THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN
WE who have been trained under the modern system have forgotten how
people lived in the old days, when the necessity of personal effort was
forced home to every single member of the fellowship of freemen who had
life or liberties or property to protect. For in spite of the vigour
and independence of our modern local administration every Englishman
now looks ultimately for the laws that rule his actions, and the force
that protects his property, to the great central authority which has
grown up outside and beyond all local authorities. He is subject to
it in all the circumstances of life; whether it exercises wholly new
functions unknown to the middle ages; or takes over to itself powers
which once belonged to inferior bodies, and makes them serve national
instead of local ends; whether it asserts a new direction and control
over municipal administration; or whether, instead of replacing the
town authorities by its own rule, it upholds them with the support of
its vast resources and boundless strength. By whatever right the State
holds its manifold powers, whether by inheritance, or purchase, or
substitution, or influence, or the superiority of mere might, he feels
its working on every hand. It is to him visibly charged with all the
grand operations of government.
But to a burgher of the middle ages the care and protection of
the State were dim and shadowy compared with the duties and
responsibilities thrown on the townspeople themselves. For in the
beginnings of municipal life the affairs of the borough great and
small, its prosperity, its safety, its freedom from crime, the gaiety
and variety of its life, the regulation of its trade, were the business
of the citizens alone. Fenced in by its wall and ditch[225]—fenced in
yet more effectually by the sense of danger without, and the clinging
to privileges won by common effort that separated it from the rest of
the world—the town remained isolated and self-dependent. Within these
narrow borders the men who went out to win the carrying trade of the
world learned their first lessons in organization, and acquired the
temper by virtue of which Englishmen were to build up at home a great
political society and to conquer abroad the supremacy of the seas—the
temper which we recognize in an early confession of faith put forth
by the citizens of Hereford as to the duties which a man owed to his
commonwealth and to its chief magistrate. “And he to be our head next
under the King, whom we ought in all things touching our King or the
state of our city to obey chiefly in three things—first, when we are
sent for by day or by night to consult of those things which appertain
to the King or the state of the city; secondly, to answer if we offend
in any point contrary to our oath, or our fellow-citizens; thirdly,
to perform the affairs of the city _at our own charges, if so be they
may be finished either sooner or better than by any other of our
citizens_.”[226] Public claims were insistent, and under the primitive
conditions of communal life, in small societies where every man lived
in the direct light of public opinion, no citizen was allowed to count
carefully the cost of sacrifice, or stint the measure of his service,
when the welfare of his little community was at stake. His duties were
plainly laid down before him, and they were rigidly exacted. According
to the accepted theory it was understood that all private will and
advantage were to be sacrificed to the common good, and Langland speaks
bitterly of the “individualists” of his day.
“For they will and would as best were for themselves,
Though the King and the commons all the cost had.
All reason reproveth such imperfect people.”[227]
I. The inhabitants of a mediæval borough were subject to a discipline
as severe as that of a military state of modern times. Threatened
by enemies on every side, constantly surrounded by perils, they had
themselves to bear the whole charges of fortification and defence. If
a French fleet appeared on the coast, if Welsh or Scotch armies made a
raid across the frontier, if civil war broke out and opposing forces
marched across the country, every town had to look to its own safety.
The inhabitants served under a system of universal conscription.
At the muster-at-arms held twice a year poor and rich appeared in
military array with such weapons as they could bring forth for the
King’s service; the poor marching with knife or dagger or hatchet; the
prosperous burghers, bound according to mediæval ideas to live “after
their degree,” displaying mail or wadded coats, bucklers, bows and
arrows, swords, or even a gun. At any moment this armed population
might be called out to active service. “Concerning our bell,” say the
citizens of Hereford, “we use to have it in a public place where our
chief bailiff may come, as well by day as by night, to give warning to
all men living within the said city and suburbs. And we do not say that
it ought to ring unless it be for some terrible fire burning any row
of houses within the said city, or for any common contention whereby
the city might be terribly moved, or for any enemies drawing near unto
the city, or if the city shall be besieged, or any sedition shall be
between any, and notice thereof given by any unto our chief bailiff.
And in these cases aforesaid, and in all like cases, all manner of
men abiding within the city and suburbs and liberties of the city,
of what degree soever they be of, ought to come at any such ringing,
or motion of ringing, with such weapons as fit their degree.”[228] At
the first warning of an enemy’s approach the mayor or bailiff became
supreme military commander.[229] It was his office to see that the
panic-stricken people of the suburbs were gathered within the walls and
given house and food, that all meat and drink and chattels were made
over for the public service, and all armour likewise carried to the
Town Hall, that every inhabitant or refugee paid the taxes required for
the cost of his protection, that all strong and able men “which doth
dwell in the city or would be assisted by the city in anything” watched
by day and night, and that women and clerics who could not watch
themselves found at their own charge substitutes “of the ablest of the
city.”[230]
If frontier towns had periods of comparative quiet, the seaports,
threatened by sea as by land, lived in perpetual alarm, at least
so long as the Hundred Years’ War protracted its terrors. When the
inhabitants had built ships to guard the harbour, and provided money
for their victualling and the salaries of the crew, they were called
out to repair towers and carry cartloads of rocks or stones to be
laid on the walls “for defending the town in resisting the king’s
enemies.”[231] Guns had to be carried to the church or the Common House
on sleds or laid in pits at the town gates, and gun-stones, saltpetre,
and pellet powder bought. For weeks together watchmen were posted in
the church towers with horns to give warning if a foe appeared; and
piles of straw, reeds and wood were heaped up on the sea-coast to
kindle beacons and watch-fires. Even if the townsfolk gathered for a
day’s amusement to hear a play in the Court-house a watch was set lest
the enemy should set fire to their streets—a calamity but too well
known to the burghers of Rye and Southampton.[232]
Inland towns were in little better case. Civil war, local rebellion,
attacks from some neighbouring lord, outbreaks among the followers
of a great noble lodged within their walls at the head of an army of
retainers, all the recurring incidents of siege and pitched battle
rudely reminded inoffensive shopkeepers and artizans of their military
calling. Owing to causes but little studied, local conflicts were
frequent, and they were fought out with violence and determination.
