ENGLISH LOCAL GOVEKNMENT
FROM
THE REVOLUTION
TO
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERN-
MENT FROM THE REVOLU-
TION TO THE MUNICIPAL
CORPORATIONS ACT: THE
MANOR AND THE BOROUGH.
BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE
WEBB. PART ONE.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 39
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, CALCUTTA AND BOMBAY.
1908.
CONTENTS
BOOK III
THE MANOE AND THE BOROUGH
PAOE
INTRODUCTION. ......... 3
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE LORD'S COURT 9
(a) THE LAWYER'S VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT . . 11
(6) THE COURT BARON 13
(c) THE COURT LEET ....... 21
CHAPTER II
THE COURT IN RUINS . . . . . . . . 31
(a) THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS . . . . 32
(6) THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED ..... 50
(c) THE COURT OF THE MANOR 64
(i.) THE BAMBURGH COURTS 89
v
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
PAGE
(ii.) THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY ... 96
(ill) THE COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MAN-
CHESTER. ....... 99
(d) THE PREVALENCE AND DECAY OK THE LORD'S COURT 114
CHAPTER III
THE MANORIAL BOROUGH 127
(a) THE VILLAGE MEETING 128
(6) THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP . 134
(c) THE LORDLESS COURT 148
(d) THE LORD'S BOROUGH . . . . . . . 160
(e) THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH . . . 178
(/) MANOR AND GILD . . . . . . .186
(</) ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY . . . . 200
CHAPTER IV
THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER . .212
(a) BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION . . . . .213
(6) MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 223
CHAPTER V
THE BOROUGHS OF WALES 232
(a) INCIPIENT AUTONOMY 235
(6) THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH . . . .241
(c) THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION . . . 254
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER VI
f PAGE
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION . . . . .261.
(a) THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION .... 267
(b) CORPORATE JURISDICTIONS . . . . . 275
(c) CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS . . . . . .285
(d) THE AREA OP THE CORPORATION . . . 288
(e) THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION . . . 292
(/) THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION . . . 302
(#) THE CHIEF OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION . . 306
(h) THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION .... 309
(i) THE BAILIFFS 318
(j) THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER . . . 321
(k) THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK . . 324
(I) THE COUNTY OFFICERS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 328
(m) THE MAYOR'S BRETHREN AND THE MAYOR'S COUNSELLORS 333
(n) THE COURTS OF THE CORPORATION . . .337
(o) COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION 339
(p) THE COURT LEET 344
(g) THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS . . 349
(?) COURTS OF SPECIALISED JURISDICTION . . . .358
(fi) THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURTS OF THE MUNICIPAL
CORPORATION 360
(t) THE MUNICIPAL CONSTITUTIONS OF 1689 . . 367
viii ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION 384
(a) THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE MAGISTRACY . . 384
(6) THE DECLINE or THE COMMON COUNCIL . . .390
(c) THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW STATUTORY AUTHORITIES 394
(d) THE PASSING OP THE FREEMEN . . . . .396
(e) THE MINGLING OP DECAY AND GROWTH . . . 402
BOOK III
THE MANOE AND THE BOEOUGH
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. THE LORD'S COURT.
II. THE COURT IN RUINS.
III. THE MANORIAL BOROUGH.
IV. THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER.
V. THE BOROUGHS OF WALES.
VI. THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION.
VII. MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION.
,, VIII. ADMINISTRATION BY CLOSE CORPORATIONS.
,, IX. ADMINISTRATION BY MUNICIPAL DEMOCRACIES.
X. THE CITY OF LONDON.
XL THE MUNICIPAL REVOLUTION.
VOL. II. FT. I
INTRODUCTION
IN a preceding volume l we have dealt with two main forms
of English Local Government, the Parish and the County ;
organisations which existed from one end of the kingdom to
the other. But to the rule of the County to some slight
extent also to the rule of the Parish there were, up and
down England, numerous exceptions, out of which had
developed, as it happens, not the least important, and, as some
may think, the most picturesque parts of the Local Government
of England between the Ee volution and the Municipal Cor-
porations Act, namely, those connected with the Manor and
the Borough. It does not lie within our province to inquire
whether some or all of these exceptions to the uniform
organisation of Parish and County may not represent a once
universal government, either Manorial or of Village Community
character. Whether or not this was the case, the continued
existence of these forms after 1689 compels us to devote a
volume to the various Exemptions, Immunities, and Franchises
which enabled the inhabitants of particular localities to exclude
the authority of the County at large, or that of one or other of
its officers; and thereby to enjoy, within their own favoured
areas, some peculiar forms of self-government. 2
1 English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations
Act, vol. i. The Parish and the County, 1906.
2 It may occur to the student that there was, between 1689 and 1835,
another kind of definitely localised local governing body, not based on
immunities or exemptions, but wielding, within its area, new and specialised
powers. Such authorities were, for instance, the Turnpike Trustees or the
various types of Street Commissioners, established by Local Acts. With all
these authorities we deal in another work. It must suffice here to note that,
although affecting limited areas, they did not constitute exceptions to the rule
of the County. They might, in fact, without inconsistency with the County
or with each other, have been multiplied so as to cover the whole area.
