Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2 (of 2)

CHAPTER XI

THE TOWN COUNCIL

The fifteenth century has been popularly taken as the time when victory crowned the local oligarchies and liberty fled from the English boroughs, and the restriction of popular rights has sometimes been attributed to the charters of incorporation given under Henry the Sixth. In this, as in many other respects, the luckless age has long lain under a heavy weight of accusations which might more fairly be distributed among other centuries; for in most towns the work of adapting the primitive town constitutions to oligarchic government had practically been accomplished long before the days of Henry.[504] Indeed it seems as though the characteristic movement of this time, a movement which naturally sprang out of the industrial developement of the Middle Ages, was the effort to enlarge the sphere of political activity. Far from being a time of apathy in local politics, it was a time of acute excitement. Townspeople on all sides were awakening to the sense that the free community of which their fathers had talked had still to be created; and were making perhaps the first organized attack on the monopoly of “the magnates,” and the first practical attempt to deal with the problem which confronts Englishmen to-day—the problem of how to combine popular control with good administration. Traditions of ancient rights which the commonalty theoretically held by law and charter mingled with the ambitions of a new world of enterprise, and, as we have seen, the manufacturing classes by asserting their right to have some share in the work of government, did here and there for the first time bring the commonalty into the council chamber.

The problem of government was indeed no longer so simple as it had been when “the magnates” first easily assumed the control of the town destinies. As the centuries went on, bringing their commercial and industrial revolutions, the growth of capital and the organization of labour, new standards of administration and a more anxious vigilance on the part of the central authority, the balance of power in local governments began to sway to one side or the other under the pressure of contending forces. Every political tendency of the time went to strengthen the administrative body, and maintain the authority of the select council. But, on the other hand, the mass of the commons were neither so poor nor so helpless as they had once been. The manufacturing classes waxed fat and kicked. Enriched by trade and disciplined by industrial training, organized in guilds, and practised in such self-government as this implied, restless under growing taxation, clamorous for advancement in well-being, tormented by petty tyranny, they were growing into a real power; and amid all the ugliness and violence and suffering of the troubled crowd which Langland brings before us at the close of the fourteenth century, we cannot but feel the stir of the coming revolution, and of a world transforming itself under the power of some new force. To the eye of the contemporary observer the merchants have become too clever at their business, the lawyers too shrewd, the common people everywhere too independent; the poor are less content to starve, and are looking for the easiest ways of getting hot meat and ale and comfortable chimney corners; the ploughman will not work till hunger has buffeted him so “that he looked like a lantern all his life after”;[505] if the peasant was for a moment safe from actual starvation, he was ready to defy the very Statute of Labourers itself.[506] On all sides there is the movement of a growing discontent[507]—the criticism and impatience that are born of a new hope. We have a sense of the vague trouble of a people grown too rich and too busy and too energetic for the old restraints—a people that had outgrown its “childish things.” Nature itself seemed to have been dragged within the circle of some mysterious change, and its old stately courses turned into confusion—

“Neither the sea nor the sand nor the seed yieldeth
As they wont were....
······
Weatherwise shipmen now and other witty people
Have no belief to the lyft nor to the lode star.
Astronomers all day in their art failen
That whilom warned men before what should befall after.”[508]

In presence of such a world—a world in restless and perpetual movement—it is difficult to make general statements of what was likely or “natural” to happen. In some cases the governing class, terrified by the new force which was stirring the masses of the people, eluded any serious conflict by making terms with the upper groups of the middle class, thus detaching to their own side the leaders of revolt; and a new oligarchy was formed out of the upper and middle sections of the community—an oligarchy stronger and wider than the old, and with promise of more permanent existence. In other cases the people had the advantage, and a more liberal settlement was for a time brought about in the interests of the commonalty; so that while the Town Council of one borough appears as a chosen band ostentatiously arrayed for the protection of a successful oligarchy, we may see it figuring in another as the advanced guard of the commons entrenched in the enemy’s country. Never, in fact, did any people endeavour to solve the difficulty of creating an efficient government with such endless resource and ingenuity as the mediÆval burghers, who as need arose, flung themselves into the art of constitution making with all the persistence, temperance, energy, and economy in patching up ancient models and finding new use for old materials in which Englishmen for centuries have found their pride.[509] The charters granted to them allowed wide limits within which they might try their experiments and plan their own mode of government at their will. A local scheme of administration was devised; and when they had framed their system it might depend on the sanction of local custom, or for greater security and authority it might be defined and ordained by a new charter; and if again the chartered constitution proved unsatisfactory, the townsfolk had only to agree among themselves on new methods, and have them once more embodied in a fresh grant from the Crown.

