Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

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;517 but the flow of its liberality was suddenly 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 themTo have lordship of man nor town.”518

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 single instance of a town where a lively trade went hand in hand with a subservient spirit, or where a temper of unconquerable 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 ecclesiastical lord. If Norwich received from the bounty of Kings one privilege after another in quick succession till its emancipation was complete, its neighbour Lynn, equally wealthy and enterprising, but subject 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 Romney, 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 generations of Nottingham burghers had been ordering their own market, taking the rents of their butcheries 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 privileges from the abbot who owned the town. Everywhere the same story is repeated, with varying incidents of passion and violence. The struggle sometimes 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 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 administration 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.519

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.520 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 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 mediæval 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;521 and then at once proceeded by a bargain with the convent at Norwich to win back for the see the whole of the lay 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,522 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 merchandise,” 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,523 this outbreak 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 municipal 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.524

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 of frankpledge; and owned the Tolbooth Court. There was indeed a mayor,525 but his authority was small, for the bishop who had been eager to grant his burghers the privileges of trade526 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 levying taxes was limited and subject to his lord’s control, nor could he make distress for sums levied on 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.527 What was far more important, the bishop on the plea of protecting the poor from tyranny had withdrawn 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.528

As in other towns, however, so here the Guild Merchant proved itself a most powerful organization for the winning of local independence.529 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 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 disputes, 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 with a sturgeon, pike and tenches, formed one of these peace offerings;530 at another time it would be a costly gift of wax. But what they gave with one hand they were 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.531 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 burghers would cry to the Privy Council to compel the bishop to rebuild it;532 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 inevitable 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.533 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 business touching the community in the King’s parliament and elsewhere.534 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.535 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 burgesses.536 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 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,537 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 corporation, 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 meanwhile seized with his own hand the view of frankpledge and the lands, giving the first over for the time to the sheriff of the county and the second to the king’s escheator.538 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,539 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 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;540 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.541

But the burghers never yielded their consent to the decision of the King’s justices, and at every provocation loudly renewed their protest. When the bishop visited Lynn in 1377, he demanded that in recognition 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 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.542 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 done 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. 0d. for the expenses of the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, in going to London on the business.543 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 allowing a sword to be carried before him544 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 4d. for the “cleaning of the mayor’s sword,” and 6s. 8d. for “crimson velvet for the sword and for making it up.”545 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 mistaken, “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 gates we came in we went out, and no blood drawn, God be thanked.”546

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 perpetually 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 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,547 but the bishop was driven at last to a compromise which preserved his historic claims untouched 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 burgesses the yearly Leet, the Steward’s Hall Port, and the Tolbooth Port;548 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 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 went 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,549 and fell back under the control of the Abbey as completely as St. Alban’s had done in earlier times.550 In other cases the resistance was more energetic and sustained, and some slight measure of success was its reward.551

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 impulse 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 enemies,552 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 compromise 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 burgesses and to have an alderman, and a Merchant 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.