Chapter XXII: Book 49: , Edward III. fol. 36.) On the other hand in 1376 the commons (1)

presented a petition complaining that many of the mayors were prevented from exercising their office thoroughly by the special charters which had been granted to certain misteries and praying that these special charters might be withdrawn so as to strengthen the hands of the local authorities. (Rot. Parl. ii. 331 No. 54.) See Gross i. 113 note 2. For instances of royal charters to guilds see the Mercers of Shrewsbury (Hibbert, 64), the Tailors of London (Clode’s Merchant Tailors), and various companies in Hull (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life).

[346] A curious instance is given in Hull in which one of the county magnates made use of the guild as an instrument for getting hold of the borough representation in Parliament. (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life, 182.)

[347] The story of the Hull Merchants’ Company is very instructive. Ibid. 180, etc.

[348] See Chapter VIII. The union of crafts in a guild at Walsall (Gross ii. 248) before 1440 seems to have been very like the union of crafts at Coventry a century earlier to get control of the town government, “in eschewing of such great misorder and inconvenience as here of late hath fortuned and happened.”

[349] Carlisle Mun. Rec. ed. Ferguson and Nansen 89-99.

[350] The town customs and bye-laws were drawn up in 1561 by “the Mayor and Council with four of every occupation in the aforesaid city, for and in the name of the whole citizens (Carlisle Mun. Rec. 28, 29, 59). In Beverley the alderman of merchants and twenty-one aldermen of various crafts gave assent in the fifteenth century to ordinances of the governors.” (Gross, ii. 23.)

[351] Gross, ii. 380-3.

[352] See Chapter XIII. 374-5.

[353] Gross, i. 111, note 3. The cases of Durham and Morpeth here mentioned are very late.

[354] Ibid. 112, note 4.

[355] Ibid. i. 124 note 2. Von Ochenkowski (Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, 67) argues that this regulation was made in consequence of the mediæval view of trade as a public trust not a mere individual act; and that skill in craft was taken as a test of uprightness of character and a pledge of fitness for citizenship. From this conclusion follows the belief, which in its turn supports the conclusion, that the rule was one imposed by the town authorities and not by the will of the crafts.

[356] Stubbs, iii. 607.

[357] This history has been treated by Dr. Gross in his “Gild Merchant.” In the thirteenth century Merchant Guilds existed in at least one-third and probably in a much greater proportion of the English boroughs. (Gross, i. 2, 22, 158.)

[358] Ibid. i. 107.

[359] Gross, i. 74, 107, 108, note 3, 109. There were clergy and women in the Andover Guild (Ibid. ii. 299, 321); and in Coventry (English Guilds, 228).

[360] Gross, i. 66-71, ii. 236.

[361] Ibid. i. 43, 61, 158-9.

[362] Ibid. i. 282-3.

[363] Gross, i. 61-63, 85. Sometimes the grant of a guild was given before the grant of other rights. In other cases it followed. Thus in Gloucester the first charter was given by Henry the Second “to my burgesses of Gloucester” in 1155. The Guild did not appear in the charter till 1200, when John granted certain municipal rights to “our burgesses of Gloucester,” and others mainly of a trading sort to “our burgesses of Gloucester of the Merchant Guild”; and in 1227 a charter of Henry the Third seems for the first time to enact that burgesses must not only dwell in the borough, hold land, and pay lot and scot, but must also “be in the Merchant Guild and Hanse.”

[364] Ibid. i. 43-52, 158-9.

[365] Ibid. i. 63, 85, 114. “In some places their powers appear to have been gradually enlarged during the thirteenth century so as to embrace jurisdiction in pleas relating to trade.” (Ibid. 65.)

[366] Ibid. i. 114-115.

[367] Gross, i. 117, 159-60.

[368] Ibid. i. 116.

[369] Dr. Gross holds that all guilds of merchants formed after the decline of the Gilda Mercatoria in the thirteenth century must be considered as being merely craft-unions of the ordinary kind—in most cases superseding the Guild Merchant (i. 129).

[370] By Dr. Gross’s definition, “What had once been a distinct integral part of the civic body politic became vaguely blended with the whole of it.” (Gross, i. 159-60, 163.)

[371] This is stated to have been very rare. (Ibid. p. 114.)

[372] Ibid. 118, 163. The appellation of the Guild Merchant “was more frequently applied to the aggregate of the crafts” than to the governing body of the borough. (Ibid. i. 114.) In Carlisle had the term “been used at all, _it would probably have been applied_ to the eight guilds aggregately, rather than to the Corporation.” (Ibid. ii. 40.) In proving that the later Guild Merchant was “an aggregate of the crafts,” Dr. Gross carries us at a single step into a much later period (pp. 118-123), where the name tells us little apart from the history of the borough. The case of Coventry seems a doubtful instance.

[373] Gross, i. 161, 163. Lynn is given as an illustration of this change, but the evidence is not adduced.

[374] Ibid. i. 118. No instance is given of this.

[375] Dr. Gross argues that any struggle which did take place was not between the Guild Merchant and the crafts, but between “the governing council (the “magnates,” “potentiores,” etc.) on the one side and the burgesses at large (“communitas,” “populus,” “minores”) on the other.” (Gross i. 110, 285.) The “magnates” of Norwich (Hudson’s Mun. Org. p. 24-5), or “les riches” of the city records, ruled in a city where there was no Guild Merchant. The “potentiores” of Lynn seem from the printed records to have been the Guild Merchant. In the town records “communitas” cannot be understood as synonymous with “populus,” still less with “minores.”

[376] Gross, i. 109. “Not a single unmistakable example of such a conflict has ever been deduced.” On this point Seligman (Mediæval Guilds, 57-8) speaks very dogmatically on most inconclusive evidence, so far as this is given in his notes. The analogy on p. 58 of craft guilds including smaller unions is not shewn, nor their common occurrence proved.