The whole character of municipal government was thus indefinitely modified by local circumstances—by the position or the special industry of the borough, the nature of its tenure and its compact with the lord of the manor, the power of the merchants or the owners of property within its walls; and nothing is more surprising than the variety and intricacy of political systems with which the mediÆval burghers were familiar. As free in theory as they were free in practice, under bondage to no fixed democratic creed, they adopted indiscriminately any method that commended itself—whether of election direct or indirect, election tempered by nomination, minority representation, public voting, or arrangements by which voters recorded their will secretly one by one.[510] Every borough, for example, had its own fashion of choosing its mayor. We have seen that in Sandwich the whole people made the election; but in Winchester the council of twenty-four chose two men and the outgoing mayor nominated one of them as his successor;[511] while in Southampton the plan was reversed and the outgoing mayor in the presence of bailiffs and council nominated two burgesses from whom the assembly was bound to elect one,[512] nor could an occasional outbreak of popular discontent do more than convince the commons afresh of their true impotence. Midway between these extremes came an endless variety of customs, often of elaborate complexity.[513] When the selection of the mayor was nominally left to the whole “people in the hall,” their choice was often limited and checked in one way or another. They must take him from among the upper council; or from among men who had already served as mayors or sheriffs; or they must send two names to the first chamber for approval, of whom this discreet company might choose one; or perhaps the council itself nominated two or three candidates for the freemen’s choice, as a curb to the license of popular judgment; or the matter was yet more effectually settled by a decision that the council alone should elect the mayor.[514] In some boroughs a special jury was chosen by the citizens for the purpose of electing the chief officers—either a single jury of twelve as at Bridgnorth,[515] or a double jury of twenty-four as at Colchester or Preston;[516] and the election of the jury itself was often far from being a simple matter, as we see at Lynn. Occasionally the necessity of recognizing various interests within the town and giving to them special influence in the municipal constitution seems to have added a local complication, as in Canterbury, where the aldermen were in early times hereditary owners and lords of the several wards of the town, and retained in consequence rights which were not finally extinguished till the reign of Henry the Eighth; here two “triours” were chosen, one by the two outgoing bailiffs together with the aldermen, the other by the commons or “council of the thirty-six”; these two triours then appointed twelve men from among the council, and the twelve finally chose the bailiffs for the next year.[517]

In appointing the other members of the corporation there was the same diversity of method, with a free use of the plan of nomination, so that a mixed system was sometimes evolved where half the corporation was elected by the people and the remainder nominated by the mayor or council. The town councillors might be chosen yearly by the burgesses, or by a jury nominated for the purpose; they might be turned into a new class of permanent officials by being elected for life; or made into an exclusive aristocratic body by being allowed to fill up all vacancies themselves; and in towns with a double council any two of these plans might be tried together; or both bodies might be chosen by some one system. An inevitable tendency to make themselves as independent as possible of the people over whom they ruled naturally guided the councillors to the belief that the manner of their election was best managed by themselves, and there were cases where not only the upper but the lower chamber became self-electing bodies in which the members held office for life.[518]

In short every conceivable experiment in government was tried in one town or another, or in the same town at different times, to the great confusion of systematic order. In one the original council of twelve or twenty-four might be maintained in its early representative character;[519] in another its constitution was gradually transformed. Sometimes besides the upper council the burghers set up a second chamber of sixteen or eighty or twenty-four or thirty-six or forty or forty-eight,[520] and the “worshipful and discreet members of the clothing,” or the “high election,” had to share their powers more or less with the “low election”, “the sad and discreet” company arrayed in plain suits with no finery of fur and velvet. Hereditary owners of land might sit on the council of one borough, and non-burgesses join the council of another. Aldermen might be forced on the people, or they might be forbidden by the authorities.[521] As occasion served the townsfolk perhaps attempted to form a representative council out of a jury of electors or of arbitrators, or from a committee of the common assembly, or delegated members from the crafts.

