THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Dr. Kate Gordon Moore
 
 IN' 
 
 VOL. I
 
 TOWN LIFE 
 
 IN 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 MRS. J. E. GREEN 
 
 TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 Honlion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1894 
 
 fte Sight of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,. 
 LOXDOX AND BUNGAY.
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 JOHN RICHARD GREEN 
 
 MARCH, 1894 
 
 n
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN the twenty years which have passed since Mr. 
 Green drew his brilliant sketch of the early life 
 of English towns, and of their influence on the 
 history of English liberty, the study of the subject in 
 this country has advanced but little ; and it is not, I 
 think, too much to say that the pages of his History 
 still present the most vivid and suggestive picture 
 which we possess of the mediaeval boroughs a 
 picture inspired by ardent sympathy and emotion. 
 In this rapid and original survey the true proportions 
 of civic history in our national life are boldly drawn ; 
 and the burghers and shopkeepers of the towns, long 
 neglected and despised, take their place in the dis- 
 tinguished ranks of those by whom our freedom has 
 been won by their sturdy battle against oppression, 
 leading the way in the growth and elevation of 
 the English people, and carrying across the ages of 
 tyranny the full tradition of liberty. But the history 
 of this great civic revolution, which in Mr. Green's 
 day cannot be said to have existed at all, has since
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 then remained strangely neglected among us. While 
 in foreign countries the study of the origin and 
 growth of municipal institutions has been recognized 
 as of overwhelming importance, and has already em- 
 ployed the erudition and tried the ingenuity of a 
 long succession of scholars, English historians have 
 stood aloof. No English name figures in the contests 
 of the schools ; nor is any English authority called to 
 witness when a learned theory is advanced to solve 
 the riddle ; and if from time to time foreign scholars 
 attempt to draw English towns within the range of 
 their generalizations, the lack of sufficient or trust- 
 worthy materials at their disposal makes the result 
 vain and unfruitful. No country indeed has been so 
 backward as our own in municipal history, whether 
 we take it from the popular or from the scientific 
 side. The traveller who has asked at the bookshop 
 of a provincial town for a local history or even 
 for a local guide is as well able to realize the 
 distance which parts us from France, Italy, or 
 Germany, as is the student who inquires for a de- 
 tailed account of how civic life or any one of its 
 characteristic institutions grew up among us. A 
 certain number of town histories do indeed exist, but 
 they by no means always deal necessarily or even 
 mainly with the life of the borough itself. To a con- 
 siderable number of local antiquaries the buried relics 
 of the Roman dominion have proved a permanent 
 and pre-occupying interest. For the student of 
 mediaeval times the monastery and cathedral tower
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 high above the squalid market-place and thatched 
 town-hall which lie dwarfed and obscured under their 
 vast shadow; and in modern as in older history the 
 butchers and brewers who represent the secular cor- 
 porations of York and Winchester are practically bid 
 to stand aside before the presence of the spiritual 
 corporations to whom the fame of S. Mary's or S. 
 Swithun's is committed. Where ecclesiastical monu- 
 ments of historic greatness are wanting, a fervent 
 apologist may still find an excuse for the meanness 
 and dulness of the municipal story, in the fact that at 
 some time or other the town has lent its streets to 
 serve as the stage for a critical scene in the national 
 drama, and thus through the lifting of a royal 
 standard, or the tragedy of a conspicuous adventurer 
 derives a borrowed title to our interest. That the 
 story of convent and chapter and solemn pageant 
 should be told with full detail I do not question. I 
 only urge that when the tale is finished we still wait 
 for some notice of the city itself and the humble 
 details of its common life. There are, it is true, 
 signs of increasing interest in such matters, and some 
 admirable studies in our municipal records have 
 lately been made in England ; nevertheless the work 
 is still at its beginning, and how much need there is 
 for further study I have had occasion to know in the 
 course of an attempt to trace the developement of 
 some forty or fifty provincial boroughs, so as to gain 
 some idea of the condition of our mediaeval towns, and 
 the general drift of their history. The preparatory
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 work which the foreign student finds already finished 
 and organized for his use, the English worker has 
 in almost every case to do for himself. Even the 
 briefest sketch of a town history too often implies 
 the long labour of seeking out a mass of scattered and 
 isolated details, which must first be drawn together 
 into some connected sequence before it is possible to 
 study the general bearing and significance of the story 
 in relation to the growth of neighbouring boroughs. 
 Those who have attempted to find their way through 
 the uncertainty and confusion of the materials as they 
 at present exist, will probably be the most lenient 
 judges of inevitable errors of detail such as must 
 creep into the performance of so delicate and 
 difficult a task. 
 
 It is evident, indeed, from the nature of the 
 subject, that any writer who desires to give a survey 
 of provincial town life as we can now picture it 
 from printed materials scattered in county histories, 
 archaeological journals, reports of commissions, im- 
 perfect abstracts of town documents, parliamentary 
 records, charters, and stray pamphlets must inevit- 
 ably remain exposed to much correction in matters 
 of detail from experts with local knowledge. At 
 the same time it seems to me that without some 
 effort to obtain a comprehensive view of the general 
 subject, the student may leave himself open to the 
 still graver errors that spring from the want of 
 some ascertained measure of proportion, and from 
 the incapacity to distinguish in each town that
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 which is normal from that which is strange or char- 
 acteristic. The question of origins I have deliberately 
 set on one side, from the conviction that the begin- 
 nings of a society may be more fruitfully studied 
 after we know something of its actual life. Avoiding 
 therefore many dark questions, I have dealt in the 
 first volume rather with the simpler and less conten- 
 tious aspects of the growth of the borough to wealth 
 and independence. In the second volume, however, 
 the subjects which arise have long been familiar as 
 matters of acute discussion ; and it has sometimes 
 happened, that in going over again the sources 
 from which all our knowledge is derived, I have 
 found myself gradually compelled to entertain views 
 contrary to those which are commonly accepted. 
 Thus, for example, in tracing the growth of self- 
 government within the borough itself, I seem to 
 discover in the phrazes of the town records a new 
 explanation for the position of the "communitas" 
 side by side with the "cives" a problem which, so 
 far as I know, has never been really stated, and 
 the difficulties of which are in no way met by the 
 universally received interpretation. Moreovei the 
 theory of an early triumph and rapid decay of 
 democratic government appears to me impossible to 
 maintain, and I have suggested that in the growth of 
 the common council we may find some evidence of a 
 popular movement towards more effectual self-govern- 
 ment which seems to have stirred the industrial 
 classes of the fifteenth century. There are other
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 burning questions in which impetuous economists 
 have outrun the historians, and have not found it 
 premature to set in order by the help of accepted 
 theories the obscure chaos of social history in the 
 Middle Ages. In spite of their zealous efforts, how- 
 ever, the whole problem (including even the ascer- 
 taining of the facts on which it depends) of the de- 
 velopement of English commerce and manufactures 
 .and of its effects on social life, still awaits the 
 student ; and it is in the confusion and ignorance which 
 ;at present prevail, that I may find my best excuse 
 for the fact that with regard to many questions 
 such, for instance, as the relation of internal traffic to 
 free trade and protection, the general organization of 
 labour, the position of the guild towards the hired 
 worker, the attitude of the municipality to the in- 
 dustrial system, and of the capitalist to the town 
 councillor I have ventured to differ from conclusions 
 which are commonly put forward. 
 
 I would add but one word of personal explanation 
 before I close. The only training or guidance which 
 I have ever had in historical work was in a very brief 
 period during which I was able to watch the method 
 and understand the temper in which Mr. Green's 
 work was done. I never had the opportunity of 
 visiting any English towns with him, or of following 
 his studies in that direction. The most fruitful 
 lesson which remains in my memory is that of a day 
 spent in Ancona between two stages of an invalid 
 journey, when I was able to see the intense enthusi-
 
 PKEFACE xiii 
 
 asm with which, as was his habit, he made his way 
 first to the Town-hall, and from the fragments of 
 Greek and mediaeval carving built into its walls, 
 from harbour and pier, from names of streets, and the 
 cathedral crypt, he extracted century by century 
 some record of the old municipal life. It was doubt- 
 less some such remembrance as this that uncon- 
 sciously led me in the course of reading, to turn to 
 the story of the English boroughs. At the same 
 time I have no doubt that I should always have been 
 restrained from any idea of writing by my conscious- 
 ness of the entire lack of adequate preparation for 
 such a task, if I had not felt bound by an imperative 
 obligation to make the attempt. When Mr. Green's 
 work was over he asked of me a promise that I would 
 try to study some of those problems in mediaeval 
 history where there seemed to him so much that still 
 needed to be done, and so much to be yet dis- 
 covered. In this book I have made my first be- 
 ginning toward the fulfilling of that promise. Such 
 a work can only be closed with feelings of compunc- 
 tion and dismay. 
 
 ALICE STOPFORD GREEN. 
 
 14, KENSINGTON SQUARE, 
 March, 1894.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ENGLISH TOWN'S . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ,THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OP THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ... 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ... 75 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 124 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TOWNSPEOPLE 169 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 197
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM (TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE) 226 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM (TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES) 250 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM (TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES) 277 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 309 1 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 333- 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONFEDERATION 384
 
 TOWN LIFE 
 
 IN 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ENGLISH TOWNS 
 
 THERE is nothing in England to-day with which we 
 can compare the life of a fully enfranchised borough 
 of the fifteenth century. Even the revival of our local 
 institutions and our municipal ambition has scarcely 
 stirred any memory of the great tradition of the past, 
 of the large liberties, the high dignities and privileges 
 which our towns claimed in days when the borough 
 was in fact a free self-governing community, a state 
 within the state, boasting of rights derived from 
 immemorial custom and of later privileges assured 
 by law. 
 
 The town of those earlier days in fact governed 
 itself after the fashion of a little principality. Within 
 the bounds which the mayor and citizens defined with 
 perpetual insistence in their formal perambulation 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 2 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP, 
 
 year after year it carried on its isolated self-dependent 
 life. The inhabitants defended their own territory, 
 built and maintained their walls and towers, armed 
 their own soldiers, trained them for service, and held 
 reviews of their forces at appointed times. They 
 elected their own rulers and officials in whatever 
 way they themselves chose to adopt, and dis- 
 tributed among officers and councillors just such 
 powers of legislation and administration as seemed 
 good in their eyes. They drew up formal constitu- 
 tions for the government of the community, and as- 
 time brought new problems and responsibilities, made 
 and re-made and revised again their ordinances with 
 restless and fertile ingenuity, till they had made of 
 their constitution a various medley of fundamental 
 doctrines and general precepts and particular rules, 
 somewhat after the fashion of an American state of 
 modern times. No alien officer of any kind, save only 
 the judges of the High Court, might cross the limits 
 of their liberties ; the sheriff of the shire, the bailiff of 
 the hundred, the king's tax-gatherer or sergeant-at- 
 arms, were alike shut out. The townsfolk themselves 
 assessed their taxes, levied them in their own way, 
 and paid them through their own officers. They 
 claimed broad rights of justice, whether by ancient 
 custom or royal grant ; criminals were brought before 
 the mayor's court, and the town prison with its irons 
 and its cage, the gallows at the gate or on the town 
 common, testified to an authority which ended only 
 with death. 1 In all concerns of trade they exercised 
 
 1 The right of pit and gallows was never formally revoked. 
 The last case was under Charles I. (Rogers'* Agriculture and
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 3 
 
 the widest powers, and bargained and negotiated and 
 made laws as nations do on a grander scale to-day. 
 They could covenant and confederate, buy and sell, 
 deal and traffic after their own will ; they could draw 
 up formal treaties with other boroughs, and could 
 admit them to or shut them out from all the privi- 
 leges of their commerce ; they might pass laws of 
 protection or try experiments in free trade. Often 
 their authority stretched out over a wide district, 
 and surrounding villages gathered to their markets 
 and obeyed their laws ; l it might even happen in the 
 case of a staple town that their officers controlled the 
 main foreign trade of whole provinces. In matters 
 that nearly concerned them they were given the right 
 to legislate for themselves, and where they were not 
 allowed to make the law, they at least secured the 
 exclusive right of administering it ; the King and 
 the Parliament might issue orders as to weights 
 and measures, or the rules to be observed by foreign 
 merchants, but they were powerless to enforce their 
 decrees save through the machinery and with the 
 
 Prices, i. 132). The gallows at Southampton stood on the com- 
 mon ; in Colchester at the end of East Street. 
 
 1 The Inquisition de quo Warranto, Ed. I., proves that S. 
 Martin's and other villages were under the jurisdiction of 
 Canterbury; inquests at these places were held by the city 
 coroner. York had a territory of 2,700 acres. (Agric. and Prices, 
 iv. 579.) The burgesses of Dorchester claimed the right to weigh 
 all goods within twelve miles of the town. A special statute 
 was passed in 1430 "that they shall not be disturbed of their 
 right," in consequence of the Act of 1429 ordering weights and 
 measures in every town. (9th Henry YI. cap. vi.) Other 
 instances, such as Norwich, Nottingham, ic., are too numerous 
 to give. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 consent of the town. Arduous duties were handed 
 over to them by the state the supervision of the 
 waters of a river basin, the keeping of the peace on 
 the seas. They sent out their trading barges in fleets 
 under admirals of their own choosing, and leaned but 
 lightly on state aid for protection or revenge, answer- 
 ing pillage with pillage, and making their own treaties 
 with the mariners of other countries as to capture and 
 ransom and redemption of goods, and the treatment 
 of common sailors or of " gentlemen " prisoners. 1 The 
 necessity of their assent and co-operation in greater 
 commercial matters was so clearly recognized that 
 when Henry the Seventh in 1495 made a league of 
 peace and free trade with Burgundy the treaty was 
 sent to all the chief towns in England, that the mayor 
 might affix to it the city seal, " for equality and stable- 
 ness of the matter ; " and the same form was observed 
 at the marriage of the Lady Mary. 2 Two hundred 
 and twenty-six burghers sat in Parliament 3 beside the 
 
 1 The mariners of the Cinque Ports drew up treaties with 
 " French shipmen," as to ransom for mariners, sailors, or fishing 
 boats that might be captured on either side ; the people of the 
 coast were to be set free without charge, while " gentlemen " and 
 merchants were to pay whatever the captors chose to ask. The 
 shipowners and merchants of each port signed the compact ; and 
 all the towns of the coast from Southampton to Thanet joined 
 the league. The document which was drawn up was handed 
 over to the keeping of the Lord Warden in Dover, and in case of 
 dispute messengers from the Ports rode there to see its provisions, 
 or to make a copy for their own guidance. Hist. MSS. Com. 
 v. 537-8 ; iv. i. 434. 
 
 -' Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 146 ; xi. 3, pp. 12-13, 171, 113. For 
 1340 see Ashley's Arteveldes, 126-7. 
 
 3 Stubos Const. Hist. iii. 484 488. Hallam Const. Hist. iii.
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 5 
 
 seventy-four knights of the shire ; and each borough 
 freely decided for itself what the qualifications of its 
 members should be, and by what manner of election 
 they should be chosen, at a time when for country 
 folk all such matters were irrevocably settled by 
 the king's law. While the great lords with their 
 armed bands of liveried retainers absolutely ruled the 
 elections in the shires, in spite of all statutes of Par- 
 liament, the towns asserted their freedom to elect 
 without fear or favour, and sent to the House of 
 Commons the members who probably at that time 
 most nearly represented the " people," that is so far 
 as the people had yet been drawn into a conscious 
 share in the national life. 
 
 Four hundred years later the very remembrance 
 of this free and vigorous life was utterly blotted 
 out. When Commissioners were sent in 1835 to 
 enquire into the position of the English boroughs, 
 there was not one community where the ancient 
 traditions still lived. There were Mayors, and 
 Town Councils, and Burgesses ; but the burgesses 
 were for the most part deprived of any share what- 
 ever in the election of their municipal officers, while 
 these officers themselves had lost all the nobler 
 characteristics of their former authority. Too often 
 the very limits of the old " liberties " of the town 
 were forgotten ; or if the ancient landmarks were 
 remembered at all it was only because they defined 
 
 36. Gneist, who gives different figures, considers that one of 
 the greatest dangers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 
 was the irrational and meaningless increase of town representa- 
 tion. (Constitution Communale, tr. by Hippert, i. 333, 338 ; ii. 9.)
 
 6 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 bounds within which the inhabitants had the right 
 of voting for a member of Parliament ; and in cases 
 where the old boundaries now subsisted for no 
 other reason, it was wholly forgotten that they 
 might ever have had some other origin. In other 
 boroughs where the right of voting was deter- 
 mined in another way, the townspeople had simply 
 lost all remembrance of the ancient limits of their 
 territory ; or else, guided by some dim recollection 
 of a former greatness with broader jurisdiction and 
 wide-reaching subject estates, the corporation still 
 yearly " walked the bounds " of lands over which 
 they now claimed no authority. As the memory of 
 municipal life died away there were boroughs where 
 at last no one suspected that the corporate body 
 had ever existed for any larger purpose than to 
 choose members of Parliament. Knowing no other 
 public honour or privilege and called to no other 
 public service, the freemen saw in a single degraded 
 political function the sole object of their corporate 
 constitution ; the representation of the people was 
 turned by them into " a property and a commerce," 
 and this one privilege, fed on corruption and private 
 greed, survived the decay of all the great duties 
 of the ancient civic life. 1 
 
 There were it is true exceptions to this common 
 apathy, and towns like Lynn might still maintain 
 some true municipal life, while others like Bristol might 
 yet show a good fighting temper which counted for 
 much in the political struggles of the early nine- 
 
 1 Rep. of Com. on Mun. Corp., 1835, 20,21 ; 29-34; Papers relat. 
 ing to Parl. Representation, 93, 94. Vol. ix. No. 92. ii. ; 31 x.
 
 THE ENGLISH TOWNS 7 
 
 teenth century. But the ordinary provincial burghers 
 had lost, or forgotten, or been robbed of the heritage 
 bequeathed by their predecessors of the fifteenth 
 century. With the loss of their municipal indepen- 
 dence went the loss of their political authority ; and 
 the four hundred or so of members whom they sent to 
 Parliament took a very different position there from 
 that once held by their ancestors. In the Middle Ages 
 the knights of the shire were the mere nominees of 
 the wealthy or noble class, returned to Parliament 
 by the power of the lord's retainers, while the 
 burgesses of the towns preserved a braver and 
 freer tradition. 1 At the time of the Keform Bill, 
 on the other hand, a vast majority of the town 
 members sat among the Commons as dependents 
 and servants of the landed aristocracy, whose 
 mission it was to make the will of their patrons 
 prevail, and who in their corrupt or timid subjec- 
 tion simply handed back to the wealthier class the 
 supreme political power which artisans and shop- 
 keepers and " mean people " of the mediaeval boroughs 
 had threatened to share with them. 
 
 The true story of this singular growth of inde- 
 pendence in the English boroughs and of its no less 
 singular decay would form one of the most striking 
 
 1 See Paston Letters, i. 160-1, 337, 339-40; ii. 78, 28, 31, 
 35-36 ; iii. 52-3. Richard the Redeless, passus iv. The great 
 people occasionally exercised influence in towns ; Hist. MSS. Com- 
 v. 497 ; ix. 138. For various modes of voting in towns see Lynn, 
 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 146-151 ; Chichester, Gross. Gild Mer- 
 chant, ii. 48 ; Reading, Coates, 459 ; Sandwich, Boys, 402 ; 
 Exeter, Freeman, 152 ; Worcester, Eng. Guilds, 373, 393 ; 
 Bristol, Hunt, 86 ; Cinque Ports, Boy's Sandwich, 774, 796.
 
 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 chapters in all our national history. But the materials 
 for such a story, obscure, fragmentary, and scattered 
 as they are, still lie hidden away in municipal 
 archives, state rolls, and judicial records, as though 
 the matter were one with which Englishmen had 
 nothing to do. It is true indeed that the many 
 ingenious expedients which the burghers devised to 
 meet the peculiar difficulties of a past age would ill 
 serve as models for our use to-day, nor can their 
 success or failure be urged on either side of our 
 modern controversies. They tell us nothing of the 
 advantages or drawbacks of protection in our own 
 time, or of the uses of state regulation of labour, or of 
 the advisability of trade guilds. We cannot revive 
 their courts or their privileges, any more than we can 
 set up their gallows or call out modern citizens to dig 
 a moat that shall be their defence from a hostile 
 world. We cannot borrow their experience and live 
 idly on the wisdom of the dead. But there is 
 no more striking study of the perpetual adjust- 
 ment and contrivance by which living communi- 
 ties adapt themselves to the changing order of the 
 world than the study of our provincial boroughs in 
 the Middle Ages ; and Englishmen who now stand 
 in the forefront of the world for their conception of 
 freedom and their political capacity, and whose con- 
 tribution to the art of government has been possibly 
 the most significant fact of these last centuries, may 
 well look back from that great place to the burghers 
 who won for them their birthright, and watch with a 
 quickened interest the little stage of the mediaeval 
 boroughs where their forefathers once played their
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 9 
 
 part, trying a dozen schemes of representation, con- 
 structing plans of government, inventing constitu- 
 tions, with a living energy which has not yet spent its 
 force after traversing a score of generations. 
 
 There is no better starting point for the study of 
 town life in England than the fifteenth century itself, 
 when, with ages of restless growth lying behind them, 
 and with their societies as yet untouched by the 
 influences of the Renascence or the Reformation or 
 the new commercial system, the boroughs had 
 reached their prosperous maturity. It would be 
 vain to attempt any reconstruction of their earlier 
 history without having first stood, as it were, in the 
 very midst of that turbulent society, and by watch- 
 ing the infinite variety of constitutional develope- 
 ment learned to search out and estimate the manifold 
 forces which had been at work to bring about so 
 complex a result ; and no study of their later history 
 is possible without an understanding of the pro- 
 digious vitality of the mediaeval municipalities. 
 There were the workshops in which the political 
 creed of England was fashioned, where the notion of 
 a free commonwealth with the three estates of king, 
 lords, and commons holding by common consent 
 their several authority, was proved and tested till it 
 became the mere commonplace, the vulgar property 
 of every Englishman. There the men who were 
 ultimately to make the Reformation were schooled in 
 all the vexed questions between church and state, 
 and in the practical meaning of interference in civic 
 matters by an alien power, so that the final crisis of 
 religious excitement was but the dramatic declama-
 
 10 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 tion on a grand scale of lessons diligently repeated 
 class by class for many a generation beforehand. 
 There, too, long before the great national struggles of 
 later centuries between England and the continental 
 powers exalted patriotism to its highest ardour, men 
 were already inspired by the vision of the English 
 nation holding its post against the world, and by a 
 passionate allegiance to its great destiny ; and in 
 every market and harbour the love of country was 
 quickened by the new commerce with its gigantic 
 ambition to win for England the dominion of the 
 seas, its federations of merchants held together by 
 the desperate struggle for supremacy, and its hordes 
 of pirates who swept the ocean with the wild joy of 
 their Norse ancestors. There is no break in our 
 history when the old world merged into the new, for 
 the spirit of the fifteenth century was the spirit of 
 the sixteenth century as completely as it is the spirit 
 of to-day. 
 
 The towns as we find them in the fifteenth 
 century were the outcome of centuries of preparation. 
 It was by a very slow and gradual process that 
 England was transformed from a purely agricultural 
 country, with its scattered villages of dependent 
 tillers of the soil, into the England we know to-day 
 a land of industrial town communities, where 
 agricultural interests are almost forgotten in the 
 summing up of the national wealth. Our modern 
 towns, indeed, can almost all trace back their history 
 into the obscurity of a very distant past ; but their 
 record as we find it in Domesday, or under the 
 Norman kings, is simply that of little country
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 11 
 
 hamlets, where a few agricultural labourers gathered 
 in their poor hovels, tilling by turns their lord's land 
 and their own small holdings ; or of somewhat bigger 
 villages which lay at the branching of a great road, 
 at a river ford, or at a convenient meeting-place for 
 fair or market, and thus grew into some little con- 
 sequence as the centres of a small local trade ; while 
 along the coast a few seaports were just beginning to 
 draw merchants with their wares to a land that had 
 long been almost forgotten by the traders of the 
 Continent. It was not till the twelfth century l that 
 our boroughs began to have an independent municipal 
 history from the time, that is, when the growth of 
 the wool trade under Henry the First gave them 
 a new commercial life ; and the organization of local 
 government under Henry the Second opened for them 
 the way into a new world of political experiment 
 and speculation. 2 From this time all went well with 
 the municipalities for three hundred years. In the 
 course of the thirteenth century the great majority of 
 towns obtained rights of self-government, until finally 
 these grants came to an end simply because there 
 were no unenfranchised towns left. 3 Not indeed 
 that the flow of royal charters ceased, for burghers 
 who had got the first instalments of independence 
 
 1 The first mention of burgesses in the Empire is in 1066 at 
 Huy, in the bishopric of Liege. Pirenne, Dinant, 18. 
 
 2 Dr. Gross gives a list of 150 towns which had gained the 
 right of having a merchant gild most of them in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries. 
 
 3 Edward the First in the thirty years of his rule created fifty- 
 four new boroughs. In the first eighty years of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury the kings only issued nine charters of this kind.
 
 12 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 were constant in pressing for all such further privi- 
 leges as could magnify their authority or protect their 
 dignity ; and successive generations of patriotic 
 citizens gathered into their town chests under the safe 
 keeping of half a dozen locks piles of precious parch- 
 ments, each of which conferred some new boon or 
 widened the borders of liberty. Determined as it was 
 by local circumstances the struggle for independence 
 was carried on after an irregular fashion, first in one 
 town, then in another ; here the burghers pressed 
 forward riotously, and there loitered indifferently or 
 stopped discouraged on their way. Some towns were 
 allowed to elect their mayor before 1200, 1 others did 
 not win the right till three or four centuries later ; 
 Bristol was made a shire in 1375, more than a 
 hundred years before Gloucester ; and in the fifteenth 
 century there were still boroughs which had to gain 
 their first charters, or else to exchange narrow and 
 insufficient rights for full emancipation. But the 
 forward movement never ceased ; every victory 
 counted for liberty, and every success justified faith 
 and inspired new zeal. The burghers went on 
 filling their purses on the one hand, and drawing up 
 constitutions for their towns on the other, till in the 
 fifteenth century they w^ere in fact the guardians of 
 English wealth and the arbiters of English politics. 
 
 At first indeed municipal life, even at its best, 
 was on a very humble scale. The biggest boroughs 
 
 1 London was not apparently before other cities in the winning 
 of liberties. (Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 372.) There were 
 reasons enough for especial caution of Henry the Second in the 
 matter of London.
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 13 
 
 could probably in 1300 only make a show of four 
 or five thousand inhabitants, and of enfranchised 
 burgesses a yet smaller number ; a while the mud or 
 wood-framed huts with gabled roofs of thatch and 
 reeds that lined their narrow lanes sheltered a 
 people who, accepting a common poverty, traded 
 in little more than the mere necessaries of life. 2 It 
 was not till the middle of the fourteenth century 
 that the towns as they entered on a larger industrial 
 activity began to free themselves from the indescrib- 
 able squalor and misery of the early Middle Ages ; but 
 from this time forward we begin to detect signs of 
 stirring prosperity, at first under the guise of a frugal 
 well-being, and later carrying its luxury with happy 
 ostentation. In the course of the next hundred years 
 we see trading ports such as Lynn, Sandwich, South- 
 ampton, or Bristol, and centres of inland traffic such 
 as Nottingham, Leicester, or Heading, and manufac- 
 turing towns like Norwich, Worcester. York, heaping 
 up wealth, doubling and trebling their yearly ex- 
 penditure, raising the salaries of their officers, 
 building new quarters, adorning their public offices 
 and churches, lavishing money on the buying of new 
 privileges for their citizens, or on the extension of 
 their trade. And while the bigger boroughs were 
 thus enjoying their harvest of blessing and fat things, 
 the small seaports and market towns also gathered 
 
 1 Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 73, note ; Archseologia, vii. p. 
 337-347 ; Stubbs, ii. 486. 
 
 2 Burgage rents in the earliest times were accounted for by 
 the officers not in a lump sum but " as the pennies come in." 
 Rep. on Markets, 13.
 
 14 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTQEY CHAP 
 
 in their share of the general good fortune by which 
 all England was enriched. 
 
 Take, for example, the town of Colchester, where 
 from the time of the Conquest a population of about 
 2,200 had found means to live, but in those two 
 hundred and fifty years had never added to their 
 numbers. Of their manner of life we can tell some- 
 thing from the records of a toll levied on their goods 
 about 1300. One of the wealthiest tradesmen in 
 the town was a butcher, whose valuation came to 
 7 155. 2d. ; while the stock-in-hand of his brethren 
 in the trade consisted mostly of brawn, lard, and a 
 few salting tubs, though one had two carcases of oxen 
 at two shillings each, and another had meat worth 
 thirty shillings in his shop. If we add to the butchers 
 thirteen well-to-do tanners, and fourteen mercers 
 who sold gloves, belts, leather, silk purses, and needle- 
 cases, besides cloth and flannel, and one even girdles 
 (which, with their silver ornaments, were costly 
 articles), we have exhausted the list of the Colchester 
 plutocrats. In the course of the fourteenth century, 
 however, the makers of cloth came to settle beside 
 the tanners and butchers. Card-makers, combers, 
 clothiers, weavers, fullers, and dyers gathered to the 
 town, and spread their trade out into the neighbour- 
 ing villages. Wool-mongers pushed their business, 
 till in 1373 the bailiffs made the under-croft beneath 
 the old Moot Hall into a Wool Hall for the con- 
 venience of dealers, and added a fine porch with a 
 vault overhanging the entrance to the Moot Hall, 
 and some shops with solars over them. Before the 
 century had closed the population had more than
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 15 
 
 doubled. The poor houses that once lined the streets 
 were swept away, and wealthy men built shops in 
 the new style with chambers over them fronting the 
 street, and let them to shopkeeping tenants. 1 
 
 In the little trading town of Bridport we have the 
 same story. In 1319 Bridport, with its one hundred 
 and eighty burgesses, could not at a " view of arms," 
 or muster of fighting men, produce a single burgher 
 who bore bow and arrows, and sent out its motley 
 regiment equipped with the universal knife or dagger, 
 or, as it might chance, with staves, hatchets, pole-axes, 
 forks, or spears, while an aristocrat or two actually 
 bore a sword. Only sixty-seven burgesses out of the 
 one hundred and eighty paid taxes, and the general 
 poverty seems to have been extreme. The richest 
 man had one cow, two hogs, two brass platters, a few 
 hides, and a little furniture the whole worth 4 8s. ; 
 and one of the most respectable innkeepers of the 
 place owned two hogs, two beds, two tablecloths, two 
 hand napkins, a horse, a brass pot, a platter, a few 
 wooden vessels, and some malt. 2 In 1323 things 
 were a trifle better, for eighty persons were then 
 taxed, the property of some of them being valued 
 only at six shillings, and this under a system in 
 which the whole of each man's possessions was exactly 
 reckoned up his cards, yarn, shoes, the girths he 
 was making or trying to sell, even his store of 
 oatmeal. A century later, however, we find a new 
 Bridport. Traders from Bristol had settled in its 
 streets, and men of Holland and foreign merchant? 
 
 1 Cutt's Colchester, 111-117, 126-7. 
 
 - Two other inn-keepers had much the same stock-in-trade.
 
 10 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY CHAP. 
 
 and craftsmen ; and the townsfolk had grown pros- 
 perous and began to bind themselves together in 
 fraternities the brotherhood of S. Nicholas, the 
 brotherhood of S. Mary and S. James, the brother- 
 hood of the Two Torches, a brotherhood of the Light 
 of the Holy Cross in S. Andrew's, and another in 
 S. Mary's, and the brotherhood of the Torches in the 
 Church of the Blessed Mary apparently the offspring 
 of the first half of the fifteenth century. The Toll 
 Hall was repaired, the houses in the town set in 
 order, and a new causeway made. The Guild Hall 
 got its clock ; the church was rebuilt and fitted up 
 with organs, and sittings in it were let out to the 
 wealthy burghers. When, finally, a " view of arms " 
 was again held in the town in 1458, there was not a 
 single name left of those who had appeared in the 
 list of 1319. But these new traders came bravely 
 set out with bows and arrows, as well as with daggers, 
 bills, pole-axes, or spears, or marching proudly with 
 their mails, jacks, salets, and " white harness with a 
 basenet." The Bridport standard had changed, and 
 one man who came carrying quite an armoury a 
 gun, besides a bow, twelve arrows, a sword, and a 
 buckler was ordered to have twelve more arrows at 
 the next muster. ] 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Corn. vi. part i. 491-2, 478, 489. In Reading 
 at the muster roll of 1311 there appeared eight men armed with 
 sword, bow, arrows, and knife ; thirty-three with bows, arrows, 
 and knives ; and over two hundred and thirty-five (besides some 
 names lost at the foot of the roll) with hatchets and knives. In 
 1371 the town was able to raise a body of archers for service 
 abroad ; and under Edward the Sixth it sent fifty soldiers armed 
 with bills, swords, daggers, bows, and arrows, and paid each
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 17 
 
 Even towns which like Rye had known all the 
 calamities of war were only waiting for a moment 
 of peace to win their share of the common prosperity. 
 Burned by the French in 1377, burned and laid 
 desolate again in 1448, Rye long remained on -the 
 level of poverty common in the Middle Ages. In 
 1414 it sheltered a mere handful of struggling 
 people twenty-one poor householders in Nesse Ward, 
 twenty-eight in Water Melle Ward, and a somewhat 
 larger number in Market Ward equally poor ; within 
 its walls, in fact, there was but one man the lord 
 of the manor who w r as assessed at so great a sum as 
 65. 8t/. , though there was the beginning of a fashion- 
 able suburb in the Ward without the Gate, where the 
 Mayor lived with some dozen other well-to-do house- 
 holders, two of whom besides the Mayor were assessed 
 at the aristocratic figure of 65. Sd. By the end of 
 the century, however, Rye fishermen were known on 
 distant seas and Rye traders in the fairs at home and 
 abroad. London merchants had bought property in the 
 thriving town, and new quarters had sprung up with 
 names borrowed from the capital Paternoster Ward 
 and Bucklersbury Ward. In 1493 five of the 
 burghers were assessed as owning 400 each, and 
 the total value of the property possessed by the 
 inhabitants was 6,303.* 
 
 Evidence of accumulating wealth indeed gathers 
 on every side. The labour and enterprise which in 
 earlier centuries had covered England with castles 
 
 soldier forty pence " for the King's affairs into Boulogne." Hist. 
 MSS. Com. xi. 7, 171, 182. l Ibid. v. 497. 
 
 VOL. I C
 
 18 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 and cathedrals and monasteries was now absorbed 
 in the work of covering it with new towns. A 
 journey through any part of the country to-day is 
 enough to show us how ruthlessly the men of the 
 fifteenth century swept away the parish churches- 
 which their fathers had built in the fourteenth 
 century, to replace them with the big bare fabrics 
 where size and ostentation too often did service for 
 beauty, and in the building of which prosperous- 
 burghers gave more conspicuous proof of wealth and 
 lavish generosity than of taste and feeling. In 
 Canterbury and Worcester and Nottingham and 
 Bristol and a host of other towns we may still admire 
 the new houses that were being raised for the traders, 
 with their picturesque outlines and fine carved work. 
 Waste places in the boroughs were covered with 
 buildings and formed into new wards. On every 
 side corporations instinct with municipal pride 
 built Common Halls, set up stately crosses in the 
 market-place such as we still see at Winchester or 
 Marlborough, paved the streets, 1 or provided new 
 
 1 Act of Parliament for paving Gloucester, 1455 ; Fosbrooke's 
 Gloucestershire,!. 157. For Exeter in 1466; Freeman's Exeter, 
 91. For Canterbury in 1474, because the "evil report" carried 
 away by pilgrims " would be stopped if the roads were properly 
 pitched with boulders and Folkestone stone " ; Hist. MSS. Com. 
 ix. 168, 144, 174. For Southampton in 1477, after a century of 
 vain attempts to pave the streets; Davies, 119, 120; in 1384 
 a tax was levied for pavage ; in 1441 accounts were rendered 
 of paving stones provided ; payments were made in 1457 to a 
 London paviour. By the Act each citizen was ordered to pave 
 before his own door as far as the middle of the street since 
 " the town was full feebly paved and full perilous and jeopardous 
 to ride or go therein, and in especial in the High Street," so that
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 19 
 
 water-supply for the growing population. 1 If we 
 count up the new gates, and quays, and bridges, and 
 wharves, and harbours, and sluices, and aqueducts, 
 and markets of which the town records furnish 
 accounts, we are filled with amazement at an activity 
 which was really stupendous. Public duty and 
 private enterprise went hand in hand. Sometimes 
 the whole commonalty was called out to help at 
 the church-building, or the digging of a new harbour ; 
 sometimes the charity once given to religious uses 
 was turned into the channel of civic patriotism, and 
 good citizens left money to found hospitals and 
 almshouses and schools, to pave the streets, to pay 
 the tolls of their town, to fee lawyers to defend its 
 privileges, or buy a charter to protect its rights from 
 invasion. Thus it was two traders of Canterbury 
 who built in 1400 the first private bridge over the 
 river; and in 1485 a mercer from London, William 
 
 " strangers thither resorting have been oftentimes greatly hurt 
 and in peril of their lives." For Bristol in 1491 when 
 the whole town seems to have been new paved. Ricart, 47-48. 
 
 1 To take a single instance, in 1421 the water-supply of 
 Southampton was undertaken by the council, and new leaden 
 pipes provided by the grant of a burgess who had thus bequeathed 
 his money " for the good of his soul." An aqueduct was made 
 at considerable expense in 1428; 261 days' work at it was paid 
 at from 4c. to 6d. a day; over 12 more was spent on an iron 
 grating for it, and 27s. 2d. given to the plumber who fixed it ; 
 great stones from Wathe called " scaplyd stonys " were carried, 
 with loads of chalk, quicklime, pitch, rosin, solder, wax, and 
 wood. In 1490 a new well was made with a " watering-place 
 for horse and a washing-place for women." Davies, 115, 117 ; 
 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 138-40. In many towns wells were 
 repaired, enclosed with a wall and covered with a roof and put 
 under the care of wardens. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Pratt, constructed at his own expense the first main 
 drain under the Old Street to carry off the rain-water 
 into the river. 1 In Birmingham the whole community 
 formed itself into a " guild and lasting brotherhood " for 
 the doing of works of charity, and chiefly it would 
 seem for the repairing of two great stone bridges and 
 divers foul and dangerous ways on the high road to 
 Wales a work which the Corporation was too poor 
 to undertake. 2 
 
 Nor was this growth in wealth the only, or indeed 
 the most striking part of the town's history during 
 these three centuries from the time of Henry the 
 Second to the time of Henry the Seventh. Trade 
 is pretty much the same wherever it exists at all, and 
 from its narrow dominion much of human energy will 
 always make a way to escape. When Englishmen 
 had spent a measure of their force in creating a 
 nation of shopkeepers, there was still enough of 
 buoyant and exuberant strength left to elaborate 
 an art of government which has affected the history 
 of the world ; and the truly characteristic part 
 of the mediaeval story is that which enables us to 
 measure the political genius with which the fore- 
 runners of our modern democracy shaped schemes 
 of administration for the societies they had created of 
 free workers. There was much to be done in the 
 new ordering of life. 3 Already in the twelfth 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 137, 145. See Paston, i. 434 ; Hist. 
 MSS. Com. xi. 7, 169; x. 4, 529-30. 
 
 2 English Guilds, 241, 249. 
 
 3 For the contrast in this respect between the shire and the 
 borough see Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville, 356-7.
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 21 
 
 century a new force had declared itself when in France 
 the middle and lower classes for the first time found 
 a voice in literature. From that time onwards poets 
 of the people and teachers of socialism, writing in the 
 vulgar tongue for common folk, proposed startling 
 questions and boldly pressed home their conclusions. 
 Nothing was safe from their criticism ; as they dis- 
 cussed the original rights of men, the " social contract " 
 between the people and their lords, the tyranny of 
 nobles, or the rights of peasants, 1 these new thinkers 
 among the people gave warning of growing energies 
 too big and passionate to live at ease in the narrow 
 bondage of mediaeval custom and tradition. The 
 inevitable changes however came slowly, and those who 
 lived in the midst of the movement were themselves 
 unconscious of the real transformation that was going 
 on. Even at the end of the fourteenth century the 
 writer of Piers Ploughman, when he paints for us 
 the picture of the feudal world as it then was, has no 
 dream that its bondage can ever be broken, that there 
 is any escape out of the prison-house of mediaeval 
 society. For the first time we there see England, 
 not as it appeared to historians and satirists of the 
 court or the monastery, but as it looked to one 
 standing in the very midst of that vast " field full of 
 folk from end to other"- to the poet who walked 
 among the people with his heart full of charity and 
 pity, who by day mixed with the crowd at the fair, 
 or watched the bargainings in the market-place^ or 
 travelled along country by-ways and entered the 
 
 1 Luchaire, Communes Francises, 22-25. See Piers Plough- 
 man, passus i. 139-146 ; ii. 90-99 ; ix. 19-76 ; x. 223-227.
 
 22 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 hovels of the poor, and at night sat in the ale-house 
 among beggars and mendicant friars. But while he 
 shows us all the trouble and confusion of that tumul- 
 tuous crowd, the social order remains to him simple 
 and unchangeable fixed, in his belief, as firmly as 
 the decrees of God and nature could establish it. 
 He could only repeat the old time-honoured counsels 
 of work and obedience as the final remedy for all 
 social ills : " Counsel not the commons the King to 
 displease." But it was more than possible that work 
 and obedience might still leave, as it had left before, 
 life empty of all but misery. Then the last solace 
 lay in resignation. 
 
 " Yea, quoth Patience, and hente out of his poke 
 A piece of the Pater Noster and proffered to us all. 
 And I listened and looked what livelihood it were ; 
 Then was it ' Fiat voluntas tua ' that should find us all. 
 ' Have, Actyf,' quoth Patience, ' and eat this when thee 
 
 hungreth 
 
 Or when thou clomsest for cold or clyngest for drought ; 
 And shall never gyves thee grieve nor great lord's wrath, 
 Prison nor other pain for patientes vincunt." l 
 
 Such was Langland's final solution for the disorders 
 of his time. But the English were not a patient 
 people, and the problem of the reorganization of 
 society had become a very serious one towards the 
 close of the Middle Ages, and was perhaps more 
 urgent to men's fears and consciences in the fifteenth 
 century than it had ever been before, or was 
 to be again till our own day. It was a press- 
 
 1 Piers Ploughman, passus xvi. 248-255.
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 23 
 
 ing question for humble folk, for shopkeepers and 
 traders and artisans and journeymen who in the 
 absence of privilege were driven to think of liberty ; 
 and in the crowded lanes, the mean workshops, the 
 disorderly market-place, the little thatched Common 
 Hall of the mediaeval town, great principles of freedom 
 found their early home, and fought their way to 
 perfection and supremacy. It was not enough that 
 the burghers should create societies of free men 
 "gentlemen" as Piers Ploughman would have 
 said, 1 to whom the great difference that dis- 
 tinguished between man and man was not wealth or 
 poverty, labour or ease, but freedom or bondage. This 
 was the easier part of their task, and was practically 
 finished early in their history. It was a longer and more 
 difficult business to discover how the art of government 
 'should be actually practised in these communities, 
 and to define the principles of their political existence. 
 But in these matters also the burghers became the 
 pioneers of our liberties, and their political methods 
 have been handed down as part of the heritage of 
 
 1 " The Jews that were gentlemen, Jesus they despised, 
 Both his lore and his law, now are they low churls, 
 As wide as the world is woneth (dwelleth) there none 
 But under tribute and tallage as tikes and churls. 
 And those that become Christian by counsel of the Baptist 
 Are franklins and free .... 
 And gentlemen with Jesus." 
 
 (Piers Ploughman, ed. by W. Skeat for Early English Text 
 Society, part iii.; pass. xxii. 34.) I have ventured to give quota- 
 tions from mediaeval writers in modern spelling, as I am here 
 concerned neither with philology nor the history of literature : 
 and there are many to whom the old methods of spelling only 
 serve to obscure the sense.
 
 24 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 the whole people. As by degrees the multitude 
 of privileges promised and confirmed left the im- 
 portant towns with no more demands to make, they 
 turned their energies to the work of framing those 
 elaborate and highly artificial constitutions which 
 mark the highest point to which their proud and 
 self-sufficient independence had attained. Instead of 
 tamely accepting the pattern or the theory of its 
 neighbours, every town was making its own peculiar 
 experiment in the art of governing, with a vivacity 
 and a restless ingenuity proper to the culminating 
 moment of their activity. 
 
 Meanwhile by a happy coincidence the boroughs 
 were called to take part in the great movement by 
 which the House of Commons was created, at a time 
 when the discipline and experience of local self- 
 government had prepared them to exercise a very real 
 influence in the moulding of the English constitution 
 into its present form. Having for the most part 
 secured their fundamental liberties just before Simon 
 de Montfort in 1265 summoned the middle class to 
 take their share in the work of Parliament, and having 
 steadily strengthened their position during all the 
 thirty years of changing counsels and tentative ex- 
 periments which followed, they saw the representa- 
 tion of the boroughs definitely established in 1295 
 the very year after county representation had been at 
 last perfectly acknowledged. 1 If for a time they played 
 apparently a small part in political battles, if the 
 separate action of the borough members is scarcely 
 mentioned, 2 the fact still remains that throughout the 
 
 1 Stubbs, ii. 137-144, 239-244. 2 ibid. ii. 560, 671.
 
 i THE ENGLISH TOWNS 25 
 
 century during which the House of Commons was being- 
 fashioned l members sent from these free self-governing 
 communities formed almost two-thirds of that House. 
 Edward the First sent Parliamentary writs to 166 
 towns, and in the Parliament of 1399, 176 repre- 
 sentatives of boroughs sat by the seventy-four 
 knights of the shire. 2 Silent and acquiescent as 
 they were for a while, there are significant in- 
 stances to show the steady growth of their im- 
 portance, and the way in which statesmen had 
 begun to appreciate the new force with which govern- 
 ments had henceforth to reckon. 3 By the close of the 
 fourteenth century their influence was marked ; and it 
 was doubtless through its vigorous burghers that the 
 
 1 Stubbs, ii. 332-4. 
 
 2 Ibid. ii. 257; iii. 16. 
 
 8 The former devices for illegal taxation on the King's part 
 broke down when the commons looked so sharply after these 
 matters that no attempt at unauthorised taxation of merchandise 
 was made after the accession of Richard the Second. Stubbs, ii. 
 574-578. How completely the relation of King and commons 
 had been reasoned out by the people we see in Langland's 
 writings. 
 
 " Then came there a King, and ' by his crown,' said, 
 ' I am a king with crown the commons to rule, 
 And holy Church and clergy from cursed men to defend. 
 And if me lacketh to live by, the law wills that I take 
 There I may have it hastelokest; (quickest) for I am head of law, 
 And ye be both members, and I above all.' 
 
 ' On condition,' quoth conscience, ' that thou conne defend 
 And rule thy realm in reason right well, and in truth ; 
 Then, that thou have thine asking as the law asketh ; 
 Omnia sunt tua ad defendendum, sed non ad dej/rekendendum,' " 
 (Piers Ploughman, passus xxii. 467-472, 478-481.)
 
 26 TOWX LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 House of Commons in the early part of the fifteenth 
 century laid hold of powers which it had never 
 had before, nor was to have again for two hundred 
 years. 1 In the list of petitions and statutes through- 
 out the century in which their influence on legislation 
 was plainly dominant, we may look for the true 
 beginning of democratic government in England. 2 
 Indeed at a yet earlier time, when the House of 
 Commons was not seventy years old, its power had 
 been already measured and men's imaginations 
 kindled by its mighty destiny. If supreme over all 
 the King kept his state at Westminster, 
 
 " him lord antecedent, 
 
 Both their head and their King, holding with no party, 
 But stand as a stake that sticketh in a mire 
 Between two lands for a true mark " ; 
 
 if his power was absolute, and he could 
 
 " claim the commons at his will 
 To follow him, to find him, and to fetch at them his counsel," 3 
 
 yet even then Conscience warned the sovereign that to 
 frame a righteous government "without the commons' 
 help it is full hard, by my head " ; 4 and Reason 
 
 " counselled the King his commons to love, 
 For the commons is the King's treasure." 5 
 
 1 Stubbs, iii. 77 : Rogers, Agric. and Prices, iv. viii. 
 - See the description of a session of Parliament in Richard the 
 Redeless, passus iii. A.D. 1399. 
 
 3 Piers Ploughman, passus iv. 376, &c. 
 
 4 Ibid, passus v. 176. 
 
 5 Ibid, passus vi. 181. M. Jusserand (Epopee Mystique du Moyen 
 Age, 101-118), justly points out what a typical representative
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 27 
 
 The whole part however played by the towns in 
 national politics, the degree of influence they exer- 
 cised, in what ways it differed from that of the aristo- 
 cratic class, how it affected matters of administration, 
 finance, foreign policy, commercial laws, the strength 
 of the monarchy, and the forms of the constitution 
 all these questions have still to be investigated. What 
 is perfectly clear is that wise rulers in those days saw 
 the tremendous change that was taking place in the 
 balance of forces in the State, as even the most foolish 
 among them felt that the power of the purse at least 
 was passing from the country magnates to the town 
 merchants ; l and they gave expression to their convic- 
 tions by a change in the whole character of their policy. 
 To kings and statesmen the friendship of the burghers 
 even in times of comparative quiet was daily becom- 
 ing a matter of greater consequence to be bought at 
 their own price. It was no longer the nobles whom 
 they sought to bribe to their interest, but the towns ; 
 and as gifts and pensions to Court favourites declined, 
 courtesies and gracious remissions of rent were lavished 
 on the boroughs. 2 From this time, even when the 
 
 of common opinion Langland was. Compare the popular manifesto 
 of 1450. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 267.) " They say the King should 
 live upon his commons, and that their bodies and goods are his ; 
 the contrary is true, for then needed him never to set Parliament 
 and to ask good of them." 
 
 1 The burden of taxation was gradually being transferred from 
 one class to another as subsidies on moveables, and customs on 
 import and export were found more productive and more easily 
 managed. Stubbs, ii. 570. 
 
 - Reductions of rent are too numerous to give ; they occurred 
 everywhere, and were sometimes apparently bought at a consider- 
 able price. (See Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville, 366.) Loans
 
 28 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 towns had fallen to their lowest estate, their heritage 
 of power was never wholly lost, and through their 
 later humiliation and corruption we may still discover 
 the evidence of their political consequence, since the 
 measure of their influence was in fact the price set 
 on their obedience. 
 
 If such a tale of long centuries of national growth 
 ending in a satisfied maturity carries its suggestion of 
 dull monotony, we need only turn to the history of 
 towns in other times and places to discover that in this 
 very monotony is hidden a real element of singularity. 
 
 from the towns seem to have been voluntary. In 1435 the 
 Sandwich commonalty refused to lend money to the King ; and 
 further excused themselves from sending him soldiers for the 
 defence of Calais, " having all the men they can spare already 
 employed in the service of the Duke of York." (Boys, 672.) A 
 grant to the King was again refused in 1486. (Ibid. 678.) The 
 Norwich citizens got into trouble for instituting a suit to have 
 their loan returned (Blomefield, iii. 147, 152). In 1424 Lynn 
 lent 400 marks, and in 1428 the council agreed that burgesses of 
 parliament should receive from executors of the late king a hundred 
 pounds for a pledged circlet of gold because they could not get more 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 161). In 1491 the king was at 
 Bristol, where he had a benevolence of 1,800 (Ricart, 47-48). 
 At the coming of Richard the Third in 1484, York, to gain a 
 reduction of the fee-ferm, agreed to give him 100 marks in a cup 
 of gold, and to the queen 100 in a dish. A list is given of the 
 citizens who subscribed the mayor giving 20, the recorder 100, 
 and so on. The whole sum subscribed was 437 (Davis' York, 
 167-9, 174). It would be quite impossible to mention all the 
 loans, but the instance of Canterbury is curious as the first fore- 
 shadowing of the national debt. In 1438 40 was lent to the 
 king, and in 1443 50 ; in these cases private individuals 
 advanced the money in various amounts according to their taste 
 for speculation, and probably got certificates promising interest 
 and redemption at par (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. part 1, 139).
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 29 
 
 The most striking contrast lies perhaps close at hand, 
 in the brilliant and dramatic story of the communes 
 in France the shortest lived of all the feudal inde- 
 pendent lordships in Europe. 1 Of earlier origin 
 than the English, their history goes back to the 
 first part of the twelfth century, fifty years before 
 the movement had effectively begun in England ; 
 and the story of their liberties is, taken all together, 
 but a brief tale of some two hundred years, from 
 1130 to 1330. Their progress was rapid and their 
 decay as swift. Indeed decline had already set in 
 by 1223, at the very time when Norwich, Notting- 
 ham, and a number of the greater English towns 
 were just receiving for the first time powers of 
 choosing their own rulers and administering their own 
 justice. In 1280 their condition was almost hopeless, 2 
 and half a century later the life of the free com- 
 munities was over and their liberties utterly 
 extinguished, saving always the liberty to carry on 
 trade. 
 
 And yet we can only wonder that the attempt 
 lasted for two hundred years, set as they were amid 
 difficulties wholly unknown to English burghers, or 
 with the ghosts or dim reflections of which these at 
 the worst had only to contend in a kind of phantom 
 fight. What were the far-off echoes of foreign con- 
 quest or defeat heard on our side of the water, or 
 the report of an occasional local rising, com- 
 pared to the devastating wars that swept the plains 
 of France, and amid the miseries of which the com- 
 munes were struggling into life ? The necessities of 
 
 1 Luchaire, 288-D. 2 Luchaire, 64, 137.
 
 30 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 war proved fatal to local liberty, and that in more 
 ways than one. If warring kings and lords created 
 independent communities for their own purposes, 
 with the sole idea of forming fortified centres 
 capable of self-defence, such communes could hardly 
 prove strongholds of freedom, and the self-govern- 
 ment of the people soon fell in fact before the 
 requirements of military discipline. Sometimes the 
 death of freedom was brought about by more violent 
 methods ; and the trembling inhabitants who made 
 their way back from the woods to their ruined homes 
 after a town had been sacked and burned by the 
 enemy, would pray to be disenfranchised that they 
 might thus be delivered from the burdens and dues of a 
 commune which they were no longer able to maintain. 
 Abroad moreover feudalism retained the authority 
 which had been torn from it here by Norman kings, and 
 was yet more dangerous to the burghers than war itself. 
 Against the might of their feudal lord, king or noble 
 or ecclesiastic, they could make in the long run but a 
 sorry fight, and perhaps after a century of desperate 
 struggle for emancipation in which the peasants saw 
 their brethren slain in thousands, their farms devas- 
 tated, their wealth torn from them, their emigrants 
 driven back starving to plundered homesteads, the 
 outcome of all their misery was finally to gain a few 
 trading privileges by consenting to a charter which 
 once more laid them bound at the feet of their master. 
 Too often the lord avoided open violence by calling 
 political craft to his aid, and devised for his burghers 
 some form of charter which while it admirably suited 
 his own purposes robbed the communal government
 
 I THE ENGLISH TOWNS 31 
 
 of any true democratic element and made the name of 
 liberty a mockery. As for the vast number of towns 
 big and little under ecclesiastical dominion, they con- 
 tended in vain against princes of the Church whose 
 mighty state was measured on the grand scale of the 
 Continent princes with the Pope always in the back- 
 ground, ready at their complaint to fulminate the decree 
 of excommunication which left all the burghers' goods 
 at the mercy of their lord. Whether the prelate sought 
 to annihilate rebellious serfs with fire and sword, 
 whether with more subtle intention he devised some 
 cunningly delusive form of charter, or contrived to 
 hinder all the operations of free government, to thwart 
 its developement, and to check the spread of its influ- 
 ence, the tragic close was always at hand political 
 slavery and degradation. Amid the innumerable 
 troubles that compassed the French communes round 
 about, the administrative difficulties, the financial 
 cares, the public bankruptcy of town after town,, 
 the evil moments when the king's fiscal officer and 
 the starving people made alliance to destroy the 
 privileges of the burghers, civic freedom failed. 
 Time and fate were allied against the commune, and 
 the issue of the battle was decided before the fight 
 had well begun. 
 
 Against the century of growth and the century 
 of decay which made up the record of the French 
 communes, we have to set three hundred years of 
 unbroken prosperity and privilege in which the 
 English burghers added charter to charter and filled 
 their " common chests " with a regularity that knew 
 no check. It is not necessary, however, to assume
 
 32 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 that Englishmen reached that happy state wholly by 
 virtue of their native superiority ; it would perhaps 
 be truer to thank the good fortune of insignificance 
 that so long waited on them. England, in fact, was 
 lagging far away in the rear, where there was little 
 of the noise and dust of battle. It was not there that 
 the idea of municipal liberty was first proclaimed ; 
 for in the Dark Ages of riot and disorder and piracy, 
 Celts, Latins, Teutons, all the members of the 
 European brotherhood in fact, found in association 
 their natural succour against danger and aid to 
 labour ; and along the great trade routes that 
 traversed Europe the more important societies of 
 men confederated for protection and assistance were 
 formed before ever Englishmen had begun to organize 
 themselves into self-governing communities. In that 
 European drama, everything took great continental 
 proportions ; men disputed for tremendous stakes, 
 and in the long battle the mighty lords of the old 
 
 o / 
 
 world were never wholly routed, but still laid their 
 grip on the modern society that was struggling to 
 usher in a new order. In the great fight there were 
 great defeats, such as we have seen in France, and 
 liberty had to begin its course afresh and lead men 
 along new roads in search of freedom and content. 
 But we in our distant island had throughout the 
 Middle Ages all the advantages of obscurity. Accord- 
 ing to any valid method of determining our place in 
 the European order, whether by yearly income, or 
 size of merchant fleets, or strength of armies, or 
 number of inhabitants, we remained for a time after 
 the loss of Normandy and Anjou unimportant in the
 
 ir THE ENGLISH TOWNS 33 
 
 eyes of Europe of little account among the peoples ; 
 and as far as popular feeling went ourselves heedless 
 of what went on on the Continent. 1 Tranquil and 
 secure because no one took the trouble to think 
 of us while we were regardless of their quarrels, 
 we were left to learn our lessons as slowly as we 
 would, to lay sure, if lowly, foundations, to practise 
 our skill by safe experiments till our art was mastered. 
 The humble display which we made in our national 
 capacity was repeated in our municipal story. There 
 indeed the tiny dominion of the community, the 
 sparse population, the poor little treasure-box, the 
 solitary "common barge," the handful of militia 
 passing in review with their clubs and forks, present 
 a sorry figure beside the majestic state of the big 
 corporations over sea. But this humble condition 
 was their true security. Set from the first in pleasant 
 places where by conquering kings the lofty had 
 been brought low and the humble lifted up, and 
 where no enemy of invincible strength lay any longer 
 across their path, the burghers might carry on their 
 own business without care. Within the narrow 
 area enclosed by the city wall and ditch, amid a 
 scanty population scarcely bigger than that of a small 
 country town to-day, experiments which would 
 have been impossible on a great scale were tried 
 with every conceivable variety of circumstance and 
 expedient ; and the boroughs owed to their early in- 
 significance and isolation a freedom from restraint 
 
 1 M. Jusserand in his Epopee Mystique du Moyen Age has 
 well pointed out that the war with France was royal rather than 
 national. Pp. 7-9, 117. 
 
 VOL. I D
 
 43 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 1 
 
 and dictation in which real political experience 
 became possible. 
 
 Thus in England, as elsewhere, the character of 
 the nation and the mould of its political thought were 
 ultimately shaped by outward circumstance ; and 
 the forms of our freedom have been profoundly 
 affected by the way which the towns took to liberty, 
 by the manner in which they modified its expression 
 according to the peculiar conditions to which each 
 community was subject, and by the use they made of 
 their power. But since the very existence of the 
 towns as important centres of life, as well as the 
 character of their development, depends on the com- 
 plete transformation which English society underwent 
 in the later Middle Ages, I venture, before beginning 
 my real story, to give a very brief and rapid sketch 
 of the Industrial and Commercial Eevolution in 
 which mediaeval England was buried and modern 
 England born.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OF THE FIFTEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 THE history of the fifteenth century has long 
 remained but little known. It is very generally 
 regarded as the " profoundly tragic close of a great 
 epoch," and the historian looks back to the golden age 
 of the thirteenth century as the glorious time of English 
 and of European history the culminating period to 
 which all the foregoing generations slowly mounted, 
 and from whose heights the later sons of men as 
 slowly and surely declined and went backward. 
 The period of this backsliding is seen as an age 
 altogether wanting in picturesqueness and moral 
 elevation, sunk in materialism, sordid and vulgar, 
 a time of confused and indiscriminate corruption, 
 where " heart and treasure " were linked in ignoble 
 union, and the political demoralization of the people 
 was only matched by their private degradation ; and 
 the fifteenth century has long borne the heavy 
 burden of its evil reputation, while its records have 
 been left comparatively undisturbed by inquisitive 
 
 D 2
 
 36 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 search. 1 For hackneyed as the period of the Wars of 
 the Roses may seem to the superficial reader, no 
 student has yet adequately studied the secret of the 
 age in which the great revolutions of the next century 
 were being prepared the age which made possible for 
 England the revival of letters and the reformation, 
 which founded her commercial greatness, which 
 revolutionized her industrial system, which cast away 
 the last bonds of feudalism and laid the foundations 
 of the modern State. 
 
 It is indeed true that no great man has made 
 this century illustrious. No general or warrior of 
 
 1 Stubbs, Lectures on Mediaeval History, p. 342; Friedman, 
 Anne Boleyn, i. pp. 1-4 ; Gneist, La Constitution Communale, 
 trans, by Hippert, i. p. 334, &c. " England at the accession of 
 Henry the Seventh was far behind the England of the thirteenth 
 century." (Dentou, Lectures on the Fifteenth Century, 120, 118.) 
 ' This low and material view of domestic life had led to an 
 equally low and material view of political life, and the cruelty 
 which stained the Wars of the Roses was but the outcome of a 
 state of society in which no man cared much for anything except 
 his own greatness and enjoyment. The ideal which shaped itself in 
 the minds of the men of the middle class was a king acting as a kind 
 of chief constable, who, by keeping great men in order, would allow 
 their inferiors to make money in peace." (Gardiner's Student's 
 History, 330-1.) "The despondency of the English people, when 
 their dream of conquest in France was dissipated, was attended 
 with a complete decay of thought, with civil war, and with a 
 standing still or perhaps a decline of population, and to a less 
 degree of wealth." (National Life and Character, by Charles 
 Pearson, p. 130-1.) " There are fewmore pitiful episodes in history. 
 Thirty-five years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortu- 
 nate had both soured and demoralised the nation." " England 
 had entirely ceased to count as a naval power." As for the 
 burgesses, " if not actively mischievous they were sordidly inert." 
 (Oman's Warwick, 4-11, 67, 133.)
 
 II THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 37 
 
 the first rank distinguished wars which were born 
 in iniquity, and kept alive by greed. No gifted 
 statesman left his mark on the government or ad- 
 ministration of the country. Among the people 
 themselves interest in national affairs seemed dead ; 
 they made revolutions and set up new kings as 
 they were -bidden to do, and kept stores of badges of 
 the houses of York and Lancaster alike, to be ready 
 with either sign of loyalty as the fortunes of war turned 
 this way or that ; l they forgot the stirring political 
 
 1 In Ricart's Calendar in Bristol he enters duly the fact that a 
 battle had been fought and that one side or other was victorious 
 without further comment. He misplaces the date of the murder 
 of Suffolk three years, though he might well have remembered it ; 
 and he writes as a sort of after-thought in the margin of his 
 record, " and this year the two sons of King Edward were put 
 to silence in the Tower of London." (Ricart, 40-46.) In 1460 
 Norwich had its captain and 120 soldiers with King Henry in 
 the north, and all the rest of its available forces had to hurry 
 off to Edward at his accession. (Blomefield iii. 162-163.) The 
 city raised 160 for the coming of Richard the Third to the 
 city, and 140 for the coming of Henry the Seventh. (Ibid. 
 173-174.) For Nottingham, see vol. ii. There is no mention of 
 Bosworth in Canterbury, and Henry the Seventh was received 
 with the same pomp as former kings. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 145.) 
 For Bosworth, where men stood afar off waiting to join the vic- 
 torious side, see Fabyan, 672-673. The policy of the burghers was 
 the same in this respect as that of the great Churchmen, who 
 were entirely passive in the real crises of the civil war, and 
 so ready to serve every king, that not one of them suffered 
 loss from fidelity to any side. (Rogers' Agricul. and Prices, 
 iv. 9, 10.) The people in general were equally indifferent. 
 " I have read thousands of documents penned during the heat of 
 the strife, and have found only one allusion to the character of 
 the times in the earlier, and one about the later war of 1470-1." 
 (Ibid., 19.) An interesting parallel to the indifference of the
 
 38 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 ballads of former generations and sang moral ditties 
 instead. In place of the mighty theologians of an 
 earlier time there came commentators and interpreters 
 of little significance. Nor did a single religious leader 
 or reformer or scholar arise to stir the popular thought 
 or conscience : Lollardy with its questionings and criti- 
 cisms was still heard of from time to time in the bigger 
 towns and manufacturing districts, but the people 
 generally acquiesced in the demands of the authorized 
 religion and discipline. Literature was well nigh 
 lost as well as the graver kinds of learning. In the 
 beginning of the century one or two nobles had col- 
 lected libraries and brought tidings of the Renascence 
 in Italy, and later on half a dozen scholars made their 
 way to the Italian universities ; but there was neither 
 poet nor scholar to follow the masters of an earlier age. 
 In the fifteenth century the very language in which 
 Chaucer wrote was but half intelligible to the mass 
 of the people, and his tales must have been unknown 
 out of court circles. Men were content with rhymes 
 innumerable on morals, on manners, on heraldry, on 
 the art of dining, on the rules of thrift and pros- 
 perity ; and in all our history there is no time so 
 barren in literature as the reign of Henry the Sixth. 
 
 Even in a democratic age it is not easy at first 
 sight to recognise where the interest lies of an epoch 
 destitute of all that has made other times illus- 
 trious, and whose significance seems to shrink in 
 
 trading communities of the fifteenth century during the Wars of 
 the Roses may be seen in the action of the Merchants' Company 
 in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. (Lambert's Gild 
 Life, 177-178.)
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 39 
 
 comparison with the struggles and victories of the 
 ages that preceded, and the splendid achievements of 
 the age that followed it ; and historians finding 
 themselves face to face with so dreary a century 
 may have been tempted to give it a character of 
 its own for grossness, for cruelty, for any distinction 
 whatever which will at least take it out of 
 the range of the absolutely commonplace. But the 
 distinguishing mark of the fifteenth century lies 
 neither in its crime nor in its vulgarity. We must 
 judge this period in fact as a time of transition in 
 many ways extraordinarily like our own. In the 
 centuries between the Great Plague and the Eeforma- 
 tion, just as in the nineteenth century, the real 
 significance of our history lies in the advent of a 
 new class to wealth and power, as the result of a great 
 industrial revolution. The breaking up of an old 
 aristocratic order, and the creation of a middle class 
 to be brought into politics and even into " society," 
 the enormous increase of material wealth, the new 
 relation of the various ranks to one another, and the 
 failure under altered circumstances of traditional rules 
 of conduct, the varied careers suddenly opened to 
 talent or ambition, the reproach for the first time 
 attached to incompetence and poverty, the vulgar- 
 ization of literature and morality which followed on 
 their adaptation to a class as yet untrained to criti- 
 cism or comparison, the extension of a habit of 
 religion closely related to a plain morality all these 
 things recall to us many of the experiences of our 
 own days, and may make us more tolerant of the 
 unpicturesque and Philistine element whether then
 
 40 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 or now. If the chief centre of interest had once lain 
 in the offices of the royal palace it might now be seen 
 rather in the new Town Hall which was being built 
 in almost every borough in England, or in the office 
 where the mayor's clerk was busied in making his 
 copies of Magna Charta or extracts of Domesday, or 
 in translating from the old French the customs and 
 ordinances of the town, or in hunting up the rolls of 
 the itinerant judges ; or over the country-side where 
 estates were being sold and bought with the develop- 
 ment of a provincial instead of a national nobility 
 and the rise of new men to possess the old acres, 
 and where the quickening of the struggle for life 
 was reflected in the stormy conflicts and signifi- 
 cant concessions of the manor courts. The new 
 middle class of shopkeepers and farmers had indeed 
 no chroniclers and no flatterers, for it was long before 
 men could realise how rapidly and completely the 
 weight of influence was being transferred from the 
 old governing class to the mass of the governed, and 
 chroniclers still went on mechanically retailing events 
 now comparatively trivial and unimportant. It was 
 not till the next century that they turned from 
 spinning out these worthless annals to a discussion of 
 matters really important which had by that time 
 forced themselves on the dullest apprehension. 
 
 The whole interest of the fifteenth century thus 
 lies in the life of very common folk of artisans and y 
 tradesmen in the towns, and in country parts of 
 the farmers, the tenants of the new grazing lands', 
 the stewards and bailiffs and armies of dependents on 
 the great estates, who did all the work at home while
 
 n THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 41 
 
 the lord was away at the wars or at the halls of 
 "Westminster. If the century produced no great 
 administrator or statesman, it did create a whole 
 class of men throughout the country trained in 
 practical affairs, doing an admirable work of local 
 government, active, enterprising, resolute, public- 
 spirited, disciplined in the best of all schools for 
 political service. If there was no great writer, the 
 new world of the middle class was patiently teaching 
 itself, founding its schools, learning its primary rules 
 of etiquette and its simple maxims of morals, reading 
 its' manuals of agriculture or law or history, practising 
 its Latin rhymes, and building up in its own fashion 
 from new beginnings a learning which the aristocratic 
 class had been too proud, too indifferent, or too remote 
 to hand on to it. 1 If no religious revival shook the 
 country, the new society was solving in its own way 
 the problem of helping the sick and poor ; 2 it was 
 
 1 See vol. ii. ch. i. 
 
 2 In Lydd corn was given to the poor at Christmas and 
 Easter, and gifts to lepers; payments made from 1480-1485 for 
 Goderynge's daughter, "poor maid," "hosen, shoes, her keep, 
 kertyl-cloth and for making thereof; also in 1490, "paid 
 to the poor man keeping the poor child 12 pence." After 
 a long list of expenses for a thief and making stocks for him and 
 a halter, "paid for one pair of shoes to his daughter 3d." and 
 "given to the quest of women 4tZ." ; summoned perhaps in 
 reference to the daughter. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 527, 526.) In 
 Bye sums were paid to the poor on opening the box of maltotes. 
 (Ibid. 494.) For Southampton, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 112 ; the 
 steward's book in 1441 contains a list of alms, .4 2s. Id., given 
 away every week to poor men and women. (Davies, 294.) Accord- 
 ing to the usual calculation at this time in almshouses of a 
 penny a day for living, this sum would mean that the corpora-
 
 42 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 earnest in religious observance, it was framing its 
 English litanies and devising its own plans for teach- 
 ing the people an intelligent devotion. 1 The burghers 
 
 tion paid weekly for the mere subsistence of 140 persons. For 
 Bristol, Ricart's Kalendar, 72-80, 82, &c. For Chester, Hist. 
 MSS. Com. viii. 371. For Komney, Hist. MSS. Com. v. 535-6. 
 The Mayor of Sandwich had to manage the hospitals of S. 
 Bartholomew and S.' John, to appoint their officers, to audit their 
 accounts, and administer their estates made up of innumerable 
 parcels of land and houses left by pious people. (Boys, 1721, 
 526.) The municipal council of Exeter appointed every year 
 a Warden of the Poor to look after their many charitable founda- 
 tions. It had charge of Magdalen Hospital, of the Ten Cells 
 Hospital for Poor, founded in 1406 by Simon Grendon, Mayor ; 
 the Combrew Almshouse, founded by Sir William Bonville, 1408 ; 
 and an almshouse founded by John Palmer. (Freeman's Exeter, 
 175-6.) There was a municipal almshouse in Hereford supported 
 by way of payment to the corporation from ecclesiastical tenants 
 for a share in the city's privileges. (Arch. Ass. Journ. xxvii. 
 481.) In the fifteenth century bequests by burgesses for these 
 purposes were very frequent and were usually left to the manage- 
 ment of the corporation. In all large towns the mayor and 
 aldermen presided over the court of orphans. (Davies's South- 
 ampton, 239.) The indications of poor relief by the towns must 
 modify Mr. Ashley's conclusion (Economic History, I. part ii. 
 338) that " no attempt was made by the State as a whole, or by 
 any secular public authority, to relieve distress. The work was 
 left entirely to the Church, and to the action of religious motives 
 upon the minds of individuals.'"' It seems difficult to follow in 
 this connexion his distinction drawn between the craft associa- 
 tions which had or had not grown out of religious fraternities 
 (p. 325). 
 
 1 Besides the customary Latin prayers a Norfolk guild used 
 English prayers for Church and State, harvest and travellers, 
 like our Litany. (English Guilds, 111-114.) The play of the 
 Lord's Prayer was performed by a York guild. " They are 
 bound to find one candle-bearer, with seven lights, in token of 
 the seven supplications in the Lord's Prayer." " Also they are
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 43 
 
 began to perform in the national economy the work 
 which in earlier centuries had been performed by the 
 great monastic societies. The extension of trade and 
 manufacture had fallen into their hands ; they were 
 busied in the gathering together and storing up of the 
 national wealth. 1 They gave to labour a new dignity 
 in social life and a new place in the national councils. 
 From the towns came a perpetual protest against war 
 and disorder ; throughout the troubles of the fifteenth 
 century, civil war, court intrigues, the tyranny of 
 usurpers and the plots of the vanquished, local raids 
 of private revenge or of land hunger, their influence 
 was always thrown on the side of peace and quietness. 
 Art found in them patrons ; illuminators and painters, 
 architects and bell-founders, the makers of delicate 
 shrines and images, 2 engravers of seals, goldsmiths 
 
 bound to make, and as often as need be to renew, a table showing 
 the whole meaning and use of the Lord's Prayer, and to keep 
 this hanging against a pillar in the said cathedral church near 
 to the aforesaid candle-bearer." (Ibid. 137-9.) See also Hibbert's 
 Shrewsbury Guilds, 62. For Pecok as " the first author of the 
 Middle Ages who propounded reason as a judge of faith," and 
 one who " might be claimed as at once the forerunner of the 
 Erastian theory of the church, and of the Rationalist interpreta- 
 tion of its theology " ; and for the place now given to general 
 councils see Rogers's Agriculture and Prices, iv. 11-13. For the 
 first signs that the revenues of monastic houses were to be 
 devoted to other purposes. (Ibid. 101.) 
 
 1 Agriculture remained stationary during the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. It was in fact but little changed from the 
 time when Walter of Henley published his treatise until the 
 time when Fitz Herbert wrote his work about 1523 embodying 
 most of the rules which Walter had given before him. The real 
 progress lay not in the country but in the town. 
 
 2 Nott. Records, ii. 143, 145, 167, 179, 121 ; iii. 21, 29.
 
 44 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and workers in brass, whether of English birth or 
 brought from foreign parts, prospered within their 
 gates ; while their harpers and minstrels doubtless 
 had a part in the musical developement of the country 
 at a time when English artists set the fashion of the 
 best music as far as the court of Burgundy. 1 They laid 
 in fact the foundations of a new English society. The 
 men of the New Learning, the men of the Eeformation, 
 the men who revealed the New World, were men who 
 had been formed under the influences of the fifteenth 
 century. 
 
 All this activity was the outcome of the great 
 industrial and commercial revolution which was 
 passing over the country. Until the middle 
 of the fourteenth century, England had been to 
 Europe what Australia is to-day a country known 
 only as the provider of the raw material of commerce. 2 
 At the close of the fifteenth century she had taken 
 her place as a centre of manufactures, whose finished 
 goods were distributed in all the great markets of the 
 Mediterranean and of the Northern Seas. It is no 
 
 1 Clement, Jacques Coeur, 196-7. Nicholas Sturgeon was 
 ordered by the Privy Council in 1442 "to go and choose six 
 singers of England such as the messenger that is come from the 
 Emperor will desire for to go to the Emperor." Proceedings and 
 Ordinances of Privy Council, ed. Sir Harris Nicholas, 1834, v. 
 218. 
 
 2 Mr. Jacobs tells me that he has found no direct evidence of 
 Jews lending to townspeople in the twelfth century ; there are 
 only some indications such as that they sought for debtors in 
 S. Paul's ; (The Jews of Angevin England, p. 45) and that they 
 claimed to attend the assizes at Bury. (Ibid. 142.) If their 
 business lay, as it seems, with nobles and landowners, it would 
 prove the absence of any demand for capital in the towns.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 45 
 
 wonder that during a change which transformed the 
 country from a land of agricultural villages into a 
 land of manufacturing towns, and opened for her the 
 mighty struggle to become the carrier of the world's 
 commerce, the whole energy of her people, thrown 
 into a single channel, should be absorbed in accom- 
 plishing their enormous task. Every one was honestly 
 busy in learning either how to make or how to 
 sell, and in conquering the difficulties that beset 
 traders as they strove to push their way into 
 the world's market on equal or, if possible, more than 
 equal terms with competitors who had long held 
 unquestioned supremacy. 
 
 From the twelfth century wool had been the one 
 great export of England, and the one great source of 
 wealth for nobles, churchmen, farmers, even kings. 
 So important was its sale that statesmen very early 
 saw the necessity of securing for the national Exchequer 
 a share in the profits of the main national trade ; and 
 in aid of the royal treasury they devised in the first 
 half of the thirteenth century a system which was 
 quite peculiar to England, the organization of the 
 Staple. 1 
 
 The Staple was an appointed place to which alone 
 certain goods might be brought for sale, raw materials 
 such as wool, wool-fells, skins, lead, or tin, of which 
 wool was far the most important. Fixed for the first 
 hundred years in some foreign town, generally in 
 Bruges, it was shifted from place to place by Edward 
 
 1 For an account of the Staple see Schanz, i. 327 et seq. ; von 
 Ochenkowski, Englands Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im 
 Ausgange des Mittelalters, 220 ; Stubbs, ii. 446-8.
 
 46 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 the Third, who from 1353 made various experiments 
 as to establishing it in England ; but finally about 
 1390, Calais was decided upon as the most advan- 
 tageous spot. Thither every dealer had to carry 
 his wares (unless he was ready to pay a high 
 tax to the Crown, or to buy at the King's 
 price a license for free trading) ; and he must 
 carry them along certain appointed routes only 
 from Lincoln by St. Botolph, from Norwich by Yar- 
 mouth, from Westminster by London, from Canterbury 
 by Sandwich, from Winchester by Southampton, as 
 the government in its wisdom might decide. In a 
 kind of secondary sense these places where the wool 
 was gathered for export thus became towns of the 
 Staple, and certain officers, Mayors and Aldermen of 
 the Staple were appointed to control their trade. The 
 merchants' goods, first weighed at the point of de- 
 parture, must be weighed again at the port where 
 they were shipped, and sealed with the seal of the 
 Mayor of the Staple, while to check fraud there was 
 an elaborate system of official papers ,to be sent to 
 the Treasury in London and to the Staple in Calais 
 for every such transaction of weighing and toll-taking. 
 Every possible precaution was taken to maintain the 
 position of the merchants in the European market 
 by rules which practically forced the wool into the 
 hands of foreign and not native buyers, so that English 
 traders complained that their interests were sacrificed 
 to courting the patronage of the Continent. If, for 
 example, the chief Staple town was for any reason 
 moved from over sea to England, native dealers were 
 absolutely forbidden to export any Staple wares, so
 
 n THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 47 
 
 that foreigners might be forced or encouraged to come 
 and take part in the trade. Foreign dealers were 
 allowed to vote along with them for officials, and so late 
 as 1445 the English merchants vainly prayed that no 
 Stapler might take part in election of Mayor or Con- 
 stable of the Staple unless he had ten sacks of wool 
 cocketed at Calais. 
 
 In thus forcing all the export trade of the country 
 through one narrow channel the first purpose of the 
 State was merely to provide a convenient method of 
 gathering customs into the Exchequer ; and in course 
 of time it further discovered that this trading system 
 might be used as a weapon against foreign peoples in 
 case of quarrel. But the very last object of the Staple 
 organization was the convenience of the traders. Nor 
 had the merchants themselves any illusions in this 
 respect. To them the Staple seemed at its beginning 
 contrary to the liberties of Magna Charta ; l and a long 
 experience taught them how its provisions might keep 
 them shut in between the rapacity of those in author- 
 ity and the hatred of the farmers who produced the 
 wool which they sold. 2 They could however still 
 wring a rich advantage out of superficial calamity 
 the advantage to be found in monopoly and corpor- 
 ate privilege and this was developed with consum- 
 mate art. The wool trade gathered into their hands 
 was hedged round with monopolies and regulations, 
 protected by fixed prices and times of sale. The 
 concourse of customers at Calais was diligently 
 maintained ; no buyer was allowed to order his work 
 through a commission house, so that traders might 
 1 Schanz, i. 329, &c. 2 Ibid. 657.
 
 48 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 be forced to come to the market in person and 
 do their business. By the charter of Edward 
 the Third a Mayor and twenty-four Aldermen 
 chosen by the whole body of merchants absolutely 
 ruled the Staple trade, appointed officers, supervised 
 markets, made regulations as to the treatment of 
 foreigners, the duties of inn-keepers, or the general con- 
 duct of business, and administered justice according 
 to the Law Merchant with a sworn jury of foreign- 
 ers or English or both together, according to the 
 case to be tided. 1 And since the governing body had 
 general control beyond Calais, itself over all English 
 merchants, not only in Bruges but throughout 
 Flanders, while they governed in England through 
 their local officers, the power of the Staple extended 
 far and wide and brought all the scattered merchants 
 under one general organization. 2 Formidable through 
 their wealth and power, they could command the 
 support of English kings and Burgundian dukes 
 against rival traders. The profits to be made at 
 Calais tempted the landowners at home, 5 and all wha 
 were wealthy enough to pay the required dues and 
 fees flocked into their body, till the great association 
 at last included all rich wool-growers and shut out 
 only the poor farmers and people of no account in the 
 country. Their monopoly was so complete, and their 
 discipline so effective, that they could absolutely dic- 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 543 ; von Ochenkowski, 216-7. For the Law 
 Merchant see Mr. Maitland's Pleas in Manorial Courts (Selden 
 Soc.), p. 137. For Staple Statutes see 14 R. II. cap. 3, 4. 
 
 ' 2 Schanz, i. 332, 338. 
 
 :; See Paston Letters, iii. 166.
 
 II THE INDUSTEIAL EEVOLUTION 49 
 
 tate prices ; and a judicious pooling system took away 
 any temptation on the part of the members to break 
 the ranks. 1 At last against the original intentions of 
 legislators they even got into their own hands the 
 carrying of the export trade, and so long as wool 
 remained the chief export of England 80 per cent, of 
 this trade passed through their hands. 
 
 But so far as the State was concerned all this elabor- 
 ate system for the protection of the wool-trade had 
 simply grown out of the fundamental conception of 
 the Staple as a fruitful source of supply for the royal 
 treasury ; and this theory was carried out to its logical 
 issues. A fixed sum was demanded from the mer- 
 chants year by year which they had to pay whether 
 their trade was good or bad ; while in their mercantile 
 dealings they were terribly hampered by a host of 
 regulations issued as to the mint in Calais, and invented 
 by financiers who from the middle of the fourteenth 
 century were haunted by alarms as to a possible dearth 
 of gold and silver, and arbitrarily used the Staple as 
 a means of forcing the flow of precious metal into 
 England. 2 Nor was the drain of taxation at all times 
 legal and regular. Merchants paid money down for 
 the protection and favour of the king in reiterated 
 loans or gifts, whether free or forced. The Captain of 
 Calais, as head of the only standing army which the 
 English kings then possessed, advanced a kind of public 
 claim on the Staplers' wealth for the security of his 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 501. 
 
 2 Von Ochenkowski, 202, 210; Schanz, 495-500. Petition 
 of merchants in 1 442 to be relieved from these rules refused. 
 Proc. Privy Council, v. 217. 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 soldiers' pay ; and the merchants had many a time 
 good reason to tremble for their wool, and might cry 
 in vain for redress if their whole store was confiscated 
 to pay the soldiers' arrears of two or three years, or if 
 militant lords " shifted with the Staple of Calais " for 
 18,000 or so for costs of war. 1 
 
 All these burdens however could be borne so long 
 as business prospered in their hands. If a Parliament 
 like that of 1258, or a great statesman like Simon de 
 Montfort, urged that England should herself become 
 an independent and self-supporting centre of manu- 
 factures, these seemed as idle words to monopolists 
 dealing in wool with command of the world's market, 
 who saw no need to forsake their easy path to 
 wealth at a moment when the growth of manufactures 
 in the Netherlands opened a vast market for English 
 produce. In the time of Edward the Third it is said 
 that 30,000 sacks of wool were shipped every year 
 from English ports. 2 
 
 But before the reign of Edward had closed, the 
 exporters of wool knew that they had fallen on evil 
 days. Trade began to slip from their grasp. The 
 revenue they paid from their profits to the King's 
 
 1 In 1442 the merchants of the Staple of Calais begged that 
 payment should be made to the soldiers for the surety of the 
 merchants' wools. (Proceedings of Privy Council, v. 215, 216.) 
 When the lords seized Calais in 1459, " they shifted with the 
 Staple of Calais for 18,000 " to carry on the war with. After 
 Edward's accession, in 1462, the merchants claimed repayment. 
 Edward refused, and after long efforts the merchant who re- 
 presented them and had borne the chief charges died a ruined 
 man in sanctuary at Westminster (Fabyan, 635, 652-3). 
 
 2 A sack was 364 Ibs. of 16 oz. each (Schaiiz, ii. 569).
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 51 
 
 Exchequer fell in the few years from 1391 to 1411 to 
 one-fifth of its former value, 1 and was still calculated 
 at this melancholy fifth in 1449. Instead of the 
 thirty thousand sacks which they yearly counted in 
 the fourteenth century, they could not at the close of 
 the fifteenth century collect more than 8,624 sacks, 
 and in the last year of Henry the Eighth even this 
 number had shrunk to under 5,000. 2 Taxes which 
 lay comparatively lightly on them in happy days, fell 
 as an intolerable burden when their warehouses lay 
 empty, and their ranks were thinned by bankruptcy 
 and desertion. 3 At the very moment when all 
 England was being rapidly turned into a land of sheep 
 pastures for the endless production of wool, the great 
 company of the wool traders was finally and irrevoc- 
 ably ruined. 
 
 The wool, in fact, was being sold at home, and out 
 of the ruin of the merchants of the Staple the cloth - 
 makers sucked no small advantage. For the great 
 revolution in trade was rapidly being completed the 
 revolution by which England was turned from being 
 a country whose chief business was exporting wool into ^ 
 a country whose chief business was exporting cloth. 4 
 
 1 Stubbs, iii. 69, Stab. 27, H. YI. c. 2. 
 
 2 Schanz, ii. 15. 
 
 3 Under the system of paying a fixed sum in good and bad 
 years alike the poor merchants became bankrupt, and in the 
 middle of the sixteenth century the number of wool exporters fell 
 enormously (Schanz, ii. 17). An extremely interesting statement 
 by the Staplers of the causes of their decay is given by Schanz 
 in vol. ii. 565-9. 
 
 4 In the years from 1485 to 1546 general trade had increased 
 by one-third, while the wool trade had decreased by one-third 
 (Schanz, ii. 12). 
 
 E 2
 
 52 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 The people had indeed long manufactured rough cloth 
 for common use. 1 But during the reigns of the three 
 Edwards the idea had constantly gained ground that 
 by working up their own raw material 2 Englishmen 
 might easily retain for themselves the profits which 
 foreigners had till now secured, and manufacturers 
 were undoubtedly doing a considerable export trade 
 in the middle of the fifteenth century. 3 Half a 
 century later, in 1411, the very year when the 
 subsidy on wool fell to a fifth, broad-cloths are first 
 mentioned in an Act of Parliament; and from this 
 time they became the chief cloths of trade. As though 
 they had been for a while half forgotten by the 
 Exchequer, the exporters of cloth found themselves 
 free from all subsidy tax and only obliged to pay to 
 the indifferent authorities tolls that amounted to less 
 than two per cent, for natives and merchants of the 
 Hanse occupied in the trade, and less than eight per 
 cent, for aliens ; and complacently measured this sum 
 with the tolls of the Staplers the thirty-three per 
 cent, paid by merchants of the Staple, or seventy per 
 cent, by all other traders, 4 a tax which perhaps explains 
 why in 1424 Parliament had to forbid the carrying of 
 
 1 In the Paston Letters there is even in the fifteenth century 
 complaint of the quality of Norfolk cloth, i. 83. 
 
 2 Ashley's Woollen Industry, 39, afterwards expanded in his 
 Economic History, part ii., chap. iii. This book was published 
 after these pages had been printed. Riley's Mem. London, 
 149-50 ; Schanz, i. 436-440, 588-9. 
 
 3 The first charter to the company of drapers or dealers in 
 cloth in London was in 1364. 
 
 4 This statement is made by Schanz, i. 441, and his reasons 
 are given, ii. 1-7. 31 H. VI. c. 8.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 53 
 
 sheep over sea to shear them there. The manu- 
 facturers, too, made alliance with the discontented 
 wool-growers. A farmer who could sell his wool next 
 door, did not trouble to send it with vexatious 
 formalities over sea to Calais ; and in course of time 
 the cloth merchants insisted upon laws which gave to 
 them during certain seasons the first choice of the wool 
 before the staplers were even allowed to enter the 
 market. 1 
 
 Under these circumstances trade grew apace. Car- 
 racks of Genoa carried English cloths to the shores of 
 the Black Sea ; galleys of Venice fetched them to the 
 pits of the Venetian dyers ; merchants of the Han- 
 seatic League sold them in the fair of Novgorod ; 
 English traders travelled with them to the inland 
 markets of Prussia, and gave them in exchange for 
 casks of herrings in Denmark. At the close of the 
 century the English Merchant Adventurers exported 
 about 60,000 pieces of cloth yearly ; and in the be- 
 ginning of the sixteenth century the cloth dealers 
 boasted that never before in the memory of man was 
 so much cloth sold out of England. The 60,000 bales 
 rose in 1509 to 84,789 pieces, and in 1547 to 
 122,354 ; 2 and the dealers claimed further gratitude 
 and admiration of their country for the fact that 
 they had "by their industry " raised by a fifth the 
 price demanded from the foreigner. 3 Meanwhile the 
 manufacturer was also getting hold of the home mar- 
 ket, as the great religious corporations and landowners 
 
 1 4 H. VII. c. 11 ; Schanz, i. 449. 
 
