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 3_s._ 4_d._, had leased it to the
rector of Sturry, two miles away, for 100_s._ 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 100_s._; for the
aldermen, 60_s._; for the men of the chamber, 40_s._; and for the
thirty-six men of the council, 20_s._ 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.