propose that he may be inserted in the dead warrant but that att the same tyme
there may be a Repreeve for him.. .’. It is an interesting indication of George
II’s importance at these cabinet meetings that Montagu asked Newcastle
‘to prevaile with the King that it may be done in this manner’.^79
The recorder was influential, and his report could be dealt with quickly be-
cause, like trial jurors, who also came to quick decisions, the cabinet and the
lords justices knew what they were looking for. Their decisions were shaped by
the commonplace ideas and attitudes that animated the criminal justice system
as a whole, and that were widely shared among the propertied population of the
capital. The particular circumstances of individual defendants—his or her age,
the kind of support they could bring to bear, political interest and influence—
would tip decisions one way or the other, as would the state of crime generally
and the level of public alarm. But the crucial matters remained in this period, as
earlier, the nature of the offence and the apparent character of the offender.
One can see this in the judgments being made by ministers and the patterns of
executions at Tyburn, as well as in the attitudes and ideas of that most engaged
and influential of recorders, William Thomson—under whom the written re-
port developed and who almost certainly saw it as a further opportunity to
shape the way criminal justice was administered in the metropolis.
In many ways the earliest of the written reports are more revealing of the in-
fluence of the recorder or his deputy on the cabinet’s decisions than the later,
fuller versions, which became very largely duplicates of the Sessions Papers and
do not reveal the recorder’s importance quite as blatantly as those in which he
summed up a case in half a dozen lines or less. In the report of 8 December 1725
the deputy recorder’s brief summaries of cases were clearly pointed towards
achieving the conclusions he had in mind. The cabinet heard that Richard
Scurrier, aged 21 , convicted of stealing a firkin of butter from a shop, had been
seen leaving with it, and that when a second witness attempted to stop him,
Scurrier had drawn a knife, cut him on the hand, and ‘afterwards said he wish’d
he had cut his Throat’. Deputy recorder Raby further revealed that Scurrier
had been previously convicted and sentenced to transportation but had escaped
as he was being taken to the ship. That was the information the cabinet heard
and it sealed Scurrier’s fate. A large ‘H’ scrawled over his name on the report in-
dicated that the cabinet agreed that he should be left to be hanged. Two other
men, aged 25 and 27 , were reported to have been convicted of robbing ‘a poor
woman’ at 4 a.m. The cabinet heard that they ‘stripp’d her, beat her unmerci-
fully, took her Clothes, and one of them thrust his Hands into her and abused
her in a very barbarous manner’. No other evidence was apparently reported
for or against these men, and their execution was confirmed. A man of 40 was
also ordered to be hanged for a robbery in which, Raby reported, he ‘knock’d
the pros[ecuto]r down with a great Club’ and took his coat. So, too, was a man
William Thomson and Transportation 453(^79) SP 36 / 5 / 218.