[377] In London, Norwich, and the Cinque Ports, there was no Guild Merchant at any time. In Lynn, Andover, Southampton, and Bristol it was all-powerful. In Nottingham no influence of its action can be traced; the guild mentioned in John’s charter (Nott. Rec. i. 9) is only once mentioned afterwards, in 1365. (Ibid. i. 189.)

[378] Gross, i. 107.

[379] See Lynn, Gross, ii. 157. Southampton, ibid. 216-226. Andover, ibid. 4, 8, 294, 344. Derby, ibid. 51-3. Newcastle, ibid. 184-5; other instances, i. 69. For Reading see vol. i. 302. For the variety in relations of the Guild to the town see Gross, i. 73.

[380] As at Oxford and Lincoln, Lib. Cus. 671. Gross, ii. 146. It is very probable, however, that these were confirmations of older institutions.

[381] Gross, i. 109.

[382] Ibid. i. 33.

[383] Ibid. i. 31. See also Bury St. Edmunds, ii. 30-3.

[384] See p. 219, note at end of Chapter.

[385] Barnstaple, Gross, ii. 12.

[386] Bury St. Edmunds, Gross, ii. 33-4.

[387] Gross, i. 117. Is there any reason to think that if the enjoyment of monopoly was split up and divided among the crafts, the exercize of authority was split up and transferred in the same proportions?

[388] When wealthy individuals of a craft, men perhaps almost in the position of merchants, were admitted to the Guild, no argument can be drawn from this as to the relation of the craft itself to the Guild.

[389] Gross, i. 114-5. In the instances here given (p. 116, note 1) of regulations made for craftsmen by the Guild Merchant it is necessary to define the exact relation between the Guild and the governing body of the town. (See Andover in 1314. Gross, ii. 308. Compare Leicester, ibid. 144.)

[390] Gross, i. 125-6, 159-60.

[391] Ibid. i. 75, 76.

[392] All the materials which I have used in speaking of Coventry have been given me very kindly by Miss Dormer Harris, who has made a careful study of the town records on the spot, and will soon, it is hoped, publish the result of her researches.

[393] Compare Chesterfield, where a Guild was established in 1218 to guard the “liberties of the town”; in case of need its aldermen were to choose twelve men to go before the justices or elsewhere to help these “liberties” of the town; and any one suffering loss for them was to be repaid by the Guild. (English Guilds, 165-167.)

[394] Compare the very small numbers of the Reading Guild, which was a survival of olden times (Vol. I. p. 302, note 1). S. Alban’s was larger, but apparently of a more doubtful character, even in the eyes of the prudent burghers. (Ibid. 296-7.)

[395] They got land from Isabella, and built their church at Bablake—the first church built by the burghers.

[396] The taking of a common name may have been connected with the license to mortmain. S. John’s Guild had got a license in 1342 and land to build its church, but some extended license must have been needed for a larger society which desired to possess new property.

[397] Mercers’ obits were celebrated in S. Catherine’s Chapel; drapers’ obits usually in the Lady Chapel belonging to S. Mary’s or the Merchant Guild.

[398] The early guildhall of York belonged to the guilds of S. George and S. Christopher; and when the new hall was built in the middle of the fifteenth century these two guilds retained considerable power in it. (Davies’ Walks Through York, 49-51.) Sir William Plumpton and his wife joined the fraternity of S. Christopher at York, 1439. (Plumpton Corr. lxii.)

[399] Cf. Norwich (p. 395). This arrangement was probably made for the sake of financial security (see p. 215-6).

[400] English Gilds, 232.

[401] Accounts of the Guild of Corpus Christi are preserved from 1488. The brethren and sisters of the Guild seem to have been spread all over England, and are mentioned at London, Lynn, and Birmingham. They were of all ranks and of all trades and callings. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 101.) The Prior of the cathedral, the Prior’s bailiff, the vicar of Trinity, various craftsmen of the town and vicars of the neighbourhood, merchants of Queenborough, Dublin, Drogheda, Bristol, Kingston-on-Hull, London, and many other places, a “merchant of the Staple,” and great men of the neighbourhood, such as Thomas Grey, the Marquis of Dorset, Lord Hastings, and others belonged to its association.

[402] S. Mary’s Hall was begun in 1340, and finished in 1413.

[403] The Twenty-four were self-elected; the mayor was elected by the Twenty-four; the common council were appointed and summoned by the mayor.

[404] Compare the case of Southampton where a guild merchant had imposed its methods on a town government.

[405] The list compiled in 1449 of living craftsmen who had held office gives fifteen drapers and eleven mercers, and seven dyers; as against two wire-drawers, two whit-tawyers, and two weavers. The dyers in Coventry were often cloth merchants of great consequence.

[406] In the time of Richard the Second the fullers and tailors first attempted to form a guild, and even obtained a patent which licensed their society to hold property worth a yearly rental of eight marks.

[407] The complaint against the dyers is shown in a petition to Parliament in 1415 (Rot. Parl. iv. 75), in which the community of Coventry say that by reason of a confederacy among the dyers they cannot get their cloth dyed under 6_s._ or 7_s._ a dozen, whereas last year’s price was 5_s._; and forty pounds of wool was now 30_s._ which was last year 20_s._, &c. The dyers are also great and common makers of cloth and take all the flower of the wool for their own cloth, the remnant serving the common people. The petitioners request that on the day of the mayor’s election, those that elect him (that is twenty-four members of the ruling guilds) shall also appoint four persons, two drapers, one dyer, and one woder, sworn to keep watch over the dyers, and present them for any “fault or confederacy” to the mayor, bailiffs, and justices of the peace—in other words to the officers of the Trinity Guild. For the first fault he was to pay a fine to the king, for the second a fine and half a year’s imprisonment. They also prayed that no one who was a dyer should make vendible cloth. These conditions being refused they claimed the suppression of the guild.