3
4 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
The proportion of the Local Government of England that
was, in 1689, carried on, whether by prescription, by Charter,
or by statute, in the form of exemptions from or exclusions of
County jurisdiction, was far larger than is commonly supposed.
Thus, with a few insignificant exceptions, the whole force
of police that then existed owed its appointment neither
to the Parish nor the County, but to Manorial Courts or
Municipal Corporations ; whilst the magistracy of the large
towns was provided, not by the Commission of the Peace, but
by the Mayors, Aldermen, and Eecorders. The suppression of
nuisances, which comprised at that time nearly the whole
regulative activity of local authorities, was practically
monopolised by the Leets of private Lords and of enfranchised
Boroughs ; for the recovery of small debts, the Court Baron of
the Lord, or its municipal analogue, often called the Court of
Record or the Court of Pleas, had largely ousted the Court of
the Sheriff of the County at large. Markets and fairs were
matters neither of Parish nor of County concern, but were
under the control of the individual or Corporate owners of
Franchises; whilst many lay and clerical Lords, and most
Municipal Corporations, had their own gaols, if no longer their
own privileges of "pit and gallows." More important than
these common services, which, in 1689, were still small in
extent, was the administration of the land, a service not now
usually connected with Local Government. But even at the
end of the seventeenth century, no small fraction of the surface
of the Kingdom was still managed by or in connection with
those local governing authorities that we class as Seignorial
Franchises and Municipal Corporations. In thousands of
rural Manors the rotation of crops, the dates at which the
various agricultural operations should be undertaken, the
management of the pastures, quarries, and fisheries, the care
of the cattle, and the breeding of stock formed part of the
business of the same open " Court " that suppressed nuisances,
fined minor offenders, chose the local officers, and tried petty
actions for debt and damages. In hundreds of urban districts
the Manorial Courts or the Municipal Corporations were
administering not only the remnant of the ancient commons,
but also dwelling-houses, wharves, docks, quays, piers, shambles,
and market places. The tolls and dues levied by these
INTRODUCTION 5
authorities, whether by Charter, prescription, or mere ownership
of the soil, formed in the aggregate no unworthy rivals of the
various County and Parish Rates. By 1835, it is true, the
agricultural business of these local governing bodies had, with
the progress of inclosure, shrunk into insignificance. The
importance of the urban properties and the revenue from tolls
had, on the other hand, in many places greatly increased.
In our history of the County we showed that, in 1689,
practically its whole business, from one end of England to
the other, was transacted by judicial process, in open Courts
of Justice, in the guise of enforcing fixed personal obligations.
By 1835, as we have seen, this had been silently transformed
into administration by committees, meeting in private, appoint-
ing, instructing, and controlling a salaried staff of officers
according to a variable policy decided on from time to time
by the committees themselves. The Seignorial Franchises
and Municipal Corporations seem, at first sight, to admit of
no such simple generalisation. We shall, indeed, describe the
successive stages of what appears to us to be an analogous
evolution. But instead of being able to trace this evolution,
within the very period with which we are dealing, in the life-
history of one vigorous organism, what we have is rather
a collection of apparently heterogeneous individuals, showing
signs of having been arrested in their development at different
stages of their growth ; some remaining in a rudimentary state ;
some even reverting to simpler types; and some, again, stand-
ing still at what seems full maturity. Those local governing
authorities that we describe in our chapters on " The Lord's
Court " and " The Court in Euins " never developed, from first
to last, anything beyond the machinery of a judicial tribunal,
designed to enforce pre-existing rights and obligations. In
subsequent chapters we shall describe, under the terms the
" Lordless Court," the " Lord's Borough," and the " Enfranchised
Manorial Borough," organisations marked by the possession of
specialised administrative structure of various grades of com-
plexity, from the mere creation of one or two new officers
and the custody of a common purse up to a full equipment
of Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councillors, but exhibiting
during the whole century and a half little or no development,
aud in some cases even retrograding to the simpler form of
6 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
a Lord's Court. The more highly organised bodies that we
analyse in our various chapters on Municipal Corporations
usually, we may observe, exhibiting no great tendency to
develop have in their constitutions the administrative
structure predominant, whilst the judicial tribunals and
judicial processes have sunk to a subordinate, and sometimes
to an insignificant position. It adds to the complexity, and,
as we think, to the impression produced of arrested development,
that, so far as the period between 1689 and 1835 is concerned,
we find all the different types coexisting in each successive
decade. In 1835 there were still rural Manors in which
the archaic Lord's Court provided the local services by the
enforcement of ancient personal obligations. Already, in
1689, the Corporation of the City of London was transacting
its extensive business by an administrative apparatus more
highly developed than that of the most advanced County a
hundred and fifty years later apparatus more complicated
than any modern constitution can show.
