riding officern.

1675 Port Donoghodee Rep. Apr. in J. Stevenson Two Cents. Life in Down (1920) x. 253 Mr. Hugh Campbale..shair's in Vessells and Trades with Merchants. So likewise hath..your Riding-Officer.

1707 J. Chamberlayne Angliæ Notitia (ed. 22) 501 Surveyor General of the Riding Officers in Kent and Sussex, to hinder the Exportation of Wool by the Owlers.

1741 Considerations on Several Proposals for preventing Exportation of Wool 10 A particular Officer to receive entries of all Wool, &c., sold at any Market, and return it to the Riding Officer.

1792 C. Smith Desmond III. 171 Rewarded your merit, and made you a riding-officer.

1826 M. Gillespie Let. 18 Dec. in Rep. Trial of Malcolm Gillespie & George Skene Edwards (1829) 46 I have long wished a situation as a Riding Officer on the Coasts and Interior of the Country in the Counties above alluded to.

1862 Illustr. London News 11 Jan. 51/2 The other day died..the last of the English ‘riding officers’.

1911 Mariner′s Mirror 1 190 The officers in the preventive service about the end of the 18th century were entitled ‘sitters’..‘riding officers’, and ‘preventive officers’.

1941 Eng. Hist. Rev. 56 659 There are some good stories about smugglers, riding-officers and tide-waiters.

1995 Times (Nexis) 15 June With the end of the Napoleonic wars the need for smuggling declined. The riding officers who had patrolled the coast became the present-day Coast Guard.