Crime and the State 385who organized and co-ordinated prosecutions in numerous courts, and the sec-
retary of the treasury who paid the bills, concentrated on efforts to convict those
who were overheard speaking treasonable words, or the authors, printers, and
sellers of what they took to be seditious publications. For example, in 1718 , Sec-
retary Stanhope sent the treasury solicitor, Anthony Cracherode, ‘Copys of two
Informations concerningJohn Yeems, against whom an Indictment [for speak-
ing seditious words] has been preferred at the Assizes at Norwich, which Indict-
ments I desire you will get and attend Mr Attorney General therewith for his
Opinion whether it be in proper and due Form, and his direction how further to
proceed thereupon.’ Stanhope went on to instruct Cracherode to pay certain
sums of money to a Norwich attorney to carry on the prosecution. This man
had clearly been employed earlier in similar work, for Cracherode was also told
to reimburse him for his prosecution of several rioters ‘at the direction of the
Justices of Assize in that Circuit’. In addition, Cracherode was asked to pay the
expenses of a number of witnesses—and to give them money for their time and
trouble—in still other cases of riot, sedition, and high treason.^49 Such payments
became very common indeed in the years after 1714. ‘Having occasion to em-
ploy John Smith a printer in detecting Printers and Publishers of Seditious
Libels’, Secretary Craggs told Cracherode with respect to one case in 1719 , ‘and
his family being thereby deprived of the benefit of his Labour... I desire that till
he can return to his business you allow his wife half a crown a day for the Main-
tenance of herself and her children.. .’.^50
The records of the secretaries’ office contain dozens of examples of Charles
Delafaye, an under-secretary of state who was included in the Middlesex com-
mission of the peace, acting as an investigative magistrate. He took depositions
and issued warrants, and, along with his fellow under-secretaries and the secre-
taries themselves, became heavily involved in the prosecution of authors, print-
ers, and booksellers of allegedly seditious publications, and of individuals for
speaking seditious words in public—toasts to the Pretender, for example, or
gibes about George I.^51 The government also organized and paid for the pro-
secution of smugglers and other offenders against the customs, and of rioters
whose protests threatened the public peace. As Edward Thompson revealed,
(^49) SP 44 / 79 A, pp. 232 – 3. (^50) SP 44 / 79 A, p. 303.
(^51) On this subject, see Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain(Oxford, 1998 ),
ch. 1. And for examples of a large number of such cases, see secretary Stanhope’s orders to the attorney-
general in 1718 to organize prosecutions of people accused of speaking seditious and treasonable words,
as well as his warrants to the messengers of the chamber to seize printers and publishers of pamphlets;
see also the activities of Charles Delafaye, one of the under-secretaries, who had been put into the Mid-
dlesex commission of the peace, and who was at the same time busily engaged in taking depositions and
corresponding with both the attorney-general and Anthony Cracherode, the secretary of the treasury,
about similar matters (SP 44 / 79 A, pp. 235 – 50 , 322 – 3 , 334 – 6 , 340 – 7 , 350 , 356 – 62 ). There are many ex-
amples of such activities in this and subsequent volumes of the so-called ‘Criminal Entry Books’ among
the State Papers, for which see below, n. 53. Delafaye was in the office of the secretaries of state as a clerk
before 1700 ; he was an under-secretary April 1717 – 34 ( J. C. Sainty, Officials of the Secretaries of State,
1660 – 1782 ( 1973 ), 29 – 30 , 34 , 74 – 5 ).