[408] The mayor and his brethren carried their complaint to the king in 1424, and by royal writ the assemblies were forbidden. In 1422 the governing guilds issued an order that all wardens should bring the ordinances of the crafts before the mayor, recorder, and bailiffs, and eight of the general council by whom honest, lawful, and good rules should be allowed; and no ordinances might be made against the law in oppression of people, upon pain of imprisonment or fine at the king’s will. In 1424 arbitrators were appointed by the mayor’s order to decide the disputes between the master weavers and their men; and rules were drawn up for the whole craft. It is obvious that this is very different from regulation by a guild which still retained the crafts within its own association.

[409] They gave forty marks for a fresh license for their guild with mortmain up to ten marks, and leave to elect four masters at the Nativity to rule the craft and to plead in courts for the whole body. As of old they seem to have failed in carrying out their scheme in spite of the license, and in 1448 a petition was presented by them (whether it was voluntary may well be doubted) that the union between the fullers’ and tailors’ crafts should be severed. At the suppression of the guilds the shearmen and tailors held a mill and tenements in mortmain for the support of their chauntry.

[410] Cf. Exeter, Chapter VII.

[411] How little freedom was left to far the most powerful craft of all—the dyers—we see from the law of 1530, that if any masters and journeymen of the dyers can be proved before the mayor and justices to have hindered any one from becoming a dyer, they are to be fined. If the journeymen refuse to work for the new dyers, then, without hindrance from the craft or the journeymen, they may hire others not inhabitants. In 1530 it was ordered that a certain Robert Perkins was to become a dyer without “let or hindrance” from craft and journeymen. In general the corporation resisted the tendency of the lesser crafts to prevent the setting up of new masters—a policy which is easy to understand in the rule of merchants, as opposed to that of the manufacturers.

[412] Posted up on the door of S. Michael’s in 1494:—

“Be it knowen and understood This cite should be free and now is bond Dame Goode-Eve made hit free And now the’ be customes for woll and the drap’ie. Also hit is made that no prentice shall be But XIII. penies pay shall he, This act did Robert Grene Therefore he had many a curse I wene.”

(Sharp’s Antiquities, 235.)

[413]

“This city is bond that shuld be free, The right is holden from the ̄C̄īalte. Our cōins that at Lamas open shuld be cast They be closed in and hegged full fast.... If ever ye have nede to the cōīalte Such favour as ye show us such shall ye see. We may speke fair and bid ye good morwe But luff from our herts ye shall have nevr.... Cherish the cōīalte and so they have their right For drede of a worse chance by day or by night. The best of all littel worth shuld be And ye had not had help of the cōīalte.”

(Sharp, 235.) Perhaps it was from the talk of the streets in some such local disturbance that Langland quoted when he wrote the lines quoted in Vol. I. p. 26.

[414] The Coventry craft-masters’ apprentices paid their fines to the mayor “for the use of the city,” not of the guild; the “searchers” for the trades were appointed and the regulations made at the Leet Court, not at meetings of a guild; the same officials attended, but they had to act as representing the municipality.

[415] As in Lynn, Bristol, and, later, Norwich.

[416] It is a subject for inquiry whether any Guild Merchant gave its name to a municipality unless it had been made responsible for the payment of the ferm, and held openly and to the knowledge of the exchequer some property or rents or tolls for the purpose.

[417] The Coventry Guild held town property for public purposes before this, apparently as a private arrangement.

[418] It is possible that in the earlier part of Richard’s reign the fear inspired by the Peasant Revolt may have quickened the spirit of organization among the wealthier classes. In the Guild of Lichfield, established by charter in 1387, the master of the Guild and the Forty-eight were “steadfastly to abide together and see that good rule be kept in the city.” (Gross, ii. 145.) Similar combinations of the richer classes seem to have been very general.

[419] English Gilds, 244-6, 249, 250.

[420] Gross, ii. 353.

[421] Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316. This states that all the burgesses and the commonalty of the borough of Bridgewater have ordained that they will choose yearly two seneschals of their guild, and one bailiff to attend on them; such seneschals to have power to punish those offending against these ordinances. If any one among them shall maliciously impute to another a charge of theft, forgery, neifty (“nativitatis,” the being a born bondman), murder, adultery, or excommunication, and be convicted thereof before the seneschals, he shall be amerced and bound to the commonalty to make satisfaction to the other at the award of his peers. No one shall implead another without the borough under pain of amercement. Any one neglecting to appear before the seneschals when summoned is to be amerced. Those opposing execution or distress made by order of the seneschals to be amerced and bound to the commonalty in forty pence. No one is to buy flesh or fish before 9 A.M. for regrating under pain of becoming bound to the commonalty in the price of the flesh or fish so bought or sold. If any one is elected to the office of seneschal of S. Mary’s or of the Holy Cross in the church of the said borough he shall render account for the moneys arising therefrom to the said seneschals whenever summoned so to do. Any person refusing any one of those offices, if elected thereto, is to be bound to the commonalty in the sum of 6_s._ 8_d._ The seneschals are to render account for all moneys received by them each year upon the morrow of the circumcision of our Lord. This deed has a large fragment of the castle seal or seal of the lord of the fee still attached. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316.)

[422] Their meetings for business were held in a small chamber attached to the church of S. Helen, which is still the exchequer chamber of their successors, the governors of Christ’s Hospital. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 98.) Dr. Gross (i. 83-4, note 11) gives the names of some towns where the government was guided by a “simple social-religious gild.” The instances suggest different problems, and need separate examination of the special circumstances.

[423] Madox, 217. How many later declarations of the poverty of _corporations_ was due to this convenient system of dealing with their funds?

[424] This system was devised before the doctrine of Trusts was adopted, in the reign of Henry the Fourth; but even after that doctrine was accepted the holding of property by a friendly corporation would have put considerable difficulty in the way of recovering money owed by the municipality.

[425] English Gilds, 231-5.

[426] See Note A at end of Chapter.

[427] See Chapter XIV.