 2 Schanz, i. 11 ; ii. 17, 18. 
 
 3 Schanz, ii. 571-2.
 
 54 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 who had once provided on their own estates for all 
 local wants recognized the new condition of things, 
 and instead of making cloth at home as of old, sent 
 every year far and wide across the country to the 
 great clothing centres to buy material for the house- 
 hold liveries, 1 seeking from one place the coarse striped 
 cloth of the old pattern and from another the 
 goods of the new fashion. The fine black copes of 
 worsted were favourite gifts of benefactors to 
 churches, and a patriotic Norfolk gentleman, after 
 seeing a " tippet of fine worsted which is almost like 
 silk," decided to " make his doublet all worsted for 
 worship of Norfolk." 2 
 
 Nor was the growth of manufacturing enterprise 
 confined to the making of cloth. For a couple of cen- 
 turies the iron trade had made of the Weald the Black 
 Country of those days, and had stirred the Forest of 
 Dean with the din of its seventy-two moveable forges ; 
 and now, what with the metals and what with the coal 
 of the country, " the merchants of England maintain 
 and say that the kingdom is of greater value under 
 
 1 In 1472 the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, buys from a 
 London alderman two pieces of cloth for gentleman's livery, nine 
 for yeoman's, and five for groom's, the price, 39 14s. ; from 
 a " rayrnaker " in New Salisbury he buys similar cloths in 1475 
 and 1480 ; again from Hadley, in 1499, he got eighteen pieces, 
 and russet cloths from a Cranbrooke clothier. (Hist. MSS. Com. 
 v. 436-7, 459.) Fastolfe bought cloth for his soldiers at Castle- 
 coombe, Wilts (Paston Letters). The Warden of Merton, Bishop 
 Fitz James, bought for his fellows and himself at Norton 
 Mandeville in Essex. (Rogers' Economic Interpretation of 
 History, 151.) 
 
 2 Paston Letters, ii. 235. 1465.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 65 
 
 the land than it is above." l In the reign of Edward 
 the Fourth when there was a riot among the Mendip 
 miners, and the Lord Chief Justice went down to " set 
 a concord and peace upon the forest of Mendip," it is 
 said ten thousand people appeared before him at the 
 place of trial. 2 But for all this miners could no longer 
 keep pace with the demands of the country, now that 
 new industries on all sides required metal that had 
 once gone to supply the wants of the farmer only ; and 
 though stores were brought from Sweden and Spain, 
 the price of iron increased to double what it had been 
 before the Plague. 3 Shipbuilders at the end of the 
 fourteenth century were fitting out vessels for foreign 
 as well as for English buyers. English gunsmiths 
 began to send out of their workshops brazen guns and 
 bombards superior to anything made in France, and 
 which were said to have given England its success 
 in the French war under Henry the Fifth. 4 A number 
 of towns, big and little, boasted of their bell-foundries, 
 
 1 Debate between the Heralds of France and England, probably 
 published from 1458 to 1461, translated by Pyne, p. 61. Pub- 
 lished in French by the Societe des Anciens Textes Francais. In 
 1454 the commons petitioned that silver mines in Cornwall, 
 Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, should be worked (Schanz, i. 493). 
 For coal see Paston, iii. 363. Nottingham Records, i. 145. In 
 1307 there were complaints about the corruption of London air 
 by use of coal. Cruden's Gravesend, 84-5. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 347. 
 
 ' A Rogers' Econ. Interpretation, 276. 
 
 4 Brazen pieces, invented 1340 or 1370, were first used in 
 England at the siege of Berwick, 1405 (Eng. Chron. 1377-1461, p. 
 184) ; not known in France so well (Three books of Polydore 
 Vergil's English History, 9-10 Camden Society). For the Lydd
 
 56 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 as for example London, Salisbury, Norwich, Gloucester, 
 Bridport, and others. 1 The copper- workers of Dinant 
 had traded with England since the thirteenth 
 century, and in the fourteenth century had an 
 entrepot at Blackwall ; but in 1455 the founders 
 set up their industry in England, stealing away 
 secretly from Dinant to profit by the cheaper 
 labour and ready sale in this country. 2 Flemish ex- 
 perts taught to Englishmen the art of brickmaking, 
 and native builders were setting up throughout the 
 country the first brick houses that had been seen in it 
 since the departure of the Eomans. 3 A whole series 
 of industrial experiments proclaimed the enthusiasm 
 with which the people accepted the challenge to secure 
 for themselves the profits of foreign manufacturers. 
 Artificers often more ambitious than skilful tried to 
 establish a native industry of glass painting. 4 Instead 
 of fetching from abroad carpets and the tapestry used 
 
 gun of 1456 the gunmakers were paid lls. 8d. ; the binding and 
 iron for it cost 18s. "Guns with six chambers " mentioned as 
 early as 1456 in Cinque Port towns. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. xvii.) 
 
 1 Journ. of Archsel. Association, 1871, p. 416; Hist. MSS. 
 Com. vi. 489. 
 
 2 Pirenne, Dinant, 102, 94, 95. In the fifteenth century the 
 Dinant traders sent their wares by Antwerp, not by Damme. 
 
 3 For English brick building see Rogers' Agric. and Prices, 
 iv. 440. First notice of bricks at Cambridge 1449, in London 
 1453, in Oxford 1461 ; common in eastern counties before end of 
 fifteenth century. Ibid. iii. 432, 433. The proverb, " as red as 
 Rotherham College," refers to one of the first brick buildings in 
 Yorkshire. 
 
 4 There is good fifteenth century English glass at Malvern and 
 elsewhere. But according to Dugdale English glass was forbidden 
 in the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 57 
 
 for churches, manufactories were set up at Eamsey, 1 
 whence came perhaps also some of the " counterfeit 
 Arras " which adorned the humbler tradesmen's homes. 
 Frames " ordained and made for the making of silk" 
 were at work ; 2 lace-makers and ribbon weavers begged 
 the protection of the government ; and English workers 
 sent into the market large quantities of the linen called 
 Holland from its first home. The export of raw 
 material fell altogether out of fashion. Traders no 
 longer carried skins over sea undressed to be prepared 
 by foreign labour, but had the work done by English 
 artizans at home. And whereas at the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century merchants brought beer from Prussia 
 to England, at its close they were carrying beer from 
 London to Flanders. 3 
 
 What with the inland and the outland trade, riches 
 gathered into the hands of the merchants with be- 
 wildering rapidity, and with results which alarmed 
 
 1 Turner's Domestic Architecture, 98. 
 
 - Silk manufacture in London in the fifteenth century was 
 carried on by women ; their complaints of the Lombard merchants 
 noticed in Act of 1454 (33 H. VL c. 5). A bill with the royal 
 sign manual prays that the king would grant to Dom. Robert 
 Essex his frames " ordeignecl and made for the makyngof sylkes," 
 with their instruments which now " stondith unoccupyed within 
 your Monastery of Westminster," and he will ordain workmen 
 to use them. Temp. Edward the Fourth, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 
 177. 
 
 3 Libel of English Policy. (Political Poems and Songs, com- 
 posed between 1327 and 1483, ii. ed. Wright Rolls Series.) 
 For export of English beer to Flanders, see Foedera, xii. 471 
 1492. Beer was a " malt liquor flavoured with bitter herbs," as 
 distinct from ale, made before 1445, though commonly ascribed to 
 a century later.
 
 58 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 good conservatives. A statute of Parliament passed 
 in 1455 lamented the good old days when Norfolk and 
 Norwich used to employ only six or eight attorneys 
 at the King's Court, " in which time great tranquillity 
 reigned in the said city and counties." This " tran- 
 quillity " was broken by the manufacturing and export 
 trade, for now a body of eighty or more lawyers busily 
 frequented every fair and market and assembly, mov- 
 ing and inciting people to lawsuits, and while having 
 nothing to live on but their attorneyship yet pros- 
 pered so well that a wise legislature had to order that 
 Norfolk should henceforth as of old have only six 
 attorneys and Norwich two. 1 Nor does it seem that 
 Norwich was exceptionally wicked, even though in 
 Piers Ploughman Covetousness is represented with a 
 "Norfolk nose," 2 for about the same time we read in 
 Nottingham of twenty-four rolls written within and 
 without with the pleas concerning trading questions of 
 a single year. The whole country in fact shared in 
 traders' profits from king to peasant. It is calculated 
 that in the reign of Henry the Eighth English exports 
 so far exceeded imports as to bring about 50,000 
 yearly into the country, and the balance of trade 
 inclined yet more strongly in favour of England under 
 Henry the Seventh. 3 Not only did the king lay up 
 vast treasure, but the very goldsmiths' shops in 
 London were reported by a foreign traveller to contain 
 more precious metals than all those of Kome, Milan, 
 
 1 Blomfield, iii. 160. 33 H. VI. cap. vii. 
 
 2 Piers Ploughman, Introduction to Text C, xxxi. 
 
 3 Schanz, ii. 35, 36.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 59 
 
 Florence, and Venice taken together. 1 So far as the 
 middle class is concerned evidence of accumulating 
 wealth is to be found on every side, and the masses of 
 the people in spite of the drain of war taxation shared in 
 the general prosperity. In the middle of the fifteenth 
 century Chief Justice Fortescue contrasts their state 
 with that of the French commons. " These drink 
 water ; they eat apples with bre ad right brown made of 
 rye. They eat no flesh, b ut if it be right seldom a little 
 lard, or of the entrails and heads of beasts slain for 
 the nobles and merchants of the land. They wear no 
 woollen but if it be a poor coat under their outermost 
 garment made of great canvas and called a frock. 
 Their hosen be of light canvas and pass not their knee, 
 wherefore they be gartered and their thighs bare. 
 Their wives and children go barefoot ; they may in 
 none otherwise live. . . . Their nature is wasted and 
 the kind of them brought to nought. They go crooked 
 and be feeble, not able to fight nor to defend the realm ; 
 nor they have weapon nor money to buy them weapon 
 withal. . . . But blessed be God, this land is ruled 
 under a better law ; and therefore the people thereof be 
 not in such penury, nor thereby hurt in their persons 
 but they be wealthy and have all things necessary to 
 the sustenance of nature." " In France the people 
 salt but little meat except their bacon, for they would 
 buy little salt " unless the king's officers went round 
 and forced every household to take a certain measure, 
 such as they thought reasonable. But " this rule 
 would be sore abhorred in England, as well by the 
 
 1 Italian Relation, 42-3 (Camden Soc.) ; Schanz, i. 513 ; 
 Heralds' Debate, 65.
 
 60 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 merchants that be wont to have their freedom in 
 buying and selling of salt as by the people that use 
 much to salt their meats." 1 
 
 An industrial revolution on such a scale as this 
 brought a political revolution in its train. The Eng- 
 lish population, says a writer of about 1453, "consists 
 of churchmen, nobles, and craftsmen, as well as common 
 people." It was a novel and significant division. 
 Traders and manufacturers took their places somewhat 
 noisily beside their fellow politicians of older stand- 
 ing, filling the whole land till it seems for a moment 
 as if nothing counted any more in English life save its 
 middle class a busy, hard, prosperous, pugnacious 
 middle-class. Slowly emerging from its early obscurity, 
 in this century it had arrived at power definitely, osten- 
 tatiously, carrying a proud look and a high stomach, 
 intent on its own affairs, heedless of the Court, re- 
 gardless of ministers save when it had to bribe them, 
 irreverent to the noble, the " proud penniless with his 
 painted sleeve," 3 tolerant of ecclesiastics and monks 
 only so long as they could be kept rigidly within 
 their allotted religious functions. 4 Henceforth in the 
 
 1 Plummer's Fortescue, 114-5, 132. Compare Bacon's Henry 
 the Seventh, 71-72. 
 
 - Heralds' Debate, 61, 1453-1461. 
 
 3 Richard the Redeless, passus iii. 172. 
 
 4 Brinklow's Tracts, published in the first half of the sixteenth 
 century, afford interesting illustrations of the type of radical 
 politician formed in the towns. His proposal for a single chamber 
 and the list of reforms sketched out are not more significant 
 than his criticism of parliamentary despotism and inefficiency, 
 " This is the thirteenth article of our creed added of late, that 
 whatsoever the Parliament doth must needs be well done.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 61 
 
 workshop and the market-place home politics and 
 foreign affairs were discussed from a new point of 
 view the interest of the trader and the manufac- 
 turer ; and the middle and working classes presently 
 began to fling to the winds the old state-craft whose 
 maxims had done service before their advent among 
 the makers of the national policy. 
 
 In the matter of our foreign relations we see the 
 drift of public thought and discussion reflected in a 
 pamphlet by which one of the King's ministers, 
 Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, sought to appeal to the 
 popular imagination and define our right attitude 
 to continental peoples. His Libel (or Little Book) of 
 English Policy, published about 1445, was clearly 
 designed for the vulgar use. 1 Written, as the common 
 taste of the day demanded, in rhyming form where the 
 absence of poetic art and the inspiration of a plain 
 common-sense constituted a double claim on public 
 attention, it made its frank appeal to the prejudice of 
 the stall-holder in the market and of the craftsman who 
 lived by making his homely English wares men who 
 saw in foreign products articles whose sinful extrava- 
 gance could only be matched by the worthlessness 
 
 and the Parliament, or any proclamation out of the parlia- 
 ment time cannot err .... then have ye brought Rome home 
 to your own doors and given the authority to the King and 
 Parliament that the cardinal bishops gave unto the Pope .... if 
 this be so, it is all vain to look for any amendment of anything." 
 Brinklow's Complaynt, E. E. Text Society, 35. See also pp. 8, 12. 
 1 Libel of English Policy (Political Poems and Songs, ii. 
 157-205. Roll's series, ed. Wright). The Libel was probably 
 written after 1436. The Bishop was murdered in 1450. (Agric. 
 and Prices, iv. 533.)
 
 62 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY CHAP. 
 
 that distinguished all work not turned out by an 
 Englishman. "With vigorous strokes the Bishop 
 sketched the outlines of England's trading interests 
 with every nation in Europe, and at the end of each 
 paragraph passionately drove home his moral. Laying 
 hold of the fundamental axiom that the sole and 
 undivided concern of England in all her foreign 
 relations was the protection of her commerce, he 
 maintained that so long as she kept a firm hold on 
 the narrow seas between Dover and Calais, she might 
 rule the trade of the world. For there all commerce 
 from north to south or south to north had to 
 pass through the strait gate held by her sentinels on 
 either side ; so that while an inexorable fate drove the 
 nations into her net, England safely hidden behind 
 her wall of defence, the stormy Channel, need have 
 no care so long as she looked well to her navy and 
 kept it swift to seize her prey and strong to drive her 
 enemies back from looking over the wall. At its very 
 outset the commercial society had thus its Cobden to 
 preach after his kind the doctrine of non-intervention 
 and the kingdom of the seas. 
 
 The exponents of a new home policy pressed hard 
 on the heels of the founders of a new diplomacy. 
 About thirty years after the Libel of English Policy, 
 another '"'Libel" was composed in imitation of the 
 first tract. 1 Less pretentious and elaborate than the 
 first, the new poem was probably the work of some 
 person of less exalted rank, whose converse had been 
 with the working men of the country rather than with 
 merchants of London or peers of the realm and minis- 
 1 Wriffht's Pol. Poems, ii. 282-7. Schanz, i. 446.
 
 n THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 63 
 
 ters of the King, and who was far more troubled about 
 our industrial policy at home than our commercial 
 policy abroad. His view of our position was also 
 finely optimistic. For, seeing that foreign traders 
 were bound, whether they would or no, to come to 
 us either for wool or for cloth, and thus depended 
 on England for one of the first necessaries of life, we, 
 who were put in this happy position of universal 
 provider, were clearly " by God's ordinance," destined 
 first to satisfy ourselves, and then " to rule and govern 
 all Christian kings," and make paynims also " full 
 tame " ; l and so " of all people that be living on the 
 ground " were most bound to pray and to please God. 
 The recognition of these inestimable blessings should 
 bring of course its corresponding sense of our duty to 
 sell our goods as dear as we could ; to " restrain strait- 
 ly " the export of wool so that " the commons of this 
 land might have work to the full " ; 2 and in any case to 
 export only the coarsest wool, on the working of which 
 the margin of profit must be small but a fifth in 
 fact of what might be made on good material. " The 
 price is simple, the cost is never the less ; they that 
 worked such wool in wit be like an ass." Above all, 
 the working men must be protected by law in the 
 conditions of their labour, so that " their poor living 
 and adversity might be altered into wealth, riches, 
 
 1 Compare the very similar expression of faith in a modern 
 labour paper. " To this island, small as it is, has been given the 
 work of leading the industrial organization of the world ; that is 
 to say, of governing and ordering the affairs of the world." 
 Trade Unionist, Dec. 26, 1891. 
 
 2 Compare Paston Letters, i. 531 ; Brinklow's Complaynt 11.
 
 64 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and prosperity," and that for the profit of the whole 
 realm. The growth of industry was already bringing 
 in its train a modern theory that " the whole 
 wealth of the body of the realm riseth out of the 
 labours and works of the common people. . . . Surely 
 the common weal of England must rise out of the 
 works of the common people." 1 
 
 From this time therefore the policy of England 
 was to be the policy of a great industrial state. 
 But the new way on which its people were thus striv- 
 ing to enter was not to be a way of good- will at home 
 or of harmony with the nations. Merchant and 
 burgher might remain, as they did, absolutely indif- 
 ferent to all schemes of mere military aggrandizement 2 
 such as the conquest of France, so that after the tak- 
 ing of Bordeaux by the French in 1445 not a single 
 cry was raised for the recovery of our lost possessions ; 
 and they might rather look for the extension of their 
 
 1 Pauli, Drei volkswirtschaftliche Denkschriften, s. 61, 75. 
 
 2 In 1447 exactions in England were so heavy "as that the 
 minds of men were not set upon foreign war, but vexed above 
 measure how to repel private and domestical injuries, and that 
 therefore neither pay for the soldier nor supply for the army 
 were as need required put in readiness." (Polydore Vergil, 77 
 Camden Soc.) For interruption of trade by the war, Paston, i. 
 425-6. Davies' Southampton, 252-3. The Staplers complain 
 that before the war the French bought yearly 2,000 sacks of 
 wool, now only 400 (Schanz, ii. 568). For effect of the war on 
 the salt trade, Rogers' Econ. Interpretation of History, 100. For 
 the wine trade, &c., Schanz, i. 299-300, 643-50. "It cannot be 
 brought to pass by any mean that a French man born will 
 much love an English man, or, contrary, that an English will 
 love a French man ; such is the hatred that hath sprung of con- 
 tention for honour and empire." (Pol. Vergil, 82.)
 
 n THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 65 
 
 trade to the bold enterprising genius of trading 
 companies and pirates exulting in freedom from 
 royal interference and military restrictions, and only 
 calling on the State for diplomatic aid in the case 
 where this proved convenient for the winning of 
 a commercial treaty. But the secret of peace was 
 not yet found, nor was the settlement of industrial 
 frontiers to prove simpler than the definition of 
 military borders. 
 
 For as yet England had wakened no jealousies 
 simply because she had never been a competitor with 
 other nations ; but obvious trouble lay in wait for her 
 people so soon as they were fairly swept into the com- 
 mercial struggle of the Continent, and introduced 
 by their manufactures to their first real trade disputes. 
 The weaver of the Netherlands, for example, had 
 gladly welcomed the English trader as the inexhaust- 
 ible provider of his raw material ; but it was another 
 matter when the Englishman came as a rival manu- 
 facturer laden with bales of cloth, grudging the old 
 supply of wool, and setting up stalls in Flemish markets 
 to seduce away his ancient customers. The Flemish 
 towns had seen an end to their prosperity, and towns 
 in such a case were bitter in negotiations with their 
 rivals. 1 Bruges which in the thirteenth century 
 had 40,000 looms, was at the end of the fifteenth 
 century offering citizenship at a mere trifle to draw 
 back inhabitants to its deserted streets ; Ypres, which 
 in 1408 had a population of from 80,000 to 100,000, 
 and from 3,000 to 4,000 cloth-workers, had in 1486 
 only from 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants, and twenty- 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 32-33. 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 five to thirty cloth-factories ; and in Ghent matters 
 were little better. Against all the misery of a cen- 
 tury of slow death in Flanders a misery on which 
 the English weaver throve and fattened the doomed 
 
 o 
 
 manufacturers set up hasty barriers on this side and on 
 that, taxes and tolls and municipal ordinances and 
 State decrees to shut English cloth out of Flanders, 
 which were met by angry English rejoinders forbid- 
 ding Flemish cloth in the English markets. Similar 
 difficulties followed everywhere the appearance of the 
 English trader with his goods. The Hanseatic League 
 drove him out of Denmark, and the Teutonic Order 
 banished him from Prussia. Moreover while disputes 
 of manufacturers kept the North in a tumult, com- 
 mercial quarrels disturbed the South, and English 
 merchant vessels met the Genoese or the Venetians in 
 the seas of the Levant to fight for the carrying trade 
 of the Mediterranean. No limit was set to the pirate 
 wars that raged from Syria to Iceland till a great 
 statesman, Henry the Seventh, made his splendid 
 attempt to discover through international treaties 
 the means of securing a settled order for the new 
 commercial state. 
 
 Nor was the question of home politics more easy of 
 solution. Under the steady pressure of public feeling 
 the government was gradually forced out of the early 
 simplicity of its view of regulating commerce as a 
 financial expedient in aid of the] Treasury, and began 
 to concern itself anxiously about the protection of 
 industry in the interests of the community. Cloth 
 manufacturers in particular entered on a period 
 of protected security such as the Staplers had
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 67 
 
 never known, when kings became the nursing fathers 
 of their trade, and its prosperity was considered 
 an absorbing charge to the government. But when 
 Parliament began in 1463 (almost the very year in 
 which the second " Libel" appeared) to concern itself 
 very actively with industrial problems, 1 the question of 
 trade legislation had already become extremely com- 
 plex and difficult. As soon as the village weaver 
 began to make cloth for the Prussian burgher or the 
 trader of the Black Sea instead of for his next door 
 neighbour, the old conditions of his trade became 
 absolutely impossible. The whole industry was before 
 long altogether re-organized both from the commercial 
 and the manufacturing side. The exporting mer- 
 chants, as we shall see later, drew together into a new 
 and powerful association known as the Merchant Ad- 
 venturers. Meanwhile the army of workmen at home 
 was broken up into specialized groups of spinners, 
 weavers, carders, fullers, shearers, and dyers. The 
 seller was more and more sharply separated from the 
 maker of goods. Managers and middlemen organized 
 the manufacture and made provisions for its distribution 
 and sale. The clothier provided the raw material, gave 
 out the wool to be made up, and sold again to the 
 draper. 2 And the draper "lived like a gentleman," 
 and sold to the big public, despising the lower forms 
 of trade. Old-fashioned economists and timid conser- 
 vatives looked on aghast at the accelerating changes, 
 
 1 See the series of statutes with which the reign of Edward 
 the Fourth opens. 4, Ed. IV. c. 1-8. Schanz, i. 447. 
 
 2 Ashley's Wool. Ind. 81-2 ; expanded in his Economic 
 History, part ii. Schanz, i. 445. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and declared that the country was being brought to 
 certain ruin by the reckless race of its people to 
 forsake handicrafts or the production of wealth, and 
 press wholesale into the ranks of merchants or mere 
 distributors. 
 
 With this division of labour and the quickened 
 contest for profits, there started into life rival in- 
 terests more than enough to break up the whole 
 community into groups of warring factions. The 
 " upper classes " generally, statesmen, treasury offi- 
 cials, nobles, the greater proprietors lay and eccle- 
 siastical in fact all the wealthy owners of flocks who 
 could enter the company of the Staplers and share 
 their profits desired an abundant export of wool ; 
 while the small farmers and the yeomen, shut out by 
 poverty from the association, and bitterly hostile to 
 the wealthy monopolist, sided with the townsfolk to 
 whom visions of wealth had first dawned in the 
 manufacturing industries and the export of cloth, 
 and who would gladly have kept all the wool of the 
 country at home. 1 Merchants and manufacturers 
 had their own special controversy, for while the 
 foreign trader was boasting of his energy in raising 
 the price of cloth, the middlemen and makers at 
 home, whose whole interest lay in rapid sales, com- 
 plained that people in the Netherlands would no 
 longer buy English goods owing to the increased cost, 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 446. " The caryage out of wolle to the Stapul ys 
 a grete hurte to the pepul of Englond ; though hyt be profitabul 
 both to the prynce and to the marchant also." (Starkey, England 
 in the Reign of Henry the Eighth. Early English Text Society, 
 p. 173.)
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 69 
 
 and that the English towns were thus brought to 
 destitution. 1 Moreover the great London merchants 
 were making a determined effort to force the whole 
 foreign trade of England through their warehouses 
 in London, and to shut all channels of commerce 
 save those provided by themselves ; 2 and demanded 
 that all cloth for the Netherlands, that is practi- 
 cally one-third of all the cloth then exported, must 
 be carried by the maker to London, and there 
 sold, as was averred, to the exporting merchants 
 either for credit or below cost price. 3 Here of 
 course they came into conflict with the local dealers 
 who wanted frequent and convenient markets for 
 their wares, and liberty to make their own bargain 
 
 1 Brinklow's Complaynt, E. E. Text Soc. p. 11. Schanz, i. 479, 
 note. 
 
 2 The fellowship of the mercers and other merchants and 
 .adventurers living in London " by confederacy made among 
 themselves of their uncharitable and inordinate covetous for their 
 singular profit and lucre contrary to every Englishman's liberty, 
 and to the liberty of the Mart there " made an ordinance and 
 constitution that every Englishman trading with the marts of 
 Flanders or under the Archduke of Burgundy should first pay a 
 fine to the Merchants' Fellowship in London on pain of forfeiture 
 of all their wares bought and sold. The fine was at first half an 
 old noble, and demanded by a colour of a fraternity of S. Thomas 
 at Canterbury, and "so by colour of such feigned holiness it hath 
 been suffered to be taken for a few years past." Finally, 
 however, the London Fellowship raised the fine to 20, then the 
 other merchants began to withdraw from the marts and the cloth 
 trade to suffer. On the complaint of the merchant adventurers 
 living outside London Parliament ordered that the fine should 
 only be ten marks. (12 Henry VII., cap. 6.) For the complaint 
 of the Hull traders against the merchant adventurers of London 
 in 1622 see Lambert's Gild Life, 171-2. 
 
 3 Schanz, i. 342.
 
 70 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 with foreign buyers visiting their town ; for to the 
 clothier this question of distribution was all-import- 
 ant, since it was in vain for him to increase 
 production by machinery, or by the improved 
 organization of labour, or by division of toil among 
 groups of skilled artizans, unless he could find his 
 profit in a corresponding developement of the means 
 of sale. The exporting merchants had also a 
 quarrel with the artizans, who naturally desired 
 to keep the dressing and finishing of cloth in their 
 own hands, while the merchants insisted on the ad- 
 vantages of a free trade in undressed cloth ; in their 
 judgement the cloth-dressers, seeking but their "sin- 
 gular and private wealth," forgot that more men lived 
 by making and selling cloth than by dressing it, and 
 that therefore the rapid developement of exports by 
 carrying out material in the rough to be finished in 
 the Netherlands was really for the enriching of the 
 whole realm. 1 These same dealers, however, looked 
 more leniently on the " singular and private wealth " 
 that went into their own pockets through the profits 
 of the export trade, and also found themselves set at 
 variance with the big public of consumers who were 
 always anxiously on the watch against the raising of 
 prices. At times the manufacturer had his grievances 
 against the municipal authorities, whenever he found 
 himself worried and fettered by the traditional wisdom 
 of Town Councils, who for a variety of reasons of their 
 own wanted to keep the ultimate control over his 
 trade so as to draw a profit for the town. Lastly, the 
 working class had begun to feel difficulties springing 
 
 1 Schanz, ii. 571.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 71 
 
 from the new methods of industrial organization, 
 and troubles about wages and prices and the relation 
 of employer to employed assailed the authorities both 
 at Westminster and in the municipal councils. Arti- 
 ficers of all kinds, it was constantly declared, could 
 no longer live of their occupation and were in great 
 misery ; l in fact, to judge by preambles to Statutes, 
 and the loud complaints as to his condition, the work- 
 ing man believed himself to be in such bad case as 
 to need all the aid of the State to keep him supplied 
 with employment. 
 
 This old industrial revolution in short brought with 
 it difficulties which bear to us the familiar look of our 
 own constant and persevering visitors visitors that 
 force their entrance at every breach in the accustomed 
 order by which trade is fenced round, and that appear 
 as the unwelcome escort of every new form of indus- 
 trial competition. Moreover, to add to the troubles 
 of the mediaeval legislator, the consumer of those 
 days was always insisting on his vested right to the 
 first consideration of the government, as the ultimate 
 dictator for whose benefit the whole colossal structure 
 of trade had been reared, and by whose approval 
 alone it was allowed to remain at that ambitious 
 elevation. With every fresh enterprise of manu- 
 facturer or merchant, the problem with which the 
 law-makers had to deal became more subtle and 
 complex. Driven hither and thither by the new 
 conflict of public opinion and the passion of rival 
 interests, baffled by the insoluble problem of how 
 to frame laws which should benefit equally all the 
 1 3 Ed. IV. c. 4.
 
 72 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 claimants for its aid, the government hesitatingly felt 
 its way along an ill-defined path, veering from side 
 to side according to the direction of the last impel- 
 ling force. Even Edward the Fourth had no fixed 
 policy of protection, and passed laws now on this side, 
 now on that, as the imperious necessity of the moment 
 seemed to demand. 
 
 But with a rapidly increasing trade, and with a 
 House of Commons three-fourths of whose mem- 
 bers were burghers personally concerned in these 
 questions, it was impossible to stand still ; and 
 the new industrial legislation gradually became the 
 expression not of the autocratic rule of kings, but of 
 a self-conscious government of the people. 1 A long 
 series of Statutes illustrates this great experiment. 
 The new protection devised by burghers and 
 merchants for the fostering of industry was 
 altogether different from the old protection devised 
 by a Court mainly occupied with the problem of 
 re-filling an empty Treasury. The English manu- 
 facturer and the English working man were its re- 
 cognized charge, and in their interest no measure 
 was considered too heroic and no detail too insig- 
 nificant, whether the matter in hand was the clos- 
 ing of English markets to a whole people, or the 
 decision of how big a piece of leather it might be 
 well in the interest of the shoemaking trade to allow 
 the cobbler to buy for the patching of an old boot. 
 All native trades were " protected " by laws which 
 declared that none of the wares which Englishmen 
 could manufacture at home might be imported from 
 1 Schanz, i. 618-19.
 
 ii THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 73 
 
 foreign parts, and that none of the raw material they 
 used might be carried out unwrought, or even half 
 finished, to be worked up abroad. The whole people, 
 save a few of the " great estates " and mighty men, 
 must go simply clad in honest goods of English make, 
 and so save themselves from waste, and English work- 
 ers from poverty. As to the long dispute about ad- 
 mitting foreigners to trade in England, in which the 
 King and the people had ever been in strong opposi- 
 tion, that matter was now more and more regulated ac- 
 cording to the desires of the traders. England ceased 
 to be the acquiescent host of guests who, in the 
 vulgar opinion, came to thrive and fatten on her 
 wealth ; and a determined resistance was declared 
 against the competition of strangers, till the Han- 
 seatic trader scarcely dared show his face outside the 
 strong walls of his Steel-yard citadel, and the Lombard 
 vainly struggled to protect his last privileges from the 
 assaults of his enemies. 
 
 The theory of State protection of industry grew fast, 
 and by the time of Henry the Seventh its triumph 
 was complete, and the foundations of a new national 
 policy were firmly laid a policy which was to be 
 largely guided by industrial interests and to represent 
 the claims of an elaborate industrial organization 
 established by law and built into vast proportions by 
 international agreement. The new relation of a 
 sovereign to his people in such a State was seen 
 at the end of the century in the first peaceful 
 king of England whose subjects had submitted 
 to his rule, the only English monarch till then 
 who had not been a strong leader in war and
 
 74 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. n 
 
 who had yet escaped murder or imprisonment at 
 the hands of his people. It has been the singular 
 misfortune of one of our greatest rulers, Henry the 
 Seventh, to be the first sovereign of the modern 
 pattern who ruled over Englishmen, and his memory 
 has in consequence come down to us shorn of all the 
 conventional glory that tradition had until then 
 declared proper to royalty. He has remained in 
 history as we see him in one of his portraits, a dim 
 obscure figure, sadly looking out from the background 
 of a canvas where the big blustering figure of his son, 
 set squarely in front, seems to elbow all virtue save his 
 own out of recognized existence. But in the delicate, 
 careworn, refined face with its suggestion of un- 
 recorded self-effacement, in the penetrating intel- 
 ligence devoted to the apprehending of the new 
 problems and the infinite labour spent in solving 
 them, in the inscrutable acquiescence with which, 
 'loving to seal up his own dangers," he carried 
 the burdens that were henceforth to fall to the lot 
 of kings, and the unflinching resolution of his 
 methods, we recognize a new type of royal dignity, 
 and measure the work demanded of rulers who saw 
 the power of mere personal dominion founded on force 
 gradually passing from their hands, and in the chang- 
 ing order of the world were called to take up the 
 leadership of the new commonwealth that was to be. 
 
 1 Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh, 38.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE FIFTEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 A FRENCH proverb of the twelfth century tells us 
 what the world thought in old days of the origin and 
 uses of a navy. " Point de marine sans pelerinages," 
 men said, seeing in pious penitents its means of sup- 
 port, and in the shrines of St. James or St. Peter 
 or the Holy Sepulchre its destinations. Trade in 
 those days avoided the way of the ocean, and 
 followed the well-known land routes across the 
 heart of Europe, and where the land came to an end 
 took the very shortest way over the water to the next 
 point of solid earth. 
 
 And slowly as commerce by sea developed in Europe 
 it developed yet more slowly among the English. All 
 goods that came to them from abroad were carried to 
 their shores by powerful confederations of foreign 
 merchants who controlled the great continental trade 
 routes of the north-west. The " men of the Empire " 
 or the Hanse of Cologne, masters of the highway of 
 the Rhine and of Cologne, the great seaport of the
 
 76 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Empire, commanded the whole Eastern trade which 
 then for the most part passed through Germany. 1 The 
 Flemish Hanse of London, 2 which included all the 
 great towns of Picardy and Flanders, and perhaps at 
 one time even Paris itself, carried over sea the wares 
 that were gathered from half of Europe to the great 
 fairs of Champagne. Through these two great com- 
 panies England first exchanged her wool for certain 
 necessaries such as salt and fish and iron and wood, 
 and for a few luxuries such as spices and silks from 
 the Levant. 
 
 And even when commerce swept beyond the narrow 
 seas and passed out of the hands of the men of Cologne 
 and the Flemish Hanse, it was not Englishmen who 
 took their place. If the waterway of the Ehine was 
 forsaken of half its trade as merchants of Northern 
 Italy abandoned the old route across Europe, and 
 instead of sending their goods to the warehouses of 
 Cologne despatched fleets through the Straits of Gib- 
 raltar to the ports of the Channel and to Bruges ; if 
 the fairs of Champagne languished when armies en- 
 camped on its plains and turned them into battle-fields, 
 and the Flemish Hanse of London slowly sank into 
 insignificance it was only to make way for other com- 
 petitors of foreign blood. Commerce with the East 
 throuo-h the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay was 
 
 O J J 
 
 1 The men of Cologne had a house in London as early as 1157. 
 
 - Founded before 1240 (Schanz, i. 291-3). Some interesting 
 details are given in Mr. Hudson's Notes on Norwich (Norfolk 
 Archaeology, xii. 25 ; see section on madder and woad.) For 
 merchants of Lorraine, Denmark, &c., Liber Custumarum, Nuni- 
 menta Gildhalhe Londiniensis (Rolls Series), vol. ii. part 1,
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 77 
 
 seized by the ships of Florence and Genoa and Venice. ] 
 The towns of the German Ocean and the Baltic gath- 
 ered under the banner of Liibeck into a new Hanseatic 
 League 2 which broke the supremacy of Cologne, claimed 
 the whole carrying trade of the Northern seas, and 
 opened a new line of communication with the Levant. 
 Novgorod became the centre of the Baltic trade, as 
 Alexandria was the centre of the Mediterranean traffic, 
 and the merchants of the Teutonic Hanse offered to 
 the English trader the silks and drugs of the East, 
 with skins and hemp and timber of Novgorod, and the 
 metals of Bohemia and Hungary. 
 
 The Mediterranean merchant was the great minister 
 to the growing luxury of mediaeval England. " The 
 estates and lords of the realm " and bishops and pre- 
 lates and parish priests bought from him cloth of gold, 
 rich brocades, vestments of white damask powdered 
 with gold of Venice, 3 and precious work of goldsmiths 
 
 1 In the beginning of the fourteenth century (Schanz, i. 
 113-8). 
 
 2 See Keutgen, Die Beziehungen der Hanse zu England, 40. 
 
 3 Boys' Sandwich, 375 ; Paston, iii. 436. The foreign trade is 
 illustrated by some of the things in Fastolf's house ; the Seeland 
 cloth, i. 481 ; iii. 405 brass pots and chafferns of French 
 making, i. 481 silver Paris cups, 475; iii. 270-1, 297-8 blue 
 glasses, i. 486 habergeons of Milan, 487 " overpayn of Raines," 
 489 cloth of Arras, 479 harness from Almayne, iii. 405 
 German girdles, iii. 270-1 the treacle-pots of Genoa, ii. 293-4, 
 bought of the apothecary. The merchant's marks were especially 
 noted for fear of adulteration. The grocer, or dealer in foreign 
 fruits, also sold hawks, iii. 55-6. In the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth about a dozen shops in London sold French or 
 Milan cups, glasses, knives, daggers, swords, girdles, and such 
 things. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 93. "A discourse of the common- 
 wealth of this Real me of England."
 
 78 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and jewellers, new-fashioned glass, and many other 
 fine things articles that " might be forborn for 
 dear and deceivable," grumbled the English dealer 
 in homely goods of native manufacture. The whole 
 luxurious traffic down to the " apes and japes and 
 marmosettes tailed, nifles, trifles, that little have 
 availed," * roused the bitter jealousy of the home 
 trader ; and even statesmen foretold with alarm the 
 perils that must come to the nation from a commerce 
 which filled the land with fancy baubles and vanities, 
 and carried away in exchange the precious wealth of 
 the people, their cloth and wool and tin, sucking the 
 thrift out of the land as the wasp sucks honey from 
 the bee. But in spite of the hostility of English 
 dealers needy kings anxious to win favour with the 
 great banking companies of Italy diligently encouraged 
 the trade ; and (always in consideration of adequate 
 tolls for privileges) freed merchants who came from 
 beyond the Straits from the vexatious control of the 
 Staple ; 2 allowed their vessels to put into port undis- 
 turbed at Southampton instead of being forced to go 
 to Calais ; and their agents to travel through the 
 country and buy and sell at will. 
 
 It was Florence which in the first half of the four- 
 teenth century took the lead in the trade of the 
 Mediterranean with England, 3 and whose merchants 
 
 1 Libel of English Policy ; Political Poems and Songs (Eolls 
 Series), ii. 173, 172. Fabyan, 630. See petition of burghers 
 against the Lombards, 1455, in Rot. Parl. v. 334. 
 
 2 Schanz, i. 65. Strangers exporting wool had to pay 43s. 4c?. 
 a sack, English merchants only 5 nobles or 33s. 4d. (Fabyan, 
 594-5). 
 
 3 In 1372 there is a receipt by two of the company of the Strozzi
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 79 
 
 lent to Edward the Third the money which alone en- 
 abled him to carry on the war with France. But when 
 Edward declared himself unable to pay his debts and 
 repudiated the whole of the Florentine loans ruin fell 
 on the city ; its trade was paralyzed, and commercial 
 disasters ended in political revolution. Bankers of 
 Liibeck took the place of its financiers as the Roth- 
 schilds of the mediaeval world ; and ship-masters of 
 Genoa seized the commerce which fell from its hands. 
 Though the winning of the port of Leghorn in 1421 
 brought a fresh outburst of trading activity to Flor- 
 ence, 1 though its merchants established depots and 
 banks and commercial settlements in all the great 
 towns of the North, though cargoes of wool were 
 again shipped to its harbour (one English merchant 
 alone in 1437 selling to an agent of the Albertine 
 Company wool to the value of almost 12,000), 2 the 
 supremacy of the Republic in the Mediterranean trade 
 was never restored. 
 
 For its great competitors, Genoa and Venice, were 
 now fairly in the field. Through their station on the 
 Black Sea the Genoese held until the Turkish conquest 
 the chief market in the East for European cloth ; and 
 their fleets laden with cloth of gold, silk and spices 
 of the Levant, with alum and mastick from the subject 
 islands of Chios and Phoccea, with the woad of Tou- 
 louse, and the wines of Provence, sailed to Southampton 
 
 for money from Archbishop Langham. Hist. MSS. Com. iv. part 
 1, 186. 
 
 1 Clement, Jacques Coaur, 23-4. 
 
 2 For the failure of this company in 1437 and its effect on 
 English traders, see Bekynton's Corres. i. 248-50, 254.
 
 80 TOWN LIFE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 to exchange their cargoes for English cloth, which they 
 sometimes carried back direct to the Black Sea, and 
 sometimes took on to sell at the Flemish markets, and 
 so make a double profit on their journey. 1 For their 
 world-wide business the Bank of St. George was 
 founded at Genoa in 1407, with a system of credit 
 notes of acknowledgement for money deposited which 
 could be transferred from hand to hand. 
 
 The great galleys of Venice, however, were formid- 
 able rivals of the carracks of Genoa. For Venice, 
 hidden away in the Adriatic, with nothing of its own 
 save salt to offer, showed in perhaps a higher degree 
 than any other Italian State what might be achieved 
 by a lavish system of State protection. 2 It was the 
 State that built its merchant fleets ; the State that 
 leased out the vessels every year to the highest bidders 
 for trading purposes ; the State that ordered the con- 
 duct of their business for the greatest public wealth ; 
 the State that protected them from competition by 
 forbidding its citizens to send out their spices by the 
 overland route, or to take in cloth from England that 
 had not been carried in Venetian galleys by long sea. 
 By the authority of its government Venice had been 
 made the emporium of the Mediterranean, and Italian 
 traders obediently carried cloths or tin or bales of 
 skins from England to Venice, and from Venice to 
 Corfu. Fortune favoured the most astute among her 
 wooers, and showered on Venice the coveted blessings 
 of trade. Her ships travelled far, and Italian mer- 
 chants who had once been only known in England as 
 
 1 Libel of English Policy. Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 172. 
 
 2 Schanz, i. 124-6.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 81 
 
 financial agents employed by the Papal Court to col- 
 lect the tribute due to Kome, now flocked to the 
 island on business of a very different character. The 
 harbour of Southampton was crowded with galleys, in 
 which cunning tailors sat day and night cutting the 
 bales of material bought into garments, so as to save 
 the export dues on cloth. 1 In the time of Richard the 
 Second a Genoese merchant who had leased the castle 
 as a storehouse for his wares proposed to the King to 
 make of Southampton the greatest trading port of the 
 west, and he might well have carried out his promise 
 if the London merchants had not prudently sent a 
 messenger to murder him at his own door. 2 Not- 
 withstanding the inhospitable and grudging welcome 
 given by London itself the Lombards found means 
 by the King's help to maintain a thriving settlement, 
 and in the fifteenth century the Venetian Consuls 
 gathered letters for the regular mail to Venice once 
 every month. 8 
 
 What the Venetians were to the commerce of the 
 Mediterranean that the merchants of the Hanseatic 
 League were to the commerce of the Baltic and the 
 German Ocean. A double strength had been given to 
 the confederation of towns which Lubeck had drawn 
 under its banner by its union with the Teutonic Order 
 an order which had originated in Bremen and Lubeck 
 and then settled on the Baltic to create the trading pros- 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11, 87. 11 H. IV. c. 7. Yarn and 
 unfulled cloths paid only subsidy finished cloths paid also 
 customs and measuring tax. Schanz, i. 448, note. 
 
 2 Davies' Southampton, 254. 
 
 3 Denton's Lectures, 192 ; Paston Letters, iii. 269. 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 perity of Danzig and Elbing. These Prussian cities,, 
 while they owned the Grand Master of the Order of 
 Teutonic Knights as their feudal chief, were still de- 
 pendent on Liibeck. 1 And with them were joined a- 
 multitude of towns so imposing in their very numbers 
 alone that when the ambassadors of the Hanseatic 
 League in England in 1376 were asked for a list of 
 the members who made up their vast association,, 
 they answered scornfully that surely even they 
 themselves could not be supposed to remember the 
 countless names of towns big and little in all king- 
 doms in whose name they spoke. 2 Under the strangely 
 diverse lordship of Kings, Dukes, Margraves, Counts, 
 Barons, or Archbishops, they found a link in their 
 common union in the Holy Roman Empire, and ever 
 counted England, cut off from that great common- 
 wealth, as a "foreign" nation. 3 
 
 In war or in commercial negotiations this mighty 
 confederation, with its members disciplined to act 
 together as one body, dealt proudly as a nation on 
 equal terms with other peoples, and in the strength 
 of its united corporation it was in fact a far more 
 formidable force than the jealous and isolated Ee- 
 publics of the South. Denmark was laid at its feet 
 by a triumphant war. Norway was held in complete 
 subjection. It forced the English traders in the North 
 
 1 Pauli's Pictures, 126-132. 2 Keutgen, 41. 
 
 3 Keutgen, 41. Dinant was the only town outside German- 
 speaking countries that belonged to the Hanseatic League. It 
 entered the League in the middle of the fourteenth century as a 
 sort of external member only sharing its privileges in England 
 and never voting in its assemblies tolerated rather than holding: 
 its right by formal grant. Pirenne, Dinant, 97-102.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 83 
 
 Sea to bow to its policy and fight at its bidding. So 
 powerful was the League in the fourteenth century, 
 that when Edward the Third had ruined the banks of 
 Florence it was the merchants of Liibeck who became 
 his money-lenders ; they were made the farmers of 
 the English wool-tax ; they rented the mines of the 
 northern counties and the tin- works of Cornwall. 1 The 
 whole carrying trade of the northern seas lay in their 
 hands. It was vessels of the Hanse that sailed from 
 Hull or from Boston to Bergen with English wares and 
 brought back cargoes of salt fish; 2 that fetched iron 
 from Sweden, and wine from the Rhine vineyards, and 
 oranges and spices and foreign fruits from Bruges ; 
 and that carried out the English woollen cloths to 
 Russia and the Baltic ports, and brought back wood, 
 tin, potash', skins, and furs. Within the strong de- 
 fences of their Steel-yard 3 on the banks of the Thames 
 by London Bridge, the advance guard of the League 
 lived under a sort of military discipline, and held 
 their own by force of the King's protection against 
 the hatred of London traders and burghers, which 
 now and then burst into violent riots. 
 
 Thus throughout the fourteenth century it was 
 strangers who held the carrying trade to England 
 along the two great commercial routes the passage 
 by Gibraltar to the harbours of Italy and thence to 
 Alexandria, and the passage by the Sound to the 
 Baltic ports and so to Novgorod. All the profits of 
 transit as of barter were secured by alien dealers who 
 travelled from village to village throughout the coun- 
 
 1 Keutgen, 5, 30. 2 Keutgen, 14-18. 
 
 3 For a description of the Steel-yard see Pauli's Pictures. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 try in search of wool or cloth to freight the foreign 
 vessels that lay in every harbour vessels bigger and 
 better built for commerce than any of which England 
 could boast. 1 Moreover, the English government was 
 content to have it so, and Kings who wanted to build 
 up alliances for their foreign wars, or to replenish 
 their failing treasury at home, in all commercial regu- 
 lations showed their favour mainly to foreign traders 
 and left the native shipowner to do as best he could 
 for himself. Once, indeed, in the reign of Richard 
 the Second, a solitary attempt was made to encourage 
 the shipping industry, and the first Navigation Act 
 passed in England ordered " that none of the King's 
 liege people do from henceforth ship any merchandise 
 in going out or coming within the realm of England 
 but only in ships of the King's liegance." 2 This 
 Act, however, after the fashion of the time, was only 
 to be in force for a few months ; and after very brief 
 experience Parliament wisely decided that the law 
 need only be obeyed when " the ships in the parts 
 where the said merchants shall happen to dwell be 
 found able and sufficient . . . and otherwise it shall 
 be lawful to hire other ships convenient." 3 With 
 this the experiment of State protection came to an 
 end for the next century ; and against the great 
 
 1 The ordinary size of French ships seems to have been 1,000 
 or 1,200 tons. (Heralds' Debate, 51-2.) Cannyngs, of Bristol, 
 had in his little fleet vessels of 900, 500, or 400 tons. (Cruden's 
 Gravesend, 131.) The " Harry Grace a Dieu," built at Woolwich, 
 1512, was of 1,500 tons, and cost 6,472. (Ibid. 143-9.) 
 
 2 1382 ; 5 Richard II., Stat. 1, c. 3. See Schanz, i. 360, for 
 the scope of this law. 
 
 3 6 Richard II., Stat. 1, c. 8.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 85 
 
 confederations and State-protected navies of the 
 Continent English merchants were left to wage singly 
 as best they could their private and adventurous war. 
 English shipping, indeed, so far as it existed at all, 
 may be said to have existed in spite of the law. 
 There was no navy whatever in any national sense. 
 A few balingers * and little coasting vessels lay in the 
 various ports some of them belonging to private 
 merchants, some to the town communities and when 
 the King wanted ships for the public service, whether 
 it was to fish for herrings for his household or to fight 
 the French, he simply demanded such vessels as he 
 needed in any harbour, kept them and their crews 
 waiting on his will for weeks or months, sent them 
 wherever he chose, and laid all costs on the town or 
 the owner's shoulders. 2 Moreover, the unlucky mer- 
 chant forfeited his ship to the Crown for any accident 
 
 1 A small war vessel with probably about forty sailors, ten 
 men-at-arms, and ten archers. Nott. Rec. i. 444. 
 
 2 Southampton had to keep a ship, " le Grace de Dieu," at its 
 own expense for the king's service. In the last year of Henry 
 the Sixth its master received from the mayor 31 10s. Qd. In 
 the first year of Edward the Fourth the mayor paid for the 
 victualling and custody of the ship 68 5s. lOd. In 1470 there 
 was a great deal of difficulty about the matter. The king ordered 
 certain payments to be made for the ship which the town for 
 some months absolutely refused to carry out. The sheriff at last 
 stepped into the breach and paid the sums due from money in his 
 own office, and the next year the town was forced by the king to 
 refund what he had spent. Three successive sheriffs were in 
 difficulties about this dispute between the king and the town. 
 They made payments as best they could, and were afterwards 
 given indemnity for the sums they spent. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi 
 3, 98-100 ; Da vies, 77. See also H.M.C. xi. 3, 215-16, 188-191, 
 221-2 ; Ibid. iv. 1, p. 426, 429-31 ; Ibid. v. 517-18, 521, 494 ;
 
 6 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 that might happen on it if a man died, or fell 
 overboard, or if it struck another vessel or touched 
 a rock. The masters might suffer ruin, or in mere 
 self-defence give up the owning of ships, and the 
 sailors might forsake the sea and turn to other occu- 
 pations to escape being impressed for war : govern- 
 ment interference to regulate wages only sent men to 
 take service at more tempting pay in foreign boats. 1 
 We cannot wonder that towards the end of the four- 
 teenth century it seems to have been thought more 
 profitable under these conditions to make ships for 
 others than to own them, and that builders were selling 
 their vessels to aliens, and these aliens " by reason of 
 the excessive profits thence arising have often sold the 
 same to the enemies of the realm." 2 Henry the Fifth, 
 indeed, proposed to build up a royal navy, but his plans 
 were cut short by his death and his ships sold under 
 Henry the Sixth, and matters went on as before. 3 
 
 Boys' Sandwich, 663; Nottingham Eecords, i. 196; Paston 
 Letters, ii. 100-105 ; Hot. Parl. i. 414, ii. 306-7.) Full accounts 
 of the making of a barge in Ipswich in 1295 are given in Hist. 
 MSS. Com. ix. 257-8. 
 
 J Schanz, i. 356-7, 362, 367. On page 357 he quotes from a 
 petition of the commons in 1371 (Rot. Parl. ii. 306-7) to prove 
 that the one result of the foreign policy of Edward the First was 
 the narrowing of town franchises, and consequent decline of the 
 navy. If the petition is read to the close the passage seems to 
 be merely a piece of fine writing to arrest attention, and the town 
 franchises are not mentioned again when the king asks to have 
 the real grievances stated. In the second petition (Rot. Parl. ii. 
 33i!) the gist of the complaint is that foreign merchants are 
 allowed to sell and buy in England, which is represented as a 
 loss of all their franchises. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 501. 
 
 3 Edward the Fourth made one futile attempt to revive the
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 87 
 
 English traders, however, did not sit down idly 
 to wait for State protection. 1 Already in the middle 
 of the fourteenth century a new life was stirring 
 in the sea-ports, and before long every one of them 
 began to send its contingent to the host that went 
 out for the conquest of the sea. Towns big and 
 little were creating or strengthening their fleets, 
 made up either of the "common barges" of the 
 community, or the private ships of their trading 
 companies. Shipbuilding was dear in England from 
 the want of wood in the country as well as of iron 
 suitable for the purpose, and cost, if we may believe 
 a contemporary observer, twice as much as in France. 2 
 So poor communities like Lydd that could not afford 
 big ventures made shift by hiring vessels from 
 Britanny, Sandwich, or London, and fitting them out 
 as economically as might be, with an old wine-pipe 
 sawed in half to serve for a bread barrel. 3 On the 
 other hand, prosperous ports like Lynn added large 
 sums year after year to the town budget for shipping. 4 
 A far poorer place, Romney, spent 73 on its common 
 barge in 1381; in 1396 another was bought and fitted 
 out for 82 ; and a third in 1400 at over 40 ; while 
 a few years later yet another ship was procured for the 
 Bordeaux trade. These vessels sailed to Scotland and 
 
 protection of English shipping, but the Act only lasted three 
 years. (3 Ed. IV. c. i.) 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 328. 
 
 - Heralds' Debate, 51-2. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 528. See the hiring out of the London 
 barge ; loss by accident from tempest or enemies to fall on the 
 commonalty ; Mem. Lond., 478. 
 
 4 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 215-16, 221-2, 188-191.
 
 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Newcastle and Norfolk and the ports of the Southern 
 coasts ; or to Ireland for wood, to Amiens for sea-coal, 
 to Britanny for salt, to Flanders for the wares of the 
 Levant, to Southern France for cargoes of wine, and 
 oil, and wood. In 1400 "the new barge" carried 
 forty-two tuns of wine from Rochelle ; in 1404 it 
 brought forty tuns besides oil and wood, and in a 
 later voyage carried fifty-six tuns. 1 Everywhere the 
 trading temper laid hold upon the people. In Rye, 
 where the inhabitants had been wont to pay their 
 yearly oblations punctually on the 8th of September, 
 there came a, time when so many of them were abroad, 
 some attending fairs, some fishing in remote seas, "that 
 Divine worship is not then observed by them as it 
 ought to be, and the due oblations are withheld and 
 hardly ever paid ; " and the day of offering had to be 
 changed. 2 
 
 The more important side of the movement, how- 
 ever, was the growth of private enterprise as shown in 
 the associations of merchants formed in all the bigger 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 534-540. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 496. Rye kept its own " schipwrite,' r 
 John Wikham, who had the freedom of the town for sixteen 
 years while building the ships of the port, and at last left in 
 1392 with a glowing testimonial from the mayor and barons of 
 Bye. Along with other towns it had made profit by selling ships 
 to aliens, which might afterwards be used by the enemies of 
 England, and a proclamation was sent to Kye in 1390 forbidding 
 such sales. For the export of eggs from Norwich in 1374, as well 
 as butter and cheese and corn, and possibly oysters, see Hudson's 
 Norwich Leet Jurisdiction (Selden Society), 62, 63, 65. The 
 practice of forestalling, carried to so great an extent as is here and 
 elsewhere described, doubtless implied buying for the foreign 
 market.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 89 
 
 towns for trading purposes. Already in the time 
 of Richard the Second there was a " Fellowship of 
 Merchants " in Bristol who directed the whole foreign 
 trade and the import of foreign merchandise, and 
 who even then did business on a very considerable 
 scale, for when in 1375 Bristol ships laden with salt 
 were captured and burnt in the Channel the losses 
 were set down at 17,739. Before fifty years were 
 over their trading vessels w r ere known in every sea 
 from Syria to Iceland. The richer merchants built 
 up by degrees little fleets of ten or twelve vessels 
 varying from 400 to 900 tons ; and one of them, 
 William Cannynges, an ancestor of Lord Canning, 
 who in 1461 had ten ships afloat (one The Nicholas of 
 the Tower from whence came Suffolk's headsman), 
 employed 800 seamen and 100 carpenters, masons, 
 and artificers. 1 Nor was Bristol singular in its activity. 
 The Guild of Merchants at Lynn rivalled that of York. 
 " With the Divine assistance, and the help of divers of 
 the King's subjects," John Taverner of Hull in 1449 
 built a great " carrack " on the scale of the mighty 
 ships of Genoa and Venice. Far and wide the move- 
 ment spread till the brief tale of 169 merchants 
 which had, been counted up by Edward the Third 
 when he wanted to borrow money from them, ex- 
 panded towards the close of the fifteenth centuiy 
 into a company of more than 3,000 traders engaged 
 in sea-commerce alone. 2 
 
 1 Hunt's Bristol, 74, 94-96. 
 
 2 Schanz, i. 328. For St. Mary's Gild in York see Hist. 
 MSS. Com. i. 109, 110. This "mystery of Mercers," or " Com- 
 munity of Mercers " in York formed into a body with a governor
 
 90 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 From whatever town they came these traders with 
 foreign ports were all alike known to the men of the 
 fourteenth century by one significant name 
 the Adventurers. For since there was but one pro- 
 tected industry in England, the Staple, every merchant 
 who was not a Stapler was a free Adventurer. All 
 trade that lay outside the Staple was for his winning. 1 
 Bound to no place or company or government or laws, 
 he was left to discover for himself a corner in the 
 world's market, and to protect himself on sea and land. 
 A perfectly indifferent State gave him no help in his 
 first ventures to become the carrier of English com- 
 merce, and vouchsafed no encouragement to shipbuilder 
 or master by offers of special favours or grants of 
 reduced tolls on a first voyage. 2 He sailed out of 
 port into a sea of peril. Pirates of all nations, Vit- 
 alien Brlider in the Baltic and the North Sea, Likedelers 
 of Calais, 3 Breton cruisers, vigorous monopolists of the 
 Hanse, outraged merchants of the South burning for 
 
 in 1430 in fact, became a company of Merchant Adventurers. 
 (Gross, ii. 280.) The Shipmen's Guild of Holy Trinity in Hull 
 drew up its constitution in 1309, but got its first royal grant in 
 1443. The Merchant Guild of S. George also dates from the 
 fifteenth century. (Lambert's Guild Life, 128-131, 156-161.) 
 
 1 In 1422 a writ was issued by the Privy Council to permit a 
 Bristol merchant to take two vessels laden with cloth, wine, 
 salt, and other merchandise not belonging to the Staple. The 
 cloth and wine were to be sold, and meat, hides, salmon, herrings, 
 and fish to be bought, and the salt used for salting these provisions. 
 Proc. Privy Council, ii. 322-3. 
 
 2 When Taverner built his ship for the Mediterranean trade 
 he got no reduction of tolls, but had to pay the high export 
 dues fixed for foreigners. Schanz, i. 367. 
 
 3 Keutgen, 79 ; Plummer's Fortescue, 232-3.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 91 
 
 vengeance, lay in wait on every quarter of the horizon. 
 In 1395 Norfolk traders were robbed of 20,000 " by 
 the Queen's men of Denmark, the which was an un- 
 doing to many of the merchants of Norfolk for 
 evermore afterwards ; " l and frequent and piteous 
 were the complaints that went up to the Privy Council 
 from English shippers begging redress and protection 
 as outrage followed outrage. 2 But a State which 
 was without any organized naval force was powerless 
 to establish order. Whether it gave the charge of 
 keeping the peace on the high seas to the merchants 
 themselves, or to the Staplers, or by special commis- 
 sion to the Admirals 3 of the coast, or to a committee 
 of lords, or to the foremost among the offenders, the 
 Captain of Calais himself, its experiments were equally 
 
 1 Eng. Chron. 1387-1461, 113. French pirates "whirling on 
 the coasts so that there dare no fishers go out," (Paston Letters, 
 iii. 81) behave " as homely as they were Englishmen." (Ibid. i. 
 114-116.) 
 
 2 For the frequent disputes in the reign of Henry the Fourth 
 see Hist. MSS. Com. v. 443. In 1419, when some Bristol mer- 
 chants had seized vessels belonging to the Genoese, the King sent 
 a messenger to choose for him a portion of the prize, for which, 
 however, he promised honestly to pay the merchants. Proc. 
 Privy Council, ii. 267. The mayor of Lynn attended by two 
 proctors travelled with the King's embassy to Bruges in 1435 
 " for the worship of the town" as its representative to declare 
 the wrongs done to Lynn merchants " by the master of Pruce 
 and his subjects and by them of the Hanse." Hist. MSS. Com., 
 xi. 3, 163; Polydore Yergil, 159 ; Davies' Southampton, 252-3, 
 275, 475. 
 
 3 Stubbs, ii. 314, iii. 57, 65 ; Plummer's Fortescue, 235-7. 
 From time to time money was collected for the protection of 
 trade ; (ISTott. Eec. ii. 34-36). In 1454 Bristol gave 150 for 
 this purpose the largest sum given by any town save London. 
 (Hunt's Bristol, 97-8.)
 
 92 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 vain. Iii self-protection town barges and merchants' 
 ships sailed in companies under an admiral of their 
 own choosing, armed to the teeth like little men of 
 war against the enemy, and even carrying cannon on 
 board as early as 1407, before any kind of hand-guns 
 had been invented. 1 If when disaster overtook them 
 their masters appealed for compensation to the 
 government they did not wait solely on the State for 
 redress ; and English rulers seem to have been often 
 less perplexed to bring a remedy to their sufferings 
 than to conciliate the great foreign confederations 
 whose anger had been roused by their swift and 
 violent retaliation. There were indeed probably no 
 more formidable pirates afloat than these English 
 cruisers themselves, for they were hard fighters who 
 took a prompt revenge ; and among foreigners at all 
 events they won the reputation of using their shipping 
 for no other purpose than to harass all trade of other 
 peoples in the narrow seas, and " obstruct the utility 
 of commerce throughout all Christendom." 2 
 
 Under these conditions we can easily understand 
 that throughout the century whenever the question 
 of the English navy emerges in Rolls of Parliament 
 
 1 Rymer's Fceclera, viii. 470. 
 
 - Debate of Heralds, 49. In 1488 a letter from London io the 
 money-changer Frescobaldo, at Venice, told that Flanders galleys 
 which left Antwerp for Hampton fell in with three English 
 ships, who commanded them to strike sail, and though they said 
 they were friends, forced them to fight. Eighteen English were 
 killed. But on the complaint of the captain of the galleys 
 the King sent the Bishop of Winchester to say he need not fear, 
 as those who had been killed must bear their own loss and a 
 pot of wine would settle the matter. Davies' Southampton, 475.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 93 
 
 and Statutes and official statements, we have a con- 
 temporary picture drawn in the gloomiest colours. 1 
 Statesmen heap up details to show how badly the mer- 
 chant service fulfils its vague functions as a royal navy. 
 Ship-owners bring their loud complainings to prove 
 how ill they have been used by the State. Each side 
 burns to waken the other to a sense of its duty, and 
 talk of the decay of English power by sea might be 
 pressed into the service of either, while the loss of 
 Southern France and the temporary blow which this 
 gave to English shipping was used to point the argu- 
 ment on both sides. The sea was our wall of defence, 
 it was said ; but now the enemy was on the wall and 
 where was our old might of ships and sailors ? The 
 very Dutch were laughing at our impotence, and when 
 they insolently jested at the ships engraved on the 
 coins of Edward the Third and asked why we did not 
 engrave a sheep on them instead, the pun was felt to 
 inflict a deep wound on the national honour. 2 
 
 Such judgements, however, should be read in the 
 light of the records which tell us what English ships 
 afloat upon the sea were actually doing in those days. 
 For at this very time the unofficial Englishman 
 seems to have been boasting that his people possessed 
 a greater number of fine and powerful ships than any 
 other nation, so that they were " kings of the sea ; " 
 
 1 See Libel of English Policy, Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 164-5 
 For complaints in 1444 and 1485 see Rot. Parl. v. 113. 
 
 2 Libel of English Policy, Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 159. 
 Capgrave de Illust. Henricis, 135. A man at Canterbury was 
 accused in 1448 of saying that the king was not able to bear the 
 fleur-de-lys nor the ship in his noble. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 455.) 
 
 3 Heralds' Debate, 17.
 
 94 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and if the boast was a little premature it lay on the 
 whole nearer to the truth. Even now the fleets of 
 the Adventurers were going forth to the conquest 
 of the seas, and their enterprise marks one of the 
 great turning points in our history. It was in fact 
 during this century that England raised herself from 
 the last place among commercial peoples to one of 
 the first. At the close of the fourteenth century, as we 
 have seen, English merchandise was mostly borne in 
 foreign ships ; a hundred years later, English vessels 
 carried more than a half of all the cloths exported 
 from the country, and about three quarters of all 
 other goods, 1 and the Navigation Act that had failed 
 under Eichard the Second was put in triumphant 
 operation by Henry the Seventh. 2 
 
 It was in the Northern Seas that the real stress of 
 the battle lay. There from a very early time bands 
 of roving adventurers went cruising from harbour to 
 harbour to discover what spoils of trade the orthodox 
 merchants of the Staple or the Hanse had left un- 
 gathered, and how the fertile resources of the lawless 
 free-trader might be used to shatter these stately 
 organizations. When the older merchants concen- 
 trated themselves in Bruges and Calais the free lances 
 of trade sought out the neglected markets of Brabant 
 and Holland. Driven from the marshes of Middleburg 
 they turned to Antwerp which the Staplers had for- 
 saken. Scarcely had the Hanse merchants under the 
 
 1 Hchanz, ii. 27. 
 
 2 4 H. VII. cap. x. ; .Schanz, i. 368-9. Encouragement was also 
 given to building of English ships as for example by remission 
 of tolls on the first voyage (Schanz, ii. 591).
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 95 
 
 stress of their Danish wars withdrawn from Bergen 
 than the Adventurers forthwith slipped into their 
 place, set up their own Staple, gathering goods there 
 to the value of 10,000 marks, and for years fought 
 steadily against fire and sword to hold their own. 1 
 If the Baltic towns fell behind the western members 
 of the League in maritime enterprizc, the Adven- 
 turers' fleets flocked to their harbours, so that three 
 hundred of them were seen in the harbour of Danzig 
 alone, carrying dealers in cloth ready to spread 
 their wares in every market town of Prussia. They 
 pushed their way into the fish-markets of Schonen, 
 offering bales of cloth instead of money 2 for salt her- 
 rings, and rousing the alarm of the Hanseatic mer- 
 chants there also. By the close of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury they had so prospered in the world on all sides 
 that they professed to look on large branches of trade 
 as their own exclusive property, and to make a griev- 
 ance of interference with their profits by other " med- 
 dling merchants who were not content with their own 
 business in which they had been brought up and by 
 which they were well able to live." 
 
 This was the beginning of a new stage in their his- 
 tory. The Adventurers now proposed to enter the 
 decent ranks of recognized associations, and exchange 
 their roving wars for the more formal aggressions of a 
 chartered company ; and at their prayer Henry the 
 Fourth granted them in 1406, for their better ordering 
 and for their protection from other " meddling mer- 
 chants," a charter by which they took as their official 
 
 1 Keutgen, 55, etc. - Ibid. 54.
 
 96 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 title their old name of the Merchant Adventurers. 1 The 
 grant included all dominions over-sea, and allowed 
 them to wander where they would in the wide world, 
 and to draw within their ranks all the Adventurers of 
 England. 2 As yet their organization was loose and free, 
 and was in fact no true incorporation as a Guild. But 
 it marked the passing away of their free and stormy 
 youth. From this time privileges came to them from 
 all sides by English grants, by gifts from foreign towns, 
 by protection of the rulers of various countries. Finally 
 in 1446 they received a new charter of privileges from 
 the Duke of Burgundy 3 by which their tolls were fixed, 
 full protection assured to them, and an organization 
 provided which lasted for the next century. So con- 
 fident did they become of their power, that when 
 Henry the Seventh at his accession raised the tolls re- 
 quired of them they refused to pay, and he did not dare 
 to enforce the order. 4 Seeing indeed in their success 
 the triumph of English commerce, he remained their 
 steady supporter, confirmed their privileges, 5 and when 
 at Calais they desired greater centralization and a 
 stricter discipline, he gave them a regular organization 
 after the pattern of the Staplers under Edward the 
 Third, with governors and a council of twenty-four 
 assistants. 6 Amid all their successes it was little wonder 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 332 ; ii. 575. A list of the charters granted to 
 them follows, ibid. 575-8. See also treaty given, ibid. 159. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 339, 340. 3 Ibid. ii. 162. 
 
 4 Ibid. i. 340. 5 1500 ; Schanz, ii. 545-7. 
 
 In 1505. Henry VII. issued regulations for the Merchant 
 Adventurers. They might meet in Calais to elect governors ; 
 and they were at the same time to elect a council of twenty- 
 four called " assistants," who were to have jurisdiction over
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 97 
 
 that there came a time when they themselves forgot 
 the free audacity of their adventurous youth. In 
 their maturer years, as the vehement assertors of 
 monopoly and State protection, they cast behind their 
 backs the very remembrance of their lawless prede- 
 cessors, and for a braver pedigree they traced their 
 greatness back to ancestors made respectable by a fabled 
 charter from King John himself, and boasted of Alder- 
 men clothed in scarlet who were supposed to have 
 borne rule over them in good old times in Antwerp. 
 
 The legend was the product of a time when Ant- 
 werp was in fact the capital of the Merchant Adven- 
 turers the home and centre of their trade. For 
 there in the fifteenth century they entered on an 
 inheritance which had been left waste when the 
 merchant princes of the Staple had finally retired 
 to Calais, and had thus practically abandoned all 
 direct trade between Antwerp and England to 
 private hands. The Adventurers soon solved the 
 question of who was to carry it on. 1 In 1407 the 
 
 all members and power to make statutes, and to appoint 
 officers both in England and in Calais to levy fines and to 
 imprison offenders. The council filled up its own vacancies. 
 Every merchant using the dealings of a Merchant Adventurer 
 was not only to pay its tolls and taxes, but must enter the fellow- 
 ship and pay his ten marks. The Calais officials were to proclaim 
 the marts whenever required to do so. The Adventurers might 
 appoint their own weighers and packers, and have nothing to say 
 to the royal officers. (Schanz, ii. 549-553.) 
 
 1 Schanz notes the settlement in Antwerp as one of the most 
 critical turning points of English industrial and commercial 
 history (i. 339). The movement had well begun in the fourteenth 
 and early part of the fifteenth centuries, but the real influx of 
 English traders was from 1442-4 (ibid. i. 9). For the treatias 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 city gave them a House in perpetual succession. 
 Three of their merchants sat in the Toll-hall with 
 the toll-keepers of the borough to see justice done 
 to their brethren. Known among the people as 
 "the nation," 1 they early showed their power, and 
 in the first half of the fifteenth century privileges in 
 the English trade were more and more withdrawn from 
 the native traders of the Netherlands, and gathered 
 into their own hands. They used their powers to the 
 full, governed firmly, ordered the whole English 
 trade with the Low Countries, dictated what fair was 
 to be attended, and ruled the prices, in spite of the 
 loud remonstrances of the unlucky natives. 2 At 
 the great marts held in the Netherlands four times 
 a year 3 " they stapled the commodities which they 
 brought out of England, and put the same to sale," 4 
 and by 1436 they could boast that they bought more 
 goods in Brabant, Flanders, and Zealand 5 than all 
 
 with the Duke of Burgundy in 1407 concerning English traders 
 in Flanders, Rymer's Foedera, viii. 469-78. 
 
 1 Schanz, ii. 577, 581, 582. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 343, 344. 
 
 3 12 Henry VII. c. 6. 
 
 4 Wheeler, Treatise of Commerce, 19, 23. 
 
 5 " Deja au quinzieme siecle les Ecossais avaient a Veere en 
 Zelande un depot pour leurs marchandises, administre par un 
 ' Conservator.' Sir Thomas Cunningham remplit cet office jusqu'4 
 sa mort en 1655, et ce ne fut que le 28 novembre, 1661 (sic), 
 que Sir W. Davison en fut charge ; il demeura de temps en temps 
 a Amsterdam, ou il eut des querelles a 1'occasion des impots 
 municipaux. Plus tard, il eut des differends avec le pasteur 
 episcopal Mowbray, qui par suite fut deplace, et enfin avec les 
 Ecossais de Yeere eux-memes. En 1668 Davison fit un traite 
 -avec la ville de Dordrecht, pour y transporter les affaires
 
 nr THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 99 
 
 other nations, and that if their merchants were with- 
 drawn it would be as great a loss to the French trade 
 as though a thousand men of war were sent into the 
 country. 1 The growing jealousy of the manufacturers 
 in Flanders indeed threatened at times to cut off their 
 entire business ; and as they were the first to bear the 
 rising storm of commercial rivalries, so again and 
 again they were brought within sight of ruin by the 
 laws passed on either side the water forbidding all 
 import or export trade. 
 
 For in their desperate attempt to save the Flemish 
 weavers from ruin the Dukes of Burgundy forbade 
 dressers to finish English cloth, or tailors to cut it in 
 the Netherlands, and laid heavy penalties on any man 
 
 d'Ecosse; mais comme les Ecossais ne voulurent pas s'y con- 
 former, Davison fut contraint deprendre son conge en mai 1671 ; 
 Yeere resta le depot du commerce ecossais. Consultez encore 
 1'ouvrage tr&s rare. " An account of the Scotch Trade in the 
 Netherlands, and of the Staple Port in Campvere. By James 
 Yair, Minister of the Scotch Church in Campvere. London, 
 1776." (CEuvres Completes de Huygens. Amsterdam, 1893. 
 Note on a letter from R. Moray to Huygens, Jan. 30, 1665.) 
 
 1 Libel of English Policy. Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 180, 181. 
 See Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, 445-6. "William Mucklow, merchant 
 at London, sent commissions to his son Richard at Antwerp ; a 
 Richard Mucklow was warden of S. Helen's, "Worcester, either in 
 
 1510 or 1519 (446). An account book of "Wm. Mucklow, mer- 
 chant, " in the Passe Mart at Barro, Middleburg, in the Synxon 
 Mart at Antwerp, in the Cold Mart and in Bamys Mart," in 
 
 1511 records sales of white drapery and purchase of various goods 
 a ball battery, fustian, buckram, knives, sugar, brushes, satin, 
 damask, sarsenet, velvet, pepper, Yssyngham cloth, spectacles, 
 swan's feathers, girdles, " socket," treacle, green ginger, ribands, 
 brown paper, Brabant cloth, pouches, leather, buckets, " antony 
 belles," " sacke belles," sheets, &c. ; and the names of the vessels 
 in which the goods were shipped. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 in Flanders who was seen dressed in woollen stuffs of 
 English make ; a but still the cloth came in, smuggled by 
 speculating dealers from Antwerp, or scattered broad- 
 cast by licensed merchants who had bought from the 
 authorities leave to evade the law. 2 Once in con- 
 sequence of political disputes 3 the Adventurers had 
 to migrate to Calais, and see the legal trade with 
 the Low Countries given to the Easterlings, a sight 
 which ' sore nipped their hearts ; " but first in " dis- 
 ordered " fashion, then lawfully, they were soon back 
 at their old occupations. 4 With the steady support 
 of Henry the Seventh, whose whole policy was 
 directed to develope the trade with Burgundy and 
 bind England and the Netherlands into a united 
 commercial state, their prosperity was assured ; and 
 before the close of the century Antwerp, after two 
 hundred years of struggle for supremacy in trade, 
 took its place as the great centre of commerce 5 in the 
 Netherlands, while its rival Bruges sank into utter 
 poverty and decay. When at last after many chances 
 and changes, the English won in 1506 through Henry 
 the Seventh free trade in cloth throughout all the 
 dominions of the Archduke Philip save Flanders, they 
 actually found themselves better off in the Netherlands 
 
 1 Rot. Parl. iv. 126 ; Schanz, i. 443-445. For English reprisals, 
 27 H. VI. cap. i. ; 28 H. VI. cap. i. ; 4 Ed. IV. cap. 5. 
 
 2 Schanz, ii. 191-3, 203-6. Negotiations were still going on 
 in 1499 as to the trade disputes between Henry the Seventh, the 
 Archduke, and the Staple at Calais (Schanz, ii. 195-202). The 
 main point in dispute was allowing English cloths to be cut in 
 the Netherlands for making clothes. 
 
 3 In 1493: Schanz, i. 17^ 18. 4 Schanz, ii. 582-5. 
 5 Ibid. i. 7-11.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 101 
 
 than the native merchants, paid less tolls than they, 
 and were in a position whence they might easily over- 
 run the country with their wares and finally destroy 
 its decaying cloth industry. 1 
 
 From their central stronghold in Antwerp the 
 Merchant Adventurers further maintained a lively 
 war to right and left, on the one side with the 
 Staple at Calais, on the other with the Hanseatic 
 League. 
 
 It was practically the jealousy of the Staplers that 
 had first driven the Adventurers from Bruges, and no 
 sooner did they feel their strength than they prepared 
 to make their ancient enemies pay the penalty for old 
 wrongs. Towards the merchants of the Staple the 
 very character of their trade from the first forced them 
 into a militant attitude. Shut out from all interest 
 in the sale of wool, their fortune rested solely on the 
 manufacturing industries, and the more weaving at 
 home was encouraged the greater were their gains. 2 
 And since the wool merchants proceeded both to claim 
 and to practise the right of exporting and selling cloth 
 as well as wool, they became in a double sense ob- 
 noxious to their rivals. Now, however, the Adven- 
 turers could fight from the vantage ground given them 
 by their new position as a chartered company. Out 
 of their acknowledged right to demand tolls on the 
 sale of cloth in their marts, they deduced by a liberal 
 interpretation of their powers the right to require 
 from each trading Stapler in addition to the ordinary 
 tolls an entrance fee or hanse of ten marks, by pay- 
 ment of which he became a freeman of the Adven- 
 1 Schanz, i. 31, 32. 2 Ibid. i. 339. 
 
 LiBKARY 
 
 OF CALIfCftfflA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 102 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 turers' Company and was made subject to their laws 
 and courts, 1 and if he refused to pay they seized his 
 wares, or imprisoned him till he gave the "hanse." 2 
 Wealthy merchants of the Staple who had taken their 
 wares to Middleburg might find themselves thrown 
 into prison among felons and murderers infected with 
 odious diseases ; the resolute Adventurers refused bail. 
 and quietly ignored royal letters of remonstrance. 3 
 Already in 1457 the Staplers complained bitterly to 
 the English King and to the Duke of Burgundy, that 
 under colour of letters patent and charters, their 
 enemies so vexed them both in their goods and per- 
 sons as to threaten them with utter ruin. 4 But the 
 decision of Henry the Sixth that the Adventurers 
 were asserting unjust claims which were strictly 
 forbidden for the future 5 scarcely interrupted the 
 battle, and the same series of complaints and aggres- 
 sions was brought in 1 504 before the Star Chamber, 
 by whose judgement the Adventurers w r ere again 
 forbidden to go beyond their right of levying tolls. 
 But if the law was against them they had on their 
 side their own inexhaustible activity, their unscrup- 
 ulous audacity, their large self-confidence, and the 
 weakness of the dying company of the Staple. Six 
 years later when the Staplers again summoned them 
 before the King for their " crooked minds and 
 froward sayings " and lawless deeds of violence, they 
 answered with uncompromising contempt. The 
 Staplers, they allowed, might have certain privileges 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 345 : ii. 561, 562. 2 Instances, Schanz, ii. 557, 558. 
 3 Ibid. ii. 564. * Ibid. ii. 543. 
 
 J From Antwerp Archives ; Schanz, ii. 539-43.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 103 
 
 in Calais but as to talking of rights in Burgundy, 
 that in their opinion was absurd to urge after the 
 removal of the Staple thence. Outside Calais the 
 Staplers had no rights. With regard to their claim 
 to exclusive jurisdiction over their members, " that 
 article might have been left out of their book, for 
 why every reasonable man knoweth the contrary. " 
 In spite of such "reasonable men," however, once 
 more the law was proclaimed to be against them ; 
 but as they knew well the law was powerless to set 
 up again the ruined company of the Merchant 
 Staplers. l 
 
 With the second and more formidable arm}' arrayed 
 against them, the merchants of the Hanseatic League ,. 
 the war of the Adventurers had to be carried on with 
 greater circumspection. Through a couple of centuries 
 the doubtful conflict was maintained on every sea and 
 
 1 In November, 1504, the Staplers and Adventurers appeared 
 before the Star Chamber. The Staplers pleaded a charter which 
 declared them free from the jurisdiction of the Adventurers. The 
 Star Chamber decided that every Stapler who dealt or traded as 
 an Adventurer was to be subject to the courts and dues of the 
 Adventurers : and every Adventurer dealing as a Stapler in like 
 manner to be subject to the Staple (Schanz, ii. 547). This 
 decision seemed to imply the ruin of Staplers, but the next year 
 it was explained that the authentic interpretation was simply 
 that " the merchants of the Staple at Calais using the feate of a 
 Merchant Adventurer passing to the marts at Calais should in 
 those things be contributories to such impositions and charges " as 
 the Adventurers had fixed (ibid. 549) ; and that they could not be 
 compelled to join the Adventurers' company. In 1510 Henry 
 the Eighth repeated the decree of Henry the Seventh that the 
 Adventurers must not force Staplers to join their body (555). 
 For the pleadings before the Star Chamber under Henry the 
 Eighth see Schanz, ii. 556-564.
 
 104 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 in every port from Danzig to Iceland. For the first 
 hundred years things went ill for the Adventurers. 
 The League monopolized the whole commerce between 
 the Scandinavian kingdoms and England ; l drove out 
 the English from Schonen, the centre to which all the 
 fishers of the Baltic and North Seas gathered for the 
 salting, packing, and selling of their fish ; 2 harassed 
 them with fire and sword in Bergen, the Staple town 
 of the north, 3 scattering them at one time by starva- 
 tion, at another by decrees of expulsion ; banished 
 them from the Prussian towns belonging to the Teu- 
 tonic Order which they were "destroying" with their 
 cloth, 4 and sought to ruin their trade by issuing an 
 order that no merchant of the Hanse should buy 
 English cloth outside England itself. When the 
 League waged war with Denmark and Norway in 
 1368-9 to confirm its mastery of the Northern Seas, 
 it drao-aed the English traders at its heels into the 
 
 cr t_ o 
 
 tight, and at its close threw them off without a 
 thought. 5 It gave a scornful answer to demands 
 made by Parliament under Edward the Third and 
 Richard the Second that the tolls exacted from 
 Hanseatic traders for exporting goods from England 
 should be increased ; and retorted by a decree that 
 all trade with England should be utterly broken off. 
 thus shutting the great market at Elbing to the 
 English merchants who had made it the centre of 
 their trade with Russia and the towns of Prussia. 6 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 249. - Keutgen, 42, 51-54. 
 
 3 Schanz, i. 251. 4 Keutgen, 30, 81. 5 Ibid. 44, &c. 
 
 ' Pauli's Pictures, 172, 185. Keutgen, 10-43. Richard the 
 Second complained to the Grand Master that traders were forced
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 105 
 
 The English traders, however, took all misfortune 
 with the hardihood and exuberant courage of youth. 
 Help from their own government was beyond hoping 
 for, so long as conquering kings like Edward the Third 
 and Henry the Fifth were bound hand and foot to 
 the great mercantile houses of Liibeck and the Hanse 
 towns by the loans raised from them to carry on the 
 French wars ; while Henry the Fourth, who, before 
 he came to the throne, had been in Danzig and seen 
 the troubles of the English merchants there, 1 and who 
 in his anxiety to win the support of the trading class, 
 was persistent in negotiations to improve their posi- 
 tion, had not the power to give effect to his desires. 
 The Adventurers, therefore, could only follow the one 
 obvious course open to them, and kept up a steady 
 brigandage on the seas and a series of opportune 
 attacks on the enemy's out-posts. They held on 
 
 to carry their cloth to Elbing instead of Danzig (ibid. 72). In. 
 1388 three citizens of London and York were sent to Marienberg 
 with an interpreter to make a treaty of commerce with the 
 " general master of the house of S.Mary of Teutonia." (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. i. 109.) In 1397, however, trade with the Easterlings 
 was practically stopped. The English imposed enormous duties on 
 German imports ; the Germans forbade traffic in English cloth. 
 For the negotiations carried on by Henry the Fourth see Literte 
 Cantuarienses, iii. xxviii.-xxxi., and the various letters on the 
 subject. The English eolony in Danzig increased greatly after 
 the peace of Marienberg. (Schanz, i. 231.) In 1392 more than 
 300 English came into Danzig to carry corn. (Keutgen, 71.) 
 But the resistance of the Danzig burghers to English trade 
 was strenuous. They were less jealous of the Netherlands 
 manufacturers, and the Teutonic Order in the fifteenth century 
 sent to Dinant for the rough cloth needed for the Baltic trade. 
 (Pirenne, Dinant, 97 ; Keutgen, 81-83.) 
 1 Pauli's Pictures, 135-8.
 
 106 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 desperately at Bergen, 1 and stoutly clung to the 
 formal right which Henry the Fourth had given 
 them to organize themselves under consuls in Nor- 
 way, Sweden, or Denmark, for the carrying on of their 
 trade. 2 Fishing boats which were shut out from the 
 Baltic or from Bergen sailed on to Iceland, where, as 
 the island was the private property of the King of 
 Norway (who was himself the servant of the League) 
 and was allowed to receive no ships save the King's, 
 or those licensed by the King, opportunities for illegal 
 trade were abundant and profits large. A frugal people, 
 needy and remote, eagerly welcomed smuggled goods 
 from England in exchange for their fish ; and the smug- 
 glers carried on a rough business outlaws and daring- 
 men of their company plundered and killed and stole 
 cattle and desolated homesteads, and bartered after 
 their own self-made laws. 3 It mattered nothing to 
 them that Henry the Fifth, in obedience to the 
 League, forbade the trade, or that in a storm of 1419 
 
 1 8 H. VI. c. 2 ; Proc. Privy Council, iv. 208 ; Schanz, ii. 170. 
 
 2 In 1425 there were letters from Henry the Sixth to the King 
 of Dacia, Norwegia, and Swecia, concerning the merchants of 
 Lynn who traded with the parts of North Berne ; (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. xi. 3, 203). In 1427 he wrote to the English merchants "in 
 partibus Prucie, Dacie, Norweie, Hanse, and Swethie com- 
 morantes," to assemble in a sufficient place, elect governors and 
 make ordinances for self-government in mercantile matters, and 
 for reasonable punishment of any merchants disobedient (203). 
 At times the English even forced compensation from the Hanse 
 merchants for outrages (Schanz, i. 250). In 1438 rye was brought 
 from Prussia " by the providence of Stephen Browne," the mayor, 
 at a time of famine in England, when a bushel of corn was sold 
 for 3s. 4d., and the people were making bread of vetches, peas, 
 beans, and fern-roots. (Fabyan, 612.) 
 
 3 Schanz, i. 254.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 107 
 
 twenty-five English ships were driven on the coast 
 of Iceland in three hours. Bristol men found their 
 way to its shores by help of the compass, leaving for 
 us the first record of its use in England, probably in 
 1424 ; and about 1436, in a year when the English 
 had been expelled from Bergen, so many vessels sailed 
 to Iceland that they could get no return cargo, and 
 half of them had to come empty home. 1 But the 
 northern trade was not all violent or lawless. English 
 merchants bought double licenses from the English 
 and the Norwegian kings, which allowed them to 
 carry on a regular traffic ; and in the middle of the 
 fifteenth century one of the Bristol merchants, Can- 
 nynges, had in his hands the chief trade with northern 
 Europe. Not only were his factors established in the 
 Baltic ports, but his transactions with Iceland and 
 with Finland were on so great a scale that when in 
 1450 all English trade with these regions was for- 
 bidden in virtue of a treaty with the King of Den- 
 mark, Cannynges was specially exempted on account 
 of the debts due to him there by Danish subjects, and 
 for two years he had a monopoly of the trade. 2 
 
 Meanwhile the Adventurers watched their oppor- 
 
 1 Libel of English Policy. Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 191. The 
 bailiffs and community of Chepstovre did trade with Iceland and 
 Finmark. (Proc. Privy Council, iv. 208.) In 1426 Lynn forbade 
 trade with Iceland to its inhabitants and the whole community 
 sent a petition against the trade to the King's Council. (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. xi. 3, 160.) 
 
 2 Hunt's Bristol, 94-6. In 1491 fishing-smacks starting for 
 Iceland had to get leave to sail, after finding surety that they 
 would not carry more grain nor any other forbidden thing than 
 sufficed for their own food. Paston Letters, iii. ."67-9.
 