Yet in face of this apparent heterogeneity, and of what we
may call the sluggishness of development among our various
individuals, the very multitude of the specimens, and their
variety in detail, enables us to set them out in such an order
that they are seen, alike in constitution and in function, to
pass almost imperceptibly one into another. Nor is it only
between the separate organisms themselves that there are no
sharp dividing lines. In particular instances we may see the
Court Leet and View of Frankpledge becoming inextricably
confused with the General Sessions of the Peace ; the Court
Baron or Customary Court with the Borough Court of Eecord
or Court of Pleas ; and the Jury of either or both of these
Manorial Courts with the Court of Common Council. The
student, we suggest, will find it impracticable to regard the
various individuals otherwise than as members of one and the
same genus ; nor, we must add, otherwise than as units in an
ascending series. There is, in fact, no logical stopping point,
when all the specimens are reviewed, between the most
insignificant Court of a petty Lord of the Manor, held once
or twice a year at his Hall, for the admission of a new tenant
or the appoiutment of the Constable, and the many-chartered
Corporation of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the
INTRODUCTION ^
City of London ; an all-embracing government in perpetual
session ; a County of itself, controlling the services of the most
important mercantile port in the world ; administering a
revenue of regal magnificence ; and exercising judicial and
even legislative functions, asserted to be independent of the
High Court of Parliament itself.
We do not wish to assert that this ascending series
of surviving specimens necessarily represents the successive
stages in the life-history of the most fully-developed Chartered
Municipality. Such a hypothesis we leave to be tested by
the historians of the Manor and the Borough. It is, indeed,
plain, even on a survey of what existed between 1689 and
1835, that part of the Municipal structure and some Municipal
functions are not to be found, even in germ, in any Manorial
origin. The historian must take account of those ancient
shire towns distinguished by heterogeneity of tenure. 1 Also
the remnant of Gild organisation clinging to many eighteenth
century Municipalities possibly even the frequent admission
to the Freedom of the Corporation by Servitude of Apprentice-
ship points to an ancestry unconnected with the Manor.
We must, moreover, not forget the working of the imitative
faculty, and of the tendency to assimilation. A constitution
which had, by custom and by law, developed out of one form
of association may be subsequently adopted by, or imposed
upon, other groups of persons associated together for quite
other reasons. But whether or not our classification suggests
any plausible theory of the growth of the Manor and the
development of the Borough, some such classification of the
ascending series of franchises and immunities, exemptions and
privileges, customs and powers, that existed between 1689
and 1835 outside the County and over and above the Parish,
is indispensable to any adequate survey of English Local
Government.
A thoroughly intelligent description of these Seignorial
Franchises and Municipal Corporations, even as they existed
in 1689, would require an historical erudition that we do not
possess. Already in the seventeenth century these mediseval
institutions had fallen more or less into decay, leaving, in the
1 Township and Borough, by Trof. F. W. Maitland, 1898 ; The Domesday
Boroughs, by A. Ballard, 1906.
8 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
majority of cases, only disconnected fragments of what we may
assume to have once been a complicated if not a systematic
structure. Without an adequate knowledge of what exactly
was the Manor in its prime, and of the part played by the
Borough in the local government of the twelfth century, it is
difficult, and sometimes impossible, to trace and to understand
the significance of such remnants as remained at the end of
the seventeenth century. Our lack of knowledge of what the
organism in its maturity was and did necessarily hampers our
interpretation of its remains. A further difficulty is caused
by the fact that these remnants, in many cases, did not remain
unaltered. In the Municipal Corporation in particular, the
new growths of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
often found inextricably twined about the old structure the
gain by accretion coming, in some specimens, to be more than
equivalent to the loss by decay. In the case of some of the
larger and more populous Chartered Municipalities, such as
Norwich and Bristol, Nottingham and Southampton, the
development of a Corporate Magistracy so completely sub-
merged the more ancient structure, whether Gild or Manorial,
that we might almost have described them as particular
varieties of a specialised form of the County ; whilst in the
exceptional instance of the City of London, one or more of its
outgrowths its so-called Commission of Sewers, if not also its
Corporation of the Poor might, in addition, have conveniently
been classed with the Statutory Bodies for Special Purposes
that we shall describe in the succeeding volume.
CHAPTEE I
THE LORD'S COURT
IN many parishes of England, town as well as country, we
find existing, in the latter part of the seventeenth century,
a sort of local governing authority that was neither Parish
Vestry nor County Justices, neither Statutory Body nor
Municipal Corporation, but one or other tattered remnant of
the old jurisdiction of the Manor. Here and there would
be found public officers exercising peculiar functions under
strange titles. An Aleconner or a Pinder, a Swine-ringer or a
Burleyman, a Common Driver or a Constable sometimes
even a vaguely influential potentate called a Portreeve or a
Boroughreeve derived his authority neither from the meet-
ing of the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, nor from the
Justices of the Peace ; neither from Statute nor from Charter.
Once or twice a year a " Court " would be held, to which
people would resort, for purposes they scarcely knew what.
