Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2

Lastly it appears that the twenty-four gradually assumed the power of making laws for the community, and “used this custom that they might remedy new defaults and mischiefs arising by making new ordinances for the common profit of the town and the citizens and of others coming or conversant there.”[729] Apparently the assembly itself was almost superseded, for on the plea that when assemblies were summoned for the common good of the city and the country, the citizens did not take the trouble to come, to the great hindrance of public business, it had been ordained some time before 1340 that for the calling together of the commonalty the bailiff’s serjeant should summon certain of the most worthy and discreet men of each leet who were to be fined two shillings if they failed to obey the summons.[730]

A council of leading citizens, though it was already organized in this elaborate way early in the fourteenth century, scarcely appears in records of the later thirteenth century, and even then dimly in a vague inchoate form. It is, however, important to notice that from the very beginning two official styles were in use in the city documents, which seem at no time to have been interchangeable one with another. In the Pipe Roll of 1255 there seems to be a distinction between “the citizens” and “the men of Norwich”;[731] and both in this year and later, whenever the borough has any dealings with Westminster it is “the citizens” who ask for favours, and it is to “our beloved citizens, they and their heirs,” or to “the bailiffs and citizens their heirs and successors” that grants are made throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[732] Exceptions to this form are rare. In 1347 when Edward the Third asked for soldiers to be furnished for the French war he addressed himself to “the mayor, bailiffs, and the whole community”;[733] but as there was at that time no mayor in Norwich, the phrase was possibly that of a new clerk brought into the War Office in a hurried rush of business. In 1355 he sent a close letter to the “bailiffs and commonalty” of Norwich to provide him with a hundred and twenty armed men; and in 1371 a letter to the “bailiffs, good people, or commons” of Norwich to fit him out a ship. In all these cases it is obvious that the king’s claim on the people was altogether independent of any obligations resting on them as citizens of a chartered borough. Very rarely did the community address the king. In 1304 and 1307[734] the “mean people of the commonalty of the city” asked his aid; and once “the commune of the town of Norwich” sent a special petition to Parliament. The city liberties had been forfeited into the King’s hands in 1285, and the royal officer set over it had wrongfully distrained the people’s goods to the value of £300;[735] but since “the citizens” in the technical sense of a corporate body possessing certain rights ceased to exist when the city lost its franchise, the Norwich people had to fall back on that which lay behind all chartered corporations – on that out of which all other rights had sprung; it was to “the commune of the town” that wrong had been done, and “the commune” appealed against it. On the other hand, whenever a question arose as to common lands or common property the business was always done in the name of “the commonalty” or “the bailiffs and commonalty,” and in such cases the style of “the citizens” was never used.[736]

There seems, therefore, ground for thinking that from first to last the Norwich burghers officially described themselves by two distinct styles, which to the common understanding had different meanings, and were not used at hazard. I venture to suggest that here and elsewhere “cives” was the term used for the corporate body of citizens possessing chartered rights; while “communitas” stood for the citizens in another aspect, as the community which held property and enjoyed privileges by immemorial custom, before the charter of a free borough had been obtained. The holding of common property was probably the signal survival of customary rights, the others being gradually merged in the privileges enjoyed by charter; and hence it was in deeds relating to land that the traditional form of “cives et communitas” was chiefly preserved. In every town in England, however, whatever might be its special constitution, we find other rights universally claimed by the commons, which carried an authority that their opponents never dared in any single instance to gainsay, even when they sought to evade it. We may, perhaps, date back to a distant past the claim of the whole community to have all laws ratified by their “entire assent and consent,” to be made privy and consenting to all elections, to know verily how the town moneys were raised and spent, to admit new burgesses by the common vote of the people. These were rights which the oligarchies constantly endeavoured to make void from the time of Henry the Third to the time of Henry the Eighth; yet no attempt was ever made to deny or to revoke them. It may be that their authentic force was derived from that obscure time of which no memory is, when the ancient “communitas” slowly built up the great tradition of its customary rights; and that when the remembrance of the primitive community had by lapse of time fallen into the background its power was still present, and to the last the name was one of dignity and carried with it a mandate from an older world. No doubt, however, in the vulgar tongue “commonalty” came to be used in a popular sense, and sometimes with an air of obloquy or contempt, to describe the general mass of citizens who had the right of meeting in common assembly, as distinguished from the official class. For by degrees old lines of division between the ruling and the subject classes were drawn sharper and deeper – when government by the select few took legal form; when a council of twenty-four sat as assessors in the courts, audited the town accounts, controlled its trade, and claimed to make its laws; when the assembly was reduced to a gathering of special men called by the bailiff’s serjeant; and when even the attendance at the leet began to fall off as at the end of the fourteenth century[737] its business passed more and more into the hands of the twenty-four. Then the word “communitas” took a new shade of meaning. Before 1378 “the citizens” had come to mean in common talk the governing council, as opposed to the “commonalty” who were left outside.

