THE COMMON COUNCIL OF LYNN

It was not in Norwich alone that the people, refusing submission to a governing plutocracy, made the experiment of creating a lower house of commons to represent the burghers at large. The peculiar difficulties that beset popular government in that city were absent in other towns, but in no case was the experiment a simple matter. Everywhere unforeseen dangers were presently disclosed, dangers new and various, and capable of overwhelming the new movement in ultimate ruin and confusion. Even at the moment when Norwich was forming its second chamber, the town of Lynn, but a very few miles away, was developing a common council wholly different in its origin and its constitution, and threatened by occasions of failure and betrayal of which Norwich had no experience.

The case of Lynn is one of singular interest. Nowhere else in England was there a corporation more wealthy, or more formidable from its compact organization and great authority. On the other hand nowhere else perhaps was there a community of “mean people,” burgesses and non-burgesses, so prosperous, active, and united; sustained as they were in every emergency by the effectual protection of their lord the Bishop, who, in his jealousy of the governing class, was forced to become the ally of the subject people, and to make their cause his own. Under these circumstances the conflict between the commons and the plutocrats who ruled over them had some original characteristics, and the problem of church and state in Lynn emerges in a new and subtle form.

The ruling class of the town was from the first the governing body of the Merchant Guild.[804] For here, as in other leading ports, it is evident that the rich traders quickly became dominant in civic affairs, even though their association in a Guild Merchant of itself gave them no right to govern. In Lynn a powerful merchant class must have been formed at a very early time. Through the town lay the one way by which Norfolk could be entered from the west; and its port was the only outlet for the trade of seven counties. Lynn was therefore the centre for the largest cattle market in the east of England, whence the export trade drew supplies of wool and fells and hides;[805] its middlemen and merchants held in their hands the commerce with Gascony, the Rhineland, Zealand, “the parts of North Berne,” with Prussia, and Dacia, and the Hanse towns; and as early as 1271 the German merchants had some sort of local organization there under their alderman Symon, a citizen of Lynn, of whom we hear that he gave a pledge on behalf of some LÜbeck merchants to the amount of £200.[806] No interest in the borough could compete with the great commercial company[807] by whom the whole volume of trade that was borne over the waters of the Wash “rowing and flowing,” was ultimately controlled. Under the name of the Holy Trinity it had obtained a charter from John, and by the time of Edward the Second had nearly nine hundred names on its bede-roll. The sons of its old members were allowed to enter the guild on payment of 6s. 8d.; while others, men and women, were willing to give 60s. or 100s. to be counted among its brethren, the men looking to share in the political as well as commercial benefits it offered, while women were perhaps consoled with its spiritual gains; and men and women alike paid the same entrance fee to be enrolled after death in consideration of the eternal advantages of such membership.[808] In 1392 the guild employed thirteen chaplains yearly to say masses in the churches of S. Margaret, S. Nicholas, and S. James, used much wax for lights in churches and chapels, and from the profits of the common staith gave alms and fulfilled works of charity.[809]

The spiritual blessings of the guild, however, pale before the financial and political boons it had to offer. As a great trading company it heaped up wealth and increased power. The aldermen and his brethren made laws to regulate the commerce even of those burgesses who did not belong to their select company, but carried on business by virtue of the charter of free trade granted to the whole borough.[810] The guild owned along with other property the common staith and all its appurtenances, the quay where by its decree “no bad persons, nor any spiritual persons should work,”[811] and the right of passage for a boat beyond the port.[812] The monopoly of various profitable trades was secured to its members, as for instance the sale of mill-stones,[813] paving-stones, and grave-stones which were sold at from 20s. to 30s. apiece. The brethren of the guild were the bankers and capitalists of the town.[814] They lent money out on usury, and not only did the corporation come to borrow from their treasury, but in 1408 more than fifty townsmen were in their debt for sums varying from £1 to £119. The trading activity of the company may be measured by the fact that in 1392 the guild had in ready money £60 13s., and in divers merchandise £200;[815] and in 1408 the loans came to £1,214. In 1422 its wealth was £1,403, of which the debts due to it made up £1,210. Its expenditure was generous and magnificent. Large sums were spent on the new guild hall, beginning in 1422 with £132 4s. The silver plate in its treasury weighed in the first half of the century 440 ounces. A silver wand was borne before its dean; and its members were carried to their graves under a covering of cloth of gold.[816]