At the close of the fourteenth century a certain knight, Baldwin of
Radington, with the help of John of Stanley, raised eight hundred
fighting men “to destroy and hurt the commons of Chester”; and these
stalwart warriors broke into the abbey, seized the wine and dashed
the furniture in pieces, and when the mayor and sheriff came to the
rescue nearly killed the sheriff.[233] When in 1441 the Archbishop of
York determined to fight for his privileges in Ripon Fair he engaged
two hundred men-at-arms from Scotland and the Marches at sixpence or
a shilling a day, while a Yorkshire gentleman, Sir John Plumpton,
gathered seven hundred men; and at the battle that ensued, more than a
thousand arrows were discharged by them.[234]
Within the town territory the burghers had to serve at their own
cost and charges; but when the King called out their forces to join
his army the municipal officers had to get the contingent ready, to
provide their dress or badges, to appoint the captain, and to gather
in money from the various parishes for the soldiers’ pay, “or else
the constables to be set in prison to abide to such time as it be
content and paid.”[235] When they were sent to a distance their fellow
townsmen bought provisions of salt fish and paniers or bread boxes for
the carriage of their food,[236] and reluctantly provided a scanty
wage, which was yet more reluctantly doled out to the soldier by his
officer, and perhaps never reached his pocket at all.[237] Universal
conscription proved then as now the great inculcator of peace. To the
burgher called from the loom and the dyeing pit and the market stall
to take down his bow or dagger, war was a hard and ungrateful service
where reward and plunder were dealt out with a niggardly hand; and
men conceived a deep hatred of strife and disorder of which they had
measured all the misery.[238] When the common people dreamed of a
brighter future, their simple hope was that every maker of deadly
weapons should die by his own tools; for in that better time
“Battles shall never eft (again) be, ne man bear edge-tool,
And if any man [smithy] it, be smit therewith to death.”[239]
II. Nor even in times of peace might the burghers lay aside their
arms, for trouble was never far from their streets. Every inhabitant
was bound to have his dagger or knife or Irish “skene,” in case he
was called out to the king’s muster or to aid in keeping the king’s
peace. But daggers which were effective in keeping the peace were
equally effective in breaking it, and the town records are full of
tales of brawls and riots, of frays begun by “railing with words out
of reason,” or by “plucking a man down by the hair of his head,”
but which always ended in the appearance of a short dagger, “and so
drew blood upon each other.”[240] For the safety of the community—a
safety which was the recognized charge of every member of these simple
democratic states—each householder was bound to take his turn in
keeping nightly watch and ward in the streets. It is true indeed that
reluctant citizens constantly by one excuse or another sought to
escape a painful and thankless duty: whether it was whole groups of
inhabitants sheltering themselves behind legal pretexts; or sturdy
rebels breathing out frank defiance of the town authorities. Thus in
Aylesbury, according to the constable’s report, one “Reygg kept a
house all the year till the watch time came. And when he was summoned
to the watch then came Edward Chalkyll ‘fasesying’ and said he should
not watch for no man and thus bare him up, and that caused the other
be the bolder for to bar the King’s watch.... He saith and threateneth
us with his master,” add the constables, “and thus we be over ‘crakyd’
that we dare not go, for when they be ‘may ten’ they be the bolder.”
John Bossey “said the same wise that he would not watch for us”; and
three others “lacked each of them a night.”[241] But in such cases
the mayor’s authority was firmly upheld by the whole community, every
burgher knowing well that if any inhabitant shirked his duty a double
burden fell upon the shoulder of his neighbour.
III. All inhabitants of a borough were also deeply interested in
the preservation of the boundaries which marked the extent of their
dominions, the “liberties” within which they could enforce their own
law, regulate trade, and raise taxes. Century after century the defence
of the frontier remained one of the urgent questions of town politics,
insistent, perpetually recurring, now with craft and treachery, now
with violence and heated passion breaking into sudden flame. Every
year the mayor and corporation made a perambulation of the bounds and
inspected the landmarks;[242] the common treasure was readily poured
out if lawsuits and bribes were needed to ascertain and preserve the
town’s rights; and if law failed, the burghers fell back without
hesitation on personal force. In Canterbury the town and the convent
of Christ Church were at open war about this question as about many
others. The monks remained unconvinced even though the mayor and
council of thirty-six periodically “walked the bounds,” giving copper
coins at the various turning points to “divers children” that they
might remember the limits of the franchise, while they themselves
were refreshed after their trouble by a “potation” in a field near
Fordwich. At one time the quarrel as to the frontier raged round a
gigantic ash-tree—the old land-mark where the liberties of the city
touched those of Fordwich—which was in 1499 treacherously cut down
by the partizans of Christ Church; the Canterbury men with the usual
feastings and a solemn libation of wine set up a new boundary stone.
At another time the dispute shifted to where at the west gate of the
town the river wound with uncertain and changing course that left
frontiers vague and undefined. A low marshy ground called the “Rosiers”
was claimed by the mayor as under his jurisdiction, while the prior
asserted that it was within the county of Kent; and for thirty years
the question was fought out in the law courts. On July 16th, 1500, the
mayor definitely asserted his pretensions by gathering two hundred
followers arrayed in manner of war to march out to the Rosiers. There
certain monks and servants of the prior were taking the air; one
protested he had been “late afore sore sick and was walking in the
field for his recreation”; another had a sparrow-hawk on his fist, and
the servants declared they were but peaceful haymakers; but all had
apparently gone out ready for every emergency, for at the appearance
of the enemy bows and arrows, daggers, bills, and brigandiers, were
produced from under the monks’ frocks and the smocks of the haymakers.