It is true that the legal privileges of the community still remained. They had a claim on part at least of the public property. No new burgher could be admitted save by the act of the whole commonalty, or of twelve of them who might be taken to represent the entire body.[738] Taxes might only be assessed by will of the whole commonalty[739] or of the greater part of the same. Whatever might be the prevailing habit, the twenty-four had no legal right to act in the name of the whole people, and if the commons refused to obey their ordinances they could not appeal to any court of law to enforce their submission. In the Assembly Rolls the burghers are mentioned as sharing in the business of elections, grants of money, and taxation.[740] That they asserted their rights in a way which seemed to the governing class “contrarious” we gather from the fact that in 1378 “the citizens” (who in this case must certainly have meant a very limited body) presented a petition to Richard the Second in which they declared that of late “many of the commonalty of the said town have been very contrarious, and will be so still unless better remedies and ordinances be made for good government”; and they pray that the bailiffs and twenty-four citizens to be elected yearly by the commonalty may have power to make ordinances and to amend them from time to time when necessary.[741] A ship which they had just built at the king’s orders possibly commended their request to his judgment, and the grant of the desired charter placed the council in a position of absolute authority, having power to issue ordinances without the consent of the people, and to enforce them by appeal to the royal courts.

What controversies and threats of revolution agitated the men of Norwich for the twenty-five years that followed this great change we do not know. The exact position of the twenty-four in the municipal assembly is not easy to trace from the paucity of existing documents.[742] The rolls which survive might be expected to shew some sign of the effect of the charter of 1378 by which the official authority of the twenty-four was established. Yet such is not the case. The description of the Assembly both before and after remains exactly the same. A select group of citizens attends at every meeting, and takes the whole charge of administration. Yet it is worthy of notice that neither before nor after 1378 is any order or resolution ever attributed to the twenty-four, though such orders are constantly referred to the action of the “tota communitas.” Throughout these rolls the only authorities mentioned are the bailiffs and the commonalty.[743] If it is possible to believe, as I have suggested, that the right of the community to give or withhold consent in legislation was an immemorial custom which could not be abrogated by charter, the failure of the twenty-four to carry their point can be understood. No doubt party feeling on both sides ran high. It became necessary for a settlement to have a new charter; and in 1403, probably, at the instance of the ruling class, the city bought a fresh constitution at the heavy price of £1,000.[744] By this charter Norwich was made into a county; the four bailiffs were replaced by a mayor and two sheriffs, to be elected by the citizens and commonalty; and, in confirming previous grants, the customary phraze used in the charters of earlier centuries, “the citizens” was replaced by “the citizens and commonalty” – a term which is recognized in the charter as being already in use,[745] but which had not until now been invariably employed as the official style.