At this " Court Leet," or " Halmot Court," or " Soke Court,"
or " Court Baron," or " Forest Court," or " Hundred Court," or
"Swainmoot," or "Lawday," as it was variously styled in
different instances, all sorts of matters of common interest,
as well as questions connected with individual property rights,
might be dealt with. In one place all transfers of copyhold
property, on death or on alienation, would be registered with
quaint ceremonies, accompanied by the exaction of customary
fines and fees. In another, various arrangements about the
commonfield agriculture, the " town bull and boar," the use of
the " town's plough," or the management of the common
pasture would form the bulk of the business. In others,
flgain, the presentment of nuisances and the condemnation
io THE LORD'S COURT
of offenders to a fine would seem to fill the greatest place.
It was in such a Court, as Butler tells us in Hudibras, that
the villagers would
. . . impeach a broken hedge,
And pigs un ringed ; at Vis. Franc. Pledge,
Discover thieves, bawds, and recusants,
Tell who did play at games unlawful,
And who filled pots of ale but half-full. 1
What was invariable in such a Court was the appointment of
one or more officers ; and the plain citizen, to whom the
Manor had seemed but a harmless antiquity, might discover
that he had been summarily chosen to discharge some onerous
public function without fee or reward, or that he had been
condemned to pay a small fine for this or that offence against
the well-being of the little community. 2
1 Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, Canto II. It will be remembered that
Shakespeare makes Christopher Sly, in his "very idle words "-
Rail upon the hostess of the house
And say you would present Jier at Uie Leet
Because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts.
(Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene ii.).
2 We know of no adequate study of the Lord's Court, as an organ of Local
Government, from the beginning to the end of its development. By far the
most authoritative, as well as the most interesting, account of its actual form
and working is to be gathered from the various writings of Professor F. W.
Maitland ; notably his Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts,
1889, and The, Court Baron, 1891, both volumes of the Selden Society ; and
Tlie History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, 1895,
vol. i. For the latest discussion of the conflicting views see Surveys Historic
and Economic, by Prof. W. J. Ashley, 1900, and T)i Growth of the Manor, by
Professor Vinogradoff, 1905. Useful bibliographies will be found in Miss F. G.
Davenport's Classified List of Original Materials for English Manorial and
Agrarian History, 1894 ; and The Manor and Manorial Records, by N. J.
Hone, 1906. Bacon gives a clear account of the functions of the Court Leet in
his Answers to Questions proposed by Sir Alexander Hay touching the Office of
Constable, 1608, and in vol. vii. pp. 748-754 of the 1858 edition of his Works ;
and its relation to other judicial institutions is well stated in The History of
English Law, by Professor W. S. Holdsworth, 1903. Among the numerous
legal treatises and manuals for Stewards not to speak of half-a-dozen archaic
works of the sixteenth century we may mention The Order of Keeping a Court
Leet and Court Baron, by Jonas Adames, 1593 ; Jurisdictions, or the Lawful
Authority of Courts Leet, etc., by John Kitchin, 1598 (and about fourteen other
editions in English or French down to 1675) ; The Complete Copyholder, by Sir
Edward Coke, 1630 (and half-a-dozen other editions down to 1764); The
Relation between a Lord of the Manor and the Copyholder his Tenant, by Charles
Calthorpe, 1635 ; The Court- Keeper's Guide, etc., by William Sheppard, 1641
THE LAWYERS VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT n
(a) The Lawyer's view of the Lord's Court
The common bewilderment as to the meaning of the
Lord's Court was not shared by the authors of the elaborate
manuals of its jurisdiction and procedure, prepared for the
instruction of Stewards and others who had the duty of
" keeping Courts." In these popular manuals we find dis-
played a clear-cut theory of the origin, exact constitution, and
precise functions of the Courts of Lords of Manors, asserted
with an assurance that may usefully be contrasted with the
modesty of conjecture of such modern investigators as
Professors Maitland and Vinogradoff. We may, in the
twentieth century, doubt whether " the methodically learned
John Kitchin of 1 Gray's Inn, Esquire, and Double Reader"
(and about eight other editions down to 1791) ; Treatise of the Antiquity,
Authority, Uses, and Jurisdiction of the Ancient Courts of Leet, by Robert Powell,
1642, 1688 ; The Authority . . . of . . . County Courts, Courts Leet, and Courts
Baron, by William Greenwood, 1st edition, 1668, 9th edition, 1730 ; Lex
Custumaria, by S. C[arter], 1701 (other editions to 1796) ; Practice of Courts Leet
and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 1st edition, 1714, 4th edition, 1728 ;
The Complete Court-Keeper, by Giles Jacob, 1st edition, 1713, 8th edition, 1819 ;
Lex Maneriorum, by W. Nelson, 1728; History of the High Court of Parliament
. . . and . . . of Court Baron and Court Leet, by T. Gurdon, 1731 ; The Complete
Steward, by John Mordant, 1761 ; Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph
Ritson, 1791 ; Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, etc., by R. B. Fisher,
1794, 1804; Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 1st edition, 1797,
4th edition, 1825 ; Laws respecting Copyhold and Court -Keeping, etc., by
Henry Fellowes, 1799 ; Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven,
first edition, 1816, seventh edition, 1896 ; C'opyJiold and Court-keeping Practice,
by Rolla Rouse, 1837 ; The Law of Copyholds, by Leonard Shelford, 1853 ;
and especially The Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay,
2nd edition, 1893. The last-named work (with those of Watkins and Scriven)
we have found the most useful. An admirable account of a mediaeval Manor
will be found in The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565,
by Miss F. G. Davenport, 1906. For references to MS. Manor Rolls, see
p. 116. The most complete series of published records of a Court Leet, extend-
ing from 1552 to 1846, is The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester,
edited by J. P. Earwaker, twelve vols., 1884-1890. The Durham Halmote Rolls
(Surtees Society) and Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, by Rev. W.
