Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1 (of 2)

THE fact that the English burghers took so impatiently the one hindrance that lay in their path to independence and supremacy is itself a proof of the habit of prosperity and su...

IN the history of Winchester we may perhaps find a clue to the explanation of that great controversy which for centuries divided the mediæval municipalities and the religious co...

A FRENCH proverb of the twelfth century tells us what the world thought in old days of the origin and uses of a navy. “Point de marine sans pelerinages,” men said, seeing in pio...

[327] In 1397 the burgesses of Preston paid sums varying from 3_s._ to 40_s._ (Preston Guild Rolls, xvi.-xix.) In Exeter an artificer had to pay 20_s._, a merchant whatever the...

WE who have been trained under the modern system have forgotten how people lived in the old days, when the necessity of personal effort was forced home to every single member of...

THE history of the fifteenth century has long remained but little known. It is very generally regarded as the “profoundly tragic close of a great epoch,” and the historian looks...

THERE is nothing in England to-day with which we can compare the life of a fully enfranchised borough of the fifteenth century. Even the revival of our local institutions and ou...

THE towns on ecclesiastical estates form a distinct group, whose lot was materially different from boroughs on ancient demesne or on feudal lands. All lay property was subject o...

[568] Under Henry the Eighth, he received £10. (Coates’s Reading, 55, 56.) A woman of the town left three silver cups and one gilt cup for the mayoralty in 1479. Public dinners...

THE comfortable independence in which the townspeople of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had stoutly entrenched themselves, was the reward of a couple of centuries of per...

ON the King’s lands, as we have seen, the interests of the monarch never came into collision with the interests of his burghers, and the townsfolk found an easy way to liberty....

WHEN a borough had won from its lord full rights of self-government, its battles were not yet over. The next effort of the town authorities was to secure complete power over all...

NO dispute has raged more fiercely in this century, not only in England but throughout Europe, than the dispute as to what qualifications should make a man fit to take part in t...

SO auspicious a beginning of municipal life as was granted to Ipswich did not however fall as a matter of course to the lot of every English town, nor was political liberty by a...

[536] A will was proved after a proclamation by the serjeant that on such a day it would be read in the Guild Hall before the mayor, and anyone who wished to contradict it must...