Underneath this apparent confusion certain broad tendencies can be discerned; and it may be that with further study these tendencies will be found to have borne a different character in various districts of the country, and to have been influenced not only by political traditions, but by special conditions of trade and industry. As yet there are not collected materials to justify any general theory; but something may be learned by observing the constitutional changes which actually took place in a few boroughs; and by judging how far these constitutional changes can be adequately summed up in the theory of a continuous backsliding from popular freedom to the despotism of a privileged group of opulent traders. A few instances which have been chosen at hazard may serve to illustrate how various were the conditions under which civic life was carried on, and how these conditions influenced the political situation, and were reflected in the temper and form of government. They fall naturally into three groups.

I. Occasionally it seems to have happened, as at Southampton, that the original single council of twelve was retained till after the Reformation, in spite of sporadic attempts of the commons to vindicate their strength, whether through the general assembly or by some other means.

II. In the great majority of towns however a second council was formed—in most cases by creating a sort of committee of the general assembly. Whether the common people refused to come to assemblies as was stated at Norwich, or whether their absence was but a pretext of the governors, it is hard to say; but apparently a system commonly grew up of calling together on important occasions a group of selected citizens. Bailiffs and mayors who were anxious to get rid of unruly and, as they judged, superfluous elements in the town meetings; or who wished to compel a sufficient number of voters to come together to carry on business; might fall back on the expedient of sending out summonses to certain chosen householders whenever an assembly was to be held, and might thus in informal fashion create a sympathetic and obedient gathering to endorse the action of the ruling body. Presently perhaps fines were inflicted in case the summons was neglected; and when it was once clearly established that a definite number of members were thus bound to assemble at the mayor’s bidding for the conduct of business, and when further this body was given the power of the whole assembly in deciding on all matters that concerned the common interest, it is clear that a council of the commons had been created—a permanent body endowed, whether with or without their consent, with the burghers’ rights of legislation. In a number of towns, such as Coventry, Hereford, Leicester, and many more, the summons to the council was sent out by the mayor, and the system to some extent represented a victory of the oligarchy; we can perhaps trace in Nottingham the informal growth of this custom and its effects.

III. There were boroughs, however, in which the second council was the monument of a popular victory; and of these Norwich and Sandwich may serve as instances; in Lynn the system was developed under peculiar circumstances.

NOTE A.

I add here some very brief notes of constitutional changes in a few boroughs, which took place in the later middle ages. They all indicate a widespread struggle between the upper and lower sections of the community during the fifteenth century. A closer study shows that this movement must not be compared to the flicker of an expiring flame, but rather expresses the quick burning of a new fire. In some of the instances given below the oligarchy seems to have proved the more powerful, in others the middle class.

In 1373 the custom of Colchester was that the whole community chose four “sufficient men” (afterwards termed headmen), one from each ward, “of good conversation, and who had never been bailiffs;” and these, being sworn, elected five more from each ward, who likewise had never been bailiffs, making together with themselves twenty-four. Two at least of every five thus chosen were to be of the common council. The twenty-four elected the two bailiffs, eight aldermen, and other officers. Then bailiffs and aldermen together chose sixteen of the “wisest and most understanding people in the burgh;” which sixteen jointly with them carried on the government. “They were to meet in assembly at least four times a year; and if any burgess had a proposition to make to his governors he was to deliver it to the bailiffs in writing, and receive an answer at the next assembly.” Edward the Fourth in his new charter directed bailiffs and aldermen and the sixteen to choose sixteen other persons, four from each ward, to be a common council with “power to make reasonable ordinances and constitutions for the good of the borough.” The first sixteen were afterwards styled Primum Concilium, the latter Secundum Concilium.

Assemblies were held in the moot hall for electing officers and making bye-laws. No ordinances could be passed unless twenty-five members were present. Fines were raised from those who did not come or who came after the doors were shut. (Cromwell’s Colchester, 264-5, 269.)

Canterbury was originally governed by a portreeve appointed by the king; but at least as early as the thirteenth century the portreeve was replaced by two bailiffs, who were assisted by a council of twelve aldermen, or “wisest men,” and by thirty-six “probi homines” or “jurati.” There is reason to believe that the bench or chamber of twelve exercised from the first the powers which belonged to them in the fifteenth century. They were sworn to keep the law days twice a year, to preserve the memory of the limits and bounds of their aldermanries, and to give good counsel to the mayor; they received all the accounts of the money in the cofferer’s keeping; and with them rested the power to make all bye-laws. (See the cofferer’s oath in muniments of city. A. 1.)

