Book 49, Edward III. fol. 36.) On the other hand in 1376 the commons

presented a petition complaining that many of the mayors were prevented from exercising their office thoroughly by the special charters which had been granted to certain misteries and praying that these special charters might be withdrawn so as to strengthen the hands of the local authorities. (Rot. Parl. ii. 331 No. 54.) See Gross i. 113 note 2. For instances of royal charters to guilds see the Mercers of Shrewsbury (Hibbert, 64), the Tailors of London (Clode’s Merchant Tailors), and various companies in Hull (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life).

[346] A curious instance is given in Hull in which one of the county magnates made use of the guild as an instrument for getting hold of the borough representation in Parliament. (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life, 182.)

[347] The story of the Hull Merchants’ Company is very instructive. Ibid. 180, etc.

[348] See Chapter VIII. The union of crafts in a guild at Walsall (Gross ii. 248) before 1440 seems to have been very like the union of crafts at Coventry a century earlier to get control of the town government, “in eschewing of such great misorder and inconvenience as here of late hath fortuned and happened.”

[349] Carlisle Mun. Rec. ed. Ferguson and Nansen 89-99.

[350] The town customs and bye-laws were drawn up in 1561 by “the Mayor and Council with four of every occupation in the aforesaid city, for and in the name of the whole citizens (Carlisle Mun. Rec. 28, 29, 59). In Beverley the alderman of merchants and twenty-one aldermen of various crafts gave assent in the fifteenth century to ordinances of the governors.” (Gross, ii. 23.)

[351] Gross, ii. 380-3.

[352] See Chapter XIII. 374-5.

[353] Gross, i. 111, note 3. The cases of Durham and Morpeth here mentioned are very late.

[354] Ibid. 112, note 4.

[355] Ibid. i. 124 note 2. Von Ochenkowski (Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, 67) argues that this regulation was made in consequence of the mediæval view of trade as a public trust not a mere individual act; and that skill in craft was taken as a test of uprightness of character and a pledge of fitness for citizenship. From this conclusion follows the belief, which in its turn supports the conclusion, that the rule was one imposed by the town authorities and not by the will of the crafts.

[356] Stubbs, iii. 607.

[357] This history has been treated by Dr. Gross in his “Gild Merchant.” In the thirteenth century Merchant Guilds existed in at least one-third and probably in a much greater proportion of the English boroughs. (Gross, i. 2, 22, 158.)

[358] Ibid. i. 107.

[359] Gross, i. 74, 107, 108, note 3, 109. There were clergy and women in the Andover Guild (Ibid. ii. 299, 321); and in Coventry (English Guilds, 228).

[360] Gross, i. 66-71, ii. 236.

[361] Ibid. i. 43, 61, 158-9.

[362] Ibid. i. 282-3.

[363] Gross, i. 61-63, 85. Sometimes the grant of a guild was given before the grant of other rights. In other cases it followed. Thus in Gloucester the first charter was given by Henry the Second “to my burgesses of Gloucester” in 1155. The Guild did not appear in the charter till 1200, when John granted certain municipal rights to “our burgesses of Gloucester,” and others mainly of a trading sort to “our burgesses of Gloucester of the Merchant Guild”; and in 1227 a charter of Henry the Third seems for the first time to enact that burgesses must not only dwell in the borough, hold land, and pay lot and scot, but must also “be in the Merchant Guild and Hanse.”

[364] Ibid. i. 43-52, 158-9.

[365] Ibid. i. 63, 85, 114. “In some places their powers appear to have been gradually enlarged during the thirteenth century so as to embrace jurisdiction in pleas relating to trade.” (Ibid. 65.)

[366] Ibid. i. 114-115.

[367] Gross, i. 117, 159-60.

[368] Ibid. i. 116.

[369] Dr. Gross holds that all guilds of merchants formed after the decline of the Gilda Mercatoria in the thirteenth century must be considered as being merely craft-unions of the ordinary kind—in most cases superseding the Guild Merchant (i. 129).

