policing of the City.^135 The lord
mayor’s Charge Book provides evidence that the marshals and their men en-
gaged to some extent in policing the streets. When a man was charged by a con-
stable on suspicion of being a thief in 1697 and the lord mayor was told that he
was ‘known by the Marshalls Men to be a person that is an old offender’ that was
Constables and Other Officers 159marshalsmen’s liveries to be made ‘suitable to the liveries’ of the lord mayor’s servants
(Rep 92 , fo. 165 ).
(^131) Rep 40 , fo. 183. (^132) Rep 80 , fo. 305.
(^133) At the reception of William III in the City in 1697 , the marshals were ordered ‘to
lead the procession on horseback with their six men on foot in new liveries to clear the way’
(Rep 102 , p. 22 ).
(^134) See, for example, the lord mayor’s detailed proclamation with respect to policing in
1676 (CLRO: P.D. 10. 64 ).
(^135) Among other things, checking that constables displayed their staves at their front doors
(Rep 104 , p. 95 ; Rep 123 , fo. 347 ).