Hudson, 1892 (Selden Society), may be consulted for earlier proceedings.
The best descriptions known to us of the actual proceedings of Courts Leet in
the nineteenth century are those of the Court at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1844
(Health of Towns Commission, First Report, Appendix, vol. ii. pp. 71-73) ;
of the Court at Berkeley in 1890, in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, vol. iv.
1890, p. 27 ; and of the Court at Durham in 1805, in Memorials of S. Giles',
Durham, edited by J. Barmby, 1896, p. 7. See also History of the English
Landed Interest, by R. M. Gamier, 1892, ch. xxix. and xxx. We know
of no work describing the part played by the Lord's Court between 16S9
and 1835.
12 THE LORD'S COURT
knew quite as much about the origin and early development
of the Court Leet and Court Baron as he supposed. Even
what he described as its contemporary nomenclature and
procedure was, as we shall presently show, unlike the actual
facts of many of the Courts that were being held around him.
But such treatises as Kitchin's Jurisdictions and Jacob's
Complete Court -Keeper had a significance not possessed by
any similar handbooks for parish officers or Justices. The
Overseers of the Poor and the Surveyors of Highways, like
the Clerk of the Peace, could turn to numerous statutes
authoritatively defining their powers and duties. But the
Lord's Court was not the creation of any Act of Parliament.
There was not even a Royal Charter prescribing its constitu-
tion or procedure. In default of any authoritative document,
the Steward whom the Lord appointed to hold his Court
naturally accepted the guidance of the contemporary legal
manuals. Hence the perpetual republishing and elaborating
of these manuals by a succession of legal experts can hardly
have failed to have tended gradually to transform the Courts
as they were into the Courts as the lawyers thought they
ought to be. Moreover, the legal theory of the seventeenth
century has, for us, a further value. It preserves some of
the spirit which had inspired the Manorial Courts in their
prime, without some understanding of which their function
can hardly be appreciated. Before describing the fragments of
Manorial Jurisdiction actually forming part of English Local
Government between 1689 and 1835, we think it, therefore,
convenient to give in outline the constitution, procedure, and
functions attributed to the Lord's Court by the contemporary
legal authors.
We note, first, that, in the lawyer's view, we have before
us not one Lord's Court, but several ; with different constitu-
tions and functions, different procedures and officers. There
is evident a tendency to elaboration, one learned authority
making out as many as five different Courts. 1 But this
1 In R. B. Fisher's Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, 1794, these are
given as the Court Leet, the View of Frankpledge, the Court Baron, the
Customary Court, and the Court of Survey. But there is no evidence that
there was ever a separate Court called the View of Frankpledge, this being
merely a duty undertaken by the Sheriff's Turn and afterwards by the Lord's
Court (as Court Leet). The Court of Survey (occasionally called also ' ' Court
THE COURT BARON 13
elaboration and distinction was largely, if not entirely, analytic.
The models for procedure offered to Stewards constantly
assumed that the various kinds of Court would be held at
one and the same time, as connected parts of what was in
fact a single sessions of one and the same tribunal. We are
unable to find contrary to a common impression that even
the most punctilious lawyer asserted that the several Courts
which he analytically distinguished ought, as a matter of law,
always to be held at different times or at different places. So
far as analytic distinction was concerned, the Courts resolved
themselves, in the lawyer's view, into two sharply contrasted
tribunals, the Court Baron and Customary Court on the one
hand, and the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge on the
other. 1
(b) The Court Baron
The Great Court of the Manor, or Court Baron, was, in the
lawyers' view, essentially a private Court of the Lord, necessarily
incident to every Manor, having for its object the maintenance
of the rights of the Lord against his tenants and of the privileges
of the tenants against the Lord, together with the settlement
of their mutual differences and the organisation of their common
affairs. It was not a Court of Eecord, but a private jurisdic-
tion forming part of the estate and property of the Lord.
