1. Spectator No. 9, i, 29. On London clubs, see Clark (1986).

2. CLRO MCI 370.

3. Thomas (1971) p. 528, quoted by MacDonald (1981) p. 102; Pearl (1979) pp. 25-6 for changes in the ward inquest and see Pearl (1961) pp. 45-68 for a description of the government of the City; good examples of ward inquest records for our period can be found in GHMS 60 (Cheap) and 4069/2 (Cornhill); GLRO DL/C/245 fo. 207 for the coffee-house, but see the depositions from Consistory Court cases generally for masses of this continue

      sort of material; it was also part of the duties of churchwardens and sidesmen to enquire 'into the lives of inordinate livers' (Miège (1691) ii, 257).

4. GLRO DL/C/245 fo. 204 (Gentry v. Gentry) see /246 fo. 90 (Johnson v. Cooper) for a mention of a skimmington ride; see also Misson (1698) p. 70 where he refers to 'charivari' processions in the streets of London which he was told were set up when 'a woman of the neighbourhood has beaten her husband, because he has accused her of making him a cuckold'; in general on 'skimmingtons', 'rough music' etc., see Thompson (1972); Shoemaker (1987) pp. 274-8 found that by 1720 there was something that could be called a riot every other day in the metropolis. Similar situations are often described in the numerous defamation cases in the Consistory Court records in GLRO. Although they were not particularly interested in adultery, mention should also be made of the moral policing of the Societies for Reformation of Manners, which sprang up in the metropolis and elsewhere from the 1690s. Many of these were local societies, inaugurated by Anglicans and dissenters alike, who employed an army of informers to bring convictions for such moral offences as drunkenness, swearing and, particularly, the non-observance of the Sabbath. See Bahlman (1957).

5. S.123. For general discussion of the methods of prosecuting crime in the early modern period, see Sharpe (1984) and Beattie (1986). See also Howson (1970) pp. 24-6 and Tobias (1979) Ch. 2 for discussions of the policing available in the metropolis.

6. For information on the parish life of the sixteenth century, see Pendrill (1937) and Brigden (1984). See also Burke (1977) for a general discussion of popular culture in seventeenth-century London. On ward or precinct dinners and breakfasts organized by the questmen, see Webbs (1908) ii, 597-8. This seems to have been the main function of the inquest. See, for instance, the accounts of Cheap Wardmote Inquest for 1701 (GHMS 60). Their receipts were £132, of which £38.10.0 was contributed by members of the inquest themselves and £84 'of the severall inhabitants of this ward in the house box'. Their disbursements included about £100 in such items as the Steward's Bill (£22), Vintner's Bill (£52), sugar and spice, ale and beer, ' brawne', coffeeman and baker. Cf. Cornhill Ward (GHMS 4069/2) where the main disbursements were also the steward's, butler's and cook's bills.

7. This section on Allhallows is based mainly on the Vestry Minutes (GHMS 5039/1), the Churchwardens' Accounts (GHMS 5038/1-2), Hatton (1708) i, 103-6 and Birch (1896) pp. 101-2. The most important local officials were the churchwardens, who were in charge of policy towards the poor. A wealthy parish like Allhallows attracted a fair number of orphans dumped on its doorsteps. See the parish register GHMS 5031 for their baptisms and a brief description of their discovery. These seem to have been well treated, put out to nurses who were paid 10s. a month, fed, clothed, educated and eventually placed as apprentices. The rather thoughtless paternalism of the day led to virtually all parish orphans being given the surname Allhallows. One suspects that one of the parish nurses, Rebecca Somerset, was herself a former parish child from St Mary Somerset. For this practice, see Pearl (1981) p. 128. break

8. GHMS 5039/1, 1 April 1698; on the separation of the sexes in the church, see Wickham Legg (1914) p. 150 and Wheler (1698) pp. 99-100, who complained about the abuse of a 'promiscuous mixture' creeping in. Pepys's ideal of a good church service was 'a good sermon, a fine church [in this case Greenwich] and a great company of handsome women' (Pepys, 13 January 1661).

9. Seating from GHMS 5039/1 22 July 1701; poor rates for 1701 from GHMS 5038/2. On Buckingham, see de Krey (1985) p. 149 and Woodhead (1965) p. 40. In one year, 1673, the women of the parish were also seated, quite separately, from the men.