 108 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 t unity to carry the war nearer home, for the League, 
 already weighted with the effort to maintain its mono - 
 poly before the rise of Scandinavian powers and the 
 consolidation of the Duchy of Burgundy, was further 
 troubled within its own ranks by divided counsels. 1 In 
 the reign of Henry the Sixth, therefore, the English 
 renewed among other claims their old demand that the 
 Hanseatic merchants should no longer be favoured at 
 their expense, but should be treated like any other 
 foreigners and forced to pay the same tolls on wine 
 and wool. There was a chance of success, for Liibeck 
 and the western towns finding in their strength and 
 self-reliance arguments for a policy of peace with 
 England, were generally for amicable compromise ; 
 though the eastern towns led by Danzig, weaker at sea 
 and peculiarly sensitive to any increase of money 
 burdens, preferred fighting to submission with its appre- 
 hended dangers. 2 The party of violence won the day 
 and a fierce maritime war followed with open hostili- 
 ties and reprisals and law-suits and endless negotia- 
 tions. On one occasion the English seized a fleet of 
 LOS sail returning to Liibeck and Riga, and the men 
 of the Hanse retaliated by laying hands on rich 
 English prizes. Trade was so ruined that Henry the 
 Sixth declared himself unable to pay to the Count 
 Palatine the dowry of his aunt Lady Blanche, because 
 there were now no dues and customs coming into his 
 
 o 
 
 Treasury from the German merchants. 3 At last the 
 
 1 Keutgen, 30. 
 
 - Ibid. 84-5, 70-71. For these negotiations see Rymer's 
 Fnedera, x. 656-7, 666-70, 753. Bekynton, i. 2! 5. 
 3 In 1439. Bekynton's Corres. i. 1S3-4.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 109 
 
 dispute came to a climax in 1469, when the English 
 quarrelled with the German traders in London, sum- 
 moned them before the courts and imposed a fine of 
 13,520, 1 while members of the Steel Yard were 
 thrown into prison, and the corporation nearly broken 
 up. 2 The answer of Bremen, Hamburg, and Danzig 
 was given in a fleet which gathered against England 
 under the leadership of Charles the Bold. But just 
 at this moment came the English revolution by which 
 Edward the Fourth was driven out of the country, 
 and all the great trading bodies, the Hanseatic League, 
 and the Flemish and Dutch corporations, seeing the 
 danger which threatened their commerce from the new 
 political situation, cast aside minor quarrels and united 
 to set Edward aa'ain on the throne. 3 Such a service 
 
 & 
 
 1 " Whereof the payment was kept secret from writers " 
 (Fabyan, 657.) 
 
 2 The fortunes of Memling's Last Judgement now at Danzig 
 give a curious illustration of this war and the trade complications 
 of the time. Ordered at Bruges through the Florentine agents 
 there (the Portinari), probably by Julian and Lorenzo de Medici, 
 the picture could not be carried to Florence on account of this war 
 begun in 1468. At last in 1473 it was sent off from Sluys in a 
 British-built ship, which had been bought by English merchants 
 as a French prize, chartered by Florentines in Bruges for a voyage 
 to London, registered in the name of the Portinari, commissioned 
 by a French captain, and navigated under the Burgundian flag 
 for greater security against capture. It was, however, taken off 
 Southampton by a privateer sailing under the Danzig flag and 
 commanded by a noted captain Benecke. In spite of a bull 
 issued by Sixtus the Fourth the cargo was sold at Stade and the 
 picture brought by the owners of the ship to Danzig. (Crowe and 
 Cavalcaselle, Early Flemish Painters, 257-260.) 
 
 3 Henry the Sixth, on the other hand, brought the help of the 
 Genoese. Possibly the excessive price of fish mentioned in the
 
 110 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 demanded a great reward ; and in 1474 a treaty was 
 signed at Utrecht, by which the Hanse was given back 
 all its earlier privileges, and secured in possession of 
 its Guild Hall and Steel Yard in London, and its houses 
 in Boston and Lynn. The Adventurers who made a 
 bold demand that the Easterlings should renounce the 
 right of carrying out wool or w T ool-fells from England 
 can scarcely have expected to succeed ; but they at 
 least gained some measure of peace for their colony in 
 Danzig. 1 
 
 The Hanseatic League, however, had now come to 
 an end of its triumphs. From this time the English 
 pressed them hard. A law which forbade the import 
 of silk and the export of undressed cloths struck a 
 heavy blow at their trade. Then came the order that 
 Rhine wine must only be carried in English ships. 
 Officials used their infinite powers of annoyance 
 with hearty good will, and the merchant who landed 
 with his goods, harassed first by the relentless officers 
 sitting at the receipt of custom, and then thwarted in 
 every possible way by the Mayor and corporation, 2 
 was at last driven by public abuse behind the walls of 
 the Steel Yard, so that in 1490 a member of the Hanse 
 dared scarcely show himself in the streets of London. 
 
 Meanwhile the great confederation of Common- 
 wealths itself showed grave signs of falling asunder. 
 The bigger towns that no longer needed the protection 
 of the association were quite ready to forsake it, and in 
 
 Paston Letters in 1471 may have been caused by the political 
 troubles (iii. 22, 254). 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 172-9 ; ii. 388-396. Pauli's Pictures, 185-7. 
 
 2 Schanz, i, 186.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 111 
 
 1501 began to refuse to bring their cloth to the Staple 
 at Bruges, and to look for freer conditions of trade. At 
 the same time the monopoly of the League was being 
 threatened on all sides. The Prussian and Livonian 
 towns treated them as enemies. A Dutch fleet 
 competed with them in the Baltic. A Danish 
 trading company had risen to dispute their monopoly 
 in Denmark. The Swedes shut them out. The Nor- 
 wegians made intermittent experiments at independ- 
 ence. At last in 1478 came the worst calamity that 
 could befall their trade, the capture of Novgorod by 
 the Muscovites, with the destruction of its free 
 government and the ruin of its position as one of the 
 commercial capitals of the world. 
 
 With the demolition of the League factory, the loss 
 of all its possessions in the city, and the whole dis- 
 location of the Eastern traffic, the supremacy of the 
 Hanseatic Confederation was shattered, as the suprem- 
 acy of the Italians in the Southern trade had been 
 shattered half a century before by the conquest of 
 Alexandria. English Adventurers naturally saw in 
 every fresh trouble that assailed their rivals a new 
 argument for aggression, and welcomed in Henry the 
 Seventh a leader equal to the great occasion. Never 
 had they found a better friend, or one who so finely 
 interpreted the popular instinct of his time. How 
 completely his determination to strengthen by every 
 means in his power the position of the Adventurers 
 in Antwerp against the Hanseatic traders at Bruges, 
 and to bind England and Burgundy together into 
 a united commercial state, fell in with the needs 
 and temper of his people was strikingly shown after
 
 112 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 a two years' interruption of commerce with the Low 
 Countries caused by the affair of Perkin Warbeck, 
 when a burst of popular joy hailed the renewal of 
 trade, and the wild enthusiasm of the people gave to 
 tlit? treaty of 1496 which restored the old kindly re- 
 lations the high-sounding name of the Intercursus 
 Magnus. 
 
 The big name has, as usual, imposed a little on 
 later generations, and greater treaties have gone un- 
 noticed for want of an equally pompous title. At first, 
 indeed, amid the political disquiet and the trade de- 
 pression which marked the early years of his reign, 
 Henry went to work slowly and patiently, and in 
 1486 even confirmed the Utrecht treaty of 1474 which 
 ensured a number of privileges to the Hanse. But 
 this policy of peace was only assumed for a brief space 
 while he was making ready for war. In 1486 he 
 renewed the commercial treaty made by Edward with 
 Britanny in 1467. 1 The real campaign, however, 
 may be said to have opened by the Navigation 
 Act of 1489, when the shipping trade w T as definitely 
 taken under State protection. And what that 
 State protection implied was at once shown in a 
 series of commercial treaties with almost every trading 
 country of Europe, whether its traffic lay in the 
 northern or the southern seas. Building up on every 
 hand alliances against the Hanseatic Confederation he 
 steadily drew to himself the friendship of the Scandi- 
 navian peoples tired of the domination of the League. 
 In 1489 he sent an embassy (two of the deputation 
 being Lynn merchants), to make terms for a com- 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 294.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 113 
 
 mercial alliance with Denmark and Norway, and 
 won from the Northern powers freedom of trade for 
 the English in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, 
 with the right to acquire land, to form corporations 
 and choose aldermen, and to be under special pro- 
 tection of the Danish King. 1 To defeat the preten- 
 sions of Danzig he turned to the Livonian towns, 
 and by treaty with Eiga attempted to secure a Kus- 
 sian trade which might open the way of Novgorod 
 and the East to English Adventurers an attempt 
 which however was frustrated a few years later. 2 A 
 conference was held in 1491 at Antwerp with the 
 Hanseatic envoys, whom Henry with diplomatic inso- 
 lence kept idly waiting for four weeks till the mes- 
 sengers he had sent to Denmark with friendly proposals 
 of a treaty as unfavourable as possible to the interests 
 of the Hanse, returned with their answer. The pro- 
 mise of this inauspicious opening for the League was 
 amply fulfilled in the long negotiations which lasted 
 at Antwerp from 1491 to 1499, and in which the 
 foreigner was consistently humbled before the trium- 
 phant Merchant Adventurer, all his compromises 
 rejected so far as they tended to limit the freedom of 
 the English trader, and the League compelled to accept 
 terms ruinous to its interests and disastrous to its great 
 tradition of supremacy. 3 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 257. 2 Schanz, i. 237-42. 
 
 3 For the negotiations between the Easterlings and the English 
 merchants, see Schanz, ii. 397-430 ; i. 179-201. In 1498 Arch- 
 duke Philip, seeing the utter ruin into which Bruges had fallen, 
 tried to revive it hy ordering that all foreign merchants should 
 do their business there only, by improving the harbour, and by 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 The story of these Antwerp negotiations gives us 
 a true measure of the place gained during the last 
 hundred years by the Merchant Adventurers in the 
 North, where, having dealt the last blows to the ancient 
 company of the Staple, and broken the power of the 
 Hanseatic League, their fleets now sailed triumph- 
 antly on every sea. And yet this was but half their 
 work ; for the North was a small thing to win unless 
 they could also load English vessels with the cargoes 
 of the East and the tribute of the great commercial 
 cities of the Mediterranean. Until the middle of the 
 fifteenth century the trade of the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean had been altogether carried on by Italians. 1 
 It was only in 1432 that the French merchant 
 Jacques Coeur (the stories of whose wealth and power 
 read like fables beside the modest doings of our native 
 traders), had sent out some ships to take part in the 
 Eastern trade ; and the Levant was not really opened 
 to Western merchants till 1442, when the Venetians 
 were driven out of Egypt and the monopoly of the 
 
 making it the Staple, for English cloths in Flanders. (Schanz, i. 
 26-27.) In 1501 Philip made Bruges a Staple where English cloth 
 might be sold in Flanders under strict conditions. (Ibid. ii. 203-6.) 
 In 1506 Henry won from the Archduke the right to sell cloth 
 by the yard and to have the manufacture of it finished in all his 
 dominions except Flanders. (Ibid. i. 31.) 
 
 1 The friendly way in which the English merchants even in 
 1 405 looked on Genoese traders is illustrated in the story told 
 by Fabyan (571), of three carracks of Genoa laden with mer- 
 chandise plundered by English lords. The Genoese merchants 
 made suit to the King for compensation, and meanwhile borrowed 
 from English merchants goods amounting unto great and noble 
 sums. When their suit was seen to be in vain they made off 
 with their spoils " to the undoing " of many merchants.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 115 
 
 Italians broken up. It was very soon after that a 
 Bristol merchant, Sturmys, fitted out probably the first 
 English ship that visited the Eastern shores of the 
 Mediterranean. But the new inheritors of the East 
 were received with bitter jealousies. Kival vessels 
 fought for the spoils and carried off the booty like 
 common pirates ; and the Genoese traders in their anger 
 seized Sturmys' ship on its return voyage and robbed 
 it of its cargo of spices and green pepper. He 
 reckoned his loss at 6,000 francs, and on his com- 
 plaint to the government all the Genoese merchants 
 in London were thrown into prison until they should 
 give bonds for the payment of this sum. 1 
 
 The question of the Mediterranean was thus vigor- 
 ously opened. In London, indeed, the Italians might 
 securely reckon on hard treatment. Merchants just 
 beginning to feel their strength, half-ruined Staplers, 
 London shopkeepers and manufacturers, all alike 
 hated their Italian rivals with a common hatred, and 
 were crying out for the most decisive measures against 
 foreign competition. Less careful than their King of 
 nursing political alliances 2 in view of foreign wars and 
 complications, the traders boldly proposed a bill in the 
 Parliament of 1439 to forbid the Venetians from 
 carrying any wares save those of their own manufac- 
 ture a measure which if it had passed would have 
 
 1 Hunt's Bristol, 97-8. 
 
 2 For the anxiety as to the friendship of powerful maritime 
 states see the French boast of the alliance of Spain and Genoa ; 
 Heralds' Debate, 59. It is interesting to notice that both Edward 
 the Fourth and Henry the Seventh preferred Florence to Venice. 
 Disputes about the Venetian wool trade under Henry the Sixth 
 are mentioned in Bekynton's Corresp. i. 126-9. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 practically annihilated the whole Venetian trade to 
 England. Their next proposal was a law to forbid 
 selling anything to the Genoese or carrying anything 
 to their port. Steadily supported as the Lombards 
 were by the King against the people, they nevertheless 
 saw their privileges from this time limited step by 
 step; and once after the persecution of 1455 in 
 London even attempted to leave the capital for ever. 
 The great days of their trade monopoly were gone. 
 Edward the Fourth and Kichard the Third laid heavy 
 burdens on them. Henry the Seventh kept them 
 dependent on his arbitrary will for a very slight in- 
 crease of freedom, such as he might see fit to grant 
 from time to time, tried to limit their gains, and in the 
 very first year of his reign forbade them to carry 
 French woad or wine, or silk goods, and further hind- 
 ered them in the export of wool. 
 
 At this time the population of the Venetian Re- 
 public was bigger than that of all England, and Eng- 
 lish traders had a good many other affairs on their 
 hands beside their quarrel with Venice. The dispute, 
 nevertheless, did not languish. No sooner were 
 Henry's regulations proclaimed in 1485 than English 
 merchants set sail for Crete, bought up the stores of 
 malmsey there, 1 and carried them off to the Nether- 
 lands under the very eyes of the Venetian captains. 
 Venice passed a law against such traffic, and in the 
 stress of anxiety as to the English competition took 
 to building better ships to maintain her own carrying- 
 trade ; while England retorted by setting up a mono- 
 
 1 The price of wine had been raised in England by new rules 
 about measures.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 117 
 
 poly of her own wool in revenge for the Venetian 
 monopoly of wine. 
 
 Meanwhile, the quick-witted Florentines, driven 
 out of traditional routine by the intensity of the 
 long competition for supremacy, had begun to doubt 
 the value for them of the old policy of naval 
 protection which the city had shared with Venice and 
 Genoa ; and had frankly adopted in 1480 a system of 
 free-trade. In Constantinople and Egypt Florence 
 began again to hold her own against Venice and to win 
 back command of Eastern markets, and she eagerly 
 welcomed English wool merchants to her port at Pisa. 1 
 In 1485, the year when England entered into the lists 
 with Venice, these Jhad become so numerous and power- 
 ful a body that a consul was appointed over them ; 
 and five years later, Henry made a commercial treaty 
 with Florence which was one of the most remarkable 
 acts of his reign. By its provisions English merchants 
 undertook to carry every year to Florence sufficient 
 wool to supply all the Italian States save Venice, and 
 in return they were given every privilege their hearts 
 desired. 2 The only resource left to the Venetians was 
 
 1 A pilgrim to Rome in 1477 got letters in London on the 
 bank of Jacobo di Medici. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 361.) 
 
 2 1. English merchants might trade freely with Florence in 
 all kinds of wares of home or foreign origin. 
 
 2. The Florentines promised to buy no wool save from English 
 ships. The English on their side were bound to carry yearly to 
 Pisa an average quantity for all the Italian states save Venice. 
 In Pisa they were to have all the privileges of inhabitants and 
 to have land for a building. 
 
 3. The English were to be free from personal services and from 
 taxes which might be raised on trade. 
 
 4. The merchants might form a corporation in Pisa.
 
 118 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 to forbid that any wine should be shipped from Crete 
 to Pisa, so that English vessels which went out laden 
 with wool finding no return cargo should be driven 
 to sail home empty. Henry immediately set such 
 heavy import duties on malmsey in England that 
 the Venetians, seeing their wine-trade on the point of 
 ruin, bowed at last to the inevitable. The victory of 
 the English merchants was finally proclaimed when 
 Henry in 1507 only consented to renew the charter 
 that gave Venetians rights of trade in England on 
 condition that they bound themselves to do no carry- 
 ing trade between the Netherlands and England, but 
 to leave that to the Merchant Adventurers. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, in all the ports visited by English ships 
 between the Mediterranean and the Channel the same 
 buoyant spirit of successful enterprise vanquished 
 every obstacle. Englishmen had always traded much 
 with their fellow-subjects in Aquitaine. From the 
 days of St. Thomas Canterbury had dealings with the 
 wine-growers of the south. 2 Ships of Bordeaux were 
 
 5. Quarrels between Englishmen to be settled by their own 
 head. Quarrels between an Englishman and a foreigner to be 
 decided by the municipality and the English consul. Criminal 
 cases by the municipality alone. 
 
 6. The English to share all advantages the Florentines might 
 win by trading treaties. 
 
 7. The wishes of the English to be considered in all new priv- 
 ileges granted in the Florentine dominions. 
 
 8. The English King was to allow no stranger to carry wool 
 out of England. The Venetians only might carry 600 sacks. 
 
 9. The wool was to be of good quality and well packed. 
 (Schanz, i. 126-137.) 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 119-U2 ; 7 Henry VII. c. 7. 
 
 2 An interesting account of this is given in Hist. MSS. Com. 
 v. 461.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 119 
 
 known in every port of the Channel, and in 1350, 141 
 vessels laden with wine sailed thence to London alone, 1 
 while the early wealth of Bristol had been created by 
 the cargoes of wool carried from its port to feed the 
 Gascon manufactories, and the casks of wine sent back 
 to fill its cellars. Conditions so pleasant for the Bristol 
 burghers were rudely changed when in 1445 Bordeaux 
 fell into the hands of the French, and English traders 
 instead of being the masters had to go humbly at the 
 bidding of the men of Bordeaux with a red cross on 
 their backs, doing business only in the town, or going 
 into the country under the guardianship of a police 
 -agent. But if the burghers of the later fifteenth cen- 
 tury cared nothing for the re-conquest of the French 
 provinces, on the other hand they were determined 
 not to lose their trade. The wool dealers, shut out 
 of Bordeaux, turned to the North, to Rouen and 
 {Calais, changed their wool there for the wine of 
 Niederburgund, and so started the woollen manu- 
 factures of Normandy, while those of Bordeaux 
 declined. By a succession of commercial treaties 2 
 and by the Navigation Act of 1489, which shut out 
 Gascon ships from the English wine trade, Heniy 
 secured for English merchants in Bordeaux such 
 adequate protection that the efforts of Louis the 
 Twelfth to limit their freedom of trade by passing 
 a Navigation Act of his own were utterly vain. 
 The Bordeaux citizens, filled with impotent rage, 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 298. 
 
 2 In 1475, 1486, and 1495. (Schanz, i. 299-304.) In 1475 
 .a proclamation in Cinque Ports forbade Englishmen to buy 
 Gascon wine of an alien. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 494.)
 
 120 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 watched the English traders going up and down the 
 land, 6,000 to 8,000 of them, as they averred, armed 
 with sticks, and scouring the country for wine. 
 
 The ports of Spain and Portugal also were visited 
 by increasing numbers of English vessels on their way 
 to the Mediterranean, and old trading alliances were 
 renewed with countries whose harbours were such 
 valuable resting places. 1 There had long been com- 
 mercial treaties with Castile and Catalonia, who com- 
 peted for the profits to be won by carrying to England 
 Spanish iron and fruits along with the wine and 
 woad of neighbouring lands. But Henry the Seventh 
 took the occasion of the negotiations for the Spanish 
 marriage in 1489 to stipulate anew for freedom of trade 
 and protection of English ships ; while at the same 
 time the English merchants asserted that by the new 
 Navigation Act the whole export trade was now their 
 exclusive right, and under the plea that their ships 
 could not make the voyage to Spain unless they had 
 a certainty of coming back well laden, forbade the 
 carrying of Toulouse woad and Gascony wine in Span- 
 ish ships. By this time the Englishman had as usual 
 roused the fear and hatred of the native merchants, 
 and the Spaniards violently resisted the new policy. 
 Heavy tolls were imposed on either side to ruin the 
 trade of the other, and in one season eight hundred 
 English ships were sent home empty from Seville 
 because the- patriotic Spanish dealers with one accord 
 
 1 An interesting trace of foreign connections is given in the 
 will of Wm. Rowley, who left money to a parish church and 
 a nunnery at Dam in Flanders, and to two places in Spain. (Histv 
 MSS. Com. v. 326.)
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 121 
 
 refused their wares to the enemy. Again fortune came 
 to help the pertinacity of the Adventurers. In 1492 
 Spain drove the Jews and Moors from her shores. But 
 their business simply fell into alien hands waiting to 
 receive it, and the hated English merchants flocked to 
 Spanish harbours now swept of their old rivals, and 
 sailed back to England laden with the gold of the 
 New World. 1 
 
 Nor was the good chance that favoured them in 
 Portugal less wonderful. With the traders of Lisbon 
 and Oporto England had entered into a commercial 
 treaty in the middle of the fourteenth century a 
 treaty which was altered in 1386 to include the whole 
 of Portugal. 2 But by some happy destiny whose 
 favours strewed the path of English traders, they asked 
 and obtained in 1458 a revision of old agreements so as 
 to secure the utmost advantage for their own interests, 
 and all this had been completed just before the dis- 
 covery of the Cape route gave to Portugal its enorm- 
 ous naval importance and threw Eastern commerce 
 into a new channel. The quarrel with Venice inspired 
 the English with increased ardour in their friendship 
 for the new masters of the spice trade ; and when 
 Portuguese dealers invited English merchants to make 
 their bargains for Eastern wares in Lisbon instead of 
 journeying to Venice, these gathered in such numbers 
 to the new emporium of Indian goods that their 
 own shipping failed to carry the wealth offered to 
 
 1 Schanz, i. 275-7. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 285-90. The Portuguese were among those who were 
 allowed to export woollen cloths under Henry the Sixth. (Proc. 
 Privy Council, v. ii. 11.)
 
 122 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 them and the merchants had to hire Portuguese 
 vessels. 1 
 
 Thus it was that in the face of the powerful con- 
 federations that held the trade of the Northern and 
 the Southern Seas English merchants were laying 
 violent hands on the commerce of the world. They 
 had vanquished their rivals in the north, while in the 
 south they had firmly planted themselves in every 
 important trading port along the western coast of 
 Europe, and competed with the Italian Republics 
 not only for their own carrying trade but for that 
 of the Netherlands as well. If in the reign of Edward 
 the Third practically the whole of the foreign com- 
 merce of England was carried in foreign vessels, in 
 the reign of Henry the Seventh the great bulk of the 
 trade had passed into English hands. British mer- 
 chants were to be found in every port from Alexandria 
 to Reykjavik, and wherever they touched left behind 
 them an organized and firmly established trade. As 
 we have seen, their battle for supremacy in commerce 
 had in its beginnings been fought by free-traders 
 
 O J 
 
 and pirates warring against the orderly forces of 
 organized protection ; but the final victory was 
 awarded to them in their later stage of a company of 
 monopolists sustained and cherished by the State. 
 The question, indeed, of how far protection con- 
 tributed to the success of the English or to the loss 
 of the foreigner is far from being a simple one. For 
 
 1 Notices of English trade with Portugal in the second half of 
 the fifteenth century may be found in the complaints of the 
 merchants ; Schanz, ii. 496-524. For Portuguese in Lydd in 
 1456, Hist. MSS. Corn. v. 521.
 
 in THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION 123 
 
 in its first stages the work done by protection may 
 possibly consist for a time mainly in the abolition of 
 privilege, and this process may pass by very slow 
 and imperceptible degrees to its last stage, that of 
 conferring privilege. It is, therefore, hard to decipher 
 the lesson when we are studying a commerce where 
 protection has but begun its work in conflict with a 
 commerce when that work is perfected. In the his- 
 tory of the later fifteenth century, moreover, the prob- 
 lem is yet further complicated by the present work- 
 ing of those vast forces which make or unmake the 
 fortunes of continents, and before which the wisest 
 policies of States, policies of protection or of free- 
 trade or of any other elaborate product of human 
 intelligence, are powerful as an army of phantoms.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WE who have been trained under the modern 
 system have forgotten how people lived in the old 
 days, w T hen 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
 
 CH. iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 125 
 
 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 com- 
 pared 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 *- 
 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 
 
 1 In Piers Ploughman a graphic illustration is taken from the 
 mediaeval borough thus isolated and protected. 
 
 " He cried and commanded all Christian people 
 To delve and dike a deep ditch all about unity, 
 That Holy Church stood in holiness as it were a pile. 
 Conscience commanded then all Christians to delve, 
 And make a great moat that might be a strength 
 To help holy Church and them that it keepeth." 
 
 Pass. xxii. 364-386.
 
 126 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 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" l 
 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 com- 
 mon 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." 2 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 461. 
 
 2 Piers Ploughman, passus iv. 386.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 127 
 
 I. The inhabitants of a mediaeval 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 fortifica- 
 tion 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 mediaeval 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 an}' 
 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
 
 128 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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." * At the 
 first warning of an enemy's approach the mayor or 
 bailiff became supreme military commander. 2 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." 3 
 
 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 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 466. 
 
 - " And Ave use that during the siege if the bailiff be an unable 
 and impotent man or unlearned, to choose us one other for the 
 time being ; but not a far-dweller unless by the pleasure of the 
 commonalty." (Ibid. 488.) See Proc. Privy Council, iv. 217. 
 
 3 Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 463, 488.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 12!) 
 
 enemies." 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. 2 
 
 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 
 
 1 In Rye there was a tax " from every stranger, as though from 
 a prisoner taken, payment of his finance for his ransom, and 
 when he has entered the fortresses of the port for his passage 
 thence, 3s. 4d.; he having to pay towards the building of the 
 walls and gates there what pertains to the common weal of the 
 town." (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 490.) For the strengthening of 
 Canterbury wall against the French, (ibid. ix. 141.) It had 
 twenty-one towers and six gates, and mayors in 1452 and 1460 
 left money for the gates. (Da vies' Southampton, 62-3, 80, 105. 
 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 167.) 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 518-24, 492-3. The Common House at 
 Romney was only provided with bows until in 1475 a gun was 
 laid on it. Burgesses were sometimes driven from towns by 
 the excessive charges of war and of watch and ward. (Owen's 
 Shrewsbury, i. 205.) For Southampton, see Davies, 79, 80, 
 Chester, Hist, MSS. Com. viii. 370. 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 130 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP- 
 
 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 de- 
 stroy 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. 1 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. 2 
 
 "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 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 370. In 1399, when the master- 
 weavers and tradesmen came armed to the cathedral and led an 
 attack on " William of Wy bun bur and Thomas del Dame and 
 many of their servants called journeymen in a great affray of all 
 the people of the city against the peace of the Lord King." Ibid. 
 367. See also Paston Letters, i. 408; Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 
 432. 
 
 2 Plumpton Correspondence, liv. Ixii.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 131 
 
 soldiers' pay, " or else the constables to be set in 
 prison to abide to such time as it be content and 
 paid." l 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, 2 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. 3 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 nig- 
 gardly hand ; and men conceived a deep hatred of 
 strife and disorder of which they had measured all 
 the misery. 4 When the common people dreamed 
 of a brighter future, their simple hope was that 
 
 1 Da vies' York, 183. For the directions given about the 
 gathering of troops, see ibid., 152-157. For cost of arms and 
 maintenance of troops to towns, see Stubbs ii. 309. Hisi,. 
 MSS. Com. ix. 143. 
 
 a Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 7, p. 171. 
 
 3 The authorities of York decreed that the soldiers sent on a 
 Scotch campaign should be given their wages for the first fourteen 
 days, and the captain should have in his pocket the money for 
 the second fortnight. The troops struck, however, and insisted 
 on having the whole twenty-eight days' pay before they started, 
 and the town had at last to give in as the only way of getting 
 the expedition started. (Davies' York 132-7.) The soldiers, 
 once paid, often did no more than start on their journey and then 
 " straggle about by themselves" with their pay in their pockets. 
 (Paston Letters ii. 1-2.) 
 
 4 Eng. Chronicle, 1377-1461, pp. 71, 83, 90, 109. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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." l 
 
 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 break- 
 ing 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 appear- 
 ance of a short dagger, " and so drew blood upon each 
 other." 2 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 re- 
 
 1 Piers Ploughman, passus iv. 478, 479. 
 
 " ' Therefore 1 counsel no King any counsel ask 
 At conscience if he coveteth to conquer a realm, 
 For should never conscience be my constable 
 Were I a king y-crowned, by Mary,' quoth Meed, 
 ' Nor be marshall of my men where I most fight.' " 
 
 Passus iv. 254-8. 
 
 2 In Canterbury, any man drawing a knife was fined or im- 
 prisoned forty days. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 172.) In Sandwich if 
 any one wounded another with a sword or knife he might choose 
 one of three punishments, a fine of 60s. to the commonalty, im- 
 prisonment for a year and a day, or to have his hand perforated 
 with the weapon by which he had inflicted the wound. (Boys 502.)
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 133 
 
 luctant citizens constantly by one excuse or another 
 sought to escape a painful and thankless duty : whether 
 it was whole groups of inhabitants sheltering them- 
 selves behind legal pretexts ; or sturdy rebels breath- 
 ing 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 w r ould not watch for us " ; and 
 three others " lacked each of them a night." But in 
 such cases the mayor's authority was firmly upheld by 
 the whole community, every burgher knowing well 
 
 1 Parker, Manor of Aylesbury, 20-21. "Also I complain," 
 said one of them pitifully, " upon James Fleccher for fraying of my 
 wife about 10 o'clock in the night and I ready for to go to bed, 
 standing scolding at my door bidding me come out of thy doors 
 an thou dare with his dagger in his hand ready to break the 
 king's peace." The prudent constable, however, refrained from 
 coming out and was content to appeal to the next court ; "he is 
 coming and therefore I beseech you of peace of his godabery." 
 In Canterbury one of the watchmen called to a person " walk- 
 ing out of due time " to know wherefore he walked there so late. 
 " The suspect person gave none answer, but ran from thence 
 into St. Austin's liberty and before the door of one John Short 
 they took him. And the same John Short came out of his house 
 with other misknown persons and took from the said watchmen 
 their weapons and there menaced them for to beat contrary to the 
 oath of a true and faithful freeman." (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 174.)
 
 134 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 " 
 \vithin 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 recur- 
 ring, now with craft and treachery, now with violence 
 and heated passion breaking into sudden flame. Every 
 year the mayor and corporation made a perambula- 
 tion of the bounds and inspected the landmarks j 1 the 
 common treasure was readily poured out if lawsuits 
 and bribes were needed to ascertain and preserve the 
 
 1 " The freemen of the borough of Huntingdon have this week 
 been engaged in the observance of a curious and ancient local 
 custom. With their sons, the whole of the freemen of the borough 
 have assembled in the morning in the Market-place. The skull 
 of an ox borne on two poles was placed at the head of a procession, 
 and then came the freemen and their sons, a certain number of 
 them bearing spades and others sticks. Three cheers having been 
 given, the procession moved out of the town and proceeded to 
 the nearest point of the borough boundary, where the skull was 
 lowered. The procession then moved along the boundary line of 
 the borough, the skull being dragged along the line as if it were 
 a plough. The boundary holes were dug afresh, and a boy thrown 
 into each hole and struck with a spade. At a particular point, 
 called Blacktone Leys, refreshments were provided, and the boys 
 competed for prizes. The skull was then again raised aloft, and 
 the procession returned to the Market-place, where three more 
 hurrahs were given before it broke up." (From the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, September 16th, 1892.) In Hythe Holy Thursday was the 
 day of perambulation. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 432.) For Canter- 
 bury in 1497 see Hasted's Kent, iv. 399-401,
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 135 
 
 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 remem- 
 ber 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 Canter- 
 bury 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 un- 
 defined. A low marshy ground called the " Hosiers " 
 was claimed by the mayor as under his jurisdiction, 
 Avhile 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 Hosiers. There certain monks and 
 servants of the prior were taking the air ; one pro- 
 tested 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
 
 136 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 hay- 
 makers. 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 l 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 delimita- 
 tion 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 COW T S 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. 2 The men of Eomney 
 did not count grudgingly their constant labour and cost 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 434. 
 
 - History Preston Gild, 41, 42; Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 345; 
 Nottingham, Records, i. 150-151, 268, 164-165.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 137 
 
 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 l 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 South- 
 ampton where the burghers had almost forgotten the 
 free traditions of popular government, the inhabit- 
 ants never relaxed their vigilance as to the protection 
 of their common property. 2 They assembled year 
 after year to make sure that there had been no dim- 
 inishing of their rights or alienation of their land, 
 or that in the periodical allotments the best fields 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 519. 
 
 2 For common pasture and closes see short account in Rogers' 
 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, i. 89-90, taken from Fitzher- 
 bert's Treatise. In 1484 a great riot broke out in York on the 
 question of the common lands. The King had begged the council 
 to make an order that a close which belonged to S. Nicholas, but 
 was common from Michaelmas to Candlemas, should be " closed 
 and several " for the use of the hospital if the commons would 
 agree to the same. The order was made, but a few days after 
 Michaelmas, when the close was not thrown open as was cus- 
 tomary, the citizens met in a " riotous assembly or insurrection " 
 which led to interference of the King. (Davies' York, 190-198.) 
 In Winchester (1414) John Parmiter was punished for accusing 
 the mayor of intending to sell the Coitebury mill without consent 
 of the citizens. (Kitchen's Winchester, 171.) For other instances 
 see Vol. II. " Democracy in the Towns," Note A.
 
 138 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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. 
 
 Y. 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 maintain- 
 ing 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. 1 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 
 
 1 At Worcester the common coffer which contained the city 
 ileeds and moneys was fastened with six locks ; three keys were 
 kept by the bailiff, an alderman, and a chamberlain, chosen by 
 the " Great Clothing," or the council of " the twenty-four above ; " 
 the other three by a chamberlain chosen by the " Low Election" 
 or the council of " the Forty-eight beneath," and by two "thrifty 
 commoners." Ens'. Gilds, 377,
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 139 
 
 of the common bell calling them together for that 
 intent " an assembly that perhaps gathered in the 
 parish church in which seats were set up for the 
 occasion at the public expense. 2 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 com- 
 modities for sale ; of the " scot " levied on the pro- 
 perty of individuals ; of the " lyvelode " or livelihood, 
 an income tax on rates or profits earned. They 
 learned what means the corporation had taken of in- 
 creasing the common revenue ; whether it had 
 ordered a " church-ale," or an exhibition of dancing- 
 girls, or a play of Robin Hood ; 3 what poor relief had 
 been given in the past year ; 4 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 shil- 
 lings ; " or they were told whether the Town Council 
 
 1 In case of error or fraud, or if the bailiff refused to make 
 answer to complaints of the burghers, he was brought before the 
 court of his fellow-citizens " and he shall make satisfaction as 
 the commonalty shall think fitting." Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 
 462. 
 
 2 In Romney the town paid every year to have seats put in the 
 church of S. Lawrence on the day of the Annunciation. (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 546.) In the same way town accounts at Rye were 
 made up and audited in the church at the end of the year. (Ibid. v. 
 494.) Lydd in 1471 " spended in the church upon the bailly and 
 jurats when they enquired what lyvelod men have in Lydd two 
 pence." (Ibid. 525.) 
 
 3 Hist. MSS, Com. i. 106, 107, 4 See p. 41, note 2.
 
 140 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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. 1 
 
 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 ; 2 and when the rent of 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com.iv. 1, 438. The Hythe barge brought back 
 three lasts of herrings which were sold for 12. In 1409 Komney 
 Jurats got 6s. increase upon white salt bought for the community. 
 (Ibid. v. 537.) If a corporation was in need of money it could 
 always fall back on loans from rich townsmen, who were willing 
 to lend even on long credit. In 1455 or 1456 one Canterbury 
 merchant lent 13 6s. 8d., which was needed for a gift to the 
 queen, then travelling on pilgrimage, and he was only repaid in 
 1464. Three leading men, who advanced large sums to do honour 
 to Edward the Fourth on his first coming to the city in 1460, 
 waited four or five years for their money. (Ibid. ix. 139-140.) In 
 Lynn the loans to the corporation were on a very great scale 
 according to the ideas of the time, and the municipal debt, entirely 
 raised on the spot, was as permanent and as progressive as that 
 of a modern town. 
 
 - Madox, Firma Burgi, 159. See also in 1322, when the
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 141 
 
 Southampton was in arrears, one of its burgesses was 
 thrown into the Fleet in London. 1 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, every- 
 one 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. 2 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 w r as in fact 
 forced labour of the whole commonalty. If the boroughs 
 suffered little from government interference neither 
 could they look for help in the w r ay 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 
 
 missing ferm was to be levied of the bailiffs' goods, chattels, and 
 lands, and, if this did not suffice, of the goods of the citizens. 
 Documents pr. 1884. (Stanley v. Mayor, &c., 24.) See Note A 
 at the end of chapter. 
 
 1 Davies, 111, 37. 
 
 2 Eng. Gilds, 362-363 ; Nott. Records, i. 267.
 
 142 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 substitutes whom they provided to take their place 
 repaired the highways and kept the streets in order. 1 
 The great trench dug at Bristol to alter the course 
 of the Frome was made " by the manoeuvre of all 
 the commonalty as well of Kedcliffe ward as of the 
 town of Bristol. 2 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. 3 
 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 work- 
 men 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 
 
 1 Records of Nottingham, iv. 449. Afterwards a paviour 
 was appointed who was paid, or partly paid, by a toll taken for corn 
 " shown " for sale in the market. This tax, known as " shewage " 
 or " scavadge," gave rise to our later word scavenger (iv. 453). 
 Rules for keeping streets clean in Southampton. (Gross, ii. 223.) 
 
 2 Ricart, 28. 1240 A.D. For carrying great stones for the 
 quay and walls of Rye. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 492, 493. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com.iv. 1, 434.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 143 
 
 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. 1 But under- 
 takings 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, col- 
 lectors 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 col- 
 lectors gives the sum of the masses said for them 
 
 1 One man received 30 10s. in various sums, 3s. 4d. a rod for 
 nineteen rods, Is. 8d. a rod for 106 rods, and 12d. a rod for 380 
 rods. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1. 434.) For forty years the men of 
 Romney fought a desperate battle with the sea and the changing 
 bed of the Rother to preserve the harbour on which their pros- 
 perity depended. In 1381 they spent nearly 9 on making a 
 sluice (Boys' Sandwich, 803) ; there were heavy payments for it 
 again in 1388, and in 1398 John Roan was brought over from 
 Flanders to take charge of it. The commons turned out in 1406 
 for " digging the common Rie," or bed of the Rother, and in 
 1409 were again busy "digging the watercourse." In 1410 
 Gerard Matthyessone was brought over from Holland to make 
 the sluice at a cost of 100 ; in 1412 over 44 was spent on it 
 besides clothing for Gerard and his household; and in 1413 pay- 
 ments were still being made to him. A few years later in 1422 
 his place was taken by another Dutchman, Onterdel, who seems 
 to have finished the work, for after this there are only charges 
 for slight repairs. Their improvements remained the model for 
 neighbouring towns, and when Lydd was occupied in works of 
 the same kind its citizens came to study the jetty at Romney.
 
 144 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 ill the year as amounting to nearly four thousand : 
 " the sum of all other good prayers no man knoweth 
 save only God alone." 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 owner- 
 ship and the duty of setting it up again to <the 
 townspeople ; w r ho appointed wardens and kept elab- 
 orate accounts and bore grievous anxiety, till find- 
 ing its charges worse than all their ordinary town ex- 
 penses 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 w r est part of England. " 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 
 
 1 Ibid. vi. 495-7. A messenger went as far as Kent and 
 Essex to gather alms for making the harbour. He collected 
 groats, pence, fleeces of wool, broken silver and rings, a dish full 
 of wheat, malt, or barley, a piece of bacon and so forth ; and got 
 a man to help him who swore before the canons of Christchurch 
 that he would be true, but declared he must have a crucifix and 
 writing as sign of authority, and got a goodly crucifix with 
 beryl set therein and a new suit of clothes, and then made off 
 with his booty. 
 
 2 Shillingford's Letters, 141, 142. Rec. Nottingham, i. 183. 
 For Rochester, Eng. Chron. 124; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 76. For 
 London see Lit. Cantuar. iii. 169.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 145 
 
 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 ward-men from every house. 1 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 w 7 ell in London, " that lasted seven days 
 continually, and there were the most part of the lords 
 
 1 Boys' Sandwich. 673, 676, 684. The town council of Lynn 
 decreed in 1431 " that the three players shall serve the commun- 
 ity this year for 21s., and their clothing to be had of every 
 house ; " but two years later the players demanded an increase of 
 their " reward," and a grant was made to each of them of 20s. 
 and their clothing, in return for which " they shall go through 
 the town with their instruments from the Feast of All Saints to 
 the following Feast of the Purification." (Hist. MSS. Com. 
 xi. 3, p. 162-3.) In Canterbury four minstrels were appointed 
 every year, and each one was given a silver scutcheon worth 
 100s. a badge which was returned at the end of the year to 
 the city chamberlain. 
 
 VOL. I I'
 
 146 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and gentles of England." 1 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, hun- 
 dreds of nails, a mitre, two bags of leather con- 
 taining 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. 2 
 
 1 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (Camden Society), 12. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 147-8. A most interesting example 
 of an English play is given in the " Common-place book of the 
 fifteenth century," ed. by Miss Toulmin Smith, pp. 46-9, the 
 play of Abraham and Isaac. The vivacity, the pathos, the 
 dramatic movement, the strong human interest, are very re- 
 markable.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 147 
 
 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." 1 
 .It was an easy life 
 
 "Some mirth to make as minstrels connetli (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." 2 
 
 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. 3 Players from Komney 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." 4 Besides this Lydd had its own 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 516-527. 
 
 2 Piers Ploughman, pass. i. 34-38. 
 
 s Hist. MSS. Com. v. 518, etc. 4 Ibid. pass. viii. 98. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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. 1 
 
 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 men- 
 agerie 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. 2 
 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 " 3 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 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540, 541,544, 552, 548, 549. 
 
 2 Ibid. xi. 7, 172-4. 
 
 3 " Two Seraions of the Boy Bishop at S. Paul's " have been 
 published by the Camclen Society, 1875.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 149 
 
 judge by the case of Bristol where the crafts who took 
 part in the watch divided among them ninety-four 
 gallons of wine. l 
 
 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 em- 
 parelled 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 dra- 
 pers, saddlers, shoemakers and many others met at the 
 cross on the Eoodeye, 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. 2 
 To these festivities we must add the yearly pageants 
 1 Eng. Guilds, 430. 2 Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 363.
 
 150 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 of the Guilds whether of the great societies like the 
 Guild of St. George at Norwich, 1 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 Christ! 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 cen- 
 tury 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." 2 The Craft 
 Guilds also, whether voluntarily or by order of the 
 Corporation, had their pageants, acting the same play 
 year after year/' 
 
 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 
 
 1 See vol. ii. 
 
 2 Davies' York, 43, 77 ; Eng. Guilds, 141-3. The expenses that 
 fell on a town at a royal visit were exceedingly heavy. (Davies' 
 York, 69.) For Canterbury, Hist/MSS. Com. ix. 140-151. 
 
 '' In 1415 there were fifty-seven crafts in York, each of which 
 had its special play. (Davies' York, 233-236: English 
 Guilds, 141-3 ; Hist, MSS. Com. i. 109.) Plays were given 
 over to certain trades to act. Abraham and Isaac, for instance, 
 was given to the slaters in Newcastle, the bowyers and fletchers 
 in Beverley, the weavers in Dublin, the parchminers and book- 
 binders in York, the barbers and wax-chandlers in Chester. 
 (Commonplace Book, ed. by Miss Toulmin Smith, 47-8.)
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 151 
 
 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. 1 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 de- 
 creed that every Mayor should henceforth " keep the 
 watch," and that the crafts who apparently hoped to es- 
 cape 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. 2 
 In the same way when the tailors of Plymouth were in- 
 corporated in 1496, they had to bind themselves to pro- 
 vide a pageant every year on Corpus Christi Day for the 
 benefit of the Corpus Christi Guild, 3 and so on in many 
 
 1 The prices charged by players and minstrels seem to have 
 risen considerably between 1400 and 1500. For a growing 
 economy, see Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 345. 2 Ibid. ix. 173. 
 
 3 Ibid. ix. 274. For the Worcester rules of 1467, see English 
 Guilds, 385, 407-8.
 
 152 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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, l 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." 2 
 
 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 pres- 
 sure 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 3 were naturally deeply interested 
 in the preservation of the good old customs, and it 
 
 1 Hist. 3188. Com. i. 103-104, no date. 
 
 2 Ibid. x. 4, 426. 
 
 3 The York hostellers contracted in 1483 to bring forth yearly 
 for the next eight years a pageant of their own, The Coronation 
 of Our Lady.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 153 
 
 was ill some cases certainly this class, the most power- 
 ful in a mediaeval borough, who raised the protest 
 against the indifference and neglect of the towns- 
 people 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 acci- 
 dents 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 l in the 
 church itself, 2 guarded by a sentence of excommuni- 
 cation against all who should violate so sacred a 
 protection. 3 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. 4 Burghers 
 
 1 A small fee was sometimes paid to the parson when the 
 church was used as store-house for grain or wool as in case of 
 Southampton. Roger's Agric. and Prices, ii. 611. 
 
 2 Paston Letters, iii. 436. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 306. York Ritual. 
 
 4 The belfry where the clock hung played so important a part
 
 154 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 honour- 
 ably " y-parroked (parked) in pews," where Wrath 
 sat among the proud ladies who quarrelled as to 
 which should first receive the holy bread ; l 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 com- 
 munity, whether it was a list of strayed sheep, or a 
 proclamation by the bailiff of the penalties which had 
 
 in the communes of France that the right to have a belfry and a 
 town hall were given by charter when the commune was estab- 
 lished, and were taken away when it was suppressed (Ordonnances 
 des Hois de France, vol. xi., cxlii., cxliii.), and the bell-tower 
 often formed the town prison. In England, on the other hand, 
 the town clock and the assembly and curfew bells in almost all 
 cases were set in the tower of the parish church, and the ringers 
 paid by the corporation. 
 
 1 Piers Ploughman, passus vii. 144. In Totnes in the thir- 
 teenth century there is a long list of entries such as these : 
 " Alice wife of Walter Cochela sits above the seats of Walter 
 rustic ; " " Nicholas son of Henry has his seat by common 
 purchase ; " and so on. And down to recent times the mayor, 
 who by tradition represents the head of the Merchant Guild, was 
 charged with appointing seats in the church to the inhabitants. 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 242-3.) In Liverpool, " according to 
 ancient custom," the city officers and their wives had special seatsin 
 S. Nicholas, and after them the householders ; " apprentices and 
 servants shall sit or stand in the alleys." (Picton's Liverpool, 
 ii. 53, 54, 57.) For allotment of seats in the parish church see 
 Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 2nd Edition. 1857, 441.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 155 
 
 been decreed in the manor court against offenders. 1 
 The church was their Common Hall where the com- 
 monalty 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. 2 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. 3 
 
 1 In Cumberland stray sheep were proclaimed at the church on 
 Sunday. At Rotherham the penalties decreed in the manor 
 court were commonly ordered to be published by the bailiff in the 
 church. (Hunter's Doncaster, ii. 10.) In 1462 the king's 
 judges sat to hold trials in the Grey Friars' Church at Bridge- 
 water for cases of assault and theft. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316.) 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 537. Romney. Ibid. iv. 1, 436. 
 
 3 Shillingford's Letters, 48, 94. For the church of S.Nicholas
 
 156 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Ill 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." : In a draft pres- 
 entation to a London vicarage of 1427 there is 
 
 o 
 
 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." 2 
 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 con- 
 science 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 
 
 Romney, 1422, see Hist. AISS. Com. v. 542. In Dover barons of 
 Cinque Ports met at the church of S. James. (Ibid. v. 528, 538.) 
 For Rye, Ibid., 499. The meetings of the town council in South- 
 ampton were probably first held in the church of S. Cross or 
 Holy Rood, where the assembly bell and curfew bell hung; and 
 so closely did the idea of the town life come to be connected with 
 this spot that when a town hall was built in the fourteenth 
 century the church was moved further back that the hall might 
 stand on its exact site. As late as 1470 the mayor and his 
 brethren met in the parish church to settle a question of town 
 business. 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 93. Report on Markets, 25. Fairs 
 forbidden on Sundays and feast days ; 27 Henry VI., cap. 5. 
 
 - Hist. MSS. Com. v. 43fi.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 157 
 
 desecrated by the transaction in it of common busi- 
 ness. 1 
 
 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. 2 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. 3 If a religious guild 
 
 1 It is interesting to note the scientific experiments of " Doctor 
 Wren " in the tower of old S. Paul's, described in a letter from 
 Moray to Huygens, Sep. 23, 1664. (Euvres Completes de 
 Huygens. Amsterdam, 1893, vol. v. 
 
 2 The mayor and jurats of Rye had the nomination of the 
 chaplain of S. Bartholomew's. (Lyons, ii. 367.) For Sandwich 
 Boys, 672-3. The Bridgewater burgesses were lay rectors of the 
 church. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 312.) For the Wells corporation, 
 Hist. MSS. Com. i. 106. At Dartmouth the parish church was built 
 by the mayor ; and a dispute began between mayor and vicar who 
 was to have fees for masses ; fresh d ispute raised every thirty 
 years from that time till 1 874, when it had come to a question 
 of pew rents, and a compromise was made. In Andover the 
 custodians of the cemetery were chosen by the people (Gross, ii. 
 331). "If any person shall be a water bearer in Totnes he 
 shall cry the hour of the day and shall carry the holy water 
 every Sunday throughout the whole ville of Totnes." (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. iii. 344.) Payment was often made for sermons. (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 549. Davies' York, 77.) 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 495. For the presenting of parish
 
 158 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 vest- 
 ments 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 w T ho died without leaving 
 to the Church an offering of twenty shillings. 1 
 
 The people on their side were taxed, and heavily 
 taxed, for the various expenses of the Church. 2 Ser- 
 geants sent by the Town Council collected under severe 
 penalties the dues for the blessed bread and " tren- 
 dilles " 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." 3 If a church had to be repaired or rebuilt the 
 
 priests and clerics by the town juries see Cutts' Colchester, 129. 
 " And also the parish priest of St. Peter's for over assessing of 
 poor folks and men's servants at Easter for their tythes and other 
 duties." (Nott. Rec. iii. 364.) In 1476, when the chaplain of 
 Old Romney Church was arraigned for felony, " according to the 
 custom of the Cinque Ports, for his acquittance it is assigned that 
 he shall have 36 good and lawful men to be at the Hundred 
 Court next to come at his peril." Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 544. See 
 ch. v. p. 175, note. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 272. 
 
 2 For the rise of the new parish administration, Gneist i. 
 282-5; ii. 21. 
 
 3 Hythe, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 432. Bridport, Hist, MSS. 
 <Jom. vi. 495 ; Andover, Gross, ii. 345. In Lynn all houses leased 
 for 20s. a year were bound to supply the blessed bread and 
 wax for S. Margaret's, and the most elaborate rules were drawn 
 up to regulate the contributions which were to be paid by tene-
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 159 
 
 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 re- 
 cognized 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. 1 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 
 
 ments lying together, or by various tenements under one roof. 
 In case payment was refused the common sergeant, or any officer 
 sent by the mayor, might levy a distress and carry off the 
 tenant's goods to the Guild Hall to be kept till he had made 
 satisfaction or paid a tine of 20s. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 161.) 
 Payments for the holy fire are frequent. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 
 432, v. 549.) Sometimes fines for breach of trade laws went to 
 church uses. (Gross, ii. 331, 345.) In Rye, if any animal got 
 into the churchyard the owner paid 3s. 4d. to fabric of church. 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 489.) 
 
 1 In Bridport the bequests for the church from 1450 to 1460 
 consist of such things as a brass crock, a ring, small sums of 
 money, and more often one or two sheep or lambs. Hist. MSS. 
 Com. vi. 494. Manorial Pleas (Selden Soc.), 150. Hist. MSS. 
 Com. x. 4, 524, 529, 531. Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 345.
 
 160 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 re- 
 placed by a new stone tower. A master mason was 
 appointed in 1448, and "supervisors" w T ere 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 Arch- 
 deacon's Court, 1 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 coun- 
 cil 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 
 
 1 Hist, MSS. Com. iii. 345, 346. When Hythe set up its 
 new steeple in 1480 the twelve jurats headed the list of subscrip- 
 tions, the greatest sum given by them being 10s. Then came 
 the commons giving from 20s. down to Id., that is, a day's sub- 
 sistence. (Ibid. iv. 1, 433.)
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 161 
 
 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 
 44 145. 6d. 1 
 
 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 mediaeval burgher had his train- 
 ing. The claims of the commonwealth were never 
 allowed to slip from his remembrance. As all the 
 affairs of the town were matters of public responsi- 
 bility, so all the incidents of its life were made matters 
 of public knowledge. The ancient " common horn " 
 or the "common bell" 2 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 
 
 1 Hist. MSB. Coin. ix. 273. Money was collected for the church 
 at Yaxley, in Suffolk, in 1485 and the following years, by a similar 
 custom of the yearly " church ale," the usual amount contributed 
 from each householder for his bread and drink being about 4s. or 
 5s. (Ibid. x. 4, 465.) 2 Boys' Sandwich, 784. 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 162 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 
 \vere any who desired to raise objections ; or there w r as 
 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 min- 
 strels 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 everv incident in the town life or brought 
 
 " O 
 
 tidings of coming change. News was open, public, 
 without distinction of persons.
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 163 
 
 Where the claims of local life were so exacting and so 
 
 o 
 
 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 con- 
 troversies raged among them as to how the govern- 
 ment 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 com- 
 munications, 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 com- 
 munity must be the detriment of another, and com- 
 petition and commercial jealousy ran high. 1 Never 
 
 1 In 1327 a violent quarrel broke out between Sandwich and 
 Canterbury. The convent was put to great inconvenience, and 
 the prior wrote to " the mayor and bailiff of Sandwich " asking 
 to be allowed to buy food and wax, as they had been put 
 to great straits. The Sandwich men agreed on condition that the 
 monks should in no manner relieve or give supplies to the Can- 
 terbury citizens. (Lit. Cantuar. i. 248-254.) There was great 
 jealousy between Norwich and Yarmouth. Yarmouth was made 
 a Staple town in 1369, in spite of all the efforts of Norwich. In 
 1390 Norwich paid large sums to have the wool staple at Nor- 
 wich again. (Blomefield, iii. 96, 113.) In the fifteenth century 
 
 AI 2
 
 164 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 1 as among the " Great Clothing " of bigger 
 boroughs. In those days indeed busy provincials but 
 dimly conscious of national policy found in the con- 
 fusion of court politics and the distraction of its in- 
 trigues, 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 un- 
 scrupulous King-maker left, and justly left, the towns 
 supremely indifferent to any question save that of how 
 to make the best terms for themselves from the win- 
 ning side, or to use the disasters of warring; lords so 
 
 O O 
 
 as to extend their own privileges. 2 Meanwhile in the 
 
 Yarmouth set up a crane, which the Norwich men forced it to take 
 down ngain. 
 
 1 1478. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 88. 
 
 - The towns were not wholly untouched by the struggle but 
 their interest was very languid. Many, like London, were divided 
 in sympathy. (Polydore Vergil, 106; English Chronicle, 1377- 
 1461, 20-1, 67, 95 ; Fabyan, 638.) During this queasy season 
 the Mayor of London feigned him sick and kept his house a 
 great season. (Ibid. 660 ; see also Warkworth's Chronicle, 
 12-22.) Bristol and Colchester were Yorkist (Hunt's Bristol, 
 07-100, 102; Cutts' Colchester, 131-2). For Nottingham see vol. 
 ii. The chief interest was probably felt in Kent and Sussex. 
 (English Chronicle, 1377-1461, 84, 91-4.) Canterbury was 
 against Cade and Lancastrian in sympathy (ibid. 84-95 ; Hist. 
 MSS. Com. ix. 140-3, 168, 170, 176-7); but in 1464 entered in 
 its accounts presents to the brothers of the king " nunc." 
 The city suffered severely. The Cinque Ports went generally for 
 "Warwick and York. Lydd sent Cade a porpoise to London, and
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 165 
 
 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 confedera- 
 tion for public purposes, destitute of the generous 
 spirit of national regard, and by their ignorance and 
 narrow outlook left helpless in presence of the revolu- 
 tions 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 
 
 a letter to have his friendship in case he succeeded. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. v. 518, 520, 523, 525.) For Roniney, ibid. 543, 545 ; Rye, 
 ibid. 492-4; Sandwich, Boys, 676.
 
 166 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 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 borouylt 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
 
 iv THE COMMON LIFE OF THE TOWN 167 
 
 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 ike debtors tcere of their society. 
 (Blomefield, iii. 50, 51.) 
 
 Mr. Mail land (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 '* coin- 
 munitas " 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 com- 
 munity 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 ex- 
 actly 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 Archaeology, 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 Not- 
 tingham 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
 
 168 TOWX LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ce. iv 
 
 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. Eec. i. 41.) For Wiggenhall, 
 (Select Pleas, pp. 157-8.) The mutual responsibility must be con- 
 sidered 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 " com- 
 iiiunitas," which seems to me to apply also to the instances here 
 mentioned bv Mr. Maitlaiid.
 
 CHAPTEK V 
 
 THE TOWNSPEOPLE 
 
 No dispute has raged more fiercely in this century, 
 not only in England but throughout Europe, than 
 the dispute as to what qualifications should make a 
 man fit to take part in the government of his state, 
 The possession of property in land, a fixed yearly 
 income, birth into a certain rank, a standard of age, 
 some degree of education these and other tests of 
 merit have been applied in the hope of securing 
 that every active citizen shall be distinguished by 
 a fitting capacity, whether proved by his own attain- 
 ments or guaranteed by the virtues or the prosperity 
 of his ancestors. But the anxieties and cares of 
 great states in this matter are only the repetition on a 
 grand scale of the perplexities that beset the humble 
 communities who first tried to solve the problem of 
 how a society of freemen could best rule themselves. 
 In the early '' commimitas " of the village or town 
 out of which the later chartered borough was to grow 
 a community which possessed common fields or
 
 170 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 customary rights of common over surrounding 
 meadows, and which had doubtless found some 
 regular system for the management of its own affairs l 
 the obvious course was to count as the responsible 
 men of the township the land-holders who had a 
 share in the common property ; and when the com- 
 munity had received the charter which made it 
 into a free borough the same system was naturally 
 continued. Those who owned a house and a certain 
 amount of land, measured according to the custom 
 of the borough, formed the society of burghers, 2 and 
 
 1 The agricultural tenants and labourers 011 a manor were 
 accustomed to elect from among themselves a " Provost " to be 
 head over them and to stand between them and their lord, Avhom 
 they were pledged to obey in all things, and who on his side 
 undertook to answer for them to their master. Bound by the 
 closest ties of mutual responsibility, their fortunes were insepar- 
 ably connected. If the lord suffered any loss, small or great, by 
 the tenant's fault, the provost had to pay the value, recovering it 
 afterwards as best he could from the servant who was to blame ; 
 and on the other hand if the damage had come through the 
 provost's neglect, and he had not of his own property the where- 
 withal to make it good, all those of the township who elected 
 him had to pay for him ; and hence people and lord alike in self- 
 protection upheld the rule that the provost must be no stranger 
 of doubtful character or property, but chosen i; from their own 
 men," and that "by election of the tenants." (Walter of 
 Henley, edited by E. Lamond, Husbandry, 65.) It is easy to see 
 the similarity between the simple methods of rural government 
 and the organization of municipal independence under an elected 
 mayor. An admirable illustration is given in Mr. Maitland's 
 Manorial Pleas, Seldeii Society, 161-175. 
 
 2 A citizen of Preston was obliged to show a frontage of twelve 
 feet to the street ; in Manchester or Salforcl he was bound to own 
 at least an acre of land. Custumal in Hist, of Preston Guild, 
 75. Thomson's Mun. Hist. 165 ; Gross, i. 71, note.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 171 
 
 to the townspeople, as to Swift centuries later, the 
 definition of law was " the will of the majority 
 of those who have the property in land." Equal- 
 ity of possessions brought with it equality of civil 
 rights, and each community formed a homogeneous 
 bod}' whose members were all subject to the 
 same conditions and shared in the same interests. 
 When the burgher's life was over, the son who 
 inherited his property appeared before the bailiffs 
 within forty days, to deliver up to them his father's 
 sword and take the freeman's oath ; * and the common 
 life went on undisturbed by the intrusion of any 
 foreign element, vagrant, restless, encroaching. 
 
 But such simple conditions of life, only possible in 
 a stationary agricultural society, 2 disappeared when 
 industry and commerce brought their revelation of 
 new standards of prosperity. In the course of a 
 very few generations there was scarcely a trace left 
 of that primitive relation of equality out of which 
 the early equality of rights had sprung. As the 
 country folk migrated in increasing numbers from 
 manor and village to the town 3 old rigid distinctions 
 
 1 Ipswich, Hist. MSS. Com. ix. p. 244. Otherwise he was 
 not allowed to be of the common council of the town. 
 
 2 At Bury S. Edmunds there were seventy-five tradesmen of 
 various kinds, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, &c., who were bound 
 to cut corn in harvest, the services being commuted for a rent 
 called reap silver when the place became a borough. At Battle, 
 under Henry the Second, 115 burgage tenements were occupied 
 by tradesmen who had to work in the meadows or at the mill, 
 but were called burgesses " on account of the superior dignity of 
 the place's excellence." Rep. on Markets, 17, note. 
 
 3 From examination of the names of the Norwich inhabitants 
 in the Conveyance Rolls, Mr. Hudson thinks it certainly within
 
 172 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENT CRY .CHAP. 
 
 were swept away, and the simplicity and uniformity 
 of the burgage tenure was completely broken up. In 
 Liverpool, for example, the burgages originally esta- 
 blished by John were already in the fourteenth 
 century divided into small fractions one-eighth or 
 even one-forty-cighth part of their original size ; * 
 and the amount of land held by owners of property 
 in Nottingham in the fifteenth century varied so 
 much that the taxes levied on them were in some 
 cases as high as 3 14s. 7\d., in other cases as low 
 as a farthing. 2 The owners of capital began to 
 thrust out the owners of land ; the shopkeeper 
 replaced the agriculturist, the tradesman and the 
 artizan exercised a new power, as the boroughs 
 quickly adapted themselves to the changing conditions 
 
 the mark to assume " that the city of Norwich, towards the close 
 of the thirteenth century, had attracted within its sheltering 
 walls natives of at least four hundred Norfolk, and perhaps 
 sixty Suffolk, towns, villages, and manors." Notes on Norwich, 
 Norfolk Archaeology, vol. xii. p. 46. 
 
 1 Pictoii's Mun. Rec., i. 10-12. For the survival in Wareharu 
 of these burgages of various sizes, Hut-chins' Dorsetshire, i. 
 77. Henry the First of England gave charters to some of his 
 towns in Normandy early in the twelfth century, by which the 
 burgess was obliged to own a house, and was originally granted 
 three acres and a garden, but with the right of creating other 
 burgesses by giving up to them a part of his land. Flach, Origines 
 de 1'Aiicienne France, ii. 347-8. 
 
 2 In Nottingham a subsidy roll in 1472 gives a list of the 154 
 owners of freehold property in the town, headed by one the tenth 
 of whose property was assessed at 74s. 7M. ; then came one 
 whose tenth was worth 67s. 7* d. ; six others paid sums from 30s. to 
 20s. ; and a great number paid from 5s. to 2s. At the bottom of 
 the list came three men whose tenth was assessed, one at l-]d. and 
 one at \d. Nott, Records, ii. 285-297.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 173 
 
 of the time and opened one door after another for the 
 bringing in of new members whose wealth or whose 
 skill might benefit the community. The ownership of 
 land still carried with it its ancient rights. 1 But the 
 son of a freeman who himself owned no land might 
 be made a burgher in his father's lifetime. Aliens 
 might buy the franchise. Craftsmen were admitted 
 into the circle of the citizens. 2 Recruits from every 
 class and from every nation pressed into the ranks of 
 burgesses. There were foreigners from Bordeaux or 
 from Flanders or from Lisbon, 3 and Irishmen in 
 abundance, in spite of occasional outbursts of 
 hostility in which Irish burghers were deprived of 
 their freedom, " till they bought it again with the 
 blood of their purses, and with weeping eyes, kneel- 
 
 1 The old feeling about burgage property is shown in the 
 custom of Nottingham that when a man sold land his nearest 
 heirs might redeem it if they made an offer in the Guild 
 Hall within a year and a day of the sale to pay to the buyer 
 the price he had given ; and they might thus redeem even if the 
 buyer refused to accept their offer. Cases of a messuage and a 
 butcher's booth thus redeemed (Nott. Rec. i. 70, 100). See 
 also at Dover (Lyon's Dover, ' ii. 274). In Lincoln and 
 Torksey no burgess could sell his burgage tenement save to a 
 burgess or a kinsman without leave (Rep. on Markets, 35). 
 The mayor and jurats of Rye might compel a tenant to keep his 
 house in proper order, "at the request of him that is in the 
 reversion." (Lyon's Dover, ii. 362.) 
 
 2 For London rules in 1319 see Lib. Gust. 269-70. 
 
 3 As, for example, John de Ypres at Romuey (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. v. 542. Ibid. iv. i. 427). Foreigners no longer lived 
 separately, as in towns of the Conqueror's time, but tended to 
 become completely united with the English in customs and law. See 
 Nott. Rec. i. 109 ; Norwich documents, printed 1884, in the 
 case of Stanley r. Mayor, p. 1 .
 
 174 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 ing on their knees, besought the mayor and his 
 brethren of their grace." l No limit was set, whether 
 of race, or occupation, or descent, or wealth, if they 
 " are born in the city and be of good report, and if 
 their presence may be profitable to the city as well 
 as for his wisdom, as also for any other validity or worth 
 known to the citizens." 2 The new society took in alike 
 traders, agriculturists, bondmen looking for freedom, 3 
 
 1 Ilicart, The Mayor of Bristol's Kalendar, Camden Society, 
 41. In 1439 two severe ordinances were passed by the Bristol 
 Council that no Irishman born might be admitted to the Coun- 
 cil by the Mayor itnder penalty of 20 each from the Mayor 
 and from the Irishman. In Canterbury also the Irish were 
 busy and unpopular traders (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 173). When 
 Irishmen were ordered out of England in 1422, burgesses and 
 inhabitants of boroughs of good reputation were excepted. 
 (Statutes 1st Henry VI. cap. 3.) 
 
 2 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 468. There was constant com- 
 munication between various towns about the character of 
 new settlers who offered themselves, and the testimonials 
 preserved to us show how careful the towns were in such matters. 
 ( Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 488. Piers Ploughman, edited by Skeat, 
 Part iii. passus iv. 108-116.) No one of illegitimate birth might 
 be a burgess. Nott. Rec. ii. 66. 
 
 3 A bondman born could in many if not in most towns win the 
 freedom of the city, as in Norwich where serfs were admitted to 
 the franchise ; but it is clear that here certainly mere residence 
 without admission to citizenship was no protection against the 
 claims of a feudal lord. (Norf. Arch. vol. xii. ; Hudson's 
 Notes on Norwich, Sec. xi.) It is most probable that the com- 
 mon phrases of " dwelling in the town a year and a day, and 
 holding land in it and being in lot and scot," or of being " in the 
 Merchant Guild," or of " remaining in the town without challenge," 
 were in fact equivalent to having been received as burghers ; 
 and in such cases emancipation was won not by a year's residence 
 but by a year's citizenship. In Norwich a serf had to produce his 
 lord's license. (Hudson's Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selden Soc.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 175 
 
 parish priests, 1 merchants who owned eight or 
 ten ships and employed over a hundred work- 
 men ; small masters with but a single journeyman 
 or perhaps two ; artizans just released from appren- 
 ticeship and enrolled as members of some craft gild ; 
 rich folk who held several burgages, and men who 
 rented a tiny shop. Everywhere the town communities 
 were fast outgrowing the old simple traditions of 
 common acquaintance and friendship, and throughout 
 the fifteenth century the seals of the frequent new 
 comers were so unfamiliar to their fellow citizens that 
 deeds of sale had constantly to be brought to the 
 
 lxxxv.-vi.) For a similar instance of feudal claims urged by a lord 
 over his serf dwelling in a city, see Owen's Shrewsbury, i. 133. 
 Compare the references given by Gross, i. 30. There were 
 exceptions, as in London, where men who held land in villein- 
 age of the Bishop of London were not allowed in 1305 to be 
 freemen of the City (Riley's Mem. 58-9). And after the 
 Peasant Revolt some towns withdrew the privilege (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. i. 109). 
 
 1 A chaplain and four parsons of churches in Norwich were 
 presented before the Leet Court of Norwich for various offences in 
 1292, in 1374, and in 1390. One of them had occupied himself 
 with a large brewing business, another traded as a Wool merchant, 
 and two were charged with not being citizens. There were in 
 all towns plenty of "clerici" who were citizens. (Hudson's 
 Norwich Leet Jurisdiction, Selden Soc. pp. 45, 63, 65, 76.) For 
 burgages owned by parsons and clerics in Southampton, Hist. 
 MSS. Com. xi. 3, 65, 70, 71, 75, 81. In Romney, where "the 
 freedom " seems to have meant more than the right to trade, it 
 was given to the vicar and others. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540, 542, 
 546-7.) Monks and heads of religious houses were, according to 
 Dr. Gross, excluded from citizenship (i. 66) though given rights 
 of trade ; but from the Charter Rolls, John, 1215, it appears 
 that in Bridgewater the brethren of the Hospital of S. John were 
 to be capable of taking up burgages in the town and to have the
 
 176 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Mayor for the addition of his seal of office to overcome 
 hesitation and distrust. 1 
 
 The hospitality of the corporations differed from 
 place to place. Sometimes a borough threw its gates 
 wide open and welcomed any new comer who would 
 but choose one of the half-dozen avenues to citizen- 
 ship that lay before him, who would buy land, or 
 marry a free woman, or pay the fixed price for his 
 freedom, or serve his apprenticeship to a trade, or 
 accept the franchise as a gift from the community ; 
 while a neighbouring town, looking on aliens with 
 jealousy and hesitation, would close its doors and 
 cling to some narrower system of enfranchisement 
 
 same liberties within and without the town as burgesses. This 
 instance, has been kindly given to me by Miss Greenwood from 
 her study of the muniments of the town ; she adds that in the 
 documents at Bridgewater there are many instances of houses 
 and market-stalls being held by clergy. In all the bills of sale 
 stalls in High Street are named burgages, and a law-suit shows 
 that a wool-stall there was sold to the abbot of Michelney. For 
 Ipswich, Gross, ii. 123; and Andover, ibid. 321. Local customs 
 doubtless differed. The Guild Merchant at Lynn allowed no 
 " spiritual person " to work on their quay -that is, to trade there 
 (ibid. ii. 166) a circumstance which reflects the greater credit 
 on the hermit who about 1349 lived in the Bishop's marsh by 
 Lynn and set up at his own great cost a certain remarkable 
 cross of the height of 110 feet, of great service for all shipping 
 coming that way (Blomefield viii. 514). When the burgesses of 
 Totnes admitted the abbot and convent of Buckfastleigh into 
 the Merchants' Guild, so as to make all their purchases like the 
 burgesses, all sales that they might attempt to make " by way 
 of trading " were excepted. Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 343. 
 
 1 In Bristol ; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 327. In Rye, " by the 
 Common Seal of the Barons of the Yille of Rye ; " ibid. v. 513, 
 499. For the old custom of sealing through rush rings see 
 ibid. ix. 234-5.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 177 
 
 which kept its ranks pure from foreign blood, and 
 its burghers free from anxieties of competition. 1 Each 
 community in fact had full liberty to order its own 
 political experiment. In the matter of choosing 
 their fellow burgesses, of framing their own society 
 and fixing the limits of its growth, the citizens knew 
 no law and recognized no authority beyond their 
 own, 2 and enjoyed herein a measure of independence 
 unknown in continental countries where a powerful 
 feudal system still barred every road to freedom. 
 
 1 For the various ways of winning municipal freedom see First 
 Rep. of the Commissioners on Mun. Corporations, 1835, 19, and 
 especially the table given on page 93. Even towns as closely 
 connected as the Cinque Ports differed much in their willingness 
 to admit new burgesses. The freedom of Sandwich might be 
 acquired in six ways by birth, by marriage with a free woman, 
 by buying a free tenement, by seven years' apprenticeship, by 
 purchase, by gift of the Corpoi-ation. In New Romney freedom 
 could only be acquired by birthright in the male line, and grant 
 of the Corporation ; while in Hythe all children born after the 
 father's admission to freedom were entitled to the freedom, and 
 daughters could convey it upon their marriage (Boys' Sandwich, 
 787, 796, 799, 812, 821). The same differences existed in other 
 towns. See Davies' Southampton, 140; Boase's Oxford, 48 ; 
 English Guilds, 390; Freeman's Exeter, 142 ; Hereford, Journ. 
 Arch. Ass. xxvii. 471, 468. 
 
 2 Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selden Soc. xxxvii. I have 
 met with but one instance in which the King interfered 
 when Edward the Second by Royal Letters Patent granted the 
 right of burgesses at Southampton to John de London of 
 Bordeaux, and in 1312 extended them to his wife and children. 
 (Davies, 190.) Henry the Fourth granted to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury the right to trade in Ipswich ; but this right carried 
 with it no political privileges in the town. (Hist. MSS. Com. 
 ix. 246.) For the granting of franchises by French kings, see 
 Luchaire, Les Communes Frangaises, 56-7. 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP 
 
 When a new comer who desired to be " franchised 
 
 for a free man, and fellow in your rolls " l 
 
 was accepted by the commonalty he was summoned 
 before them in a public court, " having with them 
 the common charter of the city ; and then the 
 steward shall take the book, and bid them lay their 
 right hands thereon, commanding all those that are 
 standing by, in the behalf of our Lord the King, to 
 keep silence," and the oath of obedience to the 
 King and fidelity to the customs of the town was 
 administered, 2 perhaps, as at Winchester, the 
 " oath to swear men to be free, kneeling on their 
 knees." 3 The candidate had further to find two or 
 more good men as pledges that he would " observe 
 all the laws ; " 4 and to pay the customary fees, 
 which varied with the caution or the poverty of the 
 borough from three shillings to five pounds ; while 
 a poor corporation like Wells was content to receive 
 its payments in wine or gloves or wax when money 
 was scarce. 5 
 
 1 Piers Ploughman, passus iv. Ill, 114. 
 
 2 Hereford ; Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 468. 
 s Gross, ii. 257. 
 
 4 Totnes, Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 342, 343. Preston Guild Rolls, 
 xvi., xix. In Nottingham one pledge was required in the 
 fourteenth century ; generally two in the fifteenth century. See 
 Nott, Records, i. 285-7, ii. 272, 302, iii. 58, 80, 84, 90, 102. 
 
 "' In 1397 the burgesses of Preston paid sums varying from 
 3s. to 40s. (Preston Guild Rolls, xvi.-xix.) In Exeter an 
 artificer had to pay 20s., a merchant whatever the Mayor chose 
 to ask (Freeman's Exeter, 142). In Canterbury freemen were 
 admitted in the fourteenth century for 10s. ; in 1480 the sum 
 had risen to 40s. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 144). See also Here- 
 ford (Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii.). In the sixteenth century
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 179 
 
 The new burgess was then required to give security 
 to the town for payment of taxes or any other 
 municipal claims by proving that he had either a 
 good yearly revenue or a tenement, or by at once 
 building himself a house. 1 A wooden framework was 
 put together either on some building ground or 
 perhaps in a vacant space in the open street, 2 and 
 was then carried to the new site. The interstices 
 were quickly filled up with plaster, and the little 
 tenement was complete. A couple of rough benches 
 and- one or two pots and a few tools served as 
 furniture, and the new burgess entered into pos- 
 session and began life as a citizen householder. 
 Henceforth he was bound to live within the walls of 
 the borough, for his franchise was forfeited if he 
 forsook the town for a year and a day. 3 Over the 
 house, which was the town's security for rent and 
 taxes, the municipality kept a watchful eye : if it 
 became ruinous and dangerous to the passer-by it 
 
 the jury of the Mickle Tourn of Nottingham presented a request 
 that every foreigner should henceforth pay 10. (Nott. Rec. 
 iv. 170-1. Wells, Hist. MSS. Com. i. 106.) In Dover the payment 
 was " put into the common horn " by the new freeman (Lyon's 
 Dover, ii. 306). 
 
 1 In Preston the rule was that if he had received for his 
 burgage " a void place " he must set up a house on it within forty 
 days; in other towns, as in Norwich or Hereford, he was 
 allowed a year and a day. (Custumal of Preston, given in Hist, 
 of Preston Guild, 74. Hudson, Municipal Organization of 
 Norwich, 27. Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 468.) 
 
 2 In Preston regulations had to be made to prevent builders 
 blocking up a street by temporarily fixing in it the framework of 
 a house. (Hist. Preston Guild, 47.) 
 
 3 Carlisle Mun. Records, Ed. Ferguson and Nansen, 63-4. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 was thrown down at the owner's cost, or if needful 
 at the cost of the commonalty ; if through neglect 
 or poverty it fell into decay the next heir and the 
 commonalty together could compel him to put it 
 in order or give it up. 1 Once or twice a year the 
 burgher had to appear at the Portmote or Borough 
 Court to prove his presence in the town, and to take 
 his necessary part in the duties of the court. 2 An 
 unwavering loyalty and public spirit was demanded 
 of him, and the loss of " frelidge," as they said in 
 Carlisle, avenged any breach of public duty, such as 
 ft refusal to help the Mayor in keeping the peace, 
 clamour and undue disturbance at the election of 
 town officers, revealing the counsels of the Common 
 Assembly, resistance in word or deed to the muni- 
 cipal officers, contempt of the Mayor's authority, or 
 any offence for which the punishment of the pillory 
 or the tumbrill was adjudged. 3 For such things 
 the burgher was " blotted out of the book of the 
 bailiff " ; and the forfeiture of his freedom was declared 
 by open proclamation of the common crier, or by sound 
 of the town bell, or by having his name written up 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 472, 475 ; Lyon's Dover, ii. 362. 
 
 2 Gross, ii. 276. Custumal, Preston Guild, 75. Hist. MSS. 
 Com. viii. i. 426. 
 
 3 In Hereford the freeman who lost his position for perjury 
 could never recover it save by the special favour of the com- 
 monalty, "and by the redemption of his goods and chattels at 
 least for twice as much as he gave before." Any citizen who had 
 been sentenced to the pillory, tumbrill or the like, " by that 
 means let him lose his freedom ; but afterwards by the special 
 favour of his bailiff and the commonalty he may be redeemed." 
 (Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 468, 481.)
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 181 
 
 oil a Disfranchised Table in the Guild Hall, 1 so that all 
 the town should know his shame. In Preston those 
 who betrayed the municipal confidence or exposed the 
 poverty of the town were not only deprived of the 
 franchise, but their toll was taken every day as of 
 forsworn and unworthy persons who could not be 
 trusted beyond the passing hour. 2 
 
 It was no mean advantage to be a burgher in those 
 days, when nearly all material benefits and legal aids 
 and political rights were reserved for the favoured 
 classes, and when it was the towns that opened for 
 the working man and the shopkeeper a way to take 
 their place too among the people of privilege. The 
 burghers, of course, shared alike in rights of common 
 and of pasturage on the town lands, of fishing in the 
 town waters, 3 of the ferry across the stream or 
 
 1 English Guilds, 403. 
 
 2 Also at Andover ; Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii. 320, 324. 
 Public disapproval was held to be a powerful motive. In Here- 
 ford if a plaintiff brought a writ of right for the possession of a 
 tenement into the court and the defendant refused to appear at 
 the court, " there ought to be taken from the tenement demanded 
 one post and to be brought unto the court and delivered to the 
 bailiff ; and the second time two ; and the third time three ; and 
 this to be done always towards the street, in, reproach to him, and to 
 the notiny of his fellow-citizens ; and if he shall not come, the 
 house ought to be thrown down, by taking one post towards the 
 street, and so forward and forward until the whole house be 
 thrown down to the ground." (Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 481-2.) 
 
 J A copy of the Charter of Manchester, granted 1301, is given 
 in B tines' History of County of Lancaster ii. 175-6. A 
 comparison of the special privileges of the burgesses with those 
 in the Preston custumal illustrates the variety in the customs 
 of different towns. (Cutts 1 Colchester, 169-170. Davies* 
 Southampton, 111.)
 
 182 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 sea channel, and so forth ; but their pre-eminent 
 privilege was the right to trade. If ordinary in- 
 habitants were allowed to buy and sell food or 
 the bare necessaries of life, all profitable business 
 was reserved as the monopoly of the full citizen. 1 
 Protected from the intrusion and the competition 
 of the alien, 2 he paid a reduced toll for his mer- 
 chandize at the entrance of the town ; his stall in 
 the market was rented at a lower price than that 
 of the stranger ; he had the first choice of storage 
 room in the Guild Hall for his wool or leather 
 or corn ; the town clock which tolled the hour 
 when the market might begin, struck for the burgher 
 an hour or two earlier than for strangers and 
 visitors. 3 If a travelling merchant brought his wares 
 to the town the citizen might claim the right of buy- 
 ing whether the owner wished to sell or no, and 
 might insist on a share in the profits of any mercantile 
 venture. 4 He alone might keep apprentices, and 
 become a master in his craft. If he travelled out- 
 
 1 See von Ochenkowski, Die wirthschaftliche Entwickelung ini 
 Ausgange des Mittelalters, 66. Stubbs' Charters, 107, 159. The 
 monopoly was sometimes the privilege of the Merchant Guild. 
 " So that no one who is not of that Guild shall make any mer- 
 chandise in the said town, unless with the will of the merchants." 
 (Hist, of Preston Guilds, Custunial, 73. Gross, ii. 122, 127, 
 129.) In other towns where we do not hear of a Merchant 
 Guild it belonged to the whole body of burgesses. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. iv. 1, 425.) 
 
 2 An alien living in Romney paid double Scot to the town. 
 (Lyon's Dover, ii. 332.) 
 
 3 English Guilds, 392, 384. Lyon's Dover, ii. 332. 
 
 4 Boys' Sandwich, 521. Lyon's Dover, ii. 365, 366, 367, 386 ; 
 Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Soc. 137.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 183 
 
 side his own town for the purpose of trade he carried 
 privilege with him everywhere, and confidently claimed 
 freedom from " pontage " and " passage " and " pesage " 
 and " shewage," that is from tolls for crossing 
 bridges, for passing into a town, for the weighing of 
 goods, for showing merchandize in the market, 1 
 and from a host of similar imposts. Wherever he 
 \vent he was shielded by the protection of his fellow 
 citizens ; 2 if he had an action for debt in any other 
 town he was granted common letters from the 
 Mayor and Jurats to assist him in his suit ; 3 if any 
 wrong was done him they enforced compensation, 
 or they avenged his injuries by confiscating the 
 goods of any merchants within their walls who had 
 come from the offending town. 
 
 1 An Act to prevent Mayors from levying shewage from 
 denizens. Statutes 19 Henry VII., Cap. 8. 
 
 2 " The Mayor of the city of York and his brethren made great 
 instance" to Lord Surrey to see that their fellow citizen, Thomas 
 Hartford, bower in Norwich, should not be annoyed by Thomas 
 Hogan, a shoemaker. (Paston Letters, iii. 366.) This pro- 
 tection however was only given on the condition of his renounc- 
 ing all other aid. The mayor of York and his brethren aldermen 
 in 1488 were applied to by Sir Robert Plumpton to protect some 
 " servants and lovers " of his dwelling in York from annoyance 
 by certain York citizens. The mayor answered in the name of 
 himself, the aldermen, and the common council, that these depend- 
 ants of Plumpton' s had been franchised and sworn to keep the 
 customs of the city of York, that they were therefore bound to 
 show any variance or trouble to the mayor " and to none other, 
 and he to see an end betwixt them." The mayor plainly 
 intimates that these men must either go home and live under the 
 protection of their master there, or else if they stay in York 
 must submit their affairs to the mayor alone " as their duties had 
 been." (Plumpton Correspondence, 57-58.) 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425.
 
 184 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Legal safeguards and privileges moreover fenced 
 him about on every side. He could only be impleaded 
 in the courts of his own town, and any fellow citizen 
 who brought an action against him outside the 
 borough miorht be disgraced and disfranchised ; l while 
 
 O O o 
 
 the King himself could not summon a burgher to ap- 
 pear before his judges at Westminster, save on the 
 plea that there had been " lack of justice " at the first 
 trial in the court of his own town. No " foreigner " 
 might meddle in any legal inquiry in which their 
 houses and property were concerned ; 2 while, on the 
 other hand, every citizen from twelve years old could 
 serve on juries for the town business. 3 Peculiar 
 favours were extended to the burgher, 4 as at 
 Worcester where there were special provisions to 
 protect him from any wrongful fine by the bailiff, 5 
 
 1 Preston Guild Rolls, xxiv. ; Freeman's Exeter, 144 ; Hist. 
 MSS. Com. ix. 241, 242, 246. For instances of royal pressure 
 brought to bear on the town courts, see Proc. Privy Council, ii. 
 152 ; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104. 
 
 ' There was a hot dispute on this question between Wycombe 
 and the Abbot of Missenden under Edward the First, and the jury 
 was finally formed of seven burgesses and five foreigners, "thus 
 saving to the said burgesses their liberty aforesaid." (From 
 Pleas de Quo Warranto, Bucks, Rot. i. Edw. I., 1286. Parker's 
 Hist, of Wycombe, 23-4.) z Parker's Hist, of Wycombe, 12. 
 
 4 Especially in matters of .debt ami arrest. Stubbs' Charters, 
 107. In Romney a burgess might recover money owed to him 
 by a stranger in the town by himself going, in the absence of the 
 bailiff, to make distraint on the stranger's goods under the sole 
 condition of delivering the distraint to the bailiff. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. iv. 1, 425. For Rye see Lyon's Dover, ii. 358 ; Boys' 
 Sandwich, 449. See also for the difficulties of aliens, Hist. 
 MSS. Com. ix. 243.) 
 
 '> English Guilds, 391 ; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 170-1. Henry the
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 185 
 
 and the city sergeant had to do any legal business 
 required of him at reduced fees ; or at Canterbury, 
 where special formalities of trial assured to him 
 a more exact and careful justice ; or at Sandwich, 
 where he could be tried only before the mayor, and 
 could not be summoned before his deputy like a 
 common stranger. 1 Everywhere he could claim the 
 right of being separated from the common criminals 
 and imprisoned in some tower or room in the Guild 
 Hall used as the Freeman's prison. 2 
 
 But all these privileges were far from being a free 
 gift to be enjoyed in idle security ; and to each in- 
 dividual burgher the franchise practically meant a 
 sort of carefully-adjusted bargain, by which he com- 
 pounded for paying certain tolls by undertaking to 
 
 Sec-ond granted to burgesses of Wallingford that if his provost 
 impleaded any one of them without an accuser, he need not 
 answer the charge. (Gross, ii. 244.) See Newcastle, Stubbs' 
 Charters, 107. The importance of these provisions is obvious if 
 the custom of Sandwich was common. There the mayor might 
 arrest and imprison any one whom he chose as a " suspect." 
 After some time the prisoner was brought from the castle to the 
 Mastez and a "cry " made to ask if there were any one to pro- 
 secute him. If no one appeared he was set free on giving 
 security, but if he could find no security he might at the mayor's 
 will be banished for ever from the town. The bailiff could not 
 arrest on suspicion as the mayor did. (Boys' [Sandwich, 687, 
 46G-7.) For mediaeval notions of punishment see the sentence of 
 the King in Piers Ploughman, pass. v. 81-82 
 
 " And commanded a constable to cast Wrong in irons. 
 There he ne should in seven year see feet ne hands." 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 170-1. Boys' Sandwich, 445 and 443. 
 In Winchester the freeman was summoned three times to the 
 court, others only once. (English Guilds, 360.) 
 
 - English Guilds, 391. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 152.
 
 186 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 do work, and work which might be both costly and 
 laborious, for the community. The body of citizens 
 was but a small one, and every man in it was liable 
 at some time or other to be called 011 to take his part 
 in the public service. Taxation for the town expenses, 
 watch and ward, service on juries, the call to arms in 
 defence of the borough, were incidents as familiar as 
 unwelcome in every .burgher's life ; but a more 
 serious matter was the summons to take office and 
 serve as mayor or bailiff or town clerk or sergeant 
 or tax-collector or common constable offices not 
 always coveted in those days, when the mayor was 
 held personally responsible for the rent of a town 
 which was perhaps vexed with pestilence or wasted 
 with fire ; when treasurers had to find funds as best 
 they could for too frequent official bribes or state 
 receptions of great lords or court officers ; when 
 bailiffs had to meet the loss from failing dues and 
 straitened markets ; 1 when the boxes of the tax-col- 
 lector were left half empty through poverty, or riots, 
 or disputed questions of market-rights ; 2 and when 
 the constable was " frayed " day and night by sturdy 
 men, dagger in hand, ready to break the King's peace. 3 
 .Many modes of escape were tried. The inhabitants 
 would refuse to take up the franchise, or they would 
 leave the town for a time ; 4 an elected officer would 
 
 1 In Norwich the bailiffs were liable to such heavy expenses in 
 bad years that in 1306 it was ordained that they could only be 
 compelled to serve once in four years. (Blomeneld, iii. 73. 
 Ordinances in Hist, of Preston Guilds, 12.) 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 145. 
 
