ward was liable for watch service, and, until watch rates were put on a more set-
tled basis, for collecting money to hire substitutes from those who refused to
serve. Whenever the watch came in for criticism—which happened frequently,
certainly whenever burglary and robbery on the streets at night raised the level
of anxiety—the beadles were among the first to be blamed (along with con-
stables) and were liable to be asked to attend the aldermen or a committee of the
Common Council to explain why the watch was undermanned, or otherwise
ineffective, or asked to bring lists of names of the men who owed watch duty, or
to account for deficiencies in the funds.^154 Their responsibility for the actual
governance of the watch was enlarged as it came under the control of the wards’
executive committee and as the system of watching became more elaborate over
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when it came to be based on more
permanent structures (on watch-houses and watch-boxes) and to have a more
visible presence than ever before.^155
How well beadles did that is another matter, but there is no doubt that they
were thought to be crucial to the system. This was clearly the main reason why
efforts were made over this period to provide them with a reasonable salary and
to base it on some permanent source. The Common Council act of 1663
required the wards to provide such a salary, but left the amount and the means
of raising it to their discretion.^156 As we will see when we examine the creation
of a paid night watch in the following chapter, there followed a long period in
which the wards gradually came around to raising a rate for watching out of
which they would also pay their beadle. By the early decades of the eighteenth
century each ward was raising a fund from which the beadle’s salary (and the
cost ofhiring watchmen) came to be paid. The weaknesses in that system in the
end obliged the government of the City to go to parliament in 1737 for statutory
authority to force the householders of the City to pay for the support of a hired
watch, and along with that to pay the salary of the ward beadle. Each ward con-
tinued to decide what that salary would be, but there was some broad uniform-
ity after 1737. In most of the wards, beadles received forty to fifty pounds a year,
rather less in the half dozen larger and poorer wards, in which salaries were
closer to thirty pounds.^157
These arrangements no doubt enhanced an office that carried some local
dignity and standing. The salary was certainly sufficiently large and sufficiently
164 Constables and Other Officers
(^154) Jor 48 , fo. 380 ; Jor 49 , fo. 156 ; Rep 132 , p. 466 ; Rep 137 , pp. 199 – 200. And for further
on the watch, see Ch. 4.
(^155) See Ch. 4. (^156) Jor 45 , fo. 427.
(^157) The beadles’ salaries had been raised by a local rate at least since the reign of Elizabeth
(Archer, Pursuit of Stability, 83 ). They varied from ward to ward, mirroring disparities in
wealth, and continued to do so when they were raised as part of the watch rate authorized by
parliament in 1737 (for which see Ch. 4 ). Beadles’ salaries were henceforth listed in the watch
establishment set out every year by the Common Council. For salaries in 1737 , see Jor 58 ,
fos. 59 – 64.