complained that ‘the present Method of reporting to their Majesties after every
Sessions’ had given rise to ‘great and intollerable troubles and many unjust Jeal-
ousies and Reflections’. And he agreed with the resolution of an aldermanic
committee that in the future he would at least consult the king’s judges present
at the Old Bailey about the advice he would give the council.^74 A further elem-
ent was introduced into the discussion in October of 1693 when ‘Severall Citi-
zens’ complained that too many criminals were being pardoned and the
aldermen resolved that the recorder should not only consult the judges before
attending the king in council but that he should make it clear that his recom-
mendations carried the Old Bailey judges’ approval—presumably to discour-
age the cabinet from being too generous with the royal pardon.^75 On at least one
occasion thereafter (in December 1693 ) the recorder got the town clerk, who
kept the Old Bailey records, to note which of the offenders on the list he would
take to the cabinet had been convicted of previous offences; the resulting report
was approved by the Court of Aldermen and the recorder was ‘ordered’ to take
it when he met the king and council.^76
The introduction of the procedure by which the cabinet came to make the
decisions concerning the level of executions in London was thus attended with
a good deal of uncertainty and perhaps anxiety in the City. In 1696 the lords just-
ices left it to the City authorities to decide whether the recorder would simply re-
port his own views on the capital cases or come instructed by the judges or the
aldermen.^77 The aldermen made it clear that—out of a continuing suspicion of
Lovell in the late 1690 s—they wanted him to consult the court about the rec-
ommendations he would carry to the council.^78 As it developed in practice,
however, the recorder did little consulting when the call came to attend the
council. In the course of William’s reign his leading role in the new system was
firmly established, a point made abundantly clear in the lords justices’ minutes
in which the simple summoning of the recorder ‘to give an account of the ses-
sions’ was regularly recorded.^79 Queen Anne maintained the procedure. Within
a month of her coming to the throne, the recorder was summoned to a cabinet
council at StJames’s to ‘give her Majesty an account of the last sessions’, and the
process became entirely routinized in her reign.^80 The recorder was generally
informed by an under-secretary a day or two ahead of time that the cabinet
council would receive his report. He took with him the list of offenders con-
demned to death at the previous session of the Old Bailey, with a brief note of
The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London 351(^74) Rep 97 , pp. 448 , 454 , 465. (^75) Rep 97 , p. 465. (^76) Rep 98 , pp. 68 , 72.
(^77) CSPD 1696 , p. 212. (^78) Rep 104 , pp. 251 – 2 , 290 , 296 ; and see CSPD 1696 , p. 212.
(^79) The minutes of the meetings of the lords justices in William’s reign are at SP 44 / 274 – 5 (Regencies).
They are calendared in CSPD 1694 – 5 , CSPD 1695 , CSPD 1696 , and CSPD 1697.
(^80) CSPD 1702 – 3 , p. 21. There are suggestions in a letter from Secretary Nottingham to the recorder
in July 1702 , four months after Anne came to the throne, that at least some of the pardon decisions were
being made by the queen on the basis of written reports and explicit advice from the recorder and the
judges who had taken the trials at the previous Old Bailey session (CSPD 1702 – 3 , 188 – 9 ). The usual prac-
tice in the reign, however, was for the recorder to report in person to the cabinet, with the queen present.