The law governing eligibility for jury service was such that the sheriffs’ offi-
cers, who called the juries, had a large number of candidates to draw on. A prop-
erty qualification of land, tenements, or goods of a hundred marks in
value—about sixty-seven pounds—that had been established in the reign of
Henry VIII and that was still in place in the late seventeenth century meant that
a significant proportion of the male householders of the City must have been eli-
gible to serve.^16 In the 1690 s the availability of tax assessments helps to identify
the social and economic standing of many of the men who were called.^17 In that
decade something in the order of a thousand prospective jurymen were sum-
moned to the eight sessions of the London courts every year, of whom close to
800 actually appeared and 328 were chosen to serve. How they were chosen is
unclear. The sheriffs and their officers, the secondaries, were responsible for
summoning the men from whom the juries would be assembled, and they drew
their candidates from the wards according to a schedule that by the late seven-
teenth century had established a settled pattern of service.^18 But how they de-
cided whom to call is unknown; nor—in the absence of a balloting system, not
established until 173019 —is it clear how the men who would serve were selected
from the panels that assembled in court. The clerk of the peace or the
magistrates or any deputy aldermen present may have had a hand in selecting
suitable men.
It seems clear at any event that no part of the process was entirely random.
Some thought and local knowledge went into the selection of the men who took
their place on the grand and trial juries. Only that would explain one of the dis-
tinctive characteristics of juries in this period: the repeated service of a number
of men who returned over and over again to sit on juries—men who liked that
particular limelight or saw it as a way of enhancing their standing in their
community, and who were at the same time presumably satisfactory to the
magistrates.
Such a pattern of frequent service on juries was not unusual in the quarter
266 The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century
(^164) Hen. VIII, c. 3 ( 1512 ). For legislation concerning juror qualification over the early modern period,
see James C. Oldham, ‘The Origins of the Special Jury’, University of Chicago Law Review, 50 ( 1983 ),
137 – 221 , especially 212 – 13 for London juries, and the valuable Appendix, 214 – 21 , listing relevant acts of
parliament. According to Gary De Krey, the total number of ratepayers in the City was 18 , 500 (‘Trade,
Religion, and Politics in London during the Reign ofWilliam III’, Ph.D. thesis (Princeton, 1978 ), 335 – 7 ).
As we shall see, the jurors were drawn from the upper ranks of that rate-paying population.
(^17) For the two taxes, collected in 1692 and 1694 , see above, Ch. 3 , n. 65. The collectors’ returns on
these taxes have been recorded by James Alexander, ‘The Economic and Social Structure of the City of
London, c. 1700 , Ph.D. thesis (London, 1989 ), appendix. For the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence
they provide of the wealth and occupations of the thousands of City inhabitants, see De Krey, ‘Trade,
Religion, and Politics’; and idem, A Fractured Society, 171 – 3. For a general account of the taxes collected in
William’s reign, see William Kennedy, English Taxation, 1640 – 1790 : An Essay on Policy and Opinion( 1913 ),
44 – 50.
(^18) For a more extended discussion of the system by which juries were selected in the City in the last
decade of the seventeenth century and the composition of the juries that resulted, see J. M. Beattie,
‘London Juries in the 1690 s’, in Cockburn and Green, Twelve Good Men and True, 214 – 53.
(^19) By 3 Geo. II, c. 25 ( 1730 ).