In the battle that followed the monks were beaten, and the citizens cut
down willows and stocked up the dyke made in the river by the convent;
and boldly proceeded the next day[243] to other outrages. The matter
was brought to judgement, and a verdict given against the mayor for
riot—a verdict which that official, however, lightly disregarded.
It was in vain that the prior, wealthy and powerful as he was, and
accustomed to so great influence at court, appealed to the Star Chamber
to have the penalty enforced, for no further steps were taken by the
government. It probably judged wisely, since in such a matter the
temper of the citizens ran high; and the rectification of frontiers
was resented as stoutly as a new delimitation of kingdoms and empires
to-day.
IV. Resolution in the defence of their territory was no doubt quickened
by the sense which every burgess shared of common property in the
borough. The value of woodland and field and meadow which made up the
“common lands” was well understood by the freeman who sent out his
sheep or cows to their allotted pasture, or who opened the door of his
yard in the early morning when the common herd went round the streets
to collect the swine and drive them out on the moor till evening.[244]
The men of Romney did not count grudgingly their constant labour and
cost in measuring and levelling and draining the swamps belonging to
their town and protecting them from the encroachments of “the men of
the marsh” beyond, for the sake of winning grazing lands for their
sheep, and of securing a “cow-pull” of swans or cygnets for their lord
the archbishop[245] when it was desirable “to have his friendship.” In
poor struggling boroughs like Preston, in large and wealthy communities
like Nottingham, in manufacturing towns like Worcester with its
busy population of weavers, in rich capitals like York, in trading
ports like Southampton where the burghers had almost forgotten the
free traditions of popular government, the inhabitants never relaxed
their vigilance as to the protection of their common property.[246]
They assembled year after year to make sure that there had been no
diminishing of their rights or alienation of their land, or that in the
periodical allotments the best fields and closes had not fallen to
the share of aldermen and councillors; and by elaborate constitutional
checks, or if these failed, by “riotous assembly and insurrection,”
they denounced every attempt at encroachment on marsh or pasture.
V. So also in the case of other property which corporations held for
the good of the community—fisheries, warrens, salt-pits, pastures
reclaimed from the sea, plots of ground saved in the dry bed of a
river, building sites and all waste places within the town walls,
warehouses and shops and tenements, inns and mills, the grassy slopes
of the city ditch which were let for grazing, the towers of the
city walls leased for dwelling-houses or store rooms, any property
bequeathed to the community for maintaining the poor or repairing
the walls or paying tolls and taxes all this corporate wealth which
lightened the burdens of the taxpayer was a matter of concern to
every citizen. The people were themselves joint guardians of the town
treasure. Representatives chosen by the burghers kept one or two of the
keys of the common chest, which could only be opened therefore with
their consent.[247] Year after year mayor or treasurers were by the
town ordinances required to present their accounts before the assembly
of all the people “in our whole community, by the tolling of the
common bell calling them together for that intent”[248]—an assembly
that perhaps gathered in the parish church in which seats were set up
for the occasion at the public expense.[249] There the people heard
the list of fines levied in the courts; of tolls in the market, or
taxes taken at the gates or in the harbour; of the “maltodes,” or sums
paid on commodities for sale; of the “scot” levied on the property of
individuals; of the “lyvelode” or livelihood, an income tax on rates or
profits earned. They learned what means the corporation had taken of
increasing the common revenue; whether it had ordered a “church-ale,”
or an exhibition of dancing girls, or a play of Robin Hood;[250] what
poor relief had been given in the past year;[251] what public loans
with judicious usury of over ten per cent., it had allowed, as when in
Lydd “the jurats one year lent Thomas Dygon five marks from the common
purse when going to the North Sea, and he repaid the same well and
trustily and paid an increase thereon seven shillings;” or they were
told whether the Town Council proposed to do a little trading for the
good of the community; and how a “common barge” had been built with
timber bought at one town, cables and anchors at another, pitch and
canvas at a third; and how, when the ship was finished, the corporation
paid for a modest supply of “bread and ale the day the mast was set in
the barge,” before it was sent out to fish for herrings or to speculate
in a cargo of salt or wine, for the profit of the public treasury.[252]
Lessons in common financial responsibility had been early forced on the
burghers everywhere by the legal doctrine that the whole body might be
held responsible for the debt of one of its members, while each member
on his part was answerable for the faults of his fellows, whether
singly or collectively. Thus when Norwich failed in paying debts due
to the King in 1286, the sheriff of Norfolk was ordered to enter the
liberty and distrain twelve of the richer and more discreet persons of
the community;[253] and when the rent of Southampton was in arrears,
one of its burgesses was thrown into the Fleet in London.[254] Under
such a system as this the ordinary interest of citizens in questions
of taxation and expenditure was greatly quickened. The municipalities
were stern creditors. If a man did not pay his rent for the King’s
ferm the doors and windows of his house were taken off, everyone in
it turned out, and the house stood empty for a year and a day or even
longer before the doors might be redeemed in full court, or before
it passed to the next heir.[255] But it was probably rather owing to
the happy circumstances of the English towns than to the vigilance
of the burghers that there is no case in England of a disaster which
was but too common in France—the disaster of a borough falling into
bankruptcy, and through bankruptcy into servitude and political ruin.
VI. In the town communities of the middle ages all public works were
carried out by what was in fact forced labour of the whole commonalty.