[370] By Dr. Gross’s definition, “What had once been a distinct integral part of the civic body politic became vaguely blended with the whole of it.” (Gross, i. 159-60, 163.)

[371] This is stated to have been very rare. (Ibid. p. 114.)

[372] Ibid. 118, 163. The appellation of the Guild Merchant “was more frequently applied to the aggregate of the crafts” than to the governing body of the borough. (Ibid. i. 114.) In Carlisle had the term “been used at all, _it would probably have been applied_ to the eight guilds aggregately, rather than to the Corporation.” (Ibid. ii. 40.) In proving that the later Guild Merchant was “an aggregate of the crafts,” Dr. Gross carries us at a single step into a much later period (pp. 118-123), where the name tells us little apart from the history of the borough. The case of Coventry seems a doubtful instance.

[373] Gross, i. 161, 163. Lynn is given as an illustration of this change, but the evidence is not adduced.

[374] Ibid. i. 118. No instance is given of this.

[375] Dr. Gross argues that any struggle which did take place was not between the Guild Merchant and the crafts, but between “the governing council (the “magnates,” “potentiores,” etc.) on the one side and the burgesses at large (“communitas,” “populus,” “minores”) on the other.” (Gross i. 110, 285.) The “magnates” of Norwich (Hudson’s Mun. Org. p. 24-5), or “les riches” of the city records, ruled in a city where there was no Guild Merchant. The “potentiores” of Lynn seem from the printed records to have been the Guild Merchant. In the town records “communitas” cannot be understood as synonymous with “populus,” still less with “minores.”

[376] Gross, i. 109. “Not a single unmistakable example of such a conflict has ever been deduced.” On this point Seligman (Mediæval Guilds, 57-8) speaks very dogmatically on most inconclusive evidence, so far as this is given in his notes. The analogy on p. 58 of craft guilds including smaller unions is not shewn, nor their common occurrence proved.

[377] In London, Norwich, and the Cinque Ports, there was no Guild Merchant at any time. In Lynn, Andover, Southampton, and Bristol it was all-powerful. In Nottingham no influence of its action can be traced; the guild mentioned in John’s charter (Nott. Rec. i. 9) is only once mentioned afterwards, in 1365. (Ibid. i. 189.)

[378] Gross, i. 107.

[379] See Lynn, Gross, ii. 157. Southampton, ibid. 216-226. Andover, ibid. 4, 8, 294, 344. Derby, ibid. 51-3. Newcastle, ibid. 184-5; other instances, i. 69. For Reading see vol. i. 302. For the variety in relations of the Guild to the town see Gross, i. 73.

[380] As at Oxford and Lincoln, Lib. Cus. 671. Gross, ii. 146. It is very probable, however, that these were confirmations of older institutions.

[381] Gross, i. 109.

[382] Ibid. i. 33.

[383] Ibid. i. 31. See also Bury St. Edmunds, ii. 30-3.

[384] See p. 219, note at end of Chapter.

[385] Barnstaple, Gross, ii. 12.

[386] Bury St. Edmunds, Gross, ii. 33-4.

[387] Gross, i. 117. Is there any reason to think that if the enjoyment of monopoly was split up and divided among the crafts, the exercize of authority was split up and transferred in the same proportions?

[388] When wealthy individuals of a craft, men perhaps almost in the position of merchants, were admitted to the Guild, no argument can be drawn from this as to the relation of the craft itself to the Guild.

[389] Gross, i. 114-5. In the instances here given (p. 116, note 1) of regulations made for craftsmen by the Guild Merchant it is necessary to define the exact relation between the Guild and the governing body of the town. (See Andover in 1314. Gross, ii. 308. Compare Leicester, ibid. 144.)

[390] Gross, i. 125-6, 159-60.

[391] Ibid. i. 75, 76.

[392] All the materials which I have used in speaking of Coventry have been given me very kindly by Miss Dormer Harris, who has made a careful study of the town records on the spot, and will soon, it is hoped, publish the result of her researches.

[393] Compare Chesterfield, where a Guild was established in 1218 to guard the “liberties of the town”; in case of need its aldermen were to choose twelve men to go before the justices or elsewhere to help these “liberties” of the town; and any one suffering loss for them was to be repaid by the Guild. (English Guilds, 165-167.)