Financial transactions on such a scale as this would in any case have given the guild control over a town government whose expenses were fast increasing, and which in every time of need turned to its coffers for money. But the company of the Holy Trinity exerted far more than an indirect authority over the corporation. It was in effect itself the real governing force in Lynn. By a charter of Henry the Third its alderman (who held office for life and was thus absolutely independent of popular control) was joined with the mayor in the rule and government of the borough: in case of the mayor’s absence or death he was appointed in his stead,[817] and in the election of a new mayor he took the leading part.[818] Moreover, the twenty-four jurats of the council, who had the control of all town business, and from among whom alone the mayor might be chosen, were bound to be brethren of the guild. Under these conditions the “Potentiores”—the “great men of the town”—as they were commonly called in the time of Edward the First, ruled without restraint, and with a high hand assessed taxes, diverted money from the common treasury, profited by illegal trading, used customs contrary to common or merchant law, and bought the king’s forgiveness if any complaint was made of their crimes. Against their despotism there was no protection for the burgesses of humbler station—the middle class which went by the name of Mediocres, and the yet lower layer of the people known as the Inferiores, traders and householders who were not burgesses, and whose prosperity, if fairly well established, was of a less brilliant character than that of the upper classes.

There was, however, a disturbing element in the history of the Lynn corporation which was absent in Southampton, Nottingham, or Norwich. The lord of the manor was close at hand, and the governing class had to reckon with his claims and expect his interference. Local disputes magnified his power. Thrown together as natural allies against the potentiores, the mediocres and inferiores were forced to rely mainly on the protection of the Bishop. He on his part, whether for the sake of developing the trade of his borough, or for the sake of increasing the population dependent on himself rather than on the rival power of the mayor, stipulated—and this at the very moment when Norwich was compelling all its traders and artizans to buy its freedom—that the mayor should not have power to force the franchise on any settlers old or new who might take up house in the town while preferring to remain free of the charges of citizenship. He won from the mayor, moreover, in 1309, a Composition for the protection of both mediocres and inferiores, which not only became the charter of all their future liberties, but was also the fullest recognition of his own authority.[819] From this time, in spite of efforts on the part of the municipality to evade the composition, the mean people, confident of their legal position and assured of the support of a powerful patron, formed a society differently compacted from that which we find in other boroughs, and played a part in the politics of Lynn which was perhaps unique in town history. The “community” of Lynn differed from the “community” of other boroughs in being made up, as is formally stated in 1412, not only of burgesses, both potentiores and mediocres, but also of inferiores[820] or non-burgesses.

The first detailed account of the constitution of Lynn is given in Letters Patent of Henry the Fifth in 1417, where the “ancient custom” which ruled the town was recapitulated.[821] When a mayor was to be elected the alderman of the guild appointed four “worthy and sufficient” burgesses, who added to themselves eight comburgesses, and this jury of twelve elected one of the twenty-four jurats as mayor, and appointed the other municipal officers for the coming year.[822] The council of twenty-four jurats, which was drawn wholly from the ranks of the merchant guild and elected for life, filled up its own vacancies, so that when any one of them died or resigned his office or was expelled, the townsfolk appeared as mere spectators in the hall, while the mayor and remaining jurats chose “one of the more worthy, honest, discreet, and sufficient” of the burgesses to fill the vacant place. If it became necessary to elect any other officers the mayor nominated four comburgesses, who named in their turn eight others to form a jury.