[428] Dr. Gross is one of the latest writers who insists especially on the passage from democracy to oligarchy. (i. 108-110, 125-6, 160, 171, 285.)

[429] Gross, i. 23-6; ii. 115 et sq. Compare Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 239, for the forms used in 1291. For elections in 1310 see Ibid. 242.

[430] In Romney an instance is given in 1442 of a man being arrested who had come, not being free, to hear the common council. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540. For Wycombe, Ibid. 557.

[431] Journal Archæological Association, xxvii. 464.

[432] Ibid.

[433] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 493.

[434] Boys’ Sandwich, 429. See also Berwick, English Guilds, 344.

[435] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 462. If a townsman struck the mayor and was too harshly punished the friends of the prisoner might call a jury “of the discreetest and stoutest men of the city,” who should ordain a just penalty. In Rye as in Hereford the old custom was that the man who struck the mayor was to lose his right hand (Lyon’s Dover, ii. 352); in Preston there was some punishment for a mayor who struck a burgess in or out of court (Custumal, Hist. Preston Guild). In Canterbury if a bailiff did wrong to any “that may be found by two lawful men of syght and of hyerth” complaint was made to the twelve aldermen; and if they charged the bailiff in vain to amend the wrong, the case was carried to a court of the thirty-six, the aldermen, and the most wisest men, “and by them right shall be ordained” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 171).

[436] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 559.

[437] Hunt’s Bristol, 103-5.

[438] For the variety of modes in which juries were elected then and later see Rep. Mun. Corporations, 27.

[439] We find also special juries—for example a jury of masons and carpenters to judge “because of a waterfall which fell from the house and gutter of Richard Maidstone upon the house and ground of William Bennett” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 169); and groups of umpires appointed to settle differences (Boys’ Sandwich, 786).

[440] This was the custom in Exeter. At Bayonne every new citizen was sworn upon a book containing the charter and statutes of the commune (Luchaire, 47).

[441] Ricart, 2.

[442] At Wycombe and Dartmouth two Italian copies of the Pandects of Justinian and commentaries were used in the fifteenth century to bind up the corporation books.

[443] See pp. 310-11, 334-6, 366-70. A decree of 1328 in Preston was made by “the mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses, with all the commonalty, by a whole assent and consent.” (Thomson, Mun. Hist. 105.)

[444] Mr. Maitland describes the communal organization of the villein tenants on the manor of Bright Waltham in 1293 (Manorial Pleas, Selden Soc. 161-4, 168). They formed a “communitas” which held property, could receive a grant of land, could contract and make exchanges with the lord (172). These rights were recognized in the manorial courts, though at Westminster they would have been held very irregular (163). They elected or recommended the reeve, shepherd, ploughman, swineherd (170), the whole ville “undertaking” for him (168). The steward kept watch that no land of servile tenure should be treated as free, and the villeins themselves were very unwilling that a villein should set up as a freeman on the ground of holding a freehold acre (164).

[445] In Barnstaple a deed concerning a tenement in the High Street in 1416 was sealed with the seal of the commonalty, not that of the mayor. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 213.) In Rye there was a seal of the community different from the mayor’s seal, which last was first used in 1377. (Ibid. v. 489, 511.) Also in Lydd (ibid. 530-2).

[446] See note A at end of chapter.

[447] Worcester, Eng. Guilds, 378.

[448] Frequent cases indicate that where the common lands played an important part in the wealth or industry of a borough the burgesses long preserved an interest in municipal affairs. Thus, in Haverford West, where the townsfolk up to 1832 took a very real part in the election of their officers and the control of business, the common meadow still contained over a thousand acres. (Report on Mun. Corporation, 233, etc.) And at Berwick-on-Tweed, where also affairs were administered by the whole body of burgesses, the annual value of the lands whose profits went to the freemen was near £6,000. (Ibid. 31.)

[449] Piers Ploughman, pass. xi. 239.

[450] Merewether and Stephens, ii. 590-2.

[451] Norwich Town Close Evidences, p. 16. A copy of this volume (a private publication printed in connection with the Town Close case in 1885) may be found in the British Museum.

[452] Norwich Town Close Evidences, 18-19.

[453] Ibid. 17.

[454] It was at this time that the mayor was given power to distrain for sums levied on the commonalty. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 186-7.)

[455] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, pp. 187, 240. Gross, ii. 155-6.

[456] Report on Markets, 62.

[457] Rot. Parl. i. 433.

[458] Madox, 94.

[459] In the list of taxpayers to the poll-tax of 1380 in Oxford, we find four aldermen mentioned—a vintner, a draper, and two others whose trade is not mentioned, but who had eight and ten servants, a number very greatly above the average. The vintner and draper each paid, like the mayor, 13_s._ 4_d._; but the man with ten servants gave only 12_d._; and the man with eight is not registered as having paid at all. (Oxford City Documents, Oxford Hist. Soc. 8-45.)

[460] See Note A at end of chapter.

[461] In 1327 a violent dispute broke out between the great people of Andover and the rest of the community. The story of the election of a sort of council of fifteen of the richer people in 1303, and of incidents leading to the riot of 1327 can be traced in the entries quoted in Gross, ii. 297-321.

[462] Inaugural Address at Oxford by Mr. Froude, Oct. 26th, 1892.

[463] Cases occur in the towns under the game laws. The Jurats of Hythe present Henry Colle as “a common destroyer in killing hares with snares and pypys to the great destruction of the sport of the gentry and against the statute”; and another man “for keeping one ferret for hunting against the statute.” (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 431, 2.)

[464] See Piers Ploughman. Pass. ix. 20-31; ii. 96; x. 223, _et sq._

[465]

“Then louh (laughed) there a lord and ‘by this light’ said, ‘I hold it right and reason to take of my reeve All that mine auditor or else my steward Counselleth me by their account and my clerk’s writing. With _spiritus intellectus_ they took the reeve-rolls, And with _spiritus fortitudinis_ fetch it, will he, nil he.’”