The Court was to be summoned by notice given by the Steward
to the Eeeve or Bailiff, and by him affixed to the Church door,
or handed to the Parish Clerk to be read in Church, according
of the Supervisor " see Seven Somerton Court Rolls, by A. Ballard ; Transactions
of Oxfordshire Archaeological Society, 1906) was only a special sitting of the
Court Baron, at which every tenant of the Manor had to produce his title,
and special inquiry was made of the mutual rights and privileges of Lord
and tenants. It was "generally held immediately upon the descending
of a Manor to a new Lord, or upon the purchase of a Manor, to inform
the new owner of every respective estate which he has a right to as Lord, and
the tenure and customs by which they are held " (The Laws receding Copy-
holds and Court-keeping, by Henry Fellowes, 1799, p. 43). Elaborate details
of what a Court of Survey should inquire into are given in The Surveyor's
Dialogue, by John Norden, originally published in 1607, and in a fourth
edition in 1738 (see pp. 120-213).
1 That the legal manuals from the thirteenth century onward distinctly
contemplated the holding, in one undivided sessions, of all the two, three, four,
or even five Courts that they analytically distinguished, will be clear to
any one who examines the model agenda for the sessions that most of them
supply. In this agenda the items belonging to the several Courts are inter-
14 THE LORD'S COURT
to local usage. 1 It was to be presided over by the Lord or
his Steward, and had to be attended by all the tenants of the
Manor, whether freeholders or copyholders. Neglect to attend
the Court subtraction, or non-performance of suit of Court
was punishable in the absence of an "essoin," or excuse
admitted as sufficient, by a fine, and theoretically even by
mingled ; and one Jury after another is to be sworn and charged. As in the
Court rolls, so in " the manuals for Stewards which come to us from the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we cannot discover two Courts or two
methods of constituting the Court " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 581). The later manuals are to the
same effect. "After the Steward has gone through his charge to the jurors
of the Court Leet," says Sir William Scroggs, "he may proceed to his charge
to the Homagers or Court Baron " (The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron,
by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, p. 22). Even Sir Edward Coke
alludes to Courts "of this double nature." The common practice "where
a Court Leet and Court Baron are held together" is referred to (ibid. p. 11 ;
Lex Custumaria, by S. C[arter], 1701, p. 73) ; or "where the three Courts are
held at the same time " (Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by R. B. Fisher,
1794, p. 167). The five necessary attributes of the Lord's Court, according to
a widely read authority, were "The Lord is chief to command and appoint,
the Steward to direct and record, the freeholders to affeer and judge, the
copyholders to inform and present, the Bailiff to attend and execute" thus
merging the Customary Court with the Court Baron (The Authority, Jurisdic-
tion, and Method of Keeping County Courts, Courts Leet, and Courts Baron, by
W. Greenwood, 9th edition, 1730, pp. 309-405). So, too, in the hundred
pages of ',' customs " of particular Manors given by Watkins, the items belonging
to the Court Baron, Customary Court, and Court Leet are not distinguished
one from another (A Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition,
1825, vol. ii. pp. 477-576). "The various Courts," says an able antiquary,
' ' were conducted very much on the same lines in all Manors ; that is, all
business connected with the transfer of land was duly settled, presentments
were made of the tenants for various offences, as trespass, assault, blood-
drawing, drunkenness, pound - breaking, disorderly conduct, etc., and for
disobeying sanitary regulations in not cleansing ditches. Actions between
tenants were tried, an immense boon to them, for they had a Court of Justice
in their own locality, acquainted with the parties to the suit and the witnesses "
(The History of Dulwich College, by W. Young, 1889 ; vol. ii. ch. ii., on the
Court Rolls, by F. B. Bickley, p. 266). In fact, any careful student of the
lawyers' treatises, as of the Court Rolls, will, notwithstanding all the analytic
differentiation, have no difficulty in inferring of the Courts which they are
describing that as Professor Maitland tells us of those of the thirteenth
century "the Court which had been enforcing the customs of the Manor did
not become some other Court when it turned to punish breaches of the peace
or to adjudicate upon actions of debt between the tenants ; a lawyer might
analyse its powers, might insist that some were royal franchises, while others
were not, but all its powers, whatever they might be, were used in the mass
and apparently with little thought as to the various titles by which they had
been acquired" (Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts, by
Prof. F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xviii ; see also History of English Law, by Prof.
W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, pp. 68-69).
1 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 1816, pp. 433-449.
It was said that at least sixteen days' notice ought to be given (The Order of
Keeping a Court Leet and Court Baron, by Jonas Adames, 1593, p. 1).
THE COURT BARON 15
forfeiture of the tenement. The " free suitors," or freehold
tenants of the Manor, holding of the Lord, in fee simple, land
liable to escheat to him, were assumed to constitute the Homage ;
and the presence of at least two such freeholders, if not three, 1
was declared to be indispensable to a legal Court Baron. But
as subinfeudation had been forbidden since the Statute of Quia
Emptores in 1290 there were, by 1689, few Manors in which
this condition could be complied with ; and the lawyers had
been driven to assert that a " Customary Court Baron " could
be held in the presence of copyholders only, who themselves
constituted the Homage. 2 And by special custom, there might
be separate Homages or Juries, sometimes of freeholders and
copyholders respectively, having distinct functions. " If," said
a writer of 1656, " the custom of the place be to make two or
more Juries, or one Grand Jury and divers Petit Juries, it is
good to observe it." 3
The Court was to be opened by formal proclamation and
summons to all concerned to attend. The roll of those owing
" suit of Court " had to be read, and the names noted of those
who were present. The " essoins " of the absentees were to be
received and considered, and the defaulters to be fined. The
Homage or Jury was then to be sworn, four at a time ; and
the Steward had to address to them a formal " charge." The
judgments of the Court were made either by the whole
" Homage," or by a Jury of Homagers,* and they were embodied
in the form of presentments to the Court, which were accepted
and pronounced by the Steward.
The principal business of the Court was to declare and en-
force the ancient customs of the Manor, which, whether relating
1 In the Manor of Dymock (Gloucestershire) the legal quorum was, by custom,
three ; see the "customs" as elaborately recorded in an indenture of 1565, en-
rolled in Chancery in 1657 ; mentioned in Jurisdictions, by John Kitchin, in
1598 ; and given in A Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 487-491.
2 The Bf lotion between the Lord of the Manor and the Copyholder his Tenant,
by Charles Calthorpe, 1635, p. 72.
3 Tlie Court- Keeper's Guide, by William Sheppard, 1656, p. 20. " In some
cases," said the lawyers, " the Steward may impanel a second Jury to inquire
into the concealments of the first, and fine them " {The Practice of Courts Leet
and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, p. 16).
4 "Out of the copyholders choose your Homage," says a manual (Laics
respecting Copyholds and Court-keeping, by Henry Fellowes, 1799, pp. 32-
43).
1 6 THE LORD'S COURT
to the incidents of land tenure, or to the use of the common
fields or waste, were legally binding on both the Lord and his
tenants. At one Court annually, the Manorial officers were to
be appointed tihe Keeve or Greave, or Bailiff, who collected
the Lord's quit-rents and heriots, his " fines certain " and " fines
arbitrary," his " work silver " and his " customary penny," his
" chevage " and " childwite," his " boscage " and " foldage " ; the
Beadle, who gathered in the fines and amercements ; the
Hayward, who had in charge the common or waste ; l some-
times a Common Driver or a Herdsman, a Hog-ringer or a
Swineherd, a Woodward or a " Greave of the Moors," a " Sur-
veyor of Hedges " to see that the tenants enclosed during
seed-time and harvest, 2 or other officers connected with the
customary privileges of the community. These officers were in
the vast majority of cases "presented by the Homage"
sometimes several persons for the Steward to choose one.
The question of liability to service in the several offices,
and of the remuneration, if any, for such service, was deter-
mined by the ancient customs of the Manor in each case.
Moreover, the Court was said to have a vaguely defined
power to enact By-laws, binding on all the tenants of the
Manor, at least in matters, such as the use of the waste, in
which they had a common interest. It was the business of the
Homage or Jury also to make presentments of escheats and
surrenders of tenements, and of the death of any tenant of the
Lord ; of dower and freebench, of " waste," " emblements," and
" botes." New tenants had also to be admitted by the Steward,
on payment of the customary fees and fines, and with due per-
1 It does not seem possible to accept Mrs. Grote's simple etymology which
made Hayward = hogwarden (Some Account of the Hamlet of East Burnham,
by a Resident, i.e. Harriet Grote, London, 1858, p. 28) ; nor is the later identifi-
cation of Hayward with hedgewarden more trustworthy. The duties of the
mediaeval Hayward, harvestman or reaper (in Latin, mtssor or messarius), a mere
farm servant, "who seems to have acted sometimes as pounder," are fully described
by Walter de Henley ; see also pp. xxv and xxxiii of The Durham Halmot Rolls
(Surtces Society, 1889), and at p. 140 of The Court Baron (edited by F. W.
Maitland and W. P. Baildon for the Selden Society, 1891). The word is used
for shepherd in the "Journal of a Gloucestershire Justice, 1715-1756," in Law
Magazine and Review, vol. ix. p. 280. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the Hayward might act in almost any capacity as an officer of the
Lord's Court. Kitchin gives the title as synonymous with Greave or Beadle
(Jurisdictions, etc., by John Kitchin, p. 93 of edition of 1675).
2 As at Gnossall (Staffordshire) ; see The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, p. 193.
THE COURT BARON 17
formance of the ancient ceremonies of the Manor. 1 The Court,
moreover, had the important function of hearing plaints and
deciding disputes. It had, said Kitchin, been "ordained to
determine injuries, trespasses, debts, and other actions," 2 at any
rate among the tenants of the Manor, and by immemorial
custom, also actions against mere residents within the Manor ;
but in all cases limited, by the judges' construction of an
ambiguous statute, to actions for less than forty shillings. 3 It
might or might not examine witnesses, as the freeholders, who
were both the judges and the jurymen, chose to decide. 4 The
Court could be held anywhere within the Manor, or, by custom,
1 See the extensive collection of the customs of particular Manors recorded in
A Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, pp. 477-576.