 3 Parker's Manor of Aylesbury, 20, 21. 
 
 4 Hist, MSS. Com. v. 536-541.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 187 
 
 plead a vow of pilgrimage to " & James in Galliee ; " 
 or an influential burgess might obtain letters patent 
 from the King which granted him freedom from 
 serving any municipal office during his life. 1 But 
 generally a heavy fine compelled the submission of a 
 refractory citizen, and in the last resort the com- 
 munity would apply for a writ against him from the 
 Privy Council. 2 The town allowed no excuses, and 
 everywhere the citizens were forced by stringent 
 laws to take on them the offices to which they had 
 been elected by their fellows. In Lydd an order was 
 made in 1429 that any one who had been appointed 
 by the bailiff or jurats to take any journey on town 
 business should pay a fine if he refused without 
 reasonable cause. 3 In the Cinque Ports generally if 
 a citizen who had been elected as mayor or jurat de- 
 clined to serve, his house was pulled down ; 4 or as at 
 
 1 Da vies' Southampton, 168. In 1422 a Winchester burgess 
 paid 10 to be free of holding any office save that of Mayor for 
 the rest of his life. Another paid five marks to be freed from 
 ever taking the office of bailiff. (Gross, ii. 259-260.) In Lynn, 
 when a man was chosen jurat, " he took time till the next 
 assembly to bring ten pounds into the Hall, or otherwise to accept 
 the burden." (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 167.) Fine for refusal to 
 go to Yarmouth as bailiff of Cinque Ports, and payment to sub- 
 stitute (Ibid. v. 541). In 1491 an Act was passed forbidding 
 the burgesses of Leicester to refuse the Chamberlainship. Sixty 
 years later another Act ordered them not to refuse the Mayoralty. 
 By Acts of 1499 and 1500 members who absented themselves 
 from the Court of Portmanmote at Whitsuntide and Christmas 
 were fined. (Ibid. viii. 426.) In Canterbury certain powers were 
 exempted by writ from serving on juries, 1415. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. ix. 169.) 
 
 2 Shillingford's Letters, xxiii. 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 527. 
 4 Lyon's Dover, Custumals, vol. ii. 267, &c.
 
 188 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Romney the bailiff with the whole community went 
 to his dwelling, turned himself, his wife, his children, 
 and all his household into the street, shut the 
 windows and sealed the door, and so left matters 
 until " lie wished to set himself right by doing the 
 said duty of jurat." In Sandwich again, " if a per- 
 son when elected treasurer will not take upon him the 
 office he shall not be permitted to bake or brew, or 
 if he does bake or brew the commons may take his 
 bread and beer to their own use till he accepts the 
 office." l At the worst, however, the burgher might 
 thankfully remember that his public duty practically 
 ceased at the wall and moat that bounded the town, 
 and that when he had paid down his money towards 
 the buying of the town charter he was at least safe from 
 the danger of being sent as tax-collector or constable 
 or juror anywhere throughout the country round. 2 
 
 The privileges and duties of the free citizen re- 
 mained, however, the endowment of the few. That 
 larger conception of the common rights of man which 
 had begun to make its way in the boroughs, was 
 checked and hindered at ever}- turn by the complicated 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425 ; Boys' Sandwich, 679, A.D. 
 1493. Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii. 276. 
 
 2 The charter of Edward the Fourth to Colchester declared that 
 the burghers should never be appointed against their will in any 
 assizes or any quests outside the borough ; nor to any post 
 of collector of taxes or aids, or of constable, bailiff, &c., nor 
 should they be liable to any fine for refusing these posts. 
 (Cromwell's Colchester, 257.) The Winchester people paid a sum 
 about 1422 "to excuse every citizen of the city from being 
 collector of the King's money within the county of Southamp- 
 ton." (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 602.)
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 189 
 
 conditions of town life, by the jealousy of established 
 settlers as to new comers, the exclusive temper 
 which the crafts had begun to show, the terror of 
 the trader before free competition, the imperfectly 
 developed authority of the corporations over the space 
 within the town walls, w r here it had failed to break the 
 barriers of feudal custom and the claims of ecclesiastical 
 corporations. Howsoever the towns widened their bor- 
 ders, there was still a growing population which lingered 
 just outside the circle of free citizens, shut out by one 
 cause or another from full municipal liberty. Settlers 
 came who did not care to burden themselves with 
 the duties and charges of citizenship ; there were 
 dwellers in churchyards and tenants of ecclesiastical 
 estates, w T ho carried on their business within the town 
 liberties but remained without the town jurisdiction ; 
 landowners from outside the walls brought their corn 
 and wool to the town market ; traders came from time 
 to time with wares to sell ; there were apprentices 
 and journeymen, escaped bondmen, and country-folk 
 coming to look for work. As all of these alike needed 
 the protection of the town, so the town needed their 
 services; and by degrees their respective duties and 
 rights were laid down in charters, in ordinances, or in 
 friendly compacts. 
 
 I. Thus it came about that below the ranks of the 
 burgesses, themselves secure in their municipal su- 
 premacy, w T ere ranged orders of men more or less 
 highly favoured according to their degree. First 
 came the inhabitants who had paid for special rights 
 of trade in the town, or were admitted as members 
 of the Merchant Guild. In times of commercial
 
 190 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 prosperity when wandering dealers and artizans 
 were attracted to some thriving borough for trading 
 purposes they went to swell this class of independent 
 inhabitants, subject to the jurisdiction of the town 
 courts, but taking no part in its politics ; l so that 
 it occasionally happened, as in Norwich and Wor- 
 cester, that the town refused to harbour this body 
 of irresponsible inhabitants and passed a law order- 
 ing them to become citizens. 2 When on the other 
 hand trade declined and poverty settled down on 
 the town, as in Koniney and Winchester, the failing 
 fortunes of the people were marked by a steady 
 decrease of the class of " advocantes," or those who 
 would "avow" themselves freemen, and inhabitants 
 who in their distress refused or renounced the 
 franchise, 3 were driven into the ranks of the politically 
 unfree. 
 
 II. So long as the trading inhabitants owned the 
 jurisdiction of the town courts their presence brought 
 no serious difficulty to the ruling authorities. But 
 within the town walls there were other groups 
 of men who lay beyond this jurisdiction, and 
 
 1 Thus iii Hythe there was a privileged body who were not 
 of the franchise, but were still apparently subject to the town 
 jurisdiction, and excused by a writ called Dormand from Hundred 
 Court and Shire Court and inquests. See also Preston Guild 
 liecord, xii., xvi., xx., xxix. 
 
 2 English Guilds, 394. Blomefield, Hist, of Norfolk, iii., 80. 
 :J Hist. MSS. Com. v. 544 545. At one time when Preston 
 
 was much distressed, it was ordained that decayed burgesses 
 unable to pay their yearly taxes should not lose their free- 
 dom because of poverty. (Thomson's Mun. History, 104. Custu- 
 male in Hist, of Preston Guild.)
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 191 
 
 held an ambiguous position which was the source of 
 many a quarrel for ascendency and man}- a struggle 
 for license in the course of the fifteenth century. 
 These were the tenants and dependants of bishop or 
 abbot, of some lay lord, or of the king's castle men 
 who lived within the liberties of the borough and who 
 had the right of trading in the town, but who were 
 bound to do suit and service at the courts of 
 their own special lord. 1 To some extent they 
 were forced to recognize the mayor's authority, since 
 their rights of trade were guaranteed by his pro- 
 tection, and since he yearly reminded them of his 
 power to levy taxes on all property within the liberties 
 of the borough. But their obedience was grudging 
 and their loyalty was cold. The mayor could not awe 
 them by a summons to his court, or enforce his de- 
 mands with threat of pains and penalties ; he could 
 scarcely terrify them into submission with his ser- 
 geant and a few constables. By degrees, it is true, 
 the tenants of the king's castle or of feudal lords 
 became merged in the general body of the inhabitants. 
 But the tenants of ecclesiastical estates ~ were main- 
 tained by lords who were bound by every tradition 
 of their order never to yield up the least jot of 
 authority to the secular power, and least of all to the 
 secular power as represented by groups of upstart 
 drapers and fishmongers and weavers whose humble 
 shops and booths leaned against the walls of the 
 abbey or the priory, and whose pretensions, loud 
 and noisy though they might be, were perhaps a 
 century or so old at the best. The ecclesiastical 
 1 See ch. x. 2 See ch. xi.
 
 192 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 tenants therefore remained everywhere an alien 
 body, no true partakers in the life of the town, 
 and when supported by a powerful bishop or abbot 
 determined to crush the pretensions of a struggling 
 borough they proved a serious danger to municipal 
 unity, and one which the authorities found them- 
 selves powerless to conquer till the Keformation 
 settled the question for ever. 
 
 TIL There was another class of privileged traders, 
 those who lived altogether outside the town, 1 
 who knew nothing of its courts, and bore none of 
 its charges. We find everywhere these country 
 traders under various styles and with various privi- 
 leges according to the town's discretion and con- 
 venience. Sometimes the citizens sold rights of 
 trade to cultivators of the surrounding lands and 
 occasional visitors to fair or market, and nobles 
 and landowners were ready to give large yearly 
 payments for freedom of the market and for the 
 right of having granaries in the town. Peasants 
 who owned a plot of land just outside the borough 
 increased their scanty store by learning some little 
 handicraft or doing a small trade in the town ; or 
 craftsmen settled down beyond the boundaries to 
 escape the town dues and live more cheaply. At 
 first the settlement of workmen and traders at their 
 gates may have seemed a matter of small conse- 
 quence, but as time went on the danger which was 
 hidden in these communities of free-traders became 
 apparent. The manufacturer or dealer was able by 
 one device or another to protect himself against 
 1 See vol. ii., The Town Market.
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 193 
 
 the enterprising man of the suburbs who came in 
 with his cheaper goods ; it was the journeymen of 
 the towns who failed before the stress of the battle, 
 driven back from their poor entrenchments by the 
 masses who pushed forward on all sides to contest 
 with them admission into the lower ranks of industry 
 where the scantiest skill sufficed to earn a bare 
 subsistence. 
 
 IV. Last of all came the non-burgesses, who had 
 neither any share in the government, nor any rights 
 to rent a stall in the market, nor to own shop or 
 workroom in the town. These formed an obscure 
 company of workers without records or history. 
 They counted among their number ancient burghers 
 who had fallen into low estate and could no longer pay 
 their burgage dues, as well as the poor w r ho had never 
 prospered so far as to buy a tenure or citizenship. 
 But they were not all necessarily poor or miserable. 1 
 Rich merchants came from foreign parts to settle for 
 four or eight months at a time, as the law might allow 
 them, and bought and sold within the four w r alls of 
 the room which the Town Council had ordered in 
 some inn as their dwelling-place, with the host stand- 
 ing at their elbow to witness every bargain. Foreign 
 workmen sometimes came to settle, like the Flemish 
 weavers in Bristol, or the Dutch makers of canals 
 and sluices whom we find in the towns of the 
 southern coast. Companies of tilers or builders 
 
 1 The non-burgesses of Lynn, the " Inferiores," were men of 
 substance and formed an important body, whose struggles for 
 a. re-distribution of power till the annals of the town in the 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 194, TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 gathered in towns where stone houses were becoming 
 the fashion, or where the Council had issued an order 
 that within the next few months every house must 
 provide itself with roof and chimney of brick or 
 tiles. 1 The seaports had their uncertain element of 
 sailors, " shipmen that had nought, and cared never 
 an they were once on the sea whether they come 
 again or not," and who at Yarmouth formed a riotous 
 population, so that it was said that " no thrifty man 
 would live in it." 2 Labourers from the country came 
 in to win freedom from serfage. Others came to 
 look for higher wages, and the hope which town 
 life held out to the enterprising and the ambitious ; 
 so that in 1405 an Act of Parliament declared 
 that the fields were deserted, and the " gentlemen 
 and other people of the nation greatly impoverished " 
 by the labourers seeking apprenticeship in towns, 
 " and that for the pride of clothing and other evil 
 customs that servants do use in the same." 3 Chil- 
 dren came, constantly as young as seven, never 
 older than twelve when they were expected to 
 begin the work of life just as at that age their 
 brothers of a better station took on themselves 
 the duties of citizenship, for " every poor man 
 that hath brought up children to the age of twelve 
 year waiteth then to be holp and profited by 
 
 1 English Guilds, 386, 399. 2 Paston Letters, ii. 293. 
 
 3 7 Henry IV. cap. 17, The coming of country appren- 
 tices into towns, though forbidden by Richard II. and Henry IV., 
 was afterwards permitted in London, Bristol, and Norwich. 
 (Statutes 8 Henry VI. cap. 11 ; 11 Henry VII. cap. 11; 12 
 Henry VII. cap. 1).
 
 v THE TOWNSPEOPLE 195 
 
 his children." l Thenceforward they had to fight 
 their own way, looking for assistance not to their 
 fathers but to their patrons, " whence it proceeds 
 that, having no hope of their paternal inheritance, 
 they all become so greedy of gain that they feel no 
 shame in asking almost ' for the love of God,' for 
 the smallest sums of money ; and to this it may be 
 attributed that there is no injury that can be com- 
 mitted against the lower orders of the English that 
 may not be atoned for by money." 2 
 
 But if apprenticeship ever brought with it " pride 
 of clothing," the poor working class of the towns 
 fared roughly and worked hard among artizans who 
 " hold full hungry house," who know " long labour 
 and light winning," who taste no wine from week 
 to week, whose bed has no blanket, and on 
 whose board no white bread ever comes." : Once 
 this rough living and rougher toil had been a sure 
 way of entering into the privileges of municipal 
 freedom. But even in the fourteenth century this 
 was no longer the case. The poorer burghers op- 
 posed the admission of new comers to share their 
 common lands, and insisted on selling the franchise 
 dearly. The crafts had already begun to form 
 themselves into close companies, and by prohibitive 
 fines shut out all save the descendants of their own 
 members ; while at the same time the custom was 
 growing up that the town franchise should be given 
 
 1 Paston Letters, iii. 481. Apprentices in London and Bristol 
 might not be under seven years old. Ricart, 102. 
 
 2 Manners and Meals, xv. 
 
 3 Piers Ploughman, Passus x. 206207, 253-4. 
 
 o 2
 
 196 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. v 
 
 only to those who were enrolled in a craft or trade 
 guild ; and strangers therefore found the way barred 
 against them ; they could neither become masters in 
 their craft nor burgesses in their town, and went to 
 swell the general mass of journeymen and serving- 
 men. Moreover the Peasant Revolt had carried with 
 it widespread terror, and from that time some towns, 
 as for instance York and Bridgenorth, refused to/ 
 allow any born bondman, whatever his estate, to 
 receive the freedom of the city. Thus from one 
 cause or another groups of men were formed in the 
 midst of every town who were shut out from the 
 civic life of the community, and whose natural bond 
 of union was hostility to the privileged class which 
 denied them the dignity of free citizens and refused 
 them fair competition in trading enterprise. The 
 burghers yearly added to their number half a dozen 
 or perhaps even a score of members wealthy enough 
 to buy the privilege, while the increase in the 
 unenfranchised class, which had begun very early in 
 the town life, proceeded by leaps and bounds ; till 
 presently the old balance of forces in the little state 
 was overthrown, the ancient constitution of a free 
 community of equal householders was altogether 
 annulled and forgotten, and a comparatively small 
 class of privileged citizens ruled with a strong hand 
 over subject traders and labourers to whom they 
 granted neither the forms nor the substance of 
 liberty.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 Bridport 
 
 THE comfortable independence in which the towns- 
 people of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had 
 stoutly entrenched themselves, was the reward 
 of a couple of centuries of persistent effort, in 
 which they had steadily laboured at their double 
 work of emancipation, freeing themselves on the one 
 hand from the feudal yoke, and on the other from 
 political servitude. Xo independent life of the 
 community could arise so long as the inhabitants of 
 a, town acknowledged an absolute subjection to their 
 feudal lord, and bore the heavy burdens of ser- 
 vices and taxes which, however they might differ 
 according to the usages of the several manors, 
 weighed upon the people everywhere with persistent 
 and intolerable force. The lord might destroy their 
 industry by suddenly calling out the inhabitants to 
 follow him in a warlike expedition, or demanding 
 services of forced labour or laying on them grievous
 
 198 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 taxes ; his officers could throw the artizan or merchant 
 into his prison, or ruin them by fines, or force upon 
 them methods of law hateful and dangerous to their 
 conceptions of a common life ; as he claimed supreme 
 rights over the soil it was impossible for the burgher 
 to leave his property by will ; and on the tenant's 
 death officers visited his house and stables and 
 granaries to seize the most valuable goods as the 
 lord's relief. It was necessary to gain his consent 
 before any new member could be admitted into the 
 fellowship of citizens ; and without his permission no 
 inhabitant might leave the borough to carry on his 
 trade elsewhere. He could forbid the marriage of 
 children arranged by the fathers, or refuse to 
 allow a widow to take a new husband and so make 
 him master of her house and freeman in her town. 
 He fixed the market laws and the market tolls. 
 He forced the people to grind at his mill and bake 
 at his oven. 
 
 If therefore the burghers were ever to develope 
 commerce, or gather wealth, or form an organized 
 society, or keep order in their streets, it was before 
 all things necessary that serfs should be made into 
 freemen; and the first object of the town com- 
 munities was to find deliverance by purchase or 
 negociation from those tyrannous usages by which 
 their masters pressed most heavily on them. Vexatious 
 feudal obligations were commuted for fixed pay- 
 ments in one town after another as their inhabitants 
 grew rich and independent. A bargain was made, 
 for instance, with the lord of Preston that he should 
 no longer summon any burgess to follow him on a
 
 vj THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 199 
 
 warlike expedition which lasted more than one day 
 nor imprison on any accusation whatever a townsman 
 who found sureties ; and he was forced to sell or 
 renounce the right of compelling the people to carry 
 their corn to the lord's mill or oven or kiln, and 
 to allow any householder who chose to build an oven 
 on his own ground. 1 The burgher everywhere be- 
 came the acknowledged guardian of his own child- 
 ren and might betroth them at his pleasure ; the 
 right of widows to re-marry was secured against 
 any interference from without ; and absolute security 
 was given to every citizen that under no circum- 
 stances could his tenement or plot of ground be 
 claimed by any superior lord. 2 When the bur- 
 gesses of Hereford were asked by a neighbouring- 
 town to give an account of their constitution 
 they proudly dwelt upon the freedom they had 
 won. "We do not use," they say, "to do fealty or 
 any other foreign service to the lord of the fees 
 for our tenements, but only the rents arising out 
 of the said tenements ; because we say that we hold 
 our tenements by the service of burgage, or as 
 
 1 Custumal in History of Preston Guild, 73-78. As late as 
 the time of James I. lords here and there were fighting to 
 keep up old customs. An action was brought by a lord against a 
 townsman of Melton for not baking his bread at the lord's 
 oven ; " and the action," wrote the steward, " is like to prove 
 frequent, for the lord's court there is scarce able to preserve his 
 inheritance in this custom of baking." Lives of the Berkeleys, 
 ii. 342-3. 
 
 2 If a Preston burgher died suddenly, neither lord nor justices 
 might seize his lands, which passed on to the next heir ; only 
 if he had been publicly excommunicated they were to be given in 
 alms. Custumal. Hist. Preston Guild, 77. Compare Luchaire 248.
 
 200 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 burgesses, so that we have not any other lord between 
 our lord the king and us." " And we do not so 
 use," they add, " to give any heriot nor mortuary 
 to any one at the death of any of the citizens 
 dying within the said city or suburbs, for any 
 of his tenements." Moreover " we say that every 
 citizen of the city or suburbs may give and assign their 
 tenements freely and quietly as well in health as in 
 sickness, when and to whomsoever they please, 
 whether those tenements are of their inheritance or of 
 their purchasing or getting, without any malicious 
 detracting of their lord, so that they be of such an 
 age and no less, that they know how to measure a 
 yard of cloth, and to know and tell twelve pence." l 
 In these ways and in many others by which personal 
 freedom was checked and thwarted, the rights of the 
 feudal lord were irresistibly swept away by the 
 pressure of growing societies of active traders and 
 artizans. 2 But the need for political emancipation was 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 471. The age was sometimes 
 fixed at twelve, sometimes at fourteen. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 
 244.) The burgher had no power to leave by will any lands 
 he held outside the town liberties, which must pass to the 
 heir appointed by the common law. For the frauds to which 
 this might give rise, see Hist. MSS. Com. x. 3, 87-9. Wills 
 bequeathing land were read publicly in the borough courts 
 (Nottingham Records, i. 96), arid there enrolled by the 
 mayor as a Court of Record. The muniments of Canterbury show 
 that from this right the mayor went on to claim probate, 
 possibly following the example of Lynn. The claim was perfectly 
 illegal, but was energetically pressed. 
 
 2 Birmingham, which under Henry the Eighth had 2,000 
 houselings, and was said to be " one of the fairest and most profit- 
 able towns to the King's highness in all the shire" (English
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 201 
 
 no less urgent ; and here the way to liberty was 
 neither simple nor easy. A very hierarchy of powers 
 held the path. The authority which the lord of the 
 manor did not assume was exercised by the sheriff of 
 the county ; and where the authority of the sheriff 
 ceased the supreme right of the king began. All 
 government and jurisdiction w T ere divided among 
 powers in high places ; and whatever privileges the 
 
 Guilds, 247-9), only counted in Doomsday nine heads of 
 families. In 1327 these had risen to seventy-five. The burghers 
 first won the lightening of feudal dues, when Birmingham was 
 freed from ward and marriage, heriot and relief, so that if a 
 burgess died the lord could only take his best weapon a bill or 
 a pole-axe or forty pence. (Survey of the Borough and Manor 
 of Birmingham, 1553. Translated by "VV. B. Bickley, with notes by 
 Joseph Hill, pp. xii., 108.) The bailiff and commonalty rented the 
 stalls in the market from the lord, and leased them out by their 
 constables to the townsfolk, fishmongers, butchers, and tanners, 
 and in this way secured complete control of the town market (pp. 
 60-61), where burgesses were exempt from toll, while strangers 
 free of the market paid a small sum, and those not free a larger 
 amount. After the Plague a " free burgage by fealty " grew up, 
 with an oath to observe the customs and services of the manor. 
 The normal holding of the villein seems to have been forty-five 
 acres, that of the cotters less (pp. xii., xiii. See Rogers' Agric. 
 and Prices, i. 12, 298). As population increased new pastures in 
 the foreign were leased out for a term of years at an annual rent, 
 and while the increase of perpetual free tenures thus ceased the 
 alienation of the whole domain was prevented (pp. xiv., 74, 102). 
 Though the town was not made a borough by royal grant, it had 
 even in the thirteenth century secured an independent life, called 
 itself a borough and elected its officers (pp. 60-1, 108-9). Its 
 public acts were done under the style of " bailiff and commonalty " 
 or "bailiff and burgesses." See also Manchester Court Leet 
 Records, 12, 14, 169, 170. For examples of the first privileges 
 which the townspeople sought to win see the " customs " of 
 Newcastle under Henry I., Stubbs' Charters, 106-8.
 
 202 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 burghers might secure must be won here a little 
 and there a little, bought for money, or snatched 
 amid the distresses and calamities of their masters, or 
 held as the reward of importunate persistence, the 
 tribute to successful craft, the recompense of some 
 timely service rendered. 
 
 The case of Bridport illustrates the life of any 
 provincial town in early times whose burghers still 
 served many masters. 1 It was a busy little trading 
 community in the thirteenth century. Hemp was 
 grown in its fields which was sent to Plympton to 
 be made into rope yarn, returned to Bridport to be 
 woven into ropes, and then sent back again to 
 Plympton for sale, or fashioned at home into the 
 girths, horse-nets, and reins for which the Bridport 
 men were famous. The inhabitants had won a con- 
 siderable measure of self-rule. They elected the two 
 bailiffs who were at the head of their local govern- 
 ment, presided in the little town court, and doubt- 
 less regulated the market and controlled the trade. 
 These two had under them under-bailiffs, cofferers, 
 and constables ; and were assisted by twelve jurors 
 chosen every Michaelmas, who yearly perambulated 
 the town to watch over its boundaries, and who 
 had charge of the " parish cheste " or coffin and 
 the parish bier, and of the pillory, whipping .post, 
 and cucking stool. Twelve men were also chosen to 
 conduct any business in which Bridport was concerned. 
 At the visits of the king's justices they were sum- 
 moned with the clerk in council to assist in the 
 business of the court ; they represented their fellow 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 491, et seq.
 
 VI THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 203 
 
 burgesses if any question was called for trial before 
 the sheriffs court at Dorchester, or if a dispute 
 arose with the bishop, or a settlement had to be 
 made with the convent at Abbotsbury. 
 
 I. The powers of the burgesses however were shut 
 up within the narrowest limits. At every moment of 
 their lives some authority from without stepped in with 
 rigorous control and ceaseless exactions. The Lord of 
 the Manor (who in this particular case was the king) 
 owned the soil of the town ; therefore his Steward 
 kept the Law Day, 1 judged the petty offences of the 
 townsmen, summoned them before him to see that 
 each was properly enrolled under the system of frank- 
 pledge, and swept their fines and forfeitures into the 
 lord's coffers. 2 
 
 II. Bridport further owed obedience to the officers 
 of the shire. The coroner 3 came to make inquisition in 
 case of mysterious or violent death or of fire, judged 
 the cause, seized forfeited goods or chattels, and 
 assessed the fines. The sheriff of the county exer- 
 cised a jurisdiction which extended over the most 
 
 1 For the injuries that might be inflicted on a community by 
 a lord's reeve, see Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden 
 Society. 
 
 2 If the lord of the soil held the town as a market-town, and 
 not as a borough, the inhabitants had to attend the Sheriff's 
 tourn, where their petty offences were judged by him or his deputy. 
 In all cases which were not specially exempted they had to 
 appear also twice a year at the court of the shire for view of 
 frank pledge and for judgment of their more serious crimes. 
 Manchester Court Leet Records, 14. 
 
 3 The coroner was an officer elected in full county court, and 
 was charged with guarding the interests of the Crown. His 
 intrusion in the towns was much resented.
 
 -204 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 important affairs of the community, and touched at 
 every point the daily life of the burghers. That his 
 supervision might be constant and effectual, he was 
 accustomed to appoint a deputy or under-sheriff to 
 represent him on the spot, generally some man of 
 importance in Bridport itself, who living in the 
 centre of the town could keep a close watch on its 
 affairs and manage them with a more exact control. 
 It was the sheriff's business to keep order, and guard 
 against breaches of the king's law. At stated times 
 
 o O 
 
 lie called the town bailiff and constable to appear 
 at his court at Dorchester ; crimes which lay beyond 
 the control of the manor court were brought to 
 judgment before him and fines, or the gifts that 
 averted fines, 1 reminded the burghers of his power. 
 As head of the shire forces he ordered at his own 
 will the muster-at-arms of the townsmen, and in 
 times of disturbance called out the levies for the 
 king's service ; he fixed the number of archers and 
 fighting men ; he regulated the contribution of 
 bows and arrows, of hemp and cord, of corn or wine 
 or fish. Year by year he assessed and levied the 
 royal taxes, 2 and collected the rent due from the 
 borough to the king's exchequer. Payments were 
 not made in money in such a town as Bridport ; so 
 when the rent day came near the sheriff or his deputy 
 first drew up a list of oxen and other goods which 
 
 1 When a robber from Bridport escaped from the town prison 
 a set of girths or horse-nets was sent by the town to Dorchester 
 to mitigate the sheriff's anger. 
 
 - For abuses in appointing tax collectors, see Paston Let- 
 ters, i. li.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 205 
 
 were to be given up by the various inhabitants and ulti- 
 mately sold on the Monday after Palm Sunday for 
 the ferm. Meanwhile this list was handed over to the 
 charge of the " bailiff- errant," who travelled from 
 town to town with his clerk and groom l on the 
 business of the shire ; and certain citizens were made 
 responsible for the safety of the cattle and goods 
 until the appointed day. The choice of goods to be 
 taken from each person, the chance of accident 
 before the day of sale, the naming of citizens who 
 were to bear the charges of making good any pos- 
 sible loss, the various fortunes of the auction and 
 of the prices it might bring, the skilful calculations 
 necessary to ensure that however much the profits 
 might exceed the needed sum they should never fall 
 short of it all these things created at every turn new 
 chances of corruption, new hopes of profit to those in 
 authority, and new prospects of ruin to those under 
 the law. 2 The division of powers between the sheriff 
 and his deputies, and the practical impossibility of 
 fixing any responsibility or of calling any one of 
 them to account, left the inhabitants mere creatures 
 at mercy, subject to varied and fortuitous hardship ; 
 while on the other hand the art of government 
 became to every one concerned in it a mere business 
 of self-preservation. When John in 1216 sent a com- 
 mission to collect the ferm of Northampton which had 
 fallen into arrears, the commissioner was informed 
 that the king could not afford payment either for 
 himself or for his servants, and that he must there- 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 491. 
 
 2 See Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville, 361-3.
 
 206 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 fore provide as best he could for their salaries and 
 provisions out of the arrears of the ferm which he 
 was sent to collect. 1 Such a system quickened zeal 
 on the part of officials, if it did not lighten the 
 troubles of the people. In those days every officer in 
 the scale, from the sheriff to the constable, subject to 
 the claims and exactions of his immediate superior, 
 could only indemnify himself by exercising a corre- 
 sponding pressure on those below him, and passing on 
 the tradition of fraud and tyranny. 
 
 It would be hard to say whether the sheriff's position 
 as tax-gatherer, as judge, or as recruiting officer and 
 military leader, gave him the largest opportunities for 
 extortion and tyranny ; but so long as every office 
 that he held added new pretences for arbitrary 
 interference, the townspeople were driven to win 
 his favour by frequent gifts, whether to himself 
 or to his wife, which indeed his deputies were strict 
 in levying when voluntary action proved tardy. He 
 generally required a "year gift" from towns under 
 his control, either to induce him not to come within 
 their liberties, or to remind him to " shew his 
 friendship " to the inhabitants in their necessities ; 2 
 and it was a common custom, when money fell 
 short, to make collection by means of a " scot-ale," 3 
 and summon the townsfolk to a drinking feast where 
 
 1 Close Rolls, I. p. 273, 1216. 2 Nottingham Records, i. 46. 
 
 3 This appears in the records of Gloucester. The scot-ale was 
 a very common method of collecting money for other purposes. 
 See Malrnesbury, Gross, ii. 172, Newcastle (183), Wallingford 
 (245), Winchester (253), Cambridge (358). It was an article of 
 inquiry for Justices Itinerant in 1254. (417) Stubbs' Charters, 
 258-259.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 207 
 
 they were bound to contribute a supply of pro- 
 visions, and to spend a certain sum at the ale-booths 
 set up for the day, while the proceeds of the whole 
 entertainment went into the sheriff's pocket. Modes 
 of extortion, however, might vary infinitely. In 
 Canterbury the sheriff once broke down the only 
 bridge over the river, and so kept it for three months, 
 while he put a ferry boat on the water which the 
 people were forced to use and pay for on his own terms. 1 
 The confessed superiority of these officials in the arts 
 of fraud and tyranny was proclaimed by the universal 
 fear and hate which followed them passions whicli 
 break out in the popular ballads where by a traditional 
 touch the people's hero, Robin Hood, is endowed with 
 the hatred of all sheriffs ; and w r hich stir the heart of 
 the writer of Piers Ploughman as he pictures these 
 officers in the foremost place wherever there is a 
 gathering of the servants of corruption, and in his 
 parable of the Lady Meed travelling to the Court 
 tells how it was a sheriff who was appointed to bear 
 her softly in a litter from Assize to Assize with 
 tenderest care for her safety, since " sheriffs of shires 
 were shent (undone) if she were not." 2 
 
 III. The sheriff however was but the deputy of the 
 crown, and the sovereign rights of the King lay be- 
 hind and above all subordinate authority whatever. 
 
 1 Hundred Rolls, i. 49, 55. The jurors of Bridgenorth com- 
 plained in 1221 that the sheriff's bailiffs and the men of the 
 country had committed to them the duty of following the trail of 
 stolen cattle through their town and fined them if they failed, 
 whereas they could not follow a trail through the middle of the 
 town. Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Society, 113. 
 
 2 Piers Ploughman, Pass. iii. 59, 177, ir. 172.
 
 208 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 \Ylien a royal messenger rode through the gates of a 
 town the officers of the lord of the manor and of the 
 shire alike acknowledged a higher law ; and such mes- 
 sengers were not rare. The sheriff's accustomed rule 
 was set aside whenever judges from Westminster sat 
 in the church or the Guild Hall to administer the 
 justice of the King's Court. Sometimes the king's 
 escheator came to investigate into lapsed estates, to 
 ascertain whether any socage tenants had died, and 
 claim the customary fines. 1 From time to time 
 Court officials "carrying the mace of the lord the king " 
 appeared to announce statutes or ordinances made in 
 Parliament ; or came as unwelcome commissioners to 
 ask for benevolences and loans. The king's clerk of 
 the market 2 might ride into the town with a troop of 
 horses and followers carrying weights and measures 
 signed with the sign of the exchequer ; he would call 
 
 1 For the profits to be made in this business and its oppor- 
 tunities of fraud, see Winchelsea (Rot. Parl. i. 373). Some- 
 times the escheator divided the fines levied between himself and 
 the King ; in other cases the office was farmed out and the King- 
 took a fixed sum leaving the escheator a free hand to do what he 
 pleased. In the towns the office was finally given to the mayor 
 at a fixed salary. The Mayor of Norwich received as escheator 
 10 ; that is, an equal salary to that which he received as 
 Mayor (Blomefield, iii. 179). As Mayor of the Staple he was 
 given 20. (Ibid. iii. 94.) 
 
 2 He was forbidden by Richard the Second to ride with more 
 than six horses, or tarry long in a town. (Statutes, 13 Richard II. 1, 
 cap. 4, and 16 Richard II., cap. 3.) In 1346 the King by charter 
 freed Norwich from " the clerk of the market of our household," 
 so that he should not enter the city to make the assay of measures 
 or weights, or any other duties belonging to his office. (Norwich 
 Doc., pr. 1884, case of Stanley r. Mayor, &c., p. 26.) For clerk 
 of the market in Calais, Lives of Berkeleys, ii. 198.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 209 
 
 for all the town measures, test them by his models, 
 see that the false ones were burned, and then claim a 
 fresh relay of horses to carry him on to his next 
 stage. If the sovereign chose he might send an 
 officer under the assize of arms to " sit at Bridport to 
 array the men " and call for archers for the king's 
 service ; or in case of need the kino-'s " harbinger " or 
 
 <_> o 
 
 " sergeant-at-arms " came to judge how many soldiers 
 should be billeted on the inhabitants. In time of re- 
 bellion or civil war, 1 suspicion of disaffection might 
 fall upon the town, and then commissioners travelled 
 from London to hold a special " inquisition " on the 
 spot. 
 
 IV. All these officers represented the king as supreme 
 head of the law ; but other messengers came from the 
 court, as unbidden and unwelcome as the last, who 
 claimed for the sovereign a tribute which belonged to 
 his personal dignity and state. When the monarch 
 travelled he carried his own law with him ; wherever 
 he went the steward and marshal of his house had 
 jurisdiction for twelve miles to be counted from 
 the lodging of the king ; 2 and their authority super- 
 seded all other law whether of the borough or the 
 shire. The marshal demanded such supply of horses 
 as was necessary for the king or his messengers ; 3 the 
 
 1 Hist. MSB. Com. v. 545. 
 
 2 Statutes, 13th Richard II., 1, cap. 3. 
 
 3 In Rochester " the King's hackney-men " took oath to be 
 ready at all times, early and late, to serve the King's Grace with 
 able hackney horses at the calling of the Mayor, and to provide 
 at all times for any man riding on the King's message, and to 
 give information to the Mayor in case any hard-driven hackney- 
 man in the town " purloin or hide any of their able hackney horses 
 
 VOL. I 1'
 
 210 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKV CHAP. 
 
 purveyors and larderers and officers of the household 
 levied provisions on all townsfolk, 1 save the few who 
 had been lucky enough to gain the king's grant of 
 protection, 2 seized what they needed of their corn and 
 bread and salted meats, called out the inhabitants 
 for forced labour, billeted the crowd that made up the 
 royal train on the various householders, 3 and in fact 
 governed at their own will any town through which 
 the king passed. A happy obscurity and distance 
 from the court could alone preserve a little borough 
 like Bridport from exactions of royal travellers ; and 
 its people might bear with resignation a poverty and 
 insignificance which at least protected them .from evils 
 
 in any privy places, whereby the King's service may be hindered, 
 prolonged, or undone." (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 287.) For Romney 
 see Lyon's Dover, ii. 341. In some towns certain innkeepers 
 had letters patent to require horses and carts for the King's 
 service. The right was greatly abused, and such patents declared 
 void by Statute. (28 Henry VI. cap. 2.) 
 
 1 For purveyors, Rogers' Agric. and Prices, 1., 119, 166. 
 Brinklow's Complaint, 19, 20. Rot. Parl. i. 400. At Lynn 
 the King's Larderer would claim ships to go out fishing for 
 the King's provisions, or perhaps to carry 5,000 fish for the 
 King's household. (Hist. MSS. Corn. xi. 3, 188-9.) As late as 
 1493 it was necessary for Canterbury (which had been freed by 
 charter from these exactions in 1414) to get a "breve" from 
 Henry the Seventh to give its inhabitants a summary means of 
 resisting the demands of the King's Purveyors. (Ibid. ix. 168.) 
 For seizing of carts, see Nottingham Records, i. 118. The 
 King's cart-takers in the seventeenth century, Hist. MSS. Com. 
 v. 407. 
 
 - Instances in Chester, 1282, Hemingway's Chester, i. 132. 
 
 ' Among the Bristol liberties was one that no burgess nor 
 inhabitant of Bristol shall against his will receive none host into 
 his house by lyverance of the King's Marshall. (Ricart, 24.)
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 211 
 
 of so great magnitude to poor and over-tasked 
 workers. 
 
 V. There was yet another form in which the power 
 of the crown pressed upon the inhabitants of a borough. 
 Privileges granted by the king might be withdrawn at 
 his caprice ; and the burghers lay absolutely at his 
 mercy for all the liberties and rights which they 
 enjoyed. At the beginning of every reign the con- 
 firmation of their charters, and the affixing of the 
 new king's seal, had to be won by such payments and 
 bribes as the officials in high places judged that the 
 burghers could afford. 1 The king might at any 
 moment raise a question as to the value of their 
 charters ; or he might make some public revolution 
 
 1 Instances of the necessity for new grants and confirmations 
 and the heavy consequent expenses are too numerous to quote. 
 In Canterbury 36 was paid in 1460 for a new charter, and 
 other payments connected with the same business were made in 
 the following year. In 1472 messengers were sent to London 
 for the obtaining again of a charter of liberties. Two years 
 later an envoy rode to London to treat with the Treasurer, Lord 
 Essex, about a writ of proviso touching the liberties of the city, 
 and a grant was then made, probably in return for heavy pay- 
 ment, which confirmed a recent restoration of ancient privileges. 
 A magnificent supper given to Lord Essex expressed the gratitude 
 of the city. In 1474 the city paid for a proviso to confirm the 
 restorations of their liberties. In 1475 there was an investiga- 
 tion in camera of the charters and muniments concerning the 
 bounds of the liberty; and in 1481 payments were made to friends 
 and patrons who had helped them with the King in preserving the 
 liberties of the city. At the accession of Henry the Seventh it 
 became necessary to buy renewal and confirmation of the charter, 
 and this was completed in 1487. In 1490 the Mayor conferred 
 with Cardinal Morton on the renewal and extension of the 
 liberties of the city. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 140 et seq., 170.) See 
 Romney, Ibid. v. 534-5, 537, 539, 543-4. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 or local disturbance the occasion for a revision or a 
 threatened withdrawal of ancient " customs." l When 
 their rights were menaced the townsmen had but one 
 resource, and hastily met together, as in the case of 
 Bridport, to order by the " common assent " that 
 reins and horse nets should be provided at the public 
 cost and sent to London, for " furthering the common 
 business." 
 
 For the whole of this complicated system of 
 administration was kept in working order by a gen- 
 erous system of bribes bribes given largely and 
 openly, registered in the public accounts, and granted 
 indifferently to any official, great or small, who- 
 
 J J ' O 
 
 might be induced by a timely gift to " show his friend 
 ship." Towns won the renewal or the preservation 
 of their chartered rights by offerings to king or queen, 
 to chancellors and bishops and great officers of the 
 household, with whom they interceded by the aid of 
 a " cow-pull " of swans or cygnets or heronshaws, 
 a porpoise, a store of dried sprats, or a cask of 
 wine. " The law is ended as a man is friended," 
 said the wise folk of the fifteenth century, and if any 
 legal question arose the town could only " have a 
 verdict " when due " courtesies," as they were called, 
 were prepared for justices and their clerks, barons of 
 the exchequer and sheriffs and counsel and attorneys, 
 besides any sums required to pay a " friendly " jury. 2 
 
 1 Writ of inquisition as to privileges of Cinque Ports. (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. vi. 544.) The instance of charters forfeited on these 
 grounds are very frequent. 
 
 2 In Southampton a hogshead of Gascony wine was given " by 
 common consent " to the sheriff to have his friendship in the
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 213 
 
 If the king sent pressing and overwhelming demands 
 for money, a deputation of leading burghers would 
 hurry up to Westminster, carrying gifts and bribes to 
 the Clerk of the Rolls and the usher of Parliament 
 as a peace offering. 1 Or some gracious patron might 
 be persuaded to divert from the town " a quest of the 
 Admiralty, that it would not come thither as was in- 
 tended to come." 2 When men were called out for 
 war the community would consult by what gifts or 
 " courtesies " it might arrange " to have pardoning 
 that we should not ride up so many men as the 
 said warrant commanded." 3 At the appearance of 
 the King's harbinger or sergeant-at-arms the first 
 thought was to collect a sum which might induce 
 their formidable guest to limit the number of troops 
 billeted on the town, or even to march them away 
 altogether. 4 In the same way if a messenger ap- 
 peared bearing part of the body of a traitor who 
 had been executed, which by the King's orders 
 
 return of a jury. In 1428 a sum of 13*. 4</. was paid for return- 
 ing " friends of the town " on a jury to settle a question which 
 had arisen between the King and Southampton as to which was 
 to have the goods and chattels of a felon who had run away. 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 140, 142.) See also Ibid. v. 518. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539. The Lieutenant of Dover, who 
 settled the amount and division of benevolences required from 
 the Cinque Ports, had also his offerings from the various towns 
 that they might be well dealt with. (Ibid. v. 527.) 
 
 2 Ibid. v. 528. These courts on the sea-shore meant con- 
 siderable expense in fees and feasts. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 491. In 1474 money was given by 
 Canterbury to Kyriel, that he might excuse the city from sending 
 men and ships to the war. (Ibid. ix. 143.) 
 
 4 Ibid. v. 518, 522.
 
 214 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 was to be set up on the gate of the borough, the 
 inhabitants would give him a present to carry on his 
 burden to some other town. 1 
 
 Counted among the usual incidents of government, 
 and reckoned in the ordinary expenditure of the 
 municipality, the payment of such bribes was to all 
 concerned merely the customary mode of defraying 
 some of the expenses of administration ; 2 and the 
 public sense acquiesced in a prudent and necessary 
 method of carrying on the affairs of state. Gifts 
 to great officials were not tokens of servitude re- 
 quired only from dependent towns, but a tribute 
 levied as rigorously from the free boroughs. The 
 bribes demanded were not less in number ; the main 
 difference was that they went into different pockets. 
 Thus the offerings required from Canterbury when 
 its municipal existence was most vigorous and self- 
 dependent, were naturally on a scale unexampled in 
 a little place such as Bridport. 3 The gifts of the 
 town were scattered far and wide ; a pike to a London 
 lawyer, wine to Master John Fineux the justiciar, a 
 conger eel to the Dean of Windsor, wine to the chan- 
 cellor of the Archbishop of York, payments to the 
 Bishop of Winchester that the city might " have his 
 mediation," gifts to Cardinal Beaufort to win his help 
 
 L Hist. MSS. Com. v. 543. Three and foul-pence, and 18d. 
 for a pair of boots as a reward. 
 
 2 See in Winchester the gifts to the coroner's clerk, to jurors 
 at the Pavilion, to the King's taxers, to the wife of the Sheriff, 
 to the Bailiff of the Soke of "\Vinton, and so on. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. vi. 595-605.) 
 
 3 Hist, MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 138-149. The expenses at 
 Lynn were very great. (Ibid. 218-225.)
 
 vr THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 215 
 
 when it was proposed to chaiige the municipal constitu- 
 tion, offerings to the Bishop of St. David's who 
 nominally got a double supply, one present being pro- 
 vided for the Episcopus Menevensis and another for 
 the Episcopus de Seynt Taffey 1 to " have their friend- 
 ship " with the King in the anxious days of 1483. 
 Eoyal dukes and court officers, bishops, chamberlains, 
 notaries, clerks of the Eolls, knights who had access 
 to the -palace, sheriffs, judges of the king's court, 
 were sumptuously feasted, and messengers knocked 
 at the doors of their lodgings laden with pheasants, 
 cygnets, capons, rams, oxen, geese, with Ehenish wine, 
 wine of Tyre, claret, muscatel, and red wine and 
 white by thirty or fifty gallons at a time. In the 
 revolutionary times of 1470 the citizens were un- 
 luckily associated with the party of Henry the Sixth, 
 and for years after their wealth was lavished in buying 
 back the favour of the court. The Duchess of York, 
 who had once been accustomed to receive her tribute 
 of Ehenish wine, red wine, and wine of Tyre, visited 
 the city in 1471, when her son was in difficulties ; but 
 the prudent citizens now only offered the poor lady 
 " for bread 12f/." On the other hand when Edward 
 was again triumphant officers and commissioners of 
 the king of every degree accepted pheasants, geese, 
 capons and red wine. The burghers presented to the 
 Duke of Clarence a load of claret and capons which 
 it took four men to carry. Soon after when the King's 
 
 1 Doubtless a scribe's error for Llandaff. (Hist. MSS. Com. 
 ix. 145.) The Bishop of St. David's writes that " in many great 
 cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he 
 hath refused."
 
 216 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAI-. 
 
 Chamberlain came to Canterbury, lie was given his 
 dinner at the " Swan," one of the inns belonging to 
 the corporation, where he feasted off " a wild beast 
 called a bukk " which had been brought from Westen- 
 hanger ; and after the dinner eight men carried a 
 peace-offering to his inn, two swans, two fat capons, 
 four capons, four pheasants, fifty-six gallons of red 
 wine, and half a gallon of muscatel ; and shortly 
 after another tribute was sent up to him in London. 1 
 
 But behind this customary system of bribes and 
 gifts lay the deep and permanent trouble of perpetual 
 uncertainty and dread. Everywhere authority came 
 home to the unhappy subjects as a mere matter of 
 arbitrary and violent caprice, and the main function 
 of government as that of rough extortion and 
 successful pillage ; while the recognition of privilege 
 on every side blotted out all sense of equality before 
 the la\v, and the weak, knowing all their helplessness, 
 were as anxious to buy the commodity of protection, 
 as the powerful, conscious of their might, were willing 
 to make a gain of it. Canterbury sought the patron- 
 age of leading people in the county or the court ; 2 
 Norwich profited, so long as he was in favour, by the 
 protection of Suffolk ; York gratefully recognised 
 the services of the Duke of Gloucester. When he 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 141-3. 
 
 2 At the important meeting in 1474, when the constitution of 
 the town was reaffirmed, William Haute, the lord of the manor of 
 Bishopsbourne (four miles away), who was then patron of the 
 town, was put at the head of the list before even the five alder- 
 men, the sheriff, or any town officers, as establishing and ordaining 
 the town ordinances. Poynings, Browne, Guildford, were at 
 different times patrons of the city.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 217 
 
 passed through the city, an order was sent out by the 
 corporation that every alderman and council man 
 in livery, and every member of any craft in his best 
 array, should go out to meet him at the gate the 
 commoners being in their places by the early dawn, 
 at three of the morning, the grand people an hour 
 later in consideration of their rank. In 1482 the 
 Duke acted as mediator between the city and the 
 King in the matter of the election of a mayor, and 
 the council agreed that in regard of " the great 
 labour of the good and benevolent lordship," that 
 he " have at all times done for the weal of this city/' 
 the whole community should join in giving him 
 " a laud and thank ; " and the aldermen dressed in 
 scarlet, with the Council of Twenty-four in murrey 
 or crimson, attended at the mayor's house to present 
 the Duke with a gift of all kinds of wine and fish, 
 and lead a procession of the whole commonalty to 
 his lodging at the Friar Austins. 1 
 
 Patronage and protection, however, were dearly 
 bought at all times, and at any moment their price, 
 determined by the reckless habits of a lord, or 
 the necessity of a king, or the greed of a sheriff, 
 might be raised so as to bring years of confusion 
 to municipal finances. Demands sudden and irreg- 
 ular, which no wisdom could calculate beforehand 
 and no prudence could avert, wasted the substance of 
 the people ; and thrifty burghers learned to measure 
 their progress to independence by their success 
 
 1 Davies' York, 128-9, 123-5. For an interesting instance 
 of beneficent protection in 1605, see Hibbert's Influence and 
 Development of Guilds, p. 95.
 
 218 TOWX LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CEXTUEY CHAP. 
 
 in limiting the pleas which the great could urge 
 as reasons for levying toll and tribute on their 
 labour. The love of liberty was forced on them by 
 the practical needs of life. A people long used to 
 hardship, dependent on the capricious mercy of 
 their masters, subject without appeal to imposi- 
 tions laid on them by the stronger hand, they 
 learned by daily experience that government by 
 laws made without their own consent, and admin- 
 istered by officers imposed on them against their 
 will, was the very definition of slavery. By a rude 
 experience of alien officials they were effectually 
 taught that the first necessity of a free community 
 was the right of choosing its own governors, that 
 the control of life and goods and the responsi- 
 bilities of any office of honour and profit and trust 
 in the town should no longer be entrusted to 
 strangers, but committed into the hands of their 
 own fellow citizens, of whose fidelity, patriotism, 
 and credit they could assure themselves. It was 
 impossible that all the fortunes of their commerce 
 should hang on the will of some distant master 
 whose faculty of ruling them in all their concerns 
 rested on the mere superiority of power ; and traders 
 everywhere demanded authority to order their own 
 business, and rule their markets. The inhabit- 
 ants of a town could not claim the property in 
 their own borough till they had secured the right 
 of holding it directly from the crown at a yearly 
 rent which they themselves should pay into the 
 exchequer at Westminster ; l and even then their 
 1 The election of a Mayor as a responsible person through
 
 vi THE PKOBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 219 
 
 privileged existence was a mere matter of royal 
 caprice till they found means to have the cor- 
 porate succession of the borough legally recognized. 1 
 Their municipality was threatened with financial 
 calamities unless the}' could win exemption from 
 the Statute of Mortmain, and obtain the right of 
 holding property for the town's good. 2 The bond- 
 age under which they lay to the sheriff 3 and tax- 
 gatherer could only be broken when they were given 
 full powers to assess and collect all their own 
 taxes. 4 Vexed and impoverished by journeys to 
 
 whom the King could deal with the town was probably often 
 connected with the settlement of the fee-farm rent. In Liver- 
 pool the first mention of a Major is in 1356, the very next year 
 the fee-farm was granted to the Mayor and others on behalf 
 of the burgesses for ten years. (Picton, Municipal Records of 
 Liverpool, i. 13-15.) 
 
 1 As against the idea of Merewether and Stephens, that 
 charters of municipal incorporation only began in 1439, Dr. 
 Gross points out that such a charter occurs in 1345, that in the 
 time of Edward the First the technical conception of municipal 
 incorporation was familiar, and that long before the judicial 
 conception came into being the borough had a real corporate 
 existence, and exercised all the functions of a corporate body. 
 (Gild Merchant, i. 93, etc.) 
 
 2 In 1391 the Statute of Mortmain was extended to cities and 
 boroughs. (Statutes, 15 Richard II., cap. 5.) Even when license 
 to hold land was granted by the Crown the amount was strictly 
 limited, and the power of refusal or of limitation was a seriou.-: 
 consideration to the town. 
 
 3 According to Mr. Round, London found means of annexing 
 the shire of Middlesex instead of asking to be separated from it. 
 (Geoffrey de Maiideville, 347-373.) 
 
 4 We have a hint of a troublesome mode of interference with 
 the municipal taxation in an incident in Norwich in 1268, when 
 "the lord the King commanded all his bailiffs that, for a jine
 
 :^0 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 distant courts for justice, harassed by the inter- 
 ference in their most private affairs of some far-off 
 governor, forced in every recurring emergency to 
 carry appeals for justice or petitions for favour to an 
 alien power separate from all their interests, they 
 urged the claim that right should be done to the 
 burghers in their own courts and by then' own officers 
 as of the very essence of any true liberty. " We 
 are the citizens of our lord the king," said the burghers 
 of Hereford, " and have the custody of his city for us 
 and for his heirs and for our heirs, and we ought not 
 to go out of our city for the recovering of our debts, 
 for divers dangers and misfortunes which might 
 happen to our wives and children ; and if we ought 
 to spend our goods and chattels in parts afar off, by 
 impleading and labouring for that, by that means and 
 the like we shall be impoverished ; and being made 
 poor, we shall not have wherewith to keep the city, 
 and so disinheritance by such ways would easily fall 
 upon our children." 1 And as the burghers claimed 
 that each community should have absolute control 
 over its members for the peace and order of the 
 commonwealth, so they were resolute that no power- 
 ful patron, within or without the borough, should on 
 
 <>f .10, which Margaret the Taneresse of Norwich made with the 
 same lord the King, he granted to her such liberty that for the 
 whole time of her life she should be quit from all his tallages 
 in the town of Norwich .... for whatsoever cause they may 
 be made. And he commanded that they vex not the aforesaid 
 Margaret contrary to this his grant." (Norwich Documents* 
 pr. 1884, 9.) In any case where the tallage was a fixed sum 
 due from the town some one else would have to pay Margaret's 
 share. ' Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 478.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 221 
 
 any plea whatever venture to aid or "' maintain" a 
 townsman who had offended against the municipal 
 law, " because by such maintainers or protectors a 
 common contention might arise amongst us, and 
 horrible manslaughter be committed amongst us, and 
 the loss of the liberty or freedom of the city to 
 the disinheritance of us and our children ; which God 
 forbid that in our days by the defect of us, should 
 happen or fall out in such a manner." From the 
 first they were forced to look beyond the ques- 
 tion of mere personal regard, seeing how deeply 
 legal forms of procedure affected their common life a& 
 a separate society, and they had their grave reasons 
 of state for insisting that the older forms of ad- 
 ministering justice in their courts should be main- 
 tained, and trial by combat rejected and abolished 
 from among them, " by reason of perpetual enmity of 
 us the parents and of our children, which might turn 
 to the ruin or perdition of the city and other 
 innumerable accident dangers." In the same way 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Ass. 479. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 241-2. Stat- 
 ute of Maintenance, 13 Richard II., Stat. 3. For the jealousy 
 of the towns as to any inhabitant relying for protection on a 
 lord outside, see p. 183, note 2. 
 
 2 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 482. For a duel in Leicester in 
 1201, see Select Civil Pleas, Selden Society, p. 33. Judicial 
 combat in Fordwich with an alien had to take place in the middle 
 of the river Stour, the alien standing up to his middle in the 
 water, while the Fordwich man apparently fought from a boat 
 tied to the quay, with an instrument called an " ore," three yards 
 long. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 442.) In 1200 "the citizens of 
 Lincoln came and produced the king's charter which witnesses that 
 none of them need plead outside the city walls except the king's 
 moneyers and servants, and that they need not tight the duel
 
 ^22 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 tliev were driven to realize the necessity of having 
 
 / / cj 
 
 some share in deciding on the laws by which they 
 were to be governed, and which might have the 
 gravest results to their little state ; as, for example, 
 when the people of Leicester petitioned for a charter 
 from Henry the Third to do away with the ancient 
 usage of " borough English," and grant the right of 
 inheritance to the eldest son, since owing to defective 
 heirs and their weakness, the town was falling into 
 ruin and dishonour. 1 
 
 because of any appeal." An accused man answered the charges 
 against him " word by word as a free citizen of Lincoln," and 
 " according to the franchise of the town " waged law with thirty- 
 six compurgators. (Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Society, 
 p. 39.) For compurgation in Sandwich in 1493, Boys, 680. 
 
 With old forms of trial old forms of punishment were allowed 
 to survive. In Sandwich, if a man failed to clear himself by 
 compurgation of a charge of homicide or theft he was condemned 
 to be buried alive in a place called the Thiefdown at Sandown. 
 (Ibid. 465.) Felons were also drowned in a stream called "the 
 Gestling"; but in 1313 a complaint was made that the prior of 
 Christchurch had diverted the course of the stream, and that 
 criminals could not be executed in that way for want of water. (Ibid. 
 664.) At Dover and Folkestone a thief was killed by being thrown 
 from a cliff, and at Winchelsea was hanged in the salt marsh. 
 (Lyon's Dover, i. 231.) In others of the Cinque Port towns 
 when a thief was taken his ear was nailed to a pqst or cart- 
 wheel and a knife put in his hand, he had to free himself by 
 cutting off his ear, to pay a fine, and to forswear the town. In 
 1470, 12cZ. was paid "for nailing of Thomas Norys his ear." 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 525, 530.) 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 407. Nottingham retained the old 
 usage till after the fourteenth century ; Records, i. 175. 
 Exeter till 1581 ; Freeman's Exeter, 119. The question may 
 have partly turned on the form of government adopted in the 
 town and the work required of the common assembly in which 
 the burghers voted.
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 223 
 
 All these privileges and exemptions were matters of 
 negociation between the borough and the king or the 
 lord of the manor to be bought for money, or for 
 political support, or for loans in time of need. 1 The 
 people everywhere simply won such advantages as 
 time and opportunity allowed, and secured benefits 
 which were measured by the grace of the king, or by 
 the price they could afford to pay, or by the show of 
 resistance they could make to their lord. Nor was 
 there anything startling or revolutionary about the first 
 beginnings of independent municipal life. The tow r n 
 assemblies which discussed and inaugurated a new con- 
 stitution transacted their business with a complete- 
 ness and accuracy of methodical routine which might 
 kindle the sympathy of a Town Council of modern 
 Birmingham. In the organization of " meetings " the 
 mediaeval Englishman seems to have had nothing to 
 learn, and the doings of the people of Ipswich when 
 they got their first charter from King John in 1200 
 carry us into the quiet atmosphere of a board-room 
 where shareholders and directors of some solid and old- 
 established company assemble for business with the 
 decorum and punctuality of venerable habit. 2 The 
 charter granted those essential privileges which were 
 
 1 It has been argued (Gneist, Constit. Connnunale, tr. Hippert, 
 i. 263; v. 275) that the State created local government in the towns 
 as a method of developing better administration, and that it was 
 therefore only accidentally and as a secondary consequence that in- 
 dependence and local liberties came in the wake of this administra- 
 tive system. The facts, however, of their story make it perfectly 
 clear that municipal liberties were of natural growth, and sprang 
 out of local needs rather than out of Court statecraft. 
 
 2 Gross, i. 23; ii. 115.
 
 224 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 recognized by all boroughs as of the very first im- 
 portance the right henceforward to deal in financial 
 matters directly with the Exchequer, and no longer 
 act as a mere fragment of the shire through the sheriff ; 
 to be free of tolls on trade throughout the kingdom, 
 and have a Guild Merchant with all its commercial 
 privileges ; to carry out justice according to the ancient 
 custom of the borough ; and to elect each year from 
 among themselves officers to rule over the town, who 
 being thus appointed by common consent could only 
 be removed from office by the unanimous counsel of 
 the whole people. The charter was given on May 25, 
 and in the following month a general assembly of the 
 burghers was summoned. At this meeting they first 
 elected the chief officers for the year, the bailiffs and 
 coroners, and then proceeded to decide by common 
 counsel that a body of twelve " Portmen " should be ap- 
 pointed to assist them ; and three days later these too 
 were formally chosen through another and more com- 
 plicated system of election by a select body of citizens 
 named for the purpose. Having taken an oath faith- 
 fully to govern the borough and maintain its liberties, 
 and justly to render the judgments of its courts, the 
 new officers then caused all the townsmen to stretch 
 forth their hands towards the Book, and with one voice 
 solemnly swear from that hour to obey and assist 
 them in guarding the liberties of the town. Twelve 
 clays after this they met to ordain the most necessary 
 rules for the administration of the town. Two months 
 were then spent in drawing up " Ordinances " which 
 were finally solemnly read to the whole people assem- 
 bled in the church-yard, and received their unanimous
 
 vi THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 225 
 
 consent. And lastly a month later, on October 12, 
 the organization of the Merchant Guild for the 
 regulation of trade was completed and its officers 
 elected ; the newly made Common Seal 1 was inspected ; 
 and the community ordered that a record of all their 
 laws and free customs should be written for perpetual 
 remembrance in a roll to be called Domesday. And 
 thus with all the grave ceremony which befitted the 
 dignity of a new republic, Ipswich started on its in- 
 dependent career as a free borough. 
 
 1 The seals of English towns of. the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
 and fifteenth centuries were of finer workmanship than any in 
 Europe. They generally represented a fortress or walled town, 
 a ship, a patron saint, or heraldic arms, but it is interesting that 
 in no case is the figure of the Mayor used to typify the borough 
 save in the London seal, where he stands among the corporation 
 and citizens. Sometimes a bridge is given, as at Barnstaple ; in 
 two or three cases the Guild Hall. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM 
 
 (1.) Towns on Royal Demesne 
 
 So auspicious a beginning of municipal life as was 
 granted to Ipswich did not however fall as a matter 
 of course to the lot of every English town, nor was 
 political liberty by any means an inevitable conse- 
 quence of favourable commercial conditions, or neces- 
 sarily withheld from boroughs in a humbler way of 
 trade. In a society where all towns alike depended 
 upon some lord of the manor who owned the soil and 
 exercised feudal rio-hts over his tenants, that which 
 
 O 7 
 
 mainly determined for each community the measure of 
 independence it should win, and the price which its 
 people should pay for liberty, was the form of lord- 
 ship to which it was subject. By the decisive 
 accidents of position and tenure the fate of the town 
 was fixed, rather than by the merits or exertions of 
 the burghers. 
 
 First among the boroughs in number and im-
 
 CH. vii TOWNS ON KOYAL DEMESNE 227 
 
 portance were those in " ancient demesne " that is, 
 boroughs which held directly from the king, and were 
 therefore reckoned as being a part of the national 
 property, such as Canterbury, York, Winchester, 
 Southampton, Yarmouth, Nottingham, Gloucester, 
 and so on. A second group was formed by the 
 towns which belonged to a lay noble, like Morpeth, 
 Berkeley, or Leicester ; or were held by him as a spe- 
 cial grant from the king, as Barnstaple or Liverpool. 
 Finally there were the towns on ecclesiastical estates, 
 whether they were the property of a bishopric like 
 Lynn, which was under the Bishop of Norwich, Wells 
 under the Bishop of Wells, Romney and Hythe under 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury ; or whether they owed 
 suit and fealty to a convent, as the towns of Reading 
 and St. Albans, which belonged to the abbots of those 
 monasteries respectively, Fordwich to St. Augustine's 
 at Canterbury, Weymouth to St. Switlnm's at Win- 
 chester. 1 In all these various groups the towns 
 were equally willing to relieve their feudal superior, 
 king or lord or bishop, of the cares of government, 
 and the only question was how far the king would 
 go in supporting these demands, or how far the noble 
 and ecclesiastic could be compelled to acquiesce in a 
 re-distribution of feudal jurisdiction and privileges in 
 favour of traders and " mean " people. 
 
 Happily for the national wealth and freedom the 
 great majority of towns in England, and almost all 
 those of importance, were part of the royal demesne, 
 and the king was lord of the soil. Fenced in by privi- 
 
 1 A few towns, in the case of some members of the Cinque 
 Ports, depended on another borough. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 leges which had been devised to protect the interest of 
 the King, and which they gradually found means to 
 transform into institutions for the protection of 
 their own interests, the burghers on ancient demesne 
 were bound into one fellowship by the inheritance of 
 a common tradition and common immunities ; l and 
 regarding their towns as the very aristocracy among 
 the boroughs, enjoyed a self-conscious dignity such 
 as the Great Powers of Europe might feel to- 
 wards the less favoured minor States. There is the 
 ring of a haughty spirit in the answer sent by 
 the men of Hereford when the people of Cardiff 
 begged for a copy of their " customs" to help them 
 in deciding on the constitution of their own govern- 
 ment. " The King's citizens of Hereford," they say, 
 " who have the custody of his city (in regard that 
 it is the principal city of all the market towns 
 from the sea even unto the bounds of the Severn) 
 ought of ancient usage to deliver their laws and 
 
 O 
 
 customs to such towns when need requires, yet in this 
 case they are in no wise bound to do it, because they 
 say the}' are not of the same condition ; for there are 
 
 1 For the position of tenants on ancient demesne, see 
 Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, ch. iii. Mr. Maitland 
 (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, ii. 99, <tc.) gives an account 
 of King's Ripton, a manor on ancient demesne, whose tenants 
 when transferred to the Abbey of Ramsey were always fighting 
 with their new lords as to the services due from their holdings. 
 " The privileged nature of the tenure had engendered a privileged 
 race, very tenacious of its land and of its customs " (p. 105). 
 The study of the way in which the customs of ancient demesne 
 affected the later constitution of the boroughs lies outside my 
 subject, and is therefore merely indicated.
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 229 
 
 some towns which hold of our Lord the King of 
 England and his heirs without any mesne lord ; and 
 to such we are bound, when and as often as need shall 
 be, to certify of our laws and customs, chiefly because 
 we hold by one and the same tenure ; and nothing 
 shall be taken of them in the name of a reward, except 
 only by our common town clerk for the writing and 
 his pains as they can agree. But there are other 
 market towns which hold of divers lords of the king- 
 dom wherein are both natives and rustics of ancient 
 time, who pay to their lords corporal service of divers 
 kinds, with other services which are not used among 
 us, and who may be expelled out of those towns by 
 their lords, and may not inhabit in them or be restored 
 to their former state, but by the common law of 
 England. 1 And chiefly those and others that hold by 
 such foreign services in such towns are not of our 
 
 o 
 
 condition ; neither shall they have our laws and 
 customs but by way of purchase, to be performed to 
 our Capital Bailiff as they can agree between them, 
 at the pleasure and to the benefit of the city afore- 
 said." 2 
 
 I. Singular advantages, indeed, fell to the lot of 
 towns thus happily situated on the national estate. The 
 King was a Lord of the Manor too remote to have 
 
 1 Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, 89. Compare the claim 
 of Bristol to be " founded and grounded upon franchises, liber- 
 ties, and free ancient customs, and not upon common law." 
 (Ricart's Kalendar, 2.) For its liberties, see p. 24-5. 
 
 2 As a matter of fact the various towns of this kind which 
 applied to Hereford for any information as to its customs on any 
 point had to pay one hundred shillings for the answer vouchsafed 
 to them. (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 470.)
 
 230 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 opportunity for overmuch meddling, and too greatly 
 occupied with affairs of state to concern himself 
 with the details of government in his numerous 
 boroughs. 1 County magnates might cling passionately 
 to the right of holding local courts as sources of power, 
 and yet more important sources of wealth ; but such 
 rights were of small consequence to a powerful 
 sovereign, who as supreme head of the law could 
 call up criminals to his own judgement seat from 
 every court in the country. 2 Confidence of supremacy 
 made him careless to put it to the test by abrupt 
 assertions of authority, as private owners, apprehensive 
 and uncertain, might be tempted to do ; and in his 
 indifference to small uses of power and devices for 
 paltry gain, he held loosely to rights that brought 
 much trouble and little profit. 3 So long as his yearly 
 
 1 There was constant watchfulness on both sides as to their 
 rights. In 1400 the bailiffs of Ipswich granted land for the 
 building of a mill for the benefit of the corporation ; the King's 
 officers declared the grant to have been made without the royal 
 licence, and the mill was seized for the King. On the other 
 hand, when the sheriff of the county arrested a felon in the 
 liberties of Ipswich and put him in the King's jail, the bailiffs 
 required that he should be given up to them. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. ix. 231, 246.) 
 
 2 That is on the plea of lack of justice in the borough court. 
 In 1401, when the citizens of Canterbury were summoned by the 
 Crown to appear at Westminster about a breach of the statutes 
 for the regulation of the victualling trades, they pleaded that by 
 their charter they could not be called to answer civil suits out of 
 their own city. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 167.) 
 
 3 In 1299 the amercements ordered by the Leet Court of Nor- 
 wich amounted to 72 18s. lOd ; the amount accounted for by the 
 collectors was 17 Os. 2d. (Hudson's Leet Jurisd. of Norwich, 
 Selden Soc. xl.) Where there was profit to be made the King
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 231 
 
 ferm was punctually paid, 1 he was ready to grant to 
 the townsfolk leave to gather into their own treasury 
 the petty sums collected at the borough or manor 
 courts, 2 or to make their mayor the king's escheator ; 
 and while he thus won their gratitude and friend- 
 ship he lost nothing by his generosity. In surrender- 
 ing local claims for a fixed payment, he not only 
 relieved himself of the charge of salaries to a mul- 
 titude of minor officials, but he had no longer to 
 suffer from the loss of fines and dues and forfeitures 
 
 was, however, always on the alert. In Piers Ploughman, 
 Passus v., 169, he complains bitterly of the lawyers; "through 
 your law I believe I lose my escheats ! " ; and it was often late 
 before he made the mayor escheator. In 1492 two Scotch priests 
 were arrested in Ipswich for treasonable talk, and the King granted 
 their chattels to one of his own Serjeants. The bailiffs sent the 
 Town Clerk to Henry to represent that the forfeited goods of felons 
 rightly belonged to the town ; to which the King answered that 
 he would not for a thousand pounds infringe in the least degree 
 their charters, but that the community had really no right to 
 these particular chattels, since the priests, being Scotch and not 
 the King's subjects, could not fairly be accused of treason, and 
 had a perfect right to talk as they chose. On this plea he kept 
 the goods. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 247.) 
 
 1 This was strictly enforced, and the town charter forfeited 
 if the rent fell into arrears. (Madox, 139, 161-2.) The towns 
 therefore made careful provision for the discharge of the debt, 
 sometimes setting apart a mill or some valuable property for its 
 payment (Madox, Firma Burgi, 251-2; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 
 198-9 ; Nott. Rec. i. 313), or assigning certain tolls or customs ; 
 (Shillingford's Letters, 92) ; or collecting it as rent from house to 
 house. (Custumal in Hist. Preston Guild, 75.) 
 
 2 When the ferm of Carlisle was raised from 60 to 80 the 
 citizens were granted, as a help towards its payment, all fines 
 inflicted by the King's judges within their walls. (Hist. MSS. 
 Com. ix. 198, 200.) See also Norwich Documents, 16, 17.
 
 232 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 which were nominally levied for the King, but which 
 had a constant tendency to find their way into the 
 pockets of the town officers or the tax-collectors rather 
 than into his exchequer. In many cases, moreover, he 
 may have gained considerably by the price which he 
 demanded for his favours ; and the royal accounts 
 possibly give a very inadequate record of the number 
 of special gifts of money and yearly annuities paid by 
 boroughs to the King in return for liberties granted to 
 them. 1 
 
 II. As lord of the manor, therefore, the King was a 
 liberal master, always ready to arrange a compromise 
 with his tenants as to vexatious feudal claims. But 
 he was equally ready to listen to their prayers for 
 freedom from the control of officers of the Shire and 
 the Hundred. So long as it was to the benefit of the 
 central authority to break up and weaken provincial 
 governments, to curtail the powers of the sheriff, to 
 confound ambitious designs of local magnates, and 
 shatter pretensions on the part of the nobles which 
 might tend to strengthen hereditary enemies of the 
 crown, so long the townspeople might count on 
 the sovereign's support in the struggle for indepen- 
 dence. In questions therefore that arose as to rival 
 jurisdictions, in claims put forward by a borough 
 
 1 Thus the Nottingham men paid 1 3s. 4cZ. a year to Henry the 
 Sixth, at least from 1454, for liberties granted them. There 
 is no entry of this in the King's accounts, and the only evi- 
 dence of it is in the Nottingham Records (iii. 133). The loyal 
 theory of Hereford was that " our goods and chattels are to be 
 taken and taxed at his pleasure, saving unto ourselves a com- 
 petent quantity for our sustentation and tuition of our city." 
 (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 471.)
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 233 
 
 against neighbouring lords for rights of navigation 
 or pasturage or fishing, in all disputes which were 
 carried in the last resort to the arbitration of the 
 king, his sympathy, especially if a fitting " courtesy " 
 was offered by the burghers, was with his borough. 1 
 Powers won from local governments or from feudal 
 lords were divided between the King and the muni- 
 cipality ; and under shelter of the royal authority 
 large rights of local self-government were rapidly 
 gathered into the burghers' hands. Functions once 
 exercised by the bailiff of the hundred and the 
 sheriff of the county were handed over to the mayor ; 
 he collected the fee-ferm, held the view of frank- 
 pledge, levied taxes, 2 mustered the men-at-arms, and 
 presided over civil and criminal courts. 
 
 III. Nor was there any serious difficulty as to the 
 exercise of the sovereign rights of the crown. To the 
 King it mattered little whether he sent a special 
 deputy direct from the court, or whether he dele- 
 gated powers to the mayor, and used him as an 
 official immediately responsible to the crown ; while 
 on the other hand such a change meant much 
 present solace to the townsfolk. A compromise 
 was therefore easily brought about between the 
 monarch and the people. The mayor was invariably 
 appointed as the King's Clerk of the Market, the 
 
 1 Nott. Rec. i. 225, 227, 413, 421. 
 
 2 The agreement made in the fourteenth century which fixed 
 the tenths and fifteenths for the towns at a permanent fixed sum, 
 made it easy for the King to give over to local officials the 
 levying of this tax without fear of injury to the Exchequer. 
 (Stubbs, ii. 599, 600.)
 
 234 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Measurer and Ganger at the King's Standard, the 
 Manager of the King's Assize ; he became the re- 
 presentative of the sovereign in the most important 
 charges of administration, as one of the King's 
 Justices 1 in the town, as Admiral, 2 as Mayor of 
 the Staple. Administrative changes such as these 
 left the power of the sovereign untouched and cost 
 him nothing ; while on the other hand the central 
 government was by this means provided with a 
 ready-made staff of trained officials, a staff which 
 the King could not possibly have created, 3 nor paid 
 out of his empty exchequer even if he had been 
 able to create it but which had become absolutely 
 essential for carrying out the supervision of local 
 
 1 Blomefielcl, iii. 137. 
 
 - The Admiral and his deputy had jurisdiction over everything 
 done on the sea and the great rivers up to the first bridge. (13 
 Richard II. St. 1, cap. 5 ; 15 Richard II., cap. 3 ; Blomefield, 
 iii. 103; Davies' Southampton, 239-40.) In 1487 the com- 
 monalty of Ipswich by a covenant with the King bound them- 
 selves to take surety of every owner, master, or purser of every 
 English ship to twice the value of the ship, that the mariners 
 should keep the peace on the sea ; that if the surety by any 
 means became less than twice the value of ship, tackle, 
 and victuals, new security should be taken ; and that the town 
 should strive to arrest every robber and spoiler in the sea or the 
 streams thereof. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 259-60.) In 1463 a 
 charter was given to the corporation of York, constituting them 
 the King's justiciaries for overlooking and preserving the main 
 rivers of Yorkshire. For the expenses and difficulties which this 
 involved, see Davies' York, 59-63, 82, &c. 
 
 3 As an illustration of his difficulties, see the statute allowing 
 sheriffs and escheators to remain for four years in office, because 
 owing to pestilence and wars there was not a sufficiency of persons 
 to occupy these offices. (9 Henry V. St. 1, cap. 5.)
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 235 
 
 affairs at a time when such supervision was growing 
 more important every day, from the point of view 
 both of the King and of the people. The towns on 
 their side, relieved by the new system from miseries l 
 under which they had suffered, readily forgot dis- 
 tinctions between laws made by them and made 
 for them, so long as these were administered by 
 officers of whom they were allowed the election and 
 control. 2 
 
 IV. Finally if the towns suffered from the offi- 
 cers of the royal household, a remedy was easily 
 granted them. The sovereign found no personal 
 
 1 In the lack of officials to carry out the regulations for the 
 control of trade a number of private people got royal letters 
 appointing them surveyors and correctors of victuallers in various 
 cities and boroughs, and freely used their privileges for extortion 
 and oppression, and the taking of heavy fines and ransoms ; their 
 patents were gradually withdrawn; and in 1472 an Act was 
 passed that all such letters and patents should be void, and that 
 the duty of searching and surveying victuals should rest wholly 
 with the mayor or bailiff. (12 Edward IV. cap. 8.) 
 
 2 In this matter the King was not allowed to interfere. In 
 1489 there was a dispute in Leicester between the Town Council 
 and the Commons about the election of a Mayor. The matter 
 was referred to the King, who issued a precept under the seal of 
 the Duchy of Lancaster, showing that it was as Lord of the 
 Manor and not as King that he interfered. He set aside both 
 candidates and reappointed the last Mayor. The next year the 
 question was settled by Act of Parliament. (Thomson, Mun. 
 Hist., 84.) For authority exercised by Parliament see Norwich 
 (Doc. Stanley v. Mayor, &c. 30.) When the citizens applied 
 in 1378 to the King and Council for a renewal of their 
 ancient liberty that no stranger should have power to buy or 
 sell by retail, they were answered that it would not be valid 
 " without Parliament " ; they therefore pray for a grant by 
 charter.
 
 236 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 inconvenience in transferring the duties of these 
 officers to the governors of the boroughs themselves ; 
 and the mayor or bailiff became the King's Steward, 
 and Marshal of the King's Household in the 
 borough. In short, as the towns advanced to 
 independence, all manner of powers and responsi- 
 bilities were heaped together on their chief officer, 
 with no clear discrimination between his various 
 and oddly mingled functions. Men did not pause 
 to ask which of his masters the mayor at any given 
 moment was serving, whether he was acting as head 
 of the city government to carry out the burghers' 
 will, or as the officer appointed by the sovereign 
 to execute his laws ; l and nice questions as to 
 the exact division of authority which had really 
 taken place were so manifestly irrelevant in presence 
 of the harmonious concentration of all power in & 
 single hand, that jealousies and suspicions on both 
 sides were allayed, to the great furtherance of 
 peace and concord. To the mediaeval poet who 
 drew a picture of Love as " the leader of our Lord's 
 folk in Heaven," standing as a " mean " or me- 
 diator of peace, there w r as one obvious comparison 
 
 1 See Hudson's Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selclen Soc. xxvii. 
 xc. " For he doth represent to us the body of our King." 
 (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 462.) See the proclamation of the 
 London Mayor : " We do command, on behalf of our Lord the 
 King, that no dyer or weaver shall be so daring," &c. (" Memorials 
 of London," p. 309.) An illustration of how the King's law and 
 the town law ran side by side may be seen in the fines for the 
 breach of certain rules, as, for instance, the rule against liveries, 
 which had to be paid both to the King and to the town. 
 (English Guilds, 388-9.)
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 237 
 
 even " as the mayor is between the King and the 
 commons." l 
 
 The history of the royal boroughs, therefore, so 
 far as their relations with the King are concerned, 
 reduces itself into a long list of favours asked and 
 given. Frequent troubles of state no doubt stimu- 
 lated the generosity of sovereigns ; and times of 
 political disturbance and revolution proved occasions 
 when the towns rose into independence through 
 the necessities of kings, who confirmed old franchises 
 and granted new ones, and " right largely made 
 charters thereof, to the intent to have the more good- 
 will and love in their land." 2 The civil wars under 
 Henry the Second, 3 the money difficulties of Eichard 
 and John, the troubled minority of Henry the 
 Third, the disorders under Edward the Second, 
 the commercial policy of Edward the Third, the 
 political insecurity of Henry the Fourth after his 
 seizure of the throne, the financial needs of Henry 
 the Fifth, the tumults and fears of the reign of 
 Henry the Sixth, the anxiety of Edward the Fourth 
 to conciliate the kingdom, all these were so many 
 heaven-sent opportunities for the burghers to win 
 new instalments of local liberty ; while the two 
 periods of reaction brought about by the fear of the 
 Peasant Revolt under Richard the Second, and the 
 nervous apprehensions of Richard the Third, were 
 themselves made use of by the governing class in 
 the boroughs to confirm and tighten their authority. 
 
 1 Piers Ploughman, Passus ii. 156, 157. 
 
 2 Warkworth's Chronicle, 2. 3 See Gross, ii. 245.
 
 238 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 So monotonous indeed is the record of the burghers 
 on the royal demesne, all moving together along 
 the same well-beaten road to independence, winning 
 the same privileges, even winning them at the same 
 time, 1 that a brief statement of liberties secured by 
 any single city will serve to illustrate the general 
 history of all. 
 
 Up to the time of Henry the Second Norwich en- 
 joyed certain liberties and privileges, but its citizens 
 were practically feudal servants of the King, who 
 appointed their governors, took the profits of their 
 courts, and looked on the city as a private possession 
 of his own. Their true freedom began with the charter 
 granted them in 1194 by Richard the First. 2 They 
 were to have the customs of London ; the burgesses 
 might not be summoned to answer any plea outside 
 the city ; they were henceforth to elect their own 
 Provost, " such as may be fitting to us and to them ; " 
 and they were allowed to hold their city at a ferm rent 
 of 108 a year, which they themselves, instead of the 
 sheriff, should collect and pay to the Exchequer. For 
 the confirmation of their rights, " and for having 
 the city in their hand," the Norwich people paid 
 200 marks. 3 From this time the provost took 
 
 1 The instances of similar grants made to various towns at 
 almost the same date are too numerous to give, but they would 
 form a striking list. 
 
 2 Charter of Lincoln the same year ; that of Winchester, 
 1190. (Stubb's Charters, 257-8). Nottingham and Northamp- 
 ton in 1200 (ibid. 301-3). The system of government adopted at 
 Norwich was followed or imitated a little later by the neighbour- 
 ing towns of Yarmouth and Colchester. 
 
 3 Norwich Doc. Stanley v. Mayor, tc. p. 3. In the great
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 239 
 
 the place of the officer formerly appointed by the 
 King, presided over the Borough Court in the Tol- 
 booth and possibly held the view of frankpledge, and 
 paid the fines of the courts into the city treasury. 
 The sheriff of the county, however, still held a higher 
 court, the Curia Comitatus, within the enclosure of 
 the castle, where he exercised criminal jurisdiction, 
 and jurors made the presentments ordered by the 
 assize of Clarendon. 1 
 
 But this power of the sheriff only lingered on 
 for a few years. In 1223 a new arrangement was 
 made between the citizens and Henry the Third. 
 Norwich consisted of four distinct divisions which 
 had been naturally formed out of the four hamlets 
 created by the first settlers and which had by de- 
 grees become united into a single town : Conesford, 
 where the earliest comers gathered round the ford 
 
 majority of cases this grant was made once for all ; but occasion- 
 ally it was renewed from time to time. Thus Henry the Sixth 
 in 1437 gave the mayor and burgesses of Bristol a lease of 
 the town and its profits for a term of twenty years. In 1446 he 
 granted a new lease for sixty years. In 1461 Edward the Fourth 
 renewed the lease, not for a term of years, but for ever. (Seyer's 
 Charters of Bristol, 105.) The ferm was granted in the 
 same way for a term of years in the case of Dunwich, a royal 
 town, where it was let out to the highest bidder. Here, however, 
 the collection of rent was peculiarly uncertain from special cir- 
 cumstances (Madox, 235-8, 241); and in 1325 Dunwich, ruined 
 by the filling up of its port, prayed to have the town taken into 
 the King's hand and a guardian appointed. (Rot. Parl. i. 426.) 
 For the inconvenience of this letting out to the highest bidder, 
 see Madox, 251. 
 
 1 Hudson, Municipal Organisation in Norwich, 20 ; Leet Jur. 
 in Norwich, Selden Society, xvi. Ixxii.
 
 240 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 over the river, protected by the stream on one side, 
 and on the other by the mound on which the castle 
 stood in later days ; the Westivick, whose name 
 shews its later foundation, and which lay on the 
 further side of the fortifications, within the bend 
 of the river ; the Magna Crofta or big field of the 
 castle, lying below the entrenchments midway be- 
 tween Conesford and Westwick, which was made at 
 the Conquest into a new ward, Mancroft Ward ; and 
 the Ward-over-the- Water on the further bank of the 
 river, somewhat cut off from the rest of the town. 1 
 For the government of these " leets," as the divisions 
 came to be called, it was decided in 1223 that the 
 burghers should elect four bailiffs, one for each dis- 
 trict. 2 There was no longer to be any provost, since 
 the bailiffs were to take his place in joint government 
 of the town, and were further to take over the crimi- 
 nal jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the sheriff in 
 his court at the castle. From this time therefore 
 most of the social, commercial, and criminal affairs of 
 the city lay in the burghers' own hands. 
 
 / J O 
 
 The four bailiffs, however, had still no control over 
 the castle and its entrenchments, nor over a wide 
 reach of land that lay along the river, stretching past 
 Conesford and Mancroft and Westwick land owned 
 by the prior and convent ; nor had they any authority 
 over the cathedral, the priory, and the bishop's 
 palace that lay within Westwick, nor over property 
 owned by them or by other ecclesiastical bodies which 
 
 1 Hudson's Xotes about Norwich, Norfolk Arch. vol. xii. p. 25. 
 
 2 In 1288 the four bailiffs presided over the courts of these 
 leets. (Hudson, Municipal Organisation, 16, 21.)
 
 vii TOWNS OX ROYAL DEMESNE 241 
 
 penetrated into the heart of the city ; while on the 
 other hand tenants of castle and prior and bishop 
 were all making their profit out of the city trade, and 
 enjoying its peace and protection. Therefore the next 
 claim of the burghers necessarily was that the King 
 should give to the municipality authority to tax for 
 the common expenses all inhabitants alike, under 
 whatever lord they held; and in 1229 they obtained 
 <i royal grant that all " who should partake of the 
 liberties which we have granted to the said citizens 
 of Norwich .... shall be taxed and give aid as 
 the said citizens ; " and that " if anyone has with- 
 drawn from their customs and scots, he shall return 
 to their society and custom, and follow their scot, 
 so that no one shall be quit therefrom." l There 
 was no trifling with the municipal authority iu this 
 matter ; in 1236 and 1237 when the tenants of castle 
 and prior attempted to resist the claim on their 
 moneys, the sheriff was ordered to summon them 
 before him to show by what right or warrant 
 they claimed acquittance from payments to the city 
 treasury; and again in 1276, when the tenants of 
 the castle refused to pay their share of taxes, the 
 case was brought before the barons of the exchequer, 
 and an order came from Westminster that the sheriff 
 w r as forthwith to levy the sum due and hand it over 
 to the city. 2 
 
 Henry the Third granted many other favours " to 
 our beloved citizens of Norwich," feeling perhaps the 
 
 1 Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, itc., p. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. 6, 8, 10. Blomefield, iii. 46, 62. 
 
 VOL. I R
 
 242 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 advantage of their friendship amid the increasing 
 troubles of his reign ; and the burghers of Norwich 
 certainly, like those of Winchester, took sides with 
 him in the war against Simon de Montfort. 1 In 1253- 
 they had been allowed to enclose then- city with a 
 ditch. 2 In 1255 (twenty years before a general law 
 was passed to this effect for all Englishmen), they 
 were freed from arrest for debt of which they were- 
 not sureties or principal debtors. And in 1256 Henry 
 granted a charter which ordered that the " citizens- 
 shall answer at our exchequer by their own hands for 
 all debts and demands .... and that no sheriff or 
 other bailiff of ours shall henceforth enter the city 
 aforesaid to make distresses for any debts ; " which 
 decreed further that all merchants who shared in the 
 Norwich liberties and merchandises were to pay the 
 city taxes " wheresoever they shall make their resi- 
 dences ; " and which ordained lastly that " no guild 
 shall henceforth be held in the aforesaid city to the- 
 injury of the said city." 3 The sheriff was thus 
 finally shut out from all land or houses held by the 
 citizens ; and absent merchants were subjected to 
 their lot and scot. 
 
 From Edward the First the citizens in 1305 obtained 
 the right to hold the Leet of Newgate in Norwich, 
 which the King had "lately recovered against the 
 Prior of Holy Trinity " ; and further paid a fine down r 
 and promised to pay 10 yearly into the Exchequer 
 
 1 The convent sided with De Montfort. For the state of 
 affairs in the city, see Blomefield, iii. 52, Arc. 
 
 2 Blomefield, iii. 49. 
 
 3 Norwich Doc.. Stanley v. Mayor, <tc.. 7.
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 243 
 
 for ever, for a charter granting that they should 
 not be impleaded outside the city ; that they should 
 not be convicted by any foreigners but only by their 
 co-citizens, save in matters touching the King or the 
 whole commonalty ; that the bailiffs should have 
 power to assess tallages and other reasonable aids " by 
 the assent of the whole of the commonalty, or of the 
 greater part of the same " for the protection and advan- 
 tage of the city, and to make "reasonable distresses " 
 for the levying of these tallages as was done in other 
 cities ; and that they should hold the Leet of Newgate 
 which the Crown had " lately recovered against the 
 Prior of Holy Trinity." l Further the burghers re- 
 membered a trouble into which they had fallen in 
 the case of a thief who had stolen some cloth and 
 brought much sorrow on the city ; for having fled 
 to the church of St. George he finally escaped out 
 of it though the door was guarded by four parishes, 
 who were all fined for their lax vigilance ; then being 
 caught and condemned by the bailiffs and commonalty 
 he was condemned to be hung, but at his burial found 
 to be still alive, and the man who had cut him down 
 was thrown into prison ; and lastly the bailiffs were 
 accused of illegal action in hanging him " without any 
 man's suit and without capture in the act," and of 
 " taking up thieves and malefactors for trespasses 
 done outside the city and executing judgement on 
 them in the city," and the city liberties had been 
 seized into the King's hands, and a royal officer set ta 
 rule over them. 2 So the burghers in 1307 presented 
 
 1 Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, &c., 16, 17. 
 