—Piers Ploughman. Passus xxii. 461-466.

[466] “If any judgment be given,” say the Hereford Customs, “or any execution of writs of our Lord the King, be to be impleaded or done, or if any doubt or ambiguity shall be upon any of our laws or customs, or anything else touching the whole commonalty, then the bailiff or steward, by all kind of rigour, may compel _the discreeter especially, or any other citizen whom they have need of_, to come unto them.” (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 464.)

[467] Hudson, Mun. Org., 24-5.

[468] Royal Commission on Markets, 15, 16. The justices had a right to dismiss poor recognitors, and order the sheriff to cause lawful knights and other proved discreet men to be elected in their stead (Select Civil Pleas, Selden Society, 100). The records of the Manchester Court Leet Jury have only been preserved from 1552. The number varied from about fourteen to eighteen, who were yearly chosen at the court leets from the chief burgesses of the town. When the father died his eldest son or younger brother seems to have been made a juror in his stead. The jurors, in fact, were chosen generation after generation from the same small number of families. The reeve and one or both constables were generally nominated from among the jury then in the box. (Manchester Court Leet Records, 177-8.) Cf. Ship of Fools. Barclay, 99.

[469] Ibid. 62. See Vol. I. 186, 165, note A. In Canterbury there was a law that if by the bailiff’s fault the king should send a writ “in hindering of the liberty” of the town the bailiff should make restitution.

[470] In Colchester for example the number of people assessed for all moveables in 1301 was 390 and the sum raised £24 12_s._ 6_d._ In 1377, when it stood twelfth on the list of English towns, it is said to have had about 4,500 inhabitants.

[471] Thus in 1342 Nicholas Langton was elected mayor of York for the seventeenth time (Hargrove’s York, i. 308) and two men bore rule in Liverpool for eighteen years between 1374 and 1406—one for twelve years and the other for six (Picton’s Liverpool, i. 30).

[472] There was a great variety in the names of mayors during the fifteenth century. John Samon held the office several times, but generally speaking the mayors were not re-elected, and in no case did they hold office two years in succession. (See Nottingham Records.)

[473] Gross, ii. 117.

[474] Lincoln and London (Madox, 14; Gross, i. 80). Canterbury (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 167).

[475] See Lynn and Southampton.

[476] Ricart’s Kalendar, 72, etc. The Mayor in Nottingham was bound “to give his brethren knowledge for to see the game of the fishing” ... and “in likewise to give them knowledge of every bear-baiting and bull-baiting within the town, to see the sport of the game after the old custom and usage.” (Rec. iii. 449.)

[477] Hythe, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 432, 434.

[478] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 542. Ibid. vi. 572-580. Any man thrice convicted of “cursing the mayor and slandering him with good and grave people,” was to be deprived of his freedom by sound of the bell of the Guild Hall.

[479] See ch. viii. Freeman’s Exeter, 90.

[480] In Bristol the town clerk, the steward, and the attorney, had forty-two rays, and their under clerks thirty-two rays. (Ricart, xii. 81.)

[481] In 1476 Lydd paid 13_s._ 4_d._ for the writing out of its “Customall.” The custumal of Sandwich written in 1301 was copied about 1465 by the Town Clerk, John Serles. The Black Book of Hythe was copied in the same way. For Southampton see Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 8. Instances are too numerous to give.

[482] See the Translation of Crouchback’s Charter at Leicester (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 404); a translation from the French in 1491 of the old book of laws and customs of Yarmouth (Ibid. ix. 305); a translation in 1473 of the ancient rules of the Guild of Southampton known as the Pax Bread. (Davies’ Southampton, 133.)

[483] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 606-7. The clerk was also responsible for deeds which were constantly given into the keeping of the Mayor and Council.

[484] The Domesday Book of Dorchester compiled in the XV. century (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxviii. 29); the Liber Albus of Norwich in 1426 (Blomefield, iii. 141; Arch. Journ. xlvi. 302). Ordinances were drawn up at Rye in 1397 (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 489); the Fordwich Kalendar in the fifteenth century (Ibid. v. 606-607). The oldest Year Book of Sandwich is the Old Black Book in which entries are made in 1432 and end in 1487. Entries in its White Book begin in 1488 and end in 1526. The fact that the laws of the Scotch Marches were codified at this time shews the prevailing tendency.

[485] As in Romney (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539).

[486] In 1386 the Cinque Ports paid for the copying of Magna Charta (Ibid. 533).

[487] Nottingham Records, ii. 340.

[488] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 489.

[489] Ibid. ix. 223-4.

[490] First paper roll in Reading accounts 1463. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 175.) Accounts at Bridport, Southampton, and Hythe on paper under Richard the Second. (Ibid. vi. 492; xi. 3-8; iv. 1, 438-9.) Some of the guild returns were on paper in 1389. (English Guilds, 132-3.) In 1467 there was a rule in Worcester that the town clerk must be a citizen, and do his own work with daily attendance and not by simple and inefficient deputy, and must engross on parchment. (Guilds, 399.)

[491] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 477.

[492] Ibid. ix. 108.

[493] Ibid. vi. 603.

[494] The difference is seen by comparing with their accounts such documents as presentments at sessions, bills for goods and the like. (Nottingham Records, iii. xiv.) See also entries in the records made by Roger Bramston, mayor of Wycombe, in 1490.

[495] The possible difficulty of getting rid of a clerk is illustrated by what happened when the mayor, sheriffs, alderman, and commons of York, in 1475, by their whole and common assent, dismissed the common clerk “for divers and many offences—excessive takings of money, misguiding of their books, accounts, and evidences, with other great trespasses.” They then wrote to D. of Gloucester to entreat his good lordship and that he would move the king to allow them to name another common clerk; and the Duke having sent letters to Lord Hastings and Lord Stanley, finally received an answer from the king that he had commissioned two serjeants of the law to examine the case, that they had reported in favour of the corporation, and that a new clerk might be elected. The grateful town agreed at a meeting of the council that the D. of Gloucester “for his great labour now late made unto the king’s great grace” should “be presented at his coming to the city with 6 swans and 6 pikes.” (Davies’ York, 53-55.)