If the boroughs suffered little from government interference neither
could they look for help in the way of state aid or state loans;
and as the burgher’s purse in early days was generally empty he had
to give of the work of his hands for the common good. In Nottingham
“booners”—that is the burgesses themselves or substitutes whom they
provided to take their place—repaired the highways and kept the
streets in order.[256] The great trench dug at Bristol to alter the
course of the Frome was made “by the manœuvre of all the commonalty
as well of Redcliffe ward as of the town of Bristol.[257] When Hythe
in 1412 sent for a Dutch engineer to make a new harbour, all the
inhabitants were called out in turn to help at the “Delveys” or
diggings. Sundays and week days alike the townsmen had to work, dining
off bread and ale provided by the corporation for the diggers, and
if they failed to appear they were fined fourpence a day.[258] In
the same way Sandwich engaged a Hollander to superintend the making
of a new dyke for the harbour; the mayor was ordered to find three
workmen to labour at it, every jurat two, and each member of the
Common Council one man; while all other townsmen had to give labour
or find substitutes according to their ability. The jurats were made
overseers, and were responsible for the carrying out of the work; and
so successfully was the whole matter managed that in 1512 the Sandwich
haven was able to give shelter to 500 or 600 hoys.
Forced labour such as this could of course only be applied to works
where skilled artificers were not necessary; but occasions soon
multiplied when the town mob had to be replaced by trained labourers,
and we already see traces of a transitional system in the making of the
Hythe harbour, where the municipality had to engage hired labour for
such work as could not be done by the burgesses.[259] But undertakings
for which scientific skill was needed sorely taxed local resources, and
the burghers were driven to make anxious appeals to public charity.
In 1447, when Bridport wanted to improve its harbour, collectors were
sent all over the country to beg for money; indulgences of forty or a
hundred days were promised to subscribers by archbishops and bishops;
and a copy of the paper carried by one of the collectors gives the
sum of the masses said for them in the year as amounting to nearly
four thousand: “the sum of all other good prayers no man knoweth save
only God alone.”[260] The building and repairing of bridges as being
also work that demanded science and skilled labour involved serious
cost. When the King had allowed the bridge at Nottingham to fall into
the river, he generously transferred its ownership and the duty of
setting it up again to the townspeople; who appointed wardens and
kept elaborate accounts and bore grievous anxiety, till finding its
charges worse than all their ordinary town expenses they at last fell
to begging also. So also the mayor of Exeter prayed for help in the
matter of the bridge there, which had been built by a wealthy mayor
and was “of the length or nigh by, and of the same mason work as
London Bridge, housing upon except; the which bridge openly is known
the greatest costly work and most of alms-deeds to help it in all the
west part of England.”[261] Such instances reveal to us the persistent
difficulties that beset a world where primitive methods utterly failed
to meet new exigencies, and where the demand for technical quality in
work was beginning to lead to new organizations of labour. Meanwhile
the burghers had to fight their own way with no hope of grants in aid
from the state, and little to depend on save the personal effort of the
whole commonalty.
VII. The townspeople all took their part not only in the serious and
responsible duties of town life but apparently in an incessant round of
gaieties as well. All the commons shared in supporting the minstrels
and players of the borough. The “waits” (so called from the French word
guet) were originally and still partly remained watchmen of the town,
but it was in their character of minstrels, “who go every morning about
the town piping,” that they were paid by pence collected by the wardmen
from every house.[262] Every town moreover had its particular play,
which was acted in the Town Hall, or the churchyard, before the Mayor
and his brethren sitting in state, while the whole town kept holiday.
In 1411 there was a great play, _From the Beginning of the World_, at
the Skinner’s well in London, “that lasted seven days continually, and
there were the most part of the lords and gentles of England.”[263] At
Canterbury the chief play was naturally _The Martyrdom of S. Thomas_.
The cost is carefully entered in the municipal account books—charges
for carts and wheels, flooring, hundreds of nails, a mitre, two bags
of leather containing blood which was made to spout out at the murder,
linen cloth for S. Thomas’ clothes, tin foil and gold foil for the
armour, packthread and glue, coal to melt the glue, alb and amys,
knights’ armour, the hire of a sword, the painting of S. Thomas’ head,
an angel which cost 22d., and flapped his wings as he turned every way
on a hidden wynch with wheels oiled with soap. When all was over the
properties of the pageant were put away in the barn at S. Sepulchre’s
Nunnery, and kept safely till the next year at a charge of 16d. The
Canterbury players also acted in the _Three Kings of Cologne_ at the
Town Hall, where the kings, attended by their henchmen, appeared
decorated with strips of silver and gold paper and wearing monks’
frocks. The three “beasts” for the Magi were made out of twelve ells of
canvas distended with hoops and laths, and “painted after nature”; and
there was a castle of painted canvas which cost 3s. 4d. The artist and
his helpers worked for six days and nights at these preparations and
charged three shillings for their labour, food, fire and candle.[264]
Minstrels and harpers and pipers and singers and play-actors, who
stayed at home through the dark winter days “from the feast of all
Saints to the feast of the Purification,” to make music and diversion
for their fellow citizens, started off on their travels when the
fine weather came, and journeyed from town to town giving their
performances, and rewarded at the public expense with a gift of 6s. 8d.