The charter of Henry the Fourth seems to have been in effect a confirmation of the charter given by Richard the Second, and to have set the victorious conclusion to the whole system of oligarchical government expressed by the council of twenty-four. The people were quick to appreciate the difficulty of making use of the powers which had been attributed to them and to perceive the tendency of the charter. A crisis was brought about by the very first elections held under the new constitution. The charter ordered that the sheriffs were to be elected, not as the old bailiffs had been by the electors of the four Leets, but by “the citizens and commonalty.” In the ordinary assemblies, however, made up of the twenty-four and “others of the community,” at which Parliament men, city treasurers, and officials, had been chosen, the twenty-four were practically supreme, and elections carried out in these gatherings were, as a matter of fact, in their hands. On March 1st, 1404, a mayor was chosen, and twelve days later two of the bailiffs were made sheriffs (the mayor’s book says by the “cives”).[746] The altered mode of appointing the sheriffs, as compared with the more popular custom of electing the old bailiffs, immediately roused the commons. An assembly was called to frame ordinances for the new state of things, and the people determined by their own authority to create a representative council of the burghers at large. It was ordered that eighty persons should be elected to attend all assemblies and act in the name of the people. To this council was given the right of nominating the sheriffs; the eighty were to go apart by themselves and name three persons, but if the commons did not approve of their choice they had again to retire and choose other names until their masters were content. Then the town clerk and some of the eighty carried the three names to the mayor and the twenty-four “probi homines”; the mayor chose one and the twenty-four the other.[747] The new council took part in the Michaelmas elections of that same year 1404, when the mayor was reappointed, and two new sheriffs were chosen.

This settlement evidently excited violent hostility, and in 1415 a Composition was framed to put an end to the discords by which the city was “divided and dissolved and in point to have been destroyed.”[748] This document did not err on the side of any lax notions as to the seriousness of a written constitution. With pedantic nicety it touched almost lovingly on the minutest details of ceremony and dress, as well as on the greater problems that vexed the state – the position of the twenty-four; the rights of the commons; and the share which the two parties were to have in appointing the officers of the city.

The effect of this Composition of 1415 was to create a miniature copy of the English kingdom, a little community governed by its three estates, the mayor, the co-citizens of the mayor’s council, and the commons. The twenty-four “probi homines” now became “the twenty-four co-citizens of the mayor’s council,” the mayor having the same authority over them “as the mayor of London hath,”[749] and the dignity of the municipal House of Lords was fitly marked by their dress, a livery “furred and lined as the estate and season of the year asketh.”[750] Above all it was decreed that they should no longer be a body elected yearly but should “stand corporate perpetually,” and even if this should accidentally not be embodied in the charter to be asked for later, “the citizens” declared that they could establish that law for themselves and not by point of charter, in virtue of the right given them in 1378, to make such ordinances as they chose in difficult or defective cases for which no remedy clearly existed in the city constitution.[751]

On the other hand the organization of the lower chamber was made more complete, and the relative position and authority of the two houses of the mimic parliament were defined with punctilious exactness. The common council was reduced from eighty to sixty members,[752] to be elected from the four wards by all citizens “inhabiting and having houses on their own account.” It had its Speaker,[753] its own mode of procedure, its system of elaborate etiquette in all dealings with the upper house. Henceforth it was to take a part in legislation which entirely annulled any claim “the citizens” might have put forward by virtue of their charter of 1378; for though the mayor and the twenty-four preserved the right of proposing all new laws, “they shall nothing do nor make that may bind or charge the city without the assent of the commonalty.” All ordinances made by the upper body must therefore be formally laid before the common council, and if it seemed to them that the matter “needeth longer advice and deliberation of answer, they shall ask it and all that seemeth expedient for the city by the common speaker of the mayor and of his council.” If needful they could ask for “a bill of the same matters to be delivered to them,” that they might give their answer in the next assembly; and “the mayor shall be beholden as ofttimes as they ask it to grant them for to go together in an house by themselves without any denying, and none other with them but the common speaker, and if they will have more to them as oft as they ask, the mayor shall be beholden to send for them without any withsaying. And in matters that seem to the aforesaid sixty persons for the common council that needeth not great nor long advice, be it lawful if they will, to go apart by themselves or in to the floor with their common speaker, and goodly and speedily, without great delay to come in with their answer as them seemeth speedful and needful to the purpose.” Finally, in “all other points that be necessary to be had for the welfare of the city that come not now to mind, it is committed to the whole assembly thereupon to ordain and make remedy by ordinance and assent of the whole commonalty for profit of all the city.”[754]