[496] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 603. In Hereford the steward might be a “foreigner who is known of the citizens.” (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 463-4.)

[497] In Sandwich the “town clerk’s” salary was 40_s._ a year, out of which he had to find parchment, except when he wrote out the cesses, when the commonalty might give him a shilling or two for the parchment and his trouble. Other small payments fell to him when a freeman was made or a corporation letter was signed or suchlike business done. (Boys’ Sandwich, 476.) In 1390 Romney paid as much as 56_s._ 8_d._; then the salary fell to 40_s._ in 1428; then to 32_s._ 11_d._; and then to 26_s._ 8_d._, with 3_s._ 4_d._ for parchment. (Ibid. 803.) This corresponded with the decline in the fortunes of Romney.

[498] The common clerk at Hythe, John Smallwood, secured for himself a following of thirty-six men sworn to help him in all his undertakings, and in 1397 he had even gathered sixty men pledged to bring about the death of four of his enemies. For four years the town refused to have any clerk at all, until at last Smallwood made his peace in 1414 by the gift of certain tenements and lands. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. part 1, 437-8.)

[499] Davies’ York, 207. Thomas Atwood, who was town clerk of Canterbury in 1497, seems to have been mayor in 1500. His brother William was one of the counsel of the city in 1497.

[500] Nottingham Records, iii. 59, 84.

[501] For his writing and one or two of his mottoes see Nottingham Records, III. ix.-xiii. ii. xvi. For Robert de Ricarto of Bristol, see p. 20. For Daniel Rowe of Romney, p. 61.

[502] Thompson, Mun. Hist. 82.

[503] See Paston Letters. Cf. The Common Weal (ed. Miss Lamond), 83-4.

[504] See the case of Norwich. The main effect of the new charters was simply to make the rate of progress apparent, and to some extent to help it forward by the mere process of reducing everything to formal legal arrangement, thus incidentally destroying vague liberties, or hardening the exercise of them into a fixed form which had lost all elasticity.

[505] Piers Ploughman. Passus ix. 174.

[506]

“But while Hunger was their master would none chide, Ne strive against the Statute, he looked so stern.”

Ibid. Passus ix. 342, 343.

[507] Occasionally we find odd instances of growing independence. In Worcester “at some seasons of wilfulness” the people had shewn their revolutionary temper by choosing for serjeants and constables “persons of worship, to the dishonour of them and of the said city;” and an ordinance was made in 1467 that none of the twenty-four or the forty-eight might be appointed to these offices. (English Guilds, 409.) In like manner the great court of Bridgenorth decreed in 1503 that no burgess should be made serjeant. (Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, 426.) In 1350 a guild was formed in Lincoln of “common and middling folks” who strongly objected to any one joining them “of the rank of mayor or bailiffs,” or claiming dignity for his personal rank, and made a rule that if any such persons insisted on entering their society they should not meddle with its business and should never be appointed officers. (English Guilds, 178-9.)

[508] Piers Ploughman. Pass. xviii. 88.

[509] The differences of early charters should all be studied. See, for example, the charters of Nottingham and Northampton given in the same year (Stubbs’s Charters, 300-302).

[510] The complexity and apparently inexhaustible confusion of their methods is well illustrated by the lists drawn up in 1833 by the commissioners appointed to inquire into municipal corporations. See appendix to the Rep. on Mun. Corpor. 94, 95; and especially the tables on pp. 102-132. Evidently the burghers have scarcely deserved the reproach of those who consider direct election by the people as the natural rude expedient of unlearned men grouped in political societies and ignorant of the wiser system of nomination which commends itself to trained legislators.

[511] Kitchin’s Winchester, 164.

[512] P. 306.

[513] Municipal Corporations Report, 21.

[514] The modes of election of sheriffs and bailiffs were as various and complicated as those of mayor and council. For illustrations of this see Rep. on Mun. Corp. 24, 25.

[515] There was also a “Great Court” of twenty-four. Hist. MSS. Com. x. part 4, pp. 425-7. At Melcombe Regis (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 578) there was an electing jury of twelve. In Preston the mayor chose in open court two ancient discreet and honest burgesses, who took an oath that they would at once select twenty-four burgesses who should not bear any office in the town during the next year. The twenty-four having been chosen and sworn, elected a mayor, a bailiff, and a sub-bailiff; these three at once took their respective oaths, and the mayor before he left the hall appointed a mayor’s bailiff and a serjeant. Laws were made by the “mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses, with all the commonalty, by a whole assent and consent.” Government seems to have been carried on by the mayor and “twelve of those who with him are ordained,” and who were known as aldermen or capital burgesses. By a guild law earlier than 1328 former mayors and bailiffs, though they might sit on the bench as aldermen, were not allowed to meddle with the twenty-four during the election, under penalty of a fine of twenty shillings or loss of citizenship. (Preston, Guild Record, xxiv. Guild ordinances in history of Preston Guild, by Dobson and Harland, 12, 17, 19-23.)

[516] To illustrate the variety of town constitutions I have given three or four, taken at random, in an Appendix at the end of the chapter. Other instances will be found in Chapters. XII.-XVI.

[517] See note A, p. 283, Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 171-2. This plan was perhaps modelled on a system common in ecclesiastical elections and possibly peculiar in Canterbury so far as municipalities were concerned. There was a dispute in 1435 about the mode of presentation to S. Peter’s, Cornhill, to avoid the “great strife and controversy” between the mayor, aldermen, and common council. It was decided that the mayor and aldermen should choose four priests living within the city or a mile of it; that these four should name to the common council four clerks “most meet in manners and conyng”; and that out of these four the mayor, aldermen, and council should choose one. Three Fifteenth century Chron. (Camden Soc., 91-92).

