and the authorities in the City. For the City, the new policy provided a way of
dealing with convicted property offenders, petty thieves as well as members of
gangs. It also held out a hope that the City treasury would be relieved of the cost
of supporting them in Newgate or the Bridewell, and without increasing the in-
cidence of public whipping. For the central government—the new whig admin-
istration that came to power with George I’s accession and that found itself
threatened by dangerous enemies in the early years of the new reign—the
Transportation Act can be seen as one element of a policy designed to deal vig-
orously with disorder, including crime, if that posed a threat to the stability of the
regime. A system that ensured the removal of the offenders pardoned by the
cabinet enlarged the deterrent capacities of the law.
The link between the central administration, parliament, and the City was
provided by the recorder, William Thomson (who was Sir William, by 1717 , hav-
ing been knighted soon after George I’s arrival in England). He was in a position
to play that role by his having been named solicitor-general in January 1717 ,
while remaining recorder of London. He had been appointed by an adminis-
tration that still included Walpole and Townshend, though the latter had re-
cently been removed as secretary of state and demoted by being given the lord
lieutenancy of Ireland, and it would not be long before conflicts within the ad-
ministration over the influence of the king’s German ministers on English for-
eign policy would lead to his and Walpole’s resignation.^10 Thomson continued
to serve when the administration was reconstructed around Lords Stanhope
and Sunderland, in March 1717.
It is possible that Thomson had been made solicitor-general to tackle the
weaknesses of the criminal justice system, or at least to deal with the problems
that had plagued the administration of transportation over several decades and
that the members of the cabinet council would have been all too familiar with
from their management of the London pardon process. Certainly, there is no
doubt that Thomson was the architect of the transportation policy, and he may
well have had at least the tacit support of the government as he thought about
ways of making the administration of the criminal law tougher in practice. He
certainly had the support of the Court of Aldermen, since he sought and re-
ceived their approval ofhis draft Transportation Bill in 1717. Their endorsement
is noted briefly in the Repertories, the court’s minutes, as follows: ‘Upon read-
ing the Draft of an Act ofParliament relating to Persons Convict now laid before
the court by Mr. Solicitor General this City’s Recorder this Court desired Mr.
Recorder to lay the same before the House of Commons.’^11 Thomson was
granted leave to introduce his bill into the Commons on 23 December, and was
joined as sponsors by the four members of parliament for the City and the
William Thomson and Transportation 429(^10) J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman( 1957 ), 222 – 42 ; Ragnhild Hatton, George I,
Elector and King( 1978 ), 193 – 201 ; J. M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I(Cambridge, 1967 ),
ch. 7.
(^11) Rep 122 , fo. 73.