There were some peculiar features about this upper council. The six aldermanries of which the city consisted had been originally held by the Crown “in capite,” but when Henry the Third granted the city to the citizens to hold in fee-ferm the offices were annexed to the fee-ferm, and the owners from that time held of the citizens. The wards, however, still remained the property of certain families in the county of Kent, estates which could be bequeathed by will, and which descended for generations from father to son. Their hereditary governors need not be either freemen or inhabitants of the city, and might moreover make their profit if they chose by leasing out the post. At one time S. Augustine’s held an aldermanry at Canterbury (Madox, 252); and at the inquisition of 1285 it was proved that William de Godstede, who held the aldermanry of Westgate from the community of the city at a rent of 3s. 4d., had leased it to the rector of Sturry, two miles away, for 100s. a year. At the same time their position in the city was most influential, for not only had they the usual police control of their wards as in other towns, but they were ex-officio members of the chamber of twelve, who formed the counsellors of the mayor in the government of the town. There they claimed superior place and privileges to their brethren, ranking in dignity next to the mayor and above the other six members of the chamber; the fine for reviling the mayor being 100s.; for the aldermen, 60s.; for the men of the chamber, 40s.; and for the thirty-six men of the council, 20s. The council of thirty-six may possibly have arisen out of the necessity of securing the attendance at the burghmote of a sufficient number of freemen. Their duties as defined by the oath customary in 1456 were very limited in character. “This hear ye, mayor, that I will be true to King Edward and his heirs, and true attendance make to the mayor of the city or his deputy at such times as I shall be desired or called, and keep the days of the burghmote, and truly keep the counsel of the said burghmote, and all other things do as one of the common council.” They seem to have had no control over the town treasure, nor any power to propose laws, and at first had apparently no power even to reject them. It would appear that juries were chosen among their body at the burgh court, and they took part in the election of the bailiffs.

A violent dispute broke out in 1445 as to the right mode of electing the bailiffs, and when Cardinal Beaufort visited the city bribes were used to win his influence in settling the quarrel. The matter ended by the grant of a new charter to the city in 1448, by which the bailiffs were replaced by a mayor. By this charter, the king gave power to hear pleas and to collect such tallages as the mayor and aldermen may consider necessary for the maintenance of the city, but of the council of thirty-six there was no mention. As early as 1429, however, its share in the government seems to have been recognized. The name “common council” was recognized in the oath used in 1456; and that it represented the people at large is clear from the statement in 1489 that the thirty-six were “sworn to the council of this city by the assent of all the commonalty of the city.” Finally in 1474 it was decreed that every act or ordinance made by the mayor and aldermen “with the assent of such of the thirty-six citizens for the commonalty of the said city chosen as it shall like the mayor and aldermen” was to be enrolled in the common chamber; and in this same year ordinances were made by the mayor, five aldermen, the sheriff of Canterbury, and two chamberlains; seven names are then given (who may possibly have formed the rest of the chamber of twelve with the five aldermen already mentioned), and thirty-six citizens (not mentioned by name) elected by the community for the public good of the city. In 1497 certain business in London was said to have been done by order of the mayor, aldermen, council, and commonalty. (Records of Burghmote Court. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 140, 146, 167, 169-173. Hundred Rolls, i. 49-55.)

In Shrewsbury, before the plague, twelve men were chosen who apparently elected the bailiffs, and presented their accounts yearly to six men chosen by the commonalty. In 1380 the town was torn by dissensions, and apparently some change had been made in the municipal constitution, for the commonalty under the direction of the Earl of Arundel now agreed to return to the form of government practised at the time of the plague. This lasted till 1389. Discords and debates still, however, continued, and the commonalty met in 1389 in the presence of the abbot and various lords to find a remedy for the misgovernment of the town. It was agreed that the bailiffs should nominate a council of twenty-five, which council in its turn should elect for the coming year the bailiffs, the coroners, and six cessors. The cessors were to oversee the spending of town moneys and to make up their accounts for six auditors chosen by the commonalty. All burgesses were to be present at elections. The bailiffs only appointed the serjeants. The collectors of murage might be dismissed during their year of office for any fault. Any burgess who resisted these ordinances or gave his opinion in the common assembly was to be punished. Ordinances were to be read openly every year.