 2 Ibid. 10-12. 
 
 R '2
 
 244 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 a petition that the right of infang theof and outfang 
 theof, which they had used at all times "whereof 
 memory runneth not," might now be definitely in- 
 serted in their charter. Further, since the sheriff 
 " by malice " still found means on one excuse or an- 
 other to arrest a citizen from time to time and 
 this though the Norwich people had the return of 
 all manner of writs l so that neither the sheriff nor 
 any foreign bailiff had any right to meddle with 
 them they required of the King that at their de- 
 mand every citizen thus seized should be delivered 
 over to them out of the hands of the alien. Likewise 
 they prayed that so long as a burgher lived in the city 
 lie should never be required to attend any foreign 
 court whatever by reason of any foreign tenure he 
 might hold ; and that no foreign tenement should give 
 the right to sheriffs or foreign bailiff to summon him 
 to be in juries or inquests outside the city. Lastly, 
 as a protection against any danger of forfeiting their 
 franchise by failure to pay the ferm rent, they asked 
 permission for the corporation to hold in perpetual 
 possession certain lands and houses the profits of which 
 might be set apart for the rent. 2 
 
 Under Edward the Third the sheriff of the county 
 
 was deprived of his last plea for interference 
 
 within the city walls. Up to this time he had still 
 
 ' collected rents and taxes and done justice for the 
 
 tenants of the Castle Fee ; and the ditches of the 
 
 1 This meant that it was the town bailiff who was to return 
 the certificate of what he had done in execution of a writ 
 addressed to him, instead of this being returned, as formerly, by 
 the sheriff. - Xorwich Documents, 16. 18.
 
 vir TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 245 
 
 Castle and the Fee, thus freed from city rule, had 
 been made a sort of refuge for felons and male- 
 factors flying from the jurisdiction of the city officers. 
 All this, however, was in 1346 handed over to the 
 bailiffs, and the sheriff was in no wise to interfere. 1 
 Moreover, in consideration of the cost to which the 
 citizens had gone in enclosing the city, they were 
 set free for ever from the jurisdiction of the clerk 
 of the market of the King's household. 2 Norwich 
 was further given its own Admiral, who sailed about in 
 the " admiral's barge," and who held admiralty courts 
 and administered its law. 3 In 1331 it became a 
 Staple town, and its mayor was made a mayor of the 
 Staple, with a salary of 20 and a seal given by the 
 king. 4 
 
 Meanwhile the Norwich people had been gradually 
 perfecting their own internal system of govern- 
 ment a system which will be described in a 
 later chapter and in the difficulties of Henry the 
 Fourth they found opportunity to complete their 
 work. A sum of 1,000 given to the King, 
 besides heavy fines paid in bribes on all sides, 
 secured in 1403 a charter which finally guaranteed 
 to them the constitution of their choice. 5 Norwich 
 was made into a county of itself. A mayor was 
 appointed, who was given supreme rights of juris- 
 
 1 Norwich Documents, 25. 2 Ibid. 26. 
 
 3 Blomefield's Hist, of Norfolk, iii. 103. 
 
 4 Ibid. iii. 81, 94-5. In 1393 the corporation was granted 
 shops and houses held of the King and worth W yearly, the 
 profits of which were to be spent on repairing the walls and towers. 
 For this licence they had to pay the King .100. Norwich 
 Documents, 32. 5 Ibid. 33-37.
 
 246 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 diction in the city, and received from the King him- 
 self a sword which was to be carried before him with 
 the point erect, along with the gold or silver maces 
 borne by the serjeants-at-mace. The four bailiffs 
 were replaced by two sheriffs, also elected by the bur- 
 gesses, who were charged with matters concerning the 
 interests of the crown w T hich had formerly been the 
 business of the bailiffs, and were responsible for the 
 yearly rent of the city. The mayor was appointed 
 the King's escheator, and thus the last office which 
 had been reserved in alien hands was given over to 
 the municipality. Finally in token of the consum- 
 mation of the municipal hopes the old seal of the 
 bailiffs was abolished to make way for a new city seal. 
 Norwich was but one among a number of 
 boroughs whose inhabitants quietly and steadily 
 gathered to themselves the liberties that made them 
 free, for in the fellowship of towns holding of the 
 King; under a uniform tenure throughout the " ancient 
 
 ~ o 
 
 demesne," the list of privileges granted to any one 
 became the model for its neighbours near and far. 1 
 With orderly progression, unbroken by any of the. 
 violent and dramatic incidents that indicate a time 
 of conflict, all the bigger towns won by gradual in- 
 stalments complete local independence. Such changes 
 of method as we observe are simply changes made 
 necessary by new national legislation, such as the 
 form of incorporation required after the Statute 
 of Mortmain, 2 or the right to elect Justices of the 
 
 1 Gross, i. 240-267. 
 
 2 Report on Municipal Corporations, 1835, pp. 16-17. Gross, 
 i. 94, note 1.
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 247 
 
 Peace when one power after another had been given 
 to these officers by law. 1 We do not distinguish 
 seasons of plentiful harvest and periods barren of all 
 growth ; in one century as in another Kings stooped 
 to accept the " courtesies " offered, and granted the 
 favours solicited. Nor do we find records of ad- 
 vantages hastily given and timidly withdrawn ; or, 
 until the reign of Eichard the Third, 2 is there 
 any suggestion of anxiety on the part of Kings 
 to check or limit the free action of the boroughs. 3 
 CJp to that time rulers of the state seem to have 
 had no apprehension of peril to public order, of 
 jeopardy to trading interests, of injury to the ad- 
 
 1 This change was evident from the time of Richard the 
 Second, when the powers of the Justices were rapidly enlarged. 
 See Statutes, 12 Richard II. cap. 10 ; 13 Richard II., 1, cap. 8 ; 
 13 Richard II., 1, cap. 13 ; 13 Henry IV. cap. 7 ; 2 Henry V. 
 cap. 4 ; 2 Henry V., 1, cap. 8 ; 2 Henry VI. cap. 12 ; 2 Henry VI. 
 cap. 14 ; 2 Henry VI. cap. 18 ; 6 Henry VI. cap. 3 ; 18 Henry 
 VI. cap. 11. 
 
 2 Southampton, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 104. Cases of inter- 
 ference occur in the unpublished records of Coventry. For 
 Romney see Lyon's Dover, 313. In 1489 there was some such 
 trouble in Leicester (Thompson, Mun. Hist., 84). And in 1512 
 there is another instance in Nottingham (Records, iii. 341-2). 
 From the time of Richard the Third there seems evidence of the 
 growth of a new anxiety in the central government about the 
 democratic movement in the boroughs, and a determination to 
 reserve power in the hands of a small corporation. An earlier 
 instance may perhaps be found in the Exeter quarrel from 
 1477 to 1482 (English Guilds, 305, &c.); and in York in 1482 
 (Davies, 122-4). 
 
 3 There were many cases in which a town's privileges were 
 forfeited, whether for arrears of rent (Madox, 139, 161-2) or 
 for other causes (154-5, 157). The franchises of Nottingham
 
 248 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 ministration of justice, of possible usurpations by 
 the municipalities which might bring them into col- 
 lision with the ordered forces of the world ; and for 
 three hundred years statesmen freely allowed the 
 growth of municipal ambition, and gave full scope 
 for the developement of all the various systems of 
 local self-government. The full importance of these 
 facts only becomes clear when we turn to the history 
 of the towns that were under subjection to other lords 
 
 were twice forfeited for some unknown cause in 1283 for three 
 years (Records, i. 56), and in 1330 for a short time. (Ibid. 102.) 
 In the same year Edward the First seized the franchises of 
 Derby because of exactions of the Merchant Guild, but restored 
 them on payment of a fine. (Gross, ii. 53.) For the case of 
 Sandwich (Boys, 661, 676). Ipswich charter withdrawn, 1285; 
 regranted, 1291 . (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 230, 239, 243.) Chester in 
 1409. (Hemingway.'s Chester, i. 137.) The liberties of Carlisle 
 were forfeited for a short time for some irregularity in the town 
 courts in the thirteenth century. (Gross, ii. 38.) Southampton 
 lost its freedom in 1276 and 1285, and again in the next 
 century for letting the French into the town. (Davies' South- 
 ampton, 33, 35, 79.) Norwich suffered several times ; for its 
 attack on the Priory in 1272; for an accusation of having 
 exceeded its powers in punishing crime in 1286 ; for riots about 
 the election of mayor in 1437 ; and for Gladman's insurrection 
 in 1443. (Stanley v. Mayor, fcc., Norwich Doc., 9-12. Pro- 
 ceedings, Privy Council, v. 45. Hist. MSS. Com. i. 103.) In 
 these cases a royal ofiicer was appointed to rule the town ; and 
 the complaint of Scarborough, when Edward the Second in 1324 
 deprived it of the right of direct payment to the Exchequer, 
 shows how a town suffered when its ferm was leased out. (Rot. 
 Parl. i. 423.) The loss of liberty was always temporary, lasting 
 from a few months to five or six years, and had no political 
 significance as in France, where it formed part of a settled policy 
 and had results which to the English mind seem of peculiar 
 importance in the history of constitutional development.
 
 vii TOWNS ON ROYAL DEMESNE 249 
 
 than the nation itself; and compare the peaceful 
 negotiations by which matters were arranged be- 
 tween the royal boroughs and the State, with the 
 violence of feeling aroused when the misgivings 
 and alarms of private owners were brought into 
 the controversy.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM 
 (2) Toivns on Feudal Estates 
 
 Ox the King's lands, as we have seen, the 
 interests of the monarch never came into collision 
 with the interests of his burghers, and the towns- 
 folk found an easy way to liberty. From time to 
 time they presented a petition for freedom, brought 
 their gifts to win the sovereign's favour, and joyfully 
 carried back to their fellow citizens a new charter 
 of municipal privileges. But the condition of the 
 towns that belonged to noble or baron was doubly 
 depressed from the standpoint of their happier neigh- 
 bours. Of secondary importance alike in numbers, 
 in wealth, or in influence, as compared to those on 
 royal demesne, they for the most part never emerged 
 into any real consequence ; while their lord had 
 every reason to oppose the growth of independence 
 in his boroughs, and lacked nothing for its complete 
 suppression but the requisite power. New franchises 
 were extorted from his weakness rather than won
 
 CH. viii TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 251 
 
 from his good will, and where acquiescence in the 
 town's liberties was not irresistibly forced on him 
 his opposition was dogged and persevering. 
 
 The dispute was none the less intense because 
 under the conditions of English life the controversy 
 between the town and the feudal lord was limited 
 within a very narrow field ; for the burghers saw well 
 how the lord's claims to supremacy might per- 
 manently fetter an active community of traders, 
 and on this point townspeople fought with a per- 
 tinacity determined by the conviction that all 
 their hopes of prosperity depended on victory. To 
 manufacturers and merchants the rule of an alien 
 governor w r as fatal ; trade died away before vexatious 
 checks and arbitrary imposts, and enterprising 
 burghers hastened to forsake the town where pros- 
 perity was stunted and liberty uncertain, and take 
 up citizenship in a more thriving borough. Success 
 and emancipation went hand in hand ; for the 
 effects of a maimed and imperfect freedom were al- 
 ways disastrous and far-reaching, and there is not a 
 single instance of an English town which remained 
 in a state of dependence and which was at the 
 same time prosperous in trade. 
 
 One or two instances will be enough to show the 
 extent and character of the traders' claim for " liber- 
 ties." The burghers of Totnes, who had been fined 
 for having a Guild by Henry the Second, had no 
 sooner succeeded in securing its authorisation from 
 John than they at once made it a weapon of offence, 
 and a formidable weapon too with its roll of more 
 than three hundred members, against their lord's
 
 252 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY CHAP. 
 
 control of the town market and of the shopkeepers. 
 The Guild claimed the right to admit non-residents to 
 their company, so that these might freely trade without 
 paying any tribute to the lord for one year, after that 
 giving six pence annually ; and pretended to have 
 authority to test weights and measures without orders 
 from the lord's bailiff ; to hold the assize of bread and 
 alo and receive fines ; and apparently to deal out 
 justice for petty offences. These usurpations of his 
 rights were discussed between the lord and his tenants 
 with riots and contentions, in which the lord proved 
 victorious in 1304, forcing the burghers to submit 
 on every point in which the Guild tried to bring in 
 customs which lay beyond the ancient rights of the 
 community. They were forbidden to admit to the 
 Guild anyone who had not a house in the town, and 
 non-residents had to take oaths before his bailiff to 
 pay a yearly fine to the lord. No trial of weights and 
 measures could take place till orders had been issued 
 to the Seneschal of the Guild by the lord's bailiff; 
 when the trial came on bailiff and town provost sat 
 beside him in the Guildhall to hear the charges, and 
 even then all false or suspected measures were to be 
 kept by the provost till the lord's next court. On 
 the other hand the bailiff might hold a trial of mea- 
 sures whenever he judged that he could do the business 
 better. So also the assize of bread was given to the 
 lord's bailiff sitting with the provost of the town ; all 
 suspected bread and weights were to be seized by 
 him, the offenders to be fined in the lord's court, all 
 punishments by tumbril or pillory inflicted by his 
 orders, and all proceeds of fines given over to him.
 
 vin TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 253 
 
 Lastly when small thefts and riots were to be judged 
 the bailiff sat by the town officers and as many 
 burgesses as chose to come, and took his share in the 
 proceedings though occasionally in his absence the 
 town officers might act by common consent of the 
 community. 1 
 
 Such was the comparative helplessness of a com- 
 munity which, with all its tenacity of purpose, could 
 neither urge custom nor tradition on its side in 
 pleading for independent rights. Iii the borough of 
 Barnstaple, on the other hand, which had been 
 granted by the King 2 to Sir John Cornwall and his 
 wife the Countess of Huntingdon, we have an instance 
 of the immense advantages possessed by a town which 
 though now in private ownership, inherited the 
 tradition of privilege which its people had won as 
 tenants of ancient demesne. 3 In 1423 the Mayor, 
 
 1 Gross, ii. 235-243. 
 
 2 Occasionally a borough was granted to a great noble or 
 court favourite ; but more commonly as time went on the grant 
 merely meant giving a charge on the rent of the town. Thus 
 before 1339 Preston had been granted at various times to 
 neighbouring lords. In 1361 John of Gaunt held the manor, 
 but long before this the rights of the lord were so reduced that 
 they are practically never mentioned in the history of the town. 
 (Hewitson's History of Preston, 7-8.) For the troubles to which 
 the nobles' claims to rent might lead, see Davies' Southampton, 
 112. Edward the Fourth granted the ferm of Bristol to the 
 Queen for her life. The treasurer of the King's chamber declared 
 it had been assigned to him in payment of a debt and brought 
 an action for it against the Bristol sheriff. Bristol proved the 
 money had been paid to the Queen and gained the case, 1465. 
 (Madox, 227-8.) 
 
 3 In 1273 Henry de Tracy held the borough from the King in 
 chief at a ferm of about 5 14s. Id, There were 36 tenants
 
 254 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Aldermen, and capital burgesses drew up a list of bye- 
 laws for the good government of the borough, which 
 apparently stirred the apprehensions of its lords. 
 For a few years later, reviving ancient traditions of 
 feudal authority in a suit against the borough, they 
 complained that the mayor and burgesses had of their 
 own authority admitted as " Burgesses of the Wynde" 
 "foreign" merchants and victuallers who merely 
 visited the town ; and had turned to their own use 
 the fines from denizens pertaining to their lord ; that 
 they had taken the correction of bread and ale, and 
 unlawfully seized fines and tolls ; that they would not 
 suffer his officers to take custom after ancient usage 
 from the people of Wales for their merchandise ; and 
 that they even seized fines belonging to him for heaps 
 of rubbish in the streets. Moreover they did not render 
 the suit and service due to the lord's court from all 
 the inhabitants of the borough, for without his 
 leave they themselves held a court every Monday, 
 and instead of coming to every court of the lord's 
 steward they did not come oftener than twice a year ; 
 
 whose rent amounted to 23s. 8d. and some tenants in a suburb who 
 paid an uncertain rent, but generally about 6s. 8d. A market was 
 held every Friday which yielded in tolls to the lord about 3 a 
 year, and a yearly fair gave 10s. Fines, reliefs, <fcc., came to 
 about 13s. M. a year. The wealth of the town increased after 
 the building of the "Long Bridge" in 1280 over "the great 
 hugy, mighty, perylous, and dreadful water named Taw," and 
 the increase of the cloth trade about 1321. Towards the close 
 of the fourteenth century the legacies and accounts show that the 
 burghers were laying up considerable wealth and doing a thriving 
 trade. Hence probably the dispute as to the claim to profits. 
 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 206-213. See also case of Bridgewater, 
 ibid. iii. 310-14.
 
 viii TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 255 
 
 nor would they suffer the lord's officers to make 
 attachments in the borough at the Nativity of Our 
 Mother after the ancient custom. In other words the 
 townsfolk, just like the people of Totnes two hundred 
 years before, were bent on regulating their trade and 
 spending the money collected in their courts and 
 markets ; but they were happier than they of Totnes 
 in being able to claim that all these so-called usurpa- 
 tions were ancient rights of the burgesses, by virtue, 
 as they said, of a charter granted by King Atlielstan 
 500 years before. As this charter however had 
 unluckily been " casualiter arnissa," the town had 
 to fall back on the verdict of an inquisition held 
 about 1300 as to the usages and franchises to which 
 it was entitled, and the payments which were due 
 by the mayor and commonalty in place of old feudal 
 services. Here the Barnstaple men held their own 
 successfully, and in 1445 they secured a charter 
 from Henry the Sixth, " for accommodation of the 
 burgesses in doing their business quietly," which con- 
 firmed to them the fullest rights of self-government, 1 
 The struggle of the boroughs with their feudal lords 
 was however a matter of little significance in England, 
 where since the Conquest feudalism from the point 
 of view of the noble had so unsatisfactory a record. 
 Fallen from the high estate of his brethren on the 
 Continent, despoiled of his might by one strong king- 
 after another, he saw himself condemned to play in 
 England a comparatively modest - part, and from his 
 
 1 They even claimed the right of infang theof and outfang theof , 
 and to be impleaded only in their own court. Hist. MSS. Com. 
 ix. 206.
 
 256 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 less exalted plane was even constrained to assume in 
 his relations to burghers and traders a conciliatory, 
 almost at times a deprecating tone, not because 
 he was lacking in " a high and pompous mind," but 
 simply because his fortunes had sunk low. Hence 
 the conflict in England was of a very different 
 character from the conflict abroad. Fashions of care- 
 ful ceremonial indeed long preserved the traditional 
 sense of impassable barriers set between the dignity 
 of the great whose daily needs were supplied by the 
 labour of others, and the low estate of those who 
 had to depend upon their own toil. " "Whensoever 
 any nobleman or peer of the realm passed through 
 any parish, all the bells were accustomed to be rung 
 in honour of his person, and to give notice of the pas- 
 sage of such eminency ; and when their letters were 
 upon any occasion read in any assemblies, the com- 
 mons present would move their bonnets in token of 
 reverence to their names and persons." Burghers and 
 journeymen with an irreverent laugh at men " ever- 
 more strutting who no store keep," 1 gathered to see 
 the noble go by " in his robe of scarlet twelve yards 
 wide, with pendent sleeves down on the ground, 
 and the furrur therein set amounting unto 20 or 
 better," while a train of followers crowded after 
 him anxiously holding up with both hands out of 
 the filth of the mediaeval streets the wide sleeves 
 made to " slide on earth" by their sides, and eagerly 
 watching lest the ladies should forget to admire " the 
 plaits behind ; " and the busy mockers of the market- 
 
 1 Rich. Eedeless, eel. Skeat. Early English Text Society, 
 Text C, Pass. iii. 177, etc.
 
 vni TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 257 
 
 place guessed that tailors and skinners must soon 
 carry their cloths and skins out into the fields if 
 they would find space enough to cut out robes like 
 these. 1 But the fine garments and leisurely state of 
 the great folk, the hollow ornaments of a vanquished 
 feudalism, were matters of little significance ; the 
 forces of the future lay rather with the crowd of 
 workers to right and left with the men who watched 
 the brave procession sweep by. and then gathered in 
 their Common House to decree that any burgher who 
 put on the livery of a lord, or accepted his main- 
 tenance and protection, should be blotted out of the 
 book of burgesses, and driven from their market- 
 place and assembly hall, and " that he come not 
 among them in their congregations." : 
 
 For the moment, indeed, the noble class was as it 
 were thrown aside by the strong current of the 
 national life, nor could the handful of families that 
 held half the soil of England and the lesser baronage 
 who followed in their train be recovered of their 
 impotence, of their impoverishment of intellect and 
 decay of force, even by the greatest landholder and 
 the most typical member of their body, Warwick the 
 
 1 Book of Precedence, E. E. Text Society, 105-108. Langland 
 in Richard the Redeless describes the noble who " keepeth no 
 coin that cometh to their hands, but changeth it for chains that 
 in Cheap hangeth, and setteth all their silver in samites and 
 horns ; " and 
 
 " That hangeth on his hips more than he winneth 
 And doubteth no debt so dukes them praise." 
 
 Richard the Redeless, Passus iii. 137-40, 147-8. 
 - Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 467. Nott. Rec. ii. 425. 
 
 VOL. I S
 
 258 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP 
 
 Kingmaker. Sated with possessions, forced into a 
 position of leadership mainly by the imposing list of 
 his great relations and the surprising number of his 
 manors a patriot who consecrated his services to the 
 cause of a faction and the unrestrained domination of 
 a family group of blood relations a general who never 
 got beyond an already antiquated system of warfare, 
 devoid according to public rumour of personal courage, 
 deserted in a crisis by the one organised military force 
 in the public service a commander with all the 
 ready instincts of the common pirate a statesman 
 made after an old ancestral pattern, who had 
 learned his politics a couple of centuries before his- 
 time, and to the last remained absolutely blind to the 
 great movements of his own day an administrator 
 who never failed at a critical moment to put in 
 jeopardy the most important national interests an 
 ao-itator restless for revolution, but whose in- 
 
 o ' 
 
 fiuence in the national counsels was practically of 
 no account when there was a pause in mere fighting 
 it is thus that Warwick stands before us, a con- 
 summate representative of his demoralized class. 
 
 The conditions under which the great landowners, 
 were living at this time were indeed singularly unfav- 
 ourable. With the new trade they had comparatively 
 little to do, 1 and the noble, with his throng of depend- 
 
 1 The landowner of the fifteenth century was usually a mere 
 landlord subsisting on his rents and not interested in the produce 
 of the soil except as a consumer. He was only occasionally a 
 trader. (Rogers' Agriculture and Prices, iv. 2 ; see Berkeleys, i. 
 365-6 ; ii. 23 ; Paston, i., lxxxviii-ix., 416, 430, 431, 454 ; ii. 
 70, 106 ; iii. 430 ; Hist, MSS. Com. viii. 263 : iv. 1, 464.) The
 
 viii TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 25 
 
 ents and his show of state, was really living from hand 
 to mouth on the harvests from his fields and the 
 plunder he got in war. 1 After the fashion of the time 
 the treasure of the family was hoarded up in his great 
 oak chests ; splendid robes, cloth of gold, figured 
 satins, Eastern damasks and Sicilian silks, velvets and 
 Flemish cloths, tapestries and fine linen, were heaped 
 together with rich furs of marten and beaver. Golden 
 chains and collars of " the old fashion" and "the 
 new," rings and brooches adorned with precious stones, 
 girdles of gold or silver gilt by famous foreign makers, 
 were stored away in his strong boxes, or in the 
 safe rooms of monasteries, along with ewers and 
 goblets and basins of gold and silver, pounced and 
 embossed " with great large enamels " or covered with 
 silver of " Paris touch." 2 But the owner of all this 
 unproductive treasure scarcely knew where to turn 
 for a little ready money. The produce of the estate 
 sufficed for the needs of the household, and if the lord 
 was called away on the king's service, or had to 
 
 really important classes were the new proprietors who rented 
 land for trading purposes. 
 
 1 See Fastolf, Paston Letters, i. 187-8. 
 
 2 Treasures were apparently stored in different quarters for 
 greater security. See Fastolf 's stores at Caistor. (Paston Letters, 
 i. 416, 473-475; S. Benet's, 468, 508; S. Paul's, London, 493; 
 Bermondsey, 474 ; White Friars, Norwich, ii. 56.) The religious 
 houses had their reward in the form of benefactions for which 
 masses were sung for the donor. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 461.) 
 In the Paston house there was stored away over 16,000 ounces of 
 silver plate, nearly 900 yards of cloth, about 300 yards of linen, 
 and coats and hats without number. See also Hist. MSS. Com. 
 vii. 537 ; viii. 93 ; Berkeleys, ii. 212. Plumpton Corresp. 10-11, 
 13. 37. 
 
 s 2
 
 260 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 attend Parliament, a supply of oats was carried for 
 the horses " to save the expenses of his purse"; and 
 an army of servants rode backwards and forwards 
 continually to fetch provisions from fields and ponds 
 and salting tubs at home, so that he should never be 
 driven to buy for money from the baker or at the 
 market. 1 The crowd of dependents who swelled his 
 train, easily content to win an idle subsistence, a share 
 of booty in time of war, " maintenance " in the law 
 courts, and protection from all enemies, either 
 received no pay at all, or accepted the most trifling 
 sums a few shillings a year when they could get it, 
 with a "livery" supplied like their food from the 
 estate. 2 For money which was scarce everywhere was 
 nowhere so scarce as in the houses of the landed 
 proprietors, who amid their extravagant display 
 found one thing always lacking a few pounds to 
 pay an old debt or buy a new coat. Sir John Pastou, 
 the owner of broad estates in Norfolk, was forced 
 more than once to pawn his " gown of velvet and 
 other gear " in London to get a few marks ; when it 
 occurred to him to raise money on his father's 
 
 1 Berkeley s, i. 167. 
 
 2 John of Gaunt retained Rankyn d' Ypres to dwell with him for 
 peace and Avar for the term of his life, granting him board and 
 twenty -five marks a year from the ferm of Liverpool, in time of 
 peace. (Picton's Municipal Records of Liverpool, i. 16.) For the 
 management of a great house with the giving out of wool for 
 spinning and weaving and accounts audited by a master clothier, 
 see Berkeleys, i. 167 ; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 330 ; Denton's Lectures, 
 293 ; Paston, ii. 354-5 ; Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, p. 297. Often they 
 supplied their own livery. (Brinklow's Complaynt, 45 ; Paston, 
 ii. 139.)
 
 viir TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 261 
 
 funeral pall, he found his mother had been before- 
 hand with him, and had already put it in pawn. 
 During an unwonted visit to Westminster in 1449, 
 the poor Lady of Berkeley wrote anxiously to her 
 husband, one of the greatest landowners in England, 
 "At the reverence of God send money, or else I 
 must lay my horse to pledge and come home on 
 my feet"; and he managed to raise 15 to meet 
 her needs by pawning the mass book, chalices, and 
 chasubles of his chapel. 1 So also the Plump tons, in 
 Yorkshire, were in perpetual money difficulties ; ser- 
 vants were unpaid, bills not met, debts of 2 10s. 
 and 4 put off from term to term, and at last a 
 friend who had gone surety for a debt of 100 
 to a London merchant was arrested. "Madam," a 
 poor tradesman writes to Lady Plumpton, " ye know 
 well I have no living but my buying and selling, 
 and, Madam, I pray you send me my money." 
 One of the family tried in vain to get a friend to 
 buy him some black velvet for a gown. " I pray 
 you herein blame my non-power, but not my will," 
 the friend answers from London, " for in faith I 
 might not do it but if I should run in papers of 
 London, which I never did yet, so I have lived 
 poorly thereafter." 2 When times grew pressing the 
 country families borrowed freely from their neigh- 
 bours and relations ; no one, even the sister of the 
 Kingmaker, felt any hesitation in pleading poverty 
 
 1 Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 63. 
 
 2 Plumpton's Correspondence, 13, 20-1, 41, 71, 72, 97, 99, 148, 
 194, 206, 1S7, 198-9. The abbot of Fountains had to write a 
 severe letter to order that a wine-seller in Ripon shall be paid
 
 262 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 as a reason for being off a bargain or asking for a 
 loan ; l and those who were in better case lent readily 
 in the hope of finding a like help themselves in 
 case of difficulty. 2 Year by year debts accumulated, 
 till the owner's death allowed the creditors to open 
 his coffers and scatter his treasured stores, when 
 the " array, plate, and stuff of the household 
 and of the chapel " scarcely sufficed to meet the 
 legacies and bills, the charities deferred, and the 
 masses required for his soul's safety. 3 
 
 There were indeed instances in which the growing 
 poverty of the nobles opened an easy way for the 
 emancipation of the towns, since it was sometimes 
 possible, under the pressure of poverty or bankruptcy, 
 to convince the lord of a borough, even though he 
 had but such a measure of good wit in his head 
 
 " As them shouldest mete of a mist from morn till even," * 
 
 that the balance of profit lay on the side of freedom. 
 For to some extent the difficulties of the landowners 
 arose from the fact that on their estates the commuta- 
 
 for a tun of wine. (Ibid. 62.) For courtiers who "paid on their 
 pawns when their pence lacked," Richard the Redeless, Pass. i. 
 53-4 ; Paston Letters, ii. 333-5, 349-50 ; iii. 99. 
 
 " Butt drapers and eke skynners in the town 
 For such folk han a special orison 
 That florisshed is with curses here and there 
 And ay shall till they be payd of their gere." 
 
 Book of Precedence, Early English Text Society, 107. 
 
 1 Paston Letters, iii. 326, 194, 219, 358. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 6-7, 20, 23, 24, 35, 46, 49, 114-5, 219, 258. 
 
 3 Lives of the Berkeleys, ii., v. ; Brinklow's Complaynt, 40. 
 
 4 Richard the Redeless, Pass. iii. 172.
 
 vin TOWNS OX FEUDAL ESTATES 26 3 
 
 tion for feudal services, or dues to be rendered for the 
 holding of land, had been settled in early times when 
 money was scarce and demands for profit modest, 
 and these charges remained fixed when prices were 
 rising and when the need of ready money was keenly 
 felt. 1 But while the lord could look for no increase 
 from his lands, a new source of profit had been opened 
 .to him in the boroughs on his estate. He could 
 find money surely and easily by leasing out rights 
 of trade, collection of tolls, and other privileges to 
 the townspeople. In the middle of the thirteenth 
 century the mayor and burgesses of Berkeley obtained 
 from their lord freedom from all kinds of toll which 
 he either demanded or might demand of them; 2 
 and in the fourteenth century he rented to them the 
 tolls of the wharfage and of the market, and received 
 larger profits from this transaction than he gained 
 from all the rent of the borough. 3 
 
 o 
 
 1 Berkeleys, i. 159. 
 
 2 Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 130. A charter given by Baldwin of 
 Redvers to Plympton, 1285, grants the same rights as the citizens 
 of Exeter had from the King, except that Baldwin's serfs, if 
 they lived in the borough, might not be granted its liberties 
 without his leave. (Madox, Firma Burgi, 42.) The King could 
 grant a number of privileges which were beyond the power of 
 any other lord such as freedom from tolls throughout the 
 kingdom, exemption from the sheriff's jurisdiction, freedom from 
 interference of royal officers, and so on ; and the matter of tolls 
 was so important that towns on private estates were practically 
 obliged to get a royal charter as well as a charter from their 
 lord. Compare the charters given in Stubbs' Charters, 105 ; 
 and Gross, ii, 136 ; with royal charters such as those in Stubbs' 
 Charters, 103; and Nott. Rec., i. 1. See also Hist. MSS. Com. 
 ix. 273. 3 Berkeley*, i. 341.
 
 264 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 The weakest corporation moreover had a persist- 
 ence and continuity of life which gave it incalculable 
 advantages in the conflict with individuals subject 
 to all the chances and changes of mortality. For the 
 nobles indeed the fight with the town was in many 
 ways an unequal one. Driven hither and thither 
 by urgent calls of war or of the King's business, 
 the lord was scarcely ever at home to look to his 
 own affairs. In the frequent absences of the masters 
 of Berkeley, perpetually called away by " troubles of 
 state." when the King summoned them to his aid 
 whether for civil war or war of conquest, 1 the 
 neighbouring towns of Bristol and Gloucester found 
 opportunity to escape from their control ; and the 
 march of the baron and his retainers from Berkeley 
 was a subject of much greater gladness to the 
 townsmen of Bristol than to the lord of the castle 
 himself; for " the household and foreign accounts 
 of this lord," we are told, " reveal a marvellous un- 
 willingness in him to this Scottish war, dispatching 
 many letters and messages to the King, and other 
 lords and favourites about him, for excuses." 2 
 When, as a reward for his services, one of the 
 Berkeleys was given the custody and government of 
 the town of Gloucester, 3 he was also charged with the 
 government of Berwick, and was moreover called 
 away whenever the King found himself in military 
 difficulties ; so that the Gloucester burgesses cannot 
 have had much to fear from him. The care of the 
 
 1 Berkeleys, i. 226, 228. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 183-185. 3 Ibid. i. 227
 
 vin TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 265 
 
 great estates, in fact, was constantly left to the 
 women of the house and to stewards, while the 
 master, pressed by ambition, or quite as often 
 by the driving necessity of getting money, was 
 fighting in Wales or Scotland, or was looking for 
 plunder in France, or for place at court. For three 
 generations the lands of the Pastons in Norfolk 
 were managed by the capable wives of absentee land- 
 lords of the judge who must have spent most of 
 his time in London or on circuit ; of his son the 
 sharp London lawyer ; and of his grandson, Sir John, 
 the gay young soldier who hovered between London 
 and Calais, and whose only care for his property was 
 to press anxiously for its rents. The story of 
 the Plumpton family was much the same. One 
 of the Plumptons spent his last years and died in 
 France ; and no sooner did the young Sir William 
 reach his majority in 1426, than he also left his 
 Yorkshire estates and set off to join the French 
 campaign. 1 
 
 On the noble class too fell the heavy consequences 
 of the rebellions and civil wars of which they were the 
 main supporters. If the lord died in battle his estates 
 might pass to a minor; if he died on the scaffold 
 they passed to the crown; or long imprisonment 
 might thwart his best laid plans for strengthening 
 his hold over his boroughs. The young Lord Maurice 
 of Berkeley, for instance, was drawn into rebellion 
 against Edward the Second, and died in prison four 
 and a half years later. During the whole time that 
 
 1 Plumpton's Correspondence, 1-1 i.
 
 266 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 lie held his estates he was only in freedom for four 
 months ; and his eldest son, who was imprisoned 
 with him, was not set at liberty till some months 
 after his father's death. 1 Meanwhile the towns 
 were always quick to make their profit in such times 
 of disturbance and revolution, as for example when 
 the Earl of Devonshire was attainted by Edward 
 the Fourth after the battle of Towton for his support 
 of the Lancastrian cause, and the citizens of Exeter 
 seized so favourable an opportunity to claim the 
 restitution of a suburb stretching down to the river- 
 side which the earls had held to strengthen their hold 
 on the navigation of the Exe. 2 
 
 Nor was the lord's position made more hopeful by 
 the furious feuds between noble and noble which 
 distracted the provinces in the fifteenth century, 
 and the incessant lawsuits by which the landowners 
 sought to mend their fortunes. In 1463 James 
 Lord of Berkeley made an agreement with the 
 Countess of Shrewsbury that they would have no 
 more battles at law ; for he was then sixty-nine, and 
 she fifty-two, and neither of them since their ages 
 of discretion had " enjoyed any three months of 
 
 1 Berkeleys, i. 233-236, 272, 280. Compare the story of Sir 
 William Plumpton, who fought at Towton on the losing side. 
 He was brought before the chief justice in York and gave a bond 
 for the payment of 2,000 before next Pentecost, and failing to 
 procure it had to give himself up a prisoner at the Tower. He 
 obtained a pardon, was released from his bond in 1462, and had 
 new letters of pardon in 1463, but was still unable to return 
 home till 1464, after he had been through a new trial and been 
 acquitted. (Plumpton's Corres. Ixvii-ix. 30.) 
 
 2 Freeman's Exeter, 166-7.
 
 vin TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 267 
 
 freedom from lawsuits." l Nor did they wage their 
 fight in the law-courts only, but carried on an open war 
 by which Gloucestershire had been distracted since 
 1421, and which proved one of the most deadly of 
 the many provincial conflicts of the fifteenth century. 
 Appeased at intervals to break out again with 
 renewed force, and with the usual incidents of hang- 
 ings and finings and imprisonments and ransomings, 
 it finally culminated in 1470 in a pitched battle on 
 Nibley Green, where the Berkeley s triumphantly 
 maintained their cause at the head of about 1,000 
 fighting men, and Lord Lisle, the son of Lady Shrews- 
 bury, who led the enemy's army, was killed. To 
 country folk and traders this feud of the nobles 
 carried with it, we are told, " the ill-effects and de- 
 structions of a petty war, wherein the borough 
 town of Berkeley, for her part, saw the burning 
 and prostration of many of her ancient houses, as 
 her old rent which till that time was 22 by the 
 year and upwards, and by those devastations brought 
 down to 11 and under, where it sticketh to this day, 
 without recovery of her ancient lustre or greatness." : 
 Such a strife was by no means singular or without 
 parallel, and the histories of Norfolk, Yorkshire, 
 Derbyshire, or Lancashire have their records of 
 similar outrages. Exeter was thrown into alarm 
 by a great fight on Clistheath in 1453 between 
 the Earl of Devon and Lord William Bonvil where 
 
 . l Berkeleys, ii. 95. Compare the expenses of Fastolf in a law- 
 suit of ten years, the costs of which were recorded in a roll of 
 seven skins. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 461.) 
 - Berkeleys, ii. 65-73, 75, 84, 103-116.
 
 268 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 many persons were grievously wounded and much 
 hurt done : " the occasion whereof was about a dog ; 
 but great displeasure thereby came to the city, where 
 presently after the fight the Lord Bonvil sheltered 
 himself, which the Earl took amiss, thinking it had 
 been so done by the city in some displeasure to him- 
 self.'' l The mere instinct of self-protection naturally 
 drove the towns to detach their interests from nobles 
 whose alliance brought disaster and ruin to simple 
 traders, and in every borough statute after statute 
 forbidding the inhabitants to wear the " livery " 2 of 
 any lord whatever, testified to the determination of 
 the towns to cut off from the great people of the 
 country round every possibility of stirring up faction 
 within their borders. 
 
 1 Freeman's Exeter, 164 ; Paston, i. xcviii, 350-1 ; Proceedings 
 of the Privy Council, v., xc-xci. ; vi. Ixxviii-ix. In 1437 a com- 
 mission of inquiry into felonies and insurrections in Bedford could 
 not be held because Lord Grey, to whom the town belonged, ap- 
 peared with a strong armed force, and was met by Lord Fanhope 
 ready to oppose him with another army. (Proceedings of Privy 
 Council, v., Preface xv-xvi.) Account given by witnesses before 
 Privy Council, v. 35, 39, 57. Fresh troubles in 1442, v. 192. 
 
 2 For the evils of liveries and maintenance under Richard the 
 Second, see Richard the Redeless, Pass. i. 55 &c., ii. 74 &c., iii. 
 309 &c. The wearing of liveries was forbidden in Shrewsbury 
 lest " when any affray or trouble fall in the said town each man 
 having livery would draw to his master or to his fellow and not 
 to the bailiffs." (Owen, i. 217.) From the towns these evils 
 seem to have been rigorously and effectually banished by ordi- 
 nances from 1309 (Freeman's Exeter, 165, 143) throughout the 
 two following centuries. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 557 ; Eng. Gilds, 
 385, 388-9, 393, 333 ; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, page 16.) The cases 
 of trouble which occur are rare. (Nott. Records, ii. 384 ; iii. 37, 
 344-5. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 415. Hunt's Bristol, 103-5.)
 
 vra TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 269 
 
 But if boroughs in the ownership of a private 
 lord might secure advantages through his poverty, 
 his misfortune, or his weakness, their position was 
 one of essential inferiority as compared with towns 
 on the public demesne. 1 In the story of Liverpool 
 we have a curious illustration of the fortunes of a 
 borough whose lot it was to fall at one time into the 
 charge of the state, and at another to be thrown into 
 the hands of a noble and whose vicissitudes at 
 last left it in a sort of indeterminate condition 
 
 1 Leicester shows the comparatively slow growth of freedom 
 in one of the most favoured towns dependent on a great lord. 
 Its great charter given by Edmund Crouchback in 1277, and 
 translated into English under Henry the Sixth, was mainly con- 
 cerned with the ordering of legal procedure for the burghers ; 
 and it was not till 1376 that the town bought from its earl the 
 right to appoint its own bailiff, and to receive the annual profits 
 of its courts, and various other dues and fines. The town pro- 
 perty was simply a tenement, a chamber, and a small place 
 yielding a few pence yearly till 1393, when it was allowed to hold 
 a little property for the repair of the bridges ; and not till 1435 
 were the mayor and the corporation given the right to acquire 
 lands and rents for the sustenation of the town and mayoralty. 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 404, 412, 413, 414. Thompson, Mun. 
 Hist., 74. A pamphlet on the Origin of the Leicester Corpora- 
 tion by J. D. Paul gives a translation of Crouchback's charter.) 
 Doncaster belonged to the family of De Mauley till the middle of 
 the fifteenth century, when it passed for a few years to the Duke 
 of Northumberland, and in 1461 was taken into the possession of 
 the Crown. Edward the Fourth made it a free borough and gave 
 it a common seal. Henry the Seventh in 1505 granted to the 
 corporation all the property which the Crown had acquired at 
 Doncaster on the attainder of Percy in 1461, and for a yearly 
 rent of 74 13. ll|cZ. secured to it the rights which had belonged 
 to the ancient feudal lords. (Hunter's History of the Deanery 
 of Doncaster, i. 13-15.)
 
 270 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 where it owed a deferential obedience to patrons 
 or masters on every side. 
 
 Liverpool, which had been granted by Henry the 
 Second to the constable of Lancaster Castle, was 
 resumed in 1207 by John, who granted it a charter 
 of trading privileges. A new charter of Henry the 
 Third, in 1229, gave it a guild merchant and hanse, 
 with freedom from toll, and the rights of a free 
 borough ; and on the very next day after this grant 
 Henry gave the lease of the fee-farm to the burgesses 
 for four years at 10 a year. 1 The true foundations 
 of municipal independence were thus laid. The 
 town had its common seal ; one of its two bailiffs 
 was apparently elected by the people, and charged 
 with the collecting of tolls for the ferm ; and the busy 
 trade with Ireland at that time, and the later ad- 
 vantage of a secure place of embarkation for troops, 
 which became very important as the harbour of 
 Chester silted up, promised prosperity. In the same 
 year, however, the town was granted away by the 
 King to the Earl of Chester, then passed in 1232 to 
 the Earl of Derby; and in 1266 was given to Edmund 
 Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, and under the Lords 
 of Lancaster Liverpool remained till a century later, 
 when in 1361 it passed by marriage to John of 
 Gaunt. 
 
 All hope of freedom for Liverpool died away under 
 its new lords. The grant of the ferm was not re- 
 newed for over a hundred years ; and at an enquiry 
 of " Quo "Warranto " in 1292 under Edward the 
 
 1 Picton's Municipal Eec. of Liverpool, i. 1-4.
 
 vni TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 271 
 
 First " certain men of the Borough of Liverpool 
 came for the commonalty, and say that they have 
 not at present a bailiff of themselves, but have been 
 accustomed to have, until Edmund the King's 
 brother impeded them, and permits them not to 
 have a free borough." Wherefore they claim only 
 " that they may be quit of common fines and 
 amercements of the county, &c., and of toll, stal- 
 lage, &c., through the whole kingdom," for " as to the 
 other liberties" which they used to have "the afore- 
 said Edmund now has them." They quote charters, 
 to show that their ancient liberties had been held 
 direct from the crown, and the court decided that 
 " Edmund hath usurped and occupied the aforesaid 
 liberties," and ordered him to appear before it ; but 
 no action seems to have been taken against him,, 
 and for forty years he and his successors went 
 on themselves collecting the tolls. 1 At last in 
 1356 the lord Henry allowed the townsmen to 
 elect a mayor every year, and the next year the 
 first Duke of Lancaster (father-in-law of John of 
 Gaunt) leased the ferm to the mayor and others to- 
 hold for the burgesses for ten years, 2 and Liverpool 
 was thus restored to the same position in which the 
 King had put it a hundred and thirty years earlier. 
 But even now its limited privileges rested simply on 
 
 1 Picton's Municipal Rec. of Liverpool, i. 5-7. 
 
 2 Ibid. 13, 14, 16. From this time leases of the ferm were 
 very numerous and were constantly granted to one or more 
 individuals; between 1354 and 1374 Richard de Aynesargh and 
 William Adamson, who were often mayors, took such leases for 
 several terms. (Picton's Memorials of Liverpool, ii. 54.)
 
 272 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 the will and caprice of the lord ; he might give the 
 lease of the ferm with the right of collecting tolls for 
 the rent to the mayor, or an ex-mayor, or whomever 
 lie would ; he might grant it for a year, or for ten 
 years, or he mig-ht take it all back into his own hands. 
 
 J O 
 
 As a matter of fact questions of convenience and profit 
 seem to have made it advisable to leave the collec- 
 tions of taxes mainly with the town officers. When 
 John of Gaunt granted his lease, at the request 
 of the " honest and discreet men of the burgesses " 
 the articles were embodied in a patent " to ourselves, 
 to the mayor, and to the bailiffs, " a and in his time 
 the lease was commonly granted for ten years. 2 
 
 However some of the evils of such a system 
 might be mitigated by the prudence of rulers bent 
 on securing the utmost possible profits from their 
 subjects, there was no real guarantee of freedom 
 or security to the people. But when at the death 
 of John of Gaunt in 1399, the Duchy of Lancaster 
 was united to the crown, there was a new gleam 
 of hope. The ferm of Liverpool, like that of Leicester, 
 was now again paid to the King ; an effort seems 
 to have been made to abolish the old uncertain 3 
 system, and in 1421 Henry V. granted the 
 
 1 Picton's Mem. of Liverpool, i. 35-36. 2 Ibid. i. 27-28. 
 
 3 In 1413 the burgesses presented a petitiori complaining that 
 their privileges were infringed upon by the shire officers coming 
 into the borough and holding courts by force, by which "the 
 said burgesses are grievously molested, vexed, and disturbed, to 
 the great hindrance and detriment of the said borough and the 
 disinheriting of the burgesses." It was declared on the other 
 side, that the mayor and bailiffs had held the King's Courts 
 without authority and received the tolls and profits. It is not
 
 vin TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 273 
 
 fee-farm for one year to the corporation, while an 
 inquiry was held as to the value of the property 
 and the terms of its tenure since the time of John 
 of Gaunt. The King's death however stopped the 
 proceedings, and the rising fortunes of the town 
 were extinguished by the two great families who 
 were from this time definitely settled down on it. 1 
 
 For Liverpool was now hemmed in between two rival 
 fortresses. Sir John Stanley with an army of followers 
 was encamped in a great square embattled fort, with 
 subordinate towers and buildings forming three sides 
 of a quadrangle, the whole planted on the river edge, 
 and commanding both the town and the Mersey, 
 where the Stanleys' ships were moored, and whence 
 they set sail for their new kingdom, the Isle of Man. 2 
 Sir Richard Molyneux, as hereditary Constable, Jield 
 
 known how the case ended. Ibid. i. 31-2. Picton's Mun. 
 Records, i. 20. 
 
 ] The revenue from Liverpool in 1296 was ,25 : it then had 168 
 inhabited houses. (Picton's Mem. of Liverpool, i. 20.) In 1342 
 the personalty of the burgesses taxed was 110 13s. 3d., that is, 
 the average personalty of each was about one mark (25). The 
 revenue in 1327 was 30; in 1346 it was 38 (26), and 
 remained the same in 1394 (31). In 1444 it was reduced to 
 21 ; in 1455 to 17 16s. 8d. ; and under Edward the Fourth to 
 14 (36-7). In 1515 an inquiry was made as to the decay of the 
 revenue (38), and the Act of 1544 put Liverpool in the list of 
 towns which had wholly fallen into decay (45). Two plagues, 
 one in 1540, another in 1548, probably carried off half its popu- 
 lation (47); and in 1565 it had but 138 inhabited houses, and 
 probably seven or eight hundred inhabitants, and twelve vessels 
 navigated on an average by six men each (55). There were 
 five streets under Edward the Third, and seven under Elizabeth 
 (62). 
 
 - Fortified in 1406. Picton's Mun. Records, i. 21, 22. 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 the King's castle a little further along the river, 
 with its area of fifty square acres defended by four 
 towers, and surrounded by a fosse thirty yards wide, 
 much of which was cut in the solid rock. 1 When a 
 quarrel broke out in 1424 between the lords of these 
 rival fortresses, Stanley collected a multitude of 
 people in the town to the number of 2,000 or more, 
 for he declared that Sir Richard Molyneux " will come 
 hither with great congregations, riots, and great 
 multitude of people to slay and beat the said Thomas 
 (Stanley), his men and his servants, the which he 
 would withstand if he might." On the other hand 
 Sir Richard had gathered his forces near the West 
 Derby fen, " and there on a mow within the said 
 town we saw the said Sir Richard with great con- 
 gregations, rout and multitude to the number of 
 1,00*0 men and more, arrayed in manner as to go to 
 battle, and coming in fast towards Liverpool town." A 
 pitched battle was only prevented by the sheriff of 
 the county, who hastened to the rescue at the head 
 of his forces, and succeeded in seizing first Stanley 
 in his tower, and then Molyneux as he rode towards 
 the town. 2 
 
 Such scenes of riot and disorder were fatal to the 
 prosperity and municipal hopes of Liverpool ; but 
 there was no escape from their unwelcome patrons. 
 Both the great houses fought for York ; and in return 
 
 1 A little thatched building in the High Street which had to 
 serve as toll house, town hall, and gaol, but the greater number 
 of criminals were imprisoned and judged in the Stanley and 
 Molyneux Castles. Picton's Memorials, ii. 25-6. 
 
 2 Picton's Mem. of Liverpool, i. 32-3.
 
 vm TOWNS ON FEUDAL ESTATES 275 
 
 Edward the Fourth granted to Stanley the borough of 
 Liverpool and other estates formerly belonging to the 
 Duchy of Lancaster ; while Molyneux was made chief 
 forester of West Derby, steward of West Derby and 
 Salford, and constable of Liverpool castle. Kichard 
 the Third again gave to the Stanleys large grants in 
 Lancashire, and confirmed the Molyneux people in 
 their offices, 1 and Henry the Seventh favoured their 
 claims. The lords were great and important people in 
 those days, and the little town of no account. Its in- 
 dependence died away, and the troubles of the ferm 
 revived in their old bad form. The question of the 
 lease was never settled, but in any case it passed out of 
 the hands of the corporation. From 1495 it was for 
 many years granted to David ap Griffith, who when 
 he became mayor in 1502 had it renewed to him. 
 Henry the Eighth leased it in 1525 and 1529 to his 
 widow and son-in-law for terms which were to expire 
 in 1566. In 1537, however, it was let to Thomas 
 Holcraft, who sublet it to Sir AVilliam Molyneux. 
 The mayor and corporation under Edward the Sixth 
 declared the authority of the Molyneux family to be 
 illegal, and claimed under the old lease granted to 
 Griffith. For many years they fought obstinately 
 in the case, holding perhaps that the house of 
 their old mayor more nearly represented the town 
 and its interests than the house of Molyneux ; and 
 one of them was thrown into prison for his resistance 
 under Mary. 2 The ferm was not finally granted to 
 the corporation till 1672; and Liverpool was for a 
 
 1 Picton's Mem. of Liverpool, i. 36, 37. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 37, 38, 46, 48-9. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. vm 
 
 couple of centuries so sorely tried by the necessity 
 of keeping well with the two great families that 
 overawed it as well as with the Chancellor of the 
 Duchy of Lancaster, 1 whether in the collecting of its 
 scanty taxes or the choosing of its burghers for 
 Parliament, that the history of its civic developement 
 long remained of no importance. 2 
 
 1 Picton, i. 63. 
 
 2 As an illustration of the reverse process, showing the im- 
 pulse given to municipal liberty when a borough was transferred 
 from private ownership to the State, see the case of Sandwich 
 <Ch. XII.).
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BATTLE FOR FREEDOM 
 (3) Toivns on Church Estates 
 
 THE towns on ecclesiastical estates form a dis- 
 tinct group, whose lot was materially different from 
 boroughs on ancient demesne or on feudal lands. All 
 lay property was subject only to laws and customs 
 which had been ultimately determined by the neces- 
 sities of social or political expediency, and which, 
 dealing with secular possessions for secular purposes, 
 were capable of being unmade as they had been made. 
 But the towns which were reckoned among eccles- 
 iastical estates lay under the special conditions 
 that governed those estates, where religious and 
 supernatural influences had been forced into the 
 service of material wealth, and the attempt was made 
 by spiritual authority to fix fluctuating political con- 
 ditions into perpetual immutability. Prelates of the 
 Church professed to rule with a double title, not 
 only as feudal lords of the soil, but as guardians 
 of the patrimony of S. Peter, holding property in 
 trust for a great spiritual corporation, and exercising
 
 278 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 an authority maintained by formidable sanctions. If 
 the watchwords of property are always impressive, 
 among lay folk they are still open, under sufficiently 
 strong pressure, to reasonable discussion ; and it is 
 admitted that temporal rights may be plausibly ex- 
 changed for others more expedient, or may be fairly 
 bartered away as a means of buying a continued and 
 secure existence. The Church, however, by a fruitful 
 confusion of the terms ecclesiastical and religious, 
 assumed to hold property by another tenure than 
 any temporal owner; girt round about by tremendous 
 safeguards to which the lay world could not aspire, 
 and leaning on supernatural support for deliverance 
 from all perils, it could the better refuse to discuss 
 bargains suggested by mere political expediency. 
 
 The difficulty of reconciling this assumption of 
 permanent and indivisible supremacy with the actual 
 facts of life became very apparent with the passage of 
 the centuries, when from a variety of causes it was 
 no longer possible for the clerical order to maintain 
 the place it had once held as the advanced guard 
 of industry and learning, and its tendency was to 
 sink into the position of a parasite class, producing 
 nothing itself, but clinging to the means of wealth 
 developed by the labour of a subject people. With 
 the wisdom born of experience the Church was ready 
 to give to its tenants all trading privileges, and any 
 liberties that directly made for the accumulation of 
 wealth ; l but the flow of its liberality was suddenly 
 
 1 See charter to Beverley ; Stubbs' Charters, 105 ; Lambert's 
 Gild Life, 73-6, York ; Stubbs' Charters, 304, Salisbury ; Gross' 
 Gild Merchant, ii. 209-10.
 
 ix TOWNS OX CHURCH ESTATES 279 
 
 dried up when townspeople proposed to add political 
 freedom to material gain, nor was it likely to be 
 quickened again by the crude simplicity with which 
 the common folk resolved the question of the lordship 
 of canons and monks. 
 
 " Unneth (scarcely) might they matins say, 
 For counting and court holding;" 
 
 " Saint Benet made never none of them 
 To have lordship of man nor town." T 
 
 The rising municipalities on the other hand, even 
 if they had a history but a century or two old, were 
 endowed with all the young and vigorous forces of 
 the modern world : nor is there a sino-le instance of a 
 
 * O 
 
 town where a lively trade went hand in hand with a 
 subservient spirit, or where a temper of unconquer- 
 able audacity in commercial enterprise did not throw 
 its exuberant force into the region of government and . 
 politics. With all their abounding energy, however, 
 burghers had still to discover that freedom might 
 be won anywhere save at the hands of an ecclesias- 
 tical lord. 2 If Norwich received from the bounty of 
 
 1 Pol. Poems and Songs (Rolls' Series). Ed. Wright, i. 327, 334. 
 
 2 The Church always showed itself exceedingly hostile to the 
 formation of communes. The synod of Paris in 1213 denoiinced 
 the " synagogues (c'est-a-dire ces associations) que des usuriers 
 et des exacteurs out constitutes dans presque toutes les cites, 
 villes et villages de la France, appelees vulgairement communes, 
 qui ont etabli des usages diaboliques, contraires a I' organisation 
 ecclesiastique et tendant au renversement jyresque complet de la 
 juridiction de I'Eglise." (Luchaire, 242. See especially pp. 
 
 235-50.)
 
 280 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Kings one privilege after another in quick succession 
 till its emancipation was complete, its neighbour 
 Lynn, equally wealthy and enterprising, but sub- 
 ject to the Bishop of Norwich, was fighting in 1520 
 to secure just such control of its local courts as 
 Norwich had won for the asking three hundred years 
 before. The royal borough of Sandwich had been 
 allowed to elect its mayor and govern itself for 
 centuries, while Eomney, also one of the Cinque 
 Ports but one which happened to be owned by 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not gain the right 
 to choose its own mayor till the time of Elizabeth, 
 and was meanwhile ruled by any one of the 
 archbishop's squires or servants whom he might 
 send as its bailiff, and forced to adopt any expedient 
 by which while under the forms of bondage it 
 might win the practice of freedom. A dozen gen- 
 erations of Nottingham burghers had been ordering 
 their own market, taking the rents of their butcher- 
 ies and fish stalls and storage rooms, supervising 
 their wool traders and mercers, and admitting new 
 burgesses to their company by common consent, 
 while the men of Reading were still trying in vain 
 every means by which they might win like privi- 
 leges from the abbot who owned the town. Every- 
 where the same story is repeated, with varying inci- 
 dents of passion and violence. The struggle some- 
 times lasted through centuries : in other cases it 
 was brought to an early close. Some boroughs won 
 a moderate success, while others wasted their labour 
 and their treasure for small reward. In one place 
 ruin settles down on the town, in another gleams of
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 281 
 
 temporary success kindle new hopes, in a third the 
 dogged fight goes on with monotonous persistence ; 
 but everywhere anger and vengeance wait for the day 
 of retaliation, when monastery and priory should be 
 levelled to the ground. 
 
 I. There was a distinct difference in the lot of 
 towns under the control of a bishop, and others which 
 were subject to a convent. Burghers who owed 
 allegiance to a bishop had to do with a master whose 
 wealth, whose influence, whose political position, 
 whose training, made him a far more formidable 
 opponent than any secular lord. On the other 
 hand he probably lived at some distance from the 
 borough, and, charged as he was with the adminis- 
 tration of his bishopric and the estates of the see, 
 besides all the business of a great court official 
 occupied in weighty matters of state, he had but 
 limited attention to give to its affairs. As the see 
 passed from hand to hand, a resolute fight with an 
 over- ambitious borough which was begun by one 
 bishop might die away under the feebler rule, the 
 indifference, or the wiser judgement of his successor. 
 In the case therefore of towns on episcopal estates, if 
 the struggle was arduous and costly, still its issue 
 was not irrevocably determined beforehand, and the 
 burghers might hope for at least partial victory. 
 But the emancipation of the townsmen was long 
 deferred, and in the fifteenth century there were 
 boroughs where the bishop's hand still pressed 
 heavily on the inhabitants. 1 
 
 1 The Bishop of Salisbury by a royal charter of 1304 got the 
 right to tallage the townspeople of Salisbury, while the burghers
 
 282 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP 
 
 One of the greatest trading towns in England gives 
 such a record of ceaseless contention carried on 
 to win rights which had been peacefully granted 
 long before to every prosperous borough on the 
 royal demesne. The Bishop of Norwich had been 
 lord of Lynn since its earliest history. 1 It is true 
 that about 1100 A.D., one Bishop Herbert made a 
 grant of the Church of S. Margaret and the little 
 borough that lay around it between Millfleet and 
 Purfleet to the monks of Norwich. But the land 
 beyond these boundaries still belonged to the see. 
 Lying as it did at the mouth of the Ouse, and 
 forming the only outlet for the trade of seven shires, 
 Lynn was destined to be one of the great commercial 
 
 were given municipal privileges the same as those of Winchester. 
 In 1305, however, the burghers, rather than pay tallage to the 
 bishop, surrendered their municipal privileges to the King, and 
 promised to give up to him their common seal. (Rot. Parl. i. 
 174-6.) But in the composition made the next year between the 
 lord bishop and the citizens, those who had shared in the revolt 
 and had not made their submission were utterly separated and 
 removed from privileges of trade or government. (Gross, ii. 
 209-10.) In 1396 there was again a quarrel between the bishop 
 and the citizens, and the case was carried to the King's Council, 
 when the mayor and commonalty entered into a recognizance to 
 the King in 20,000 to behave well to the bishop, and two hundred 
 of the citizens entered into recognizances to the bishop, each one in 
 the sum of 1,000. In the agreement, however, certain provisions 
 were made to prevent the ecclesiastics from taking advantage in 
 any way of this treaty. (Madox, 142.) 
 
 The Commons in giving the grant of 1435 pray that no 
 prelate may be a collector, adding that the dioceses of bishops and 
 the neighbourhood of abbeys were greatly oppressed by ecclesias- 
 tical lords. (Rogers' Agric. and Prices, iv. 164.) 
 
 1 Our Borough, by E. M. Beloe, 1-3.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 283 
 
 ports of the east coast, and the bishops proved good 
 stewards of their property. As population outgrew 
 the Lynn of older days, with its little market shut 
 in between the Guildhall and S. Margaret's where 
 the booths then as 'now leaned against the walls of 
 the parish church, and its tangle of narrow lanes 
 leading to the river side, houses began to reach out 
 over the desolate swamp that stretched to the north 
 along the river side. Under the energetic rule of the 
 prelates the sea which ebbed and flowed over the 
 marsh was driven back, and a great wall raised 
 against it, 340 feet long and nine feet thick at the 
 base ; while another stone wall ran along the eastern 
 side to protect the town from enemies who might 
 approach it by land. In the second half of the twelfth 
 century the " Bishop's Lynn" rose on the newly won 
 land along the river bank, with its great market- 
 place, its church, its Jewry, its merchant houses ; and 
 soon in the thick of the busiest quarter by the 
 wharves appeared the " stone house " of the bishop 
 himself, looking closely out on the " strangers' 
 ships" that made their way along the Ouse, laden 
 with provisions and merchandise. 
 
 Lynn was now in a fair way to become the 
 Liverpool of mediaeval times. Under King John its 
 prudent bishop obtained for the town charters 
 granting it all the liberties and privileges of a free 
 borough, saving the rights of its lords ; l and then 
 at once proceeded by a bargain with the convent at 
 Norwich to win back for the see the whole of the lay 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 185-6.
 
 284 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 property in the old borough, leaving to the monks 
 only the churches and spiritual rights. Once more 
 sole master of the town, his supremacy was only 
 troubled by the lords of Castle Rising who, by virtue 
 of a grant from William Rufus, claimed half the 
 profits of the tolbooth and duties of the port, while 
 the bishop had the other half. In 1240 however an 
 exact agreement was drawn up between prelate and 
 baron as to their respective rights ; and the bailiffs 
 of both powers maintained a somewhat boisterous 
 jurisdiction over the waters of Lynn, 1 collected their 
 share of dues paid by the town traders on cargoes 
 of herrings, or on the wood, skins, and wine they 
 imported from foreign parts, and in their own way 
 made distresses for customs, plaints, and so forth. 
 Thus Robert of Montault, in the time of Edward the 
 Second, set up a court under his own bailiff at one of 
 the bridges, and caused the merchants " rowing and 
 flowing to the said town of Lynn with their ships 
 and boats, laden as well with men as with mer- 
 chandise," to be summoned, distrained, and harassed, 
 " both by menacing them with hurling of stones 
 that they come to land and tarry, and by extorting 
 heavy fines from them," till at last in despair the 
 traders gave up their business, and sold all their 
 ships and boats. And when the exasperated burghers 
 in their turn set upon these alien officers in 1317 
 and threw Robert himself into prison, 2 this out- 
 
 1 For the troubles of the mayor and community in trying 
 to carry out the King's laws in the presence of this divided 
 jurisdiction, see Rot. Parl. i. 331. 
 
 - There had been trouble the year before which Robert's soft
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 285 
 
 break only brought upon them new calamities, 
 for they were condemned by the King's judges to 
 make atonement for their crime by paying to the 
 offended lord within the next six or seven years a 
 fine of four thousand pounds ; which was practically 
 equal to the confiscation of the whole of the munici- 
 pal expenditure for about thirty years. Soon after 
 this, however, the rights of the lords of Rising were 
 sold to the Queen Dowager Isabella and passed 
 through her to Edward the Third ; so the rough 
 and ready methods of their bailiffs came to an end. 1 
 
 The power of the bishop on the other hand was 
 still untouched. He held the Hall Court through his 
 steward ; and held further the Court Leet and view 
 
 words failed to dissipate. " Know, dear friends," be writes, 
 " that I am surely concerned for your trouble, and if I could give 
 you ease or alleviation of your trouble I would do it most readily, 
 but assuredly, dear friends, I am at present in sucb misfortune of 
 money tbat .... wherefore I pray you, my dear friends, that 
 you put me in possession of my moneys as speedily as you can, 
 since of a truth I can no longer dispense with them which much 
 troubles me. And with respect to the wrong that was done to 
 my bailiff , you have sent me word that the parties are in agree- 
 ment. Know you that though peace be made between them the 
 contempt done to me is not redressed, wherefore, I pray you, 
 dear sirs, that you will take order amongst yourselves that amends 
 may be made to me for the aforesaid contempt. Adieu, dear 
 friends ! May he give you happy and long life ! " Hist. MSS- 
 Com. xi. part 3, 241-4. 
 
 1 For the King's bailiffs, see the petition in 1382 to the Lord 
 Chancellor for relief from extortionate demands of the bailiffs of 
 the Tolbooth. The bailiffs were perhaps not to blame; in 1396 
 and 1397 they had to pay 20 marks of silver out of receipts 
 to the Duke of Britanny ; in 1398, 10 marks to the Duke of 
 York ; in 1400, 8 to the Duke of Lancaster. Ibid. 244-5.
 
 286 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 of frankpledge ; and owned the Tolbooth Court. 
 There was indeed a mayor/ but his authority was 
 small, for the bishop who had been eager to grant 
 his burghers the privileges of trade was less eager 
 to see them set up any real self-government. Owing 
 his post to the bishop's approval and nomination, if 
 the mayor failed in obedience or respect his place 
 might be at once forfeited. His power of levy- 
 ing taxes was limited and subject to his lord's 
 control, nor could he make distress for sums levied 
 011 the commonalty. He was not charged with the 
 custody or the defence of the town ; it was the bishop 
 who had command of the town gates, who could 
 order them to be shut at his own will, and with a 
 following of men-at-arms could enforce the order. 3 
 What was far more important, the bishop on the 
 plea of protecting the poor from tyranny had with- 
 drawn from him the power of compelling inhabitants 
 to take up the franchise, and by thus establishing in 
 the borough a population dependent on himself had 
 permanently divided its forces. 4 
 
 As in other towns, however, so here the Guild 
 Merchant proved itself a most powerful organization 
 for the winning of local independence. 5 Lynn was 
 already in the thirteenth century becoming one of 
 the richest towns in the country, and the mayor 
 was supported by a Guild as masterful and as 
 
 1 The charter of 1268 granted the right to elect a mayor in 
 accordance with the former charter of the bishop. Hist. MSS. 
 Com. xi. part 3, 186, 246 ; Gross, ii. 158. 
 
 2 Gross, ii. 165. 3 Gross, ii. 155; Paston Letters, ii. 86-7.. 
 4 Gross, ii. 155-6. 5 See Yol. II., Chap. XI Y.
 
 is TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 287 
 
 wealthy as any in England. When once the question 
 was raised whether he or the bishop was really to 
 command within its gates, two equally matched and 
 formidable forces were brought into play ; and a war 
 of two hundred years was conducted on either side 
 with violence and craft, and remained of doubtful 
 issue to the last. The bishop narrowly watched every 
 effort made by the mayor to enlarge his powers or 
 exalt his state ; and the mayor was no less jealous of 
 the pretensions of his lord. In the course of many 
 experiments in the making of constitutions for its 
 government, Lynn was again and again torn with dis- 
 putes, and harassed by the difficulties of rightly 
 adjusting the powers of its various classes ; and in 
 every constitutional struggle the bishop interfered 
 anew, and often almost dictated the final settlement. 
 The burghers treated him as occasion served. Constant 
 gifts were offered to soften his heart. A pipe of red 
 wine, a vessel of Rhine wine, portions of oats w r ith a 
 sturgeon, pike and tenches, formed one of these peace 
 offerings ; l at another time it would be a costly gift of 
 wax. But what the}' gave with one hand they w r ere 
 ready to take away with the other ; and when chance 
 happily favoured them appropriated without scruple a 
 house, 100 acres of land and twenty acres of pasturage 
 which the bishop held in right of his church of Holy 
 Trinity at Norwich. 2 As disputes grew hot, now 
 over one point, now over another, prelate and town 
 alike called the king's authority to their aid. If a 
 sea-wall was washed away by a high tide, the 
 
 1 Blomefield, iii. 163. 2 In 1403. Blomefield, viii. 531.
 
 288 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 burghers would cry to the Privy Council to compel the 
 bishop to rebuild it ; l or they would demand justice 
 against him on the plea that he had usurped their 
 own officers' right to hold the Leet Court and the 
 Tolbooth Court. The decision of the crown was given 
 sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other ; or 
 the sovereign might for a time take the disputed 
 authority into his own hands. But it was inevit- 
 able that the final gain should fall to the king, 
 whose authority was strengthened by every appeal 
 to his supreme jurisdiction; while lesser profits came 
 to the court by the way gifts to high officials and 
 great people, and to the royal judges when they 
 came to hold their assizes in the Guild Hall, and the 
 town lavished its treasures in costly dinners and 
 varied wines and presents to them and to their 
 clerks. 
 
 From the beginning of the fourteenth century we 
 can trace the progress of the long strife as the town 
 gradually perfected its municipal organization. First 
 came the necessary financial precautions. In 1305 
 the Guild established itself more firmly by a charter 
 which secured to it all its lands and tenements ; 
 and the mayor obtained power to distrain for sums 
 levied on the commonalty. 2 Then at an assembly 
 held in the Guildhall in 1314 authority was given to 
 twenty- six ' persons to elect twelve of the more 
 sufficient of the town to make provision for all 
 
 1 Proceedings of Privy Council, vol. i., 167 (1401). 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 186-7. In 1307 the mayor and 
 community got a grant of land from the bishop for their basin for 
 water. Ibid. 239.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 289 
 
 business touching the community in the King's 
 parliament and elsewhere. 1 But the real struggle 
 seems to have begun about 1327 when much money 
 was spent on lawyers, negotiations with the bishop, 
 and a new charter, and the business was still going 
 on in 1330 with more counsels' fees and messengers 
 to London. Finally in 1335 the town bought a new 
 charter from the king at a cost of 55 and a multitude 
 of gifts to king and queen and bishop. 2 In this year 
 or the next it obtained, among other things, the right 
 to have all wills that affected property in the town 
 proved in the Guild Hall before the mayor and bur- 
 gesses. 3 The bishop seems to have found means 
 of defeating the burghers' intention in this particular 
 claim ; but there still remained the one important 
 question which lay behind all minor struggles that 
 of the administration of justice in the town the 
 question whether it was the mayor or an ecclesiastical 
 officer who should preside in the courts, and whether 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 240. - Ibid. 213-215. 
 
 3 A will was proved after a proclamation by the Serjeant that 
 on such a day it would be read in the Guild Hall before the 
 mayor, and anyone who wished to contradict it must then 
 appear. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 153, 189.) In the earliest 
 wills no mention is made of probate before the ordinary ; in later 
 registrations it is recorded that the will had received episcopal 
 probate before coming before the mayor. (Ibid. 155.) The cost 
 of this was what the people desired to avoid. 
 
 " For who so woll prove a testament, 
 That is not all worth tenne pound, 
 He shall pay for the parchment 
 The third of the money all round ; " 
 
 Pol. Poems and Songs, ed. Wright, i. 323. 
 VOL. I U
 
 290 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 their profits, fines, and forfeitures should go to enrich 
 the treasury of the bishop or of the municipality. 
 The mayor held a court in the Guild Hall twice a 
 week, and had jurisdiction over all transgressions and 
 debts arising by water between the limits of S. 
 Edmondness and Staple Weyre, 1 and he seems now 
 further to have laid claim to the view of frankpledge 
 and the criminal jurisdiction of the Leet Court. The 
 bishop answered with a vigorous retort. In 1347 
 he assumed the view of frankpledge of the men of 
 Lynn and tenements formerly held by the corpora- 
 tion, and withdrew or threatened to withdraw from 
 the burghers the right of electing their mayor. On 
 this an appeal was made to the king, who sent a royal 
 commission to enquire into the dispute, and mean- 
 while seized with his own hand the view of frank- 
 pledge and the lands, giving the first over for the 
 time to the sheriff of the county and the second to 
 the king's escheator. 2 Possibly there was some 
 attempt at a compromise, but the new charter of 
 1343 in which the bishop confirmed the liberties 
 granted by his predecessors, 3 even if it may have 
 allowed the mayor's -election, left the great question 
 of the courts unsolved. The burghers still debated 
 whether the town officers were not entitled to hold 
 the view of frankpledge, and the husting court, and 
 to have cognizance of pleas in fact to exercise all 
 the more important rights now monopolized by the 
 bishop ; and insisted on the election of their own 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 207. 
 
 - Ibid. 205. s Ibidi 189 .
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 291 
 
 mayor. It was in vain that Edward the Third 
 ordered the mayor and community under pain of 
 forfeiture of their liberties to alter their demeanour 
 and not cause prejudice and damage to the bishop ; l 
 and the whole matter was at last brought before the 
 King's Court in 1352, when the judges decided 
 against the town in every question raised. In spite 
 of the verdict, however, there was one point on 
 which the people refused to submit ; and the bishop 
 was compelled to confirm their right to elect yearly 
 one of themselves as mayor, though he enforced 
 a significant confession of subjection by requiring 
 that the mayor should immediately after the 
 election appear before himself or his steward, and 
 swear to maintain the rights of the church of 
 Norwich. 2 
 
 But the burghers never yielded their consent to the 
 decision of the King's justices, and at every provoca- 
 tion loudly renewed their protest. When the bishop 
 visited Lynn in 1377, he demanded that in recogni- 
 tion of his supremacy the town serjeant should carry 
 before him the wand tipped at both ends with 
 black horn, which was usually borne before the 
 mayor himself. For their part they were heartily 
 willing, answered the courteous mayor and aldermen, 
 but they feared that at such a flagrant breach of 
 their ancient customs and liberties, the commons, 
 " always inclinable to evil," would certainly fall on 
 the bishop's party with stones and drive them out 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Cora. xi. part 3, 188. 
 
 2 Blomefield, iii. 513. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 189, 205. 
 
 U 2
 
 292 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 of the town. But the bishop roughly rebuked 
 the mayor and his brethren for " mecokes and 
 dastards," thus fearing the vulgar sort of people, as 
 if it mattered to him what the common folk should 
 say ; and set out on his ride with the rod borne before 
 him. He rode alone with his followers, however, for 
 no burghers would accompany him ; and as he went the 
 whole people rose, and with their bows and clubs and 
 staves and stones broke up the brave procession, and 
 put the bishop and his men to flight, carrying off many 
 hurt and wounded. 1 It seems possible that the fray 
 was really excited by the astute mayor and council as 
 a means of making a final breach between the bishop 
 and the common people. But their opponent was 
 too strong for them. The bishop carried his complaint 
 to the King's Council, and " for the transgression 
 clone to him in the town " the burgesses barely escaped 
 punishment by spending a sum equal perhaps to two 
 years of the town revenues in fines and gifts to the 
 king, his mother, and others who had " laboured for 
 the community " ; besides paying 116 10s. Od. for the 
 expenses of the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, in 
 going to London on the business. 2 Seventy years 
 later, after a series of constitutional troubles, 
 the old quarrel as to rights of jurisdiction and the 
 use of the symbols of supreme authority broke out 
 anew. The mayor in 1447 got a grant from the King 
 
 1 Blomefield, iii. 516-17. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 222. It would seem that in 
 1377 the mayor and burgesses were made responsible for the 
 custody of the town, and were ultimately given power of distress 
 for subsidies for its defence. (Ibid. 190, 205.)
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 293 
 
 allowing a sword to be carried before him l with the 
 point erect, the last and highest emblem of absolute 
 jurisdiction. At this outrage to his dignity the 
 bishop interfered promptly and resolutely, and the 
 next year the King had to write that in spite of his 
 good inclinations he must remember his coronation 
 oath to observe the rights of the Church, and that 
 the mayor must henceforth cease from having any 
 sword or mace borne before him. In 1461, 
 however, whether the town had got a new grant 
 from Edward, or was taking advantage of troubled 
 times to re-assert its claim, the common accounts 
 register a payment of 4c/. for the " cleaning of the 
 mayor's sword," and 65. 8d. for " crimson velvet for 
 the sword and for making it up." 2 And when in 1462 
 the bishop came to the town with a following of sixty 
 armed men, and ordered the gates to be shut after 
 him, the attitude of the people was not to be mis- 
 taken, " the mayor and all the commonalty of Lynn 
 keeping their silence " when the bishop was openly 
 defied in the streets by the lord of Oxenford with 
 his fellowship, even though " the bishop and his 
 squires rebuked the mayor of Lynn, and said he had 
 shamed both him and his town for ever, with much 
 other language." So clear was the state of things 
 to the bishop's sixty men-at-arms that " when we 
 met there bode not with him over twelve persons at 
 the most with his serjeant-at-arms, which serjeant 
 was fain to lay down his mace ; and so at the same 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 165. 
 
 2 Ibid. 225.
 
 294 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 gates we came in we went out, and no blood drawn, 
 God be thanked." 1 
 
 The incident was not one to soften passions or 
 conciliate rivals ; but the issue of the strife as 
 compared with the hostilities in the last century 
 shows how the balance of power was shifting. The 
 bishop's resources were being exhausted faster than 
 his pretensions ; every trader in Lynn was perpetu- 
 ally reminded that in Norwich, only fifty miles or 
 so distant, the citizens had held their own borough 
 court since 1194, and the higher court with view of 
 
 7 O 
 
 frankpledge since 1223. For these privileges they 
 themselves had waited now for three hundred years, 
 and only one settlement was possible. In 1473 
 the quarrel as to the view of frankpledge was still 
 going on, 2 but the bishop was driven at last to a 
 compromise which preserved his historic claims un- 
 touched in theory, while it handed over the real 
 power to the municipality. For the sake of peace 
 he consented in 1528 to lease to the mayor and bur- 
 gesses the yearly Leet, the Steward's Hall Port, 
 and the Tolbooth Port ; 3 besides various dues from 
 fairs and markets, with waifs and strays, and some 
 other rights. A ruder and more effective close was 
 before long put to the quarrel by the sharp methods 
 of the Reformation, when Bishop's Lynn became 
 finally the King's Lynn. 
 
 II. If boroughs attached to a bishopric were in a 
 difficult position, the difficulty was vastly increased 
 
 1 Paston Letters, ii. 86-7. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 205. 3 Ibid. 246.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 295 
 
 in the case of those subject to the lordship and rule 
 of a monastery. Towns owned by abbot or prior 
 were like all the rest stirred by the general zeal for 
 emancipation, but they were practically cut off from 
 any hope of true liberty. The power with which they 
 had to fight was invincible. Against the little lay 
 corporation was set a great ecclesiastical corporation, 
 wealthy, influential, united, persistent, immortal. All 
 the elements which w r ent to make up the strength of 
 the town were raised in the convent to a yet higher 
 degree of perfection, and the struggle was prolonged, 
 intense, and at the best remained a drawn battle, 
 setting nothing beyond dispute save the animosity of 
 the combatants. Sometimes the defeat of the borough 
 in the fifteenth century was as complete as it had 
 been two hundred years before. Cirencester which 
 had won extended privileges from Henry the Fourth 
 in return for political services in his time of difficulty, 
 was utterly beaten at last, 1 and fell back under the 
 control of the Abbey as completely as St. Alban's had 
 done in earlier times. 2 In other cases the resistance 
 
 1 Proc. Privy Council, i. 127. Beecham's Hist. Cirencester, 
 154-8. 
 
 2 In 1333 St. Alban's brought its charter to the King's 
 Chancery and renounced there all the liberties contained in the 
 said charter. The keeper of the rolls at their request broke off 
 the seal of wax, and cancelled the enrolment in the Chancery 
 rolls. The townsmen also brought their common seal of silver, 
 which at their request was destroyed and the silver given to 
 the shrine of St. Alban. (Madox, 140.) Common as it was in 
 France for a commune to renounce its freedom, there is scarcely 
 any instance in England save on ecclesiastical property. The case 
 of Dunwich was peculiar and I have met with no other.
 
 296 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 was more energetic and sustained, and some slight 
 measure of success was its reward. 1 
 
 As in the case of towns on feudal estates, any 
 borough that possessed traditions of freedom handed 
 down from a state of larger liberties might have 
 some hope of ultimate success, but otherwise rebellion 
 could only issue in defeat so final and decisive as to 
 leave no further room for argument. Under the im- 
 pulse of the popular movement which seems to have 
 agitated many towns after the rising that took place 
 in the days of Simon de Montfort, the men of S. 
 Edmundsbury kept up for about seventy years a 
 desperate struggle with the abbot who ruled them. 
 For in 1264 it happened that "the younger and less 
 discreet" of the town organized a conspiracy under 
 colour of a Guild called " the Guild of Young Men," 
 and despising altogether the ancient horn of the 
 community set up a new common horn of their own. 
 Three hundred and more of these hopeful conspirators, 
 known by the name of " bachelors," having bound 
 themselves to obey no bailiff save the aldermen and 
 bailiffs of their own Guild, to answer to the sound 
 of their new common horn instead of the old moot 
 horn, and to count all who did not join them as public 
 
 1 Occasionally a convent drove a hard bargain. In 1440 an 
 agreement was made between the convent of Plimpton and the 
 commonalty of Plymouth, by which the commonalty was to pay 
 41 yearly, and if this rent was unpaid fifteen days after quarter 
 day, the officers of the convent might seize all the goods and chat- 
 tels of the mayor and commonalty and of any burgesses and of 
 any others residing and abiding there which could be found 
 within the borough and the precinct thereof. Madox, 222-3.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 297 
 
 enemies, 1 soon found themselves engaged in riotings 
 and in violently resisting the abbot from behind 
 closed gates. On the abbot's appeal to the Crown, 
 however, the town grew frightened ; the Guild was 
 annihilated by the help of the more prudent sort, and 
 the insurrection suppressed. 
 
 In less than thirty years, however, the burghers 
 were renewing the memory of their old offences 
 forcing townsmen against their will to go to the hall 
 of the Guild, and take an oath of allegiance to it ; 
 levying tolls and taxes, distraining on merchants who 
 sold in the abbot's market to extort money from 
 them ; hindering the execution of justice on merchants 
 suspected of selling goods outside that market ; and 
 refusing to allow any member of the guild to bring 
 a plea in the abbot's court against any other brother 
 of the guild : while the abbot on his side asserted 
 his right to choose the alderman of the town and to 
 appoint the keepers of the gates. In spite of a com- 
 promise made before the king's judges sent the next 
 year to enquire into the case, the same charges were 
 again brought against the men of Bury before a royal 
 commission of judges in 1304. The accused confessed 
 that the abbot was lord of the whole town and its 
 courts, but they still urged a claim to be free bur- 
 gesses and to have an alderman, and a Merchant 
 
 1 The organization of the guild does not seem to have been at 
 all of a democratic or " advanced " kind, but after the pattern of 
 the oligarchic societies of the time. Four men owning goods to 
 the value of 10 marks were elected yearly, by a committee of 
 twelve burgesses, to hold the guild, and summoned to do their 
 duty by two officers of the guild called " les Dyes."
 
 298 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Guild with certain rights of justice belonging to it 
 and with an elaborate code of procedure, and asserted 
 their right to hold meetings for the common profit 
 of the burgesses, and to levy taxes from men trading 
 in the town. All this the abbot denied, whether the 
 right to a Merchant Guild, or pleas belonging to it, 
 or a community, or a common seal, or a mayor ; 
 according to him the townsfolk only had a right to a 
 drinking feast, which they maliciously turned into an 
 illegal convention, and if they took any fines it was 
 against the merchant law and the King's peace. The 
 case was given for the abbot. The leaders were fined 
 and put in jail, some of them escaping by payments 
 while others through poverty lay in prison a month. 
 
 Once more, however, the burghers took heart, and 
 in 1327 broke into the abbey and forced the abbot 
 to concede to them a community, a common seal, a 
 Guild merchant, and custody of their gates, with other 
 liberties. But their triumph was short ; utterly de- 
 feated by the forces of abbot and king, they were 
 forced in the concord of 1332 to renounce for ever 
 the claim to a community ; l and when after the 
 Peasant Revolt there was much general begging 
 for pardon, the men of S. Edrnundsbury, who were 
 ordered to sue for their pardons specially, had to 
 find surety not only to the King but to their lord 
 the abbot. 2 
 
 If S. Edmundsbury was one of the most unfortunate 
 ecclesiastical towns Reading was perhaps the most 
 
 1 Gross, ii. 29-36. Yates' Bury S. Edmunds, 123-135. 
 
 2 Statutes, 6 Richard II., 2, cap. 3.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 299 
 
 fortunate. For Reading was originally a borough 
 on royal demesne, which was granted by Henry the 
 First to the new monastery founded by him. 1 From 
 this time the town lay absolutely in the control of the 
 abbot. He owned all its streams, from which the 
 inhabitants had " chiefly their water to brew, bake, 
 and dress their meat." : The mills were in his hands ; 
 he did as he chose with the market, controlled 
 the trade, and had the entire supervision of the 
 cloth manufacture. He appointed the Warden of 
 the Guild or mayor, and the various town officers ; 
 and claimed a decisive voice in the admitting of new 
 burgesses or members of the Guild, while from every 
 burgher's son who entered the Guild he claimed a 
 tax of 45., and from every stranger one-half of the 
 fine paid as entrance fee the sum of the fine being 
 fixed in presence of a monk who might raise 
 objections so long as he was not overborne by the 
 joint voices of six legal men of the Guild. Every 
 burgher in the Guild had further to pay to him a 
 yearly tax of chepin gavell for the right of buying 
 or selling in the town. 3 For any breach of the law 
 fines were gathered in to increase his hoard, since all 
 the administration of justice lay in his hands. Before 
 the abbot alone the emblems of supreme authority 
 might be borne, and the mayor when he went in 
 
 o * 
 
 state was only allowed to have two tipped staves 
 carried before him by the abbot's bailiffs. 
 
 From the time of Henry the Third there was 
 
 1 Coates's Reading, 49. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 224. 3 Gross, ii. 208.
 
 300 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 unceasing war between the townsmen and their 
 lord. Violent dissensions broke out in 1243, when the 
 burghers " lay in wait day and night for the abbot's 
 bailiffs," and " hindered them from performing their 
 duties," till order was restored by a precept from 
 the King. 1 The townsfolk were appeased by 
 the grant of certain trading privileges ; but ten 
 years later the quarrel broke out again. The 
 abbot, as they maintained before the King's Court 
 at Westminster, had taken away their Guild, sum- 
 moned them to another place than their own Guild 
 Hall to answer pleas, changed the site of their 
 market, and forced them to render unwonted services. 
 An agreement was drawn up before the judges, by 
 which the burghers won the right to hold their 
 corn market in its accustomed place, to own their 
 common Guild Hall, with a few tenements that 
 belonged to it, and a field called Portmanbrok (the 
 rent of which was set apart for the salary of the 
 mayor), and to maintain their Guild merchant as of 
 old. On the other hand the townspeople conceded that 
 it was the abbot's right to select the Warden of the 
 Guild from among the guildsmen, and require him 
 to take oath of fidelity to himself as well as to the 
 burgesses. The abbot might tallage the town at 
 certain times, and his bailiffs were still to administer 
 justice, and might at any time claim the keys of the 
 Guild Hall, sit there to hold pleas, carry off all 
 profits to the abbot's treasury, and fine the burgesses 
 any sum which it was in their power to pay. Finally 
 
 1 Coates's Reading, 49-50.
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 301 
 
 it was admitted that the meadow beyond the Port- 
 manbrok belonged to the lord. 1 
 
 After an arrangement which left to the abbot all 
 the weighty matters of government, the control of 
 the burghers' trade and a charge on their profits, 2 
 it was no wonder that before a hundred years were 
 over the inhabitants of Heading, restless and dis- 
 contented, were again battling for larger privi- 
 leges. In 1351 the mayor and commonalty refused 
 obedience to a constable appointed by the abbot's 
 steward, claiming for themselves the right to choose 
 the constables, and present them to take their 
 oaths before the king's justices and the justices of 
 the peace instead of before the abbot. At the same 
 time they raised various fundamental questions 
 as to their rights, just as Lynn was doing almost 
 in the very same year. They asked whether the 
 town was not a royal borough and therefore in no 
 way dependent on the abbey ; whether the townsmen 
 had not therefore a right to elect their own mayor ; and 
 whether that mayor ought not to exercise jurisdiction 
 over the burgesses and commonalty " according to 
 the custom of the borough and Guild " questions 
 which one and all afforded fair subjects of dispute 
 for the next hundred and fifty years. 
 
 1 Gross, ii. 202-4. 
 
 2 Some of the fines levied were doubtless used for the towns- 
 men's benefit. For example, there were nineteen bridges within the 
 limits of the borough, which after the dissolution of the monastery 
 fell into decay and were repaired in the time of Elizabeth with 
 the stones from the abbey walls. (Coates's Reading, 64.) But 
 material advantages did not take the place of political freedom.
 