[394] Compare the very small numbers of the Reading Guild, which was a survival of olden times (Vol. I. p. 302, note 1). S. Alban’s was larger, but apparently of a more doubtful character, even in the eyes of the prudent burghers. (Ibid. 296-7.)

[395] They got land from Isabella, and built their church at Bablake—the first church built by the burghers.

[396] The taking of a common name may have been connected with the license to mortmain. S. John’s Guild had got a license in 1342 and land to build its church, but some extended license must have been needed for a larger society which desired to possess new property.

[397] Mercers’ obits were celebrated in S. Catherine’s Chapel; drapers’ obits usually in the Lady Chapel belonging to S. Mary’s or the Merchant Guild.

[398] The early guildhall of York belonged to the guilds of S. George and S. Christopher; and when the new hall was built in the middle of the fifteenth century these two guilds retained considerable power in it. (Davies’ Walks Through York, 49-51.) Sir William Plumpton and his wife joined the fraternity of S. Christopher at York, 1439. (Plumpton Corr. lxii.)

[399] Cf. Norwich (p. 395). This arrangement was probably made for the sake of financial security (see p. 215-6).

[400] English Gilds, 232.

[401] Accounts of the Guild of Corpus Christi are preserved from 1488. The brethren and sisters of the Guild seem to have been spread all over England, and are mentioned at London, Lynn, and Birmingham. They were of all ranks and of all trades and callings. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 101.) The Prior of the cathedral, the Prior’s bailiff, the vicar of Trinity, various craftsmen of the town and vicars of the neighbourhood, merchants of Queenborough, Dublin, Drogheda, Bristol, Kingston-on-Hull, London, and many other places, a “merchant of the Staple,” and great men of the neighbourhood, such as Thomas Grey, the Marquis of Dorset, Lord Hastings, and others belonged to its association.

[402] S. Mary’s Hall was begun in 1340, and finished in 1413.

[403] The Twenty-four were self-elected; the mayor was elected by the Twenty-four; the common council were appointed and summoned by the mayor.

[404] Compare the case of Southampton where a guild merchant had imposed its methods on a town government.

[405] The list compiled in 1449 of living craftsmen who had held office gives fifteen drapers and eleven mercers, and seven dyers; as against two wire-drawers, two whit-tawyers, and two weavers. The dyers in Coventry were often cloth merchants of great consequence.

[406] In the time of Richard the Second the fullers and tailors first attempted to form a guild, and even obtained a patent which licensed their society to hold property worth a yearly rental of eight marks.

[407] The complaint against the dyers is shown in a petition to Parliament in 1415 (Rot. Parl. iv. 75), in which the community of Coventry say that by reason of a confederacy among the dyers they cannot get their cloth dyed under 6_s._ or 7_s._ a dozen, whereas last year’s price was 5_s._; and forty pounds of wool was now 30_s._ which was last year 20_s._, &c. The dyers are also great and common makers of cloth and take all the flower of the wool for their own cloth, the remnant serving the common people. The petitioners request that on the day of the mayor’s election, those that elect him (that is twenty-four members of the ruling guilds) shall also appoint four persons, two drapers, one dyer, and one woder, sworn to keep watch over the dyers, and present them for any “fault or confederacy” to the mayor, bailiffs, and justices of the peace—in other words to the officers of the Trinity Guild. For the first fault he was to pay a fine to the king, for the second a fine and half a year’s imprisonment. They also prayed that no one who was a dyer should make vendible cloth. These conditions being refused they claimed the suppression of the guild.

[408] The mayor and his brethren carried their complaint to the king in 1424, and by royal writ the assemblies were forbidden. In 1422 the governing guilds issued an order that all wardens should bring the ordinances of the crafts before the mayor, recorder, and bailiffs, and eight of the general council by whom honest, lawful, and good rules should be allowed; and no ordinances might be made against the law in oppression of people, upon pain of imprisonment or fine at the king’s will. In 1424 arbitrators were appointed by the mayor’s order to decide the disputes between the master weavers and their men; and rules were drawn up for the whole craft. It is obvious that this is very different from regulation by a guild which still retained the crafts within its own association.