or 3s. 4d., and with dinner and wine “for the honour of the town.”[265]
It was an easy life—
“Some mirth to make as minstrels conneth (know),
That will neither swynke (toil) nor sweat, but swear great oaths,
And find up foul fantasies and fools them maken,
And have wit at will to work if they would.”[266]
Entries in the town accounts of Lydd give some idea of the constant
visits of these wandering troops, and of the charges which they made
upon the town treasure.[267] Players from Romney came times without
number, others from Rukinge, Wytesham, Herne, Hamme, Appledore, Stone,
Folkestone, Rye; and besides these came the minstrels of the great
lords, the King, the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord
De Bourchier, Lord Fiennes, the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of York,
Lord Arundel, Lord Exeter, Lord Shrewsbury, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Dacres, etc.; all of whom doubtless the town dared not refuse to
entertain, but “for love of their lords lythen (listen to) them at
feasts.”[268] Besides this Lydd had its own special plays, _The May_
and _The Interlude of Our Lord’s Passion_, and the whole town would
gather on a Sunday to hear the actors, while watchmen were paid to keep
guard on the shore against a surprise of the French. Its players seem
to have set the fashion in the neighbourhood; the Romney Corporation
“chose wardens to have the play of _Christ’s Passion_, as from olden
time they were wont to have it,” and paid the expenses of a man to go
to Lydd “to see the original of our play there,” besides giving the
Lydd players a reward of 20s. for their performance.[269]
Other wanderers too knocked at the gates of Lydd—”the man with the
dromedary,” a “bear-ward,” or the keeper of the King’s lions travelling
with his menagerie and demanding a sheep to be given to the lions;
archers and wrestlers from neighbouring towns whom Jurats and Commons
gathered to see, and supplied with wrestling collars and food for
themselves and their horses, as well as a “reward” at the public
expense.[270] Besides bull-baiting, Lydd, doubtless, like other towns,
had its occasional “bear-baiting.” There were the Christmas games and
mumming, and the yearly visit of the “Boy Bishop”[271] of S. Nicholas
who came from Romney to hold his feast at Lydd. And there was the
universal festival of the “watch” on S. John’s Eve, when Lydd paid
out of its common chest for the candles kept burning all night in the
Common House, and for the feast—not a trifling expense if we may
judge by the case of Bristol where the crafts who took part in the
watch divided among them ninety-four gallons of wine.[272]
This festival was observed everywhere, but other local feasts were
arranged according to local traditions. In Canterbury every Mayor
was bound “to keep the watch” on the Eve of the Translation of S.
Thomas. “And in the aforesaid watch the Sheriff to ride in harness
with a henchman after him honestly emparelled for the honour of the
same city. And the Mayor to ride at his pleasure, and if the Mayor’s
pleasure be to ride in harness, the Aldermen to ride in like manner,
and if he ride in his scarlet gown, the Aldermen to ride after the same
watch in scarlet and crimson gowns.” The city was to be lighted by the
Mayor finding “two cressets, or six torches, or more at his pleasure,”
every Alderman finding two cressets, and each of the Common Council
with every constable and town clerk one cresset. In Chester the great
day for merry making was Shrove Tuesday, when the drapers, saddlers,
shoemakers and many others met at the cross on the Roodeye, and there
in the presence of the Mayor the shoemakers gave to the drapers a
football of leather “to play at from thence to the Common Hall.” The
saddlers at the same time gave “every master of them a painted ball
of wood with flowers and arms upon the point of a spear, being goodly
arrayed upon horseback accordingly.” The whole town joined in the
sports, and everyone married within the year gave some contribution
toward their funds.[273]
To these festivities we must add the yearly pageants of the
Guilds—whether of the great societies like the Guild of St. George
at Norwich,[274] whose Alderman in scarlet robe followed by the four
hundred members with their distinguishing red hoods, marched after
the sword of wood with a Dragon’s head for the handle which had been
presented to them by Henry the Fifth;—or of the Corpus Christi Guild
which evidently played a political part in the life of every great
town. In York it is said to have had in the sixteenth century nearly
fifteen thousand members, and at its great pageant, the Mayor and Town
Council “and other worshipful persons” joined in a common feast, and
sent wine and fruits at the public expense to great nobles and ladies
in the city, till perhaps supplies ran out and the town was “drunken
dry.”[275] The Craft Guilds also, whether voluntarily or by order of
the Corporation, had their pageants, acting the same play year after
year.[276]
It has been commonly supposed that the English people had in the later
middle ages a passion for pageantry and display, which was one of
the strongest forces in maintaining their guild organization. But
towards the end of the fifteenth century at least it becomes less and
less clear that the freewill of the craftsmen had much to say to the
maintenance of these public gaieties, or that they felt any enthusiasm
for amusements which yearly grew more expensive and burdensome.[277]
There were places where the crafts, whether through poverty or economy,
neglected to spend a due proportion of their earnings on the public
festivals, and in one town after another as popular effort declined
the authorities began to urge the people on to the better fulfilment
of their duties. In 1490 a complaint was made in Canterbury that the
Corpus Christi Play, the City Watch on S. Thomas’ Eve, and the Pageant
of S. Thomas had fallen into decay. Some Mayors indeed “in their year
have full honourably kept the said watch;” but others had neglected it,
and “all manner of harness within the city is decayed and rusted for
lack of the yearly watch.” It was therefore decreed that every Mayor
should henceforth “keep the watch,” and that the crafts who apparently
hoped to escape from the heavy charges of these plays by declaring
themselves too poor to be formed into a corporate body, should
forthwith be grouped together into a sort of confederation or give up
their bodies for punishment.[278] In the same way when the tailors of
Plymouth were incorporated in 1496, they had to bind themselves to
provide a pageant every year on Corpus Christi Day for the benefit
of the Corpus Christi Guild,[279] and so on in many other towns.