 302 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 The burghers henceforth gave the abbot no rest. 
 In the long quarrel the Merchant Guild became the 
 real centre of the common activity, just as it did 
 wherever a town subject to a lord temporal or 
 spiritual failed to win independent jurisdiction of its 
 own. 1 For if there were free boroughs where the 
 mayor, with his council and the common assembly of 
 the burghers in which the whole conduct of govern- 
 ment was centred, were in name and fact the accepted 
 constitutional authorities ; on the other hand in de- 
 pendent towns where political freedom was still in- 
 complete the Merchant Guild appears as ostensibly 
 the only means by which the will of the community 
 could find expression ; as men recognized in it 
 the one society in whose disciplined ranks they 
 might be enrolled to fight for the liberties they 
 claimed, its organization \vas held to be the most im- 
 portant of their privileges and the truest symbol of 
 their common life ; and it necessarily became the 
 bond of fellowship, the pledge of future freedom 
 the school of political energies. 2 In such towns 
 
 1 Gross, i., 90-1. The number of burghers in the Guild seems 
 to have been very small. In 1486, 28 burghers paid chepin 
 gavell ; in 1487, 22 burgesses; and in 1490-93, 31 burgesses.. 
 In 1510 there were 45 burgesses. (Coates's Reading, 58.) 
 There were many who paid fines and dues to the abbot who were 
 of the town and not of the Guild, and this class was doubtless 
 encouraged by the convent, following the same policy as the bishop 
 in Lynn. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 172, 175-6.) 
 
 2 The Guilds were naturally looked on with very little favour 
 by the ecclesiastical lords in such cases. There was a conflict 
 between abbot and town at Malmesbury in the time of Edward 
 the First. The burghers claimed to have a Guild of their own
 
 ix TOWNS ON CHURCH ESTATES 303 
 
 therefore the Merchant Guild had a vitality and a 
 persistent continuity of life which was unknown 
 elsewhere, and was often preserved in full vigour 
 two or three centuries after it had perhaps suffered 
 decay or transformation elsewhere. 
 
 This was the case in Reading. The burghers fell 
 back on the Guild as the one authorized mode of 
 association for public purposes, and in its " morghe- 
 speche," or "morning talks," the leading townsfolk 
 discussed how the independence of the borough 
 might be advanced. Successive mayors of the Guild, 
 though still to all appearance appointed as officers of 
 the abbot, became really the representatives of the 
 town, identified themselves absolutely with its inter- 
 ests, and readily led their fellow citizens in revolt 
 against the convent. In 1378 the burghers paid about 
 5 for a new charter ; and twice sent the mayor to 
 London to assert their privileges, and to insist that 
 the convent should be forced to bear a just share of 
 the burden of taxation, and pay a part of the tenth 
 demanded by the King. The messengers were lavish 
 with their gifts to judges and officers and lawyers who 
 might befriend them, eels and pike, perches and salmon 
 and capons ; and succeeded so well that the town 
 charters were confirmed in 1400, in 1418,and in 1427. 1 
 
 people, who alone had a right to trade in the town, and to take 
 certain taxes for the support of the Guild from all traders who 
 were not of it. The abbot refused to allow them to use their 
 rights. The town fell back on its liberties when it had been a 
 royal borough, and appealed to the King. (Gross, ii. 173.) See 
 also the precautions taken by the Bishop about the Guild at 
 Salisbury. (Ibid. 209-10.) J Coates's Reading, 53.
 
 304 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 In 1391 the burghers carried the dispute about the 
 appointment of constables to the king's judges at 
 Westminster ; and seem to have succeeded in this 
 matter too, for in 1417 the mayor elected the constables 
 in the Guild Hall, and the justices of the peace 
 admitted them to office. About 1420 a Guild Hall 
 was built close to the Hallowed Brook, though the 
 burghers complained of being " so disturbed with 
 beating of battle-dores " by the women washing in 
 the brook that they could scarcely hold their courts 
 or do any public business. 1 They made payments for 
 the clock house, and set up a bell for the community, 2 
 and appointed a permanent salary for the mayor of 
 five marks, to be paid from the Common Chest 
 instead of the uncertain rent of the Portmanbrok. 
 But when they went on to build a new " Out- 
 butchery," and buy " smiting stocks " for butchers not 
 living in the town, the abbot at once saw an attempt 
 to limit his own market profits which he imme- 
 diately resented, denying the burghers' right to hold 
 their new out-butchery or receive rents from it. 
 They on their side protested that their Guild was 
 a body corporate, having a Common Hall, a seal, 
 and the right of possessing common property ; that 
 they held also a wharf, a common beam or weighing- 
 machine, and the stocks and shambles ; that they 
 had been granted freedom from toll throughout 
 the kingdom ; that they returned two burgesses to 
 Parliament ; and were freed from shire and hundred 
 
 1 They got afterwards from Henry the Eighth the church of 
 the Grey Friars for their Guild Hall. 
 
 2 Hist.MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 172-3.
 
 li TOWNS OX CHURCH ESTATES 305 
 
 courts ; and finally they asserted, to sum up all the 
 rest, that they had held of the King long before 
 the monastery was founded. 1 In 1431 lawyers were 
 appointed to search the evidences in the Common 
 Chest as to agreements between the town and the 
 abbot. At the same time a Register of the Acts of 
 the mayor and burgesses was begun, and continued 
 year after j'ear without break. In 1436 and 1439 
 payments were made for the writing out of certain 
 articles as to the privileges of the town ; and counsel 
 were again employed to look over the evidences in 
 1441. 2 
 
 Throughout these years the mayor and officers were 
 constantly at Maidenhead, London, or Canterbury, 
 holding consultations about legal business with 
 Lyttleton and the most famous lawyers. They suc- 
 ceeded in buying a charter for their Guild Hall with 
 sums contributed by rich citizens ; and gratefully 
 adorned the building with a picture of the King. The 
 mayor of the guild became more and more the repre- 
 sentative of the burghers' hopes, and his greatness the 
 symbol of their triumph. They had not only raised 
 his salary in 1459 to ten nobles, 3 but like their 
 
 1 Coates's Reading, 53, 54. All this time matters were 
 made easier for the townspeople by constant talk of loans to the 
 King. In 1420 the town officers went to Walliiigford to discuss 
 the matter with the King. There was a loan made in 1430, and 
 another in 1445. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 173, 174. 
 
 - Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 174. 
 
 3 Under Henry the Eighth, he received 10. (Coates's 
 Reading, 55, 56.) A woman of the town left three silver cups 
 and one gilt cup for the mayoralty in 1479. Public dinners 
 at each election began in 1492, and feasts for the burgesses 
 
 VOL I. x
 
 306 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 brethren at Lynn they got permission from Henry 
 the Sixth to have a mace carried before him ; and in 
 1459 the mace was actually bought. 1 At this extra- 
 vagance, however, the abbot made a firm stand, and 
 Henry had to send a letter to the Mayor of Reading, 
 just as he had done eleven years before to the mayor 
 of Lynn, ordering that this privilege should remain 
 with the abbot alone as the token of his supremacy. 
 But the mayor possibly gained his point a little 
 later, for in 1487 he was allowed two Mace-serjeants, 
 so it would seem that at least his tipped staves were 
 now borne by his own servants. 2 He secured too for 
 himself and for the burgesses exemption from serving 
 on juries; and in the same year assumed supervision 
 of the cloth trade. In 1480 the burgesses had done 
 away with individual payments of the " chepin gavell " 
 tax to the abbot, by ordering that it should be 
 given from the Town Chest ; and in 1486 a citizen 
 bequeathed property for its payment, so that the 
 townsmen were henceforth freed from all personal 
 difficulties in this matter. 3 
 
 Either the question of the cloth-market or that of 
 the mace-serjeants brought the battle to a climax. 
 The abbot absolutely refused to appoint any " master 
 of the guild, otherwise called mayor," and took upon 
 himself to admit such people as he chose to the 
 office of constable. 4 The guild retorted by choosing a 
 mayor for themselves, who nominated his own officers 
 to keep order, while all alike in this emergency gave 
 
 at Christmas and Shrovetide. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 
 180-1, 176.) 1 Ibid. 180. 2 Eng. Guilds, 298. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 175, 180. 4 Ibid. 212.
 
 ix TOWNS OX CHURCH ESTATES 307 
 
 their services freely, for iii 1493 " nothing was paid to 
 the mayor, because neither he nor any one else charged 
 anything on the office." 1 In the case of the lesser 
 offices the burghers held their own, and when in 1499 
 the abbot appointed two constables, the mayor thrust 
 them out of their places. 2 
 
 But the triumph of the people was short-lived, 
 for in the long run they proved powerless against 
 the great spiritual corporation which ruled over them. 
 In the very next year, 1500, the inhabitants were 
 utterly defeated as to the election of the mayor 
 himself; and as they still protested, there was once 
 more an appeal eight years later to the judgment of 
 the King's Court. The verdict of the judges threw 
 back the whole question almost to the very point 
 where it had stood centuries before at the time of the 
 earlier appeal in 1254, and the brethren of the Guild 
 were declared of ancient time to have had no other 
 right than the power to present from among them- 
 selves three persons, of whom the abbot should 
 choose one as mayor. The two constables, and the 
 ten vvardmen of the five wards, might be elected by 
 the mayor and commonalty, but they must be sworn 
 in before the abbot. According to ancient custom the 
 name of any proposed burgess must be given to the 
 abbot fourteen days before his election, and a monk 
 must be present for the assessing of his fine of forty 
 shillings, half of which went to the abbot ; an alien's 
 
 o ' 
 
 fine might be determined by six burgesses, and if they 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 7, 176. 
 - Coates's Reading, 52, 53. 
 
 x 2
 
 .308 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. ix 
 
 affirmed on oath that the fine was reasonable the 
 abbot was bound to accept it. The question of the 
 out-butchery still remained undecided ; but the dis- 
 pute as to the cloth-trade was settled by a compro- 
 mise. As in the case of the mayor, the town was to 
 choose three men and present them to the abbot, 
 who should then appoint one of the three to be the 
 keeper of the seal for sealing the cloth. 1 
 
 So closed for the moment the long struggle of two 
 hundred and fifty years a struggle whose gain was 
 .small in comparison with all the cost and labour, 
 the civic enthusiasm, the learning and ability which 
 had been lavished on it. The easy passage to freedom 
 by which the royal towns had travelled, the large and 
 regular expansion of their liberties, the liberal admis- 
 sion of their right to supremacy over their own trade 
 and over the higher matters of law and justice, might 
 well kindle in the subjects of abbey and priory a 
 perpetual unrest, and anger deepened against their 
 masters as they saw themselves, in an age of univer- 
 sal movement, bound to the unchanging order of the 
 past, and condemned to perpetual dependence under 
 a galling system of administration which the secular 
 government had abandoned three hundred years 
 before. 
 
 1 Coates's Reading, 54-5. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 7, 168-9.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 
 
 WHEN a borough had won from its lord full rights 
 of self-government, its battles were not yet over. The 
 next effort of the town authorities was to secure 
 complete power over all the inhabitants within 
 their walls, so that they might compel all alike to 
 submit to the town courts, and to bear their share of 
 burdensome duties, such as the payment of taxes, the 
 keeping watch and ward, the defence of the town, the 
 maintenance of its trade, or the enlargement of its 
 liberties in fact to take their part as good citizens 
 in all that concerned the common weal. 
 
 For all towns alike, whatever were their chartered 
 rights, had to reckon not only with their own lord 
 of the manor, but with the great people, whether 
 king or noble or bishop or abbot, or perhaps all 
 of them together, who might own a part of the land 
 within their walls, and might all assert their various 
 and conflicting rights, and multiply officials of 
 every kind with courts and prisons and gallows, 
 to vindicate the lord's authority. Thus in Wai-wick
 
 310 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 ill the eleventh century, when the population was 
 scarcely over a thousand, the King held a hundred 
 and thirteen houses, and various lords and prelates 
 owned a hundred and twelve, while there were nine- 
 teen independent burgesses who had the right of sac 
 and soc. So also in the time of Edward the First 
 there were five gallows in Worcester and the district 
 immediately round the city. One belonged to the 
 town, another to the bishop, and a third to the 
 Earl of Gloucester, while two more were set up by 
 the abbots of Pershore and Westminster who held 
 property in the borough ; all of which lords and 
 prelates had the right of hanging thieves and rioters 
 in this little community of about two thousand in- 
 habitants, 1 
 
 A new municipality, face to face with these tra- 
 ditional claims, and powerless before the customary 
 rights of property, could only fall back on friendly 
 treaties by which both sides might win advantage 
 from peaceable compromise. As soon as the burghers 
 had won chartered privileges of trade and freedom 
 from toll throughout the kingdom, they had some- 
 thing to offer to their neighbours, and the bargain- 
 ing began. They could propose to grant protection 
 and a share in their privileges, and would demand 
 in return that the tenants of alien lords should 
 
 1 Miller's Parishes of Worcester, vol. I. Rot. Hun., p. 282,; 
 3 Edward I. In Canterbury there were still in 1835 not less 
 than fifteen precincts within the limits of the corporate authority 
 but exempt from its jurisdiction (Rep. on Mun. Corpor., 31). 
 For crown property in York not under municipal law, see' 
 Davies' Walks through York, 27-28.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 311 
 
 contribute to their taxes and take part in public 
 duties, and perhaps acknowledge, in some respects at 
 all events, the authority of their courts. But the 
 progress of the negociations and their final result un- 
 derwent considerable modifications, according as the 
 townspeople had to deal with the constable of the 
 King's castle ; with some lord who held property in 
 the borough ; or with an ecclesiastical settlement,, 
 whether cathedral or monastery, planted within the 
 liberties. 
 
 I. The Castle Fee was a bit of the royal territory 
 altogether independent of the municipality. In 
 Bristol, for example, the castle had its own market 
 at its gate ; and its inhabitants were exempt from 
 the town justice, so that if one of the tenants of the 
 fee committed a crime he was sent to Gloucester 
 thirty miles distant instead of being tried in Bristol 
 itself. Since the castle fee lay outside the jurisdiction 
 of the town, its ditches became the refuge of felons 
 and malefactors flying from the bailiffs, and as late as 
 1627 it was stated that two hundred poor persons 
 were dwelling within the precincts who mostly lived 
 by begging, besides a number of outlaws, excom- 
 municated people, and offenders who found them a 
 hiding place, and when soldiers and sailors were im- 
 pressed great multitudes of able men " fled thither 
 as to a place of freedom, where malefactors live in 
 a lawless manner." 1 From his position as the king's 
 lieutenant the governor or Constable of the Castle in 
 important frontier or seaport towns was a very great 
 official, with an authority as military commander 
 
 1 Ricart's Kalenrlar, 117.
 
 312 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 which gave him the right of interference in local 
 affairs, and whose power might easily prove a real 
 danger to municipal institutions. 1 In Bristol, where 
 the mayors after their election " did fetch and take 
 their oath and charge at the castle gate " from the 
 constable as the representative of the King, he was 
 practically the official arbiter in any crisis of town 
 politics, and when a revolt of the commons broke 
 out in 1312 against a handful of merchants who 
 controlled the municipal government, the party in 
 power at once claimed the constable's help against 
 their fellow-townsmen. Thereupon the commons as- 
 saulted the castle and built forts against it, so that 
 the forces of three counties which were marched 
 to the rescue by their sheriffs could not quell the 
 riot ; but the castle party finally triumphed, the in- 
 surrection was violently put down, twelve burgesses 
 banished, the rule of those who had usurped privi- 
 leges claimed by the whole commonalty confirmed, 
 and the enemy of the Bristol burghers, Lord Maurice 
 of Berkeley, appointed by the King " custos of the 
 castle and town." 
 
 It was only however in a few boroughs that excep- 
 tional military difficulties made the post of governor 
 one of great or permanent authority, as for instance in 
 Bristol or Southampton. And even in these towns a 
 good understanding was before long established be- 
 tween king and burghers, and powers exercised by 
 
 1 In 1285 the Bristol charter was forfeited because of en- 
 croachments on the rights of the constable of the castle. Beyer's 
 Bristol, ii. 74. 
 
 -' Beyer's Bristol, ii. 88-100.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 313 
 
 
 
 royal officers which impeded the free developement 
 of municipal life were withdrawn without jealous 
 alarms on the sovereign's side, or prolonged agita- 
 tion on the part of the town. The Bristol mayors 
 were freed by royal charter from the necessity of 
 taking their oath from the constable in 1345. And in 
 towns such as Norwich, where military considerations 
 early became of comparatively little importance, the 
 castle tenants were made to contribute to the city 
 taxes in the thirteenth century, and in the course 
 of the next hundred years, were put unreservedly 
 under the control of the city authorities. 1 
 
 II. There w r ere not very many cases where a lay 
 lord became a formidable enemy to municipal free- 
 dom, either from the extent of his property in a town, 
 or from his power of enforcing his claims. Such 
 disputes as did arise were settled in various ways by 
 purchase or friendly compact, or by gaining from 
 the Crown a charter which conferred such rights 
 of control as were necessary for discipline and order. 
 Boroughs on the royal demesne naturally found them- 
 selves supported by the King in urging these demands, 
 but the appeal to force always lay behind the legal 
 settlement, and there was occasionally a serious battle 
 before the question of supremacy was finally decided. 
 A bitter fight was waged between Bristol 2 and the 
 
 1 Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, &c., 25. Here the fee \vas 
 given to the citizens as early as 1346. 
 
 2 There were also occasional difficulties as to the jurisdiction 
 of Bristol over the Temple fee, which first belonged to the Templai>, 
 then to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and was not 
 finally incorporated with the city till 1543. (Seyer's Bristol, 
 i. 134-6.)
 
 314 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 lords of Berkeley, who owned Redcliffe, and claimed 
 the river where they had built a quay as part of their 
 lordship ; who had their own courts and their own 
 prison ; who held their own markets and fair ; and 
 who broke the Bristol weights and measures, and re- 
 fused to take the measures of assize from the mayor 
 even though in such matters he acted as the King's 
 marshal. They fought long and fiercely for their 
 power, even after a royal charter in 1240 had given 
 the jurisdiction over Redcliffe to the mayor. 1 In 1305 
 an energetic young lord Maurice of Berkeley to 
 whom his father had given Redcliffe Street tried to 
 assert his rights, but at the ringing of the common 
 bell the Bristol men assembled, broke into Maurice's 
 house, took away a prisoner from him, and refused 
 to allow him to hold any court, or to buy and sell 
 any wares in Redcliffe Street. Upon this the young 
 lord, appearing with "great multitudes of horse and 
 foot," forced the burgesses to do suit to him, and 
 cast those who refused into a pit, while the women 
 who came to help their husbands in the fray were 
 trodden under foot. He set free prisoners from the 
 Bristol gaol, assaulted Bristol burgesses at Tetbury 
 fair, claimed dominion over the Severn, and seized 
 the Bristol ships. All this did Maurice, " than whom 
 a more martial knight, and of a more daring spirit, 
 of the age of twenty-four years, the kingdom nor 
 
 1 In 1240 the inhabitants of Redcliffe were combined and 
 incorporated with the town of Bristol ; and the ground of S. 
 Austin's by the river was granted to the commonalty by the 
 abbot for certain money paid by the said commonalty. Ricart,
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 315 
 
 scarce the Christian world then had ; " and the 
 mayor and burgesses left King and Parliament no 
 rest with their petitions, telling of outrage after 
 outrage committed by him, till commissioners were 
 appointed to examine their complaints, and to Lord 
 Maurice the sequel of this angry business was a 
 fine of 1,000 marks, afterwards commuted to service 
 with the King's army with ten horsemen. A few 
 years later moreover the Bristol men found oppor- 
 tunity to avenge their bitter grudge, for when he 
 was taken in rebellion the mayor and the commonalty, 
 " out of an inveterate hatred and remembrance of 
 former passages," threw into the common gaol every 
 man who was even suspected of having adhered to 
 the faction of Maurice. 1 Troubles again broke out 
 in 1331, and the mayor and burgesses gathered at 
 the ringing of the common bell for an assault on a 
 Lord Thomas of Berkeley, destroyed his tumbrill 
 and pillory, carried his bailiff to the Guild Hall, 
 and forced him to swear that he would never again 
 execute any judgements in the courts. The next 
 year however the town, " taking the advantage of 
 the time while the said lord was in trouble about 
 the murder of King Edward the Second in his castle 
 of Berkeley," settled the matter for ever by an oppor- 
 tune payment to the King of 40, for which the 
 mayor and burgesses obtained a confirmation of all 
 their charters, and especially that which granted 
 that Redcliffe Street should be within their jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 No sooner was the dispute finally decided than 
 1 Lives of the Berkeley*, i. 177, 196-201.
 
 31 C. TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 rancour quickly died away, and the burgesses of 
 Bristol settled down into the most friendly relations 
 with Berkeley castle. The lords of Berkeley took to 
 trading in wool and corn and wine, and went partners 
 with Bristol men in robbing carracks of Genoa as well 
 as in lawful traffic. 1 So far had the w r heel of fortune 
 turned that one of the lords who made a treaty of 
 peace with the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury 
 meekly appeared before the mayor and council of 
 Bristol to give surety ; 2 and when he went out to 
 fight at Nibley the Bristol merchants sent men to 
 his help. 3 The alliance was cemented by marriage 
 when a Berkeley in 1475 took to wife a daughter of 
 the mayor of Bristol ; 4 and when she died in 1517 the 
 mayor, the master of the Guild, the aldermen, sheriffs, 
 chamberlains, and wardens of Bristol, and thirty-three 
 crafts, followed the coffin with two hundred torches 
 altogether a multitude of five or six thousand people. 
 A " drinking " was made by the family for the mayor 
 and his brethren in St. Mary's Hall, at which they 
 were entertained with a first course of cakes, comfits, 
 
 1 They took to trading about 1367. Berkeleys, i. 365-6. 
 Ibid. i. 23. Thomas Berkeley got leave from Henry the Sixth 
 " for three of his factors to go with the ship called the Cristopher 
 with any lawful merchandise, and to sell the same and return and 
 go again. And the year before, this Thomas and two of his partners 
 had the like licence to go with their ship called the Trinity of 
 Berkeley, to Bordeaux, and there to unload and load again, and 
 bring any merchandise into England." Ibid. ii. 83, 136. 
 
 - Ibid. ii. 68. 3 Ibid. ii. 113-4. 
 
 4 The new marquis was very angry at the unworthiness of such 
 a match with so mean blood, and made it an excuse for disinherit- 
 ing him. Ibid. ii. 172, 173.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 317 
 
 and ale, followed by another of marmalade, siioket, 
 red wine, and claret, and a third of wafers and blanch 
 powder, with romney and muscatel ; " and I thank 
 God," wrote the steward, " no plate nor spoons was 
 lost, yet there was twenty dozen spoons." l 
 
 III. Ecclesiastical corporations also nominally held 
 their property in the various towns by the usual 
 feudal tenure, just like the lay lords ; and when a 
 borough formally stated its theoretic relations with 
 them both lay and spiritual lords were put on exactly 
 the same level. The " Customs " of Hereford show us 
 the ideal view of these relations as the burghers liked 
 to picture them. " Fees " within the walls 2 were held 
 by both ecclesiastical and lay lords, whose tenants 
 desired a share in the city privileges, and the Hereford 
 men classed them all together under a common de- 
 scription. " There are some lords and their tenants 
 who are dwellers and holders of lands and tenements 
 within the said bounds, which they hold by a certain 
 service which is called ' liberum feodum ' ; because 
 long ago they besought us that they might be of us, 
 and they would be rated and taxed with us, and they 
 are free among us concerning toll and all other 
 customs and services by us made, but concerning 
 their foreign services which they do, or ought to do, 
 and of old have done, their lords are not excluded 
 by us nor by our liberties ; for we never use to 
 intermix ourselves with them in any things touching 
 those tenures, but only with those which concern us, 
 or their tenures which for a time hath been of 
 
 1 Berkeleys, ii. 175, 176. 
 
 - Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 461.
 
 318 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 our condition." l Tenants still bound to render 
 feudal services to their lords were not reckoned 
 among the true aristocracy of the freemen, who in 
 admitting them to a limited fellowship marked their 
 sense of the difference of status between the free 
 burgher and the man who was but half emancipated ; 
 " and such men ought not to be called citizens or 
 our fellow citizens .... because they are ' natives/ 
 or born in the behalf of their lords, and do hold 
 their tenements by foreign services and are not bur- 
 gesses." It was only when a tenant bought a house 
 in the city and was in scot and lot with the citizens, 
 that they allowed that he " is free and of our condi- 
 tion ; but let him take heed to hftnself that he 
 depart not from the city to any place into the 
 power of his lord." 
 
 But the municipality was perfectly firm in the 
 assertion of the authority which it had a right to 
 exercise over all those who were admitted to the 
 privileges of the common trade, and took a very de- 
 cided tone with the spiritual as well as with the 
 lay lords. To the Hereford burghers it was obvious 
 that the ecclesiastical tenants only enjoyed a share 
 in the town liberties by the grace of the citizens, 
 and in virtue of " a composition betwixt us and 
 them, which we for reverence to God and to the 
 Church our mother had granted the same unto 
 them ; and also for divers alms to be given to 
 our citizens and other poor and impotent of our city 
 in an almshouse by the keeper of the same for ever. 
 And it was not our intentions that these men, the 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 480. 2 Ibid. 481.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY' 319 
 
 tenants of the bishop, dean, and chapter should have 
 nor enjoy our laws and customs, unless after the 
 same manner as we enjoy them " that is, as they 
 went on carefully to explain, every one must 
 acknowledge law as well as privilege, and be subject 
 like the citizens to authority. They were all to be 
 obedient to the Bailiff for the execution of the Kind's 
 
 o 
 
 writs ; nor could they claim any immunities or in- 
 dependent jurisdiction in the King's highway, seeing 
 that all offenders taken there were to be judged by 
 the city Bailiff. If the peace or the tranquillity of 
 Hereford was disturbed by the tenants of any fee, 
 the city Bailiff, " taking with him the bailiff of that 
 fee and twelve of the most discreetest and stoutest 
 men of the whole city," might " by all way of rigour " 
 compel the offenders to come before them, and force 
 them to end their discords and make amends ; if they 
 refused, the whole community " shall account and 
 hold them as rebels ; and that they come not among 
 them in their congregations." All bailiffs, whether 
 of Church estates or others, were bound to help the 
 chief Bailiff of the city in apprehending thieves and 
 malefactors and keeping order. A vagabond, even if 
 he were an ecclesiastical tenant, who made a noise at 
 night " to the terror of his fellow-citizens," might be 
 taken up by any inhabitant and brought to the city 
 jail till one o'clock the next day ; when, in polite re- 
 cognition of the lower jurisdictions, he was solemnly 
 handed over in a public place to the bailiff of his 
 own fee, by him to be kept in prison for a day 
 and a night, and then returned to the city 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 467.
 
 320 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 prison, " there to stay until he hath made amends 
 as the Bailiff and commonalty shall think fit." The 
 tenants of the various fees were allowed to plead in 
 the town courts at their pleasure, a privilege not 
 granted to aliens ; and in matters touching frank- 
 pledge, or anything " which could not be amended 
 in the courts of those lords," the city claimed rights 
 of arbitration, and power to determine such cases 
 ' ' according to the laws of the city and not according 
 to the customs, unless it be by special favour of the 
 commonalty." All questions concerning '-lands and 
 tenements in the city were to be decided by the free 
 citizens only ; and if ecclesiastical tenants refused to 
 submit to the jurisdiction of the city magistrates and 
 absented themselves from the court, " then our chief 
 Bailiff, calling unto him six or more witnesses of his 
 citizens, shall go to the cathedral church, and there 
 before the chapter shall notify or declare the dis- 
 obedience of their bailiffs and of their tenants." If 
 the canons would not assist or aoree, the Bailiff 
 
 o ' 
 
 should announce that he must then proceed himself 
 to administer full justice, though " by his will or 
 knowledge he would not hurt the liberties of their 
 mother the Church." This concession to ecclesiastical 
 sensibilities was apparently looked on by the men of 
 Hereford as a proof of fine magnanimity. "And it 
 was not wont so to be done, but that there was a 
 composition had between us, which we for the 
 reverence of God and the tranquillity of their tenants 
 and our citizens, had granted unto them." 
 
 All this story, however, comes to us from the side 
 
 / ' 
 
 1 Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 480.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 321 
 
 of the town, and has something of the ring of a 
 lordly municipal pride ; it almost sounds like an ideal 
 view of the compromise between the contracting 
 powers as conceived by the burghers, and one to 
 which the Church party must have demurred. At 
 any rate by whatever means the municipality of 
 Hereford had won a jurisdiction of this sort over the 
 bishop's tenants, it was singular in the possession of 
 such authority, which has no parallel in towns like 
 Canterbury, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Exeter, and many 
 more. But the situation, even as the citizens put it, 
 is so complicated in its arrangements that we could 
 scarcely wonder if a state of truce depending on 
 provisions so elaborate should under provocation be 
 transformed into a state of open war; nor can we 
 question the wisdom of townspeople everywhere in 
 making it their fixed purpose to establish one un- 
 divided and supreme law for the government of each 
 community. How important the question at issue 
 really was to the town's life we may see from the 
 story of Winchester. 
 
 The mayor of Winchester was at the head of what 
 seems, on paper at least, a powerful and elaborate 
 corporation, worthy of a great city which held itself 
 to have been built " in the age of the world 2995, 
 ninety-nine years before the building of Home," and 
 " environed with stone walls " exactly 533 years later. 1 
 A common assembly met twice a year. There were two 
 coroners and two constables, six aldermen of the wards 
 with their six beadles, a town clerk and four Serjeants, 
 a council of twenty-four elected every year, and 
 1 Gross, ii. 265. 
 
 VOL. I Y
 
 322 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAR 
 
 four auditors of this council, besides a body of twelve 
 jurors chosen whenever there was necessity, who sat 
 at " the Pavilion," and with whom the mayor peram- 
 bulated the liberties to view the rivulets and rivers. 1 
 The boundaries of the city were apparently marked 
 out by a rough square formed by the walls and ditch ; 
 but to the mayor and aldermen of the fifteenth 
 century, the idea that their authority should reach 
 as far as the limits allowed by the girth of the walls 
 would have seemed a far-off counsel of perfection. 
 
 For right across the city from the east to the west 
 gates stretched the High Street, cutting the town into 
 two equal halves ; and to the south of the High Street 
 one may say roughly that the mayor had no authority 
 at all. Near the west gate stood the King's castle, 
 where municipal law of course did not run. Beside 
 the castle lay the great convent of S. Swithun, 
 and next to it the cathedral, both fenced round by a 
 wall which shut out all lay jurisdiction or intrusion of 
 any kind. Nearer to the east gate lay the palace of 
 the bishop, who was also of course exempt from secular 
 interference, and who ruled with supreme authority 
 over the bishop's Soke that stretched away beyond 
 the gate, and took tolls of all merchandise that passed 
 along the river. 2 His tenants while remaining 
 outside municipal control had still the right to buy 
 and sell all kinds of merchandize in the city which 
 according to the burghers' complaint was to their hurt 
 and loss ; and the exceeding difficulty of any regula- 
 
 1 Hist, MSB. Com. vi. 601. Gross, ii. 254. 
 
 2 The bailiff of the Soke was sometimes called the Mayor of 
 the Sake to emphasize his independence.
 
 * BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 323 
 
 tion of trade in the midst of this competition of privi- 
 leged workers, with the ruin of the city treasury which 
 it threatened, are shown by a quarrel between the 
 bishop and the burghers as to a street which the bishop 
 had claimed as his property in 1275 ; for when people 
 discovered that in that liberty so appropriated they 
 paid nothing, since the city bailiff could not enter it 
 to make distraint, nearly all the clothworkers forth- 
 with withdrew themselves from the other streets and 
 went to live there to the manifest loss of the com- 
 munity, and the great profit of the bishop. 1 
 
 The northern part of the town was more than half 
 given up to fields and gardens, the shops and houses 
 of traders and artizans forming but a narrow settle- 
 ment that gathered closely along the central street 
 and the lanes that opened from it. And even of 
 this district a part was wholly withdrawn from the 
 city jurisdiction. The Queens, whose " morning gift " 
 Winchester was, lived "tax free " in the Queen's House 
 opposite the King's palace near the west gate, and 
 took rent and tolls from the row of Queen's stalls on 
 the High Street. At the east gate was another belt 
 of ecclesiastical property the settlements of the 
 Franciscans and Dominicans, and next to them a 
 group of poor houses depending on S. Swithun's. 2 
 
 1 Gross, ii. 254. For the way in which a bit of the town under 
 ecclesiastical and not under municipal control might serve as a 
 sort of sanctuary against the tax gatherers, see the complaint of 
 the Bristol commonalty about Temple Street. (Rot. Parl. i. 
 434.) 
 
 2 They had once been occupied by " good citizens," but 
 all through the Middle Ages were filled by a very poor popula- 
 tion. (Kitchin's Winchester, 75.) 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Eight in the middle of the town, opposite the Guild 
 Hall in the High Street, was the liberty of " Godbeate" 
 belonging to S. Swithun's, where the writ of the King 
 or the authority of the city had no power ; and whose 
 church formed a sanctuary always open- for ill-doers 
 flying from municipal justice. The very curfew-bell 
 which hung in its tower rang out from land that defied 
 the mayor's authority. 1 
 
 Winchester had not even control of its own gates. 
 The bishop had charge of one ; and two were in the 
 hands of the convent, which in times of civil war 
 could freely admit within the city walls the armies 
 of the side opposed to the townsfolk. 2 Even the 
 commerce of the place was taken out of the bursrhers 
 
 J- O 
 
 hands. Not only did the bishop take tolls of the 
 river traffic, but once a year when the great fair of 
 S. Giles' took place he assumed supreme command 
 in Winchester ; for the time all civic government was 
 altogether suspended ; the bishop closed all shops in 
 and round the town ; traders coming with their cloth 
 and woollen goods, their wines, their pottery, their 
 brass-work, or their eastern spices, were subject to his 
 jurisdiction, and handed over to him the biggest share 
 of the profits, which he divided with the various 
 religious establishments in the city. 3 At other times 
 
 1 Kitcliin's Winchester, 46-7, 75-7. 
 
 2 In 1264 there was a violent fray near the King's Gate, the 
 citizens fighting to keep the monks from admitting the followers 
 of De Montfort. (Ibid. 130.) The convent kept control of the 
 King's Gate till 1520. (Ibid. 132.) 
 
 3 For the bishop's rights during the fair such as tronage, 
 authority to take all weights and measures and bear them to the 
 Pavilion and there make assay, to demand that the people of
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 325 
 
 the King's chamberlains and the King's clerk of the 
 market regulated business in their master's interest, 
 and collected the dues of the market and tolls on 
 every load carried by man or horse into the town. 1 
 
 Winchester suffered also from the memory of its 
 ancient state as the capital and residence of the West 
 Saxon Kings ; and its mayor almost alone among 
 the mayors of English towns in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury had to go to London to take his oath of 
 office from the King's judges, 2 just as the mayor of 
 London does to this day. He could win neither free- 
 dom nor independence. At home he was beset with 
 dangers; he might be imprisoned by the King for 
 one offence, and punished by the bishop for another. 3 
 
 the city should come to the Pavilion to present cry raised and blood- 
 shed, and other things touching the peace of our Lord the King, 
 see Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 595-605. Compare his powers in 
 Southampton during the same fair. There he might send his 
 bailiff to see that only food was weighed or sold in the town, 
 that no merchant whether resident or not ventured to sell 
 anything except food, that there was no weighing or measur- 
 ing, that merchants who came with their goods swore they did 
 not bring them to sell at this time. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 
 part 3, pp. 67, 68.) The convent also had its own home and 
 foreign trade on a very large scale. (Kitchin's Winchester, 161.) 
 
 1 English Guilds, 353, &c. 358. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 495-605.) 
 
 2 This custom, once common (Madox, 152-3), was abandoned 
 in Ipswich as early as 1317, and seems to have generally died out 
 in the fourteenth century, though Gloucester sent its bailiffs to 
 Westminster till 1483. 
 
 3 In 1244 a mayor who had obeyed the King's orders to shut 
 the city gates against a bishop whose election the King opposed , 
 was severely punished by the bishop when he gained possession 
 of his see and palace. (Kitchin's Winchester, 121.) The mayor 
 was thrown into a London prison because a state prisoner had 
 escaped from Winchester. (Ibid. 139.)
 
 3-2G TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Against such odds as the burghers had to face it 
 was almost hopeless for any corporation to contend ; 
 and the helpless townsfolk could but show their 
 impatience and discontent in petty quarrels with 
 the convent as to the site of a market, or blindly 
 do battle for worthless Kings such as Henry the 
 Third or Edward the Second if the monks took up 
 the opposite party. 1 The struggle for independence 
 lias no fine record of stirring incidents ; but that 
 there should have been any conflict at all before the 
 settling down of quiescence and final apathy is a 
 striking instance of the vitality and persistence of 
 municipal institutions. 
 
 It is impossible not to attribute to the hopeless 
 situation of the municipality before the rival autho- 
 rities in the city, and especially the powerful lords 
 of convent and cathedral, much of the calamity of 
 its history. For at a time when prosperity was 
 generally increasing, its fortunes steadily sank. In 
 1450 the citizens drew a terrible picture of the local 
 distress, not in the vague phrases which we meet 
 with elsewhere when for some special purpose happier 
 boroughs put on a temporary show of distress, but 
 with a minute exactness which betrays the truth and 
 the whole measure of their suffering. Winchester, 
 they declared, " is become right desolate." Nine 
 hundred and ninety-seven houses stood empty, and in 
 seventeen parish churches there was no longer any 
 
 1 Compare the action of Norwich. In the Wars of the Roses 
 the Winchester people were, like their bishop Wayneflete, 
 Lancastrian, but they had neither energy nor power to play any 
 important part. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 147.)
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY :i27 
 
 service. A list is given of eleven streets " that be- 
 fallen down in the city of Winchester within eighty 
 years last passed " ; and in each case an account is 
 added of the number of householders that had 
 formerly lived in the street, a hundred, a hundred 
 and forty, or two hundred, as the case might be, where 
 there were now but two or three left. Since the last 
 Parliament held there eighty- one households had 
 fallen. " The desolation of the said poor city is so 
 great, and yearly falling, for there is such a decay 
 and unwin, that without gracious comfort of the King 
 our sovereign lord, the mayor and the bailiffs must 
 of necessity cease, and deliver up the city and the 
 keys into the King's hands." l To produce a distress 
 such as this no doubt industrial causes were at work, 
 and Winchester probably suffered as Canterbury did 
 from changes in the woollen manufacture and in 
 trade routes. But nowhere in any considerable city 
 do we find a parallel to the utter ruin of this un- 
 fortunate community. Nowhere, on the other hand, 
 were the conditions of municipal life so fatal, if once 
 prosperity began to dwindle or the pressure of out- 
 ward circumstances became such as to call on the 
 resources of the people. Through the breaking up 
 of the city into separate and independent fragments 
 the whole burden of any difficulty had to be borne 
 by the little company of inhabitants governed by the 
 mayor ; and so heavily did the common municipal 
 charges and expenses fall on the scanty population of 
 Imro-hers shut into the narrow area which was under 
 
 o 
 
 municipal government, and from which alone the 
 
 1 Archseologia, i. 91, 93-4.
 
 328 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 authorities could gather the fee-farm and the royal 
 taxes, maintain the bridge and walls, provide house- 
 holders for the nightly watch, and furnish men and 
 arms for the defence of the city ; and we do not 
 wonder that the inhabitants at last began to re- 
 nounce, or refuse to accept, a franchise which brought 
 such formidable responsibilities, or that they sought 
 to escape from a city doomed to ruin. An attempt 
 was made in 1430 to revive manufacture and com- 
 merce by an invitation to all kinds of traders 
 and artificers to come and do business in Win- 
 chester free of toll. 1 But the experiment in free 
 trade was quickly abandoned, probably because the 
 corporation could not meet the heavy yearly ex- 
 penses without the customary taxes levied on trade; 2 
 and in 1450 the citizens laid a petition before Henry 
 the Sixth, praying him to consider the extent of 
 their distress. They were bound, they said, to pay 
 yearly a rent of 112 marks to the King, "for 
 the which said fee-farm so to be paid your bailiffs 
 have little or naught of certainty to raise it of, 
 but only of casualties and yearly leases 40 or 
 more." There was further a sum of 50 10s. 4=d. 
 for the tax of the fifteenth, " the which when it 
 is levy able, some one man in the said city is set 
 unto four marks and some five marks, because 
 your said city is desolate of people." Then came 
 a sum of GQs. to be paid yearly to the Magdalen 
 
 J Gross, ii. 260-1. 
 
 2 Payments for stalls went to the King's ferm. (Ibid. 262.) 
 The question was therefore one of revenue and not one of 
 protection.
 
 x BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 320 
 
 Hospital ; l and besides that there were the expenses 
 of two burgesses to Parliament who cost 4s. a day ; 
 " and also the great charges and daily costs the which 
 your said poor city beareth about the enclosing and 
 murage of your said city." To add to all their 
 trouble a grant which the king had made to the 
 municipality in 1439 of forty marks from the ulnage 
 and subsidies of woollen cloths had been withdrawn 
 again ; and the commonalty sadly entreat that it may 
 be restored. 
 
 The King allowed the payment of the forty marks 
 during the next fifty years, and Winchester made 
 one or two further attempts at mending its fortunes. 
 The people of Southampton had as long ago as 1406 
 succeeded in obtaining a license from the bishop 
 of Winchester, to buy and sell within their town 
 during the fair of St. Giles ; 3 and the mayor and 
 community of Winchester perhaps hoped to follow this 
 example. In 1451 they raised a debate as to the 
 franchises and customs of the fair, and interfered with 
 the bishop's privileges ; but their usual ill luck 
 pursued them and they were obliged to submit and 
 give a promise that he should never again be dis- 
 turbed from having the keeping of the city and the 
 customs aforesaid. 4 A few years later a transient 
 gleam of hope was cast across the unhappy town 
 when the Italian merchants were driven out of 
 
 1 Archaeologia, i. 102. 
 
 2 The fraternity of St. John allowed nearly 35 a year to- 
 wards the maintenance of the bridge and walls. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 77. 
 
 4 Ibid. vi. 595-605.
 
 330 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 London in 1456, and in this sudden emergency 
 hired the "great old mansions" 1 which the Win- 
 chester traders had allowed to fall into decay, putting 
 the owners to heavy expenses for repairs. But 
 they seem never to have occupied the mansions 
 after all. Perhaps they were disheartened by the 
 sense of failing trade and oppressive taxes ; or 
 they possibly feared the dangers that might come to 
 them in a town that had never been allowed powers 
 to govern and defend and deal fairly by its own 
 townsfolk. In any case they left the big empty 
 houses to go to Southampton, and Winchester was 
 none the better. 2 
 
 Winchester was an extreme instance of difficulties 
 which were felt in every other town in a greater or 
 less degree. For scarcely any important borough was 
 without some ecclesiastical settlement within its 
 walls, and everywhere the dispute took the gravest 
 form. With the King or with a neighbouring lord 
 the boroughs might make terms of peace, or impose 
 conditions as conquerors, but their most imposing- 
 demonstrations were inevitably routed before the 
 power of the Church. Outbreaks of popular fury in 
 which from time to time the irritation of the burghers 
 found expression have often been represented as 
 symptoms of a spirit of malice and misrule by which 
 an ignorant mob was instigated to attack the most 
 
 1 Gregory's Chronicle of London, eel. Gairdner, Early English 
 Text Soc. 199. 
 
 - A charter of Edward the Fourth still speaks of Winchester 
 as now being " quite unable to pay the fee-farm rent of 100 
 marks." (Kitchin's Winchester, 174.)
 
 BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY 331 
 
 beneficent institution known to their society and with 
 no justification save from their lawless temper seek to 
 appropriate to themselves its privileges and possessions. 
 But the causes of the conflict were more valid and 
 serious. As the instances given in the next chapter 
 prove, the burghers learned by a genuine experience 
 to gauge the beneficence of the Church's claims to 
 temporal authority. There does not seem to have 
 been in England, as there often was abroad, the 
 additional stimulus of religious revolt, for the 
 practical townspeople apparently did not find the 
 slightest difficulty in distinguishing between spiritual 
 influence and secular jurisdiction, mainly perhaps 
 because the power of the ecclesiastical potentates in 
 England was of so limited a kind as to awaken but 
 a moderate fear and equally moderate excitement. 
 But in face of the secular problem created by the 
 presence of a rival authority ruling over half the space 
 enclosed in the town walls an authority with which 
 no permanent agreement could ever be concluded and 
 which was manifestly fatal to the dignity or the suc- 
 cess of municipal government the boroughs were 
 forced, as a mere matter of self-preservation, into 
 insistent and reiterated demands that this double 
 rule should be abolished, and that there should be 
 but one undivided and supreme control in each 
 community for civil affairs. When the pole-axes 
 and daggers with which they at first sought to en- 
 force their convictions were laid aside, they turned 
 to the law-courts and the paper wars of West- 
 minster to seek a remedy for their grievances ; 
 and it is in the records of trials from the middle
 
 332 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. x 
 
 of the fifteenth century to the Eeformation in 
 which the pleadings of both sides may be heard 
 that we find the real justification of the burghers' 
 claim to civic supremacy, and of their determined 
 assaults on the political independence of ecclesi- 
 astical communities.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Ix the history of Winchester we may perhaps find 
 a clue to the explanation of that great controversy 
 which for centuries divided the mediaeval municipalities 
 and the religious corporations into two hostile armies, 
 armies that chafed under the restraints of an 
 enforced and angry truce, and from time to time 
 broke into the brief exhilaration of a free fight. 
 There were certain towns, such as Exeter or Canter- 
 bury or Norwich, where the municipality was as free 
 as royal charters could make it and acknowledged no 
 dependence on Cathedral or Priory, and where 
 notwithstanding Town and Church were always in 
 arms against one another, and the task of adjusting 
 their mutual relations presented such insoluble 
 difficulties that every other question seemed of easy 
 settlement in comparison with a problem so insistent, 
 so manifold in its forms, so tremendous in its propor- 
 tions in the eyes of burgher and of ecclesiastic. The 
 convent or chapter, entrenched behind its circuit of 
 walls and towers, with its own system of laws, its
 
 334 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURA CHAP. 
 
 own executive, its independent trade and revenues, 
 had practically no interest either in the prosperity 
 or the security of the town, while its keenest activi- 
 ties, whether from the point of view of business or 
 religion, were enlisted in uncompromising defence 
 of ecclesiastical privilege. On the other hand the 
 body of burghers, conscious of the difficulties of 
 government, with a mass of complicated business 
 thrown on their hands and a heavy financial responsi- 
 bility, nervously keeping guard over their franchises, 
 inspired by a commanding sense of the importance 
 of strict organization, and an ambition stimulated 
 by tradition, success, and capacity, found in com- 
 mon experience reasons for judging that a double 
 system of law and a double authority was the negation 
 of order, peace, or material prosperity in their little 
 republic. Their avowed object was to put an end to 
 this division of the borough into two camps, and to 
 secure for the community the ultimate control of 
 administration within the city boundaries. Hence the 
 issues raised between the townspeople and the clerical 
 order were direct and clear. Questions of temporal 
 and spiritual power, of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of 
 the immunities claimed by the " clergy," of the gulf 
 that separated the servant of the Church from the 
 citizen of the State all these things were forced 
 home to the people with the sharpness, variety, and 
 force of practical illustration. The war which in 
 the twelfth century had been waged on behalf of 
 the State and the Church by their great representa- 
 tives, Henry the Second and Archbishop Thomas, 
 was during the next three centuries brought down
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 335 
 
 into every borough and fought out there in more 
 humble fashion by provincial mayors and ecclesiastics 
 of a circumscribed and stinted fame. 
 
 And as the quarrel was long so it was practically 
 universal. It was this that made the struo-ale so 
 
 GO 
 
 momentous. Few boroughs after all were subject to 
 the absolute rule of ecclesiastical lords ; and their 
 attempts to win freedom were local, isolated, without 
 national significance. But all the great towns had 
 one or more ecclesiastical bodies established within 
 their boundaries, and all were able to appreciate the 
 character of the conflict entailed on them. Nor 
 were the consequences of the dispute exaggerated 
 by the combatants on either side. During centuries 
 of strife they had abundant opportunity of gauging 
 its importance from the time of Edward the 
 First, when, by the enclosing of churchyards and 
 ecclesiastical precincts with walls, the attempt was 
 made to shut in religious authorities within their 
 own limits, and give the town undivided respon- 
 sibility outside these boundaries till the time when 
 triumphant burghers saw walls and towers levelled 
 to the ground under Henry the Eighth. 
 
 For in the war waged by burghers against clerics 
 who used spiritual authority to create temporal sover- 
 eignty, and in this temporal power then found means 
 to enforce spiritual claims, though the combatants 
 were people of no account, fighting their quarrel out 
 in remote and isolated boroughs, and though the noise 
 of the battle no longer resounded as it had once done 
 throughout Europe, the conflict was still the same, 
 the questions were as vital for the just ordering of
 
 336 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 human society, and the tenacity of the opponents 
 was as great as ever. The disputes covered the 
 whole field of practical life. In matters of trade there 
 was not only the rivalry of two trading companies 
 under different conditions of wealth, influence, and 
 protection ; l but even in the case of individuals there 
 was unfair competition, as when a citizen gave up his 
 dwelling in the town, obtained a corrody in some 
 ecclesiastical house, and claimed the benefits of citizen- 
 ship without bearing its obligations. 2 Sometimes the 
 burghers found themselves called to defend against 
 the ecclesiastical lawyers a right which had been 
 proved essential to their freedom the right of being- 
 tried only in their own courts and the commonalty 
 would make ordinances that no process-server should 
 carry or cite elsewhere men or women living in the 
 borough, and the jury of the Leet Court kept watch 
 and made their presentment of summoners, com- 
 missary, and clerks who had dealt lightly with the 
 liberties or goods of the citizens, or called them to 
 distant courts. 3 Or again, the iiwaluable privilege of 
 having all matters that concerned the commons of the 
 borough tried by a, jury of inhabitants and not of 
 aliens, might be put in jeopardy. In Lincoln the dean 
 and chapter had a special grudge against trials " by 
 
 1 See the case of Lincoln, Rot. Parl. i. 156-7. 
 
 2 Hudson's Leet Jurisdiction of Norwich (Selden Soc.). 
 
 3 Cutts' Colchester, 149. Hudson's Norwich Leet- Jurisdiction 
 (Selden Soc.), 17. See pp. xxxvii., xli. The constables of Nott- 
 ingham at the court Icet present the " Master Official (of the 
 archdeacon) for excessive and extorcious taking of fees " for 
 probate of testaments, and for over assessing poor folks and 
 men's servants at Easter for their tythes. (Records, iii. 364.)
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHUECH 337 
 
 people of the same city, which be so favourable one 
 to another 'that they doubt not to make false oaths, 
 and that because they be encouraged, forasmuch as 
 they have not been before this time convict by 
 foreigners by colour of their franchise." On their 
 complaint " our lord the King, willing, for the cause 
 aforesaid, to provide for the quietness of the said 
 church, and full right to be done as well to the said 
 bishop, dean, and chapter and their successors," ordered 
 that henceforth " if any of the parties feel himself 
 grieved of a false oath made by such assize, jury, 
 or inquest, the attaint shall be granted to him, and 
 the record sent by writ into the King's Bench or 
 into the Common Pleas ; and that the sheriff im- 
 panel the jury of such attaint of foreigners of the 
 county, without sending to the franchise of the said 
 city, and that the justices shall take the same jury 
 of the same foreigners, notwithstanding any franchise 
 granted to the same city, or other usage to the con- 
 trary." l The question of sanctuary, too, remained a 
 standing trouble, and the bailiffs of the borough who 
 sent town clerks and town Serjeants to make procla- 
 mation for weeks together at the abbey gate calling 
 upon a debtor who had fled from his creditors to 
 appear for judgement, had small sympathy with the 
 abbot's privileges. 2 Whenever burghers had liberty 
 and opportunity to act on their own judgement 
 they found no difficulty in coming to a decision as 
 to the sanctity imposed by religion on territories 
 
 1 13 Richard the Second, 1, c. 18. Statute 4 Henry the Fifth, 
 c. 5, repeats with some alterations that of Richard 
 
 2 1454, Cutts' Colchester, 150-1. 
 
 VOL. I z
 
 338 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 consecrated to sacred uses. From old premises they 
 drew new conclusions. " As holiness becomes the 
 Lord's House," declared the mayor, jurats, and whole 
 community of Rye in 1483, "in future, to the honour 
 of God and of the glorious Virgin Mary, the parish 
 church of the said town, with the churchyard and 
 the manse of the vicarage thereof, shall be of the 
 same freedom, and with as much liberty as the other 
 houses of the freemen, especially as to arrests and 
 other matters." l 
 
 There is perhaps no better illustration of the 
 character and conditions of the controversy between 
 town and church than the story of the quarrel between 
 Exeter city and the Cathedral, which has been preserved 
 for us in the letters of an able mayor, who at a very 
 important crisis conducted the case of his fellow- 
 citizens against the chapter, and whose phrases, 
 written in the heat of battle, carry us back into the 
 very midst of a long-forgotten strife. Descended from 
 an old county family which had thrown in its lot with 
 the burghers of Exeter and become traders in the city 
 and leaders in its counsels, John Shillingford was 
 born into a tradition of civic patriotism. His father 
 served as mayor from 1428 to 1430 and was noted for 
 being learned in the law ; and John Shillingford 
 himself was mayor three times, and the distinguished 
 leader from 1445 to 1448 of a struggle for independ- 
 ence which was already a hundred and fifty years old. 
 
 From 1206 or earlier Exeter had been governed 
 by its own mayor and bailiffs, and the citizens 
 held their town at a fee-farm rent from the King. 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 496.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 339 
 
 But a century later the mayor was a mere dependciit 
 of the Earl of Devonshire, wearing his " livery " as 
 one of his retainers and acknowledging his protection. 
 However it happened on a certain day in 1309 that 
 the earl and bishop made an attempt to buy all the 
 fish in the Exeter market, leaving none for the towns- 
 folk. Then the mayor, " minding the welfare of the 
 commons of the said city, and that they also might 
 have the benefit of the said market," ruled that one- 
 third of the fish must be given to the citizens. The 
 carl with loud threatenings angrily ordered his rebel- 
 lious dependent to appear before him. Followed by 
 a tumultuous procession of " his brethren and houest 
 commons of the said city," the mayor went from 
 the Guild Hall to the earl's house, entered his lord's 
 " lodging chamber," and there took off his " livery" 
 coat and gave it back to the earl once for all, the 
 commons meanwhile beating at the door and loudly 
 demanding their mayor, till the terrified earl entreated 
 him to quiet their clamour. The town forthwith 
 passed a law that no citizen should ever again 
 w r ear " foreigner's livery," and so began the long 
 fight for municipal independence. 1 
 
 For the same two great powers ever kept watch 
 on the Exeter citizens and their market, if by 
 chance there was any profit which could be turned 
 their way. At the town gates the Earls of Devonshire 
 held Exe Island and the adjoining suburb, com- 
 manded the navigation of the Exe, forced the mayor 
 to lay aside his mace as he approached the suburb, 
 and sought to recall the days when he had worn their 
 1 Freeman's Exeter, 165. 
 
 z 2
 
 340 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP, 
 
 livery. A more dangerous enemy was encamped within 
 the walls. Just opposite the little town-hall rose the 
 great wall with its towers which guarded the bishop's 
 palace, the cathedral, and the ecclesiastical precincts - r 
 and within this fortified enclosure ruled an august 
 power that defied the petty upstart forces of the 
 mayor and his group of shopkeepers outside. The 
 conflict of the town with the Earls, 1 if it lasted for 
 something like three hundred years, was still of minor 
 significance. The conflict with the Church was far 
 more dangerous in form and serious in its issues. 
 
 The town and the close, as we are told by the 
 mayor in 1448, had "been in debate by divers- 
 times almost by time of eightscore years, and that 
 I could never know, find nor read that we ever took 
 a suit against them, but ever stand in defence as- 
 a buckler player, and smiter never." Now at last, 
 however, the citizens were resolved " once to smite, 
 taking a suit," 3 as became the temper and traditions, 
 of the fifteenth century when such quarrels were 
 fought out, not with clubs and daggers, but in the 
 "paper wars of Westminster." As the crisis ap- 
 proached the townsfolk made ready for the fray. 
 Determined that their battle should be conducted 
 by the most capable man among them, at Michael- 
 mas, 1444, they elected as their mayor John Shil- 
 
 1 Freeman's Exeter, 84-5, 165-6. 
 
 2 Shillingf orcl's Letters (Camden Society), p. 68. An order 
 of the town had been issued in 1339 that no clerk of the con- 
 sistory court was to be chosen mayor or bailiff or allowed to 
 meddle with the elections. Freeman's Exeter, 147. 
 
 3 The bishop had taken an action years before in 1432-3. 
 Shillingford's Letters, xiv.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 341 
 
 liugford. He refused to accept office, upon which 
 they sent to Westminster and procured a writ 
 under the Privy Seal ordering him either to submit 
 or pay a fine of 1,000, a sum which probably no 
 single individual in Exeter at that time possessed. 
 In February 1445 therefore, he " came to the Guild 
 Hall and there was sworn ; and though at the first 
 with an evil will, yet in the end did perform it 
 very well," ' so well indeed that the bishop even 
 saw in " the wilful labour of John Shillingford " the 
 main cause of all " the great hurt and loss of the said 
 church and city." 
 
 Once Mayor Shillingford quickly threw down 
 his challenge to the chapter. On Ascension Day, 
 1445, the city Serjeant followed a servant of the 
 chancellor into the precincts, and there arrested him 
 when he was actually taking part in a procession, 
 holding up from the ground his master's golden 
 cope ; 3 and two more arrests of clerks followed in a 
 little over a year. A new mayor took his place at 
 Michaelmas 1445, but when in April 144G the chapter 
 prepared to bring a suit against the town, laying the 
 damages at 1,000, the city again fell back on 
 Shillingford and for the two critical years of the 
 strife he remained supreme magistrate and led the 
 fight as it broadened so as to cover the whole range 
 of the civic life. Party strife ran high, and the 
 inhabitants were soon on terms of open war. On one 
 occasion in the midst of the quarrel, a great stack of 
 wood which lay between the cathedral and the town 
 was set on fire at nine o'clock in the shortest time of 
 i Shillingford's Letters, xxii.-iv. - Ibid. 98. 3 Ibid. xiv.
 
 342 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 the year. This, the burgesses cried out, was done by 
 the ministers of the cathedral to burn down the town. 
 The charge was thrown back in their teeth by the 
 canons, who protested it was set afire by men of the 
 same city deliberately by consent of the commonalty 
 with intent to burn the church. 1 The tossing to and fro 
 of such an accusation gives us a glimpse of the state 
 of feeling that existed. The cathedral party hated 
 the townspeople as a usurping and rebellious mob ; 
 while to the townsfolk when their passion was aroused 
 the cathedral within its walls wore the aspect of a 
 fortress in their midst, held by the power of an ancient 
 enemy. 
 
 Which was the " smiter " in the quarrel it would 
 be indeed hard to say. The claims raised on either 
 side were absolutely irreconcilable, and each denied 
 with great frankness and conviction every asser- 
 tion put forward by the other. For convincing 
 proof of its own dignity the corporation boldly 
 carried back its inquiries to some unknown period 
 before the Christian era, when Exeter " was a city 
 walled, and suburb to the same of most reputation ; " 
 and recounted how " soon upon the passion of Christ 
 it was besieged by Vespasian by time of eight days ; 
 the which obtained not the effect of his siege, and so 
 wended forth to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to 
 Rome, and from Rome to Jerusalem, and then he 
 with Titus besieged Jerusalem and obtained and sold 
 thirty Jews' heads for a penny, as it appeareth by 
 Chronicles." They then passed on to its position 
 under the Saxon Kings ; and thence came directly to 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 86-7.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 343 
 
 the privileges of the mayor, derived from the good old 
 time when bailiffs and citizens held the town in 
 fee-farm from the King, before any monastery or 
 cathedral church was built. 1 All the historical re- 
 search on this side in fact plainly proved the ecclesias- 
 tical authority to be a mere modern usurpation, of no 
 credit or value. 
 
 The bishop and chapter for their part ignored the 
 times before Vespasian, and bluntly " say that they 
 doubt of Vespasian's being at Exeter, and so at 
 Bordeaux and Jerusalem, to sell thirty Jews' heads 
 for a penny ; " so coming at once to their main conten- 
 tion, they declared that St. Stephen's Fee was no 
 parcel of the city, as the Book of Domesday would 
 show, and was indeed " of elder time than is the 
 city," for Exeter was nothing more than a borough 
 till the first bishop had been installed there by the 
 Confessor. Indeed they observed that the mayor 
 himself was well known to be an officer of yesterday, 
 since till the time of Henry the Third there " was no 
 mayor nor fee-farm," but the town was governed by 
 the sheriff of the county, and the bishops in their 
 sphere had absolute jurisdiction, " without that time 
 out of mind there were any such mayor, bailiffs, and 
 commonalty known in the city. 2 
 
 But all the arguments of the bishop, " that blessed 
 good man in himself if he must be Edmund, Bishop 
 of Exeter," 3 as the mayor politely remarked, were 
 thrown away on Shillingford. " I said nay, and proved 
 it by Domesday," 4 he writes, fully satisfied that my 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 75-6. 2 Ibid, p. 95-6. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 1, 43. 4 Ibid. 10.
 
 344 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 lord " had no more knowledge of the ground of this 
 matter than the image in the cloth of arras there " l a 
 melancholy ignorance, " considering his blessedness, 
 holy living, and good conscience." The prelate's 
 history, indeed, like that of his antagonist, was not 
 without reproach. Domesday makes no mention of any 
 separate lands of the Church in Exeter ; but copies of 
 Domesday were scarce, and it was tolerably safe to refer 
 to its authority. In any case, however, the daily 
 pressure of circumstance was so strong that it mattered 
 very little to the opposing forces whether ancient 
 history justified their position or no. To the burghers 
 the difficulties of a divided administration, and the 
 humiliation of submission, were made more galling 
 every day by the growing prosperity of the town 
 and the independent temper of the time; while the 
 chapter, confident in the legal strength of their 
 position, had not the least hesitation in forcing on the 
 conflict. 
 
 The suit which opened in London in 1447 was 
 complicated and costly, 2 and mayor and law officers 
 and town councillors in Exeter had to put forth all 
 their resources. Perpetual consultations were carried 
 on in the Town Hall with the help of much malmsey ; 
 once two plovers and a partridge helped the feast. 
 As time went on the expenses in meat and drink 
 were heavy ; judges had to be feasted, and the muni- 
 cipal officers encouraged, and presents were needed 
 for the great folk in London, besides the serious cost 
 of sending messengers continually to London, Tiver- 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, p. 43, 44. 
 
 2 Ibid, xiv.-xvi. ; Freeman's Exeter, 158-60.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 345 
 
 ton, and Crediton. Even after the matter was finally 
 decided the city had to make up in the next year 
 rewards of money, and gifts of fish and wine, for 
 which it was still in debt. 1 
 
 The most arduous and costly part of the work, 
 however, lay in the vast amount of historical and 
 legal research which the case demanded. " It asketh 
 many great ensearches," said Shillingford, " first in 
 our treasury at home among full many great and old 
 records ; afterward at Westminster, first in the Chan- 
 cery, in the Exchequer, in the Receipt, and in the 
 Tower ; and all these ensearches asketh great labour 
 long time as after this, to make our articles we have 
 many true against one of theirs." 2 Evidences and 
 documents were read and re-read, and arguments 
 brought from the Black Roll of the city, from Domesday 
 Book, from Magna Charta, from statutes, charters, and 
 letters patent, from the eyres holden at Exeter by 
 the judges of Edward the First, from records of the 
 "customs" under Henry the Third or Edward the 
 Third. The Recorder of Exeter worked hard, and 
 the mayor turned confidently to him when legal 
 questions became peculiarly obscure. It "is dark 
 to my conceit as yet," he writes from London ; 
 "but I trust to God it shall be right well with 
 vour good information and help thereto ; to which 
 intent I send you a roll in the which is contained 
 copies of Domesday, copy of eyres, of charters, 
 and other things that is necessary to be seen in 
 making of these replications. I can no more at this 
 time, but I pray you be not weary to over-read 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, p. 143, et seq. 2 Ibid. p. 58.
 
 346 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 hear and see all the writing that I have sent home 
 to you at this time ; and if you be, no marvel 
 though I be weary, and God be with you." l 
 
 Shillingford himself was constantly in London ; 
 where the record of one day's work may serve as an 
 instance of his activity. He left Exeter at 6 
 o'clock on Wednesday morning, and reached London 
 on Saturday at 7 A.M. " That day I had right great 
 business," he says. First he went to the Exchequer to 
 see about Exmouth Port ; then to Westminster 
 Hall to speak with various lawyers ; after that he 
 visited the chief justice, Sir John Fortescue, and rode 
 with him homeward ; then he called on another jus- 
 tice, Sir Richard Newton ; from thence he went to 
 commune " with our counsel of our matters ; " and in 
 the afternoon proposed to visit the archbishop at 
 Lambeth. 2 Meanwhile he kept a certain watch over 
 affairs at home, and sent an occasional order as to 
 the conduct of local business in Exeter. " Also I 
 charge Germin (the treasurer) under rule and com- 
 mandent of J. Coteler, my lieutenant, that he do 
 that he can do, brawl, brag and brace, lie and swear 
 well to, and in special that the streets be right clean 
 and specially the little lane in the back-side beneath 
 the flesh-fold gate, for there lieth many oxen heads 
 and bones, that they be removed away for the nonce 
 against my coming, as soon as I may by cokky's 
 bones." 3 
 
 From London long letters to the " Fellowship " at 
 home rehearsed every step of the negociations, from the 
 moment when the mayor first " came to Westminster 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 17. 2 Ibid. pp. 67, 68. 5 Ibid. 23.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 347 
 
 soon upon nine of the bell, and there met with my 
 lord chancellor at the broad door a little from the 
 stair-foot coming from the Star Chamber, I in the 
 court, and by the door kneeling and saluting him 
 in the most goodly wise that I could, and recom- 
 mended unto his good and gracious lordship my 
 fellowship and all the commonalty, his own people 
 and bedesmen of the city of Exeter. He said to 
 the mayor two times ' Welcome ' and the third 
 time ' Right welcome, mayor/ and held the mayor 
 a great while fast by the hand, and so went forth 
 to his barge and with him great press, lords and 
 other." In the same way Shillingford notes 
 
 carefully every detail of the grave ceremonial 
 observed before the arbiters of the city's destiny, 
 when " my lord took his chair and the justices 
 sat with him, and both parties with their counsel 
 kneeled before." 2 Then followed a long argument in 
 which the mayor held his own against the lawyers, 
 and "so we departed, standing afar from my lord, 
 and he asked wine and sent me his own cup, and 
 to no more ; " 3 also " my lord in this time did me 
 much worship and openly .... commended me for my 
 good rule at home." When a letter from the mayor 
 was addressed to the lord chancellor, we hear how the 
 recorder " kissed the letter and put it into my lord's 
 blessed hand, and my lord with a glad countenance 
 received the letter, and said that the mayor and all 
 the commons should have Christ's blessing and his, 
 and bade my master Radford 4 to stand up, and so 
 
 1 Shiilingford's Letters, p. 6. 2 Ibid. p. 12. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 12-15, 63. " The Recorder of Exeter.
 
 348 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 did, and anon my lord brake the letter even while 
 grace was saying, and there right read it every deal 
 or he went to his dinner." 
 
 Business in London was best furthered by judi- 
 cious gifts, and Exeter was constantly called on to 
 send fish to the chancellor conger eel, 400 of 
 buckhorn or dried whiting, or a " fish called crabs." l 
 Or again when the prudent mayor heard the lord 
 chancellor bid the justice to dinner for a Friday, " I 
 did as me thought ought to be done. . . and sent 
 thither that day two stately pickerellis and two 
 stately tenches." 2 This proved a very successful 
 venture, as " it came in good season " for the great 
 lords and bishops who dined with the chancellor that 
 day. At one stage of the business indeed the mayor 
 thought it unwise to proceed with his argument 
 until a certain present of fish should arrive. " I 
 tarried and yet tarried because of the buckhorn, 
 the which came not yet, me to right great anger 
 and discomfort by my troth. . . for it had been a 
 good mean and order, after speaking and communica- 
 tion above-said, the buckhorn to have been presented, 
 and I to have come thereafter, and so to have sped 
 much the better ; but now it is like to fail to hinder- 
 ing." 3 Whether it was the fault of the trea- 
 surer of the town, or of the carrier, he did not know ; 
 he was sure each would accuse the other. " Christ's 
 curse have they both," he breaks out, " and say 
 ye amen, non sine merito, and but ye dare say so, 
 think so, think so ! " At last the buckhorn arrived on 
 Candlemas even " better late than never," said the 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 146. 2 Ibid. 9. 3 Ibid. 23, 150.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 349- 
 
 irritated mayor. " That day was I at Lambeth with 
 my lord at mass, and offered my candle to my lord's 
 blessed hand, I kneeling adown offering my candle. 
 My lord with laughing cheer upon me said heartily 
 ' Graunt mercy, mayor ; ' and that same day I 
 abode there to meat by my said lord's command- 
 ment ; I met with my lord at high table end com- 
 ing to meatward, and as soon as ever he saw me 
 he took me fast by the hand and thanks enough to ; 
 I said to my said lord it was too simple a thing 
 considering his estate to say on his ' graunt mercy,' 
 but if I had been at home at this fair he should 
 have had better stuff and other things. I went 
 forth with him to the midst of the hall, he stand- 
 ing in his estate against the fire a great while, and 
 two bishops, the two chief justices, and other lords, 
 knights and squires, and other common people great 
 multitude, the hall full, all standing afar apart from 
 him, I kneeling by him, and after recommendation 
 I moved him of our matter shortly as time asked." 
 He closed this argument against the prelate's mal- 
 practices in his most graceful manner " I in my 
 leave-taking saying these words, ' My lord have pity 
 and mercy upon that poor city, Jesus vidit civitatem 
 et flevit super earn" l 
 
 But amid all the fashions of the chancellor's court 
 the mayor never for a moment lost the sense of his 
 own dignity as the representative of a free city. 
 Deferential and scrupulous in paying the grave 
 courtesies of an exact formality, Shillingford was 
 inflexible in all that lay beyond mere ceremonial ; 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 37, 38.
 
 350 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 for, as he said, " the matter toucheth the great 
 commonalty of the city of Exeter as well as him." 
 " The said mayor," he writes on one occasion, " con- 
 ceived and knew right well that his said lord bishop 
 took unworthy, as he might right well, for simple- 
 ness and poverty to speak or entreat with him. 
 Nevertheless he said, such simple as he was, he was 
 Mayor of Exeter." In every dilemma he fell back 
 haughtily on his own " simpleness," and on his sub- 
 jection to the town council at home, " having no 
 power, nor nought may do, say, agree, nor assent, 
 without a communication had with my fellowship 
 a commonalty which is hard to deal with," 3 added 
 the artful mayor, with a humour which his submissive 
 subjects at Exeter doubtless fully appreciated. 4 
 
 We may safely assume that great labour and cost 
 were not expended without some serious reason by 
 the Exeter citizens a community of hard-working 
 
 1 Shillingforu's Letters, 11, 47. 2 Ibid. 43, 45. 
 
 3 Ibid. 32, see 11, 14, 20. 
 
 4 His temper towards ecclesiastical interference and his 
 urbanity in argument are admirably shown in a letter to the 
 bishop's counsel. The rough draft of the letter ends with a fine 
 outburst of anger. " We would fain have an end," he writes, 
 and goes on to ask how it was possible for any one ever to 
 conceive that " John Shillyng, for no dread of great words of 
 malice, disclaunders, language, writings, nor setting up of bulls 
 bo that intent to rebuke me and to make me dull to labour for the 
 right that I am sworn to, for truly I will not be so rebuked nor 
 dulled, but the more boldlier." But he struck out this vigorous 
 passage in the second draft in favour of a less belligerent sentence 
 " for ye may fully conceive that my fellows and I would fain 
 have a good end and peace, praying you to apply your good will 
 and favour to the same." Shillingford's Letters, 25.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 351 
 
 practical traders, who knew the value both of their 
 time and their money. And in the mayor's accounts 
 of the proceedings in London we can gather up the 
 long list of grievances which had gone on accumulat- 
 ing within the walls of this little city between 
 Church and State, till the inhabitants found themselves 
 ranged in two hostile armies, to either of which sur- 
 render meant ruin and enslavement. 
 
 (l) The most burning question at issue was the 
 right of arrest of the bishop's tenants, or within 
 the ecclesiastical precincts. Among many other 
 
 Lucays, tenant of the said bishop, the most, or one 
 of the most, misgoverned men of all the city of 
 Exeter, or of all the shire afterward," who made a 
 fray upon a townsman at the very door of the Guild 
 Hall, and w T hen the sergeant seized him " brake 
 the arrest and went his way " into the church, 
 pursued by the two Serjeants. The stewards of 
 the city who followed with the king's mace to keep 
 the king's peace found the church doors shut upon 
 them, and the prisoner " violently with strong 
 hand taken away from them " ; and various clerks 
 and ministers of the church, by order of the dean 
 and chapter, fell on them with door-bars, swords, 
 daggers, long- knives, and " Irish skenes," so that 
 " both stewards and Serjeants stood in despair of their 
 lives, and scarce escaped out of the church with their 
 lives." : This was the mayor's story. The bishop 
 on his part said that Hugh Lucas was an innocent 
 man, who was driven into the cathedral during 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 52-3. - Ibid. 78.
 
 352 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 divine service by the turbulent mob of burghers 
 brandishing " swords, daggers, and other invasive 
 weapons," and intent only on wickedness and misrule. 1 
 Then again one of the bishop's servants who had struck 
 a townsman in the eye with a dagger almost unto 
 death, could not be punished because he had been 
 standing within the Close gate, between the cemetery 
 and the city. " Also ofttimes the mayor hath not 
 dared do the law and execution thereof. . . for now 
 almost every mantaketh colour by my lord" the bishop. 
 If any riotous person made a fray, he would run off and 
 " take the church late ; " if a man was arrested on 
 Saturday, " he must be delivered to make my lord's 
 work " on Sunday, 2 and by such devices both men and 
 women " by whom the mayor is rebuked " got off scot 
 free. A compromise had been made that the city officers 
 should make no arrests in church or cemetery from 
 the ceasing of Our Lady bell to the end of Com- 
 pline, but the chapter later laid this against them 
 in evidence that they had no right ever to make 
 any arrest there, " which is to the said mayor and 
 commonalty great vexation, hurt, and hindering ; 
 and to misgoverned men, rioters, and breakers of 
 the peace great boldness." 3 The mayor alleged 
 that it was impossible to keep order in face of 
 privileges which rendered the clergy and their tenants 
 practically independent of the law. " Night walk- 
 ing, evil language, visao-ing, shouldering, and all 
 
 O 7 O o ' O O' O ' 
 
 riotous rule" went on unchecked, seeing that the 
 
 mayor " could no longer rule the King's people 
 
 after his laws, nor do right as he is sworn to, for 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 97. " Ibid. 53. 3 Ibid. 66, 10, 94.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 353 
 
 dread of iny lord." l Just outside St. Peter's Close 
 stood a well-known tavern, and the canons who 
 owned the Broad Gate kept its wicket open al- 
 most all the night, " out of which wicket into which 
 tavern cometh the great part of all the rioters into 
 the Close, priests and others," said the townspeople, 
 and there made sleep impossible the whole night 
 long to the neighbours. The canons however 
 held that the "mayor and such dreadful people of 
 his commonalty be the misgoverned people and 
 incomers that they spoke of." According to the 
 clerical party indeed the whole municipal body was 
 altogether sunk in sin ; the very town Serjeants were 
 " wild and unreasonable fellows," who had even been 
 heard to threaten " that there should many a priest 
 of the Close of Exeter lose his head once of midsummer 
 even ; " 2 and as for the tavern, it was wholly the 
 mayor's business to keep order there, unless indeed, 
 as they suggested, it was he himself " that is cause 
 and giver of example to all such misgovernance." 3 
 This charge, however, which the chancellor had struck 
 out with his own hands, was one about which the 
 mayor did not greatly trouble himself. " As touching 
 the great venom that they meaneth of my living," he 
 wrote to the Fellowship, " I take right nought by and 
 say sadly ' si recte vivas' etc, and am right merry 
 and fare right well, ever thanking God and my 
 own purse. And I lying on my bed at the writing 
 of this right early, merrily singing a merry song, and 
 that is this ' Come no more at our house, come, come, 
 come ! ' I will not die nor for sorrow nor for anger, 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 53. 2 Ibid. 64. 3 Ibid. 93, 104. 
 
 VOL. I A A
 
 354 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 but be merry and fare right well, while I have 
 money ; but that is and like to be scarce with me, 
 considering the business and cost that I have had 
 and like to have ; and yet I had with me 20 and 
 more by my troth, whereof of troth not right much 
 I spend yet, but like, &c. Construe ye what ye will." 1 
 
 (2) It was a further grievance to the townspeople 
 that the bishop claimed the right to hold both 
 a court baron and leet and view of frankpledge, 
 and on this pretence called before himself various 
 pleas and matters that should have been tried be- 
 fore the mayor and bailiffs, thus covetously gather- 
 ing into his coffers fines on which they themselves 
 had set longing eyes ; and moreover that he took to 
 himself any goods seized from felons. 2 There had 
 been angry feeling over the case of one John Barton, 
 whom the town officers pursued for robbing. But as 
 it was a church that he had robbed, and as he had 
 hidden the stolen goods in a tenement of the bishop's, 
 the ecclesiastics, rather than see justice done by the 
 secular power, had shut the door in the face of the 
 municipal officers, and had hurried off the sacrilegious 
 thief into the cathedral, then smuggled him out into 
 a bakehouse, and so conveyed him out of the city ; 
 while the stolen goods were kept with a strong hand 
 to the use of the bishop, " to great hurt and hindering 
 of our sovereign lord the Kino- and the said mayor 
 and commonalty." : 
 
 (3) In all towns where the question of jurisdiction 
 was raised between the townsfolk and the Church 
 
 1 Shillingf orcl's Letters, 16. 2 Ibid. pp. 10. 14. 91, 99, 104. 
 3 ibid. 83-4.
 
 xr THE TOWNS AND THE CHUKCH 355 
 
 party the quarrel about coroner's inquests ran high. 
 Churchmen and laymen alike had to submit to the 
 coroner's inquest. But chapters of cathedrals and 
 monasteries found it less humiliating to admit within 
 their precincts an officer of the shire than the town 
 officer sent in by a mayor who was for ever keeping 
 his jealous watch at their gates. On the other hand, 
 after their long and determined struggle to be freed 
 from foreign interference, the towns looked with 
 suspicion on the appearance within their walls on any 
 pretext whatever of any official of the shire. In Exeter 
 as elsewhere the city coroner claimed " to corowne 
 prisoners dead in the bishop's prison," but the bishop 
 flatly refused to admit into the precincts any officer 
 save the coroner of Devonshire, and if the municipal 
 coroners on hearing of a prisoner's death appeared 
 at the gates of the Close, they were turned back by 
 " servants of the said bishop, and by his com- 
 mandment they were let to do their office there ; 
 and the said prisoners so dead buried uncoroned." l 
 
 (4) There was also as might be expected a burning 
 controversy as to the city taxes. 2 The mayor alleged 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 83, 84, 99. Compare Norwich, 
 Blomefield, iii. 62. In Canterbury the murder of a citizen by a 
 waggoner of the priory in 1313 gave rise to a hot dispute as to 
 the jurisdiction of the city coroner. The Convent refused him 
 admittance within the priory gates, smuggled in an alien coroner to 
 view the body, and then had it buried by the prior's grooms. The 
 story is given in an Inspeximus of Richard the Second ; Muni- 
 ments of Canterbury. 
 
 2 The distribution of taxes was a matter of special arrange- 
 ment in the different towns. By the request of the canons the 
 ecclesiastical tenants at Grimsby were not tallaged with the 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 that lie and his deputies had been accustomed to 
 collect in the cathedral precincts a certain proportion 
 of the King's taxes, the ferm, and the sums needed 
 for general town expenses ; and Shillingford sup- 
 ported this claim before the lord chancellor by "a 
 long rehearsal thereof from King Edward's time unto 
 this day, how and under what form it was done of 
 old time." 1 Of late however the bishop's tenants 
 had refused to come to the Guild Hall and have 
 their share assessed, " by the commandment of the 
 said bishop menacing the said tenants .... to put 
 them out of their tenures. And so they durst not 
 come, set, nor pay as they have been wont to do." 2 
 The bishop justified his action by a variety of argu- 
 ments. The King's taxes he probably could not dispute 
 
 burgesses (Madox, 270). In Leicester the tenants of the Bishop's 
 Fee just without the walls did suit and service to the Bishop of 
 Lincoln ; a compromise had been made in 1281 by which it 
 was decided that the Bishop's tenants should share in certain com- 
 mon expenses, and should in return enjoy the franchises and free 
 customs which had been won by the Merchant Guild of Leicester ; 
 but while the burgesses had to bear the charges both of " the 
 community of the town," and " the community of the guild," the 
 bishop's tenants only paid for such matters as touched " the com- 
 munity of the guild," and were not liable for the general town 
 taxes. (Gross, ii. 140-1.) As early as 1189 the Guild of 
 Nottingham obtained the right to raise contributions to the ferm 
 rent from tenants of all fees whatsoever. In Norwich this was 
 given in 1229 (Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, etc., 5, 6). But 
 the question of collection still remained a burning one, and the 
 itinerant justices having failed in 1239 to settle matters between 
 the convent and the city, the King himself went to Norwich to 
 insist 011 an agreement in 1241. (Blomefiekl, iii. 46.) See 
 ]>. 357, note 4. 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, p. 13. 2 Ibid. 79.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 357 
 
 with any show of reason. But with regard to the 
 ferm he employed a comprehensive mode of reason- 
 ing which struck at the very foundation of all 
 authority of mayor or commonalty ; for that, he said, 
 the town had no power whatever to collect, since 
 Exeter had neither mayor nor bailiffs nor any fee- 
 ferm at all till the time of Henry the Third, and even 
 then the grant was illegally made by Richard of 
 Almayne, who really possessed no rights in the 
 borough. 1 For the taxes connected with municipal 
 expenses, or as the mayor called them, the " citizens' 
 spending," he asserted that his tenants were not 
 legally responsible. In any case he differed altogether 
 from the citizens in his definition of the " ancient 
 custom " by which the payment of the taxes should 
 be regulated, 2 and complained that his tenants had 
 not been duly summoned to take part in the assess- 
 ment, and " of malice " had been charged in their 
 
 absence " an importable sum so that there 
 
 would have remained in the mayor's hands a great 
 sum thereof above the said dime," like as there had 
 remained in other mayors' hands as much as 7 or 
 5, sometimes more or less. 3 
 
 (5) In one of the most burdensome duties of town 
 life, the keeping of watch and ward, the depend- 
 ents of St. Peter's fee had sought to throw the 
 whole labour on the citizens. 4 The bishop's tenants 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 96. 2 Ibid. pp. 98, 108. 
 
 3 For the mayor's defence, see p. x. 107-9. 
 
 4 The tenants of the hospital of S. John in Worcester refused 
 to aid in tallages, to submit to the assize of bread and beer, under 
 the town's officers, and to keep watch and ward. In 1221 they
 
 358 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 when they were summoned " to come and keep the 
 watch and the peace came not. . . but they* were 
 forbode upon a great pain, and charged if any of the 
 mayor's officers entered into any tenement of the 
 bishop for to warn any man to come to the watch, 
 that they should break his head." l The bishop in fact 
 had ordered that a fine of 40s. a fine quite beyond 
 the power of an ordinary tradesman to pay should be 
 levied from any one who dared to serve on the watch. 
 " Whereupon the mayor made right great wayward 
 language to them. The mayor said waywardly he 
 would do more, he would make levy both of the 
 citizens' spending and the fee-farm, and that he would 
 well avow, and bade them of all to inform the Justice 
 thereof, and that lie would do the same ; and so the 
 
 1 1 Jj 9 
 
 mayor did. 
 
 (6) " The most disclaunderous article " of all, ac- 
 cording to the bishop, was the question of the assize 
 of wine, ale, and bread. While the mayor claimed 
 the assize over the bishop's demesne, the bishop 
 asserted that such assize " of time that no mind is " 
 belonged wholly to the bishop himself, and in no wise 
 
 were ordered to do all these things. (Select Pleas of the Crown, 
 Selden Soc. p. 97.) In 1331 Norwich resisted the handing 
 over of three houses to the prior and convent " for that a very 
 great part of the same city which is inhabited, is in the hands of 
 the prior and convent and of other religious persons, whereby the 
 inhabitants are at their distress, and cannot be tallagecl to the 
 tallages and aids of the lord the King and of the city aforesaid 
 as tenants should be, nor can they be in assizes, juries, and recog- 
 nizances, whereby others dwelling in the same city are burdened 
 and grieved more than usual by such gifts and assignments." 
 (Norwich Documents, Stanley v. Mayor, pr. 1884, 24, 25). 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 44-45. 2 Ibid. 52.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 359 
 
 to the mayor. 1 This matter was partly a question of 
 finance, and partly a question of order. So long as 
 wine was first smuggled in by the bishop's tenants, and 
 then sold in the houses of the canons and in the pre- 
 cincts, against " the ordinances and cry " made by the 
 mayor, the town lost the customs which ought to be 
 paid at the port of Exniouth on every pipe of wine ; 
 and as the ferm was paid out of these customs, the 
 bishop's tenants escaped their share of the rent, 2 and 
 left the whole burden to be borne by the citizens. 
 The corporation further lost the " wine gavell " paid 
 on all wine sold by retail in the town. Moreover 
 fraudulent sellers went unpunished ; for instead of 
 allowing the town officers to cast into the canal wine 
 which was condemned by the municipality as "cor- 
 rupt and not whole for man's body, damnable and 
 which should ])& damned," the bishop's tenants actu- 
 ally found means to gather from it profits of iniquity; 
 " the which corrupt wine hath been carried to Tops- 
 ham and there shipped, and so led to Bordeaux, there 
 to be put and melled among new wine, as it shall be 
 well proved if need be." In the same way the weigh- 
 ing of bread was resisted, and the due testing of 
 beer, and the authority of the city set at nought. 
 
 (7) There was also a quarrel about who was to get 
 the profits from increased rents of stalls and shops 
 and houses which opened on the market-place, 3 and 
 whose value altogether depended on the growth of 
 the market and the town trade. Both the munici- 
 pality and the church would willingly have seized 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 91-2, 104-5. 
 
 * Ibid. 92. 3 Ibid. 100, 109.
 
 360 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 the " unearned increment." The convent had set up 
 stalls and booths " on the ground of the said mayor 
 and citizens without licence of them asked " great 
 stalls sixty feet long and over three feet broad, where 
 of old time there had only been' shop windows, " the 
 leaves thereof going inward, and none other ne never 
 were." The bishop answered that any one in the 
 town might put stalls outside his own house if he 
 chose ; and in any case, he added, with consistent 
 denial of the authority of the corporation, it was a 
 matter to be punished by the King, if at all, and not 
 by the commonalty. When the townsmen further 
 urged that they had always " of time that no mind 
 is " held their fish-market in Fish Street, a sort of 
 debateable land, which lay outside the cemetery but 
 within the precincts of the close, but that now the dean 
 and chapter had refused to let the market be held 
 there, and had themselves made stairs and gardens 
 encroaching on the street, which moreover cut off 
 the mayor's way to the town walls and towers, the 
 bishop answered in quibbling wise that as there never 
 was such a street as Fish Street, no market could well 
 be held in it, nor could it be encroached upon : 
 w r hat the town chose to call Fish Street, the prelate 
 explained, was in his nomenclature S. Martin's or the 
 Canon's Street. 1 
 
 (8) As in other fortified towns, where the wall of 
 the ecclesiastical precincts ran side by side with the 
 city wall, 2 endless questions were raised as to the 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 84-5, 99. 
 
 2 En Canterbury also the Convent was bent on getting posses- 
 sion of that part of the covered way which lay along its territory.
 
 xr THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 361 
 
 management and repair of walls and towers, and the 
 control of the city gates, and the use of the narrow 
 way that ran inside the wall for the movement of 
 troops, the carriage of ammunition, and the ap- 
 proach of the city authorities, or of workmen- 
 questions which in time of war or of civil revolt 
 were of vital consequence, and which even in quiet 
 days brought frequent trouble. Each side claimed 
 the lane, and the mayor and corporation objected to 
 the canons who, having back doors opening from the 
 gardens into it, had made it into a mere rubbish heap, 
 so " that no man therein may well ride nor go nor 
 lead carriage to the walls, to the great hurt and 
 hindering of the mayor and commonalty ; " and who 
 had further broken up the great drain which had 
 been made to draw off rain water from the town and 
 had carried away the stones. Moreover the common- 
 alty had spent 20 on building a great tower " and 
 right a strong door with lock and key made thereto 
 and fast shut, to this intent there to bring in stuff 
 for the war and defence of the city and other thing- 
 more of the said city there to be kept strong, safe, 
 and sure ; but whenever this lock, and those of 
 
 and the city wall itself so far as it touched the Cathedral 
 precincts. Their first step was taken in 1160, and their final 
 success was not assured till 1492, when the city resigned to the 
 Convent the wall and covered way between Burgate and North- 
 gate with the waste land adjoining, and the chapter was allowed 
 to make a postern and to build a bridge across the f oss. Such an 
 arrangement was of course only possible at a time when peace 
 with France, and the close of civil wars and riots at home had 
 freed the town from danger of siege or revolution. (Lit. Cant., 
 i. 60-2, iii. 318-20.) See also Davies' Walks through York, 
 11, 12.
 
