reading of the commissions.^37 And they, too, occasionally tried cases. The
recorder of the City was even more likely, as a lawyer, to take trials. And he
played another crucial role during and after the sessions: it was his duty to pro-
nounce the sentences at the conclusion of the last case, and after 1689 , as we
shall see, to report in person to the sovereign and the cabinet on the cases of pris-
oners convicted of capital offences.
The judicial system of the metropolis thus depended on courts of quarter and
general sessions of the peace meeting eight times a year in the City and in Mid-
dlesex (the latter supplemented by the quarter sessions held in Westminster) and
the sessions of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery at the Old Bailey at which
prisoners from both London and Middlesex were tried. The Old Bailey sessions
were held a varying number of times a year until 1669 ; thereafter, they settled
into a pattern that was to be observed through the eighteenth century of meet-
ing eight times a year between the four law terms and the two assize circuits,
generally inJanuary, February, April, May, June, August, October, and Decem-
ber.^38 The sessions of the peace met at the same time in the City and in Middle-
sex. This was no accident, for the two levels of courts were intimately related
in ways that were fundamentally different from the relationship of the quarter
sessions and assize courts in the rest of the country.
Outside London, the county courts of quarter sessions and the assizes were
independent of one another and were held at different times. Each had its own
sphere of jurisdiction well marked out. Cases might occasionally be sent from
one to the other: in particular, the magistrates in quarter sessions might leave a
difficult matter to be dealt with by the professional judges at their next assizes.
But, in the main, accused offenders were committed for trial by examining magis-
trates either to the assizes or quarter sessions, and each court proceeded inde-
pendently of the other. Each employed a clerk and clerical staff and kept its own
records. In the metropolis there was no such separation between the sessions of
the peace, on the one hand, and the sessions of oyer and terminer and gaol de-
livery, on the other. The sessions of the peace, held in the Guildhall, began two
days before the Old Bailey opened. The magistrates swore in a trial jury and a
grand jury (though apparently without delivering a charge) and began the trials
of those accused of minor offences. The recorder generally presided. The court
often completed its work of trying misdemeanours in two days, but if not, the
sessions were adjourned on the third day to the Old Bailey, whence the lord
mayor, recorder, and other City officials moved to join the three high court
judges for the delivery of Newgate gaol and the sessions of oyer and terminer.
The grand jury that had assembled at Guildhall for the sessions of the peace
also moved to the Old Bailey where it was sworn in again under the new
Introduction: The Crime Problem 15(^37) For a rota in 1699 that obliged every alderman who was a magistrate to attend in turn, see Rep 104 ,
pp. 60 , 67 – 70.
(^38) Bowler (ed.), London Sessions Records, vii. And see Langbein, ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Crim-
inal Trial’, 12 n. 29 , for a useful explanation of the timing of the Old Bailey sessions.