Occasionally indeed the Corporation took a different and more merciful
line; for the Mayor and Sheriffs of Norwich petitioned the Lords and
Commons to pass an Act or Order to prevent Players of Interludes from
coming into the city, as they took so large a share of the earnings
of the poor operatives as to cause great want to their families, and
a heavy charge to the city,[280] and Bridgenorth got an order from
Elizabeth that the town might no longer pay players or bear-wards;
whoever wanted to see such things must see them “upon their own costs
and charges.”[281]
On the whole it is evident that long before the Reformation, and even
when as yet no Puritan principles had been imported into the matter,
the gaiety of the towns was already sobered by the pressure of business
and the increase of the class of depressed workers. It was not before
the fanaticism of religion, but before the coming in of new forms of
poverty and of bondage that the old games and pageants lost their
lustre and faded out of existence, save where a mockery of life was
preserved to them by compulsion of the town authorities. And the town
authorities were probably acting under pressure of the publicans,
and licensed victuallers. Cooks and brewers and hostellers[282] were
naturally deeply interested in the preservation of the good old
customs, and it was in some cases certainly this class, the most
powerful in a mediæval borough, who raised the protest against the
indifference and neglect of the townspeople for public processions and
merry-making, because “thereby the victuallers lose their money, and
who insisted on the revival of these festivals for the encouragement
of trade. Probably where the crafts were strong and the votes of the
working people carried the day, the decision turned the other way.
VIII. All the multitudinous activities and accidents of this common
life were summed up for the people in the parish church that stood in
their market-place, close to the Common House or Guild Hall. This was
the fortress of the borough against its enemies—its place of safety
where the treasure of the commons was stored in dangerous times, the
arms in the steeple, the wealth of corn or wool or precious goods[283]
in the church itself,[284] guarded by a sentence of excommunication
against all who should violate so sacred a protection.[285] Its shrines
were hung with the strange new things which English sailors had begun
to bring across the great seas—with “horns of unicorns,” ostrich eggs,
or walrus tusks, or the rib of a whale given by Sebastian Cabot. From
the church tower the bell rang out which called the people to arm for
the common defence, or summoned a general assembly, or proclaimed the
opening of the market.[286] Burghers had their seats in the church
apportioned to them by the corporation in the same rank and order as
the stalls which it had already assigned to them in the market-place.
The city officers and their wives sat in the chief places of honour;
next to them came tradesmen according to their degree with their
families honourably “y-parroked (parked) in pews,” where Wrath sat
among the proud ladies who quarrelled as to which should first receive
the holy bread;[287] while “apprentices and servants shall sit or stand
in the alleys.” There on Sundays and feast-days the people came to
hear any news of importance to the community, whether it was a list
of strayed sheep, or a proclamation by the bailiff of the penalties
which had been decreed in the manor court against offenders.[288] The
church was their Common Hall where the commonalty met for all kinds of
business, to audit the town accounts, to divide the common lands, to
make grants of property, to hire soldiers, or to elect a mayor. There
the council met on Sundays or festivals, as might best suit their
convenience; so that we even hear of a payment made by the priest to
the corporation to induce them not to hold their assemblies in the
chancel while high mass was being performed.[289] It was the natural
place for justices to sit and hear cases of assault and theft; or it
might serve as a hall where difficult legal questions could be argued
out by lawyers. In the middle of the fifteenth century when the Bishop
and the Mayor of Exeter were in the height of a fierce contest about
the government of the town they met for discussion in the cathedral.
“When my lord had said his prayers at the high altar he went apart to
the side altar by himself and called to him apart the mayor and no
more, and there communed together a great while.” And on this common
ground the dean and chapter on the one side and the mayor and Town
Council on the other, attended by their respective lawyers, fought out
the questions of law on which the case turned.[290] In fair time the
throng of traders expected to be allowed to overflow from the High
Street into the cathedral precincts, and were “ever wont and used ...
to lay open, buy and sell divers merchandises in the said church and
cemetery and special in the king’s highway there as at Wells, Salisbury
and other places more, as dishes, bowls, and other things like, and
in the said church ornaments for the same and other jewels convenient
thereto.”[291] In a draft presentation to a London vicarage of 1427
there is a written memorandum with an order from the king that no
fairs or markets shall be held in sanctuaries, “for the honour of Holy
Church.”[292] Edward the First had indeed forbidden such fairs in his
Statute of Merchants, but such an order was little in harmony with the
habits and customs of the age; and if there was an occasional stirring
of conscience in the matter, it was not till the time of Laud that the
public attained to a conviction, or acquiesced in an authoritative
assertion, that the church was desecrated by the transaction in it of
common business.[293]
In the middle ages however the townspeople were connected with their
parish church after a fashion which has long been unknown among us.
They were frequently the lay rectors; they appointed the wardens and
churchwardens; they had control of the funds, and the administration
of lands left for maintaining its services and fabric; sometimes they
laid claim to the fees paid for masses.[294] The popular interest might
even extend to the criticism and discipline of the rector; so that
in Bridport an enquiry of the bishop as to whether his chaplain, “a
foreigner from Britanny,” was “drunk every day” was held in presence of
“a copious multitude of the parishioners,” and twelve townsmen acted as
witnesses.[295] If a religious guild had become identified with the
corporation, the town body and the Church were united by a yet closer
tie. The corporation of Plymouth, which on its other side was the Guild
of our Lady and St. George, issued its instructions even as to the use
of vestments in St. Andrews, ruling when “the best copes and vestments”
should be used at funerals, and how “the second blue copes” only might
be displayed at the burial of any man who died without leaving to the
Church an offering of twenty shillings.[296]
The people on their side were taxed, and heavily taxed, for the various
expenses of the Church.[297] Sergeants sent by the Town Council
collected under severe penalties the dues for the blessed bread and
“trendilles” of wax, or “light-silver” for the lights burned beside
dead bodies laid in the church; and the town treasury paid for “coals
for the new fire on Easter Eve.”[298] If a church had to be repaired or
rebuilt the pressure of spiritual hopes or fears, the habit of public
duty, the boastfulness of local pride, all the influences that might
stimulate the common effort, were raised to their highest efficiency
by the watchful care of the corporation. All necessary orders were
sent out by the mayor, who with the Town Council determined the share
which the inhabitants were to take in the work; and in small and
destitute parishes where the principle of self-help and independence
was quite as fully recognized as it was in bigger and richer towns,
real sacrifices were demanded. Men gave their money or their labour or
the work of their horse and cart, or they offered a sheep or fowls,
or perhaps rings and personal ornaments.[299] In the pride of their
growing municipal life the poorest boroughs built new towers and hung
new chimes worthy of the latest popular ideals. The inhabitants of
Totnes were so poor that in 1449 there were only three people in the
town who paid as much as twentypence for the tax of half-tenths and
fifteenths for the King. But since Totnes had four new bells which had
been anointed and consecrated in 1442, it decided that the old wooden
belfry of the parish church should be replaced by a new stone tower.