[409] They gave forty marks for a fresh license for their guild with mortmain up to ten marks, and leave to elect four masters at the Nativity to rule the craft and to plead in courts for the whole body. As of old they seem to have failed in carrying out their scheme in spite of the license, and in 1448 a petition was presented by them (whether it was voluntary may well be doubted) that the union between the fullers’ and tailors’ crafts should be severed. At the suppression of the guilds the shearmen and tailors held a mill and tenements in mortmain for the support of their chauntry.

[410] Cf. Exeter, Chapter VII.

[411] How little freedom was left to far the most powerful craft of all—the dyers—we see from the law of 1530, that if any masters and journeymen of the dyers can be proved before the mayor and justices to have hindered any one from becoming a dyer, they are to be fined. If the journeymen refuse to work for the new dyers, then, without hindrance from the craft or the journeymen, they may hire others not inhabitants. In 1530 it was ordered that a certain Robert Perkins was to become a dyer without “let or hindrance” from craft and journeymen. In general the corporation resisted the tendency of the lesser crafts to prevent the setting up of new masters—a policy which is easy to understand in the rule of merchants, as opposed to that of the manufacturers.

[412] Posted up on the door of S. Michael’s in 1494:—

“Be it knowen and understood This cite should be free and now is bond Dame Goode-Eve made hit free And now the’ be customes for woll and the drap’ie. Also hit is made that no prentice shall be But XIII. penies pay shall he, This act did Robert Grene Therefore he had many a curse I wene.”

(Sharp’s Antiquities, 235.)

[413]

“This city is bond that shuld be free, The right is holden from the ̄C̄īalte. Our cōins that at Lamas open shuld be cast They be closed in and hegged full fast.... If ever ye have nede to the cōīalte Such favour as ye show us such shall ye see. We may speke fair and bid ye good morwe But luff from our herts ye shall have nevr.... Cherish the cōīalte and so they have their right For drede of a worse chance by day or by night. The best of all littel worth shuld be And ye had not had help of the cōīalte.”

(Sharp, 235.) Perhaps it was from the talk of the streets in some such local disturbance that Langland quoted when he wrote the lines quoted in Vol. I. p. 26.

[414] The Coventry craft-masters’ apprentices paid their fines to the mayor “for the use of the city,” not of the guild; the “searchers” for the trades were appointed and the regulations made at the Leet Court, not at meetings of a guild; the same officials attended, but they had to act as representing the municipality.

[415] As in Lynn, Bristol, and, later, Norwich.

[416] It is a subject for inquiry whether any Guild Merchant gave its name to a municipality unless it had been made responsible for the payment of the ferm, and held openly and to the knowledge of the exchequer some property or rents or tolls for the purpose.

[417] The Coventry Guild held town property for public purposes before this, apparently as a private arrangement.

[418] It is possible that in the earlier part of Richard’s reign the fear inspired by the Peasant Revolt may have quickened the spirit of organization among the wealthier classes. In the Guild of Lichfield, established by charter in 1387, the master of the Guild and the Forty-eight were “steadfastly to abide together and see that good rule be kept in the city.” (Gross, ii. 145.) Similar combinations of the richer classes seem to have been very general.

[419] English Gilds, 244-6, 249, 250.

[420] Gross, ii. 353.