10. Seating from list of 1694; occupations from 1692 Poll Tax (CLRO Assessment Box 56. 1) and from the parish register (GHMS 5031); tax ratings from the Poll Tax and the Marriage Duties (CLRO Marriage Duties 2); that the back rows seated newcomers and the peripatetic can be seen from the fact that the clerk quite often did not know the christian names of those seated there and also by an analysis of turnover. If those known from the parish register to have died in the interim are left out, then 58 per cent of those seated in 1694 were also seated in 1701. However, the figures are almost exactly two-thirds of those in the first four rows and one-third of those in the last two rows.

11. The seating places are all in the Vestry Minutes (GHMS 5039/1). For the 1678 Poll Tax, see CLRO Assessment Box 67.2. For Keeling and Buckingham, see Woodhead (1965) pp. 40, 101. One assumes that Bristow had already served the local offices before the records begin.

12. Other parishes had rules for the same purpose, e.g. St Bride Fleet Street where, on 8 April 1697, a committee was chosen 'for ye regulating ye seating of ye people in ye pews in ye church' and produced a set of rules for seating men and women on the basis of seniority, past and present office-holding etc. (GHMS 6554/2).

13. Webbs (1906) pp. 62-3; for St Giles, see Account (1725) pp. 21-2 for the situation in 1724 before the workhouse was built; for Allhallows Bread Street, see references in note 7 above; for a general discussion of poor relief in late seventeenth-century City parishes, see S. Macfarlane (1986) pp. 254-7.

14. Webbs (1908) pp. 626-7. In two places, G. S. De Krey ((1983) p. 607, Table 1 and (1985) p. 198, Table 5.1) has also suggested that a fair number of common councilmen, particularly Tories, 'were of unpretentious social status' on the basis of what he calls their 'real wealth'. His analysis is based on 151 new common councilmen in the years 1695-1703 whom he has traced in the second quarter assessments of the 1694 parliamentary aid in CLRO. (On this tax, see note 11 of Chapter 8.) De Krey has used the tax on rent as an indication of 'real wealth' and has divided his common councilmen into three groups, 'over £80 p.a.', '£41-£80 p.a.' and '£40 p.a. or less', the implication being that those in the last group are quite poor, though in fact rentals are not a very good proxy for wealth.

15. The occupations of the 46 common councillors were as follows: 16 merchants, 3 wholesale haberdashers (the poorest worth just under £4000), continue

      3 apothecaries (ave. wealth £3874), 2 wholesale and 1 retail grocers, 2 woollen-drapers (worth £12,000 and £4000), 2 linen-drapers (1 insolvent, 1 worth £10,000), 2 builders (worth £5000 & £13,000), 2 wholesale tobacconists, a very rich rentier, a cloth finisher, a printer, a publisher/bookseller, a leather-seller, a silkman, a coal merchant, a wholesale distiller (worth £12,000), a druggist, a dyer, a hop merchant, a carman and a dealer in turnery ware. By a freak of the sample, all nine aldermen were merchants, which was certainly the commonest but by no means the only occupation of this City élite; 6 of the 9 paid fines to escape the office, either immediately or after a year or two's service.

16. There is a very large body of literature on the history of individual livery companies, most of it of little more than antiquarian interest, though there are honourable exceptions. The standard work on the problems of the companies in our period is Kellett (1957-8).

17. Kellett (1957-8) p. 385; for successful prosecutions of the Pewterers' Company for trespass, see Hatcher & Barker (1974) pp. 205-6; for worries about the cost and legality of searches in the Tallow-Chandlers' Company, see Monier-Williams (1977) pp. 185-6. A prosecution brought in 1709 by a Piccadilly candle-maker for damage done to his property by a company search cost the company £200 in legal fees and costs, and made them even more reluctant to attempt to enforce their former powers (p. 196).

18. Kellett (1957-8) p. 384 re the decision in the case of J. Tolley, quoting Bohun (1702) p. 115; for the diversity of trades amongst members of the Drapers' Company, see Johnson (1922) iv, 98-102, 161-2, 368-71.

19. See Kellett (1957-8) pp. 388-9 for numbers of new freedoms.

20. GHMS 11589/1 (Grocers' committee meeting of 18 March 1691).

21. For example, the average length of time between the date of freedom and the date of becoming assistant for 71 members of the court of the Fishmongers between 1641 and 1700 was just under 28 years, suggesting that the average age of new assistants was in their early fifties (calculated from the initial letters A-M in GHMS 5587/1). For 14 members of the sample on whom this information is available, the average age was exactly 50. Since assistants normally served for life, the average age of the court would of course be much older.

