Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

338

An alien living in Romney paid double Scot to the town. (Lyon’s Dover, ii. 332.)

339

English Guilds, 392, 384. Lyon’s Dover, ii. 332.

340

Boys’ Sandwich, 521. Lyon’s Dover, ii. 365, 366, 367, 386; Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Soc. 137.

341

An Act to prevent Mayors from levying shewage from denizens. Statutes 19 Henry VII., Cap. 8.

342

“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 protection however was only given on the condition of his renouncing 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 dependants 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.)

343

Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425.

344

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.

345

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.)

346

Parker’s Hist. of Wycombe, 12.

347

Especially in matters of debt and 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.)

348

English Guilds, 391; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 170-1. Henry the Second 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 prosecute 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, 466-7.) For mediæval 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.”

349

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.)

350

English Guilds, 391. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 152.

351

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. (Blomefield, iii. 73. Ordinances in Hist. of Preston Guilds, 12.)

352

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 145.

353

Parker’s Manor of Aylesbury, 20, 21.

354

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 536-541.

355

Davies’ 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 substitute (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.)

356

Shillingford’s Letters, xxiii.

357

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 527.

358

Lyon’s Dover, Custumals, vol. ii. 267, &c.

359

Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425; Boys’ Sandwich, 679, A.D. 1493. Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii. 276.

360

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 Southampton.” (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 602.)

361

Thus in 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 Record, xii., xvi., xx., xxix.

362

English Guilds, 394. Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, iii., 80.

363

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 freedom because of poverty. (Thomson’s Mun. History, 104. Custumale in Hist. of Preston Guild.)

364

See ch. x.

365

See ch. xi.

366

See vol. ii., The Town Market.

367

The non-burgesses of Lynn, the “Inferiores,” were men of substance and formed an important body, whose struggles for a re-distribution of power fill the annals of the town in the fifteenth century.

368

English Guilds, 386, 399

369

Paston Letters, ii. 293.

370

7 Henry IV. cap. 17. The coming of country apprentices 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).

371

Paston Letters, iii. 481. Apprentices in London and Bristol might not be under seven years old. Ricart, 102.

372

Manners and Meals, xv.

373

Piers Ploughman, Passus x. 206-207, 253-4.

374

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.

375

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.

376

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), and 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.

377

Birmingham, which under Henry the Eighth had 2,000 houselings, and was said to be “one of the fairest and most profitable towns to the King’s highness in all the shire” (English 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 W. 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.

378

Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 491, et seq.

379

For the injuries that might be inflicted on a community by a lord’s reeve, see Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Society.

380

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.

381

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.

382

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.

383

For abuses in appointing tax collectors, see Paston Letters, i. li.

384

Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 491.

385

See Round’s Geoffrey de Mandeville, 361-3.

386

Close Rolls, I. p. 273, 1216.

387

Nottingham Records, i. 46.

388

This appears in the records of Gloucester. The scot-ale was a very common method of collecting money for other purposes. See Malmesbury, 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.

389

Hundred Rolls, i. 49, 55. The jurors of Bridgenorth complained 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.

390

Piers Ploughman, Pass. iii. 59, 177, iv. 172.

391

For the profits to be made in this business and its opportunities of fraud, see Winchelsea (Rot. Parl. i. 373). Sometimes 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.)

392

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 v. Mayor, &c., p. 26.) For clerk of the market in Calais, Lives of Berkeleys, ii. 198.

393

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 545.

394

Statutes, 13th Richard II., I, cap. 3.

395

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 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.)

396

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. Com. 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.

397

Instances in Chester, 1282, Hemingway’s Chester, i. 132.

398

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.)

399

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 payment, 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 investigation 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.

400

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.

401

In Southampton a hogshead of Gascony wine was given “by common consent” to the sheriff to have his friendship in the return of a jury. In 1428 a sum of 13s. 4d. was paid for returning “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.

402

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.)

403

Ibid. v. 528. These courts on the sea-shore meant considerable expense in fees and feasts.

404

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.)

405

Ibid. v. 518, 522.

406

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 543. Three and fourpence, and 18d. for a pair of boots as a reward.

407

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 Winton, and so on. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 595-605.)

408

Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 138-149. The expenses at Lynn were very great. (Ibid. 218-225.)

409

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.”

410

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 141-3.

411

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 aldermen, the sheriff, or any town officers, as establishing and ordaining the town ordinances. Poynings, Browne, Guildford, were at different times patrons of the city.

412

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.

413

The election of a Mayor as a responsible person through whom the King could deal with the town was probably often connected with the settlement of the fee-farm rent. In Liverpool the first mention of a Mayor 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.)

414

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, &c.)

415

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 serious consideration to the town.

416

According to Mr. Round, London found means of annexing the shire of Middlesex instead of asking to be separated from it. (Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347-373.)

417

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 fine £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.

418

Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 478.

419

Journ. Arch. Ass. 479. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 241-2. Statute 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.

420

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 fight the duel 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 post or cartwheel 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, 12d. was paid “for nailing of Thomas Norys his ear.” (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 525, 530.)