THE COUNCIL OF NOTTINGHAM
PROBLEMS of government sat lightly on the people of Nottingham.
Singularly favoured as it was by fortune compared with many other
towns, there is something phenomenal in the record of a town so
tranquil, so uniformly prosperous, so exempt from apprehension, with
so complacent a record of successful trading and undisturbed ease.
Administration was carried on in its simplest form, and few sacrifices
were demanded of the inhabitants, whether of labour or of money,
compared with the efforts which were required of less fortunate towns.
The interest, in fact, of its history lies in the quiet picture that is
given of a group of active and thriving traders, at peace with their
neighbours, and for the most part at peace with themselves.
The position of Nottingham was one of great military importance; for
lying almost at the centre of the kingdom, the town held the approach
to the one bridge over the Trent by which the main road from the south
struck northward: and further commanded the navigation of the river
from the point where, broadened by the confluence of the Derwent
and the Soar, it became a great highway of internal communication.
Throughout its history, therefore, from the time of the Danes down to
the time of the Civil War, Nottingham could not be left out of account
when any fighting was going on. But England was in the main a land of
peace, and the occasional and intermittent importance of an internal
fortress was wholly different from the consequence that attached to
a border castle like that of Bristol, or to outposts against foreign
foes such as the walled seaport towns of the coast. Hence the military
advantages of its site made but little mark on the character and
history of the town, and the castle which crowned the sandstone cliff
that rose precipitously from the waters of the river Lene played no
great part in the life of the mediæval borough. Lying well out of reach
of all foreign foes, it fell into no misfortunes such as Rye, which
was destroyed by fire twice in half a century, nor was it impoverished
by taxes for defence against the French such as threatened to leave
Southampton desolate; and its merchants were only occasionally required
to make contribution towards the protection of the coast and the safety
of the sea-borne trade which added to their wealth and luxury. Thus,
when the keeping of the sea was given in 1406 to the English merchants,
their elected Admiral of the Fleet, Nicholas Blackburn, wrote a
peremptory order to Nottingham for £200 as its share of the cost;[621]
but the merchants’ experiment failed, and they were relieved of their
responsibility before they had levied any second toll.
But the same geographical position which, under other circumstances,
would have made of Nottingham a strategic centre, did under the actual
conditions of English life assure the fortunes of the borough in
industry and commerce. By land and by water, trade was almost forced
to its gates. The bridge which spanned the Trent, after it had fallen
into ruins as the property of the kings, was granted by Edward the
Third to the townspeople, who willingly undertook the heavy charges
of its repair and maintenance; each division of the town territory
was made responsible for one or two of its nineteen low arches,[622]
and the wardens appointed to oversee the whole appeared from time
to time before the municipal officers with laborious and portentous
accounts. Over this bridge all traffic from south to north was bound
to pass; while boats from Hull and the eastern ports travelled up the
river to unload at the quays of Nottingham. Thus the burghers, more
fortunate than those of Canterbury, Norwich, or Shrewsbury, had no
cause to fear the troubles of a shifting commerce, of manufacturers
driven away to seek for brighter prospects, or of merchants forsaking
the old ways for some new trade route. A uniform prosperity seems to
have reigned in the town. Traders of every kind were in 1395 winning
more than the law allowed them,[623] and the market-place, which is
said even now to be the largest in England, was covered with booths;
there were twenty fish-boards, thirty-two stalls in the Butchers’
House, thirty in the Mercers’ House, twenty in the Drapers’ House,
and so on, the rents of which were rapidly rising in the second half
of the fifteenth century;[624] and the stately Guild Hall, besides its
council room, and its upper prison for felons and gaols for debtors
with iron grating to the street, had its storage room for merchandise.
Buyers and sellers crowded to the market, for new burgesses were still
willingly admitted[625] on the payment of 6_s._ 8_d._, and it was only
at the close of the next century that the ready hospitality of the town
gave way to a jealous exclusiveness. Strangers without number paid
for license to trade, besides rents for stalls or shops;[626] and the
number of suits between burgesses and “foreigners” or non-burgesses,
was so great that sometimes in a single year twenty rolls or more were
closely written on both sides with the records of these suits alone—a
fact which points to trade dealings with the outer world on a scale
quite unknown to previous times.[627] Even the geological position
of the town added to its sources of wealth, and the corporation as
well as traders made profit from the neighbouring coal-mines.[628]
All kinds of industries seem to have flourished. As early as 1155,
when probably there were few places in England where cloth was dyed,
bales were sent to Nottingham to be coloured red, blue, green, and
tawny or murrey; and if their scarlet dye was liable to turn out not
scarlet but red[629] even in 1434, we must remember that at this time
for a fine scarlet dye English cloth had to be sent to Italy.[630]
Nottingham manufacturers made linen as well as woollen goods.[631] Its
famous workers in iron lived in Girdler Gate and Bridlesmith Gate.
There was a foundry for bells well known in all the neighbouring
counties, and the bell-founder, besides his bells, made brazen pots.
