Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

On the first day of meeting the business, as befitted 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 bailiffs of the last fair who stood bare-headed before them, and elected their successors who were to govern the coming fair.754 But other interests had grown up round the assembly hill. The seafaring population, masters and mariners of trading barges, saw in the union of Ports the power which regulated the relations 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.755

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 taxation756 ordered at Shepway, the discussion of commercial relations,757 the care of the common corporate privileges of the confederation758– 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.759 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.760 All the important affairs of the Cinque Ports practically lay in their hands, and their decisions, registered as Acts of the Brodhull by the Common Clerk of the Cinque Ports,761 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 privileges 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 on a bigger neighbouring town, the special liberties of each borough had been developed 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.762 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 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 government.763 This is very evident if we compare the situation of Sandwich and Romney – 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,764 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 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 bargaining 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,765 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.766

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.767 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 convent had to get a new writ.768 The bailiff’s 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;769 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;770 but he could not hold the court without the mayor’s leave, nor issue the summonses without the mayor’s orders.771 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.772 Though the bailiff sat by his side and took part in the business of the court, yet for offences against the corporation the mayor and jurats might punish the freemen “without consulting the bailiff or any one else.”773 To them belonged the entire regulation of trade and the management of weights and measures, for “the bailiff has nothing to do with this business.” In no case was he allowed to interfere with the town market; “that business belongs wholly to the mayor and jurats,” the town customs declared.774

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 towns enjoyed its share of profits in the growing trade of the country.775 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 after its cloth-dealer Hollyngbroke;776 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 Rother 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 Romney saw their trade driven into other ports.777 The forty-eight vintners of 1394 had sunk to forty-four in 1415, to five in 1431, and to one in 1449.778 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.779

Through good and evil fortune moreover Romney 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,780 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.781 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 bailiff’s 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.”782 The bailiff’s power indeed was strictly limited. So far as the administration of justice went he was absolutely controlled by the twelve jurats who were yearly elected “for to keep and govern the port and town;”783 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 commons.784 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 ferm,”785 and for the century which 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 Romney786 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 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 tenure787 which the townsfolk thus raised to the dignity of a “customary” right was 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 commonalty to those of his lord, and only intent on heaping up treasure against the day when his credit and employment should come to an end. He became 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.788 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 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.789

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,790 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, 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,791 he refused to give to 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 Archbishop was concerned the townsmen had commuted 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.792

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 inquisitions as to whether they had been wrongfully held.793 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.794 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.

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 between London and Lydd, or riding to Canterbury to get the Abbot’s charter, or to Winchelsea to meet the Abbot’s counsel.795 For a hundred years moreover the town kept up the long struggle to free itself from the supremacy of Romney. Already in 1384 deputations 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 deputations 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 Archbishop 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.796 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.797

IV. In the same way Sandwich had the mastery of the little town of Fordwich,798 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 “Taperaxe.” 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.799

Fordwich however had been granted by the Confessor to S. Augustine’s, Canterbury.800 The Abbot owned the soil of the town; his bailiff lived within its walls and presided over the Hundred Court which he summoned by his officer “Cachepol”; he had his own prison; he was entitled to fines and forfeitures from felons and fugitives; and he claimed certain customs on all imports, and asserted a right to control 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.801

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 dependent towns had simply to pay such proportions of the sum due as their masters ordered, and there were naturally frequent signs of grumbling and dissatisfaction.802 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 well 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 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 members were yet more completely withdrawn from the chance of assistance; for the seven great towns of the association would have looked with little tolerance on any revolt in their dependent villages.803 Undoubtedly 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 novelties.”804 There was never a rising in which they were not the most eager partizans of the revolutionary side. The men of Kent crowded after Cade. Hastings sent eleven soldiers to help him; Rye 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.805 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.806 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 every hamlet in England. But with this sturdy spirit of municipal freedom the question of federal organization had nothing whatever 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.807 There is no evidence that the confederation 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 matter 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 freedom, 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.