THE COMMON COUNCIL OF SANDWICH
THE attempt in various boroughs to create a municipal house of commons
for the protection of popular liberties is so striking a fact in the
town history of the fifteenth century that, for the sake of again
observing the experiment under a new set of conditions, we may take
one last example of the building up of a representative council. The
case of Sandwich differs considerably from that either of Norwich or
of Lynn, though one significant fact is common to all three boroughs.
In each of these towns the effort to work out the new constitution was
frustrated; and, singularly enough, it was frustrated in every case,
not by any evidence of inherent weakness in the scheme itself, but by
the operation of external and accidental causes. In Norwich the system
was possibly wrecked by difficulties in the working of what we may call
foreign affairs—that is by the ill-defined and impossible relations
of the town to the country, when the town claimed to interfere with
interests over which its authority was limited, while these interests
had no regular representation in its councils, so that intrigue came
in to replace recognized and orderly influence, and the natural
distinctions of parties within the town were submerged in factions more
or less external and artificial, and in the corrupt political ambitions
to which these gave opportunity. In Lynn an equally artificial state
of parties was created and maintained by the miniature strife between
the Church as a temporal power and the civil government. The existence
of a large body of commons delivered by the Bishop from taking up the
just burdens of citizenship, as dependents on his protection, withdrawn
from a full share in the responsibilities of their fellow-townsmen
and used as a sort of occupying army for the maintenance of his
rights over the borough, was fatal to the healthy developement of
municipal self-government. But in Sandwich an altogether new problem
is suggested—the problem of local self-government in the members of a
confederated state, in which the several communities might tend towards
democracy while the central administration remained the stronghold of
aristocratic tradition.
For Sandwich must not be considered as if it stood alone like Norwich,
independent and self-contained. Under the constitution of the Cinque
Ports, as we have seen, certain weighty matters, such as military
defence, finance, foreign trade and foreign traders, the higher matters
of justice, and so on, were under a central government represented
either at Dover or at the Brodhull, and the several towns were mainly
concerned with local affairs. It is possible that in the conduct of
daily business of a comparatively simple kind there was less necessity
than in the greater boroughs for the supremacy of experts, and
apparently administration did not so soon harden into the despotism of
an oligarchy. There was much, moreover, which was favourable to popular
movements in the general conditions of Kent and Sussex, which, even
as early as the twelfth century, were centres of important mining and
manufacturing industries, and in whose midst there arose more than once
movements of liberal and radical thought like those which in our days
have come from the coal-fields and iron mines of the north. The trading
vessels which put out from the ports across the German Ocean kept
the people in constant touch with the commercial towns of the north
European coast where municipal life was most vigorous and enduring. And
of the strangers to whom Sandwich gave shelter, till at last almost a
third of its streets were occupied by foreigners, the main body were
traders or artizans from the Netherlands who, wherever they sought
refuge after their desperate battle against oligarchy in their own
country, must have carried with them their sturdy creed of independence
and freedom of political discussion, and would have inevitably
ranged themselves on the popular side of town politics, whether as
enfranchised voters or as unenfranchised talkers.
Thus the men of the Cinque Ports long preserved a fine tradition of
vigorous independence; and in Sandwich, as in the other ports, the
burghers actually maintained in practice something of the early
democratic theory of government. The mayor, jurats, and other officers,
elected by the whole commonalty,[856] carried on the administrative
and judicial work, but when a question arose as to the making of new
laws or the granting of cesses the whole people were called together
to a hornblowing,[857] and “the mayor and commonalty at a common
assembly may make such decrees as they think proper.” Any gathering
of freemen, no matter how small, who assembled with the mayor,
was “deemed a meeting of the whole body,” and its ordinances were
consequently binding; but the mayor might send the common wardman, or
whom he pleased, to shut up all the windows of cellars and shops and so
forcibly persuade dealers and artizans to join the congregation.[858]
This mode of government by a single council of twelve checked by the
_referendum_ lasted unchanged till the middle of the fifteenth century;
and it was certainly less difficult for the system that in larger
boroughs so quickly developed into the rule of a plutocracy, to keep
its democratic character in a small community which had only increased
from the three hundred and eighty-three inhabited houses of the
Conqueror’s time to four hundred and twenty households in 1565,[859]
and in which the forces that made for freedom and popular government
were strong. It would seem indeed that the mayor’s difficulty was not
so much to force the freemen to fulfil their civic duties, as to check
the too active zeal of inhabitants not enfranchised, and Sandwich
had to reiterate its laws that only free “barons,” indwellers, and
householders, should attend at elections, and at last had to inflict on
any offender a fine of 21_d._ and the loss of his upper garment.[860]
In the middle of the fifteenth century, however, there was a movement
to amend the primitive constitution of the town. The first change was
probably intended to bring Sandwich into harmony with the prevailing
fashion. In 1437 its eight wards were made into twelve, and a jurat
sat over each, with power to appoint every year his own constable and
deputy constable.[861] Other reforms followed under the auspices of
Richard Cok, who was mayor five times in thirteen years, and who was
again chosen for the sixth time in 1470 to make peace with Edward the
Fourth after his triumph over Henry the Sixth.[862] During his first
mayoralty (in 1441) an order was issued that no one might sit on the
bench at court but the mayor, the jurats, and the king’s bailiff; in
other words the dignity of the upper chamber was asserted, and all
intrusion and interference with its consultations made impossible.