[421] Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316. This states that all the burgesses and the commonalty of the borough of Bridgewater have ordained that they will choose yearly two seneschals of their guild, and one bailiff to attend on them; such seneschals to have power to punish those offending against these ordinances. If any one among them shall maliciously impute to another a charge of theft, forgery, neifty (“nativitatis,” the being a born bondman), murder, adultery, or excommunication, and be convicted thereof before the seneschals, he shall be amerced and bound to the commonalty to make satisfaction to the other at the award of his peers. No one shall implead another without the borough under pain of amercement. Any one neglecting to appear before the seneschals when summoned is to be amerced. Those opposing execution or distress made by order of the seneschals to be amerced and bound to the commonalty in forty pence. No one is to buy flesh or fish before 9 A.M. for regrating under pain of becoming bound to the commonalty in the price of the flesh or fish so bought or sold. If any one is elected to the office of seneschal of S. Mary’s or of the Holy Cross in the church of the said borough he shall render account for the moneys arising therefrom to the said seneschals whenever summoned so to do. Any person refusing any one of those offices, if elected thereto, is to be bound to the commonalty in the sum of 6_s._ 8_d._ The seneschals are to render account for all moneys received by them each year upon the morrow of the circumcision of our Lord. This deed has a large fragment of the castle seal or seal of the lord of the fee still attached. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 316.)

[422] Their meetings for business were held in a small chamber attached to the church of S. Helen, which is still the exchequer chamber of their successors, the governors of Christ’s Hospital. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 98.) Dr. Gross (i. 83-4, note 11) gives the names of some towns where the government was guided by a “simple social-religious gild.” The instances suggest different problems, and need separate examination of the special circumstances.

[423] Madox, 217. How many later declarations of the poverty of _corporations_ was due to this convenient system of dealing with their funds?

[424] This system was devised before the doctrine of Trusts was adopted, in the reign of Henry the Fourth; but even after that doctrine was accepted the holding of property by a friendly corporation would have put considerable difficulty in the way of recovering money owed by the municipality.

[425] English Gilds, 231-5.

[426] See Note A at end of Chapter.

[427] See Chapter XIV.

[428] Dr. Gross is one of the latest writers who insists especially on the passage from democracy to oligarchy. (i. 108-110, 125-6, 160, 171, 285.)

[429] Gross, i. 23-6; ii. 115 et sq. Compare Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 239, for the forms used in 1291. For elections in 1310 see Ibid. 242.

[430] In Romney an instance is given in 1442 of a man being arrested who had come, not being free, to hear the common council. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540. For Wycombe, Ibid. 557.

[431] Journal Archæological Association, xxvii. 464.

[432] Ibid.

[433] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 493.

[434] Boys’ Sandwich, 429. See also Berwick, English Guilds, 344.

[435] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 462. If a townsman struck the mayor and was too harshly punished the friends of the prisoner might call a jury “of the discreetest and stoutest men of the city,” who should ordain a just penalty. In Rye as in Hereford the old custom was that the man who struck the mayor was to lose his right hand (Lyon’s Dover, ii. 352); in Preston there was some punishment for a mayor who struck a burgess in or out of court (Custumal, Hist. Preston Guild). In Canterbury if a bailiff did wrong to any “that may be found by two lawful men of syght and of hyerth” complaint was made to the twelve aldermen; and if they charged the bailiff in vain to amend the wrong, the case was carried to a court of the thirty-six, the aldermen, and the most wisest men, “and by them right shall be ordained” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 171).

[436] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 559.

[437] Hunt’s Bristol, 103-5.

[438] For the variety of modes in which juries were elected then and later see Rep. Mun. Corporations, 27.

[439] We find also special juries—for example a jury of masons and carpenters to judge “because of a waterfall which fell from the house and gutter of Richard Maidstone upon the house and ground of William Bennett” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 169); and groups of umpires appointed to settle differences (Boys’ Sandwich, 786).

[440] This was the custom in Exeter. At Bayonne every new citizen was sworn upon a book containing the charter and statutes of the commune (Luchaire, 47).

[441] Ricart, 2.

[442] At Wycombe and Dartmouth two Italian copies of the Pandects of Justinian and commentaries were used in the fifteenth century to bind up the corporation books.

[443] See pp. 310-11, 334-6, 366-70. A decree of 1328 in Preston was made by “the mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses, with all the commonalty, by a whole assent and consent.” (Thomson, Mun. Hist. 105.)

