390 Crime and the State
implication at least of a note among the State Papers of 1726 of the charges at
Hicks’ Hall (where the Middlesex grand jury met to scrutinize bills of indict-
ment) for ‘Drawing the Indictment for Felony & Robbery’ ( 3 s. 4 d.), of the fees for
swearing witnesses, and for a ‘Subpena’ and a ‘Ticket’ for witnesses ( 2 s. 6 d. and
4 d., respectively—a ticket being most likely an entry fee to the court). Their in-
formant also reported that at the Old Bailey a bill of indictment for a ‘single
felony’ (that is, a clergyable felony) or a burglary cost 2 s., which suggests that a
robbery indictment would cost 3 s. 4 d., as in Middlesex.^67 The government in-
tervened with financial or other support in only a few felony cases, but often
enough by the mid- 1720 s that the secretaries began to speak of the money ad-
vanced to the treasury solicitor as a fund for ‘criminal prosecutions’.^68 The pay-
ments made by the treasury solicitor increased from an average of about four
thousand five hundred pounds in the five years 1718 – 23 to six thousand pounds
in 1723 – 7.^69 A significant change of outlook and practice was thus underway in
the administration in this period and it was to have profound effects on the
criminal courts and the conduct of trials.
The whig government’s willingness to help to pay the costs of prosecutions of
violent offenders was yet another indication, along with the massive rewards of-
fered by proclamation, that robbery and the threat of serious violence were
thought to constitute a considerable problem in London; and in particular that
the number of gangs that were believed to infest the streets of the capital posed
a threat to order and to the property and the safety of its citizens. Most import-
ant in capturing the government’s attention may have been the sense that there
had been a significant increase of violent crime in Westminster. Certainly, the
lords justices who governed in George I’s absence in Hanover in the summer of
1720 thought there had been such an increase when they called Westminster
and Middlesex magistrates before them to urge an improvement of the night
watch and to take other measures ‘to prevent robberies and disorders that hap-
pen in the streets’.^70 An unusual level of danger in Westminster no doubt drew
their attention because of its high concentration of upper-class residences, as
well as its being the site of the court and parliament. The threat to life posed by
street gangs so close to home may not have seemed far removed from matters of
state.
At any event, the secretaries of state turned their attention to Middlesex in the
1720 s, and developed contacts with the county and Westminster benches in
ways that seem entirely new. This connection did not mean that the City be-
came less important as a centre of judicial administration. The City had always
had close ties to the court, the Privy Council, and the secretaries of state through
(^67) SP 35 / 63 / 97. (^68) See, for example, SP 44 / 81 , p. 444.
(^69) His accounts show payments of more than £ 10 , 000 by the end of the decade, though by then his
annual accounts also included the payment of the large proclamation rewards which he had taken over.
These data are derived from the treasury solicitor’s Declared Accounts (PRO, AO 1 / 2320 / 45 – 53 ).
(^70) SP 44 / 283 , 30 August 1720.