Moreover, there were artists of repute.[632] Among English churches
of the early Perpendicular period, there is none more beautiful than
S. Mary’s, lifted high above the market on the steep hill side.[633]
The Nottingham goldsmith was sent for to repair the cross in Clifton
Church.[634] The town had its own illuminator, Richard the Writer; and
its image-maker, Nicolas Hill, who sent his wares as far as London (on
one occasion as many as fifty-eight heads of John the Baptist, some of
them in tabernacles or niches) and as he worked also in painting or
gilding alabaster salt-cellars, was commonly known as the “Alablaster
Man.”[635]
The wealth of Nottingham was possibly not equal to that of towns like
Bristol or Lynn, where at a time when capital was scanty the burghers
had accumulated in their coffers good store of gold and silver. But
a general air of substantial comfort and well-being seems to have
pervaded the town. The subsidy roll of 1472 which gives a list of 154
owners of freehold property, from one whose tenth was 74_s._ 7-1/2_d._
down to one whose tenth was set down at 1/4_d._,[636] the inventories
of household goods, and the legacies which occur from time to time,
show a considerable class of citizens living in wealth and luxury, and
a yet larger class of comparatively well-to-do people after the measure
of those times. While the richer merchants were building or adorning
with handsome carved oak houses which a later age called “palaces of
King John,” humbler tradesmen contented themselves with homes such
as are described in a builder’s contract of 1479, where the little
dwelling with a frontage of 18 feet on the street, was to have two bay
windows and to cost altogether about £6.[637] Before the latter part of
the sixteenth century[638] at least there is no indication of poverty
such as we find in various other towns, in Southampton, or Romney, or
Chester, or Canterbury—all places which had to suffer from special
causes of distress—and even the wills do not contain the frequent
bequests for the relief of the poor and of prisoners which occur in
places where the calls of distress were more pressing and insistent.
The financial problems of the corporation were perfectly simple and
regular, and presented no more formidable difficulty than the keeping
in repair of the great bridge. When the ferm of the town was reduced
to £20 by Edward the Fourth it was done, so far as the municipal
records tell the tale,[639] without any of the complainings of utter
misery and desolation by which such favours were commonly won; and in
the next half century there is no more serious hint of distress than is
marked by the fact that in 1499 two of the butchers’ stalls and a few
other holdings were lying vacant, and that the Corporation had borrowed
some small sums.[640]
Nottingham was unfretted too by trouble from without. Set on the
outskirts of Sherwood Forest, but exempted since the time of John from
the Forest laws and the jurisdiction of the Forest officers,[641] its
very position tended to free it from the neighbourhood of any powerful
lord who could threaten its citizens, diminish its rights, or tax its
people with petty wars or law-suits, as Liverpool and Bristol and Lynn
were taxed and harassed. In its only trouble—an occasional dispute as
to the control of the waters of the Trent—it was invariably supported
by the Crown. Sometimes weirs and fishing nets obstructed the river;
sometimes when the water was low boats coming from Hull had to be
dragged along from the banks, and the river-side owners demanded fines
for use of the towing path, so that the price of goods in Nottingham
was increased to “a great dearness.” Then the Nottingham men would
hasten to move the king by “a clamorous relation”; and forthwith royal
commissioners were sent down to inquire into the obstructions; royal
proclamations were issued to forbid the exacting of river-side tolls;
and royal orders forbade the neighbouring lord of Colwick to divert the
waters of the Trent to his own uses to the injury of Nottingham.[642]
Nor were its burghers troubled by claims of any ecclesiastical power
within the town walls, such as those which vexed Norwich and Exeter
and Canterbury. Ecclesiastical interests indeed play no great part
in Nottingham. Two churches already existed under Cnut, and before
the fourteenth century one more was added.[643] But no abbey had been
founded within its liberties, and the yearly journey of the mayor
and his brethren to carry Whitsuntide offerings to the mother church
at Southwell was but a picturesque ceremonial that recalled the time
when Paulinus first founded there a centre of mission work among the
pagans.[644]
As for Court factions and dynastic intrigues, distant traders with
much work of their own on hands were generally prompted by a prudent
self-interest to side with the dominant power in the State. The
burghers easily transferred their sympathies from the Lady Anne of
Bohemia to Henry the Fourth;[645] they stood by Henry the Sixth so
long as the triumph of the rebels was doubtful, but no sooner were the
fortunes of Edward the Fourth in the ascendant than by gifts out of
their treasure and little detachments of their militia they testified
to a new loyalty, and thus obtained the renewal of their charter and
a reduction of their ferm for twenty years, “to have a reward to the
town of Nottingham” “for the great cost and burdens, and loss of their
goods that they have sustained by reason of those services.”[646] In
1464 they ordered off a little troop in red jackets with white letters
sewn on them[647] to join the king at York, and once more at Edward’s
restoration in 1471,[648] the town spent about £60 for “loans for
soldiers” and liveries, besides many other costs. In October of 1482,
the jury “presented” an offender charged with wearing the livery of
the intriguing Richard of Gloucester;[649] but before the battle of
Bosworth the town hospitably entertained Richard himself, and in its
castle he received the Great Seal;[650] while no sooner was the day
lost for York than a deputation was sent in hot haste to make peace
with Henry the Seventh and obtain a safeguard and proclamation.[651]
Stall-holders and burghers, in fact, intent on their own business, only