In the matter of elections, however, the general assembly reappeared in full force. When a new mayor was to be chosen the two councils were summoned to the hall; “and also all the citizens dwellers within the same city unto the aforesaid election shall freely come as they are beholden, and the doors of the hall to all citizens there willing to enter and come in shall be open and not kept, nor none from thence forbarred nor avoided but foreigners.” After the mayor and the twenty-four had proclaimed the election from the bench they withdrew to the chamber, and the whole people in the hall then chose from among those who had already been mayors or sheriffs two names of “sufficient” persons, “and if that any variance happen among the commons in the hall that it may not clearly be known to the common speaker by no manner of form by him unto them, for to be put or showed, which two hath the most voices, then the common speaker and the common clerk shall go up to the mayor and to him shall declare the variance of the people in the hall. And then the mayor shall give to the common speaker in commandment for to call together the sixty persons for the common council of the city, or as many as there be there into an house by themselves. Which there shall try the aforesaid variance in the same form as it hath been and yet is used in the city of London.” The names were carried to the chamber by the common clerk, the common speaker, and the recorder, with six of the common council; the six commons returned to the hall, leaving the three officers to take the votes of the mayor and council, and bring back to the commonalty the name of the elected mayor.

The election of all other municipal officers was carefully divided between the two parties in the state. The mayor and the twenty-four elected the common clerk, one sheriff, one chamberlain, one treasurer, one coroner, two keepers of the keys, two auditors, and eight constables. The common council chose the common speaker, a second sheriff, chamberlain, treasurer, and coroner, two keepers of the keys, two auditors, and eight constables. The whole assembly appointed the common serjeant, the recorder, the bell-man, and the ditch-keeper; they also chose the men who were to gather in the king’s taxes, appointing four men in each ward to assess the tax and two to collect it. The new mayor named two sword-bearers, of whom the assembly chose one; in the same way the mayor nominated four persons for serjeants, and the assembly chose two of them.[755] Members of Parliament were chosen by the common assembly.

Thus the commons of Norwich made their decorous entry on the official stage, with a punctilious care to secure their dignity and make fast their liberties by countless ceremonial ligatures. The Composition which vindicated their right against the oligarchy proved, however, like the Ordinances of 1404, a hard saying to many; and disputes between the mayor’s council and the commonalty were so violent[756] that the citizens appealed to Henry the Fifth in 1417 for a charter which should make the late agreement legally binding. The mayor’s council no doubt brought influence to bear in high places, for their position was now somewhat bettered. By the charter, for which the city had to pay over £100,[757] the twenty-four, now first called aldermen, got rid of one serious difficulty in their way by securing the clause that they “shall stand perpetually as they do in London,” and henceforth the old ceremony of annual election was simply recalled by the custom of reading out the names every year before the wards. In the composition it had been settled that in making “new ordinances for the welfare of the city that come not now to mind it is committed to the whole assembly thereon to ordain by ordinance and assent of the whole commonalty,”[758] but the new charter decreed that the mayor and aldermen should have full power to amend the laws and constitution with assent of the sixty of the common council.[759]

For the rest of the century the government of the city[760] remained of this pattern. The four great leets which had once elected the bailiffs now became the four wards, and were ultimately divided into twelve small wards. Each of these was represented in the upper council by two aldermen chosen for it by the electors of its own great ward. Each great ward also elected a fixed proportion of the members of the common council. The sheriffs held their “tourns” for the four wards, and appointed for each ward a jury drawn from the “men of good name and fame.” Meanwhile the leet courts of the sub-divisions over which the bailiffs used to preside carried on an obscure and feeble existence, and the capital pledges which formed the leet juries sank into insignificance[761] under the combined usurpations of the sheriffs and the two councils. Once when the capital pledges attempted to secure to the small trader some advantage in landing their goods at a staith where apparently they escaped some city tolls, the governing body promptly repressed their insubordination.[762] Evidently the administration of the city was neither more lax nor more popular because its governing body was enlarged.

