than at the end of William’s war. But that generally amounted to very little, and
they found themselves discharged with the same two weeks’ subsistence and the
clothes they wore, with the injunction that they were to return to their homes
and trades (again the way was smoothed for those few who might have had
trades), and with very little else. They were left essentially to fend for themselves,
large numbers of them near the capital.^134 The anxieties this gave rise to can be
judged by the order passed down from the mayor and aldermen in the summer
of 1713 to the beadles and constables of the wards of the City to search for ‘dis-
banded soldiers and other unsettled persons’.^135 The re-enlistments in 1715 , as
regiments were raised to meet the Jacobite rebellion, provided only temporary
relief.^136
It would hardly be surprising if some of the soldiers and sailors discharged so
ungratefully fended for themselves by using the skills they had been practising
on behalf of their country in recent years—wresting by force what they were not
given by policy. The fact that cavalrymen were allowed to keep their horses at
their discharge because they had paid for them with their allowances gave them
the means to rob on the highway if they chose. Their familiarity with weapons,
their acquaintance with accomplices in a similar position with whom they could
join forces, above all the courage they had learned by hard service on the Con-
tinent, must have made certain forms of crime seem a possible way to supply at
least their short-term needs. There is certainly a good deal of evidence that the
upsurge in burglary and of violent crime on the highways and the streets of
London for a few years after 1697 (as indeed after every war through the eight-
eenth century) was the work of demobilized soldiers and sailors. So many sol-
diers took to the roads that a string of guardhouses had to be built between
London and Kennington to protect the public; at least one gang ofhighwaymen
operating near Henley, along the Thames, consisted largely of ex-cavalrymen
and dragoons.^137 If there had been an increase in violent offences in the last
years of the seventeenth century and in the years following the Peace of Utrecht
in 1713 , the involvement of ex-soldiers would not be surprising.
There is a further point to be made about the way in which increases in pros-
ecutions were perceived by contemporaries—especially if we are tempted to
think that, from a modern perspective, the numbers involved are not particu-
larly massive. The institutions that dealt with crime and criminals—the gaols,
for example—were small by later standards, easily overcrowded, and always in
danger of being incubators of diseases that threatened more people than the in-
mates. When prosecutions increased persistently over several months or years
the state of the gaols in the City—Newgate and the two sheriffs’ prisons, the48 Introduction: The Crime Problem(^134) R. E. Scouller, The Armies of Queen Anne(Oxford, 1966 ), 321 – 8.
(^135) CLRO, Papers of the Court of Aldermen, 23 June 1713.
(^136) J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, 13 vols. ( 1899 – 1930 ), ii. 5 – 6.
(^137) Childs, British Army of William III, 204 ; and see idem, ‘War, Crime Waves and the English Army’,
10 – 11.
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