asked that Court quarrels might be settled with the least possible
trouble to themselves; and throughout the Wars of the Roses the
Nottingham men did just what the men of every other town in England
did—reluctantly sent their soldiers when they were ordered out to the
aid of the reigning king, and whatever might be the side on which they
fought, as soon as victory was declared hurried off their messengers
with gifts and protestations of loyalty to the conqueror. Meanwhile
they went steadily on with the main business of trade and watched the
rents of their booths and the profits of their shops going up and their
wealth constantly accumulating.[652]
Like all boroughs that held under the Crown, Nottingham won very
early the rights of a free borough. Henry the Second from 1155 to
1165 granted its burgesses freedom from toll, a market, the monopoly
of working dyed cloth within the borough, and free passage along the
Trent; and further gave them power to tax inhabitants of all fees
whatever for common expenses.[653] Originally governed by a reeve who
collected its yearly ferm and managed its affairs on behalf of the
king, Nottingham obtained by charter from John in 1189 a Merchant
Guild, and leave to elect a reeve of the borough who should answer for
the ferm to the Exchequer.[654] In 1230 the burgesses were allowed to
appoint coroners, and (the ferm being fixed at £52) to levy a tax for
weighing at the common scale all goods brought to the town.[655] A
charter of 1255 granted them the freedom from arrest for debt which was
being so commonly given at this time; the return of writs; and an order
that no sheriff or bailiff should interfere in the exercise of justice
in Nottingham unless “the burgesses” had not done their duty. And ten
years later they were freed from the aid of 100_s._ formerly paid
to the sheriff for his good will and that he should not enter their
liberties.[656]
In the reverses of the Welsh war, when Edward the First summoned two
great provincial councils of knights and burgesses to bestow a grant
for completing the conquest of Wales, Nottingham used his necessities
to secure its own profit; for three years the town had been in
disgrace, with all its franchises forfeited, but in 1284 it not only
regained them, but won permission to elect a mayor “by unanimous
consent and will” of “both boroughs of the same town”—that is the
French and the English boroughs which from the time of the Conquest had
been established side by side, each governed by its own bailiff[657]
according to the different laws and customs of the two peoples. During
the Scotch war in 1314 their position as masters of the northern road
possibly disposed Edward the Second to grant readily any favours they
might demand; and immediately after Bannockburn they received power
to hold all pleas before the mayor, and alien sheriffs or bailiffs
were forbidden to enter the borough.[658] Yet later one of the first
acts of Henry of Lancaster, after the deposition of Richard in 1399,
was to make interest with the keepers of the stronghold of middle
England. He gave lavishly all he had to give: the assize of tenure
formerly held before the judges; all fines, forfeitures, and ransoms
which had not yet been handed over; the election of four justices of
the peace; the placing of the mayor upon all commissions of array of
men-at-arms, so that neither sheriff of the county, nor officer of
the court could henceforth tax the town for military aid without his
assistance and consent.[659] In 1448 Henry the Sixth completed the
emancipation of Nottingham by granting it a charter of incorporation
under the title of “the mayor and burgesses of the town of Nottingham.”
By this charter the town, with the exception of the king’s castle and
gaol, was entirely separated from the county and made into a shire; its
bailiffs became sheriffs, and were henceforth not to go out of the town
to take their oath, but were to be sworn before the mayor; and the
mayor himself was made the king’s escheator.[660] If the king in these
difficult times, with Normandy almost lost, and England on the eve of
rebellion, offered bribes for loyalty, he required a due return; and in
1450 the Nottingham men had to pay their part of the bargain, by hiring
men to go to the help of the sovereign at Blackheath against Jack Cade,
which they accomplished by leasing some of their common lands for a sum
of £20 to be paid in advance.[661]
Unfortunately, owing to the loss of the Old Red Book of Nottingham
and other records, it is only by piecing together scattered hints
and fragments that we can discern anything of the early constitution
of the borough. In the first charters or official dealings with the
court, we hear of “the Burgesses” only, with no mention of reeve or
bailiff; until after the creation of the mayor in 1284, when the formal
style is changed to “the Mayor and Burgesses.” Whatever was the actual
significance of the term “burgesses” we know that it already had a
technical meaning, for a charter granted by Edward the First to “the
Burgesses and Community of our town” in the days before the mayor had
replaced the reeve,[662] shows that even then the two words were used
in a special sense; and this original distinction remains throughout
the records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In general, the
business of the town was done in a somewhat elaborate manner by “the
mayor, burgesses, and community,” or “the mayor and his co-burgesses
and the community”; but it seems that there were some affairs which
were given over to the “mayor and burgesses”—an occasional treaty with
another town,[663] or the letting of tenements or property acquired by
the corporation and set apart for special public purposes such as the
ferm, or of lands assigned for the expenses of the bridge; while on the
other hand, where the common property of the people in house or land
was in question transactions were carried out in the name of the “mayor
and community.”[664] There are perhaps no more than two cases before
the middle of the sixteenth century in which common lands were leased
by the “mayor and burgesses,” and these happened as late as 1511 and
1514, and were probably acts of a specially corrupt administration.