 362 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 various postern doors, were repaired " they have 
 been right spitefully broke up by the bishop, and 
 dean and chapter," and the door of the tower left at 
 all times open so that the canons could throw their 
 rubbish into it. And finally, the canons having 
 fitted one of the town gates with a new lock and 
 key of their own, by night and day " full ungodly 
 carriage have been led in and out." " At which gate 
 also ofttime have been great affrays and debate, 
 and like to have been manslaughter, and divers 
 night-walkers and rioters coming out at that gate 
 into the city, and there have made many affrays, 
 assaults, and other riotous misgovernance against the 
 peace, and broken out over the town walls, and much 
 more mischief like to fall by that gate without better 
 remedy had." To all these charges the canons 
 answered that the lane was their own property, nor 
 had they ever broken any gutter there nor thrown 
 
 J \j O 
 
 rubbish out ; and as to the wall it was the commonalty 
 which " by their frowardness to evil intent," had let 
 it fall down and had not repaired it "in any time 
 this hundred year ; " while the towers stood on 
 ecclesiastical ground, " and the bishop sometime had 
 his prison in that tower." l 
 
 (9) The common use of the cathedral became a 
 further subject of wrangling, as the corporation pressed 
 for sole authority within the tower inclosure and the 
 ecclesiastical party retorted by stricter protection of 
 its own peculiar property. It had been the custom 
 at fair-time to set up booths in the cemetery and even 
 within the church ; but the dean and chapter now 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 88, 89, 16.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 363 
 
 began to demand tolls, especially from tlie jewellers' 
 stalls. This the town angrily resented, and the matter 
 was referred to arbitrators, who decided that the chap- 
 ter had no right to any such tolls within church or 
 cemetery, " for anger and evil will whereof the said 
 dean and chapter by their ministers and servants, 
 ever since have put out j all such merchants and 
 merchandize contrary and against the old rule and 
 use, and to the destruction of the fairs and markets." 1 
 Moreover the canons proceeded to lock the doors 
 of a cloister adjoining the church which was accord- 
 ing to the citizens " a common way for the mayor 
 and commonalty" into the cathedral, and "a place 
 of prayer and devotion to pray for all souls whose 
 bones lay buried there." It was in no sense, said 
 the ecclesiastics, a "common way" of the towns- 
 people ; it was walled and glazed and had a chapter 
 house and library, and the canons were much offended 
 that " ungodly ruled people, most custumably young 
 people of the said commonalty within the said cloister 
 have exercised unlawful games as the top, ' queke,' 
 ' penny prykke,' and most at tennis, by the which 
 the walls of the said cloister have been defouled and 
 the glass windows all to brost, as it openly sheweth, 
 contrary to all good and ghostly goodness, and directly 
 against all good policy, and against all good rule within 
 the said cloister to suffer any such misruled people 
 to have common entry." The mayor still asserted 
 however that " within time out of mind there was no 
 such cloister there but all open church here, and a 
 common way into the said church." As to the 
 1 Shillingforrl's Letters, 93, 94.
 
 364 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 games, " the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty say that 
 they by the law be not bound thereto to answer." l 
 
 Amid the endless and vulgar details of all this 
 intricate quarrel, Shillingford held fast to the prin- 
 ciples which he saw plainly were of the very essence 
 of any true municipal life. Charters of freedom were 
 of no use if in every question of trade, of police, of 
 finance, of public order, ecclesiastical privilege stepped 
 in and brought all government save its own to 
 an end. All discussions from first to last invariably 
 came back to the one central problem the right of 
 arrest and here the mayor was determined that no 
 persuasion should induce him to abate one jot of 
 the city claims. He would give no assent to the 
 bishop's arguments drawn from an alleged friendly 
 agreement which laid down that the town officers 
 should make arrests in the cemetery only, and that 
 they might not arrest there the canons or men wear- 
 ing the religious habit or their ministers and ser- 
 vants, and steadfastly denied that any such writing 
 had ever been known or proved. Henceforth he 
 would not hear of concession or compromise ; 
 " it would seem if I so did that I had doubt of our 
 right where I have right none," 2 as he said to the 
 lord chief justice. When " my lord himself spake 
 darkly of right old charters," and conjured him to 
 make an end of the matter, " and if I so did I 
 should be chronicled ; " the mayor still remained 
 firm. 3 " I held my own, I had matter enough." He 
 was especially pressed in sundry points by the lord 
 
 1 Shillingforcl's Letters, pp. 85, 86, 101, 110. 
 
 2 Ibid. 9. 3 Ibid. 20.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 365 
 
 chancellor, who as a learned man made merry over 
 the tale of Vespasian's connexion with the city, a 
 piece of history upon which the mayor did not greatly 
 care to dwell ; l and as former canon of Exeter cathe- 
 dral he was ready at times to laugh over the stories 
 of his Exeter days, and of the exciting arrests and 
 lively disputes which he so well remembered ; "all 
 it was to tempt me with laughing cheer," said the 
 watchful mayor. 2 " At the last fell to matter of 
 sadness, and they spake of God's house, St. Peter's 
 Church of Exeter, and my lord spake of his house, 
 his hall, and the justice the same, how loath they 
 would be to make arrests therein, and said that St. 
 Peter's Church was God's house and His hall, &c., 
 and made many reasons to bring in absence of 
 arrests. 3 They were answered as God would give 
 us grace." The chancellor, as was natural from his 
 old association with the chapter, was especially 
 anxious to bring about a compromise favourable to 
 the church. He proposed that the city should have 
 the view of frankpledge over the whole city and 
 precincts, and should only make arrests ordered by 
 that court ; and on the other hand the bishop " to 
 have his courts of his own tenants and to hold pleas 
 of greater sum than the court baron, forty shillings, 
 and spake of forty marks. Upon this mean he 
 sticked fast and thought it was reasonable, and 
 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 12. 2 Ibid. 10, 19. 
 
 3 The Commons had perhaps some reason to ask in 1371 that 
 none but a layman should have charge of the seal. (Campbell's 
 Lives of the Lord Chancellors, i. 262.) This system, however 
 only lasted till 1378, and in the next hundred years, out of 35 
 chancellors only eight were laymen.
 
 366 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP 
 
 ever asked of me divers times what I would say, 
 thereto, all as I conceived to tempt me, and to 
 consent to a mean ; and then I said, my lord, if it 
 please you, ye shall have me excused to answer, 
 for though methought that it were a mean reason- 
 able I dare not say yea, though I have power, for 
 the matter toucheth a great commonalty as well as 
 me, and so that I dare not say unto time that I 
 have spoke with my fellowship at home." 1 
 
 For two years the discussions dragged on at one 
 place or another, till in 1448 an agreement was made 
 between Town and Church " by mean and mediation 
 of Thomas Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and of Sir 
 William Bonville, knight," and was four days later 
 (Dec. 16th, 1448) confirmed by the Chief Justice of 
 Common Pleas and another Judge. Exeter was 
 forgiven the enormous damages demanded by the 
 convent for the illegal arrests made by the town 
 officers within the precincts two years before 
 damages amounting to 1,000, or a sum which 
 must have been equal to many years' revenue of 
 the borough. For the rest the arbitration re- 
 asserted in definite terms the division of authority 
 against which the city had so vigorously protested. 
 The bishop was left absolute lord of his fee. All 
 he desired court baron, leet, view of frankpledge, 
 a rule without any disturbance of the mayor, bailiffs, 
 or coroners of the city, and with absolute freedom 
 from distress or arrest, was secured to him for 
 ever. He was only bound not to arrest any of the 
 mayor's subjects in his precincts. As for the mayor 
 1 Shillingford's Letters, 11.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 367 
 
 and commonalty they retained their ancient powers 
 in the city, but might make no arrests on church 
 lands. They might summon the bishop's tenants 
 to keep the watch in their turn, and might fine 
 them if they refused, making a levy on their goods 
 found without the Fee. In the king's taxes and the 
 city murage the church tenants were to take their 
 share, but it was to be raised by their own officers. 
 Lastly the mayor and bailiffs might have their 
 maces carried before them in the cathedral pre- 
 cincts without disturbance. 1 It was decreed that 
 no new charters were to disturb this arrangement ; 2 
 and hence forward the chapter guarded its privileges 
 with accurate solicitude. 3 
 
 This " final " settlement gave to the city all that 
 any lawyer could have given it in the fifteenth century, 
 for lawyers after all could only declare the legal 
 principles that had been laid down in times when 
 the power in the State had been very differently 
 balanced, and the fashioning of the law in these 
 matters had lain in the hands of ecclesiastics. States- 
 men like the chancellor moreover could discuss the 
 question with philosophic calm ; in the greater con- 
 cerns of national administration the problem between 
 
 1 Shillingford, 136-140. 
 
 2 In 1463 when Edward granted the city fresh franchises and 
 powers he exempted the close from civic jurisdiction. Freeman's 
 Exeter, 91. 
 
 3 In 1452 the judges held their assize in the hall of the bishop's 
 palace ; the King being in the town it was proved to him that 
 holding of assize in the bishop's hall was a breach of the privi- 
 leges of the church ; two traitors who had been condemned were 
 therefore pardoned by the King. Ibid. 89.
 
 368 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Church and State had been decided for them in the 
 days of Henry the Second, by methods as rough 
 and ready as any which burghers of later times had 
 attempted ; and they therefore now looked at the 
 townspeople's troubles from afar off. The pressure of 
 difficulty had changed, and whereas it was the people 
 who had once gained profit from ecclesiastical immu- 
 nities, while kings and statesmen had to bear the 
 violence of the battle for order and the authority of 
 government, now the brunt of the fight fell on 
 the common folk, while rulers at Westminster sat 
 at ease and calmly recounted the old arguments 
 which their greater predecessors had found it 
 necessary to repudiate utterly three hundred years 
 Itefore. 
 
 For the experience of Exeter was by no means 
 exceptional or rare, and if we turn to the history of 
 Canterbury or Norwich we find the same record of 
 centuries of passionate strife, with fire and pillage 
 and murder and costly processes of law ending in 
 yet fiercer antagonism. To multiply instances would 
 prove wearisome repetition, but considering the great 
 importance which these questions had for the medi- 
 aeval burgher, and the gravity of their results in 
 later history, it may be well to note in the history of 
 another town how, with a few superficial differences, 
 the fundamental difficulty was always the same. 
 
 In Canterbury, as we might expect, things were 
 yet more complicated than in Exeter, and the 
 situation of the citizens was one of considerable 
 perplexity. From almost every considerable holding 
 in the town some religious corporation claimed a rent
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 369 
 
 charge which had to be deducted in the city accounts. 
 The Convent of S. Gregory declared itself to be in the 
 shire of Kent and outside the city bounds, and as late 
 as 1515 asserted its freedom by refusing to take its 
 share in the payment of a subsidy ; when the mayor 
 levied a distress the convent sued him for trespass, 
 and a long and costly lawsuit followed. 1 The hos- 
 pitals of S. Nicholas at Harbledown and of S. John 
 Northgate were exempted by royal charter from 
 all tallages, aids, and contributions ; and their lands 
 and woods in the hundred of AVestgate were made 
 free from contribution for the defence of the coast. 2 
 But these trifling grievances scarcely came into 
 notice beside the troubles caused by greater ecclesi- 
 astical powers the Priory of Christ Church, the Con- 
 vent of S. Augustine's, and the Archbishop. The old 
 dissensions that had once disturbed their common 
 harmony had all been appeased by means of a com- 
 plete separation between the property and jurisdic- 
 tion of the Archbishop and the Convent of Christ 
 Church, which had been finally arranged somewhere 
 about 1260 ; and by an agreement which was con- 
 cluded about the end of the fourteenth century, be- 
 tween S. Augustine's and Christ Church, as to their 
 special disputes about ecclesiastical prerogatives, or 
 about the rights of the convents on the high sea, on 
 the quay at Fordwich, in the common meadows at 
 Sturry, and in the neighbouring harbours of Sandwich 
 which belonged to Christ Church, and Stonor which 
 belonged to S. Augustine's. 3 But in the general 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 150. 2 Ibid. 169. 
 
 3 Lit. Cant, i., Ixi. Sandwich and Stonor were the two ports 
 VOL. I B B
 
 370 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 peacemaking the city was left out, and the city had 
 its own separate grievances against archbishop, abbot, 
 and prior. 
 
 I. For the archbishop possessed certain rights which 
 were exceedingly inconvenient to the borough. In 
 case of a quarrel, he could refuse to ordain Canterbury 
 men, to confirm Canterbury children, or to allow the 
 offices of the Church to sick people, unless the towns- 
 folk swore to obey him in all things. He could forbid 
 his tenants to join in the great city festival of the 
 Translation of S. Thomas. He was known to have 
 cited 140 of the chief citizens to appear before him 
 at Charing, twelve leagues away from Canterbury 
 and without proper victuals, whereas by custom they 
 should be summoned to appear in their own cathe- 
 dral. Such \vere the complaints which the struggling 
 town had to make in 1290. 1 His borough of Staple- 
 gate, just opposite the palace and within the city 
 boundaries, was surrounded by a wall and exempt from 
 the jurisdiction of both the city and the county ; 2 
 even the royal writ did not run in it. Since his 
 tenants in "Westgate and Wingham were free from the 
 town authorities, when Westgate men took to building 
 their houses so near the river that the stream was 
 driven against the city walls with such force as to make 
 them fall, the town was helpless to check the evil, and 
 complained as loudly of the wrong in 1467 3 as it had 
 done in 1290. Or when Wingham men intercepted 
 
 of London and therefore of considerable consequence. For the 
 history of Stonor see Boys' Sandwich, 552-5, 658-62. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 172-3. 
 
 2 Ibid. 150. 3 Ibid. 172-3, 141.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHUECH 371 
 
 for their market the provisions which were on the 
 road to Canterbury, and thus both diminished the 
 tolls of provisions taken at the Canterbury gates and 
 increased the price of food, the corporation had no 
 remedy, for the archbishop's right to hold a market 
 at Wingham could not be denied. 1 Moreover the 
 Whitstaple fishermen, also tenants of the archbishop, f 
 were supported by him in 1431 in their claim of a 
 right to sell fish in the city free from any toll save a 
 farthing for each person; and in 1481 when the 
 fishwives refused to pay toll or to sell in a new 
 market built by the citizens, the townsfolk had no 
 resource save to make up out of their own pockets the 
 losses of the tax collector during these troubles. 2 We 
 have the record of yet another quarrel in 1480, when 
 the archbishop seized the tithe of the aftermath in 
 the King's Mead, updn which the mayor immediately 
 collected his posse, marched to the meadow about a 
 mile distant, and there ordered sixteen pennyworth 
 of wine to be served out all round for the refreshment 
 of his troop. 3 
 
 II. With the Abbot of S. Augustine's the city 
 had disputes concerning mill and market. For the 
 " Abbot's Mill " was supposed to injure the City 
 Mill, which lay a little higher up the stream, and 
 the grievance was so serious that in 1415 iron- 
 topped stakes were driven into the river bed by a 
 board of inspectors to mark the highest level for the 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 139, 145. 
 
 2 Ibid. 173. 
 
 3 The cost was entered on the chamberlain's accounts, but 
 there is nothing more to tell how the matter ended. Ibid. 144. 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 water at the Abbot's Mill, so that the fall might be 
 deep enough for water coming from the wheel of the 
 City Mill. 1 As late as 1522 there was a consultation 
 between the town body and " Milord of S. Austin's " 
 about the fish-market, which ended in a friendly 
 manner with the present of a conger-eel and a bottle 
 of Malmsey to the abbot. 
 
 The chief quarrel however was as to the exact 
 limits of the abbot's authority as defined by an 
 agreement drawn up in the thirteenth century, and 
 carefully copied out anew by the city clerk in the 
 fifteenth century ; and the nice point under discus- 
 sion during many generations was whether the abbots, 
 under pretext of infang-theoff, should persist in arrest- 
 ing evildoers in Longport, which was the King's 
 highway and under the jurisdiction of his assignees, 
 the corporation of Canterbury, but which ran for its 
 whole length through the abbey lands. 2 It was only 
 after 1475 that the dispute seems to have come to an 
 end, when the abbot's gallows at Chaldensham were, 
 by the consent of the community and of the convent, 
 broken to pieces. A Baron of the Exchequer and 
 the Recorder of London chosen to arbitrate between 
 the burghers and the monks, were welcomed at Canter- 
 bury with a fee for their pains, lodged at the Austin 
 Friars, entertained sumptuously at the town's expense 
 with lavish supplies of choice food and drink, 3 and 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 169-70. 2 Ibid. 170. 
 
 3 The details as to the costs of many of these feasts are pre- 
 served the claret and wines white and red, and the beer and ale, 
 which recommended a dinner made up for example of a swan, 
 five capons, two geese, a side of brawn, two lambs, four rabbits,
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 373 
 
 served with three meals a day, " fractio jejunii, jan- 
 taculum, et ccena," till finally, on a certain afternoon 
 the monks and the corporation met to drink together 
 in honour of the final peace, and the ambassadors set 
 out on their journey homewards, treated to refresh- 
 ments at every stage from the parting cup at Canter- 
 bury to the farewell drink at Newgate. In 1478 
 they delivered their arbitration at Westminster, and 
 there was a fresh series of " potationes " to celebrate 
 the settlement. 1 
 
 III. The Abbot of S. Augustine's was indeed a far 
 less formidable neighbour than the Prior of Christ 
 Church, between whom and the city there lay centu- 
 ries of angry controversy. With him also there was 
 of course the usual quarrel about the administration 
 of justice. The Prior had his own gallows, where 
 men were hung for sheep-stealing as well as for 
 murder, and when the see of Canterbury was vacant 
 convicted prisoners who " pleaded their clergy " 
 were handed over to him as their ordinary an 
 arrangement which evidently must have been a 
 source of much bitter feeling on the part of the 
 townspeople; in 1313, for example, out of nine men 
 who were convicted by a jury in the Assize court 
 of stealing and murder and who all pleaded their 
 clergy, seven purged themselves before the ecclesi- 
 
 beef, marrow bones, a jowl of salmon, gurnards, roach, bread, 
 spices, salt, vinegar, butter, milk, eggs, lard, and suet. Sacks of 
 coal were always bought for the cooking of these great dinners, 
 either charcoal sold in sacks, or "sea-cole" sold by the tub. 
 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 146, 163. 
 ' Ibid. 143-4.
 
 374 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY CHAP. 
 
 astical judge and were set free. 1 Moreover the 
 cathedral was turned into a sanctuary, where crimi- 
 nals fled from the just judgment of their fellow 
 citizens. In 1425 Bernard the goldsmith, a stranger 
 from over sea, escaped from the city prison and fled 
 to the cathedral church, followed by the bailiffs 
 and a wild mob of townsmen. As he crouched 
 within the rails of the new monument put up to 
 Archbishop Chicheley, the mob thrust their arms 
 between the bars, seized him and beat him with 
 sticks hidden in their sleeves, and at last tore him 
 out of the enclosure, carried him into the nave, and 
 would have dragged him back to gaol, save for the 
 sudden interference of the commissary, who with his 
 followers drove them back and rescued the prisoner 
 from their hands. 2 
 
 So also the question of taxes caused much wrang- 
 ling. Christ Church, which owned within the franchise 
 200 of rent and five acres of land, 3 claimed to be 
 free from any contribution for maintaining the walls 
 of the city 4 after their circuit had been completed by 
 Archbishop Sudbury and left to the people's care ; 
 and this dispute was not settled till 1492, when the 
 convent, having got possession of a part of the wall, 
 undertook to keep that section of it in repair. 5 
 With regard to the costs of levying soldiers for 
 the royal service 6 the citizens decided in 1327 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 77. 2 Ibid. 112. 
 
 3 Lit. Cant. i. 216. 4 Ibid. iii. 379, 380. 
 
 5 Ibid. 318-320; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 433-4. 
 G These charges were heavy in the southern towns. For 
 example, Canterbury and Sandwich had to provide Warwick and
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 375 
 
 to charge a part of this tax on lands held by the 
 convent. The tax seems to have been required 
 only from property in the city, and the archbishop 
 was inclined to give way after discussion with his 
 counsel, " however much those of our Church may 
 \vish to do otherwise," but the prior resolutely held 
 out and got a letter of special protection from the 
 King for Church property. 1 At this the city was 
 stirred to the utmost fury. The people held a 
 meeting in Blackfriars' churchyard, and passed a 
 resolution that if the convent still refused they would 
 break their windows in Burgate, disable their mills, 
 drive their tenants out of their houses ; that they 
 would allow no one to give, sell, or lend meat or 
 drink to monks, and would seize carts and horses 
 carrying food from their manors and sell them in the 
 market ; that they would arrest any monk coming 
 out of the monastery into the city and take his 
 clothes and property ; that the monastery should be 
 cut off from the world by a deep trench dug in front 
 of its gate, and that no pilgrim should be allowed to 
 enter the cathedral until he had taken an oath not to 
 make the smallest offering. Finally every man at the 
 meeting swore that he would have from S. Thomas's 
 shrine a gold ring for a finger of each hand. 2 The 
 threat of interference with their pilgrims was a 
 serious matter to the convent, since the whole charge 
 
 his garrison with victuals in Calais in 1457. Oman's Warwick, 
 64. 
 
 1 Lit. Cant. i. 213-222. This quarrel was 100 years old at 
 this time. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 433. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 98.
 
 376 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 of providing for the comfort and safety of the 
 pilgrims lay with the mayor. Not only was it his 
 office to see that sufficient food was laid up in the 
 city for the pilgrims and to have all the special 
 directions which he judged necessary for their victuals 
 and lodgings set forth on a post which stood before 
 the court hall, but he was further responsible for 
 keeping order among them, and there were occasions 
 when travellers would set out on their journey with 
 just apprehension unless, as happened at Lydd, 
 official messengers from the town were sent before 
 to Canterbury to arrange that its pilgrims might 
 come and go in safety without danger of arrest, and 
 won favour of the mayor's wife by the gift of a quart 
 of malmsey. 1 The corporation had in fact power to 
 make a visit to the shrine so difficult and unpleasant 
 as seriously to affect the flow of offering to the treasury 
 of the saint, and this at a time when the anxiety of 
 the convent about profits was heightened by the 
 pressing demands of the Papal Court for a share in 
 the spoils of its great Jubilee festivals. 2 Money quarrels 
 in fact never failed on either side, and at the very 
 end of the fifteenth century it would seem that 
 Cardinal Morton saw in the old feuds a chance for 
 making Canterbury pay its full tribute to the royal 
 treasury ; when in 1494 he issued demands for aid in 
 money or in men for the Scotch war he seems to have 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 521. 
 
 - The last Jubilee, when the oblations amounted to 600, was 
 celebrated in 1470. In 1520 the Pope demanded a half of the 
 gross receipts, but the archbishop and chapter not being disposed 
 to grant this no Jubilee was held. Literse Cantuar. iii. xxxv., 
 xxxvi.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 377 
 
 sent several blank copies of the summons to his friend 
 Prior Selling to be filled up by him and issued to 
 corporations and citizens whom he thought rich 
 enough to pay. Probably in his directions to the 
 tax-gatherer Prior Selling did not forget old enemies 
 of the convent. 1 
 
 The quarrel as to the town market also lasted on 
 throughout the fifteenth century. There the city 
 magistrates had indeed undisputed control, but it was 
 not always easy to enforce their control on the clever 
 people of the convent. Sometimes the monks at- 
 tempted to escape from the regulations and tolls of 
 the burgesses by sending to buy their fish at the 
 seaside ; and the townsmen protected themselves by 
 seizing any fish so bought on its way to the priory. 2 
 Other questions arose as to houses belonging to 
 Christ Church which opened inwards on the pre- 
 cincts but had windows looking outwards on the 
 market-place in Burgate just outside the priory 
 gate, from which houses shutters and windows 
 could be let down for the inhabitants to display their 
 wares on market-day, whereat the town was doubly 
 aggrieved both by losing the rent of stalls and by 
 seeing the increasing rent of the houses pass away 
 into the convent treasury. At last in 1493 convent 
 and city sought to make a final settlement of the 
 question. The boundaries of the monastery were 
 defined, including many houses of laymen, and within 
 these limits the town renounced all jurisdiction except 
 over houses and shops which had doors or windows 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 145-146. 
 
 2 Ibid. v. 433.
 
 378 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 opening on the street ; while the convent was allowed 
 to distrain on any houses that belonged to it in the 
 city. But in 1500 the quarrel broke out with intenser 
 bitterness, and the mayor violently shifted the market 
 from the prior's gate to the open space near the city 
 church, so that no house held by the convent should 
 have the advantage of opening out upon it. Then 
 ecclesiastical tenants refused to sell in the new market, 
 and city stall-holders treated the convent servants 
 with little courtesy. The citizens fell on the caterer 
 of Christ Church as he was carrying a halibut he had 
 bought from the market to the priory gate, and took 
 it from him, " contrary to all right and good con- 
 science ; " and when the prior sent to the seaside for 
 fish, it was seized at the entrance of the town by the 
 citizens, " disappointing in the same the brethren of 
 the place of their dinners." 1 The prior brought his 
 grievances before the London courts, upon which the 
 whole town took up the question with ardour, and the 
 burgesses collected a voluntary subscription to defend 
 their cause. The mayor was charged with the 
 conduct of the suit in London. Ten or twelve 
 citizens were perpetually riding backwards and 
 forwards and hanging about the courts, and the 
 usual expenses entered in the town records for drink, 
 supper, horse-meat, hire of horses to Rochester and 
 hire of barges and cloaks for the travellers from thence 
 to London, down to " threepence paid at Sittingbourne 
 in washing of my shirts." Master Poynings, being at 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Coin. v. 433-4. 
 
 2 Ibid. ix. 146-7. The chamberlain's accounts give 
 the costs of one visit to London of mayor and aldei-men
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 379 
 
 last commissioned by the King to take evidence on 
 the spot, was entertained at a splendid banquet, and 
 finally an exemplification of the market was sent up 
 to the King's Council in London. In 1501 a new 
 messenger from the King " came to the city and 
 
 on business of the town. Three counsel were paid 10s. ; 
 one of them " in the cloister at Paul's when he corrected 
 the copy," got 3s. 4e. and his clerk I2d. The mayor gathered 
 together all the witnesses in a house beside Paul's to rehearse 
 their evidence "against they came into the Star Chamber," 
 and paid for bread and drink and house room for them 16cZ. 
 At Westminster Hall the three counsel got 3*. 4d. each, and 
 for the three days following the same fees were daily paid. 
 In the Star Chamber Master Roydon paid for examination of 
 sixteen persons at 2s. 4c. a man, 37s. 4e?. ; two days after fees 
 were again paid to two counsel, and a breakfast given to Sir 
 Matthew Browne. Master Fisher was paid for the fees of the 
 Hilary term 19s. Warrants of attorney cost 4s., and copies of 
 the panels 2s. The counsel had to be looked up in their country 
 houses, and messengers were always crossing Tilbury Ferry to 
 look for " Master Raimond," and give him a retaining fee " to be 
 our counsel," or going to Finchley to seek " Master Frowick," 
 perhaps to find that " he was then ridden to Walsingham, so the 
 said Thomas came to London homeward again." The Master 
 Recorder of London was met coming to the Temple and besought 
 "to be good master to the city," and retained at a cost of 6s. 8d. 
 with a breakfast to his servants in Fleet Street. Then a mes- 
 senger waited at the Guild Hall for the recorder, and again 
 watched for him " the same day at afternoon at Milord Dawbeny's 
 place, there waiting till the said Master Recorder had supped, 
 and when he came out we besought him to speed us, for the time 
 of the forfeit passed not three days ; which answered that he was 
 sore occupied and might not entende it so shortly, where we took 
 him 6s. 8d., and then he bade us wait on him on the morrow in 
 the Temple. The next day when Mr. Recorder had contrived 
 the bill and corrected it, for his reward 6s. 8d. Paid for a pike 
 given to Master Mordaunt 3s. 4o?." The mayor then sent to 
 Canterbury to direct that some gift should be sent up which
 
 380 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 tarried not because of death, 1 but spake with Mr. 
 Mayor at S. Andrew's Church, the which showed him 
 the market and so he departed to Dover," followed by 
 a messenger of the mayor hurrying after him with 
 presents of fish, game, poultry, and wine. Then new 
 ambassadors were sent from the city to the King at 
 Richmond, and the paying of fees, and costs for eating 
 and drinking went on merrily. But the citizens won 
 the day in the end, for the Canterbury market is still 
 held by S. Andrew's Church and was never- brought 
 back to the priory gate. 
 
 Even the control of the river brought its troubles, 
 for whenever a question arose as to embanking and 
 straightening the bed of the stream, the prior and the 
 mayor met in the meadows about Chatham with their 
 followers and carried on consultations refreshed by the 
 usual supply of meat and drink. Business however 
 was done at these parties, and the river turned from 
 its meandering course from one side of the valley to 
 the other into the straight channel in which it now 
 flows. 2 The question of the mills was less easy to 
 
 might be used in "making friends"; and several members of 
 the Common Council travelled up with two trouts (one trout cost 
 about 10s.) and ten capons. The witnesses examined in the Star 
 Chamber each got 6s. 8d. and their travelling expenses ; after 
 their examination they adjourned to the buttery for an entertain- 
 ment, and paid " in reward to the officers of the King's buttery 
 for their good cheer I2d. and to the cook of the King's kitchen 
 8d." Besides all this there was a great deal of feasting and 
 drinking in eight of the London inns, in Southwark, Cheap, 
 Fleet Street, Paul's Chain, and Holborii. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 
 147. 
 
 1 The Plague. Hist, MSS. Com. ix. 147. 
 
 2 Ibid. 150.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHUECH 381 
 
 settle, with the dependent problems as to damming 
 the water and dredging the shallows. A settlement 
 made in 1431 to prevent the injury of the city mill 
 failed to end disputes, and in 1499 the prior dug a 
 trench which drew away the water from it, upon 
 which the citizens destroyed the trench and pro- 
 ceeded to make a dam for the conservation of the 
 water running to their mill. The prior in his turn cut 
 the dam ; whereupon the mayor called out his posse to 
 fight the matter out in the meadows by the river, 
 apparently routed the enemy's forces, seizing their 
 arms, and the next day in his wrath removed the 
 market to its new place, as we have seen. 1 
 
 So ended the fifteenth century in Canterbury amid 
 a storm of invective and free fighting. The mayor 
 protested that the prior, in addition to all his other 
 crimes, had taken away the mace from the city 
 serjeant, and had allowed the city ditch to be be- 
 fouled. The prior retorted by accusing the mayor 
 of riotous conduct, and breaking of boundaries and 
 building of bridges and diverting of water-courses 
 to his damage, and not only this, but of having for 
 malice and grudge to the prior and convent broken 
 the old custom of the citizens' gathering at Christ- 
 mas at the tomb of Sudbury to pray for his soul 
 for the great acts he had done for the city, so that 
 they now withdrew their prayers from thence to 
 hold their service under the prison house called 
 Westgate. Indeed they even refused to join the 
 noblemen who brought the King's offering to S. 
 Thomas at the Christmastide feast. 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 433-4.
 
 382 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 As usual, however, all this mighty turmoil ended in 
 nothing. The mayor was indicted by the convent for 
 riot, and the verdict of the jury went against him, 
 but no particular result seems to have followed ; and 
 though the persevering prior then had the case 
 brought before the Star Chamber in 1501, it was 
 passed over for want of leisure. 1 
 
 Practically the same story was repeated at Canter- 
 bury as at Exeter and in every other city where 
 there was a similar conflict. 2 Money and skill and 
 labour and passion were expended without measure, 
 and finally the courts adjudged that all must remain 
 as it had been when the municipality scarcely existed 
 three hundred years before, an order which states- 
 men possibly thought the safest course in the presence 
 of opposing forces, neither of whom was strong 
 enough to win, and neither of whom could dare to 
 lose. But this was not the end of the matter. 
 Through these three hundred years the towns had 
 gathered strength, perfected their machinery of 
 government, and realized their own might. Wealthy, 
 highly organized, very centres of rationalism in 
 politics and common sense in business, their con- 
 troversy with the Church, singularly free as it was 
 from theological pre-occupation, was inevitably in 
 all questions of temporal government more keen and 
 resolute in the fifteenth century than ever before. 
 It was vain to renew attempts in one town after 
 another to appease irreconcilable quarrels by arbitra- 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 434. 
 
 2 The dispute in Norwich was brought before the king's court 
 in 1512. Documents, Stanley v. Mayor, &c., pr. 1884, 50-64.
 
 xi THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH 383 
 
 tions and compromises which left the real problem 
 untouched, and the century before the Reformation 
 was everywhere a time of restless dissatisfaction, and 
 of spasmodic revolts against the alien ecclesiastical 
 settlements which throve on the town's wealth, and 
 could never be absorbed into the town's life. For 
 a little space matters hung in the balance, and then 
 came the crash of the Reformation. In the bitterness 
 of feeling that grew out of the long struggle of the 
 burghers, we have a measure of that temper of virile 
 independence which created the boroughs of the 
 Middle Ages ; and as we stand now under the walls of 
 Canterbury Cathedral and see its glory shattered and 
 its carved work broken in pieces, we may well won 
 der whether in that great ruin there was no other 
 motive at work than the fanaticism of a religious 
 awakening.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CONFEDERATION 
 
 THE fact that the English burghers took so im- 
 patiently the one hindrance that lay in their path to 
 independence and supremacy is itself a proof of the 
 habit of prosperity and success which they were 
 accustomed to accept as part of their natural heritage 
 in the pleasant place where their lot had fallen. How 
 little they had at any time to reckon with opposition 
 is obvious from the striking fact that they never found 
 themselves compelled to form any kind of union or 
 alliance for common purposes. Here the story of 
 English boroughs is in vivid contrast to that of the con- 
 tinental towns. The powerful confederations formed 
 in European countries by towns battling against 
 tremendous odds to protect their commerce, liberty, 
 and law, had no parallel among the comparatively 
 peaceful and regular conditions of English life, where 
 self-government w T as so easily attained, and where 
 trade was so generally secure, that the necessity 
 never arose for the creation of any such associations.
 
 CH. xii CONFEDEKATION 385 
 
 Towns on the royal demesne stood in no need of any 
 combined effort to defend their freedom ; and the 
 towns on ecclesiastical lands or feudal estates that 
 had grievances to complain of were few, scattered, 
 and subject to so many different lords that com- 
 bination among them would have been wholly 
 impossible. Organized common action was therefore 
 practically unknown among the English boroughs ; 
 for the loose tie of affiliation which bound together 
 communities of which one had adopted the charter 
 and copied the customs of another was a bond so 
 slight as to be scarcely recognized, 1 and implied no 
 mutual obligations whatever. In moments of ex- 
 cited strife or rapid constitutional growth a borough 
 might undoubtedly become fired by the example of a 
 near neighbour, or catch the contagion which spread 
 from some community more advanced in its experi- 
 ments and daring in its pretensions ; but these 
 movements of sympathy, of voluntary affiliation, of 
 emulation, never resulted in any kind of federation or 
 alliance. For the developement of its liberties each 
 borough was ultimately left to depend only on its 
 own resources ; while such societies as were con- 
 stituted in later days in England for trading pur- 
 poses took the form of federations of men not of 
 towns. 2 
 
 There was but one exception to this general rule, 
 
 1 Gross, i. 241-281. 
 
 2 See the saying of Bacon quoted by Anderson in his Origin 
 of Commerce, ii. 232. " I confess I did ever think that trading 
 in companies is most agreeable to the English nature, which 
 wanteth that same general vein of a republic which runneth in 
 the Dutch and serves them instead of a company ; and therefore 
 I dare not advise to adventure this great trade of the kingdom, 
 
 VOT. I C C
 
 336 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and in the Confederation of the Cinque Ports we have 
 the single illustration in England of an association of 
 towns created and maintained for common interests. 
 From Seaford in Sussex to Brightlingsea in Essex 
 ports and villages were bound together into one 
 society. To the original group of the Five Ports 
 Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe, 
 whose alliance probably reaches back to the time when 
 the English learned war and commerce from Danish 
 masters the two Ancient Towns, Winchelsea and 
 Rye, had been added immediately after the Norman 
 Conquest ; and what with the desire of these seven 
 to divide their burdens of taxation and war charges 
 with the neighbouring villages, and the readiness of 
 the villages on their side to seek admission to the 
 Port privileges, 1 an association had in course of time 
 been evolved consisting of seven head Ports with 
 eight corporate and twenty-four non-corporate mem- 
 bers, 2 all gathered under the rule of the Lord Warden. 
 To the last they bore traces of foreign influences in 
 the name of Jurats by which they called their " port- 
 men," and of Barons which they gave to their 
 'freemen." But amid the curious vicissitudes of 
 
 which hath been so long under government, in a free or loose 
 trade." 
 
 1 Boys' Sandwich, 770. The Custumals of Dover, Sandwich, 
 Romney, Rye, and Winchelsea, are given in Lyon's Dover, ii. 
 267-387. 
 
 2 The Ports with corporate members were : Hastings : (Sea- 
 ford, Pevensey). Sandwich : (Fordwich, Deal). Dover : (Folke- 
 stone, Faversham). Romney : (Lydd). Rye : (Tenterden). Hastings 
 had six non-corporate members ; Sandwich six ; Dover seven ; 
 Romney four ; and Hythe one ; each of which was governed by 
 a Deputy sent by the head Port.
 
 XTI CONFEDERATION 387 
 
 their history, and the odd incidents of their owner- 
 ship in times when it seemed natural and simple 
 to grant away the very frontier defences of 
 England to Norman counts and Breton dukes and 
 abbots of Fecamp and monks of Canterbury, 1 and in 
 later days after English kings had realised the 
 advantages of themselves owning the main gates by 
 which their country opened on the European world, 2 
 these communities remained firmly united under their 
 federal government. 3 The King's writ did not run 
 in the Ports unless it bore the seal of the Lord 
 Warden. Exempt by charter from serving on 
 juries, assizes, or recognizances outside their own 
 
 1 Dover had always remained in the King's hands, but Hythe 
 and Romney belonged to the Archbishop, while Sandwich had 
 been given to Christ Church, Canterbury, and Hastings, Win- 
 chelsea, and Rye had been handed over to the Abbey of Fecamp. 
 A few details about the relations of Fecamp to its possessions at 
 Hastings, Winchelsea, and Rye, may be found in Leroux de 
 Lincy's Abbaye de Fecamp, pp. 289, 294, 300, 327, 331 ; and 
 a notice of the tax called aletot which was paid by the inhabit- 
 ants of Rye to Fecamp, p. 299. The two parish churches of 
 Hastings, being part of the alien priory of Fecamp, were never 
 appropriate or belonging either to the College of S. Mary or 
 to the Priory. They were afterwards granted away by Henry 
 the Eighth (Horsfield's Hastings, i. 448). The Counts of Eu 
 held the Castle with the whole of the rape of Hastings and 
 the manor till their estates were forfeited by rebellion about 
 1245 and given by Henry the Third to his son Edward. Moss' 
 Hastings, 3-4, 63. 
 
 2 There was a considerable change in the century that followed 
 the complete political separation of England from the Continent. 
 Henry the Third got back Rye and Winchelsea, and at least the 
 Castle of Hastings if not more ; and Edward the First Sandwich ; 
 while Hythe and Romney remained with the Archbishop. 
 
 3 For rights possessed in the time of Henry the Second see 
 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 454. 
 
 C C 2
 
 388 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 territory, 1 the freemen could be impleaded only in 
 their own courts. 2 No prisoner from the Ports could 
 be summoned by the Judges to Westminster, and 
 in the case of an express order from the King " some 
 demur should be made to the first mandate till it 
 be known with certainty it is his pleasure," 3 while 
 on the other hand any stranger who committed a 
 crime within their liberties might be claimed by the 
 mayor and jurats from any lordship in the realm, 
 even from the King himself. 4 They had even, after 
 a fight which lasted for generations, successfully 
 resisted all attempts to bring their local jurisdiction 
 within the general judicial system of the kingdom, 
 and the Justices Itinerant were shut out from crossing 
 their boundaries or sitting at their Court of Shepway. 5 
 Ancient privileges were jealously guarded. "New 
 Acts of Parliament," they said, " ought not to alter the 
 free customs." 6 No deodand was given to the Crown 
 
 1 Confirmed by Edward the First, 1293. Rot. Parl, i. 101. 
 There were no coroners in the Cinque Ports except the mayors of 
 the various towns. Lyon's Dover, ii. 269, 347, 371, 303. 
 
 2 A writ of error lay to the Shepway Court only from any of 
 the Ports ; but from the Shepway finally there might be an 
 appeal to the King's Bench. (Boys' Sandwich, 697, 771.) A 
 mayor of Sandwich accused of assaulting the sheriff's bailiff 
 refused to answer except at the Court of Shepway. (Ibid. 661.) 
 
 3 Lyon's Dover, ii. 304. See Rot. Parl. i. 332. For the charter 
 of Edward the Third see Boys' Sandwich, 568-9. 
 
 4 Boys, 470-1. 
 
 5 Montagu Burrows' Cinque Ports, 73-4. The Cinque 
 Ports joined Simon de Montfort against the King. Possibly this 
 revolt was due to the limits fixed to their territory by Henry in 
 1259-60, for a little later the Barons' party extended those limits. 
 (Ibid. 107.) It was in this war too that they finally secured free- 
 dom from summons before the King's Justices. 
 
 (> Boys' Sandwich. 445. " Within the Cinque Ports there
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 389 
 
 " because it never was the custom here." 1 If an 
 ecclesiastical officer came from Canterbury to make 
 an inventory of the goods of a Sandwich man who 
 had died without a will, he was not allowed to act 
 because it was contrary to the ancient customs 
 and liberties of the town. 2 Their corporate dignity 
 was officially recognized on great occasions of State, 
 such as the coronation of a King or the consecra- 
 tion of an Archbishop, when the envoys of the 
 Cinque Ports were treated with special honour and 
 sat at the right hand table in the hall ; and each 
 of the Ports in turn sent representatives to carry 
 the canopy over the newly-crowned King, and after 
 the ceremony to bear it back with its silk hangings, 
 its spears, and its silver bells, as the town's spoils. 3 
 As to the idea or principle which held this 
 society of towns together and the purpose which it 
 was meant to serve, the definition given by a 
 minister of the Crown would probably have been 
 very different from that given by a baron of the 
 Ports. To a statesman the confederation of the Cinque 
 Ports was organized in the interests of the whole 
 country, and maintained as the bulwark of national 
 safety ; and the policy of West Saxon rulers, of 
 Danish conquerors, of Norman kings, of Angevin 
 statesmen, had all alike aimed at the increasing 
 of its public utility. Holding their posts in the 
 first line of defence against invasion, the Cinque 
 Port towns were bound to keep a sufficient number 
 
 is no trial by jury as in other places." Ibid. 452. For the 
 system of compurgation see p. 465. 
 
 1 Ibid. 468. - Boys, 681. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425 ; v. 496 ; ix. 151.
 
 390 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 of men within their walls for defence against the 
 enemy, and watch that inhabitants were not driven 
 away by the imposition of undue local taxes ; they 
 had to bear heavy costs for ordnance, ammunition, 
 fortifications ; to set a nightly watch in every 
 borough and at every dangerous creek or harbour ; 
 to have armed forces ready to meet the first brunt 
 of attack, while their citizens might expect in time 
 of war to see their houses sacked and burned 
 again and again. They had to provide every year 
 fifty-seven ships and 1,197 men with provisions for 
 the defence of the kingdom, 1 and if these were not 
 enough in number or in size greater ones and more 
 were required of them. If they hesitated to comply 
 with such demands, or if they were shown not to 
 have held firm against the invader, they were 
 roughly reminded of the bargain on the terms of 
 which alone all their privileges were held, and 
 saw their charters and franchises seized into the 
 King's hand. 2 
 
 This view of the organization of the Cinque Ports 
 for the public service was visibly represented in the 
 rule of the King's officer, the Lord Warden of the 
 Ports and Constable of Dover Castle. His authority 
 the men of the Cinque Ports were never for a moment 
 
 1 Boys' Sandwich, 682. 
 
 2 In 1395 Romney contributed nearly 10 to the maintenance 
 of the liberties of the Cinque Ports, and in 1407, 1408, and 1409, 
 it had to spend over <5 each year in payment for such pur- 
 poses. The renewal of these charters on one occasion cost 
 Hythe 17 as its share. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 535, 537.) These 
 payments were over and above the sums which had to be given 
 for the charters of each separate Port, and which were also a 
 heavy cost.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 391 
 
 allowed to forget ; and the Lieutenant of Dover or his 
 messengers, continually riding round the Ports with 
 message or proclamation or to " make inquisition," 1 
 were everywhere helped on their way by dinners, 
 breakfasts, pipes of wine, or a play at the public 
 expense. From Dover came proclamations " warning 
 us of the Danes " ; ordering " that no man should 
 quarrel with other for none old sores " ; commanding 
 " to arrest the men who came from beyond sea with- 
 out leave and without billets " ; or to seize ships 
 for crossing over to Flanders ; calling out vessels 
 " to watch the sea " ; or to serve the King in siege or 
 battle during the French war ; summoning men " to 
 keep the Castle of Dover " ; or decreeing the amount 
 of benevolences to be paid to the King. 2 The 
 subjection of the whole confederation to his rule was 
 publicly recognized every year in the Court of 
 Shepway, when at his summons there came from 
 every port the mayor and a little group of jurats 
 carrying with them the required gifts and dues, wine 
 and swans and fish and spices to furnish breakfast 
 for officials and suitors at the court ; or costly offerings 
 to soften the hearts of wardens and judges, and 
 induce them on their first entering into office to look 
 favourably on their subjects. Before them as they 
 sat on either side of the Warden on the open plain 
 near Lympne 3 proclamation was made as to the taxes 
 to be raised by the confederation, the special military 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 545. 
 
 2 Ibid. 525, 494, 517-18, 520. 
 
 3 The usual number was four or five. Lyon's Dover, i. 
 251. Roinney sent six. Ibid. ii. 342. For the capons, geese, 
 etc., with which they came laden see Hist. MSS. Com. v. 534.
 
 392 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 services required of the freemen, or the new decrees 
 issued by the Government ; and special offences 
 against the Crown were judged. A whole community 
 might be charged with a breach of the King's peace, 1 
 or an aggrieved corporation made application that 
 officers of the Ports should be sent to help in the 
 arrest and punishment of some stranger who had com- 
 mitted a crime in their town ; and prisoners from the 
 various towns accused of coining false money, treason, 
 or counterfeiting the King's seal, 2 were tried, and if 
 found guilty were forthwith tied on a sledge, drawn 
 round the circuit of Shepway, and hanged on the 
 spot. 3 
 
 Nor did the authority of the Warden end at 
 Shepway. As Constable of the Castle he had his 
 court-martial in Dover. 4 As Admiral he could order 
 a " quest of the Admiralty " to be held on the 
 sea-shore, or perhaps at some one of the Ports which 
 had offended against the laws of the confederation 
 a calamity which the town at once sought to avert 
 by negotiations and bribes " that he should not hold 
 the court." As Chancellor he issued precepts and 
 summonses as to the services to be performed by 
 the Ports in return for their privileges, and exercised 
 in his court of chancery the complicated jurisdiction 
 that gradually arose out of these records. There 
 
 were moments when the Kinff was stirred to a 
 
 o 
 
 recollection of his sovereignty moments when the 
 towns had pushed independence too far, or when the 
 treasure in the royal coffers had fallen low ; then 
 
 1 In 1281 the mayor and townsmen of Sandwich were accused 
 of assaulting the sheriff's bailiffs. Boys' Sandwich, 661. 
 
 2 Ibid. 462. 3 Lyon's Dover, i. 254. 4 Ibid. 1., 260-1.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 393 
 
 from Westminster a writ of enquiry would come as 
 to the privileges of the Ports, delegates were 
 summoned from the various towns to appear before 
 the Warden, and might find themselves kept many 
 days and nights at Dover 1 while "inquisition was 
 made for the King." Sometimes they were ordered 
 to assemble on the sea-shore. Sometimes the Warden 
 came down the steep path of the castle hill to the 
 tiny church of S. James, set in the first little reach 
 of level ground below the walls of the fortification, 
 and there the jurats came up to meet him from their 
 lodgings in the town below, and after days of discus- 
 sion probably returned home with heavy news of 
 fines to be levied for buying a new charter, or for 
 getting the confirmation of some doubtful privilege. 
 
 In the authority of the Warden we see the view 
 held at Westminster about the uses of the Cinque 
 Ports and the main object of their existence. To the 
 people on the other hand the association had another 
 and wholly different character. So completely was 
 all the business of the Warden's court at Shepway 
 looked on by the portsmen as the King's affair, and 
 so slight was their sense of participation in it, that 
 they presently gave up attending it altogether, leaving 
 the Warden at last to preside in solitary state. In 
 course of time even the ancient site was abandoned, 
 and instead of the annual assembly at Shepway the 
 president only summoned an occasional court of 
 appeal to be held at Dover, 2 and there, surrounded 
 
 1 In 1410 jurats from Romney spent three days and three 
 nights at Dover at such an inquisition. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 
 538. 
 
 2 From about 1471 the court only met at Shepway for the in-
 
 394 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 by a group of lawyers to advise him, sat on the chalk 
 cliff fronting the castle to hear certain cases imme- 
 diately touching the King's interest. 1 Meanwhile the 
 barons of the Ports had their own tradition of 
 independence and self-government ; and the popular 
 belief as to the object and meaning of the con- 
 federation was embodied in another court which sat 
 on the Broad Hill, near Eomney a court where the 
 Lord Warden had no seat. 2 It was there that the 
 whole interest of the people centred, as turning their 
 backs on the King's courts and leaving him to conduct 
 through the Lord Warden the matters which were his 
 peculiar business, they occupied themselves with the 
 management of their own special affairs. For to the 
 fisherman of the coast the confederation of the villages 
 was in its origin and working simply a great trading 
 company of the Ports for the protection of their staple 
 business, the herring fishery, and for the preservation 
 of their ancient customs of harbourage and sale on 
 the strand at the mouth of the Yare a matter which 
 became of absorbing importance when their monopoly 
 was threatened by the fishermen of Yarmouth, so that 
 from the time of John onwards they could only pre- 
 serve their interests by ceaseless vigilance and by 
 costly appeals to King and Parliament, and Council. 3 
 
 stallation of the Lord Warden and the presentation of the 
 courtesy of 100 offered him on the occasion by his subjects. 
 Montagu Burrows' Cinque Ports, 186. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 
 539. 
 
 1 It only took cognizance of five points, high treason, falsifying 
 money, failure of ship service, false judgment, and treasure box. 
 
 2 Montagu Burrows' Cinque Ports, 66-7, 73-5. See the 
 agreement of the Ports drawn up in 1358. Boys' Sandwich, 
 560-3. :! See Rot. Parl. i. 32, 332
 
 xn CONFEDERATION 395 
 
 In the eyes of the barons therefore the great assembly 
 of the confederation was that which yearly met to 
 discuss the business of the Yarmouth fair. And 
 this was in the strictest sense a court of the people 
 themselves, summoned only by common consent, 1 
 presided over by the chief magistrate of each Port 
 in turn, and in which every town was represented 
 by its mayor or bailiff, three elected jurats, and three 
 commons. The sheltered harbour of Romney formed 
 a sort of natural centre of the Ports, and the 
 delegates met for business on the Broad Hill or 
 Bromhille of Dymchurch close by, whence they 
 possibly took the name of Brodhull, a name which in 
 later days when the first site was forsaken and 
 forgotten and the delegates met in Romney itself, 
 became changed into " Brothyrhill " or Brotherhood. 2 
 On the first day of meeting the business, as be- 
 fitted an association for trading purposes which dated 
 back to the time when the herring fishery was the 
 staple trade of the Ports, was invariably the Yarmouth 
 fair, and the court heard the report of the bailififs of 
 the last fair who stood bare-headed before them, and 
 elected their successors who were to govern the 
 coming fair. 3 But other interests had grown up 
 
 1 Every year a letter was sent to each Port asking " whether 
 a Brotherhood or Guestling is necessary to be arreared this year," 
 and when the common consent was given the summonses were 
 issued. Burrows' Cinque Ports, 177. 
 
 2 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 427. 
 
 3 These four bailiffs aided by a provost chosen by the Yarmouth 
 commonalty, took over the keys of the prison, issued all 
 ordinances and held pleas. This went on till 1663. (See Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 553, 533, 535, 539-43.) Boys' Sandwich, 
 576-7. But the question of the Yarmouth fair gradually declined
 
 396 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 round the assembly hill. The seafaring population, 
 masters and mariners of trading barges, saw in the 
 union of Ports the power which regulated the re- 
 lations of seamen on either side of the Channel. 
 To the taxpayers it was a voluntary association for 
 the equitable adjustment of their burdens. And all 
 the inhabitants alike recognized its importance for 
 maintaining against lords of other franchises the 
 privileges which had been granted them in return 
 for their services. 1 
 
 On the great day when the Yarmouth fair was 
 under discussion the Court of Brotherhood sat alone ; 
 but on the following days when other work was to be 
 done the distribution between the various towns of 
 the taxation 2 ordered at Shepway, the discussion of 
 commercial relations, 3 the care of the common cor- 
 
 in importance, and in the fifteenth century became relatively of 
 so little consequence that the Brodhull decreed in 1515 that 
 the yearly report of their bailiffs sent to Yarmouth might be 
 dispensed with. (Lyon's Dover i. xii.) 
 
 1 Lyon's Dover i. iv. v. 
 
 2 It was already well established in the fourteenth century, 
 and possibly much earlier, that orders of the Court of Shepway 
 as to the taxes required for the King or for the general purposes 
 of the Ports became the basis of agreements made between the 
 Ports at the Brodhull concerning the share of taxes to be paid by 
 each Port. See Burrows' Cinque Ports, 180-1. 
 
 3 In 1412 a curious agreement between the mariners of France 
 and England was signed by Romney and Lydd, and probably by 
 all the ports from Southampton to Thanet. It provided that if 
 any master or mariner were captured the only ransom to be 
 asked on either side should be six nobles for the master and 
 three for the mariner with 20 pence a week board for each ; a 
 fishing boat with nets and tackles was to be set free for 40 pence ; 
 any man taken on either coast should be charged no ransom, but 
 a gentleman or merchant who was taken might be charged any
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 397 
 
 porate privileges of the confederation l the Court of 
 Brotherhood was joined by the Court of Guestling, 
 probably a descendant of the ancient Hundred Court 
 once held in the old town of Gestlinges near the 
 border-line of Kent and Sussex. 2 To this court each 
 town might send the mayor, two jurats, and two 
 commoners ; so that if all the delegates came the 
 number of the united assemblies would be seventy- 
 seven ; as a matter of fact however in the time of 
 Henry the Sixth the business was done by about 
 thirty members. 3 All the important affairs of the 
 
 ransom that his captor chose. In case of any dispute, arbitrators 
 were appointed ; if these were disobeyed 100s. was to be paid on 
 one side to S. Nicholas at Romney, on the other side to the 
 Church of Hope All Saints. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 537-538.) 
 The arrangement as to the place of payment of the fine was 
 doubtless different in each town of the league. The common 
 serjeant of Hythe in the same year rode to Dover to get 
 a copy of the composition for his own town. In a disputed 
 case when the plaintiff and defendant seem to have been of 
 Romney, questions touching the " Law of Oleron," i.e., the Law 
 Maritime, were decided " by the judgment of the masters of ships 
 and boats of the vills of Hastings, Winchelsea, Sandwich, and 
 Dover," that is, a majority of the seven towns. (Hist. MSS. Com. 
 vi. 543.) 
 
 1 At any time the court might be summoned to redress a 
 wrong, and not only the jurats and commonalty of a town but 
 any aggrieved person whatever in the whole confederation 
 might claim that a Brodhull should be summoned if he was 
 wronged on any point touching the charters, usages, or franchises 
 of the Ports. Burrows' Cinque Ports, 181. 
 
 2 Ibid. 177-8. The Guestling sometimes sat separately for 
 special business, generally perhaps at Winchelsea, for the affairs 
 of the three Sussex Ports. For an instance in 1477 see Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 489. 
 
 3 Moss's Hastings, 21. The importance of the Guestling 
 Court gradually declined and in 1601 the Brotherhood Court
 
 398 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 Cinque Ports practically lay in their hands, and their 
 decisions, registered as Acts of the Brodhull by the 
 Common Clerk of the Cinque Ports, 1 became the law 
 of the whole confederation. 
 
 Constantly reminded of their ancient covenant and 
 confederation by imminent perils, arduous exertions 
 and recurring taxes, trained to habits of vigilance 
 and mutual support, the Cinque Ports kept a jealous 
 watch against the slightest infraction of the privi- 
 leges of their united body. But there was one 
 matter with which the confederation had nothing 
 whatever to do. Subject to a variety of jurisdictions, 
 some of them depending on the King, some on the 
 Archbishop, some 011 a bigger neighbouring town, 
 the special liberties of each borough had been deve- 
 loped under very different conditions ; and the whole 
 association took no heed of the defence of the 
 liberties of any single Port against its lord, or the 
 enlargement of the privileges of any one member 
 of their society as apart from the whole. 2 The 
 corporate existence of the united Cinque Ports was 
 a thing altogether apart from the corporate existence 
 of each town within it ; and indeed combination for 
 any purpose of securing local liberties would have 
 been out of the question in a confederacy where a 
 
 (then near its own extinction) passed a decree that the yearly 
 Guestling might be abolished. Lyon's Dover i. xii. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539. 
 
 2 Burrows (Cinque Ports, 238) suggests that Lydd, like the 
 supposed case of Faversham, might have owed its incorporation 
 under a mayor and jurats to the Court of Shepway. He does 
 not give any reasons for this supposition. Lydd was under the 
 Archbishop ; Faversham under the abbot until the suppression 
 of the abbey. Ibid. 234.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 399 
 
 certain outward uniformity was but the screen of 
 endless diversity, and towns bound together by 
 special duties and privileges were widely separated 
 from one another in all the conditions of govern- 
 ment. 1 This is very evident if we compare the 
 situation of Sandwich and Eomney much more so if 
 we consider the position of any of the subordinate 
 members of the Ports. 
 
 I. For many centuries Sandwich belonged to the 
 monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and so long- 
 as it was a humble little port powerful kings like 
 Eadgar, Cnut, Henry the First, and Henry the 
 Second had been content to have it so, and with 
 indifferent acquiescence confirmed the monastic rights 
 over the town. But when in the course of time 
 Sandwich became the port through which almost 
 the whole of the continental trade with England 
 passed, when its commerce and revenue increased 
 till it stood far before Dover in importance, 2 when 
 it was the chief harbour from which monarchs or 
 their ambassadors set sail for France, or from which 
 armies were sent forth in time of war, the King 
 
 1 Dover and Sandwich were the first of the Ports to have a 
 mayor, the mayors of Sandwich being continuous from 1226. 
 Then came Rye and Winchelsea about 1297. The other three, 
 Hastings, Hythe, and Romney, were ruled by bailiffs till the 
 time of Elizabeth. 
 
 2 For goods imported into Sandwich see Boys, 435-9, 658-9. 
 Iron was brought from Spain and Cologne and wine from Genoa ; 
 all kinds of skins, and furs, with silk, spices, and frankincense from 
 the Levant. For the taxes on merchandise, cellars, and ware- 
 houses see Hist. MSS. Com. v. 458. Under Edward the Third 
 it fitted out for the King's service 22 ships with 504 mariners. 
 Boys, 783-4.
 
 400 TOWN LIFE IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 began to look more seriously on the powers exercised 
 over it by the convent. An inquest ordered by the 
 Crown in 1227 reported in favour of the rights of 
 Christ Church over Sandwich, but by judicious bar- 
 gaining matters were finally arranged to the royal 
 satisfaction. At the price of a grant of lands in 
 Kent Edward the First bought the town, and though 
 the monks were still allowed certain lands and houses 
 free from municipal charges, and continued to receive 
 large sums from the wharf which was known as 
 Monkenkey with its crane for loading and unloading 
 ships, 1 and from the warehouses enclosing it, they 
 had to abandon their powers of taxing at discretion 
 all passengers and goods which crossed the bounds 
 of their territory. 2 
 
 The Sandwich people had elected their own mayor 
 since the beginning of the thirteenth century ; while 
 the royal interests were now looked after by a bailiff 
 appointed by the King. 3 The townsmen however 
 kept a jealous watch over their own prerogatives. 
 When in 1321 Christ Church obtained a royal writ 
 to protect their property from the town taxes the 
 mayor and community refused to accept it because 
 it had been issued to the King's bailiff, and the 
 
 1 Liters Cant. i. Ixix. Ixxii. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 74. 
 Boys' Sandwich, 663. Edward the Third completed the process 
 in 1364. Ibid. 669. 
 
 2 In 1422 an agreement was made that the corporation should 
 go in and out on the quay freely, and use the monks' gate, " to 
 provide for the guard and the defence of the town." The ground 
 along the quay was to be deemed a highway. Ibid. 671. 
 
 3 Under a patent of white wax because Sandwich would not 
 obey an Exchequer patent under green wax. Boys, 441, 404, 
 435-457.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 401 
 
 convent had to get a new writ. 1 The bailiffs powers 
 were carefully defined and kept in strict subordination 
 to those of the mayor. He collected the King's dues 
 on goods brought into the town ; 2 and it was he who 
 summoned the Hundred Court every three weeks to 
 meet in S. Clement's church for view of frankpledge, 
 for pleas of land, questions of trespass, covenant, 
 debt, battery, bloodshed, and so on ; 3 but he could 
 not hold the court without the mayor's leave, nor 
 issue the summonses without the mayor's orders. 4 The 
 mayor for his part, if he was elected in S. Clement's, 
 the church where the courts of the King were held, 
 had his seat of government in S. Peter's, a church 
 that stood in the very centre of the town near the 
 Market-place and Common Hall, and in whose tower 
 the " Brande goose bell " hung which summoned 
 jurats and council men to the Common Assembly, 
 and rang out the hours for the market. He gathered 
 the Town Council for business to S. Peter's, and in 
 S. Peter's he sat every Thursday, and if business 
 required it on other days, to judge the people. 5 
 Though the bailiff sat by his side and took part in 
 the business of the court, yet for offences against 
 
 1 Literse Cant., i. 46-48. In 1324 the convent however 
 repeated the offence. Ibid. 118-120. 2 Boys' Sandwich, 435. 
 
 3 Pleas of the Crown were held at Sandown in a place called 
 the Mastez either 011 the Monday of the Hundred Court or 
 any other Monday. Ibid. 443. 4 Ibid. 457. 
 
 "' Ibid. 311, 501. The mayor is the judge and gives such 
 judgment as he thinks proper, whereas the bailiff has nothing 
 further to do with the business than to receive the amercements. 
 Ibid. 459. 
 
 VOL. I D D
 
 402 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 the corporation the mayor and jurats might punish 
 the freemen " without consulting the bailiff or any 
 one else." 1 To them belonged the entire regulation 
 of trade and the management of weights and measures, 
 for " the bailiff has nothing to do with this busi- 
 ness." In no case was he allowed to interfere with 
 the town market ; " that business belongs wholly 
 to the mayor and jurats," the town customs de- 
 clared. 2 
 
 II. Sandwich in fact after it had passed to the Crown 
 enjoyed the full freedom common to the royal boroughs. 
 Bound only by allegiance to the general law of the 
 Cinque Ports it long maintained, as we shall see 
 later, a real independence of local life and a vigorous 
 democratic temper. But in Romney, in the very 
 port where the general assembly of the Cinque Ports 
 held its deliberations, the conditions were wholly 
 different. For a moment Romney like other to\vns 
 enjoyed its share of profits in the growing trade of 
 the country. 3 The vintners engaged in the wine trade 
 rose from ten in 1340 to forty-eight who headed the 
 list of taxpayers in 1394 ; a new ward was called 
 
 1 Boys' Sandwich, 527. See also 450. 
 
 " 2 Ibid. 510, 536-7. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 533-4,535,537,539,541-2. In 1340 
 Romney was divided into thirteen wards, and 941 persons above 
 fifteen were assessed to the subsidy granted to the King that 
 year. The whole sum assessed was ,48 9*. 6d. Forty-five 
 persons were assessed in Old Romney at 43*. Qd. The receipts 
 from taxes, rents, etc., in 1381 seem to have been nearly 180. 
 (Boys, 799-801.) Romney seems to have come to the height of 
 its prosperity about 1386. One barge was built 1386 ; one in 
 1396 ; one in 1400; one hired in 1420. (Ibid. 535-40.)
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 403 
 
 after its cloth-dealer Hollyngbroke ; l and merchants 
 from Prussia, Holland, Spain, and Flanders, citizens 
 of Bristol and of London, men from York and from 
 Dorset gathered within its walls. But a doom was 
 already on the town. As early as 1381 it had 
 begun its vain struggle against winds and tides 
 which silted up its port, destroyed its river 
 channel, and forced the Bother into a new bed. 
 Dutch and Flemish engineers had been called over 
 to make scientific sluices and barriers, and the 
 whole population had been summoned out to dig a 
 water-course, but in spite of incessant efforts the men 
 of Eomney saw their trade driven into other ports." 2 
 The forty-eight vintners of 1394 had sunk to forty- 
 four in 1415, to five in 1431, and to one in 1449. 3 
 The burghers were being steadily ruined, and the 
 story of their decay remains registered in the long 
 lists of citizens who pledged their goods for debt, 
 giving in promise of payment saddles, cups, table- 
 cloths, helmets, cloths, which were delivered by the 
 creditor into the hands of the bailiff for keeping in 
 the Common Hall " according to custom," and when 
 the day of payment had passed were appraised by 
 bailiff and jurats, often at half or a quarter of the 
 value at which they had been first declared, and 
 handed over to the creditor. 4 
 
 Through good and evil fortune moreover Romney 
 
 1 This was an old family in the town, for in 1314-15 complaint 
 was made that Hugh Holyligebrok and the community were 
 sheltering and defending robbers and felons so that the country 
 could not get justice on them. Rot. Parl. i. 324. 
 
 - Hist. MSS. Com. v. 535-42. 
 
 s Ibid. 535-42. 4 Ibid. vi. 543-4. 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY CHAP. 
 
 had to maintain a constant struggle for freedom. 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury was lord of the manor, 
 and appointed, subject to the ratification of the Lord 
 Warden, the bailiff of the town, 1 choosing if it seemed 
 good to him one of his own servants or squires, and 
 by a curious exception from the general law having 
 liberty to select a publican. 2 The bailiff fixed the 
 days for holding the market. He gathered in the 
 Archbishop's dues, made sure that his share of any 
 wax, or wine, or goods cast on the shore from wrecks 
 was handed over, and that the jurats collected in 
 proper time the capons and swans and cygnets 
 which had to be sent to him, or that a porpoise 
 taken by the fishermen should be duly despatched to 
 the lord. The common horn sounded twice at the 
 market-place and at the cross to summon the people 
 to his court. 
 
 The question of government and of the bailiffs 
 position was however always in debate. The "best 
 men of the town " rode to Archbishop Courtenay " to 
 know his will and what he proposed to do against 
 their liberties"; and for the following century the 
 Romney men were always on the watch, and heavily 
 taxed in gifts and bribes " to protect the liberty of 
 the town that the said lord might not usurp it." 3 
 The bailiffs power indeed was strictly limited. So 
 far as the administration of justice went he was 
 
 * Hist, MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425, 429; Ibid. vi. 541. 
 
 2 Bailiff and jurats were allowed to hold taverns of wine and 
 ale " notwithstanding their office, so that they do not sell more 
 dear on account of their office." Lyon's Dover, ii. 337. 
 
 8 Hist, MSS. Com. v. 534, 535, 539, 543, 544.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 405 
 
 absolutely controlled by the twelve jurats who were 
 yearly elected " for to keep and govern the port and 
 town ; " l and " in case the bailiff do other execution 
 than the sworn men have judged against the usage 
 of the town " they might fine him 10 to the com- 
 mons. 2 But this was not enough. In 1395 the 
 jurats made suit to the Lord Archbishop to "put 
 his bailiwick into the hands of the community of 
 Romney at ferrn," 3 and for the century w T hich followed 
 they were always seeking for some means of gaining 
 complete control of the government. For lack of 
 better security a simple expedient was discovered. 
 The townspeople allowed a custom to grow up that 
 the Archbishop should not be expected to appoint 
 a new officer every year, but that whoever was sent 
 to the town should be understood to hold his post 
 permanently. When in 1521 the prelate complained 
 that the jurats would not let his bailiff enter 
 Romney 4 they answered that when there was no 
 bailiff in the town the Archbishop might send a new 
 one, but that the accustomed bailiff who had been 
 admitted seven or eight years ago was still living 
 
 1 The twelve jurats were summoned by the common horn to 
 assemble for business in the parish church until they hired a room 
 in 1410 to hold their meetings and to store the goods of the com- 
 munity ; in 1421 they built or repaired a common house with 
 thatched roof and glass windows, an exchequer table covered 
 with green cloth, and a bell to ring for the election of jurats. A 
 book of customs was probably drawn up under Richard the 
 Second, a small seal made in 1389, and a bell in 1424. Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 534, 537, 540, 541, 546. 
 
 2 Lyon's Dover, ii. 313-14. 
 
 3 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 535. 4 Boys' Sandwich, 806-8.
 
 406 TOWX LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 and was " of good name and fame," and so the place 
 was not void ; moreover, they said, a bailiff must 
 make his appearance with certain formalities and 
 " be of good opinion," but this new man had not 
 been sent with the proper forms. The fixity of 
 tenure : Avhich the townsfolk thus raised to the 
 dignity of a " customary " right Avas a real guarantee 
 that the bailiff should no longer be a mere dependent 
 holding his post at the pleasure of a distant master, 
 trembling under the apprehension of hazarding his 
 employment by preferring the interests of the com- 
 monalty to those of his lord, and only intent on heap- 
 ing up treasure against the day when his credit 
 and employment should come to an end. He be- 
 came more and more identified with the townsfolk 
 among whom he lived, and on whose approval he 
 was made dependent by their contention that he 
 should hold office so long as he was, in their opinion, 
 " of good name and fame." 
 
 But the burghers were still dissatisfied with so 
 precarious a tenure of independence. There was a 
 proposal which came to nothing to unite the 
 bailiff and jurats of the town with the bailiff 
 and jurats of the marsh; but in 1484 the people 
 profited by the troubles of Richard's reign to plan 
 a, thoroughgoing revolution. 2 They set up a 
 mayor for themselves, and sent to have a silver 
 mace made at Canterbury under the very 
 walls of the Cathedral precincts. The Archbishop 
 
 1 One bailiff appointed in 1415 was only ratified in 1421. 
 (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 429.) The contrast with the habit in 
 other borough? is very striking. 2 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 547.
 
 xit CONFEDERATION 407 
 
 called in the help of the Crown and the great people 
 of the London law courts, and after much battling 
 and negotiation the matter was ended before the 
 year was out by a Privy Seal being sent down to 
 Romney to depose the mayor. Before a generation 
 had passed away however the struggle broke out 
 again with new vigour, and in 1521 town and prelate 
 were again quarrelling over all the old grievances. 1 
 
 The main point of the burghers' argument was to 
 deny the Archbishop's assertion that " the town is 
 all bishopric." The jurats contended that "from all 
 time " they had had the privileges of one of the 
 capital Five Ports, that their grant of " streme and 
 strond" of the sea and all other rights came to 
 them from the King and not the Archbishop ; and 
 that they held the greater part of their town directly 
 from the Crown, 2 on which land the Archbishop 
 had no right to enter, and the commonalty had 
 rights of justice. So also the Archbishop had no 
 right to the marsh and pasturage of four hundred 
 acres which had once been creek and haven, but 
 had been left dry land since about 1380 by the 
 withdrawal of the sea a good half-mile from the town, 
 for this " void place " left by the main course of the 
 stream through the town belonged to the King. 
 Arguing therefore from this fiction of being on royal 
 soil the jurats went on to claim the popular control 
 of justice which was used in royal boroughs, and 
 frowardly kept the courts without the bailiff, 
 
 1 Boys' Sandwich, 806-8. 
 
 2 For notices in Domesday on this point see Burrows' Cinque 
 Ports, 48.
 
 408 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 boldly asserting in their own defence that he 
 was at the best but a minister of the King's 
 courts in Romney and not a judge ; for if the town 
 courts were in fact courts of the King, they were 
 under the royal grants and charters which ordained 
 that mayor and jurats, or bailiff and jurats, elected 
 by the people, were to hold courts, hear pleas, and 
 have fines and amercements and other profits of 
 leets and law-days ; and therefore since the bailiff of 
 Romney was not elected by the commons he was 
 clearly excluded and had nothing to do in the said 
 courts save as minister and executioner, and any 
 record of pleas before him was void. In times past, 
 they declared, he had merely been allowed to sit 
 among them by favour, and not of duty. The fines 
 raised at leets and law-days they claimed for the 
 town's use, saying that these had only been given 
 to the most Reverend Father by the favour of the 
 jurats to obtain his good lordship ; but that he had 
 never any right whatever to leet or law-day, fine or 
 amercement. So persistent were their protestations 
 of independence that it seems as though ultimately 
 the Archbishop's heavy wrath settled down to rest on 
 the town. When Cranmer leased out the bailiwick 
 of Hythe to the townspeople, 1 he refused to give to 
 
 1 In 1412 Hythe sent two of its citizens to London to see 
 the Archbishop and the Lord Chancellor and succeeded in win- 
 ning some relief from the ancient customary services to the King- 
 In the fifteenth century the Archbishop sometimes appointed the 
 bailiff of Hythe, and sometimes leased out the appointment to 
 the town for a term of years. Cranmer leased it out for ninety- 
 nine years. It only got a mayor under Elizabeth. (Burrows'
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 409 
 
 Romney a similar lease a gift which it had begged 
 of Courtenay a hundred and fifty years before. 
 Cranmer's lordship indeed came to an end at the 
 Reformation, but even then Romney was for a time 
 governed by its senior jurat, and it was not until 
 1563 that it seemed to have sufficiently purged its 
 iniquity, and that Elizabeth finally allowed its people 
 to elect a mayor. 
 
 III. From the instances of Sandwich and Romney 
 it is evident that the bond which existed between 
 the chief Ports only served certain definite ends, and 
 had no influence whatever on the developement of 
 local liberties or the intimate relations of a borough 
 to its lord. And if this was the case with the leading 
 Ports, still less was it possible for the subordinate 
 members of the confederation to look for aid in their 
 private controversies. Romney itself for example 
 in the midst of its struggle with the Archbishop 
 was engaged in a resolute effort to retain its own hold 
 over its dependent town of Lydd. There also the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury was lord of the manor, 
 both of the town and of a great part of the grazing 
 land round it known as Dengemarsh, in which lay the 
 fishing-station of Lydd, Denge Ness ; while the rest 
 of Dengemarsh was divided between the Abbot of 
 Battle, the Castle of Rochester, and Christ Church, 
 Canterbury, all alike ready to raise at any time 
 questions of disputed rights. As far as the Arch- 
 bishop was concerned the townsmen had commuted 
 
 Cinque Ports, 215, 217-218; Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 434, 429. 
 Boys' Sandwich, 811.) One man was bailiff for six years from 
 1389 ; and a wealthy publican for two years from 1421.
 
 410 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 their services at his court of Aldington for a yearly 
 payment, and became " lords in mean " of their own 
 borough possibly in the time of Henry the Sixth 
 when they first began formally to use the style of 
 Bailiffs, Jurats, and Commonalty of Lydd ; but the 
 Archbishop's seal with the mitre was still used in 
 deeds for selling or letting land. 1 
 
 But Lydd was further subject to Romney as 
 " member of the Town and Port," and in token of 
 this submission their custumal was kept at Romney. 
 If they wanted to ascertain their rights they had to 
 send a messenger to the superior town ; and an entry 
 in the accounts of Lydd tells how the corporation 
 paid eightpence to "the servant of Romney bringing 
 authority of having again our franchise." Romney 
 claimed to make awards on disputed questions, 
 interfered about the Lydd markets, and ordered in- 
 quisitions as to whether they had been wrongfully 
 held. 2 Moreover as the inhabitants of Lydd " were 
 contributors to Romney before all memory," their 
 officers had year after year to present themselves 
 before the jurats of Romney in the Church of S. 
 Nicholas carrying their accounts and such payments 
 as were demanded by their rulers. 3 Even after the 
 men of Lydd had been given by Edward the First 
 the same liberties and free customs as the other 
 barons of the Cinque Ports, the sum of their taxes 
 was fixed by Romney. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 531-2. 2 Ibid. 525-6, 532, 536. 
 
 3 In 1403 " Jurats of Lydd and Dengemarsh rnade account in 
 the church of S. Nicholas at Romney before the Jurats there of 
 all their outlays and expenses." Ibid. 536.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 411 
 
 Among many masters the corporation was kept in 
 a perpetual ferment. The boundaries of its territory 
 were not finally decided till 1462, and the quarrel 
 with Battle on this point kept lawyers and town 
 clerks busy hurrying backwards and forwards be- 
 tween London and Lydd, or riding to Canterbury to 
 get the Abbot's charter, or to Wmchelsea to meet 
 the Abbot's counsel. 1 For a hundred years moreover 
 the town kept up the long struggle to free itself from 
 the supremacy of Romney. Already in 1384 depu- 
 tations from both the towns met in Dover to discuss 
 the terms of agreement between them with the 
 Warden, and from that time lawyers were kept 
 constantly at work, and a counsel seems to have been 
 permanently employed in London, besides the de- 
 putations of bailiff, common clerk, and jurats sent 
 there as well as to Dover, Sandwich, or Canterbury, 
 and the messengers despatched with " courtesies " for 
 the Lieutenant, the Seneschal, or the Clerk of Dover 
 Castle, the Mayor and Clerk of Dover town, the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and his steward, the Common 
 Clerk of Winchelsea and so on ; while the salary 
 of the Town Clerk, Thomas Caxton, probably a brother 
 of the great printer, was raised again and again, so 
 as to secure the services of the most skilful lawyer 
 and able administrator in all the country round. 2 
 Even in a trifling matter of taxation it was not till 
 1490 that the town was able to make a composition 
 for a fixed yearly payment. 3 
 
 IV. In the same way Sandwich had the mastery of 
 
 i Hist. MSS. Com. v. 524-5. 2 Ibid. 522, 524, 526, 528. 
 
 3 Ibid. 516, 532.
 
 412 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP: 
 
 the little town of Fordwich, 1 which lay fifteen miles 
 higher up the river and claimed dominion over a 
 tiny territory reaching back from the water's edge 
 on either side as far as a man in a boat on the river 
 could throw an axe of seven pounds called " Taper- 
 axe." The inhabitants elected every year a mayor, 
 treasurer, and jurats to govern them and preserve 
 the liberties of the town. The mayor with a black 
 knotted stick as badge of his office, held his court 
 of justice. He appointed every year four freemen 
 to act as arbitrators in case of trespass, and if any 
 townsman refused to accept their decision or tried to 
 carry the cause to another court, he was fined the 
 enormous sum of a hundred shillings, or thrown for 
 a year into the town prison, a filthy hole of nine 
 feet square which still exists. In capital cases the 
 mayor could give sentence of death, and order the 
 prosecutor if he won his suit to carry the condemned 
 criminal to the " Thefeswell" and himself throw him 
 into it with hands and feet tied, " knebent " as it 
 was called. 2 
 
 Fordwich however had been granted by the Con- 
 fessor to S. Augustine's, Canterbury. 3 The Abbot 
 owned the soil of the town ; his bailiff lived within 
 its walls and presided over the Hundred Court which 
 lie summoned by his officer "Cachepol"; he had his 
 own prison ; he was entitled to fines and forfeitures 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 606-7. 
 
 ' 2 It was a common custom in the Cinque Ports for the accuser 
 to be executioner. Burrows' Cinque Ports, 76. 
 
 : ' The cvistoms levied by S. Augustine's on the imports at Ford- 
 wich quay were to be the same as those collected by Christ 
 Church at Sandwich. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 443.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 413 
 
 from felons and fugitives ; and lie claimed certain 
 customs on all imports, and asserted a right to con- 
 trol the fisheries of the river so as to supply his 
 monks at the fasting seasons. 
 
 The convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, owned 
 on the other hand a quay at the highest point to 
 which ships could pass up the river ; to this quay 
 wine, alum, Caen stone, etc., were brought for the use 
 of the monastery, and endless quarrels were developed 
 out of its trading monopolies. 1 
 
 As a member of the Port of Sandwich the town 
 was subject to certain regulations and taxations 
 which Sandwich had a right to impose. When the 
 chief Ports met to assess and distribute taxation 
 among themselves, the voice of the lesser members 
 of the confederation was never heard, and the de- 
 pendent towns had simply to pay such proportions 
 of the sum due as their masters ordered, and there 
 were naturally frequent signs of grumbling and dis- 
 satisfaction. 2 The severe protectionist laws which 
 the Fordwich people passed against Sandwich as to 
 the use of the common quay with the crane possibly 
 indicates some attempt at encroachment which it was 
 possible to resist as \vell as to resent. 
 
 Under the rude pressure of rival jurisdictions on 
 every side, and from which there was no escape, the 
 corporation needed constant vigilance in looking 
 after its own interests. Like every other town big 
 and little in the fifteenth century Fordwich made 
 careful research into the true limits of its chartered 
 
 1 Liters Cant. iii. 358. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 326. 
 
 2 See case of Old Romney. Hist, MSS. Com. v. 544.
 
 414 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. 
 
 rights, and the clerk wrote out new copies of their 
 custumal and of the old record of their boundaries. 
 In the only point where they had a chance of success 
 its burghers fought with steady pugnacity for their 
 privileges. Protesting that they held a monopoly of 
 the quay where the ships were unloaded, they refused 
 the customs demanded by S. Augustine's, claimed the 
 whole control of the river and of the three weirs 
 which were made every year at the beginning of the 
 fishing season, and at last forced a compromise which 
 left the convent only the produce of a single weir. 
 
 If the lesser members of the Ports which were 
 themselves corporate bodies, such as Lydd or 
 Fordwich, could expect from their superiors no help 
 in achieving independence, the non-corporate mem- 
 bers were yet more completely withdrawn from the 
 chance of assistance ; for the seven great towns of 
 the association would have looked with little toler- 
 ance on any revolt in their dependent villages. 1 Un- 
 doubtedly the inhabitants of the Cinque Ports had 
 their full share of the democratic temper that ruled 
 in the trading towns of the eastern coast from the 
 Wash to the Channel. Rebellion was in the air ; and 
 the labourers and miners of Kent and Sussex had an 
 evil reputation in the Middle Ages as being most prone 
 to civil dissensions, " as well for that they can hardly 
 bear injuries as for that they are desirous of novel- 
 ties." 2 There was never a rising in which they were 
 
 1 For the difficulties which attended the government of a 
 group of dependent villages by the head town see Lyon's 
 Dover, i. 26-29. See also the relations of Sandwich and 
 Stonor. Boys' Sandwich, 547-8. 2 Polydore Vergil, 84.
 
 xii CONFEDERATION 415 
 
 not the most eager partizans of the revolutionary side. 
 The men of Kent crowded after Cade. Hastings sent 
 eleven soldiers to help him ; Eye begged for his 
 friendship ; and Lydd sent its constable on horseback 
 to meet him, wrote him a letter of excuse for not 
 joining him, and presented him with a porpoise. 1 
 When Warwick took up the cry of Cade they rallied 
 to his side ; and when he brought back Henry the 
 Sixth in 1470 they again gave him support. 2 In 
 the internal politics of the towns we meet the same 
 temper ; and however obscure and insignificant were 
 the struggles of the Ports and of the humble villages 
 that gathered around them, they reveal to us the 
 militant spirit of self-assertion which was stirring in 
 
 1 Archseologia Cantiana, vii. 234 ; Hist MSS. Com. v. 520. 
 
 2 See especially the account of Canterbury in Hist. MSS. Com. 
 IX. 176-7. Lydd incurred heavy expenses in the war of 1460. In 
 Rye there is an entry of 1 Qs. 3d. for the expenses of the mayor, 
 bailiff, common clerk and four jurats at Dover, " going and return- 
 ing on carrying the men's quarters, when the mayor and bailiff 
 with four jurats were sent under the heaviest penalty, andon pain 
 of contempt of our lord the King." Another two pence was spent 
 in giving them a drink of malmsey before dinner (Hist. MSS 
 Com. v. 492, 493) ; and the same year " the men of the Lord 
 Warwick entered the town with a strong band and took down the 
 quarter of the man and buried it in the churchyard." In 1470 
 Romney and the other Cinque Ports supported Warwick against 
 Edward, 1469-70. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 545.) For Lydd, p. 525 ; 
 and Sandwich, Boys' Sandwich, 676. At the return of Henry 
 the Sixth from October 1470 to April 1471, an entry in Lydd 
 records " on the second Sunday after the feast of St. Michael the 
 Archangel in the year of King Henry the Sixth." (Hist. 
 MSS. Com. v. 525.) The clerk did not know what year to call 
 it. For the sufferings of Kent in the war see Warkworth's 
 Chronicle, 21-22.
 
 416 TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY CH. XH 
 
 every hamlet in England. But with this sturdy 
 spirit of municipal freedom the question of federal 
 organization had nothing whateve r to do. We have 
 seen that the trading privileges won in early days 
 by the joint action of the towns were confined to the 
 supervision of the herring fair at Yarmouth, and 
 that the association never developed into a great 
 commercial league after the imposing pattern of the 
 towns of Picardy or of the Rhine. Still less did 
 the union resemble any of the federative republics 
 formed across the water in Ponthieu or the Laonnais 
 for mutual aid against the enemies of their peace or 
 liberties. 1 There is no evidence that the confedera- 
 tion of the Cinque Ports afforded to its members any 
 security of municipal freedom, or any extension of 
 the rights to be won from their several lords ; and as 
 a mattei' of fact this group of favoured towns does 
 not seem to have made the slightest advance on other 
 English boroughs, either in winning an earlier free- 
 dom, or in raising a higher standard of liberty. In 
 fact the history of the sixteenth century was to prove 
 that there was no more formidable opposition to 
 the growing democracies in the Kent and Sussex 
 towns than the respectable official company that 
 gathered at Romney and ate together the annual 
 feast of the Court of Brotherhood. 
 
 1 Luchaire, Communes Franchises, 77, etc.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbotsbury, convent at, 203 
 
 Adamson, William, lease of Liver- 
 pool ferin to, 271, note 2 
 
 Admiral, appointment of mayor as, 
 234 ; Ms jurisdiction, i&., note 2 ; 
 of Norwich, 245 ; of the Cinque 
 Ports, his jurisdiction, 392 
 
 Adventurers, Merchant, 90 ; their 
 rivalry with Staple and Hanse, 
 
 94, 95 ; organized by charter, 
 
 95, 96 ; by Henry VII., 96 ; 
 growth of their privileges, ib.; 
 settlement at Antwerp, 97, 98 ; 
 struggle for free trade in cloth 
 in the Netherlands, 99-101 ; 
 struggle with the staplers, 
 101-103 ; with Hanseatic League, 
 103-111 ; organization in Nor- 
 way, Sweden, and Denmark, 106 ; 
 supported by Henry VII., Ill, 
 112 ; their triumph in the north, 
 114 ; progress from Edward III. 
 to Henry VII., 122 
 
 " Advocantes," 190 
 Alderman of the staple, 46, 48 
 Aldington, archbishop's court of, 
 
 409 
 Aletot, tax paid by Eye to Fecamp, 
 
 387, note 1 
 Alexandria, centre of Mediterranean 
 
 traffic, 77 
 Alien, judicial combat in Fordwich 
 
 with, 221, note 2 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 Almshouses, 41, note 2 
 
 Amusements in towns, 145-153 
 Andover, punishment for breach of 
 
 public duty in, 181, note 2 
 Antwerp, trade of English Adven- 
 turers at, 94 ; capital of the 
 Merchant Adventurers, 97, 98 ; 
 succeeds Bruges as a centre of 
 commerce, 100 ; conference at, 
 113 
 
 Apprentices, kept only by burghers, 
 182 
 
 Apprenticeship, in towns, sought by 
 country labourers, 194 
 
 Archers of Reading in 1371, 16, 
 note 
 
 Arms, view of, at Bridport, 15, 16 ; 
 at Reading, 16, note 
 
 Arrest, disputes about rights of, 
 351-352, 364-367, 372 
 
 Assemblies in the towns, 223 
 
 Assize of wine, bread, and ale, con- 
 troversy as to, in Exeter, 358-9 
 
 Attorneys, their numbers in Norfolk 
 and Norwich limited, 58 
 
 Augustine's, S., convent of, Canter- 
 bury, its agreement with Christ- 
 church, 369 ; disputes with the 
 town, 371-3 ; owner of Fordwich, 
 412 ; compromise with Fordwich, 
 414 
 
 Aylesbury, evasions of watch and 
 ward in, 133 
 
 Aynesargh, Richard de, lease of 
 Liverpool to, 271, note 2 
 
 E E
 
 418 
 
 INDEX 
 
 B 
 
 Bailiff, commander of the town in 
 war, 128 ; his appointment as 
 king's steward and marshal, 236 ; 
 capital, of Hereford, 229, 319-320; 
 election of, in Liverpool, 270 ; of 
 wards in Norwich, 240, 243, 245, 
 246 ; of Romney, 404-406 ; of the 
 king, in Sandwich, 400-402 
 
 Bailiff-errant, his duties, 205 
 
 Baltic, English Merchant Adven- 
 turers in, 95 
 
 Barge, the admiral's, 245 ; common, 
 of towns, 87, 140 ; of Ipswich, 
 85, note 2 ; of London, 87, note 3 ; 
 of Eomney, 87, 88 
 
 Barnstaple, granted to Sir John 
 Cornwall and the Countess of 
 Huntingdon, 253 ; its ferm, &c., 
 in 1273, id., note 3 ; its traditions 
 as borough in ancient demesne, 
 253-255 ; byelaws of, 254 ; " Bur- 
 gesses of the Wynde " in, ib. ; 
 complaints of lords of, about au- 
 thority claimed by burghers, ib. ; 
 inquisition as to franchises of, 
 255 ; charters, ib. ; market, 253, 
 note 3; Long Bridge, ib.; its 
 wealth in thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries, ib.; seal, 225, 
 note 
 
 Barons of the Cinque Ports, 386 
 
 Barton, John, thief in Exeter, 
 354 
 
 Battle, services due from its bur- 
 gesses, 171, note 2; its quarrel with 
 Lydd about boundaries, 411 ; 
 abbot of, owner of land in Lydd, 
 409 
 
 Beaufort, Cardinal, 214 
 Bedford, opposition to commission 
 of enquiry in, 268, note 1 
 
 Beer, its introduction, 57 ; English, 
 
 exported to Flanders, ib. 
 Bell, the common, 161, 180 ; of 
 Bristol, 314, 315 ; of Hereford, 
 127 ; Reading, 304 ; Romney, 
 405, note 1 ; Brandegoose, at Sand- 
 wich, 401 ; of church, 153 ; the 
 curfew, 324 
 Bell-foundries, 55 
 
 Benecke, captain of Danzig priva- 
 teers, 109, note 2 
 
 Bergen, staple set up by English 
 adventurers at, 95 ; English ex- 
 pelled from, 107 
 
 Berkeley, owned by lay noble, 
 227 ; privileges leased to the 
 burghers of, 263 ; relations with 
 its lords, 264, 267 ; lords of, their 
 fight with Bristol, 313-315 ; their 
 trading, 316 
 
 Berkeley, Lord James, 266 
 
 Berkeley, Lord Maurice, 265, 266 
 312, 314-315 
 
 Berkeley, Lord Thomas, 315 
 
 Berkeley, Lady, daughter of Mayor 
 of Bristol, 316 ; her funeral, ib. 
 