In the obscure years of conflict between 1378 and 1415 we are told nothing about the men or the organizations of men that made the revolution. But we know that a very important movement was going on in Norwich itself in the growth of the craft guilds. Long forbidden by the civic government because of the loss to the city chest when the craftsmen were withdrawn from the common courts, they apparently made matters easy for themselves by regular payment of fines, and continued to flourish.[763] Between 1350 and 1385[764] a number of guilds were either founded or reconstituted so as to obtain public recognition in the city,[765] and the one fact that we catch sight of in their ordinances amid the absolutely monotonous and formal recital of religious duties, is that they were in some cases allowed to choose their own aldermen and council, instead of being subjected as before to the twenty-four. The importance of this is at once evident in the ordinances of 1404, where the guilds take a very prominent place; and in the composition of 1415, when they were finally sanctioned and given a completed form.[766] Not only was the power of choosing their own officers granted to every trade, but it was decreed that “citizens of the city shall be enrolled of what craft he be of” on pain of forfeiture of his franchise; and that all “that shall be enfranchised from this time forth shall be enrolled under a craft and by assent of a craft.” Such a rule practically made the craft-masters the judges of a new candidate for the city privileges, for if they refused to admit him to the guild he could never become a burgess.[767] On the other hand it was commanded that all the members of a craft must become freemen; foreigners were to hold shops under tribute and fine for two years and a day, and were then forced to buy the franchise of the city. “The master of the craft shall come honestly to him and give him warning to be a freeman or else spear in his shop-window.” If he did not obey within fourteen days the master with an officer of the mayor again visited him with his spear, “and he so speared in, nor no other, shall not hold his craft within house nor without.” Thus no trader or shopkeeper could remain exempt from the dues and charges of the city, and the whole commonalty was placed under the police supervision of the craft masters. The very dress of the crafts was made a matter of strict definition; all liveries and hoods of former days were to be given up, and the crafts were to wear liveries the same as those of London.[768]

If, however, during the years of conflict the craft associations may have done good service to the commonalty, they were met by a counter organization of the merchants and upper class. It seems to have become common after the Peasant revolt, when a new terror was stirred as to what the poor commons might do if left to follow their own will and appetite, for the richer sort to unite for self-protection and the preservation of their authority. In Norwich a Guild of S. George was founded in 1385 as a fraternity with the usual religious colour, and a – “going each Monday about in the city remembering and praying for the souls of the brethren and sisters of the said guild that be passed to God’s mercy.”[769] At first an informal body, consisting apparently of the wealthier and more powerful people, both lay and ecclesiastic, of Norwich and the surrounding country, its weakness lay in the fact that it was “desevered by constitutions and ordinances made within the city,” and according to the old rule by which the formation of any guild was forbidden, it was, in fact, an illegal body. The governing class, however, probably enlisted considerable sympathy at court in the negociations for the charter of 1417; and the associates of S. George won from Henry the Fifth in 1418 permission to constitute themselves into a permanent society, and received a sword of wood with a carved dragon’s head to be carried before their alderman on S. George’s day.[770] The great people of the county and their wives entered the order, bishops, monks and rectors, counts, knights, and merchants – something like four hundred of them – all men of substance who rode on horseback to the guild assembly, where the uniform of S. George was varied by the mayors, sheriffs, aldermen, or masters of crafts, riding in the garments of their order. The government of the society was put in the hands of a very close corporation, and the alliance between Church and State in the guild is manifested by the association of the prior, mayor, and sheriffs of the city in its government.[771]