By the Nottingham folk themselves, therefore, the word “burgesses”
was from the thirteenth century onwards applied to a body which could
be distinguished from the commonalty; and in the use of the words we
seem again to catch the double meaning, first of the corporate body
of citizens as opposed to the ancient “communitas”; and then of the
governing council or assembly as opposed to the whole congregation of
the freemen. When this secondary use of the words grew up in Nottingham
we cannot say, as we know absolutely nothing of the early government
of the town. It is only through one or two brief notices which have
been saved from the general destruction of old records that we detect
the presence in the council chamber of a recognized group of officials
or councillors; and these notices belong to a late time. Meetings were
held in the town hall in 1435 and 1443, in which a council of justices
of the peace and “trustworthy men” did business with the consent of the
commons;[665] and in 1443 we hear of a fine to be paid by “burgesses”
who neglected to come to the hall when summoned, the fine being (as
we learn from other towns) the customary sum levied from absent
members of a regularly appointed council.[666] And from another entry
copied from the records of three years later we know certainly that
a council of twelve did exist in 1446. “Ordered that twelve and the
mayor chosen to order, end, and dispose of as they think meet of all
things belonging to the commonalty of the town without interruption or
contradiction of any person within the town. All orders are with the
consent of the commonalty.”[667]
Whether the order of 1446 was the bringing in of a new method of
administration, or an extension of the powers of an established
council, or merely a declaration of the law that it should do its
business “without interruption or contradiction” of any of the
townsfolk, we cannot certainly tell, for the old Red Book is lost and
the phrase is only preserved for us in a note made by a town clerk a
hundred and fifty years later, whose comment on it, “And there shall
you see the erection and election of the council,” is of little value
in deciding the matter.[668] In the absence of any direct evidence,
the traces of an earlier council certainly suggest the idea that in
the twelve we may have the successors of a body resembling the twelve
portmen elected in royal boroughs for the general administration of
the town, and that from 1399 the four justices of the peace formed
part of this council. The commonalty had the right of entering the
town hall during the meetings of the council, and of confirming the
ordinances of the governing body by their “assent and consent”; and
these powers might of course be more or less left in suspense or fully
exercized as opportunity required. No doubt in a big and busy borough
any frequent gathering of the townspeople was impossible, and it is
very probable that (as at Sandwich), when the mayor did business in
the borough court, any burghers who happened to be present[669] were
taken to represent the general assembly of the commons, and bye-laws or
necessary orders passed by them were understood to have received “the
consent of the community.” In the majority of instances the numbers who
attended were probably few, but their presence is from time to time
distinctly marked, as in the meeting of 1435; in the assembly of a
hundred and thirty burgesses in 1463 to make laws; and in the calling
of the commons together in their common hall in 1480.[670]
If the administration followed this well understood routine, it is
probable that the conduct of public business underwent no great change
when two new charters, in 1446 and 1448, settled the final order of
government in Nottingham, and made it into a county. No mention was
made in these charters of the existing council (unless indeed the term
“burgesses” was commonly understood to mean the council),[671] but by
the second in 1448 it was enacted that “the burgesses” should elect
from time to time _from amongst themselves_ seven aldermen (to answer
to the seven wards of the town), one of whom was always to be mayor,
while all the seven were to be justices of the peace. The aldermen were
to hold office for life, and in their scarlet livery with suitable furs
and linings, after the fashion of the aldermen of London,[672] were
manifestly the leading members of the council; and the six burgesses
who completed that body were within a few years known as “common
councillors,” to distinguish them from the heads of the wards.[673]
The constitution of the Nottingham council seems in fact to have been
exactly the same as that of Canterbury or of Southampton; and here no
doubt, as in other places, the official governing body did at some time
take to itself in a special sense the title of “the Burgesses,” leaving
that of “the Community” to the freemen at large.
The new charter, whether it introduced any change in older methods or
no, at least seems to have awakened no resistance. A Council of Twelve
which ruled before 1448 ruled in like manner afterwards, though now
seven justices of the peace sat in it instead of four. As for what may
seem to us the crucial fact that henceforward aldermen were elected
for life, and elected by their own fellows and not by the people, it
is possible that even this change, if indeed it was a change at all,
seemed less revolutionary to the men of Nottingham in those days than
it does now, for there is no trace of any conflict concerning the
matter either at the time or for half a century afterwards. Indeed the
same method of election was used for the councillors themselves, who
also were appointed for life.[674] It appears that while the aldermen
were always selected from among the six councillors, the councillors
were chosen from “the clothing”—a very important body composed of
sheriffs and chamberlains or treasurers who had passed out of office,
but still wore their scarlet robes on great occasions.[675]
The oligarchy thus established was however no more in absolute
possession of the field than an oligarchy of the thirteenth century.
The people’s right to hold a general assembly was admitted by the
governing class as late as 1480, and claimed by the commonalty
a century later. The jurors of the Court Leet long acted as
representatives of the general body of burgesses for purposes of
criticism and remonstrance. For certain kinds of business touching the
community the custom of electing special juries was maintained; as in
1458 when “twenty-four upright and lawful men from the aforesaid town
of Nottingham, as well as twenty-four upright and lawful men from each
wapentake of the county aforesaid”[676] were summoned to report on the
state of the bridge. It seems probable that at least six burghers took
part in the election of municipal officers; and in 1511 the inhabitants
claimed some share in the elections by virtue of “the statute of
free elections in such cases ordained.”[677] Above all the burghers
exercized their ancient rights over the common property of the people.
For in those days Nottingham boasted of great possessions[678] in
land. From the low cliff of red sandstone which lifted it out of the
floods that constantly swamped the lower grounds, the townsmen looked
out over the common fields and closes and Lammas lands that stretched
round it on every side, and formed until the Act of 1845 a broad
belt of open country which cut off the borough from its surrounding
dependent villages, and might in no way be used for building. These
wide reaches of pasture were yearly distributed in due proportion among
the burghers by common consent of the mayor and the whole community.
In the division, and in questions of boundaries and fences and fields,
the commonalty were all directly interested; and they never consented
to hand over to the undisputed management of a council rights which
touched them so nearly.[679] They asserted their claim to attend the
meetings when the lands were divided or let out on lease, to take part
in all decisions, and to keep a close watch on the councillors lest
these should be tempted to pass over their own names when the poor
lands were divided and to distribute among themselves all the best
closes.[680] At the very end of the fifteenth century their verdict was
still decisive. In 1480 the commons being called together to the Common
Hall by the mayor on a question as to the common lands, “the said
commons would in no wise agree” to his proposal.[681]
It is therefore probable that the charter of 1448 did not mark for
Nottingham the moment of a serious constitutional revolution. Such
little evidence as we have seems to show that the state of affairs
was singularly like that which we have already seen in Southampton
at the same date; that things went on pretty much as they had done
for years past, and that the burgesses neither suffered, nor thought
they suffered, any usurpation of their rights, or any grave loss of
customary liberties. The system established in 1448 had been in full
working for over half a century before any struggle, so far as we know,
took place between the governing class and the people; and even then it
was not suggested that the disturbance was caused by any change in the
legal form of government.[682] For in 1500 Nottingham was in as sorry a
plight as Norwich had been in 1300. It was practically handed over to
the rule of publicans and licensed victuallers, who, with or without
the law, held their own bravely against all opposition. When brewers
and bakers and vintners rose to power they took care that the assize of
bread and beer and wine should not be brought to mind; when butchers
and cattle-dealers became aldermen and chamberlains they encouraged
a confusion which was most profitable to themselves as to the limits
of the common pastures, letting gates and bridges fall into ruin,
and “although they have been often required by the whole community
of the whole town of Nottingham to make common boundary marks, as
their predecessors had done, have hitherto refused to do so;”[683]
even as common trespassers they put their cattle and sheep in the
meadow in the night time unto the great harm of their neighbours.[684]
The officers appointed by the council dutifully served the interests
of their masters: “We often complain of his demeanour, and have no
remedy”[685] is the comment of the Mickletorn jury about the common
serjeant. Year after year the protests of the commonalty were heard at
the local courts. Jurors of the quarter sessions laid their grievances
before the justices of the peace, themselves the main offenders; while
the jury of the Mickletorn or Leet asserted their right to address the
town council (when they could be persuaded to take their places at the
court) and “in the name of the burgesses and commonalty of this town,”
to declare the wrongs of the people.[686]
It was in 1511 that the struggle between rulers and burghers
culminated. In the August of that year the council seems to have
violated the ancient custom, and leased common pastures by the
authority of “the mayor and burgesses,” the witnesses being six
aldermen and six of the common council[687]—a style which had not
been used before in dealing with these lands. This meddling with the
rights of the community apparently heralded an outbreak of revolt. At
the next Court Leet, in October, 1511, the Mickletorn jury presented
the mayor who had been in power when the lease was granted, and charged
him with encroaching on the common lands, and making his servants
“riotously break off our common pasture hedges; it is thought contrary
to right and to the common weal.” Six months later, in April, 1512,
the jury extended their attack, and the actual “Master Mayor” was
presented for being the first beginner of a muck-hill, for misusing
the time of the common serjeant, and for selling unfit herrings in the
market and excluding other men who would have brought as good stuff
and sold eight for a penny where he sold five, though as clerk of the
market he should have increased and bettered it instead of impairing
it, “and upon this runneth a great slander in the country and a great
complaint.” He was charged, along with “all his brethren,” with failing
to account for money in his charge “to the great hurt of the town and
commons.” Further the mayor and chamberlains together were presented
for not repairing the two gates of the town; and the chamberlains for
not looking after a public well; and the mayor’s clerk, “the which
takes our wages not as a beneficial servant unto us in no matter that
any burgess of this town hath to do, but he repugnes and maligns
against the burgesses and commons that they be not content with his
demeanour.”[688]
The commons went further than this, however, and raised the question
of their ancient rights of assembling in the common hall and taking
part in the election of officers.[689] At this point the authorities
became genuinely alarmed. A month later, May 21, the Recorder or
legal adviser of the corporation wrote a formal letter of advice to
the governing body on these crucial matters of election and assembly.
“I am informed,” he says, “that divers of the commons of your town
confederate themselves together and make sinister labour to do others
to take their part and say as they do, and intend thereby to make
aldermen and other officers at their pleasure; and if that should be
suffered it should be contrary to all good politic order and rule,
and in conclusion to the destruction of the town. Wherefore now at
the beginning wisely withstand the same and call your brethren and
the council together, and if ye by your wisdom think that by calling
of these confederates every of them severally before you ye cannot
order them without further help, then my advice is that ye send some
wise person to Mr. Treasurer[690] that it would please him to see
reformation, if he be in England, and else that he would write to my
Lord Privy Seal, or to my Lord Steward, now in his absence to see this
matter redressed, ascertaining you have spoke with my Lord Steward in
this matter, and he gave me advice thus to write to you; for if ye
shall suffer the commons to rule and follow their appetite and desire,
farewell all good order. For if they be suffered now they will wait
to do in like case hereafter.” In a postscript he adds, “In any wise
beware of calling of any common hall at the request of any one of them
that make this confederacy. I doubt not but divers of you remember the
saying of Mr. Treasurer of the inconveniences that had ensued upon the
calling of the commons together in the city of London and in other
cities and boroughs.”[691] The sympathies of Mr. Treasurer were duly
enlisted, according to the Recorder’s advice, and on the very day when
a new mayor took the place of the last, he wrote urging him to stand
firm against those commons who would “combine themselves to subvert the
good rule of the town and would make aldermen and put them out at their
pleasure, contrary to the good order of your charter and privilege of
your town.” He begs them, if there be any of such “wilful disposition
to subvert the good rule of the same your said town, that with all
diligence certify me of their names, and I trust to see such remedy for
them as shall not be to their contentment, but I shall see them shewn
condign punishment as they have or shall deserve.”[692]
The shibboleth of “good order” had its accustomed effect, and the
governing body carried their point, though in leases of the common
lands they presently returned to the old style.[693] The new mayor,
John Rose, known to the people as the butcher chamberlain who in 1500
had let their landmarks be removed, and who since then had grown
into innkeeper and victualler, ruled for eighteen months.[694] His
successor, appointed in January, 1515,[695] was Master Thomas Mellers,
an alderman who had a very bad reputation in the presentments of the
Court Leet; after he had reigned two years, a mercer of Nottingham
tried to kill him with a dagger while he was joyfully dining with an
alderman; but he survived to rule again in 1522.[696] Again the jury
returned to the charge. In 1524 the outgoing mayor was presented at
the July sessions for not keeping the assize of bread,[697] and in
October the matter was pressed on the attention of the newly-appointed
mayor. Two years later, however, Nottingham was for the third time put
under John Rose, who in the interests of firm government determined
to suppress once for all the importunate presentments of the jury.
During the whole time of his mayoralty, “in the default of the said
Master Rose there was no verdict given of the jurors sworn for the
body of this present town ... to inquire of things inquirable
afore you justices of record,” nor was the assize of victual ever
put in execution; and by this the town had not only been greatly
disordered but had been put in danger of forfeiting its liberties
and franchises.[698] The next year (1527) the jury were again roused
by the fact that three aldermen, one of them being Rose, the last
year’s mayor, had by their united efforts filled all vacancies with
victuallers; and a formal petition was addressed to the mayor and his
brethren in the name of the whole town. They called to remembrance
the law that “No victualler should be chosen to no such rooms as
judge of victual,” and told again the long tale of their grievances.
They declare that these elections were illegal, “the burgesses and
commonalty of the said town not being made privy, nor thereunto
consenting, contrary to the corporation of the said town, and also
contrary to the statute of free elections in such case ordained,” and
that therefore the whole town might be made to suffer the loss of their
liberties and franchises for non-using or misusing the same. In the
lately elected aldermen “the want of discretion and debility of reason”
was well known to the whole town, so that the common voice and fame of
it ran through the shire; and the jurors thought “that the most wisest
and discreetest men ought to have been chosen to such rooms by you and
the burgesses _and commonalty_.”
Further the jury, “in their most humble manner,” observed that the king
had been deceived in the matter of the last subsidy; for in addition
to their other crimes the three aldermen, when their substance was
assessed for a subsidy at £50 or £55, had “embezzled” the record, and
changed the figures to a nought.
Finally they pray “by the whole minds and agreements” that the present
counsel of the town might use and continue in his place “like as he
unto the same was elect and sworn, and that according to right and
good conscience he may have his fees that is behind to him contented
and paid.”[699] All this the jury spoke in the name of the people,
“whereunto we, the aforesaid jurors, in the name of the burgesses and
commonalty of this town and borough are fully content and agreed.”
In these troubles, it does not seem that the revolt of the people was
excited by any definite constitutional change, nor was the charter
of 1448 called in question or brought forward as the origin of later
evils, nor was any protest made against the election of councillors for
life. Complaints multiply against corrupt administration of the law, or
the holding of office by unfit and illegal men. But the claim of the
people to a share in elections is vague and indefinite, and neither
in 1511 nor in 1527 do the commons appeal to precedent. Opinions as
to their rights are tossed to and fro, balanced by contending winds
of doctrine. In defence of the system of close election the council
call to witness the charter and privileges of the town; while on the
other hand the commons declare that elections are illegal if the
commonalty as well as the burgesses are not “made privy nor thereunto
consenting.” Possibly the explanation lies in a common tendency of
practice to drift away from the theory with which it had first kept
company, and finally to disown its old accomplice. No doubt the commons
inherited theoretically an inalienable right to take part in elections;
but it had apparently become the practice that the people should only
exercise that right in a certain definite way through the half-dozen
representatives who attended the elections, and not through a common
gathering; and thus the situation was one in which either side might
indefinitely urge law and custom without ever bringing conviction to
their opponents.
It is indeed conceivable that the true peril to popular liberty was
of a far more subtle character than the words of any charter would
suggest, and rather grew out of developements in the unwritten
constitution of the borough, than in the written law. Not only in
elections, but in the meeting of the general assembly, insidious
changes may have been brought about by the mere growth of common
custom. In the institution of “the Clothing” there were latent
possibilities which time alone could bring to light. For over half a
century sheriffs and chamberlains were quietly bowed out of office,
and transferred with all their fur and finery to the brilliant company
of the liveried ex-officials to await a happy re-election. But in due
course, as its numbers multiplied, the Clothing was made manifest to
all men in its stately ranks or “clene scarlet” as the very body-guard
and sworn defenders of the central group of high officials, the
traditional depositories of power. Surrounded and shielded by a band
of forty or fifty friends who had already held office and might hold
it again, men dedicated to their interests and disciplined to their
methods, the mayor and his brethren were no longer left face to face
with the whole community. Under the established custom by which any
burgesses who were present at an assembly were taken to represent
the whole body, it was evidently easy even while outwardly observing
constitutional form, to summon to the meeting only members of the
Clothing; and the decrees of the council having been submitted to
this loyal gathering were assumed to have obtained the assent of the
commonalty. Popular control might thus be absolutely extinguished, and
that without revolution or going beyond the letter of the law, when
a council chamber crowded with the official class[700] replaced the
assembly of the commons, and exercized its powers simply by preserving
its name.
The plan of forming a select committee of the General Assembly
nominated by the mayor seems to have been a very favourite custom.
In Coventry, for example, the mayor summoned certain citizens who
were added to the twenty-four to form a common council. Their number
was perhaps at first uncertain, for in 1444 we hear of a meeting
of fifty-three, twenty-four of the council and twenty-nine other
burgesses; but apparently from 1477 twenty-four citizens always
assembled with the twenty-four jurats to form the common council of
forty-eight. Generally, as in Leicester or Gloucester, a fixed number
of representative citizens was summoned. A lower chamber of this
pattern evidently assured the triumph of the oligarchy; and the idea of
popular control was perhaps more completely banished by this narrow and
formal interpretation of the common right of meeting than by mere idle
neglect of the assembly. In Nottingham, so far as we can judge from
the few council minutes preserved during the sixteenth century, the
mayor and his brethren acted with perfect independence of the burgesses
at large, and no longer mentioned the name of the community even in
ordinances which touched the common lands.[701]
Still, however, the jury fought with indefatigable zeal for some
control over administration.[702] They never let slip a chance of
reprimanding their governors. Again and again the mayor was presented
for refusing to enforce judgment on bakers, butchers, and brewers,[703]
and with his brethren was charged with innumerable frauds on the
people. Sometimes we find the jury busied about securing a capable
schoolmaster;[704] sometimes they were demanding to have the accounts
laid before them—the accounts of the bridge and the free school and
the sums raised for the burgesses of Parliament, “and how the residue
of the money is bestowed, for our money is therein as well as yours
was, and therefore it is convenient that we know.”[705] As Englishmen
had once looked back to the times of the good King Edward, so the men
of Nottingham turned wistfully to the golden past when the Red Book
had been the charter of their liberties, and vainly prayed that the
necessary parts of the book (doubtless the ancient town ordinances)
should as of old be read yearly in the hearing of the burgesses.[706]
Clinging to the ideal of a primitive liberty, these inveterate
conservatives robbed reform of all the terrors that attached to what
