in cutting crime that when funding stopped, highwaymen soon returned. The Patrol was not re-introduced until 1805 following Patrick Colquhoun's campaign. They wore a distinctive scarlet waistcoat under their blue greatcoats. Policing in the early 18th century Up to the early 18th century, Britain did not have an official policing system backed by the state. A police force like the Maréchaussée already present in France would have been ill-suited to Britain, which saw examples such as the French one as a threat to their liberty and balanced constitution in favour of an arbitrary and tyrannical government. The enforcement of the law then was mostly up to the private citizens, who had the right and duty to prosecute crimes in which they were involved or in which they were not. At the cry of 'murder!' or 'stop thief!' everyone was entitled and obliged to join the pursuit. Once the criminal had been apprehended, the parish constables and night watchmen, who were the only public figures provided by the state and who were typically part-time and local, would make the arrest. As a result, the state set a reward to encourage citizens to arrest and prosecute offenders. The first of such rewards was established in 1692 of the amount of £40 for the conviction of a highwayman and in the following years it was extended to burglars, coiners and other forms of offence. The reward was to be increased in 1720 when, after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the consequent rise of criminal offences, the government offered £100 for the conviction of a highwayman. Although the offer of such a reward was conceived as an incentive for the victims of an offence to proceed to the prosecution and to bring criminals to justice, the efforts of the government also increased the number of private thief-takers. Thief-takers became infamously known not so much for what they were supposed to do, catching real criminals and prosecuting them, as for "setting themselves up as intermediaries between victims and their attackers, extracting payments for the return of stolen goods and using the threat of prosecution to keep offenders in thrall". Some of them, such as Jonathan Wild, became infamous at the time for staging robberies in order to receive the reward. Henry Fielding (1750–1754) Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle turned to Henry Fielding for help. Fielding had become a Westminster