A new composition made in 1433 gave the council of twenty-five right to choose a serjeant in addition to the two appointed by the bailiffs; he was to collect the rents due from burgesses for the ferm of the town. Further, the commons’ rights in electing the six auditors were affirmed and protected from encroachment “in deceit of the said commons.” The members of Parliament were also to be elected by the whole of the commons. All the burgesses were ordered to attend at the guild hall when summoned, and the common seal was to be kept by four men chosen by the commons. Lastly, the bailiffs and commons were to elect twelve worthy men who were to serve as continual assistants to the bailiffs for the term of their lives. In case of death the bailiffs and commons were to elect another councillor. The burgesses entreat that this composition shall be confirmed by Parliament because in the case of previous accords the commonalty could not bring action against the bailiffs for contravention of them.

In 1444 the council of twelve were given the name of aldermen. The common council was to act for the whole body of burgesses, who in the assemblies at the guild hall were no longer to answer in their own persons, but to show their advice to the twenty-four who were then to consult among themselves and to elect a speaker who was to declare their will to the bailiffs and aldermen.

At the same time the nomination of the electing jury of twenty-five was taken out of the hands of the bailiff; henceforth they were to elect two of the common council, and these two were to appoint the twenty-five electors, as well as the six auditors and the coroners. The commons were also to choose a chamberlain or treasurer. (Owen’s Shrewsbury, i. 168-174, 207-9, 212, 216.)

In Winchester “of the heads of the city should be four and twenty sworn instead of the most good men and of the wisest of the town for to truly help and counsel the mayor”; and the mayor was to be “chosen by the common granting of the four and twenty sworn, and of the commune, principal ‘sosteynere’ of the franchise.” The mayor and the twenty-four then nominated four men to serve as bailiffs, and two of these were chosen by the commons. For levying taxes six men were chosen “by the common granting and sworn, three of the four-and-twenty and three of the commune.” This was in and before the fourteenth century. At a later time the twenty-four named two men for mayor and the mayor chose one; while for the two bailiffs the twenty-four chose four men and the commonalty selected one of them, and in their turn chose four more, of whom the twenty-four selected one. The common seal was kept in a large coffer with two locks; one of the twenty-four was chosen to keep one key, and one of the commons to keep the other. (Eng. Guilds, 349-50, 356. Kitchin’s Winchester, 164-5.)

In the early fifteenth century laws, etc., were made by the mayor and his peers and all the community of the city. (Gross, ii. 258-9.) The “full assembly” of 1477 mentions the mayor and fifty-seven of his peers then present (Ibid. 262). It is a matter for inquiry whether the thirty-three citizens added to the twenty-four were specially summoned householders, and whether Winchester followed in its common council the type of Leicester or of Norwich.

Leicester had originally a council of twenty-four; and the commons had a right at first to gather at elections or at a Common Hall and watch the proceedings of the council. They had, however, no right to interfere with business, and in 1467 a fine was imposed on any who cried out or named aloud one of the mayor’s brethren to the office of the mayoralty. In the fifteenth century there were rumours and speech of ungodly rules and demeanings among the people, and in 1489 “whereas such persons as be of little substance or reason, and not contributors, or else full little, to the charges” still continued “their exclamations and headiness,” they were excluded as a body from the Common Hall, and the mayor, bailiffs, and Twenty-four, were ordered only to summon forty-eight and no more of the most wise and sad of the commoners after their discretion. In the later part of the fifteenth century orders were made by the mayor and “his brethren called the Twenty-four and the whole company of the Forty-eight, then and there assembled, for and in the name of the whole body of the corporation of the town.” (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 423; Thomson, Mun. Hist. 55-6, 80-84.)

In 1553 “the mayor and burgesses” of Gloucester claimed to have had power time out of mind to ordain, constitute, and hold a court in their Council House, and to call many and divers men to their council at the same court and to compel and swear them in of their council. This summoning of additional councillors seems to have made up the “Common Council.” In 1526 it was stated that “it has been the custom time out of mind to elect certain chief burgesses, sometimes more sometimes less in number,” to form a common council; and the number was then fixed at forty, twelve of whom were to be aldermen.

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