One of the grandest spectacles in Old London was that of the Marching Watch on St. John's Day. Comprised in it were about two thousand men, some mounted, others on foot. There were "demilances" riding on great horses; gunners with harquebuses and wheel-locks; archers in white coats, bearing bent bows and sheafs of arrows; pikemen in bright corslets; and bill-men with aprons of mail. There was likewise a cresset train numbering nearly two thousand men. Each cresset—flaming rope, soaked in pitch, in an iron frame held aloft on a shaft—was carried by one man and served by another. Very imposing were the Constables of the Watch, with their glittering armour and gold chains, each preceded by his minstrel and followed by his henchman, and with his cresset bearer by his side. Then came the City waits (musicians) and the morris dancers—Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the rest; after whom appeared the Mayor, with his sword bearer, henchmen, footmen, and giants, followed by the Sheriffs. All the windows facing the street stood open, and there was no lack of distinguished spectators. To quote Nicols:
Kings, great peers, and many a noble dame,
Whose bright, pearl-glittering robes did mock the flame
Of the night's burning lights, did sit to see
How every senator, in his degree,
Adorn'd with shining gold and purple weeds,
And stately mounted on rich trapped steeds,
Their guard attending, through the streets did ride
Before their foot-bands, graced with glittering pride
Of rich gilt arms, whose glory did present
A sunshine to the eye, as if it meant
Amongst the cresset lights shot up on high
To chase dark night for ever from the sky.
By the Setting of the Watch on Midsummer Eve appears to have been meant the stationing of these armed guards in various parts of the City, which they were to secure from harm on that night only. In the thirty-first year of his reign Henry VIII. abolished the Marching Watch, and substituted for it a permanent watch maintained out of the funds which had previously gone to support the great annual pageant. For harnessed constables Londoners now had watchmen equipped with lanthorn and halberd, whose duty it was to call upon the sleeping citizens to hang out their lights, as required on dark wintry nights:
Lanthorn and a whole candle light.
Hang out your lights! Hear!
The next thing to be added was a bell. This institution was not popular with all; and Dekker, satirically expressing the feeling of the malcontents, defined the bell as "the child of darkness, a common night-walker, a man that had no man to wait upon him, but only a dog; one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beat at men's doors, bidding them (in mere mockery) to look to their candles, when they themselves were in their dead sleeps."
Milton, on the other hand, makes grateful mention of the salutation as a lullaby and prophylactic:
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth
Or the bellman's drowsy charm
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Having said something of the means employed to prevent crime and arrest criminals, we must go on to refer to the punishments in vogue in the event of conviction. And here it may be observed that, among other interferences with commerce and the liberty of the subject, hostelers were not allowed to make either bread or beer. The former they were compelled by public enactment to buy from the baker, and the latter from the brewer or brewster (female brewer). But the City, if it defended what was esteemed the legitimate claim of the baker to a proper livelihood, was equally solicitous for the welfare of his customers, and woe betide the baker who sold bread deficient in weight or quality! For the first offence he was drawn on a hurdle from the Guildhall through the principal streets, which would be thronged with people and foul with traffic, and hanging from his neck was the guilty loaf. In the Record-room at the Guildhall is an Assisa Panis containing a pen-and-ink sketch of the ceremony, from which it appears that the unhappy tradesman wore neither shoes nor stockings and had his arms strapped to his sides. It seems also that the hurdle was drawn by two horses, which suggests that it was rattled along at an inconsiderate pace. For the second offence the baker was again conveyed on a hurdle "through the great streets of Chepe," and he further underwent an hour's exposure in the pillory, probably erected in Cheapside, with what consequences may be imagined. If he proved so incorrigible as to commit the offence a third time, the hurdle was again requisitioned, but, public patience being exhausted, his oven was demolished and he was forced to abjure his trade of baker in the City for ever. From the reign of Edward II. the penalty of the hurdle was no longer imposed for the first offence, the pillory being employed instead.
Exposure in the pillory was a favourite prescription, a kind of judicial panacea, to which all sorts of the morally infirm were introduced in turn. Mr. Riley has compiled a list of the sins atoned for by such involuntary penance, which, if we were guided by that alone, would testify to a shocking state of depravity in the Metropolis. Culling from this catalogue, we find that the pillory was considered a fitting reward for various impostures: pretending to be a holy hermit; pretending to be the son of the Earl of Ormond; pretending to be a physician; pretending to be the summoner of the Archbishop of Canterbury and so summoning the Prioress of Clerkenwell; pretending to be one of the Sheriff's sergeants and meeting the bakers of Stratford and arresting them with a view to fradulently extorting a fine, etc., etc. Scandalum magnatum also merited the pillory—a fact brought home to an idle gossip who occupied that uneasy elevation for "telling lies" about the famous Mayor, William Walworth. "Telling lies" of John Tremayne the Recorder was, in the same way, held to justify a public exhibition of the impudent and imprudent person. So, too, anti-social forestalling.
There were cases, however, in which this common method of advertising paltry offences was thought not to involve an adequate degree of notoriety and reprobation. We have already adduced one instance—that of the unscrupulous baker—in which it was attempted to evoke superior indignation. There were others. The natural destiny of impostors was, as we have seen, the pillory; among the qualifications for this shadow of crucifixion being "pretending to be a physician."