A master mason was appointed in 1448, and “supervisors” were chosen
to visit the bell towers of all the country round and to make that
at Totnes “according to the best model.” The proctors of the church
provided shovels and pick-axes, and the parishioners were called out to
dig stones from the quarry; every one who had a horse was to help in
carrying the stones, “but without coercion,” while “those who have no
horses of their own are to work with the horses of other persons, but
at their own cost.” Last of all an ordinance was made that the mayor,
vicar, and proctors of the church should go round to each parishioner
and see how much he would give to the collection on Sundays for the
bell tower, and those who contributed nothing were to have their names
entered on a roll and sent to the Archdeacon’s Court.[300] When St.
Andrews at Plymouth was enlarged the town authorities decided that the
money should be collected by means of a yearly “church-ale.” Taverns
were closed by order of the council on a certain day, and every ward
of the town made for itself a “hale” or booth in the cemetery of the
parish church. All inhabitants of the wards were commanded to come
with as many friends and acquaintances as possible “for the increasing
of the said ale,” and to bring with them “except bread and drink such
victual as they like best”; but they must buy at the “hale” “bread and
ale as it cometh thereto for their dinners and suppers the same day.”
After ten years of these picnics in the churchyard the new aisle of St.
Andrews was finished at a cost of £44 14_s._ 6_d._[301]
In the midst of this busy life—a life where the citizens themselves
watched over their boundaries, defended their territory, kept peace
in their borders, took charge of the common property, governed the
spending of the town treasure, laboured with their own hands at all
public works, ordered their own amusements, the mediæval burgher had
his training. The claims of the commonwealth were never allowed to
slip from his remembrance. As all the affairs of the town were matters
of public responsibility, so all the incidents of its life were made
matters of public knowledge. The ancient “common horn” or the “common
bell”[302] announced the opening of the market, or the holding of the
mayor’s court, or called the townspeople together in time of danger.
Criers went about the streets to proclaim the ordinances of the
community, and to remind the citizens of their duties. From the church
stile or in the market-place they summoned men to the King’s muster,
or called them to their place in the town’s ship or barge; or if
danger from an enemy threatened, warned the citizens “to have harness
carried to the proper places,” or “to have cattle or hogs out of the
fields.” They exhorted the people “to leave dice-playing,” “to cease
ball-playing and to take to bows;” to shut the shops at service time;
“to have water at men’s doors” for fear of fire. The crier “called” any
proclamation of the King in the public places of the town; he declared
deeds of pardon granted to any criminal, or proclaimed that some poor
wretch who had taken sanctuary in the church had abjured the kingdom
and was to be allowed to depart safely through the streets. Perhaps the
“cry” was made that a prisoner had been thrown into the town gaol on
suspicion, and accusers were called to appear if they had any charge
to bring against him; or it was announced that the will of a deceased
townsman was about to be proved in the court-house, if there were any
who desired to raise objections; or there was proclamation that a
burgher had offended against the laws of the community and was degraded
from the freedom of the town, or perhaps banished for ever from its
territory. At other times players and minstrels would pass through
the market-place and streets “crying the banns” of their plays. The
merchant, the apprentice, the journeyman, the shopkeeper, gathered in
the same crowd to hear the crier who recorded every incident in the
town life or brought tidings of coming change. News was open, public,
without distinction of persons.
Where the claims of local life were so exacting and so overpowering
we can scarcely wonder if the burgher took little thought for matters
that lay beyond his “parish.” But within the narrow limits of the
town dominions his experience was rich and varied. While townsmen
were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their
privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the
government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of
political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of
the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution
they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism.
Traders too, intent on the developement of their business, were deeply
concerned in all the questions that affected commerce, the securing
of communications, or the opening of new roads for trade, or the
organization of labour. In such matters activity could never sleep; for
the towns anticipated modern nations in the faith that the advantage
of one community must be the detriment of another, and competition and
commercial jealousy ran high.[303] Never perhaps in English history
was local feeling so strong. Public virtue was summed up in an ardent
municipal zeal, as lively among the “Imperial Co-citizens” of New
Sarum[304] as among the “Great Clothing” of bigger boroughs. In those
days indeed busy provincials but dimly conscious of national policy
found in the confusion of court politics and the distraction of its
intrigues, or in the feuds of a divided and bewildered administration,
no true call to national service and no popular leader to quicken their
sympathies. Civil wars which swept over the country at the bidding of a
factious group of nobles or of a vain and unscrupulous Kingmaker left,
and justly left, the towns supremely indifferent to any question save
that of how to make the best terms for themselves from the winning
side, or to use the disasters of warring lords so as to extend their
own privileges.[305] Meanwhile in the intense effort called out by
the new industrial and commercial conditions and the reorganization of
social life which they demanded, it was inevitable that there should
grow up in the boroughs the temper of men absorbed in a critical
struggle for ends which however important were still personal, local,
limited, purely material—a temper inspired by private interest and
with its essential narrowness untouched by the finer conceptions
through which a great patriotism is nourished. Such a temper, if it
brought at first great rewards, brought its own penalties at last,
when the towns, self-dependent, unused to confederation for public
purposes, destitute of the generous spirit of national regard, and by
their ignorance and narrow outlook left helpless in presence of the
revolutions that were to usher in the modern world, saw the government
of their trade and the ordering of their constitutions taken from them,
and their councils degraded by the later royal despotism into the
instruments and support of tyranny.
