Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

278

Ibid. ix. 173.

279

Ibid. ix. 274. For the Worcester rules of 1467, see English Guilds, 385, 407-8.

280

Hist. MSS. Com. i. 103-104, no date.

281

Ibid. x. 4, 426.

282

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.

283

A small fee was sometimes paid to the parson when the church was used as storehouse for grain or wool as in case of Southampton. Roger’s Agric. and Prices, ii. 611.

284

Paston Letters, iii. 436.

285

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 306. York Ritual.

286

The belfry where the clock hung played so important a part in the communes of France that the right to have a belfry and a town hall were given by charter when the commune was established, and were taken away when it was suppressed (Ordonnances des Rois 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.

287

Piers Ploughman, passus vii. 144. In Totnes in the thirteenth 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 seats in 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.

288

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 Bridgewater for cases of assault and theft. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316.)

289

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 537. Romney. Ibid. iv. 1, 436.

290

Shillingford’s Letters, 48, 94. For the church of S. Nicholas Romney, 1422, see Hist. MSS. 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 Southampton 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.

291

Shillingford’s Letters, 93. Report on Markets, 25. Fairs forbidden on Sundays and feast days; 27 Henry VI., cap. 5.

292

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 436.

293

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. Œuvres Complètes de Huygens. Amsterdam, 1893, vol. v.

294

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 dispute raised every thirty years from that time till 1874, 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.)

295

Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 495. For the presenting of parish 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.

296

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 272.

297

For the rise of the new parish administration, Gneist i. 282-5; ii. 21.

298

Hythe, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 432. Bridport, Hist. MSS. Com. 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 tenements 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 fine 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.)

299

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.

300

Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 345, 346. When Hythe set up its new steeple in 1480 the twelve jurats headed the list of subscriptions, the greatest sum given by them being 10s. Then came the commons giving from 20s. down to 1d., that is, a day’s subsistence. (Ibid. iv. 1, 433.)

301

Hist. MSS. Com. 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.)

302

Boys’ Sandwich, 784.

303

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 Canterbury 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 Norwich again. (Blomefield, iii. 96, 113.) In the fifteenth century Yarmouth set up a crane, which the Norwich men forced it to take down again.

304

1478. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 88.

305

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, 97-100, 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 a letter to have his friendship in case he succeeded. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 518, 520, 523, 525.) For Romney, ibid. 543, 545; Rye, ibid. 492-4; Sandwich, Boys, 676.

306

The agricultural tenants and labourers on a manor were accustomed to elect from among themselves a “Provost” to be head over them and to stand between them and their lord, whom 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 inseparably 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 wherewithal 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 “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, Selden Society, 161-175.

307

A citizen of Preston was obliged to show a frontage of twelve feet to the street; in Manchester or Salford 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.

308

Ipswich, Hist. MSS. Com. ix. p. 244. Otherwise he was not allowed to be of the common council of the town.

309

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.

310

From examination of the names of the Norwich inhabitants in the Conveyance Rolls, Mr. Hudson thinks it certainly within 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 Archæology, vol. xii. p. 46.

311

Picton’s Mun. Rec., i. 10-12. For the survival in Wareham of these burgages of various sizes, Hutchins’ 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 l’Ancienne France, ii. 347-8.

312

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. 7½d.; then came one whose tenth was worth 67s. 7½d.; 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 1¼d. and one at ¼d. Nott. Records, ii. 285-297.

313

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.)

314

For London rules in 1319 see Lib. Cust. 269-70.

315

As, for example, John de Ypres at Romney (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 v. Mayor, p. 1.

316

Ricart, 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 Council by the Mayor under 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.)

317

Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 468. There was constant communication 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.

318

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 common 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. 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 villeinage 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).

319

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 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 lawsuit 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.

320

In Bristol; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 327. In Rye, “by the Common Seal of the Barons of the Ville of Rye;” ibid. v. 513, 499. For the old custom of sealing through rush rings see ibid. ix. 234-5.

321

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 Corporation. 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.

322

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 Françaises, 56-7.

323

Piers Ploughman, passus iv. III, 114.

324

Hereford; Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 468.

325

Gross, ii. 257.

326

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.

327

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 Hereford (Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii.). In the sixteenth century 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).

328

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.)

329

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.)

330

Carlisle Mun. Records, Ed. Ferguson and Nansen, 63-4.

331

Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 472, 475; Lyon’s Dover, ii. 362.

332

Gross, ii. 276. Custumal, Preston Guild, 75. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. i. 426.

333

In Hereford the freeman who lost his position for perjury could never recover it save by the special favour of the commonalty, “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.)

334

English Guilds, 403.

335

Also at Andover; Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii. 320, 324. Public disapproval was held to be a powerful motive. In Hereford 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 noting 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.)

336

A copy of the Charter of Manchester, granted 1301, is given in Baines’ 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’ Colchester, 169-170. Davies’ Southampton, 111.)

337

See von Ochenkowski, Die wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im 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 merchandise in the said town, unless with the will of the merchants.” (Hist. of Preston Guilds, Custumal, 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.)