Significant changes in the law or orders from the Court of Aldermen were com-
municated to the City constables in two ways: copies of important statutes were
distributed to them by the beadles; and at the annual meeting of the wardmote,
which they chaired, the aldermen occasionally spoke to new constables about
developments that had implications for their work.^14
The citizen’s unpaid service remained the basis of policing in the century
after the Restoration, and many householders continued then to fulfil their
obligation to serve in the office for a year. There were to be some changes, how-
ever, in the kinds of men willing to take on the post, as a consequence in part of
changes in the policing tasks in the City. These were most directly a product of
a growing metropolitan population and an enlarging economy—simply more
people, more coaches, more horses and wagons, more goods, more traffic gen-
erally. They were also a consequence of the periodic intensification of problems
that had a direct bearing on policing concerns: public order issues arising from
political divisions and economic conflicts; vagrancy and begging and other vis-
ible manifestations of poverty and inequality; and crime and violence, anxiety
about which, as we have seen, increased at several points in the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. Such concerns fluctuated over time, but tended
to increase in the metropolis as the population grew, particularly in the last
decades of the seventeenth century. And although the rate of growth gradually
stabilized in the City itself after 1700 , the virtual doubling of the larger metro-
politan population over the course of the eighteenth century could not but have
had an impact on the City too. An increasing need for policing was also a prod-
uct of changing expectations of what such a service should provide, and the en-
larging ambit within which policing forces were expected to work. As a
consequence of the growth of the economy, of consumption and leisure activ-
ities, the public space expanded over which it was thought necessary to exercise
some control; new tasks multiplied for those charged with policing the streets,
especially after dark, when the hours of legitimate business were extended be-
yond the nine or ten o’clock curfews that might have been expected in the early
seventeenth century.^15
Constables and Other Officers 119Meriton, A Guide for Constables, Churchwardens, Overseers of the Poor.. .( 1669 ; reprinted frequently over the
next fifteen years, reaching its eighth and final edition in 1685 ). This was replaced by R[obert] G[ardiner],
The Compleat Constable, Directing Constables, Headboroughs, Tithingmen, Churchwardens, Oveseers of the Poor, Sur-
veyors of the Highways and Scavengers in the duty of their several offices.. .( 1692 ; 2 nd edn., 1700 ; 6 th edn., 1724 ; 7 th
edn., 1725 ). There is another version dated 1692 , not said to be by R.G., but identical in every other re-
spect with those that are. A rival guide was published by [ J. P. Gent], A new guide for Constables, Head-
boroughs, Tything-men, Church-wardens.. .( 1692 ; with further edns. 1700 and 1705 ), but not many copies of
any of these editions seem to have survived, so it may not have been as popular as The Compleat Constable.
Later guides include Joseph Shaw, Parish Law, or, a Guide for Constables( 1733 ; 9 edns. through 1755 ), and
those by Saunders Welch, John Fielding, and Patrick Colquhoun, noted below.
(^14) Rep 106 , p. 156 ; Rep 105 , pp. 335 – 6 , 468 ; Rep 118 , fo. 419. For the beadles’ distribution of import-
ant information in the City, see below, p. 165. At the Bishopsgate wardmote of 21 December 1737 the al-
derman ordered that a recently enacted Watch Act that added considerably to their duties be read to the
new constables (GLMD, MS 2428 / 1 ).
(^15) See Ch. 4.