Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2

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 12s. 6d. 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 13s. 4d. 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 40s. 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 56s. 8d.; then the salary fell to 40s. in 1428; then to 32s. 11d.; and then to 26s. 8d., with 3s. 4d. 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 10s. 10d. In the first year of Edward the Fourth he again paid for the victualling and custody of the ship £68 5s. 10d. (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.