[444] Mr. Maitland describes the communal organization of the villein tenants on the manor of Bright Waltham in 1293 (Manorial Pleas, Selden Soc. 161-4, 168). They formed a “communitas” which held property, could receive a grant of land, could contract and make exchanges with the lord (172). These rights were recognized in the manorial courts, though at Westminster they would have been held very irregular (163). They elected or recommended the reeve, shepherd, ploughman, swineherd (170), the whole ville “undertaking” for him (168). The steward kept watch that no land of servile tenure should be treated as free, and the villeins themselves were very unwilling that a villein should set up as a freeman on the ground of holding a freehold acre (164).

[445] In Barnstaple a deed concerning a tenement in the High Street in 1416 was sealed with the seal of the commonalty, not that of the mayor. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 213.) In Rye there was a seal of the community different from the mayor’s seal, which last was first used in 1377. (Ibid. v. 489, 511.) Also in Lydd (ibid. 530-2).

[446] See note A at end of chapter.

[447] Worcester, Eng. Guilds, 378.

[448] Frequent cases indicate that where the common lands played an important part in the wealth or industry of a borough the burgesses long preserved an interest in municipal affairs. Thus, in Haverford West, where the townsfolk up to 1832 took a very real part in the election of their officers and the control of business, the common meadow still contained over a thousand acres. (Report on Mun. Corporation, 233, etc.) And at Berwick-on-Tweed, where also affairs were administered by the whole body of burgesses, the annual value of the lands whose profits went to the freemen was near £6,000. (Ibid. 31.)

[449] Piers Ploughman, pass. xi. 239.

[450] Merewether and Stephens, ii. 590-2.

[451] Norwich Town Close Evidences, p. 16. A copy of this volume (a private publication printed in connection with the Town Close case in 1885) may be found in the British Museum.

[452] Norwich Town Close Evidences, 18-19.

[453] Ibid. 17.

[454] It was at this time that the mayor was given power to distrain for sums levied on the commonalty. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 186-7.)

[455] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, pp. 187, 240. Gross, ii. 155-6.

[456] Report on Markets, 62.

[457] Rot. Parl. i. 433.

[458] Madox, 94.

[459] In the list of taxpayers to the poll-tax of 1380 in Oxford, we find four aldermen mentioned—a vintner, a draper, and two others whose trade is not mentioned, but who had eight and ten servants, a number very greatly above the average. The vintner and draper each paid, like the mayor, 13_s._ 4_d._; but the man with ten servants gave only 12_d._; and the man with eight is not registered as having paid at all. (Oxford City Documents, Oxford Hist. Soc. 8-45.)

[460] See Note A at end of chapter.

[461] In 1327 a violent dispute broke out between the great people of Andover and the rest of the community. The story of the election of a sort of council of fifteen of the richer people in 1303, and of incidents leading to the riot of 1327 can be traced in the entries quoted in Gross, ii. 297-321.

[462] Inaugural Address at Oxford by Mr. Froude, Oct. 26th, 1892.

[463] Cases occur in the towns under the game laws. The Jurats of Hythe present Henry Colle as “a common destroyer in killing hares with snares and pypys to the great destruction of the sport of the gentry and against the statute”; and another man “for keeping one ferret for hunting against the statute.” (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 431, 2.)

[464] See Piers Ploughman. Pass. ix. 20-31; ii. 96; x. 223, _et sq._

[465]

“Then louh (laughed) there a lord and ‘by this light’ said, ‘I hold it right and reason to take of my reeve All that mine auditor or else my steward Counselleth me by their account and my clerk’s writing. With _spiritus intellectus_ they took the reeve-rolls, And with _spiritus fortitudinis_ fetch it, will he, nil he.’”

—Piers Ploughman. Passus xxii. 461-466.

[466] “If any judgment be given,” say the Hereford Customs, “or any execution of writs of our Lord the King, be to be impleaded or done, or if any doubt or ambiguity shall be upon any of our laws or customs, or anything else touching the whole commonalty, then the bailiff or steward, by all kind of rigour, may compel _the discreeter especially, or any other citizen whom they have need of_, to come unto them.” (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 464.)

[467] Hudson, Mun. Org., 24-5.