In later days it was supposed that so long as these ordinances were observed “mayor, jurats, burgesses, and community, rested happily under the sweetness of peace and quiet throughout the days of prosperous times.”[823] Prosperous times there had certainly been[824] if we judge by the growth of the town’s budget. In 1354 the corporation spent £176; in 1355 £94; in 1356 £266; in 1357 £92; in 1367 £165; in 1371 £163; in 1374 £249. The year 1377 was very costly to the burghers, whose expenses suddenly mounted to £874. It was the year of the quarrel with the Bishop of Norwich,[825] and Lynn had to give £318 15s. to the king, his mother, and others “labouring for the community” when the Bishop laid his complaint before the council “for a certain transgression done to him in the town”; and to pay £116 10s. for the expenses of the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses who went to London on the same business. They were required further this year to spend £113 on making an enclosure for the defence of the town; and £103 10s. on a town barge, doubtless fitted out at the king’s demand to serve as a war vessel. All this naturally ended in a heavy debt; the corporation had only been able to raise £650 6s. 2d. and had to borrow £160 from the guild, and to leave the salaries of the mayor, clerk, serjeants, and chamberlains unpaid. The next year, however, it made an effort to clear off its debt and actually spent nearly £773, paying off £241 10s. to its creditors. From this time expenditure grew fast. In 1380 it was £351, and in 1382 £204; in 1385 £304; in 1389 £394; in 1399 £461.[826] In 1403 the borough had to lend to the king over £333 which was not repaid till 1425.[827]

The municipal debt of course grew as fast as the municipal expenditure, and in 1408 the corporation owed the guild between £400 and £500.[828] The council of jurats borrowed generously from the fraternity in their capacity of town councillors, and lent as generously to the corporation in their capacity of members of the guild. The inevitable abuses which belong to financial administration conducted on this system presently made themselves felt. Perhaps there was an attempt at reform when in 1402 changes were made in the manner of keeping and auditing accounts, and each of the four chamberlains had to return a separate statement of receipts and outgoings.[829] But if so the remedy was ineffectual, and for the state of Lynn, as for far bigger states, the question of finance ended in a question of revolution, or was at last the pretext of revolution. The angry discontent of the community finally broke out in 1411, when the people demanded the repayment into the town treasury of a sum of £458, which the last five mayors had spent without the consent of the community in litigation with the Bishop, to the serious prejudice and extreme depoverishment of the town. The five mayors on their side, at the head of the potentiores, retorted by claiming from the town £280 to repay losses which they had incurred in its service during their terms of office.

Thus the traditional “sweetness of peace” was at an end, and Lynn was presently plunged into the excitement of a revolution. Fortunately for the people the ruling body found itself face to face with all its enemies at once; for the mediocres and inferiores, alike excluded from places of honour and power, were as of old drawn into close relations and were together thrown on the protection of their lord the Bishop for the defence of their rights; while the Bishop himself, with whom the municipality had been dragging on a long quarrel for the last thirteen years, was probably in no conciliatory mood. Everything, however, was conducted on strictly constitutional lines. By common consent a committee of eighteen men of the town was appointed to deal with the grievances of the state, and every section of the town society was required to give pledges of obedience to its decision. The mayor and twenty-two potentiores bound themselves in sums of £100 each to submit to the decrees of the eighteen; eighty-four of the mediocres pledged themselves in sums of £50 each; and sixty-six of the inferiores in sums of £5 11s. 2d. On the committee itself each of the three classes that made up the community was represented. There were twelve burgesses, of whom seven were potentiores and five mediocres, and six non-burgesses or inferiores.

At first all seemed to go well for the popular party. The decisions of the committee were eminently satisfactory. The compensation money which the late mayors had claimed was altogether refused; and they were ordered to repay to the town treasury the £458 illegally spent without consent of the community. A decree was made that henceforth the mayor should only have, according to ancient custom, £10 for his year’s fee and whatever the community might put by for his reward having regard to his merit or demerit; and that he should answer to the town for all arrears of contributions during his mayoralty. It was declared that the non-burgesses had been deprived of the privileges secured to them by the composition of 1309, and an order was made that from this time they “shall have and use all rights to the said inferiores granted.” This was a declaration of ancient law and custom; but the committee went further and began the process of “mending the constitution” by issuing a decree that for the future each mayor should choose and take to himself a council consisting of three potentiores, three mediocres, and three inferiores, which nine persons together with the mayor should have full power to deal with the rents, etc., of the community.[830] By these ordinances which mark the triumph of the alliance between the mediocres and inferiores with the lord of the manor behind them, just as the composition of 1309 had marked their triumph a century before, the non-burgesses were formally given a share in the actual control of administration—a circumstance which so far as published records go has no parallel in the history of any other borough. The decrees were agreed to (how reluctantly was to be proved later) by the corporation on April 8, 1411, and signed by persons chosen from the three orders of inhabitants;[831] in November, 1412, they were confirmed by Henry the Fourth; and once more on April 10, 1413, by Henry the Fifth.[832]

At the same time, in 1411, the important question of elections was raised; and for the sake of securing to the commonalty a due share of power along with the alderman and his brethren, it was suggested that “certain new ordinances and constitutions concerning and about the elections of the mayor and the rest of the jurats, and officers, and ministers,” might be drawn up. The commons were to meet together a week before the day of election, and choose from among themselves a common speaker—a prolocutor he was called in Lynn. All burgesses who desired it might freely come to the guild hall for the election, and the congregation having been made, after public proclamation that none but a burgess or minister might give his vote,[833] they should choose two names from among the jurats, and from these two names the mayor and jurats were to select one as mayor. Throughout this proceeding the prolocutor and clerk were practically set to act as spies[834] on one another in the interests of their several parties, the prolocutor guarding the people’s interest, and keeping watch at the elbow of the common clerk (the nominee of the mayor and jurats) as he went from burgess to burgess in the hall to inquire for whom they wished to vote, or as he carried the nominations to the mayor, and wrote down the decisive votes of the upper chamber “severally and secretly.” In like manner the election of the other officers was also regulated;[835] and above all, the burgesses were, for the first time, given a share in the election of the council of twenty-four, being allowed at every vacancy to nominate two candidates; if these were rejected they were again to choose two other names, and so on until the jurats were satisfied. In its new constitution Lynn, like Norwich, decided to shape its system after “the manner and form in which it was used in the city of London;” but in Lynn there were special difficulties, and the new scheme could only be brought “at least to the greatest possible conformity with them of London, forsomuch that in the aforesaid town there are not had aldermen, wards, recorder, nor divers other things as in the city of London.”[836]

Unhappily for “the sweetness of peace” parties were so evenly matched in the committee of eighteen that the reforms were only passed by a majority of one vote.[837] Moreover, the agreement—drawn up by the committee on April 8, 1411, set forth and assented to by the mayor and community in May, signed by their orders in July, and sealed with the common seal in December—was not confirmed by charter till the following November, 1412.[838] Thus, when the burgesses met on August 27, 1411, to choose a new mayor, their ordinances were still but a common agreement and without any sanction of law if they were disputed. Burgesses and non-burgesses gathered in force, some three hundred or so strong, to see what was going to happen. The question was raised as to what form of election should be used, and a proposal was made to delay the business. But the mayor having put it to the meeting that all who wished to proceed with the election were to sit down and the others to rise up, all save six “suddenly as in a moment fell on the forms, benches, and ground”; and a hundred and forty-eight burgesses insisted on going on with the business. The next point was how the electing jury was to be named, and the hundred non-burgesses present begged to have “a little voice” in the matter, which was refused. The alderman of the guild and the inferiores having been thus set aside, the burgesses were left in possession of the field, and they proceeded, with a compromise between the old and new systems, to nominate, as the alderman had formerly done, the first four members of the jury, two jurats and two mediocres, who then added to themselves eight burgesses. In the following year the people again assembled, burgesses and non-burgesses together to the number of three hundred, in spite of a notice on the rolls of process for “quieting these dissensions,” and again carried out the elections after the new mode.[839]

The balance of forces, however, was too even to give the victors any security of tenure, and government worked with great friction. It seems that the mayor of the popular party strengthened the radical vote by admitting to the franchise “foreign” inhabitants (probably some of the inferiores) against the will of the council; while the reformers insulted the guild brethren in their own guild hall; and in 1415 “without consent of the mayor and burgesses” quit-claimed the debts of the town—debts owed, as we have seen, to the guild.[840] By their enemies the new ordinances were declared to have “furnished the fuel of grief and hatred,” and according to the malcontents the late agreement had only caused “immense expenses, charges, losses, and intolerable damage by reason of discords, strifes, and other ills,” and must inevitably “redound to the final destruction and pauperization, but also the desolation and probable overthrowing of all that town.” In 1416 an appeal was made to Henry the Fifth, whose sympathy here, as in Norwich at the same time, was with the oligarchy; and he summoning the parties before him[841] ordered a final concord between them. To “pluck up by the roots and extirpate strifes” the new ordinances were utterly annulled, the former customs of the town recapitulated, and the old constitution restored. The alderman received again his ancient position,[842] the jurats became once more a self-electing body, and the town was subjected to the system dear to the potentiores, and against which the people had risen in vain. From this time the old method of election was resumed and carried on throughout the century.[843] Murmurs of discontent still seem to have been heard occasionally. In 1419 one of the townsmen challenged the alderman of the guild at the election assembly. “We would know,” he said, “by what authority or right you call up four persons to make our mayor”; but he was put down by a speech about “our charter,” and after this meeting it would seem that the public were no longer admitted to the meetings of the corporation.[844]

Defeated on the great issue of the election of the mayor and jurats, the commons fell back on the idea of a chamber of representatives. An attempt had already been made, in 1411, to form a council of nine, which though appointed by the mayor was to be drawn from the three orders of the community, and to act for them; but this scheme came to an end with the annulling of the ordinances. No sooner, however, was the old power of the potentiores restored by Henry the Fifth than the idea of a common council immediately revived among the people, possibly inspired by the example of Norwich which had only a year before secured the charter that gave its common council a permanent status. It was decided that each of the nine constabularies or wards in Lynn should choose three burgesses “having sufficient tenure in the town” who should take part in all business concerning taxes, tenths, fifteenths, allowances, repairs of houses, walls, bridges, water-courses, ditches, all payments, rendering of accounts, and other charges of the borough. This new body of twenty-seven became at once generally known as the common council, and was formally confirmed by the Bishop in 1420. The community bound itself to obey any decree which was issued in the name of the two councils,[845] and from December, 1418, when the noble jurats and the discreet burgesses met for the first time in the guild hall, the whole conduct of town business passed into their hands.[846] Henceforth decrees and ordinances were made with the assent of “the whole congregation”;[847] but it is obvious that the institution of the common council in this form marked the final separation between the interests of the two lower classes of the community, and the irrevocable close of their alliance. As in 1411 the inferiores had been declared incapable of any share in electing officers, so now they remained without any part in legislation, while the mediocres entered happily into their inheritance.

So the revolution of Lynn flickered out. For the new common council cannot be said to have represented after all a very formidable concession to democratic demands. Unlike the council of 1411 it apparently took no account at all of the inferiores. The electorates of the constabularies seldom numbered more than twenty people and sometimes as few as twelve, and the whole body which elected the new council did not consist of more than a hundred and fifty persons.[848] To prevent any trouble, moreover, there was a provision that if any man proved unfit, the mayor and aldermen and the councils of twenty-four and twenty-seven might choose another in his place.[849] With such safeguards the new representatives might be trusted to work in complete harmony with the older body; the potentiores had taken the mediocres into their counsels and formed an alliance with them, and the inferiores, left outside the door of the common hall, deserted by their old confederates, and dependent on a lord whose influence was steadily on the decline, sank into obscurity and silence. In course of time the jurats rose to the full dignity of an upper house, and effectually secured in their own hands the whole administration of the nine constabularies by an order (in 1480) that a jurat must be chosen as alderman in each constabulary, that the alderman and constable together shall keep the peace and settle debates, and that if they could not reduce rebellious persons to quiet, no burgess in that constabulary might be suitor in any court, spiritual or temporal, without the leave of the mayor.[850] Finally, in 1524, the two ruling classes obtained a charter which formed their corporation into a close self-elective body; the mayor was to be elected by the twelve aldermen, and the twelve aldermen by the common council, and the common council by the mayor and aldermen.

In the last state of the council we see the strength given to the upper classes by a common alliance, by the humiliation of the non-burgesses, and by the increasing weakness of the lord of the manor. It would, however, be impossible to maintain that in Lynn a primitive democratic government had been gradually submerged by a usurping oligarchy. If we compare the demands put forward in 1309 by the inhabitants at large—demands for freedom of trade and some assurance that they should not be unjustly taxed—with their claims a century later to be formally represented in the administration of the town, we see what strides had been made in that hundred years in the notion of popular government; and so far as it was not violently thwarted by alien influences the movement of the early fifteenth century was in the direction of widening liberty. In the new governing body more than twice as many members sat as in the old council of the potentiores, and two orders of the community were represented instead of one; while the commonalty lost none of the ancient customary rights which had originally belonged to it. The non-burgesses still made their appearance with the rest when taxes were to be levied or the common property allotted. In 1435, when the mayor was sent to Bruges as one of the king’s ambassadors on commercial matters, his journey and its expenses are ordered “by the full advice and assent of the twenty-four and the common council and of all the burgesses and merchants of Lynn.”[851] During the first years of Henry the Sixth loans of money to the king and the receiving of re-payments was done in the name of and with the consent of the whole community;[852] in 1448 arbitrators to decide on a disputed question about a tenement were in like manner elected by the whole community;[853] and in the levying of taxes the whole three orders acted together as of old, so that in 1463, when a sum of £36 had to be raised, of the eighteen men chosen to assess the tax, six belonged to the jurats, six to the common council, and six to the “communitas.”[854]

