of the aldermen were also magistrates and that the more senior of them had
served as lord mayor meant that a sizeable proportion of the Court of Aldermen
and also most of the men who sat for the City in parliament had had first-hand
experience of dealing with crime, and of that large grey world where crime and
poverty and vagrancy overlapped. Such men knew all too well the weaknesses
of the law in dealing with the kinds of offenders they met with most commonly
in London. Those who served through William’s reign also knew the problems
that the levels of offending and the weakness of the penal regime had created for
Newgate and other City gaols within their responsibility.
A second element of London’s governance also helps to explain the City’s in-
terest in promoting criminal legislation: the active political life at precinct,
parish, and ward level, which made it possible for men of modest property who
served as constables and churchwardens and jurors to make their views known
to the City’s political élite on the aldermanic bench. The City’s constitution and
political practice encouraged the discussion of matters of public interest within
the square mile. Informal channels of influence may have grown increasingly
important in the eighteenth century, particularly as the deputy aldermen and
one or two of the leading common councillors came to dominate the adminis-
tration of the City’s twenty-six wards with the withdrawal of the aldermen from
day-to-day concerns and the diminishing role of the wardmote inquest as an ac-
tive governing body. The grand jury was also to lose some of its importance by
the middle decades of the eighteenth century as these newer centres of opinion
and administrative energy took further hold. But in the generation after the
Revolution the grand jury retained its vigour as a voice of communal opinion.
The seventeen-member body concluded each of the eight annual sessions at the
Old Bailey with a presentment to the bench—in effect to the City magistrates
and thus to the Court of Aldermen—containing recommendations for action to
deal with pressing problems. As we have seen, their presentments in the late seven-
teenth and early eighteenth centuries returned frequently to the issues of crime
and immorality in the City. Some juries were content to urge the magistrates to
see the laws put into effect. But on occasion the City grand jury recommended
that the aldermen seek new powers through legislation and proposed new de-
vices for fighting crime. Some of those recommendations were acted on.^25
The City was not of course the only source of ideas and energy behind the
criminal legislation proposed in the parliaments of William and Anne. Nor is it
likely that there was always unanimity in the City itself on the right approach to
this or any other social problem. There were sharp political divisions in London
throughout this period, as Gary de Krey has revealed, and it would be surpris-
ing if the attitudes and interests underlying these divisions had not been
reflected in views about crime, or at least what should be done about it.^26 I have
The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London 325(^25) For grand jury presentments, see above, pp. 51 – 3.
(^26) De Krey, A Fractured Society, esp. chs 5 – 6.