[468] Royal Commission on Markets, 15, 16. The justices had a right to dismiss poor recognitors, and order the sheriff to cause lawful knights and other proved discreet men to be elected in their stead (Select Civil Pleas, Selden Society, 100). The records of the Manchester Court Leet Jury have only been preserved from 1552. The number varied from about fourteen to eighteen, who were yearly chosen at the court leets from the chief burgesses of the town. When the father died his eldest son or younger brother seems to have been made a juror in his stead. The jurors, in fact, were chosen generation after generation from the same small number of families. The reeve and one or both constables were generally nominated from among the jury then in the box. (Manchester Court Leet Records, 177-8.) Cf. Ship of Fools. Barclay, 99.

[469] Ibid. 62. See Vol. I. 186, 165, note A. In Canterbury there was a law that if by the bailiff’s fault the king should send a writ “in hindering of the liberty” of the town the bailiff should make restitution.

[470] In Colchester for example the number of people assessed for all moveables in 1301 was 390 and the sum raised £24 12_s._ 6_d._ In 1377, when it stood twelfth on the list of English towns, it is said to have had about 4,500 inhabitants.

[471] Thus in 1342 Nicholas Langton was elected mayor of York for the seventeenth time (Hargrove’s York, i. 308) and two men bore rule in Liverpool for eighteen years between 1374 and 1406—one for twelve years and the other for six (Picton’s Liverpool, i. 30).

[472] There was a great variety in the names of mayors during the fifteenth century. John Samon held the office several times, but generally speaking the mayors were not re-elected, and in no case did they hold office two years in succession. (See Nottingham Records.)

[473] Gross, ii. 117.

[474] Lincoln and London (Madox, 14; Gross, i. 80). Canterbury (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 167).

[475] See Lynn and Southampton.

[476] Ricart’s Kalendar, 72, etc. The Mayor in Nottingham was bound “to give his brethren knowledge for to see the game of the fishing” ... and “in likewise to give them knowledge of every bear-baiting and bull-baiting within the town, to see the sport of the game after the old custom and usage.” (Rec. iii. 449.)

[477] Hythe, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. i. 432, 434.

[478] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 542. Ibid. vi. 572-580. Any man thrice convicted of “cursing the mayor and slandering him with good and grave people,” was to be deprived of his freedom by sound of the bell of the Guild Hall.

[479] See ch. viii. Freeman’s Exeter, 90.

[480] In Bristol the town clerk, the steward, and the attorney, had forty-two rays, and their under clerks thirty-two rays. (Ricart, xii. 81.)

[481] In 1476 Lydd paid 13_s._ 4_d._ for the writing out of its “Customall.” The custumal of Sandwich written in 1301 was copied about 1465 by the Town Clerk, John Serles. The Black Book of Hythe was copied in the same way. For Southampton see Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 8. Instances are too numerous to give.

[482] See the Translation of Crouchback’s Charter at Leicester (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 404); a translation from the French in 1491 of the old book of laws and customs of Yarmouth (Ibid. ix. 305); a translation in 1473 of the ancient rules of the Guild of Southampton known as the Pax Bread. (Davies’ Southampton, 133.)

[483] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 606-7. The clerk was also responsible for deeds which were constantly given into the keeping of the Mayor and Council.

[484] The Domesday Book of Dorchester compiled in the XV. century (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxviii. 29); the Liber Albus of Norwich in 1426 (Blomefield, iii. 141; Arch. Journ. xlvi. 302). Ordinances were drawn up at Rye in 1397 (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 489); the Fordwich Kalendar in the fifteenth century (Ibid. v. 606-607). The oldest Year Book of Sandwich is the Old Black Book in which entries are made in 1432 and end in 1487. Entries in its White Book begin in 1488 and end in 1526. The fact that the laws of the Scotch Marches were codified at this time shews the prevailing tendency.

[485] As in Romney (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539).

[486] In 1386 the Cinque Ports paid for the copying of Magna Charta (Ibid. 533).

[487] Nottingham Records, ii. 340.

[488] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 489.

[489] Ibid. ix. 223-4.

[490] First paper roll in Reading accounts 1463. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi.