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
6_s._ 8_d._; while others, men and women, were willing to give 60_s._
or 100_s._ 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 20_s._ to 30_s._ 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
13_s._, 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 4_s._ 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 15_s._
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 10_s._ 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 10_s._ 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 6_s._ 2_d._ 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 10_s._ 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 11_s._ 2_d._ 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.