make little distinction between office holding and jury service, and who may
well have regarded a role in the drama at the Old Bailey as one of several ways
of confirming their standing in the community.^28
It is essential to emphasize the decisive colouring that this gave to the juries
that administered the criminal law in London. It is clear at the very least that,
given such juries, the point and purpose of the trial could only have been very
different indeed from the modern ideal, in which jurors are expected to make a
judgment entirely on the basis of the evidence they hear in court. Prior know-
ledge or an interest in the outcome would today be grounds for a juror’s exclu-
sion. It would be unthinkable in the modern courtroom for an official—a welfare
officer, social worker, or city councilman—to be included on a jury to try men
and women they knew from their communities. But that was entirely acceptable
in the seventeenth century. The London jurors’ previous service and their ex-
perience in the administration of their wards and parishes prepared them for
their role in the criminal courts and the speed of decision-making that was re-
quired once the evidence was in. It was their total experience, not merely of
courtroom procedure but of civic duty and office holding in general, that taught
the jurors who sat through these rapid-fire trials their role and their powers and
duties. As they heard the evidence and listened to and watched the defendant,
they knew what they were looking for, as they knew the parameters within which
they could exercise the considerable discretion available to them.
The process of jury deliberation contributed to the speed with which trials
were conducted at the Old Bailey. In the late seventeenth century the jurors did
not need to sit together because they normally left the courtroom to deliberate
and find their verdicts. According to the guide for clerks of assize, some sat on
one side of the court, some on the other.^29 Occasionally, if they were charged
with just a few prisoners and if those cases appeared to be straightforward, the
jury might deliberate and announce their verdicts without leaving the court-
room. The London jury at the December 1678 session we discussed earlier did
this, for example, in the case of the first two defendants to be tried. But, for the
most part, Old Bailey juries did not deliberate in court in the seventeenth
270 The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century
(^28) There seems to have been an office-holding group in each ward, an élite from whom office holders
were mainly chosen. I can only speculate that this is why the City jurors apparently wore gowns. The fre-
quency and significance of that remain as yet unclear, but there is evidence of their doing so. When,
after finding verdicts in the first two cases of the December 1678 session, the London jury gave way to the
jury from Middlesex, they were told to return at 3 p.m. ‘in their gowns’ (An Exact Account of the Trials...
Decemb. 1678 , p. 6 ). These were not gowns that they acquired in court, but that they had apparently
brought with them. A blank warrant for the summoning of jurors in 1710 required the addressee to
appear at the Old Bailey at 7 a.m. on the first morning ‘in your Gown’ (CLRO, Instruction Book,
1703 – 10 : loose printed paper). Did men acquire gowns for jury service? Does the requirement that they
turn up ‘in their gowns’ suggest that the gown in question was a multi-purpose garment—that it was
something they might wear at other times? Was it worn at the wardmote, for example? Since it is unlikely
that men would acquire gowns in anticipation of jury or other service, it does raise the possibility of there
being a group of men in the City who had such expectations.
(^29) The Office of the Clerk of Assize( 1682 ), 45.