22. This section on the Apothecaries is based on GHMS 8202/2 (Warden's accounts, 1668-1692), 8200/4 (Court minutes, 1694-1716), 8202/2 (Quarterage Book) and Wall et al (1963).

23. GHMS 6208/4, 21 February 1694. This section is based on this volume of Court minutes, 6207/1 (Court minutes, 1714-30) and 6203/1 (Renter warden's account book, 1671-1735).

24. On the Vintners' Company in general, see Crawford (1977). The section which follows is based on GHMS 15201/6 (Court minutes, 1703-21) and 15333/6 (Accounts, 1687-1712).

25. Unwin (1938) pp. 37-8. The section that follows is based on GHMS 557 1/2 (Court minutes, 1683-1708), 556 1/3 (Prime warden's accounts, 1682-1706), 5563/6 (Renter warden's accounts, 1690-1700).

26. Rees (1923) pp. 169-76. break

27. Ravenhill (1689) introduction n.p.; this book has a good summary of the financial position of the Grocers. Otherwise, this section is based on GHMS 11588/6 (Court minutes, 1692-1738), 11571/18 (Warden's accounts, 1692-1701) and 11589/1 (Committee book, 1683-1719).

28. Quoted by Fisher (1968) p. 77.

29. Dunn (1973); Rothstein (1964).

30. De Krey (1985) p. 247; cf. ibid., pp. 57-8 when the descent of Spitalfields weavers on parliament in August 1689 confused an already confused situation.

31. On 1641-2, see Pearl (1961) and Manning (1976). On the other riots, see Beloff (1938), Sachse (1964), Holmes (1976) and N. Rogers (1978).

32. Furley (1959), quote from p. 17; N. Rogers (1978).

33. Quoted by Allen (1976) p. 570.

34. For a general discussion of the electorate and voting in the constituencies during this period, see Speck (1970) and for an analysis of the proportion of the City electorate who voted in elections from 1690 to 1715, see de Krey (1985) p. 249. The proportion ranged from a low of 62 per cent in 1695 to a high of 92 per cent in 1713.

35. Quoted by Speck (1970) p. 95. See also pp. 76-7, 95, where he emphasizes the importance nationally of the London elections, and App. E on pp. 128-30, where he estimates the numbers of electors. The members for the City of London were elected by the liverymen, whose numbers had been swollen by the companies' thirst for livery fines to 7500-8000 by the early eighteenth century; 3200 freeholders voted in Middlesex, 5900 householders in Westminster and 3500 in Southwark, a total of over 20,000 voters for the metropolis or about 1 in 5 of the householders. The national electorate rose from about 200,000 in the 1690s to over 250,000 in 1715, which probably represented about the same proportion of householders.

36. The following section draws on all the writers mentioned in notes 30 to 35 above, together with Horwitz (1987) (2), Plumb (1967), Holmes (1967), Brenner (1973), J. R. Jones (1961), de Krey (1983), N. Rogers (1977), Colley (1981) and Sutherland (1956).

37. Fisher (1968) pp. 80-1; cf. Brenner (1973) p. 92; de Krey (1985) pp. 167-76; N. Rogers (1977) p. 3; Colley (1981).

38. For the details of the change in politics from the mid-1690s, see de Krey (1985). Prior to the Revolution of 1688, it was the Whigs who were the radical party but by the late 1690s the Tories had taken over this role, while the rich Whigs abandoned populism and concentrated on making money as the City élite.

39. N. Rogers (1978) pp. 84-6.

40. De Krey (1985).

41. Estimates of the numbers of dissenters and whether they were increasing or decreasing vary considerably between different historians. Watts (1978) suggests that there were 338,000 dissenters in England in 1715-18, of whom 33,220 were in London (pp. 270, 509) and he also argues that the numbers had been falling since the late seventeenth century. Holmes (1976) argues that they had been increasing and that there were continue

      about 500,000 in England and 100,000 in London in the reign of Queen Anne (p. 63), and he is followed by de Krey (1985) p. 75 and, in general, pp. 74-120, though he seems to have a very elastic view of what constitutes a dissenter. It is not clear whether Watts' figure, which relates to 'hearers', includes children but in any case it certainly does seem rather low, while those of Holmes and de Krey are probably too high, and one might plump for somewhere in the middle, say 10-15 per cent of the population of London, a very sizeable number.

42. Defoe (1726-7) i, 47; Defoe (1724-6) i, 72.