a limited role when minor property crimes increased sharply; and, on the other,
that the alternatives, particularly clergy and its consequences, were inadequate.
It is that narrowness of penal choice available to the courts, including the long-
recognized weaknesses of benefit of clergy, that explains the variety of efforts
made in this period to introduce new forms of punishment for convicted felons.
In broad terms, the legislative efforts to reshape the administration of the
criminal law after 1689 derived from convictions about the threat of immorality
in society released by the events of the Revolution. The sense that crime was a
deep and increasingly serious problem helped to feed those anxieties, along
with the alarming numbers of women caught up in the criminal justice system.
Over the longer term, and as a consequence of the foreign and financial policies
that the Revolution gave rise to, the criminal law was to be shaped in important
ways by the growth of a more powerful state.^15 But most directly, in the 1690 s
and in Anne’s reign, the legislation we are considering was encouraged and
made possible by the regularity of parliamentary sessions after 1689. As it
became clear that parliament would no longer meet sporadically, but that there
would have to be at least a brief session every year to deal with the financing of
the war and other essential business—as parliament in fact became for the first
time essential to the government of the country—it became even more available
than ever before to local interests and lobbying groups who sought legislative
resolutions to domestic problems of all kinds.
In large part, the initiative for virtually all the measures proposed came from
private members. Ministers might give advice, and almost certainly they could
help a bill over the many hurdles between its introduction and the royal assent
that concluded the process of statute-making. But the king’s ministers them-
selves initiated very little legislation bearing on domestic social policy, even on
matters as significant as the criminal law and its administration. Backbench
MPs were the main proponents in this period of the dozens of proposals with a
bearing on the criminal law. Success required time and persistence—time to
manage the bill through both houses in a session that might be cut short by the
administration without thought to pending legislation, and persistence to intro-
duce bills in a subsequent session when (for whatever reason) they failed initially
to pass. In those circumstances, the regularity of parliamentary meetings pro-
vided the essential condition for success for MPs interested in pushing a piece of
legislation.^16
If one takes as the main supporters of crime bills in the House of Commons
those members who brought in bills, chaired committees, served as tellers, or
carried proposals to the Lords, a central group of about fifty MPs can be seen to
322 The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London
(^15) John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688 – 1783 ( 1989 ); Stone (ed.),
An Imperial State at War.
(^16) For the subjects touched on in this paragraph—including the process of legislation, the high level
of failure of bills to become law, the dates and patterns of parliamentary sessions, and the importance of
their regularity—see the sources cited above in n. 3.