 Bernard, the goldsmith, his escape 
 from prison, 374 
 
 Berwick, government of, given to 
 one of the Berkeleys, 264 
 
 Bier, the parish, 202 
 
 Billeting, forbidden in Bristol, 210, 
 note 3 
 
 Birmingham, 200, note 2 ; its bridges, 
 20 ; its guild, ib. 
 
 Bishops as lords of towns, 281 
 
 Blackwall, entrepot of Diuant cop- 
 perworkers at, 56 
 
 Bondmen, not to be admitted to 
 franchise in York and Bridge- 
 north, 196 
 
 Bonvil, Sir William, 41, note 2, 
 267, 268, 366 
 
 " Booners," 141 
 
 Bordeaux, its trade, 87, 118, 119, 
 316, note 1 ; taken by the French, 
 119 
 
 Boroughs, English, their importance 
 in fifteenth century, 1 ; created 
 by Edward L, 11, note 3 ; repre- 
 sentation in Parliament, 24, 25 ; 
 conditions of claiming the pro- 
 perty of, 218 ; importance of 
 corporate succession of, 219 ; 
 classification of, 227 ; sympathy 
 of king with, in questions of rival 
 jurisdiction, 232-3 ; local self- 
 government in, 233-237 ; extortion 
 in, 235, note 1 ; advantages gained 
 by, in times of state troubles, 
 237 ; anxiety of king about 
 democratic movement in, 247,
 
 INDEX 
 
 419 
 
 note 3; granted to nobles, 253, 
 note 2 ; in "ancient demesne," 
 227, 246, see Towns 
 
 Borough Court, or Portmote, attend- 
 ance of burghers required at, 180 ; 
 wills enrolled in, 200, note 1 ; at 
 Norwich, 239 
 
 Borough English, 222 
 
 Boston, house of the Hanseatic 
 League at, 110 
 
 Boulogne, soldiers from Reading at, 
 16, note 
 
 Boundaries, preservation and per- 
 ambulation of, 134 
 
 Boy Bishop, 148 
 
 Brass, guns made of, 55, note 4 
 
 Bribes, system of, in the towns, 
 211-217 
 
 Brickmaking, its beginnings in Eng- 
 land, 56 
 
 Bridges, repair of, 144 ; the Long, 
 at Barnstaple, 253, note 3 ; at 
 Birmingham, 20 ; Canterbury, 
 19 ; Exeter, 144 ; London, ib., 
 Nottingham, ib. ; Reading, 301, 
 note 2 
 
 Bridgenorth, payment to players 
 forbidden in, 152 ; franchise of, 
 196 ; complaint of the jurors 
 against the sheriffs bailiffs, 207, 
 note 1 
 
 Bridge water, burgages held by clergy 
 at, 175, note 
 
 Bridport in the thirteenth century, 
 202-203 ; in fourteenth century, 
 15 ; in fifteenth century, 15-16 ; 
 views of arms at, ib. fraterni- 
 ties in, ib. ; Toll Hall and Guild- 
 hall at, ib. ; bell foundries at, 55- 
 56 ; collection for improving its 
 harbour, 143, 144 ; rector and 
 parishioners, 157 ; bequests for 
 the church, 159, note ; manufac- 
 tures at, 202 ; payments in kind 
 for ferm, 204-5 ; advantages of 
 its obscurity and distance from 
 court, 210 
 
 Brinklow, his political ideas, 60, 
 note 4 
 
 Bristol made a shire, 12 ; gives a 
 benevolence to the king, 27, note 
 2 ; disputes with Genoese mer- 
 chants, 91, note 2 ; its contribu- 
 
 tion for protection of traders, ib., 
 note 3 ; new channel dug for the 
 Frome at, 142 ; billeting forbidden 
 in, 210, note 3 ; revolt of the 
 Commons, 312 ; charter forfeited, 
 ib., note I ; mayor of, freed from 
 oath to constable, 313 ; obtains 
 jurisdiction over Redcliffe, 314 ; 
 fight with lords of Berkeley, SIS- 
 SIS ; difficulties as to jurisdiction 
 of Temple fee, 313, note 2; incor- 
 poration of Redcliffe with, ib.,note ; 
 burgesses' petitions to King and 
 Parliament, 315 ; assault on Lord 
 Thomas of Berkeley, ib. ; pay- 
 ment for confirmation of char- 
 ters, ib. ; sends men to Lord 
 Berkeley's help at Nibley, 316 ; 
 the castle fee in, 311 ; con- 
 stable of castle, 312 ; grant of 
 ferm, 238, note 3 ; dispute about 
 ferm, 253, note 2 ; S. Mary's Hall 
 at, 316 ; Fellowship of Merchants, 
 89 ; paving, 18, note ; common 
 bell, 314, 315 ; gaol, 315 ; watch on 
 S. John's Eve, 149 ; compass first 
 used in England by its men, 107 ; 
 trade with Gascony, 119 ; traders 
 from, settle in Bridport, 15 ; sail 
 to Iceland, 107 ; Flemish weavers 
 in, 193. 
 
 Britanny, commercial treaty with, 
 112 
 
 Broad-cloth first mentioned, 52 
 
 Broad Hill, court held on, 394, 395 
 
 Brodhull, register of its acts, 398 ; 
 see Brotherhood 
 
 Brotherhood, court of, 395-398 ; see 
 Brodhull, Guestling 
 
 Bruges, the staple at, 45 ; made 
 staple for English cloth in 
 Flanders, 113, note 3 ; decline of 
 its weaving trade, 65 
 
 Building in towns in fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 18, 19 
 
 Burgage rents, 13, note 2 
 
 Burgage tenure, 170-173, 200, note 
 2 
 
 Burgesses, in the empire, first men- 
 tion of, 11, note 1 ; decayed, in 
 Preston, 190, note 3 ; of the 
 Wynde in Barnstaple, 254 ; their 
 qualifications, 170, 171 ; crafts- 
 
 E E 2
 
 INDEX 
 
 men and foreigners admitted as, 
 173 ; see Burghers, Citizens 
 
 Burghers, mode of admission of, 
 178-9 ; duties, 180-181 ; privi- 
 leges, 181-185 ; responsibilities 
 and services, 185-188 ; punish- 
 ment of, for refusing [to serve 
 in municipal offices, 187, 188 ; 
 their duties confined to town, 
 188 ; the exclusive character 
 of the poorer, 195 ; claim to have 
 their own courts, 220 ; growing 
 importance in the country, 257 ; 
 their seals, 175 ; see Burgesses, 
 Citizens 
 
 Burgundy, Henry VII. 's alliance 
 with, 4 ; charter to Merchant 
 Adventurers in, 96 
 
 Burgundy, Duke of, grants charter 
 to English Merchant Adventurers, 
 96 
 
 C. 
 
 " Cachepol " of abbot of S. Augus- 
 tine's, 412 
 
 Cade, Jack, his supporters in Cinque 
 Ports, 415 
 
 Calais, the staple at, 46 ; captain of, 
 49 ; mint at, ib. ; Likedelers of, 
 90 ; election of governors of Mer- 
 chant Adventurers held at, 96, 
 note 6 
 
 Cambridge, first notice of bricks at, 
 56, note 3 
 
 Canal-makers, Dutch, 193 
 
 Cannyges, of Bristol, 84, note 1, 
 89, 107 
 
 Canopy, at coronation of King, car- 
 ried by representatives of Cinque 
 Ports, 389 
 
 Canterbury, royal borough, 227 ; 
 extent of its jurisdiction, 3, note ; 
 Henry VII. received at, 37, note ; 
 quarrels with Sandwich, 163, note ; 
 Henry VII. 's breve to enable in- 
 habitants to resist demands of 
 King's purveyors, 210, note I ; 
 payment to be excused from 
 sending ships to the war, 213, 
 note 3 ; relations with York and 
 Lancaster, 215, 216 ; refusal of 
 citizens to appear at the King's 
 Court at Westminster, 230, note 
 
 2 ; property exempt from corpor- 
 ate authority 310, note ; dis- 
 pute as to jurisdiction of city 
 coroner, 355, note 1 ; dispute with 
 S. Augustine's, 371-2 ; with Christ 
 Church, 135-6, 373-382; with 
 convent of S. Gregory, 369 ; 
 bridge, 19 ; charters, expenses 
 connected with, 211, note ; cathe- 
 dral, its jubilee festivals, 376 ; 
 church of S. Andrew, 380 ; Black- 
 friar's churchyard, 375 ; first main 
 drain, 20 ; expenses of feasts, 
 372, note 3 ; town festival, 149 ; 
 price of admission to freedom, 
 178, note 5 ; municipal debts, 
 140, note 1 ; gifts, 214-216 ; hos- 
 pitals, 369 ; Swan inn, 216 ; loans 
 to King, 27, note 2 ; market, 371- 
 2, 377-80 ; mayor, probate 
 claimed by, 200, note I ; mace, 
 381 ; king's mead, 371 ; mill, ib., 
 372, 381 ; minstrels, 145, note; pav- 
 ing, 18, note ; plays, 146 ; protec- 
 tion of burghers, 185 ; provision 
 for pilgrims, 375-6 ; punishment 
 for drawing knife, 132, note 2 ; ex- 
 tortions of sheriff, 207 ; Staple - 
 gate, 370; trade with Bordeaux, 
 118 ; walls and gates, 129, note 1 ; 
 Westgate, 370, 381 ; see Augus- 
 tine's (S.), Christ Church 
 
 Canterbury, Archbishops of, 177, 
 note 2, 369-371, 409 
 
 Cardiff requests copy of Hereford 
 customs, 228 
 
 Carlisle, its " frelidge," 180 ; help 
 granted towards payment of ferm 
 in, 231, note 2 ; liberties forfeited, 
 247, note 4 
 
 Carpets, manufactory of, at Ramsey, 
 57 
 
 Castile, commercial treaty with, 120 
 
 Castle Coombe, cloth sold at, 54, 
 note 1 
 
 Castle, constable of, his authority, 
 311-12 
 
 Castle Fee, its independence of the 
 municipality, 311 
 
 Catalonia, commercial treaty with, 
 120 
 
 Caxton, Thomas, town clerk of Lydd, 
 411
 
 INDEX 
 
 421 
 
 Cemetery, booths set up in, at fair- 
 time, 362 
 Chaldensham, the breaking to pieces 
 
 of the abbot's gallows at, 372 
 Charters, power of the King to 
 withdraw, 211-12 ; payments for 
 the confirmation of, 211 ; of incor- 
 poration, 219, note 1 ; see Barn- 
 staple, Bristol, Canterbury, Ips- 
 wich, Leicester, Lincoln, Liver- 
 pool, Lynn, Northampton, Nor- 
 wich, Nottingham, Plimpton, 
 Reading, Winchester 
 Chepin gavell in Reading, 299, 306 
 Chepstowe, its trade with Iceland 
 
 and Finmark, 107, note 1 
 Ohest, the parish, 202 ; the common, 
 
 of Reading, 305, 306 
 Chester, raid of Baldwin of Rading- 
 ton on, 130 ; affray at, ib., note 
 1 ; town festival, 149 ; liberties 
 forfeited, 247, note 4 ; silting up 
 of harbour, 270 
 Chester, Earl of, Liverpool granted 
 
 to, 270 
 
 Children of citizens, age of taking 
 
 up duties of citizenship, 194 ; of 
 
 non-burgesses, age of beginning 
 
 work, 194-5 
 
 Chimneys of tiles or brick, houses 
 
 to be provided with, 194 
 Christ Church, Canterbury, its agree- 
 ment with S. Augustine's, 369 ; 
 ownership of Sandwich, 399-400 ; 
 owner of land in Lydd, 409 ; 
 quarrels with Fordwich about the 
 quay, 413 ; see Canterbury 
 Christopher, the (ship), 316, note 1 
 Church, hostile to the formation 
 
 of communes, 279, note 2 
 Church-ales at Plymouth, 160, 161 ; 
 
 at Yaxley, 161, note 
 Churches, parish, their various uses, 
 153-156 ; apportionment of seats, 
 154; townspeople lay rectors of, 
 157 ; various expenses, 158-161 ; 
 bequests for, 159 ; rebuilding of, 
 in 15th century, 18 
 Churchyards and ecclesiastical pre- 
 cincts enclosed by walls, 335 
 Cinque Ports, their treaties with 
 " French Shipmen," 4, note I ; 
 house of elected mayor or jurat 
 
 who declined to serve, pulled down, 
 187 ; jurats and barons of the, 
 386 ; confederation of, 386-399 ; 
 privileges, 387-389 ; ownership of, 
 387, notes 1 and 2 ; j ustices itinerant 
 shut out from, 388 ; writ of error 
 in, 388, note 2 ; no trial by 
 jury in, 388, note 6 ; support 
 Simon de Moutfort, 388, note 5 ; 
 heavy charges for defence borne 
 by, 389-390 ; payments for main- 
 tenance of liberties of, 390, note 2 ; 
 monopoly threatened by Yar- 
 mouth, 394 ; jealous watch against 
 infractions of privileges, 398 ; ac- 
 cuser often executioner in, 412, 
 note 2 ; confederation affords no 
 security to members against their 
 lords, 414 ; various jurisdictions, 
 398 ; admiral of, 392 ; no coro- 
 ner in, 388, note 1 ; trading privi- 
 leges, 414-415 ; confederation, un- 
 like confederations abroad, 415 ; 
 supports Cade, ib. ; supports 
 Warwick, ib. ; courts of, see 
 Brotherhood, Guestling, Shepway 
 Cirencester, 295 
 
 Citizens, their busy life, 161 ; inde- 
 pendence, 177 ; laws passed in 
 Norwich and Worcester to com- 
 pel men to become, 190 ; age 
 for taking up duties, 194 ; out- 
 numbered by the unenfranchised 
 classes in the towns, 196 ; dis- 
 tinguished from "natives" in 
 Hereford, 318 ; see Burgesses, 
 Burghers 
 Clarence, Duke of, present from 
 
 Canterbury to, 215 
 Clergy as citizens, 175, note 
 Clisheath, fight on, 267 
 Clock, the town, 182 
 Clock-house, payments for, in Read- 
 ing, 304 
 
 Cloth, altered conditions of produc- 
 tion, 54 ; sold in London, ib. 
 note I ; taxes on, 81, note 1 ; 
 struggle for its free impor- 
 tation into Netherlands, 99, 
 100 ; undressed, its export for- 
 bidden, 110 ; terms of sale and 
 finishing, granted to Henry VII. 
 by Flanders, 11 3, note 3 ; woollen,
 
 422 
 
 INDEX 
 
 its export allowed to Portuguese, 
 121, note 2 ; manufacture pro- 
 tected by government, 66, 67 ; 
 attempt to confine its export to 
 London, 69 ; dressing of, disputes 
 about, 70 ; seal for sealing it, in 
 Reading, 308 ; broad, 52 ; see 
 Trade 
 
 Cloth-workers, rivalry with wool- 
 growers, 68 
 
 Clothiers distinguished from drap- 
 ers, 67 
 
 " Clothing, Great," of Worcester, 
 138, note 
 
 Coal, its early use in London, 55, 
 note 1 
 
 CcEur, Jacques, 114 
 
 Colchester, its condition, c. 1300, 
 14 ; progress in the 14th cent., 
 ib., 15 ; burghers not to be ap- 
 pointed in any quest or assize 
 outside the borough, 188, note 2 ; 
 Norwich system of government 
 imitated by, 238, note 2 ; gallows, 
 2, note ; moot hall, 14 ; wool hall, 
 ib. 
 
 Cologne, Hanse of, 75, 76, note 1 
 
 Commerce, treaties of, 66 ; govern- 
 ment protection of, 66, 67 ; by sea, 
 its early routes, 75-77 ; between 
 England and the Baltic, 83 ; its 
 two great routes, 83 ; in hands of 
 foreign carriers, 83, 84 ; growth 
 of private enterprise, 88,89; trans- 
 ferred from foreign carrying 
 vessels to those of English adven- 
 turers, 94 ; see Trade, Treaties 
 
 Common, rights of, 136, 137, 181 
 
 Commons, House of, relation of 
 boroughs to, 24 ; control over 
 taxation, 25, note 3 ; height of 
 power in early 15th century, 26 ; 
 petition for working of mines, 55, 
 note 1 ; see Parliament 
 
 Communes, the Church hostile to 
 the formation of, 279, note 2 ; of 
 France, contrast between their 
 history and that of the English 
 towns," 29-32 
 
 Commuflitas, its meaning, 167-168 ; 
 early government, 169-171 
 
 Compass, its first recorded use in 
 England, 107 
 
 Compurgation, 221, note 2 
 Conesford Ward, Norwich, 239-40 
 Confederation, contrast between 
 English boroughs and Continental 
 towns as to, 384-385 ; of Cinque 
 Ports, 386-99, 414-416 
 Constable, dispute about election of, 
 in Reading, 304, 306 ; of the 
 castle, his authority, 311-312 
 Convents, towns subject to, 227, 
 
 295 
 Copes, regulations about use of, at 
 
 Plymouth, 158 
 Copper works at Dinant, 56 ; in 
 
 England, ib. 
 
 Cornwall, Sir John, Lord of Barn- 
 staple, 253 
 Cornwall, its silver mines, 55, note 
 
 1 ; tin works, 83 
 
 Coroner, business of, 203 ; dispute 
 in Exeter about the jurisdiction 
 of, 355 ; of Devonshire, 355 ; 
 in Cinque Ports, 388, note 1 
 Corpus Christi, guild of, 150, 151 
 Coteler, J., lieutenant of mayor of 
 
 Exeter, 346 
 
 Court, the papal, its demands from 
 Canterbury cathedral, 376 ; see Ad- 
 miralty, Borough, Brotherhood, 
 Curia Comitatus, Guestling, Hun- 
 dred, King's, Leet, Orphans, 
 Portmote, Sheriffs, Shepway, 
 Steward's Hall Port, Tolbooth 
 Craft guilds, 150 
 Crafts, their formation into close 
 
 companies, 195 
 
 Craftsmen, their political import- 
 ance, 60 ; admitted as burgesses, 
 173 
 
 Cranmer, his refusal to lease out 
 bailiwick of Romney to towns- 
 people, 408-9 ; his lease of the 
 bailiwick of Hythe to townspeople, 
 408, 
 
 Cranbrooke, cloth sold at, 54, note 1 
 Crete, English merchants buy wine 
 
 in, 116 
 
 Criers in the towns, 161-162, 180 
 Cunningham, Sir Thomas, 98, note 5 
 Curfew bell in Winchester, 324 
 Curia Comitatus at Norwich, 239 
 Customs, Hereford, 317 ; copy of, 
 asked for by Cardiff, 228
 
 INDEX 
 
 423 
 
 J) 
 
 Danzig, English cloth-dealers at, 
 
 95 ; English colony at, 104, 
 
 note 6 
 Dartmouth, its parish church, 157, 
 
 note 2 
 
 Davison, Sir W., 98, note 5 
 Dean, Forest of, its forges, 54 
 Demesne, ancient, boroughs in, 227- 
 
 229 
 
 Dengemarsh, 409 
 Denge Ness, 409 
 Denmark, English traders expelled 
 
 from, 66 ; Henry VII.'s treaty 
 
 with, 113 
 Derby, franchises of, forfeited, 247, 
 
 note 4 
 Derby, Earl of, Liverpool granted 
 
 to, 270 
 
 Devon, its silver mines, 55, note I 
 Devon, Earl of, his fight with Lord 
 
 William Bonvil, 267-8 
 Devonshire, the coroner of, 355 
 Devonshire, Earls of, 266, 366 ; 
 
 conflict of Exeter with, 339, 340 
 Dinant, its relation to the Hanseatic 
 
 League, 82, note 3 ; copper- workers 
 
 of, their trade with England, 56 
 Disfranchised table, 181 
 Domesday, 343, 344, 345 ; of 
 
 Ipswich, 225 
 Dominicans, their settlement in 
 
 Winchester, 323 
 Doncaster, 269, note 
 Dorchester, extent of its jurisdiction, 
 
 3, note ; sheriffs court at, 203, 
 
 204 
 
 Dorset, its silver mines, 55, note 1 
 Dover, member of Cinque Ports, 
 
 386 ; ownership of, 387, note 
 
 1 ; church of S. James, 393 ; 
 
 the Lord Warden's court of 
 
 appeal held at, 393-394 ; meeting 
 
 of deputations from Lydd and 
 
 Romney at, 411 ; punishment of 
 
 thief, 221, note 2 ; lieutenant of, 
 
 213, note 1, 391 ; castle, constable 
 
 of, 390, 392 
 Drain, at Canterbury, 20 ; at 
 
 Exeter, 361 
 Drapers distinguished from clothiers, 
 
 67 ; of London, their first charter, 
 
 52, note 3 
 Duel in Leicester, 221, note 2 ; 
 
 freedom from, in Lincoln, ib. 
 Dunwich, 238, note 3 
 
 Ecclesiastical estates, towns on, 227, 
 277-281; tenants of, their atti- 
 tude in the towns, 191, 192 
 
 Edmund Crouchback, 269, note ; 
 270, 271 
 
 Edmund, Bishop of Exeter, 343 
 
 Edward I., boroughs created by, 11, 
 note 3 ; charter to Norwich, 
 242 ; grant to Lydd, 410 
 
 Edward II., advantages to towns of 
 disorders under, 237 
 
 Edward III., his dealings with the 
 staple, 45, 46 ; relations with 
 Florentine merchants, 78, 79 ; 
 borrows money of Liibeck mer- 
 chants, 83 ; advantages to towns 
 of his commercial policy, 237 
 
 Edward IV., his relations with the* 
 Hanse, 109-110 ; grants fresh 
 franchises to Exeter, 367, note 2 
 
 Egypt, Venetians driven out of, 114 
 
 Elbing, market at, 104 
 
 Election of town officers, 224, 235 
 
 Empire, first mention of burgesses 
 in, 11, note 1 
 
 Enclosure of churchyards and ec- 
 clesiastical precincts within walls, 
 335 
 
 Engineers, Dutch and Flemish, 
 employed in England, 142, 143, 
 note, 403 
 
 England, its comparative unimport- 
 ance in Europe in thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 32, 33 ; character of its his- 
 tory in fifteenth century, 35-44 ; 
 classes of its population c. 1453, 60 
 
 English language, prayers in, used 
 by a Norfolk guild, 42, note 
 
 Escheator, the King's, 208 ; ap- 
 pointment of mayor as, ib., note 
 1 ; term of office, 234, note 3 
 
 Essex, Dom Robert, manufactures 
 silk at Westminster, 57, note 2 
 
 Exe Island, 339
 
 424 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Exeter, its early government, 338 ; 
 jurisdiction of Earls of Devon- 
 shire in, 339 ; disputes with them, 
 266, 339; with the cathedral, 
 340-368 ; discussion between 
 bishop and mayor, 155 ; election 
 of ShOlingford as mayor, 340, 341 ; 
 grant of Richard of Almayne to, 
 357 ; grants of Edward IV. to, 
 367, note 2 ; almshouses at, 41, 
 note 2 ; right of arrest in, 
 364-366 ; assize of wine, bread, 
 &c., 358-9 ; bridge at, 144 ; Broad 
 Gate, 353 ; great drain, 361 ; 
 Canon's-street, 360 ; controversy 
 as to common use of cathedral, 
 362-364 ; as to jurisdiction of 
 coroner, 355 ; cathedral close, 352, 
 353, 355 ; provision for ferm in, 
 359 ; Fish-street, 360 ; price of 
 admission to freedom, 178, 
 note 5 ; gates, dispute for con- 
 trol of, 361, 362 ; Guildhall, 
 341,351,356 ; hospitals, 41, note 2 ; 
 law against livery, 339; market,i. 
 359, 360 ; St. Martin's-street, 360 ; 
 paving of, 18, note ; bishop's 
 prison, 362 ; St. Peter's fee, 357 ; 
 Recorder, 345, 347 ; maces, 339, 
 367 ; Black Roll, 345; S. Stephen's 
 fee, 343 ; town-hall, 344 ; great 
 tower, 361-2 ; warden of the 
 poor, 41, note 2 ; controversy as to 
 watch and ward, 357, 358 ; wine 
 gavell, 359 
 
 Exeter, Edmund, bishop of, 343 
 
 Exmouth, port, 346, 359 
 
 Export trade, revenue from, under 
 Henry VII. and VIII., 58 ; in- 
 dustrial changes occasioned by, 
 67 ; disputes caused by, between 
 merchants and artizans, 70 ; see 
 Trade 
 
 Extortion in the boroughs, 235, 
 note 1 
 
 F 
 
 Fairs and markets forbidden to be 
 held in sanctuaries, 156 ; forbid- 
 den on Sundays and feast days, 
 156, note ; of Ripon, 130 ; of 
 Tetbuiy, 314 ; St. Giles's, at Win- 
 
 chester, 324, 329 ; at Yarmouth, 
 395, 396, 415 
 
 Fastolf, Sir John, 259, note 2 ; 267, 
 note I 
 
 Faversham, its incorporation under 
 mayor and jurats, 398, note 2 
 
 Fecamp, abbey of, its relations to 
 Hastings, Winchelsea, and Rye, 
 387, note 1 
 
 Fees on admission to freedom of 
 town, 178 ; in kind at Wells, ib. 
 
 Fellowship,', Merchants', in Bristol, 
 89 ; in London, attempt to mono- 
 polize the export of cloth, 69 ; of 
 the mayor of Exeter, 346, 353, 366 
 
 Felon, dispute about the seizure of 
 the goods of, in Exeter, 354 
 
 Ferm of towns, collection of, 205 ; 
 settlement of, connected with 
 election of mayor, 218, note ; pro- 
 vision for payment of, 231, note 1, 
 244, 359 ; leasing out of, 238, note 
 3, 247, note 4 
 
 Festivals, local, 149 ; complaints of 
 their decay, 151 ; jubilee, at Can- 
 terbury cathedral, 376 
 
 Feudal estates, condition of towns 
 on, 250, 251 ; lords, struggle of the 
 boroughs with, 198-200, 255-257 
 
 Finance of towns, 138-141 
 
 Fines paid to be free of holding 
 municipal offices, 187, note 1 ; of 
 borough or manor courts, granted 
 to citizens, 231 
 
 Fineux, Master John, justiciar, 214 
 
 Florence adopts free trade, 117 ; 
 Henry VII. 's commercial treaty 
 with, ib. ; its trading importance, 
 78 ; loans of its merchants to 
 Edward III., ib., 79 ; commercial 
 revival after acquisition of Leg- 
 horn, 79 
 
 Folkestone, punishment of thief at, 
 221, note 2 
 
 Fordwich, 227, 369 ; under master- 
 ship of Sandwich, 411, 412 ; 
 extent of its territory, 412 ; 
 jurisdiction of Abbot of S. 
 Augustine's, ib., 413 ; quarrels 
 with Christ Church about quay, 
 ib. ; regulations and taxations 
 imposed by Sandwich on, ib. ; 
 compromise with S. Augustine's
 
 INDEX 
 
 425 
 
 as to control of river and weirs, 
 414 ; capital punishment in, 412 ; 
 judicial combat with alien in, 221, 
 note 2 ; Hundred court, 412 ; 
 jurisdiction of mayor, ib. ; its 
 officers, ib. ; prisons, ib. ; Thefes- 
 well, ib. 
 
 Foreigners, admitted as burgesses, 
 173, 178, note 5 ; limitation of 
 their rights, 184 
 
 Forfeiture of town privileges, 247, 
 note 4 ; of citizenship, 179, 180 
 
 Fortescue, Sir John, chief justice, 
 59, 346 
 
 France, condition of people in, as 
 described by Fortescue, 59 
 
 Franchise forfeited by forsaking 
 town for a year and a day, 179 ; 
 refusal to take up, 186, 328 ; to 
 be confined to members of craft 
 guild, 195, 196 ; bondmen born 
 not to be admitted to, in York 
 and Bridgenorth, 196 ; of Lynn, 
 controlled by the Bishop of Nor- 
 wich, 286 ; see Freedom 
 
 Franciscans in Winchester, 323 
 
 Frankpledge, view of, dispute in 
 Lynn about, 290, 294 
 
 Fraternities at Bridport, 16 
 
 Freedom, municipal, ways of win- 
 ning, 177, note 1 ; mode and terms 
 of admission to, 178, 179 ; lost 
 by breach of public duty, 180 ; 
 mode of recovery in Hereford, 
 180, note 3 ; classes shut out from, 
 189, 190 
 
 Freemen, their decrease in Romney 
 and Winchester, 190 
 
 Freeman's prison, 185 
 
 Free-traders, their settlement out- 
 side the towns, 192, 193 
 
 "Frelidge " at Carlisle, 180 
 
 G 
 
 Gallows and pit, right of, 2, note 
 Gallows of prior of Christ Church, 
 Canterbury, 373 ; the abbot's, at 
 Chaldenshain, 372 ; of Colchester, 
 2, note ; Southampton, ib. ; Wor- 
 cester, 310 
 
 Gaol, the common, of Bristol, 315 
 Gascony,its trade with England, 119 
 
 Gates, dispute about control of, in 
 Exeter, 362 ; in Winchester, 324 
 
 Gate, the Broad, of Exeter, 353 
 
 Gaunt, John of, 253, note 2, 260, 
 note 2, 270 
 
 Gavell, the wine, in Exeter, 359, see 
 Chepin 
 
 Genoa, its trade, 79, 80 ; bank of 
 S. George, 80 ; relations of its 
 traders with England, 114, note, 
 115; proposal to forbid trade with, 
 116; disputes of its merchants 
 with those of Bristol, 91, note 2 
 
 Germin, treasurer of Exeter, 346 
 
 Gestling, drowning of felons in the, 
 221, note 2 
 
 Glass, English, forbidden in Beau- 
 champ Chapel at Warwick, 56, 
 note 4 
 
 Glass-painting, early English, 56 
 
 Gloucester made a shire, 12 ; owned 
 by King, 227 ; custody of, given 
 to one of the Berkeleys, 264 ; 
 bell foundries at, 55, 56 ; paving 
 of, 18, note 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of, at York,216,217 
 
 Gloucester, Earl of, his gallows at 
 Worcester, 310 
 
 Godbeate, liberty of, in Winchester, 
 324 
 
 Goldsmiths of London, their wealth, 
 58 
 
 Grendon, Simon, Mayor of Exeter, 
 41,wofe 2 
 
 Griffith, David ap, grant of ferm of 
 Liverpool to, 275 
 
 Grimsby, regulation as to taxes in, 
 355, note 2 
 
 Guestling, courts of, 397 ; see 
 Brotherhood 
 
 Guild at Birmingham, 20 ; of Corpus 
 Christi, 150, 151 ; of Young Men 
 at S. Edmundsbury, 296, 297 ; 
 shopmen's, at Hull, 89, note 2 ; of 
 merchants at Lynn, 89 ; at 
 Malmesbury, dispute about, 302, 
 note 2 ; of Nottingham, rights of 
 taxation given to, 355, note 2 ; of 
 Totnes, 251, 252 ; of Our Lady 
 and S. George at Plymouth, 158 ; 
 at York, 42, note, 89, note 2 
 
 Guilds, festivals of, 150 
 
 Guild Hall, see Hall
 
 426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Guild Merchant, its importance in 
 dependent towns, 302, 303 ; of 
 Ipswich, 224, 225 ; Leicester, 355, 
 note 2 ; Liverpool, 270 ; Lynn, 
 286, 288 ; Reading, 300, 303, 304 ; 
 Totnes, 175, note ; claimed by S. 
 Edmundsbury, 297, 298 
 
 Guns, English-made, their supe- 
 riority, 55 
 
 H 
 
 Hadley, cloth sold at, 54, note 1 
 
 Hall, the common, of Romney, 129, 
 note 2, 403, 405, note 1 ; of Sand- 
 wich, 401 ; the guild, of Bridport, 
 16 ; Exeter, 341, 351, 356 ; Lon- 
 don, 378, note 2 ; Lynn, 283 ; Read- 
 ing, 300, 304, 305 ; Winchester, 324 
 
 Hanse of Cologne, 75, 76, note 1 ; 
 Flemish, in London, 76 
 
 Hanseatic League, 81, 82 ; its carrying 
 trade, 83; disputes with Lynn mer- 
 chants, 91, note 2 ; struggle with 
 English Merchant Adventurers, 
 103-111 ; gathers fleet against 
 England, 109 ; supports Edward 
 IV., ib.; Edward IV.'s treaty 
 with, 110; its guildhall in Lon- 
 don, ib.; house at Boston and 
 Lynn, ib.; its decline, ib., Ill; 
 negotiations with Henry VII. at 
 Antwerp, 113 ; expels English 
 traders from Denmark, 66 ; suc- 
 ceeds Hanse of Cologne in the 
 carrying trade, 77 
 
 Harbledown, hospital of S. Nicholas 
 at, 369 
 
 Harbours, making and improving, 
 142-144 
 
 "Harry Grace a Dieu," the, 84, note 1 
 
 Hastings, 386 ; castle, 387, note I 
 
 Haute, William, lord of the manor 
 of Bishopsbourne, 216, note 2 
 
 Hemp, grown at Bridport, 202 
 
 Henry III., advantages to towns of 
 his reign, 237 ; charter to Liver- 
 pool, 270 ; to Norwich, 242 
 
 Henry IV. supports the Merchant 
 Adventurers, 95, 96, 105, 106 ; ad- 
 vantages to towns of his political 
 insecurity, 237 ; charter to Nor- 
 wich, 245-6 
 
 Henry V. forbids English trade with 
 
 Iceland, 106 ; plans a royal navy, 
 86 ; advantages to towns of his 
 financial needs, 237 
 
 Henry VI., Canterbury associated 
 with the party of, 215 ; advantages 
 to towns of tumults of his reign, 
 237 ; charter to Barnstaple, 255 
 
 Henry VII., his position among 
 English sovereigns, 73, 74 ; re- 
 ceived at Canterbury, 37, note ; 
 enforces Navigation Act, 94 ; pat- 
 ron of the Merchant Adventurers, 
 96, 111, 112 ; international treaties 
 of commerce, 66 ; renews treaty 
 with Brittany, 112 ; treaties with 
 Burgundy, 4 ; commercial treaty 
 with Florence, 117 ; with Riga, 
 113 ; with Scandinavia, ib.; with 
 Venice, 118 ; confirms treaty of 
 Utrecht, 112 ; negotiations with 
 Hanseatic League at Antwerp, 
 113 ; treatment of Lombards, 116 ; 
 secures protection for English 
 merchants in Bordeaux, 119 ; 
 stipulations for free trade with 
 Spain, 120 
 
 Herbert, bishop of Norwich, 282 
 
 Hereford, municipal alnishouse at, 
 41, note 2 ; duties of its citizens to 
 their chief magistrate, 126 ; town 
 bell, 127 ; mode of recovery of 
 freedom, 180, note 3 ; the burghers' 
 account of their freedom, 199, 200; 
 law against maintainers or pro- 
 tectors, 220, 221; trial by combat 
 abolished, ib. ; customs, 317 ; 
 relations with lay and ecclesias- 
 tical lords and their tenants within 
 its liberties, 317-320 ; distinction 
 drawn between " citizens " and 
 " natives," 318 ; authority over 
 those privileged to trade in 
 town, 318, 319; capital bailiff, 229, 
 319, 320 ; punishment of a vaga- 
 bond, 319, 320; tenants of various 
 fees allowed to plead in the courts 
 of, 320 ; refusal to give Cardiff 
 copy of customs, 228, 229 
 
 Highway, the king's, sale of mer- 
 chandise in, 156 
 
 Holcraft, Thomas, ferm of Liverpool 
 let to, 275 
 
 Holland, engineers from, employed
 
 INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 at Hythe, 142, 143, note ; at Sand- 
 wich, 142 
 
 " Holland " linen made in England, 
 57 
 
 Hollingbroke, ward in Romney 
 named after, 402, 403 
 
 Horn, the common, 161 ; at Dover, 
 178, note 5 ; of S. Edmundsbury, 
 296 ; of Romney, 404, 405, note 1 
 
 Hospital at Exeter, 41, note 2 ; at 
 Sandwich, ib. ; the Magdalen, 
 Winchester, 328, 329 ; of S. 
 Nicholas, Harbledown, 369 
 
 Hospital of S. John, Worcester, 
 refusal of its tenants to aid in 
 taxes, &c., 357, note 4 
 
 House built by burgher as security 
 on admission to freedom, 179 ; of 
 burgher must be kept in proper 
 repair, ib., 180 ; of stone, 193 ; the 
 Queen's, at Winchester, 323 
 
 Hull, shipbuilding at, 89 ; shipmen's 
 guild at, 89, note 2 
 
 Hundred, freedom from officers of, 
 232, 233 
 
 Hundred court in Fordwich, 412 ; 
 Sandwich, 401 
 
 Huntingdon, perambulation of its 
 boundaries, 134, note 
 
 Huntingdon, Countess of, owner of 
 Barnstaple, 253 
 
 Huy, burgesses at, 11, note 1 
 
 Hythe, ownership of, 227, 387, note 
 1 ; member of Cinque Ports, 386 ; 
 payment towards renewal of 
 Cinque Ports charters, 390, note 2; 
 Cranmer's lease of bailiwick to 
 townspeople, 408 ; appointment 
 of bailiff, ib., note ; grant of mayor 
 to, ib. ; new harbour made at 
 (1412), 142, 143; subscriptions for 
 new steeple, 160, note 
 
 Iceland, English Adventurers in, 
 
 106, 107 
 
 Income-tax in towns, 139 
 Incorporation, charters of, 219, note I 
 Industry, revolution in, during 14th 
 
 and 15th centuries, 39, 40, 44, 45 ; 
 
 changes in, 67, 70, 71 ; relations 
 
 of government to, 67, 70-72; state 
 protection of, 72, 73 
 
 Inferiores, in Lynn, 193, note 
 
 Inns of London, 378, note 2; bailiffs 
 and jurats allowed to hold, in 
 Romney, 404, note 2; the " Swan " 
 at Canterbury, 216 
 
 Intercursus Magnus, 112 
 
 Ipswich, archbishop of Canterbury 
 given right to trade in, 177, note 2; 
 general assembly, 224 ; barge, 85, 
 note 2 ; charter from John, 223, 
 224 ; charter withdrawn, 247, note 
 4 ; Domesday Roll, 225 ; election 
 of officers, 224 ; Guild Merchant, 
 ib., 224, 225 ; ordinances, 224 ; 
 arrest of Scotch priests, 230, note 
 3 ; common seal, 225 ; guardian- 
 ship of sea, 234, note 2 
 
 Ireland, its trade with Liverpool, 270 
 
 Irishmen, feeling against, in the 
 towns, 173, 174, note 1 
 
 Iron, trade in England, 54; increase 
 in price, 55 ; imported from 
 Sweden and Spain, 55 
 
 Italy, merchants of, their privileges 
 in England, 78 ; expulsion from 
 London, 329, 330 ; hire houses in 
 Winchester, 330 ; settle in South- 
 ampton, ib. 
 
 Jewry of Bishop's Lynn, 283 
 John, advantages to townfc of his 
 money difficulties, 237 ; charter 
 to Ipswich, 223 ; to Liverpool, 
 270 ; to Lynn, 283 
 Jurats of the Cinque Ports, 386 
 Jury, citizens from twelve years 
 old might serve on, 184 ; exemp- 
 tion from serving on, granted to 
 burghers of Reading, 306 ; pay- 
 ments to " friendly," 212 ; no trial 
 by, in Cinque Ports, 388, note 6 
 Justices, itinerant, phut out from 
 Cinque Ports, 388 ; of the Peace, 
 247 
 
 K 
 
 Kent, men of, their evil reputation 
 in Middle Ages, 415
 
 428 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kiln of feudal lord, 199 
 
 King, the, and Commons, 25, note 3, 
 26 ; his sovereign rights, 207-209 ; 
 various officers of, who visited 
 the towns, 208-210 ; power of, to 
 withdraw or question the value of 
 charters and ancient customs, 211, 
 212 ; as lord of manor, 229- 
 232 ; his sympathy with borough 
 in questions as to rival jurisdic- 
 tions, 232, 233 ; his difficulty in 
 finding sufficient officers, 234 ; 
 power of granting privileges be- 
 yond that of other lords, 263, note 
 2 ; loans to, 27, note 2, 305, note 1 
 
 King's court, 208 
 
 Labour, division of, 67 ; forced, in 
 towns, 141, 142 
 
 Landowners, unfavourable con- 
 ditions of life of, 258-268 
 
 Language, English, prayers in, used 
 by a Norfolk guild, 42, note 
 
 Laonnais, federative republic of, 415 
 
 Law, king's, and town law, 236, note 
 
 Law day, business done at, 203 
 
 Law Merchant, 48 
 
 Lawsuits, increase caused by growth 
 of trade, 58 ; of nobles, 266 
 
 Leet in Norwich, 240, 242, 243 
 
 Leet court, 336 ; in Lynn, 288, 294 ; 
 in Norwich, 230, note 3 ; in Not- 
 tingham, 336, note 3 
 
 Leghorn won by Florence, 79 
 
 Leicester, owned by lay noble, 227 ; 
 dispute about election of mayor, 
 235, note 2 ; town property, 269, 
 note ; charter from Edmund 
 Crouchback, ib. ; regulations 
 as to taxes, 355, note 2 ; Guild 
 Merchant, ib. ; duel in, 221, note 
 2 ; petition for abolition of 
 "borough English" in, 222 
 
 " Libel of English Policy," 61, 62 ; 
 the second, 62-64 
 
 Likedelers of Calais, 90 
 
 Lincoln, charter of, 238, note 2; com- 
 plaint about trials in, 336, 337 ; 
 freedom from duel, 221, note 2 
 
 Linen manufacture, its beginnings 
 in England, 57 
 
 Lisbon, commercial treaty with, 121 
 
 Lisle, Lord, his death at Nibley 
 Green, 267 
 
 Liverpool, burgages in, 172 ; takes 
 place of Chester as landing place, 
 270 ; trade with Ireland, ib. 
 common seal, ib. ; election of 
 bailiffs, ib. ; charter from John, 
 ib. ; from Henry III., ib. ; granted 
 to constable of Lancaster Castle, 
 ib. ; resumed by John, ib. ; to Earl 
 of Chester, ib. ; to Earl of Derby, 
 ib. ; to Edmund Crouchback, ib. ; 
 passed by marriage to John of 
 Gaunt, ib. ; Quo Warranto in, ib. r 
 271 ; first mayor, 218, note, 271 ; 
 leases of fee form, 218, note, 270, 
 271 ; liberties usurped by Edmund 
 Crouchback, 271 ; dependence on 
 lord, 272 ; reverts to crown, ib. ; 
 petition of burgesses, ib., note 3 ; 
 relations with Molyneux and 
 Stanley, 273-276 ; grant of ferm to 
 David ap Griffith, 275 ; ferm let 
 to Thomas Holcraft, ib. ; granted 
 to corporation, ib. ; revenue, 273, 
 note 1 
 
 Livery, 339; town laws against, 257, 
 268 ; supplied from lord's estate, 
 260 
 
 Loans, voluntary, from towns to the 
 king, 27, note 2 
 
 Lombards settled in London, 81 ; 
 their relations with Edward IV., 
 Richard III., and Henry VII. , 
 116; persecution of, in London, 
 ib. 
 
 London hires out its common barge, 
 87, note 3 ; bell foundries in, 55, 
 56 ; first notice of bricks in, 
 56, note 3 ; bridge of, 144 ; 
 drapers of, 52, note 3 ; cloth sold 
 in, 54, note 1 ; use of coal in, 55, 
 note 1 ; wealth of its goldsmiths, 
 58; guildhall, 378, note 2; Flemish 
 Hanse of, 76 ; guildhall of Han- 
 seatic League, 110 ; inns, 378, note 
 2 ; Italian merchants expelled 
 from, 329, 330 ; Lombards in, 81, 
 116 ; house of Cologne merchants 
 in, T6,note 1 ; Merchants' Fellow- 
 ship of, its attempt to monopo- 
 lize export of cloth, 69 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 429 
 
 annexes Middlesex, 219, note 3 ; 
 Recorder of, 372, 378, note 2 ; silk 
 manufacture in, 57, note 2; settlers 
 from, at Rye, 17 ; effort to con- 
 centrate foreign trade in, 69 ; 
 paviour from, employed at South- 
 ampton, 18, note ; great play acted 
 in, 145 
 Longport, Canterbury, disputes 
 
 about rights of arrest in, 372 
 Liibeck, head of the Hanseatic 
 League, 81, 82 ; succeeds to finan- 
 cial importance of Florence, 79 ; 
 its merchants farm the English 
 wool tax, 83 ; lend money to 
 Edward III., ib. ; rent English 
 mines, ib. 
 Lucas, Hugh, arrest of, in Exeter, 
 
 351 
 
 Lydd, expenses incurred in war, 
 415, note 4 ; fine for refusing 
 to take journey on town 
 business in, 187 ; incorporation 
 under mayor and jurats, 398, 
 note 2 ; assessment of income 
 tax, 139, note 2 ; imitates Romney 
 jetty, 143, note ; liberties given by 
 Edward I. to, 410 ; quarrel with 
 Battle about boundaries, 41 1 ; loan 
 to Thomas Dygon, 139; minstrels 
 at, 147 ; plays, &c., at, 148 ; pro- 
 vision for poor in, 41, note 2 ; 
 Portuguese in, 122, note; use of 
 archbishop's seal in, 410 ; its 
 services at archbishop's court com- 
 muted for yearly payment, 409, 
 410 ; its hired ships, 87 ; style 
 under Henry VI., 410 ; subjec- 
 tion to Romney, 410, 411 ; town 
 clerk, 411 ; watch on S. John's 
 Eve, 148 
 
 Lynn under Bishop of Norwich, 
 227, 282 ; granted by Bishop 
 Herbert to monks of Norwich, 
 282 ; repurchased, 283-4 ; char- 
 ters from John, 283 ; of 1335, 
 289 ; from bishop, 290 ; struggle 
 between bishop and town, 287- 
 294 ; petition for relief from 
 demands of king's bailiffs, 285, 
 note 1 ; expenses of bribes, 214, 
 note 3 ; Church of St. Margaret, 
 283 ; disputes with the lords of 
 
 Castle Rising, 284-5 ; various 
 courts held by the Bishop of 
 Norwich, 285-6 ; courts leased 
 by bishop to burghers, 294 ; 
 municipal debt, 140, note 1 ; fran- 
 chise controlled by the Bishop of 
 Norwich, 286 ; dispute about the 
 view of frankpledge, 290, 294 ; 
 guildhall, 283 ; guild of mer- 
 chants, 89 ; Guild Merchant, 286, 
 288 ; house of the Hanseatic 
 League, 110 ; cross set up by 
 hermit at, 175, note ; "Inferiores," 
 193, note ; Jewry, 283 ; Leet 
 court, 288, 294 ; Tolbooth court, 
 286, 288; the authority of the 
 mayor limited by the Bishop 
 of Norwich, 286 ; disputes of 
 merchants with the Hanse, 91, 
 note 2 ; lends money to the king, 
 27, note 2 ; payment of players, 
 145, note ; growth of shipping, 
 87 ; taxation for Church expenses, 
 158, note 3 ; trade with Iceland 
 forbidden, 107, note 1 ; wealth 
 in the thirteenth century, 286 ; 
 proving of wills at, 289 
 " Lyvelode," 139 
 
 M 
 
 Maces, at Canterbury, 381 ; Exe- 
 ter, 339, 367 ; Norwich, 246 ; 
 Reading, 306 ; Romney, 406 
 
 Maintenance, statute of, 221, note 1 ; 
 town laws against, 257 
 
 Malmesbury, dispute about guild at, 
 302, note 2 
 
 " Maltodes," 139 
 
 Malvern, fifteenth century glass at, 
 56, note 4 
 
 Manchester, qualifications of burgh- 
 ers in, 170, note 2 ; charter, 181, 
 note 3 
 
 Mancroft, ward in Norwich, 240 
 
 Manufactures, growth of, in England 
 in fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies, 44, 45, 67 ; of cloth, 52-54 ; 
 of wool, in Normandy, 119 
 
 Manufacturers, rivalry with mer- 
 chants, 68 
 
 Marienburg, treaty of commerce 
 made at, 104, note 6
 
 430 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mariners of England and France, 
 agreement between, 396, note 3 
 
 Market, the king's clerk of, 208 ; 
 payments for freedom of, 192 ; 
 market at Barnstaple, 253, note 3 ; 
 Canterbury, 371-2, 377-380 ; Exe- 
 ter, 359, 360 
 
 Marshal of king's house, extent of 
 his jurisdiction, 209 
 
 Mastez in Sandwich, 184, note 5 
 
 Matthyessone, Gerard, Dutch en- 
 gineer employed at Romney, 143, 
 note 
 
 Mayor, election of, 12 ; its connex- 
 ion with settlement of fee-farm 
 rent, 218, note 1 ; various offices 
 given to, 231, 233, 234, 236 ; 
 position between the king and 
 townspeople, 236-7 ; of Bristol, 
 charter to the, 313 ; his 
 daughter's marriage with Lord 
 Berkeley, 316 ; of Canterbury, 
 his office respecting pilgrims, 
 376 ; of Exeter, his depen- 
 dence on the Earl of Devon- 
 shire, 339 ; of Fordwich, his 
 jurisdiction, 412 ; of Hythe, 408, 
 note ; of Leicester, dispute about 
 election of, 235, note 2 ; of 
 Liverpool, first election of, 218, 
 note, 271 ; of Lydd, 398, note 
 2 ; of Lynn, his authority 
 limited by Bishop of Norwich, 
 286 ; dispute with the Bishop 
 about jurisdiction, 289-94 ; his 
 sword, 293 ; of Norwich, rights 
 of jurisdiction given to, in 1403, 
 245-6 ; made mayor of Staple, 
 245 ; his salary, ib. ; his sword 
 and maces, 246 ; appointed King's 
 Escheator in Norwich, ib. ; of 
 Reading, provision for his salary, 
 300, 304, 305 ; his mace, 306 ; 
 disputes about election, ib., 
 307 ; of Romney, 409 ; deposed by 
 Privy Seal, 407 ; of Sandwich, 
 400 ; his power to arrest on sus- 
 picion, 184, note 5 ; of Winchester, 
 325 ; of the Staple, 46, 48 
 
 Mediterranean, its trade, 77, 78 
 
 Melton, action against townsmen for 
 not baking bread at lord's oven in, 
 199, note I 
 
 Memling's Last Judgement, its ad- 
 ventures, 109, note 2 
 
 Mendip, mines in, 55 
 
 Mercers of York, 89, note 2 
 
 Merchant Guild, see Guild Merchant 
 
 Merchants, their aversion from 
 foreign war, 64 ; rivalry with 
 manufacturers, 68 ; associations 
 of, 88 ; increase in their number, 
 89 ; Fellowship of, at Bristol, ib.; 
 guild of, at Lynn, ib. ; Italian, 
 their privileges in England, 78 ; 
 of London, seek to monopolize 
 foreign trade, 69 ; Statute of, 156 
 
 Middlesex annexed to London, 219, 
 note 3 
 
 Mill of feudal lord, 199 ; at Can- 
 terbury, 371-2, 380-1 
 
 Mines, English, 55 ; rented by 
 Liibeck merchants, 83 
 
 Miners of Mendip, riot of, 55 ; of 
 Sussex, 415 
 
 Minstrels, 147 ; of Canterbury, 145 
 
 Mint at Calais, 49 
 
 Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, his 
 Libel of English Policy, 61, 62 
 
 Molyneux, Sir Richard, his relations 
 with Liverpool, 273-276 
 
 Monkenkey, Sandwich, owned by 
 Christ Church, Canterbury, 400 
 
 Montault, Robert of, his struggle 
 with Lynn, 284-5 
 
 Montfort, Simon de, Norwich and 
 Winchester against, 242 ; support- 
 ed by Cinque Ports, 388, note 5 
 
 Moot Hall at Colchester, 14 
 
 Morgespeche of Guild of Reading, 
 303 
 
 Morpeth, 227 
 
 Mortmain, Statute of, 219, 246-7 ; 
 extended to cities and boroughs, 
 219, note 2 
 
 Morton, Cardinal, 211, note, 376-7 
 
 Music, its developement in England 
 in fifteenth century, 44 
 
 N 
 
 " Natives," their distinction from 
 
 citizens in Hereford, 318 
 Navigation Act, the first, 84 ; put 
 
 in force by Henry VII., 94; of- 
 
 1489, 112, 119
 
 INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 Navy, mediaeval idea of its origin 
 and use,75 ; planned by Henry V., 
 86 ; merchant, its character, 92 ; 
 its inefficiency as a royal navy, 
 93 
 
 Netherlands, rivalry with England 
 in the cloth trade, 65, 66 ; English 
 traders in, 98-101 
 Newgate, leet of, in Norwich, 242, 
 
 243 
 
 Nicholas of the Tower (ship), 89 
 Nibley Green, battle of, 267, 316 
 Nobles, their patronage sought by 
 towns, 216 ; honours paid to, 
 256 ; dress and state, ib., 257 ; 
 decay and poverty, 257 ; stores 
 of treasure, 259 ; money diffi- 
 culties, ib. ; dependents, 260 ; 
 borrowing and debts, 261-2 ; 
 leasing out privileges to towns- 
 people, 263 ; frequent absences 
 from home, 264, 265 ; heavy con- 
 sequences of rebellions and civil 
 wars to, 265-266 ; feuds and law- 
 suits, 266-268 
 Non-burgesses, 193-196 
 Norfolk, cloth-making in, 52, note 1 ; 
 worsted manufacture, 54 ; increase 
 of lawsuits, 58 ; traders robbed by 
 Danes, 91 
 
 Normandy, beginning of its woollen 
 manufactures, 119 ; Henry I.'s 
 charters to towns in, 172, note 1 
 Northampton, charter of, 238, note 
 2 ; collection of arrears of ferm, 
 205-6 
 Norton Mandeville, cloth sold at, 
 
 54, note 1 
 
 Norwich, its condition before 
 Henry II. 's time, 238 ; charter of 
 Richard I., ib.; of Henry III., 
 242 ; of Edward I., ib. ; of 
 Henry IV., 245-6 ; sided with 
 king against De Montfort, 242 ; 
 authority exercised by Parliament 
 over, 235, note 2 ; liberties for- 
 feited, 243, 247, note 4 ; petition 
 in 1307, 243-4 ; made county, 245 ; 
 made staple town, 245 ; sues for 
 repayment of a loan to the king, 
 27, note 2 ; twelve of its citizens 
 distrained for the city's debt to 
 the king, 140 ; action in Wars of 
 
 the Roses, 37, note ; under the 
 protection of Suffolk, 216 ; rivalry 
 with Yarmouth, 163, note ; admiral 
 appointed in, 245 ; its burghers 
 freed from arrest for debt, 242 ; 
 four bailiffs, 240, 245, 246 ; 
 bell foundries, 55, 56 ; Borough 
 Court, 239 ; castle fee and its 
 tenants, 240, 241, 244, 245, 313 ; 
 law passed to compel men to be- 
 come citizens, 190 ; church of S. 
 George, 243 ; exemption from 
 clerk of the market, 208, note 2, 
 245 ; ditch, 242 ; exports in 1374, 
 88, note 2 ; ferm, 238 ; provision 
 for, 244 ; guild of S. George, 150 ; 
 system of government imitated by 
 Yarmouth and Colchester, 238, 
 note 2 ; inhabitants in thirteenth 
 century, 171, note 3 ; increase of 
 lawsuits in, 58 ; four leets, 240 ; 
 leet of Newgate, 242, 243 ; 
 amercements ordered by Leet 
 Court, 230, note 3 ; mayor of, his 
 salary, 208, note 1 ; his rights of 
 jurisdiction, 245-6 ; his sword 
 and maces, 246 ; made mayor of 
 Staple,i6. ; made King's Escheator, 
 ib. ; payment for charter, 238 ; 
 petition against players, 152 ; 
 Provost, 238, 239; seal, 246; 
 sheriffs, ib.; municipal taxation, 
 royal interference with, 219, note 
 4, 241, 355, note 2 ; adventures of 
 a thief, 243 ; tolbooth, 239 ; four 
 wards, 239, 240 ; towers and walls, 
 provision for repairing, 245 , note 4 
 
 Norwich, Bishops of, see Herbert, 
 Lynn 
 
 Nottingham, borough in ancient 
 demesne, 227 ; charter, 238, note 
 2 ; franchise forfeited, 247, note 4 ; 
 foreigners to pay .10 for admis- 
 sion to freedom, 178, note 5 ; pay- 
 ment for liberties, 232, note 1 ; 
 rights of taxation given to the 
 guild, 355, note 2 ; " booners " in, 
 141 ; "borough English," 222, 
 note 1 ; bridge, 144 ; burgages, 
 172 ; court leet, 336, note 3 ; 
 pledges, 178, note 4 ; pleas con- 
 cerning trade, 58 
 
 Novgorod, 77, 111
 
 432 
 
 INDEX 
 
 O 
 
 Official, the Master, of the arch- 
 deacon at Nottingham, 336, note 3 
 Onterdel, Dutch engineer employed 
 
 at Romney, 143, note 
 Oporto, commercial treaty with, 121 
 Orphans, Court of, 41, note 2 
 Outbutchery built in Reading, 304 
 Oven of feudal lord, 199 ; of house- 
 holders at Preston, ib. 
 Oxford, first notice of bricks in, 56, 
 note 3 
 
 Palmer, John, of Exeter, 41, note 2 
 
 Parliament, representation of towns 
 in, 4, 7, 24, 25 ; Brinklow's criti- 
 cism on, 60, note 4 ; authority 
 exercised by, in Norwich, 235, 
 note 2 ; expenses of members of, 
 in Winchester, 329; see Commons 
 
 Paston family, stores in their house, 
 259, note 2 
 
 Paston, Sir John, 260, 265 
 
 Paston, Judge, 265 
 
 Pavilion, the, in Winchester^ 322 
 
 Paving of towns,. 18, note 
 
 Payments from towns for the con- 
 firmation of charters, 211, 303 ; 
 for liberties, 232, 238 ; for deliver- 
 ance from feudal obligations, 198 ; 
 in kind at Bridport, 204-5 
 
 Peasant Revolt, 196, 237 
 
 " Penny prykke," game of, 363 
 
 Pershore, Abbot of, his gallows in 
 Worcester, 310 
 
 Philip, Archduke, makes Bruges the 
 staple for English cloth in Flan- 
 ders, 113, note 3 
 
 Picardy, commercial league of, 415 
 
 " Piers Ploughman," picture of Eng- 
 lish life in, 21 ; dealings with the 
 social problems of the day, 22 ; 
 his theory of King and Commons, 
 25, note 3, 26 
 
 Pilgrims to Canterbury, provision 
 for the safety and comfort of, 
 375, 376 
 
 Pillory, 252, 315 
 
 Pit and gallows, right of, 2, note 
 
 Pirates attack English Adventurers 
 90,91 
 
 Pisa, English wool merchants at, 
 117 
 
 Plays, 145-148 
 
 Players, petitionagainst,inNorwich, 
 152 
 
 Pledges required of candidates for 
 citizenship, 178 
 
 Plumpton family, their money diffi- 
 culties, 261 
 
 Plumpton, Sir John, 130 
 
 Plumpton, Sir William, 265, 266, 
 note 1 
 
 Plimpton, charter of Baldwin of 
 Redvers to, 263, note 2 ; agree- 
 ment of the convent of, with Ply- 
 mouth, 296, note ; rope yarn, made 
 at, 202 
 
 Plymouth, its agreement with 
 the convent of Plimpton, 296, 
 note ; money collected for S. 
 Andrew's by church ales, 160, 161; 
 regulations about the use of copes, 
 158 ; the guild of our Lady and 
 S. George, ib.- of Corpus Christi, 
 151 ; incorporation of tailors, ib. 
 
 Ponthieu, federative republic of, 
 415 
 
 Portmanbrok in Reading, 300, 304 
 
 Portmen in Ipswich, 224 
 
 Portmote, see Borough Court 
 
 Portugal succeeds Venice in the 
 Eastern trade, 121 ; commercial 
 treaty with, ib. 
 
 Pratt, William, builds the first main 
 drain at Canterbury, 19, 20 
 
 Preston, its various lords, 253, note 
 2; qualifications of burghers, 170, 
 note 2 ; their privileges, 190, note 
 3, 198, 199 ; punishment for 
 breach of public duty, 181 
 
 Prison of the bishop, in Exeter, 362 ; 
 freeman's, 185 ; the abbot's, at 
 Fordwich, 412 
 
 Privy Seal, see Seal 
 
 Probate, claimed by the Mayor of 
 Canterbury, 200, note 1 ; at Lynn, 
 289 
 
 Provost of Norwich, his election, 
 238; his duties, 239; replaced by 
 four bailiffs, 240
 
 INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 Prussia, English traders banished 
 
 from, 66 
 Purveyors, the king's, 210 
 
 Q 
 
 Quay at Fordwich, quarrels about 
 the, 413 ; of Sandwich, agreement 
 between Christ Church and Sand- 
 wich about, 400, note 2 
 
 " Queke/' game of, 363 
 
 Quo Warranto in Liverpool, 270 
 
 Radford, Recorder of Exeter, 345, 
 347 
 
 Radington, Baldwin of, 130 
 
 Ramsey, carpet and tapestry manu- 
 factories at, 57 ; tenants of King's 
 Ripton transferred to the Abbey 
 of, 228, iiote 
 
 Reading, originally on royal 
 demesne, 299 ; its subjection 
 to the Abbot, ib., 227 ; struggle 
 with him, 300, 301, 303-308 ; 
 confirmation of charters, 303; 
 archers, 16, note ; view of arms, 
 ib. ; bell, 304 ; nineteen bridges, 
 301, note 2 ; the Hallowed Brook, 
 
 304 ; chepin gavell in, 299, 306 ; 
 common chest, 305, 306 ; con- 
 stable, 304, 306 ; guild merchant, 
 300, 303, 304 ; guildhall, 303, 304, 
 
 305 ; exemption from serving on 
 juries granted to burghers, 306 ; 
 loans to the king, 305, note 1 ; the 
 mayor, his salary, 304, 305 ; his 
 mace, 306 ; disputes about his 
 election, 306, 307 ; register of his 
 acts, 305 ; Morgespeche, 303 ; 
 Outbutchery, 304 ; Portmanbrok, 
 300, 304 ; seal for cloth, 308 ; 
 contribution of soldiers under Ed- 
 ward VI., 16, note 
 
 Reap-silver, 171, no te 2 
 Recorder of Exeter, 345, 347 ; of Lon- 
 don, 372, 378, note 2 
 Redcliffe,dispute about ownership of, 
 VOL. I 
 
 314, 315 ; incorporated with Bris- 
 tol, 314, note 
 
 Redvers, Baldwin of, his charter to 
 Plimpton, 263, note 2 
 
 Religion among English townsfolk 
 in 15th century, 42 
 
 Rhine, commercial league of the, 
 415 
 
 Ricart of Bristol, his notices of 
 political events, 37, note 
 
 Richard I., advantages to towns of 
 his money difficulties, 237 ; his 
 charters to towns, 238 
 
 Richard III.'s dealings with York, 
 27, note 2 
 
 Richard of Almayne, his grant to 
 Exeter, 357 
 
 Riga, Henry VII. 's commercial 
 treaty with, 113 
 
 Ripon, its fair, 130 ; fight at, in 
 1441, ib. 
 
 Ripton, King's,tenantsof, transferred 
 to the abbey of Ramsey, 228, 
 note 
 
 Rising, Castle, disputes between the 
 lords of, and the bishop of Nor- 
 wich. 284 ; its rights in Lynn pass 
 to Edward III., 285 
 
 Roan, John, Flemish engineer em- 
 ployed at Romney, 143, note 
 
 Rochelle, its wine trade with 
 Romney, 88 
 
 Rochester, the King's hackney-men 
 in, 209, note 3 ; castle of, owner 
 of land in Lydd, 409 
 
 Roll, the Black, of Exeter, 345 
 
 Romney under Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, 227 ; member of Cinque 
 Ports, 386 ; ownership of, 387, 
 note 1 ; struggle for freedom, 404- 
 409 ; claim to be a royal borough, 
 407-408 ; struggle with Lydd, 
 409, 411 ; auditing of town ac- 
 counts, 139, note 2; bailiff, 404- 
 406 ; bell, 405, note 1 ; Cranmer's 
 refusal to lease out bailiwick 
 to townspeople, 408-409 ; common 
 barges, 87, 88 ; decay of burghers, 
 403 ; book of customs, 405, 
 note 1 ; commerce, 87, 88 ; com- 
 mon hall, 129, note 2 ; 403, 405, 
 note 1 ; common horn, 404, 405, 
 note 1 ; care of common lands, 
 F F
 
 434 
 
 INDEX 
 
 136, 137 ; decrease of freemen, 
 190 ; bailiffs and jurats allowed to 
 hold inns, 404, note 2 ; govern- 
 ment by senior jurat, 409 ; places 
 of assembly of jurats, 405, note 1 ; 
 grant of mayor, 409 ; mayor de- 
 posed by Privy Seal, 407 ; silver 
 mace, 406 ; payment for mainten- 
 ance of liberties of Cinque Ports, 
 390, note 2 ; plays at, 148 ; silting 
 up of its port, 403 ; punishment 
 of elected mayor or jurat who 
 refused to serve, 188 ; seal, 
 405, note 1 ; sluices, 143, note ; 
 assessment of taxes, 402, note 4 ; 
 trade, 402-403, 88 ; wards, 402, 
 note 4 
 
 Roofs of tiles or brick, houses to be 
 provided with, 194 
 
 Ropes, made at Bridport, 202 
 
 Rosiers, at Canterbury, dispute for 
 jurisdiction over, 135, 136 
 
 Rother, river, 403 
 
 Rotherham college, its red brick, 
 56, note 3 
 
 Rowley, William, 120, note 
 
 Russia, Henry VII. 's attempt to 
 secure trade with, 113 
 
 Kye,ownershipof,387, notel ; member 
 of Cinque Ports, 386 ; growth, 17 ; 
 auditing of its accounts,139, note 2; 
 expenses for war, 415, note 4 ; tax 
 for its fortification, 129, note I ; 
 London merchants in, 17 ; build- 
 ing of its quay, 142, note 2 ; rights 
 of sanctuary forbidden in, 338 ; 
 its " schipwrite,"88,Mofe2 ; trade, 
 88 ; gifts to poor, 41, note 2 ; 
 wards, 1 7 
 
 S 
 
 Sailors, in seaports, 194 
 
 St. Albans, ownership of, 227 ; re- 
 nounces its liberties, 295, note 2; 
 its seal, ib. 
 
 St. Edmundsbury, its agricultural 
 services, 171, note 2 ; dispute 
 with abbot, 296-298; Guild of 
 Young Men, 296, 297 ; claims a 
 merchant guild, 297, 298 ; com- 
 mon horn, 296 ; seal, 298 
 
 Salford, qualification for citizenship 
 in, 170, note 2 
 
 Salisbury, bell foundries at, 55, 56 ; 
 cloth sold at, 54, note 1 ; relations 
 between citizens and bishop, 281, 
 note 
 
 Sanctuary, question of, 337-8 ; in 
 Canterbury Cathedral, 374 ; rights 
 of, forbidden in Rye, 338 
 
 Sandwich, member of Cinque Ports, 
 386 ; port of London, 369, note 3 ; 
 ownership, 387, note 1, 399, 400 ; 
 freedom as royal borough, 402 ; 
 refuses loan to the king, 27, note 
 2 ; quarrels with Canterbury, 
 163, note ; mastery of Fordwich, 
 411-413 ; common assembly, 
 401 ; Hundred court, ib. ; powers 
 of King's bailiff in, 400-402 ; 
 church of S. Clements, 401 ; of 
 S. Peter, ib. ; engages a Dutch- 
 man to make a new dyke, 142 ; 
 harbour, 369 ; privilege of burg- 
 hers, 185 ; market-place and 
 common hall, 401 ; the Mastez in, 
 184, note 5 ; its mayor manager 
 of the hospitals, 41, note 2 ; his 
 power to arrest on suspicion, 184, 
 note 5; may or and jurats, 400-402 ; 
 Monkenkey, 400 ; punishment of 
 men charged with homicide or 
 theft, 221, note 2; of elected 
 treasurer who refused to serve, 
 188 ; penalty for wounding in, 
 132, note 2 
 
 Scarborough, its complaint about 
 ferrn, 247, note 4 
 
 " Scavadge," 142, note 1 
 
 Scot-ales, 206, 207 
 
 Scotland, war with, Morton's de- 
 mands for, 376, 377 
 
 Scots traders at Veere, 98, note 5 
 
 Schonen, English cloth dealers at, 
 95 
 
 Seaford, 386, note 2 
 
 Seaports, their duties, 128, 129 
 
 Seals, 175-6 ; English, their fine 
 workmanship, 225, note of Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury used in 
 Lydd, 410 ; of Barnstaple, 
 225, note ; of Doncaster, 269, note ; 
 Ipswich, 225 ; Liverpool, 270 ; 
 Norwich, 246 ; for sealing the
 
 INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 cloth in Reading, 308 ; of Rom- 
 ney, 405, note 1 ; St. Albans, 295, 
 note 2 ; of S. Edmundsbury, 298 ; 
 of Lord Warden of Cinque Ports, 
 necessary to make King's writ 
 valid, 387 ; the Great, request 
 that only laymen should nave 
 charge of, 365, note 3 ; the Privy, 
 writ of, 341 ; mayor of Romney 
 deposed by, 407 
 
 Security required by town on 
 admission of man to freedom, 
 
 , 179 
 
 Self-government in the towns, 1-3, 
 218 
 
 Selling, Prior, of Christ Church, 
 Canterbury, 377 
 
 Serfs, conditions of their emancipa- 
 tion in towns, 174, note 3 
 
 Shepway, court of, 388, 391-394, 
 396, note 2 
 
 Sheriff, jurisdiction of the, 203-4 ; 
 appointment of deputy by, 204 ; 
 assessor and collector of royal 
 taxes and rents, ib. ; duties as 
 head of shire forces, ib.; tyranny 
 and extortion of, 206 ; hatred of, 
 expressed in popular ballads and 
 books, 207 ; term of office, 234,ote 
 3 ; business at Bridport, 204 ; 
 modes of extortion in Canterbury 
 and Bridgenorth, 207 ; court at 
 Dorchester, 203, 204 ; of Norfolk, 
 his Curia Comitatus at Norwich, 
 239 ; jurisdiction there, 246 ; of 
 Norwich. 246 
 
 " Shewage/' 142, note 1 
 
 Shillingi'ord, John, 338, 340-341, 
 346-348, 350 
 
 Shipbuilding for aliens, 86 ; at 
 Hull, 89 ; at Woolwich, 84, note 1 ; 
 its costliness, 87 
 
 Shopmen's guild at Hull, 89, note 2 
 
 Shipping, native and foreign, regu- 
 lation of, 84 ; its conditions in 
 England, 85, 81:5 ; growth in sea- 
 port towns, 87 ; trade taken under 
 State protection (1489), 112 
 
 Ships, English and foreign, sizes 
 of, 84, note 1 ; English, dispute 
 with Flemish, 92, note 2 ; nee Chris- 
 topher, Grace, Harry, Nicholas, 
 Trinity 
 
 Shire officers, 203-207 ; freedom 
 from them, 232-3 
 
 Shrewsbury, wearing of liveries for- 
 bidden in, 268, note 2. 
 
 Shrewsbury, Countess of, her 
 agreement with James, Lord of 
 Berkeley, 266 
 
 Silk, its importation forbidden, 110 ; 
 manufacture, its beginning in 
 England, 57 ; carried on by 
 women in London, ib., note 2 
 
 Silver mines in England, 55, note 1 
 
 Skenes, Irish, 351 
 
 Soke, the bishop's at Winchester, 
 322 
 
 Soldiers, charges of levying for 
 royal service, 374 
 
 Somerset, its silver mines, 55, note 1 
 
 Southampton, owned by King, 227 ; 
 burgess imprisoned for its rent, 
 140, 141 ; liberties forfeited, 247, 
 note 4 ; its aqueduct and water 
 supply, 19, note ; constable of 
 castle, 312 ; gallows, 2, note ; 
 licence to buy and sell during 
 S. Giles' Fair, 329 ; Italian mer- 
 chants at, 78, 81, 330 ; paving, 18, 
 note ; provision for poor, 41, note 
 2 ; ship, 85, note 2 ; rights of 
 Bishop of Winchester in, during 
 fair of S. Giles, 324, note 3 
 
 Spain, English trade with, 120, 121 
 
 Stalls, in Exeter market place, 360 ? 
 the Queen's, in Winchester, 323 
 
 Stanley, John of, 130 
 
 Stanley, Sir John, his relations with 
 Liverpool, 273-276 
 
 Staple, the, 45 ; its wanderings 
 under Edward III., ib, 46 ; fixed 
 at Calais, ib. ; mayors and alder- 
 men of, ib, 48 ; English towns of, 
 46 ; rules, 46-48 ; authority, 48 ; 
 merchants of, monopolize export 
 of wool, 49 ; of Calais, its money 
 transactions with the captain and 
 the Government, ib, 50 ; decline, 
 51 ; struggle against Merchant 
 Adventurers, 101-103 ; Mediter- 
 ranean merchants freed from its 
 control, 78 ; appointment of 
 mayor as mayor of, 234 ; set up 
 by English adventurers at Ber- 
 gen, 95 ; for English cloth in
 
 436 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Flanders, placed at Bruges by 
 Archduke Philip, 113, note 3 
 
 Staplegate at Canterbury, 370 
 
 Statute of Maintenance, 221, note 1; 
 of Merchants, 156 ; of Mortmain, 
 219, 246-7 
 
 Steel-yard, the, 83, 109, 110 
 
 Steward of King's house, his juris- 
 diction, 209 
 
 Steward's Hall Port of Lynn, 294 
 
 Stonor, harbour of, 369 
 
 Sturgeon, Nicholas, 44, note 1 
 
 Sturiuys of Bristol, sends a ship to 
 the East, 115 
 
 Sturry, 369 
 
 Sudbury, Archbishop, 374 
 
 Suffolk, Duke of, 216 
 
 Sussex, miners of, their evil reputa- 
 tion in Middle Ages, 415 
 
 Svvithun, S., the convent of, at 
 Winchester, 322, 323, see Win- 
 chester 
 
 Sword, of mayor of Norwich, 246 ; 
 of mayor of Lynn, 293 
 
 Tailors at Plymouth incorporated, 
 
 151 
 
 Taperaxe, 412 
 
 Tapestry factory at Ramsey, 57 
 Taverner, John, builds a "carrack" 
 
 at Hull, 89 
 Tax on wool farmed by Liibeck 
 
 merchants, 83 
 Taxation, changes in, 27 note 1 ; of 
 
 cloth, 81, note 1 ; illegal, con- 
 trolled by Commons, 25, note 3 ; 
 
 internal, of towns, 139, 355-357 ; 
 
 interference with, in Norwich, 
 
 219, note 4 
 
 Temple Fee, Bristol, 313, note 2 
 Tennis, game of, 363 
 Tetbury fair, 314 
 Teutonic Order banishes English 
 
 traders from Prussia, 66 
 " Thefeswell " in Fordwich, 412 
 Thiefdown, 221, note 2 
 Thomas, S., feast of translation of. 
 
 370 
 Tin-works, Cornish, rented by 
 
 Liibeck merchants, 83 
 
 Tolbooth at Norwich, 239 ; Court 
 at Lynn, 286, 288 ; Port, at Lynn, 
 294 
 
 Toll hall at Bridport, 16 
 Tolls of cloth-exporters and staplers 
 compared, 52 ; on export, 90, 
 iiote 2 ; for Merchant Adven- 
 turers, fixed by charter in Bur- 
 gundy, 96 ; freedom from, granted 
 to burghers, 183 
 Topsham, 359 
 
 Totnes, jurisdiction of the lord's 
 bailiff in, 252-3; disputes between 
 lord and tenants, 252 ; poverty in 
 1449, 159 ; wooden belfry re- 
 placed by stone tower, 160 ; Guild 
 under Henry II. and John, 251 ; 
 rights claimed by, 251-2 ; Mer- 
 chant Guild, 175, note ; water- 
 bearers, 157, note 
 
 Towns, English, their importance in 
 fifteenth century, 1 ; significance 
 of their history, 8-10; beginning 
 of municipal history, 11 ; con- 
 trast of their history with that of 
 French communes, 29-32 ; their 
 lowly beginnings, 33 ; relation to 
 the Government, 27 ; importance 
 of their internal administration, 
 20 ; their contribution to the re- 
 organization of society, 23, 24 ; 
 progress up to fourteenth century, 
 10-12 ; in fourteenth century, 
 13 ; place in history of fifteenth 
 century, 40-44 ; fallen condition 
 in 1835, 5, 6 ; attitude in Wars 
 of Roses, 164 ; ratify Henry VII. 's 
 treaties with Burgundy, 4 ; their 
 self-contained and self-dependent 
 life, 125 ; changes in their condi- 
 tion through increase of industry 
 and commerce, 171 ; amusements 
 in, 145-153 ; assemblies, 223 ; 
 "common barges," 140 ; preserva-. 
 tion of boundaries and " liberties," 
 134 ; common lands, 136, 137 ; 
 common revenue, 139 ; competi- 
 tion and commercial jealousy in, 
 163 ; corporate property, 138 ; 
 criers, 161, 162,180; duties, 4; 
 duty of citizens to chief magistrate 
 and community, 126 ; military du- 
 ties, 129-131 ; military discipline,
 
 INDEX 
 
 437 
 
 127, 128 ; freedom of election, 5 ; 
 its decay, 6, 7 ; festivals, 149, 
 152, 153 ; financial responsibility, 
 140, 165-167 ; refusal to take up 
 the franchise, 186 ; forced labour 
 in, 141, 142 ; extent of their 
 jurisdiction, 3, 190-193, 333-8 ; 
 right of criminal jurisdiction 
 in, 2 ; election of mayor, 12 ; offi- 
 cers' duties and responsibilities, 
 186 ; representation in Parlia- 
 ment, 4, 7, 24, 25 ; patronage of 
 nobles sought by, 216 ; paving of, 
 18, note ; political feeling in, 60, 
 61 ; privileges forfeited, 247, note 
 3 ; their protection extended to 
 men who were not free citizens, 
 189 ; provisions for relief of the 
 poor, 41, note 2 ; ranks and classes 
 of men in, 189-196 ; conflicting 
 rights in, 309-311 ; their self- 
 government, 1-3 ; self-taxation, 
 2 ; distribution of taxes in, 355, 
 note 2 ; regulation of trade, 2, 3 ; 
 watch and ward, 132, 133 ; water- 
 supply in, 19; condition of the 
 working classes in, 195 ; public 
 works, 141 ; on ancient demesne, 
 227-229 ; dependent on other 
 boroughs, 227, note; on ecclesi- 
 astical estates, 227, 277-281 ; on 
 feudal estates, 250-1 ; subject to 
 monastic rule, 295 ; sea-port, 
 their duties during Hundred 
 Years' War, 128, 129; of the 
 Staple, 46 ; see Boroughs 
 Townspeople lay rectors of parish 
 church, 157 ; their temper in the 
 fifteenth century, 165, 
 Tracy, Henry de, holder of Barn- 
 staple, 253 note 3 
 
 Trade, its regulation in towns, 2, 3 ; 
 early associations for protection 
 of, 32 ; increase of lawsuits con- 
 cerning, 58 ; revolution in fif- 
 teenth century, 51 ; endeavour to 
 exclude foreigners from, 73 ; 
 attempts to protect it from 
 piracy, 91 ; right of, given to 
 burghers, 182 ; payment for 
 rights of, 189 ; with the East, 
 monopolized by Italians, 114 ; 
 diverted from Venice to Portugal, 
 
 121 ; English, with Bordeaux, 
 118, 119, 316, note 1 ; with 
 Genoa, proposal to forbid, 116; 
 with the North, 106, 107, 114 ; 
 of Florence, 78, 79 ; foreign, 
 Bishop Moleyns's views of, 61 ,62 ; 
 an anonymous "Libeller" on, 62- 
 64 ; London attempts to monopo- 
 lize, 69 ; injured by war with 
 France, 64, iwte ; of Romney, 
 403 ; free, adopted by Florence, 
 117 ; of the country, formidable 
 rival to protected trade of towns, 
 193 ; between Liverpool and 
 Ireland, 270 ; of the Mediterra- 
 nean, 77, 78 ; State protection of, 
 72, 73 ; its results at Venice, 80 ; 
 by sea, its early routes, 75, 77 ; 
 Venetian, bill against, proposed 
 in Parliament, 115 ; of Winches- 
 ter, 324, 328; in beer, with 
 Flanders, 57 ; in cloth, its 
 rise, 51-54, 94, 95 ; rivalry in, be- 
 tween England and Flanders, 65- 
 66 ; in iron, 54 ; in wool, 45, 49, 
 51 ; in wine, between Aquitaine 
 and England, 118-120; from 
 Rochelle to Romney, 88 ; struggle 
 between England and Venice lor, 
 116-118; licenses for trade given 
 to lords of Berkeley, 316, note 1 
 
 Traders in the towns, 189-192 ; 
 privileged, living outside towns, 
 192-3 
 
 Treaties of commerce, Henry VII. 's, 
 66; with Brittany, 112; with 
 Castile and Catalonia, 120 ; 
 Henry VI I. 's, with Florence, 
 117; with Portugal, 121; with 
 Riga and Scandinavia, 113; of 
 Marienburg, 104, note 6; of 
 Utrecht, 110; of 1475, 1486, 
 1495, 119, note 2 : of 1496 (Inter- 
 cursus Magnus), 112 
 
 Trials, complaint about, in Lincoln, 
 336-7 
 
 Trinity of Berkeley (ship), 316 note I 
 
 Tumbril, 252, 315 
 
 U 
 
 Under-sheriff, appointed by sheriff, 
 204
 
 438 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Unenfranchised class, increase of, 
 
 in towns, 196 
 Utrecht, treaty with the Hanse 
 
 made at (1474), 110; confirmed 
 
 by Henry VII., 112 
 
 Veere, depot of Scottish traders at, 
 
 98, note 5 
 Venice, its state-protected trade, 
 
 80 ; its trade with Southampton, 
 
 81 ; diverted to Portugal, 121 ; 
 bill to forbid its carrying trade 
 proposed in Parliament, 115 ; 
 driven out of Egypt, 114; 
 struggle of English merchants 
 with, 116 ; Henry VII.'s agree- 
 ment with, 118 
 
 Vitalien Briider, 90 
 
 W 
 
 Waits, 145 
 
 Walls, provision for repairing in 
 Norwich, 245, note 4 
 
 Wards in Norwich, 239, 240 ; in 
 Romney, 402, note 4 ; in Rye, 17 
 
 Warden, the Lord, of the Cinque 
 Ports, towns under the rule of, 
 386 ; his authority, 390-394 ; 
 powers as Constable of Dover 
 Castle, as Admiral, as Chancellor, 
 392 ; his seal, necessary to make 
 King's writs valid, 387 
 
 Warden of the Poor at Exeter, 41, 
 note 2 
 
 Warwick, its various lords, 309 310 
 
 Warwick, Earl of, the Kingmaker 
 257-8, 415 
 
 Watch and ward, 132, 133 ; con- 
 troversy about in Exeter, 357-8 
 
 Water supply in towns, 19, note 
 
 Wayneflete, Bishop of Winchester, 
 326, note 
 
 Weald, iron trade in, 54 
 
 Weavers of Chester, their riot in 
 1399, 130, note 1 ; English and 
 foreign, their rivalry, 65 ; Flem- 
 ish, their struggle against import- 
 ation of English cloth, 99-101 ; 
 in Bristol, 193 
 
 Weights and Measures, Act of 1429, 
 3, note 
 
 Wells, under Bishop of Wells, 227 ; 
 fees in kind at, 178 
 
 Westgate, Canterbury, 381 ; Arch- 
 bishop's tenants of, 370 
 
 Westminster, silk manufactory at, 
 57, note 2 ; Abbot of, his gallows 
 in Worcester, 310 
 
 Westwick, ward in Norwich, 240 
 
 Weymouth, ownership of, 227 
 
 Whitstable, rights claimed by Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury's tenants, 
 of, 371 
 
 Wikham, John, " schigwrite " of 
 Rye, 88, note 2 
 
 Wills, enrolled in borough courts, 
 200, note I ; probate of, at Lynn, 
 289 ; claimed by Mayor of Can- 
 terbury, 200, note I 
 
 Winchelsea, ownership of, 387 note 1 ; 
 member of Cinque Ports, 386 ; 
 punishment of thief at, 221, note 2 
 
 Winchester, owned by King, 227 ; 
 charter, 238, note 2 ; sided with 
 King against De Montfort, 242 ; 
 its reputed antiquity, 321 ; pover- 
 ty, 190 ; decrease of freemen, ib. ; 
 dispute between bishops and 
 burghers, 323 ; fight between citi- 
 zens and monks, 324, note 2 ; 
 distress and poverty in fifteenth 
 century, 326-330 ; Lancastrian 
 sympathies, 326, note ; heavy bur- 
 dens, 327-9 ; petition of burghers 
 to Henry VI., 328, 329 ; ferm, 
 fines, and expenses in 1450, ib. ; 
 grant of forty marks to, from 
 ulnage and subsidies of cloths, 
 329 ; various alien bodies within 
 its liberties, 322-324 ; common as- 
 sembly, 321 ; boundaries, 322 ; 
 castle, ib. ; corporation, 321 ; 
 curfew bell, 324; S. Giles' fair, 
 324, 329 ; fraternity of S. John, 
 its payment towards maintenance 
 of walls and bridges, 329, note 2 ; 
 provision for ferm, 328, note 2 ; 
 franchise refused, 328 ; experi- 
 ment in free-trade, ib. ; friars, 
 323; Magdalen hospital, 328, 
 329 ; mayor, 325 : control of 
 gates, 324 ; liberty of Godbeate,
 
 INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 ib. ; Guildhall, 324 ; High Street, 
 322, 323 ; Italian merchants in, 
 330 ; King's officers in, 325 ; 
 town officers, 321, 322 ; expenses 
 of burgesses to Parliament, 329 ; 
 Pavilion, 322 ; perambulation of 
 liberties, ib. ; the Queen's House, 
 323 ; Queen's stalls, ib. ; convent 
 of S. Swithun, 322 ; Bishop of, 
 bribes to, 214 ; his authority over 
 trade, 324 ; palace, 322 ; rights 
 of his tenants, 322-3 ; Soke, 322 
 
 Windsor, Dean of, gift from Canter- 
 bury to, 214 
 
 Wines, variety of, 215 ; Rhine, 
 ordered to be carried only in 
 English ships, 110 ; see Trade 
 
 " Wine gavell " in Exeter, 359 
 
 Wingham, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury's tenants of, 370-1 
 
 Women carry on silk manufacture 
 in London, 57, note 2 ; their man- 
 agement of great estates, 265 
 
 Wool, beginning of its manufacture 
 in Normandy, 119 ; export of, 
 45, 49 ; under Edward III., 
 50 : decrease in fifteenth century, 
 51 ; tax on, 49 ; farmed by 
 Liibeck merchants, 83 
 
 Wool Hall at Colchester, 14 
 
 Wool-growers, rivalry with cloth- 
 manufacturers, 68 
 
 Woolwich, ship built at, 84, note 1 
 
 Worcester, protection of burghers, 
 184 ; law passed to compel men 
 to become citizens, 190 ; com- 
 mon coffer, 138, note ; "Great 
 Clothing," ib. ; gallows, 310 ; 
 hospital of S. John, 357 note 4 
 
 Working-classes in towns, condition 
 of the, 195 
 
 Worsted manufacture in Norfolk, 
 54 
 
 Wynde, burgesses of the, in Barn- 
 staple, 254 
 
 Yarmouth, owned by King, 227 ; 
 rivalry with Norwich, 163, note : 
 made staple town, ib. ; imitates 
 Norwich system of government, 
 238, note 2 ; riotous population 
 of sailors, 194 ; threatens monopo- 
 ly of Cinque Ports, 394 ; its fair, 
 395, 396, 415 
 
 Yaxley, church-ales at, 161, note 
 
 Year gift, 206 
 
 York, owned by King, 227 ; its cor- 
 poration made justiciars for pre- 
 serving rivers, 234, note 2 ; deal- 
 ings with Richard III., 27, note 2 ; 
 reception of Duke of Gloucester, 
 216, 217 ; guilds at, 42, note ; 
 89, note 2 ; mercers at, 89, note 
 2 ; territory, 3, note ; its fran- 
 chise, 196 ; dispute about payment 
 of troops, 131, note 3 ; riot about 
 common lands, 137, note 2 
 
 York, Archbishop of, his attack on 
 Ripon in 1441, 130 
 
 York, Duchess of, gifts from Canter- 
 bury to, 215 
 
 Yorkshire, early brick buildings in, 
 56, note 3 
 
 Ypres, decline of its weaving trade, 
 65 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BUNGAY.
 
 Date Due 
 
 MAR 2 
 
 Ull 
 
 
 W4 
 
 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137