Still, however, from the point of view of any real extension of liberty, the revolution had failed, and as in Norwich it had failed from purely external causes. The temporal sovereignty of the Church had destroyed the political freedom of the State. From the time when the Bishop had broken their society into two sections, which could never again unite for civil purposes, an ecclesiastical tradition stood between the people and freedom. The crucial moment for liberty in Lynn had occurred a century before, on that day in 1309 when the Bishop had won from the corporation the right to create as a bulwark of his power a class of inhabitants protected in every material interest of their lives, but cut off from the body of free citizens, and carefully debarred from political independence. For a time the system by which a privileged class was allowed to buy the protection of the borough without paying the fair price, and to maintain a position within its walls by the authority of a power without, seemed to work well for both parties to the cunning bargain—indeed, to offer certain advantages. Dependent on the Bishop for all their rights of trade and privileges, the inferiores were content to let him fight their battles, which he did so effectually that the mediocres themselves were attracted to their party, and made common cause with them to the apparent profit of all concerned. But the only strength of a corrupt alliance utterly false in principle lay in the support given by the Bishop, and no sooner did this begin to fail than the whole scheme utterly collapsed. The question of elections raised at the August meeting of 1411 gave the potentiores their opportunity to break up the confederation from within by detaching the hundred or hundred and fifty mediocres from the rest of the party of resistance, leaving the non-burgesses to shift for themselves; and when these, suddenly alive to their hapless situation, tried to recover ground and begged to be taken into the family of citizen-voters, even by “a little voice,” there was no place found for their repentance. The common council which the community had striven to create finally represented only a handful of privileged people instead of the general body of inhabitants, and any hope of the political developement of Lynn as a free community was once for all arrested. The betrayal of the common cause of civic equality brought its exact recompense on the day when every weapon of the unenfranchised inhabitants was seen to be broken and useless. In the common assembly they had no votes. In the common council they had no representatives. The machinery of all their seventy-five guilds[855] could not in any way be so handled as to further the power of the people; for so long as the great body of craft-holders and artizans lay outside the borough franchise it was impossible for them to employ their organizations in the service of the common cause. Deprived of the close connection between the borough and the craft which existed in other towns, they could neither aspire to send delegates from the trades into the council chamber, nor could they make the crafts the only way of entrance into the freedom of the city.

The main result of this breaking up of the “communitas” of Lynn into three fractions which could never again be united, was the final affirmation of power in the hands of a small ruling class. In Lynn it was always the merchants who conquered. One by one they vanquished their opponents, the Church, the mediocres, the inferiores. A singular and pathetic unity pervades the history of the town from first to last. Lynn had won from land and sea a little space of ground, a little tenure of life, and there, lighted by a passing gleam of beneficent fortune, it made its brief experiment—a single experience consistent from first to last, and scarcely subjected to accident or change. The old borough still retains some subtle charm of a lingering distinction. Even now as we look at the homes of its last traders—the heavy double doors which shut off the great court from the street, the houses built round three sides of the open square, and lifted at the back straight out of the waters of canals cut to give passage to the ships and barges which drifted up on every rising tide, almost brushing as they passed the windows that opened on rich chambers dark with carved work in wood—we seem to breath the strange air of a remote place and time in which this old city of dead merchants lies ever steeped. The very fashion of the place still affirms perpetually that when the end came the ancient rulers of Lynn made a proud exit, bequeathing their heritage to none, and leaving their silent dwellings to suffer indeed the presence of strangers, but with no pretence of acquiescing welcome.