NOTE A.
There are many instances of the responsibility of individual citizens
for costs of various kinds which were the charge of the whole borough.
In 1212 the townsmen of Southampton got hold of the King’s money that
came from Ireland, and two bailiffs and six principal men were charged
with its payment to the King. (Madox Firma Burgi, 158.) A bailiff of
Chichester was fined in 1395 for not attending at a session of the
peace, and as he had no lands and chattels to seize for the debt, two
citizens were charged with the payment of the fine. (Ibid. 187.) In
1256, when Warwick had to pay a fine of forty marks to the King for
a trespass, the sheriff was ordered to raise the fine both from the
townsmen and from all men of the suburb, both within and without the
liberty, who did merchandise in the city of Warwick. (Ibid. 183.) In
1431 the bailiffs of Andover were held responsible for various escapes
from prison. They were declared insolvent and the charge thrown back
upon the town. The townsmen, however, pleaded that two of the officers
charged had quite enough goods and chattels either in the town or in
the country to pay themselves, and as for the third they had never
chosen him. (Madox, 210. Other instances, ibid. 182, 184, &c.; Hist.
MSS. Com. ix. 173.) In 1456 the Mayor and Common Council of Leicester
agreed that all actions brought against them in the King’s Court by
the bailiff should be paid for by the whole town. (Hist. MSS. Com.
viii. 422.)
This method of raising money was never a popular proceeding, and in
almost every case where there is an account of goods seized from a
community or guild for the payment of ferm or fine, the sheriffs seem
to make the return that these goods remain on their hands for want
of buyers. (Madox, 188, 212, 214, 217, 218.) It is evident that the
responsibility of the private citizens was almost extinguished in
later times (see Madox, 217), at least in some cases—a fact which
may be referred to “the mayor and burgesses” replacing for official
purposes “the community,” and being licensed to hold _corporate_
property.
It is necessary to distinguish between the responsibility for the
_borough_ expenses and the responsibility for the _trading_ debts of
the burghers. In the latter case the “community” was also responsible,
but the guarantee was strictly confined to burghers and not shared
by inhabitants. For the inconvenience to which burghers were subject
by being seized for debts whereof they were neither debtors nor
pledges, see Derby. (Rep. on Markets, 58.) Mr. Maitland points out
that the doctrine that traders form a society in which each member
is answerable for the faults of the others, which is shown in early
charters, was gradually wearing out, and in 1275 a law was passed
that no Englishman could be distrained for any debt unless he was
himself the debtor or the pledge, though possibly this law still left
members of a community in the position of pledges. But long before
this law was passed all the bigger towns had already obtained charters
to the same effect. See the charter of Norwich in 1255. “We have
granted, and by this our Charter confirmed, to our beloved citizens of
Norwich, that they and their heirs for ever shall have this liberty
through all our land and power, viz. that they or their goods found
in whatever places in our power shall not be arrested for any debt
of which they shall not be sureties or principal debtors.” (Stanley
_v._ Mayor, Norwich Doc. 1884, 7.) In 1256 goods belonging to the
Norwich freemen were arrested for the debts of others that were not
free at Boston fair. Norwich however produced its charter of the year
before, making their goods free from arrest for any debt unless they
were the principal debtors, _or the debtors were of their society_.
(Blomefield, iii. 50, 51.)
Mr. Maitland (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Society, ii.
134-5) in discussing this question of the trading guarantee points out
the difference between the responsibility of the “communitas” and of
the “cives” or “burgesses” of a town, showing that the “communitas”
did not form a juristic person, while “the citizens” of a town could
sue and be sued collectively by a common name. He thinks that the
“communitas” may mean the merchant guild “though not perhaps in all
cases a duly chartered guild.” Of this there is no proof, and many
serious difficulties lie in the way of accepting the hypothesis. In
the case of Leicester, where there was a merchant guild, it is never
mentioned, the responsibility lies on the “members of the community
of Leicester,” (p. 145-7) and Thomas pleads, not that he was not
in the merchant guild, but that he was from Coventry. So also “the
whole community of Norwich” is spoken of in exactly the same way,
but in Norwich there was _no_ guild merchant, (p. 149, 152. See also
on this point Hudson’s Mun. Org. 36. Notes on Norwich in the Norfolk
Archæology, xii. “The city and feudalism.”) In Nottingham, John
Beeston (p. 153-4) brings a counter-charge against the community of
Stamford, (p. 159); he was probably one of the very numerous licensed
traders of Nottingham and not a burgher. (Nott. Rec. ii. 102-4, 240-4;
iii. 349-52.) It is important to notice the words of the charter by
which in 1255 the Nottingham burghers had obtained freedom from
arrest, “except in case the debtors are of their commune and power,
having whereof their debts may be wholly or partly satisfied, and the
said burgesses shall have failed in doing justice to the creditors of
the same debtors.” (Nott. Rec. i. 41.) For Wiggenhall, (Select Pleas,
pp. 157-8.) The mutual responsibility must be considered in connection
with the inter-municipal treaties (see Vol. ii. ch. iii.) which were
always drawn up in the name of “the community” at this early time,
and never at _any_ time in the name of the guild merchant. I have
suggested in vol. ii. (see Norwich, Lynn, Nottingham, Southampton)
another meaning of “communitas,” which seems to me to apply also to
the instances here mentioned by Mr. Maitland.