[518] Report on Mun. Corporations, 20.

[519] In Bridport there were twelve jurors. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 489-90, 492-3.) In Southampton twelve “discreets,” p. 308. The jurats in Romney and others of the Cinque Ports formed a similar body. So also in Carlisle, and in Pontefract. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 270-1.) A writ from the privy council was addressed to “the mayor, bailiffs, and twenty-four notablest burgesses of our town of Northampton” in 1442. (Proceed. Privy Council v. 191.) Wells had a council of twenty-four. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 106-7.)

[520] Oxford, by a charter of Richard the First, had a mayor and two aldermen. In 1255 Henry the Third made the aldermen four, corresponding to the four wards of the city, and joined with them eight leading burgesses mainly to keep peace in the city and to have charge of the assize of bread, beer, and wine. The twenty-four common councilmen were elected from the citizens at large. (Boase’s Oxford, 42-44.) In Ipswich besides the twelve “honest and loyal” portmen elected yearly in the cemetery of S. Mary Tower there was a council of twenty-four; and seven of the portmen and thirteen of the twenty-four could together make rules for the town. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 242, 244.) In Yarmouth (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 305; Blomefield, xi. 301-2, 342), twenty-four jurats (afterwards called aldermen) were chosen by the burgesses, and appointed all the officers of the town. Between 1400 and 1407 changes were made in the constitution. Two bailiffs were elected instead of four, and besides the council of twenty-four aldermen a common council was formed of forty-eight members. So also in Colchester and Norwich. Worcester had two councils, “the twenty-four above and the forty-eight beneath.” (English Guilds, 379, 396. Also Leicester, Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 425.) Canterbury had an upper council of twelve and another of thirty-six. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 171-2.) For councils of seventy and eighty see pp. 374, 432. In Chester a charter of 1506 gave twenty-four aldermen and forty of the common council. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 359-60.) In Bristol (Hunt’s Bristol, 85-86) and Liverpool (Picton ii. 26) the council was composed of forty “honest and discreet” men. Colchester had two councils of sixteen each. (Cromwell’s Colchester, 265.)

[521] The manner in which the aldermen took their place in the system of municipal government has not yet been worked out. In London, Canterbury, and Lincoln they were hereditary owners of the various wards. The people of Coventry petitioned for aldermen over the wards in 1450, but the mayor and his brethren refused. In Lynn there were only constables of the wards.

[522] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 551-569.

[523] Davies’ Southampton, 263.

[524] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3. p. 42, 77-82.

[525] Davies’ Southampton, 250.

[526] Gross, ii. 232.

[527] Davies, 253.

[528] 2 Rich. II. St. 1, cap. 3.

[529] Davies, 254.

[530] Ibid. 250.

[531] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 50, 87.

[532] Ibid. xi. 3, 81, 83, 86. Davies, 253-4.

[533] For example, Thomas Payne, whose barge, the “John of Southampton,” traded with Zealand; or the goldsmith, William Nycoll, who was also a merchant, and sent his ship the “Marye of Hampton” to the Bay of Biscay under the charge of a cousin, his factor and purser. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3. p. 78, 84, 88.)

[534] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, pp. 70-73. Davies, 97-8. In 1399 Richard the Second granted to the Emperor for the war against the Turks a sum of £2,000, which was sent through a Genoese merchant and charged on the customs at Southampton. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 16. Bekynton, i. lx. note. In 1401 a second £2,000 was paid.

[535] Davies, 61, 256.

[536] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 66-69.

[537] Ibid. 77.

[538] Davies, 255.

[539] Ibid. 471.

[540] Ibid. 255-6.

[541] In 1411 the burgesses made a great wharf with a crane on it at the water-gate to increase merchandise and prevent the evading of customs. Davies, 112. For strangers brought their wines “very contemptuously” and landed them “within this realm where they think good themselves.” (H.M.C. xi. 3, 50-52.)

[542] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 11, 87.

[543] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 90.

[544] Hist. MSS. Com. vi, 551-569.

[545] Davies, 294. This may have supported nearly 140 people.

[546] Davies, 82. For supplies for the King’s ship see Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 113.

[547] Davies, 79. Archers sent to the castle for the defence of the townsmen were charged to their account, and they had to submit patiently to their exactions; a letter from Edward the Fourth ordered the town to release one of the Bowers who had been committed to prison “for his inordinate demeaning,” and to go on paying him his wages like other Bowers. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 99.)

[548] The castle wall was not pulled down before the end of the fifteenth century. Finally the castle hill itself, after its mound had been lowered and planed, was crowned in 1818 with a Zion chapel on the site of the Norman keep. (Davies, 76, 84.)

[549] Ibid. 81. For the inconvenience which a constable might cause to the town if he wished, see p. 83.

[550] See for one example among many, Davies, 81.

[551] Davies, 216.

[552] Ibid. 79.

[553] In the last year of Henry the Sixth the master of one of the King’s ships received from the Mayor £31 10_s._ 10_d._ In the first year of Edward the Fourth he again paid for the victualling and custody of the ship £68 5_s._ 10_d._ (Davies, 110, 113. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, pp. 85, 98.)

[554] Davies’ Southampton, 214. For sum in 1468 ibid. 72, 100.

[555] Davies, 62-3.

[556] Ibid. 105.

[557] With help from the king if necessary. (Davies, 80.) The town had power to raise a tax on all goods carried in or out of the gates till the wall was finished. (Davies, 60.)

[558] Davies, 80. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 61. So a hundred and fifty years later Henry the Eighth forbade any citizen to leave Chester, because “the city standeth open in the danger of enemies,” and requireth all “for its safety and defence.” (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 370.)

[559] Davies, 60, 61. Similar complaints were perpetually renewed in the next century.