was new. What had been might safely be again. Nor was there any
tendency to riot or disorder. All must be done in a constitutional
way, and within the limits of tradition. Towards the end of the
sixteenth century, therefore, there was a good deal of tinkering at the
municipal constitution. On March 29 (1577) the number of councillors
was increased from six to twelve, all as before to be chosen by the
Clothing.[707] The democracy had probably very little to say to this
change, for the order was made by forty-five burgesses “being then
all of the degree of chamberlains” who seem here clearly to be acting
as though their assent to an ordinance were equivalent to the consent
of the whole community.[708] Six months later, however, it occurred
to the people to make some use of the ancient custom of summoning a
jury of forty-eight from town and suburbs for public business; and
they proposed to have the common council elected by such a jury—to
which suggestion the ruling class agreed. They further demanded that
the councillors should attend at the Leet when the Mickletorn jury
presented offences and gave their verdicts. All this was, as they
claimed, a return to the authentic custom of former days, “according to
the Red Book as we do think.”[709] But in November the Leet jury were
still praying that this agreement should be carried out, and there is
no evidence that they ever succeeded. In any case, two years later,
when the people once more urged their old claim to have the accounts
made public and “to hear the end and reckoning of any subsidy when any
is,”[710] they advanced a new demand for reform yet more radical; and
suggested that all the common councillors should be utterly abolished,
leaving only the aldermen and two coroners to form an upper chamber,
“and that the forty-eight may be joined to you to confer in any matters
for the town, as there is in other places where their corporations
are better governed than this is,”[711] and that the same forty-eight
as representing the commons should be given a definite share in the
management of the bridge and school.[712]
But all these efforts proved vain, and the Council and Clothing
continued their victorious career. As late as 1598 the commons
endeavoured to revive the old constitution of the town and to call
a general assembly through summons by the constables of the wards;
and even collected money to institute a suit that they might inquire
into a corrupt lease of common property by a member of the council.
In the curious account preserved of the examination and depositions
of the ringleaders in calling the assembly together the passionate
determination of the people still finds voice, and there was at least
one among them to maintain stoutly that he did not care if he died in
a good cause.[713] The beginning of the next century found the contest
slowly dragging along, the Mickletorn jury still protesting against the
negligence of the councillors[714] and the people still discussing new
constitutions with increasing nicety of detail, and debating the merits
of two chambers of twenty-four and forty-eight,[715] or of twenty-eight
each.[716] Meanwhile the twelve of the council are mentioned as
existing unchanged in 1604.[717]
By this time the men of Nottingham had adopted in turn all the
constitutional means of securing popular freedom that lay in their
reach. They had consistently appealed to the old ordinances which in
theory at least endowed them with sovereign power. The Mickletorn
jury had been incessantly called on to right their wrongs by force of
law. The cumbrous machinery of the general assembly had been dragged
out in its noisy inefficiency. The custom of summoning forty-eight
jurors for public purposes had been seized on as an institution out
of which a chamber of the commons might be created and representative
government established. But the mediæval history of Nottingham
closes with the utter failure of schemes so industriously cherished.
Doubtless reform had tarried too long in coming. Whether the general
commercial prosperity had drawn all activity into trading enterprise
and diverted it from politics, whether a common well-being had tended
to an acquiescent conservatism, whether the variety of trades carried
on in the town had, as in modern Birmingham, resulted in the absence
of effective trade organization or of any strong and commanding craft
guild to serve as a centre of union, or whether in this wealthy
community buried in the Midlands there was some lack of ready
interchange of thought and discussion with the outer world, the fact
remains that resistance to the dominion of an oligarchy was of late
and ineffectual growth, and when it did appear it seems to have mostly
lost its energies in talk. In 1600 the men of Nottingham were still
discussing the formation of a House of Commons to represent the will of
the people—an experiment which Norwich had tried two hundred years
before, and for which in municipal life it was now two hundred years
too late.
Thus in the history of civic freedom Nottingham seems to stand midway
between Southampton and Norwich. Not only did it in the fifteenth
century closely follow Southampton in the critical dates of its
municipal history, but it is certain that its local administration must
have been a matter of no less importance to the Crown from a military
point of view. In times of disturbance it was all-important to the king
to keep a firm hold on the Midlands and on their central stronghold,
and preserve as it were a “buffer state” between north and south, east
and west; and we have seen how quick was the central government to take
alarm at any “confederacy” to “subvert the good rule of the town,” and
how anxiously, as in Southampton, it interfered to protect the select
oligarchy against the “sinister labour” of the commons. On the other
hand the belief of its people in an ideal liberty, steeped as it is
in strong emotion, is far removed from the apathy of the Southampton
burghers. In the aspirations of its commonalty Nottingham comes nearer
to Norwich, but here there is a profound difference not only in the
conduct of the controversy between rulers and subjects but in its final
issue; and the council of the commons which the oligarchy was able to
assemble by stealth in Nottingham has no likeness to the lower chamber
created by the middle classes themselves in Norwich.