Their duties included meeting and corresponding with the other riding officers either in person or by letter, and inquiring and learning if there were any smuggled goods upon the coast, or landed.
[1] In 1671 Charles II had established the Board of Customs and by 1685 there were ten ships patrolling the coast between Yarmouth and Bristol.
[2] The first riding officers initially only patrolled the south coast, however the force was totally inadequate for the job, with only eight men managing the whole of the Kent coastline.
[2] By 1698 there was realisation that the mounted revenue men were not up to the task, so the scope of the force (now called the Landguard) was widened, and in Kent their numbers were initially increased to 50 and later to 300.
[2] The smaller patrol routes were necessary in areas that were particularly rife for smuggling such as East Sussex and Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire.
Their job was to venture out in all weathers and ride back and forth looking out for smugglers, suspicious ships moored offshore or small boats bringing in contraband.
Parliament then rushed through an act forbidding anyone who lived within a fifteen-mile distance from the sea from buying wool unless he could produce documentary evidence that he intended to sell it inland from the 'exclusion zone'.
When Daniel Defoe rode through Hythe towards Rye in the 1720s he saw riding officers and dragoons searching the marshes for wool smugglers '... as if they were huntsmen beating up their game ...' Though the officers sometimes scored successes, they were usually so outnumbered that they could only stand and watch as the wool was carried on board ship straight from the horses' backs, and taken immediately to France.
[4] A riding officer's duties included tackling the bands of smugglers (which would often greatly outnumber him) wielding just a cutlass and pistol, he could if he deemed it necessary fetch soldiers to assist in the arrest.
As a result, the posts of riding officers were filled by apothecaries, brewers, and other tradesmen, who carried out their duties in their spare time in a manner totally convenient to themselves, falsifying records if necessary.
In 1740 Thomas Carswell was shot as he tried to arrest members of the notoriously violent Hawkhurst Gang who operated on the south coast of England between Dorset and Kent.
A single riding officer was rash enough to intervene at Hurst Beach near Southampton when fourteen armed smugglers were running a cargo.
It was a very lonely vocation, having to ride out every night in all weathers for hours at a time looking for suspicious activity not knowing if you would be returning home safely.
In his annual report in 1783, Sir William Musgrave, the Commissioner of Customs and Excise, said that Riding Officers were 'of very little service, 'tho' a great Burthen to the Revenue'.