The increasing authority of the council was immediately met by an
organization of the commons to protect their own interests, such as
we have seen at Norwich and Lynn half a century earlier. During Cok’s
fifth term of office, in 1454, a representative council of seventy
commons was formed, who, with the consent of the mayor and jurats, were
to make all manner of elections and all scots and lots. In this way
about one citizen householder out of every six was given a share in the
government—a scheme so different from that of either Norwich or Lynn
that it suggests how far Sandwich must have outstripped those towns in
the habit of popular government.
From this time we can trace a steady conflict between the two parties
in the town, the official or governing class and the commonalty. The
common council was remodelled ten years later, in 1464, and its members
reduced to thirty-six. It is very probable that this change was brought
about by the policy of the governing class; for at the same time the
mayor and jurats set up a claim to be the authoritative judges of the
fitness of men sent by the commonalty to serve as councillors, and it
was ordained that the people should henceforth nominate forty-eight
persons, sixteen out of each parish, and that the mayor and jurats
should then choose thirty-six of these to be of the common council.
Their triumph, however, was short, for in 1471, immediately after
Cok’s last mayoralty, the controlling choice of mayor and jurats was
set aside, and it was decided that the commonalty should elect for
themselves, without any interference or dictation, twelve men from
each of the three parishes to be of the common council, to consult
with the mayor and jurats “whenever the mayor pleases” for the benefit
and utility of the town, and to make and establish decrees for its
profit.[863]
For over half a century the democratic party had their way. Popular
representation was recognized as part of the Sandwich constitution, and
so far as the town itself was concerned, it would seem that liberal
ideas of government and civic freedom prevailed in a far greater degree
than in either Norwich or Lynn. All went well till the time of Henry
the Eighth. Then a singular danger declared itself, and the story of
the sixteenth century is that of the ruin of popular liberties in
Sandwich. The governing class had in each of the Cinque Ports a source
of peculiar strength. Out-numbered and out-voted as they might be in
each separate port, they reigned supreme in the Brodhull court, where
their majority was certain, and where they could carry matters with a
high hand; and it was there that the governing bodies of the various
ports, all alike threatened with public criticism of their acts and
limitation of their powers, formed a combination for the protection of
their common interests. All devices to establish freely elected common
councils, or any representative bodies to express popular opinion,
received their quietus at the Brodhull court in 1526. The respectable
assembly of mayors, jurats, and delegates there gathered passed a
resolution that the duties of electing the mayor and jurats, receiving
the king’s bailiff, and appointing the bailiffs to Yarmouth, should
be given over in each port to a committee of thirty-seven persons;
and in each corporate town to a body of twenty-four, who were to be
nominated by the mayor and jurats.[864] In 1528 a new mayor of Sandwich
was elected after the new fashion, the whole commonalty nominating
three jurats, one of whom was then chosen by the appointed committee
of thirty-seven.[865] That the freemen did not give up their rights
without a fight we may judge from the fact that in 1535 they again
elected their mayor after the ancient custom of the town; but it was a
losing battle, and as a matter of fact no popular liberties survived
this century. The common council was reduced to twenty-four members,
and both the upper and lower councils alike were appointed by the mayor
and jurats. The election of the mayor was taken from the people, and
the jurats succeeded in turn to the post by order of seniority.[866]
Finally even the right of the commons to vote at assemblies was taken
from them in 1595, to be restored in 1599, and again taken away “for
their insolence and disorder” in 1603.
In Sandwich, therefore, it is obvious that the reform movement failed,
not through inherent vice or defect of its own, but by the overpowering
pressure of an external force—on this occasion by the federal council
of the united states that made up the confederation of the Cinque
Ports. No doubt the easy victory of the whole confederation was made
possible by the decaying fortunes of the town; for at the time of its
defeat the vigour and the glory of Sandwich had departed. Works for
the preservation of the port had been constantly going on since the
thirteenth century when the artificial canal known as the Delf was dug,
and put under the charge of overseers; though after a brave struggle of
two hundred years diggers and sluice-makers could no longer hold their
own against winds and sands that silted up their harbour. In 1483 the
town, under the threat of breaking up the whole wall they had built,
ordered the gentlemen and yeomen of the country who had pastures by the
stream to scour their dykes and make sluices; though neither the forced
efforts of the county squires, nor the royal grant to the town in 1548
of all the plate and treasures of the parish churches to carry on the
works of the harbour;[867] nor a later Act of Parliament for deepening
the Stour, could rescue Sandwich from its doom. In its decrepitude
liberty slipped from its grasp. But the disaster of a later time must
not wholly obscure with its shadow the records of days when Sandwich
was rejoicing in brighter fortunes. If in the decay of its prosperity
and hope the oligarchy fixed their yoke on the neck of the people, and
inaugurated the rule of the plutocrats, their victory was not quickly
won; for throughout the fifteenth century, as we have seen, when by
the necessity of the times the question of stricter organization of
public life was here as elsewhere forced into prominence, the commons
of Sandwich neither renounced their rights to self-government, nor
failed to take an adequate part in moulding the new constitution. It is
indeed not impossible that the oligarchic congregation of the Brodhull
mainly drew its force for the suppression of popular independence from
the support or even the instigation of the Court; for we can easily
understand that at a time when under the policy of the Tudors England
figured as a great power in Europe, laden with obligations and with
hatreds, her ministers were driven to look anxiously to her first line
of defence against foreign foes. The policy of securing the main ports
in the hands of a little group of loyal officials, easily controlled
from headquarters, and no friends to common riots or rebellions, must
inevitably have followed the revival of the ancient tradition which
saw in the safety of the realm the whole purpose of the Cinque Port
confederation.