[560] Davies, 35. Southampton was constantly in arrears of its ferm. Ibid. 34.

[561] Margaret of Anjou was allowed in 1445 a grant of £1,000 a year from the great and little customs of the town, and the annuity of £100 which was confirmed to her in 1454 was not resumed by Parliament till 1464.

[562] Davies, 37.

[563] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 111, 112.

[564] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 112-13.

[565] English Chronicle, 1377-1461 (Camden Soc.), 90. Davies, 471-2.

[566] Davies, 111. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 16. See also 98-99.

[567] Davies, 111, 37. In 1462 arrears of the ferm were remitted, and again in 1484 (Ib. 34). In 1463 a mayor of Southampton was deposed by the King’s mandamus (Ibid. 168).

[568] Davies speaks of this John Ingoldsby who paid the debt as afterwards apparently one of the Barons of the Exchequer (p. 38.) A John Ingoldsby had been Recorder of Southampton from at least 1444 (p. 185) to at least 1459 (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 113) and very probably later.

[569] Davies, 36. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3. 100.

[570] In 1486 the pension of £154 was paid to the Earl of Arundel as constable of Dover Castle, part of it being given in kind. For other trouble, see Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3. 98.

[571] The outlay of the town in this year was £383 9_s._ 7_d._ (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3. 141-2.)

[572] In this last case they were comforted by a promise of release for ten years from payment of 140 marks from the rent of £200 which had been assigned to Queen Joan, and by a grant to the corporation of the right to hold land to the value of £100. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 42-3.)

[573] The Southampton trade did in fact utterly fail before a century was over. In 1530 its rent was reduced by £26 13_s._ _d._, and in 1552 the King ordered that when the customs at the port did not amount to £200, and no ships called carracks of Genoa and galleys of Venice should enter the port to load or unload, the town should not pay the accustomed rent of £200, but only £50. To this day certificates are still prepared every year on November 9th that no carracks of Genoa nor galleys of Venice have arrived at the port. (Davies, 38-9. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 49.)

[574] Unfortunately in the brief extracts from the Southampton records which have been as yet published, references to municipal government are so scanty that any sketch of it can only be drawn in faint and uncertain outline. In the opinion of Dr. Gross the Merchant Guild was originally a strictly private fraternity, and only became the dominant burghal authority in the fourteenth century. (Gross, ii. 231.) I have suggested here the idea of an earlier connexion; but the question needs full examination.

[575] Davies’ Southampton, 163.

[576] Hist. MSS. Com. Report xi. Appendix 3. p. 43.

[577] Ibid. 44.

[578] Possibly in 1217, certainly in 1237. Davies, 170.

[579] Gross, ii. 220-5.

[580] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 57. See guild ordinances.

[581] Indenture in 1368 by mayor, four scavins, two bailiffs, the steward, sixteen burgesses named, and the whole community. Ibid. p. 66.

[582] In 1240 the style used is simply “the burgesses.” Ibid. p. 7.

[583] Gross, ii. 214. Davies, 163.

[584] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, pp. 40-2, 43, 46. Compare Nottingham.

[585] Davies, 154, 238.

[586] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 42.

[587] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 45.

[588] Ibid. pp. 46, 81, 84, 87, 106.

[589] Gross, ii. 222-5.

[590] In 1302 a lease of the ferm of the town to certain persons is granted by consent of twenty-two men named, but without any mention of their position, “and all the community of the town.” (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 56.) Ordinances were made in 1349 by the mayor, aldermen, and community. (Ibid. 9.)

[591] Gross, ii. 220, 223, 225.

[592] Gross, ii. 220-3.

[593] See the office assigned to the aldermen in 1504, Davies, 76. For their dress, ibid. 235.

[594] Davies, 237-9. An ordinance was made in 1409 by the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, and a similar one in 1486 by the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses in common assembly; and an ordinance in common assembly in 1504. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11.)

[595] Davies, 155. It is possible that at this time the chief aldermen were fashioned into a close body elected for life after the pattern of London; at any rate soon after this we find them and their wives in the orthodox scarlet robes with fur and velvet, in all points the same as those of the mayor. 235.

[596] Davies, 63, 71-2, 125.

[597] Gross, ii. 225. Davies (p. 136) says that whenever the guild became settled as the supreme authority, there entered at that period an element of restriction alien from the more ancient government of the towns; and traces to the guild the narrowing of common privileges and subjection of the community to an exclusive system of local administration. It is possible that wherever a guild merchant did lay hold on a town government, as here, at Lynn, or at Coventry, the tendency may always have been to intensify the existing tendencies to the despotic rule of the richer citizens.

[598] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 7, 60, 61. Ordinances in 1368 and 1393, 9, 8; a concord in 1397, 74; lease of customs in 1390, 72; land in 1373, 1379, 69-70. For other instances see 1403, p. 76; 1410, 77; 1413, 79; 1421, 80; 1422, 80-1; 1433, 82; 1433, 44; 1439, 84; 1462, 85; 1466, 86; 1477, 87; 1482, 90; 1491, 90; 1494, 90-1; 1496, 91; 1507, 91.

[599] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 12, 91, 113.

[600] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 91, 107; Davies, 164. In Nottingham, as in Southampton, we have an occasional indication that the burgesses or common councillors, possibly under some fit of impatience at the pretensions of the aldermen, had intermittent tendencies to side with the people. In Southampton there was possibly at this time a certain bond of sympathy, for seven years earlier, in 1452, the burgesses complained that the aldermen had assumed the right of retaining, as justices of the peace, fines which had always gone to them towards the payment of the ferm; and their contention having been maintained in Parliament, royal orders were sent to the aldermen to molest the burgesses no more. Davies, 156.

[601] Davies, 164, 165.

[602] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 104. In 1617 two burgesses tried to oppose the “private nomination,” but were called before the common council and forced to submit. (Davies, 164, 165.)

[603] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 11.

[604] Ibid.