2 Jurisdictions, etc., by John Kitchin, 1598, p. 6. "A Court Baron, "says
another authority, " consisteth of the Lord, Tenants, Steward, and Bailiff within
the Manor, and is sometimes called the Copyholders' Court, especially when it is
for trial of titles of their lands, for taking and passing estates, surrenders, admit-
tances, and grants ; and herein the Lord or his Steward is judge (as the custom of
the place is) ; yet this Court is sometimes called the Freeholders' Court, when
the actions and proceedings are for trial under 40s., and is something like a
County Court, and the proceeding much the same, and was without doubt
granted to the Lord originally by the King ; but now most are by prescription,
and are commonly held once in three weeks, and may be as often as the Lord or
Steward thinks fit, who is supreme judge in law and equity" (The Practice of
Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, pp.
39-40).
3 The Statute of Gloucester, 1278, limiting actions in the King's Courts to cases
in which not less than 40s. was at issue, was construed by the judges as for-
bidding such actions in the County Court and Court Baron (Select Pleas in
Manorial Courts, by F. W. Maitland, p. Ivi). At Dover, by custom, the Lord's
Court had jurisdiction without limit of 40s. (Jurisdictions, by John Kitchiu,
1598) ; and in at least several scores of Manors possibly those once connected
with such ecclesiastical corporations as the Knights of St. John the Court had
jurisdiction in probate and testamentary cases (Treatise on the Law of Copyholds,
by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 423). The wills proved in nearly
fifty such Courts, between 1562 and 1815, are now deposited at Somerset House,
London, or at various diocesan registries (see the list in The Manor and Manorial
Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 22, 302).
4 The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th
edition, 1728, p. 3. Whether the Court had anciently heard counsel or allowed
appearance by attorney is not clear. That it did so in places in the eighteenth
century is plain, but we suspect that this was exceptional. We read in 1731 of
"the Freeholders' Court having lost most of its business, lawyers and attorneys not
finding an account in giving attendance there for one or two cases, and the parties
finding it difficult to have the assistance of lawyers there" (The History of the
High Court of Parliament . . . and . . . of Court Baron and Court Leet, by
T. Gurdon, 1731, vol. ii. p. 610). Occasionally even leading counsel would
appear. At a " Baronial Court " held in the archiepiscopal Manor of Lambeth in
1828, with a Jury of copyholders, both the Attorney - General and Henry
Brougham were engaged for the several parties in a copyhold case (Augell v.
Angell ; see Times, January 7, 1828).
VOL. II. PT. I C
1 8 THE LORDS COURT
in one Manor for other Manors belonging to the same Lord.
It could be called together whenever the Lord or his Steward
chose, without unreasonably inconveniencing the tenants ; but
usually, by custom, it was to be held every three weeks a
period apparently derived from a Writ of Henry III. to the
Sheriff of Lincoln, authorising the Courts of the Lords to be
so held, 1 whence they were frequently termed Three Weeks'
Courts. Finally, as was eventually decided by the Court of
King's Bench in 1822, neither the right to hold such a Court,
nor its jurisdiction in petty actions, was lost by mere non-user ;
so that it could be revived after a lapse of half a century. 2
We have said above that the lawyers declared the Court
Baron to be a private jurisdiction of the Lord of the Manor,
and not a public tribunal. But we must warn the student
against a misunderstanding by which we ourselves were long
misled. When it was held that the Court Baron was of
private, not of public nature, those words were used in a
sense very different from that nowadays given to them. All
that the lawyers meant was that the Court Baron was not
a Court of the King, to be held only by his authority or
subject to his will. What the modern student has to bear
in mind is that the Court Baron, however little of its power
it may have owed to the King, had within its sphere no small
part of the administration of the common affairs of the
inhabitants of the Manor. It was, in fact, an organ of local
government, alike legislative, executive, and judicial in
function, with attributes that we shall, in our subsequent
analysis, find of considerable interest. It was the Court
Baron, and not the Court Leet, that had jurisdiction over the
commonfield agriculture that survived, in many cases, down
to the nineteenth century, and over the common pastures and
wastes that were destined in certain places to become streets
of dwelling-houses, market-places, wharves, and docks. It
was the Court Baron, and not the Court Leet, that could
claim authority -over fisheries and weirs, and generally over
the banks and channels of rivers and estuaries, out of which
1 Close Roll of 18 Henry III. ; see The Law of Copyholds, by 0. I. Elton and
H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, p. 300.
2 R. v. Steward of Manor of Havering atte Bower, 1822 ; in Reports of Cases,
etc., by E. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. v. pp. 691-692 ; Reports
of Cases, etc., by James Dowling and A. Ryland, 1823, vol. ii. pp. 176-177.
THE COURT BARON 19
might spring prescriptive rights to tolls and dues. It was
the Court Baron, and not the Court Leet, that provided the
tribunal for the trial of petty actions for debt and trespass,
which we shall see figuring prominently among the Courts
by which the autonomy of Manorial Boroughs and Municipal
Corporations was built up. It was the Court Baron, and
not the Court Leet, that chose the Eeeve, the chief local
officer of the little community, who became responsible for
collecting the money tributes due to the Lord of the Manor,
exactly as the chief officer of the Manorial Borough 1 was
responsible to the Lord for .his quit-rents, or as the Mayor
of the fully-developed Municipal Corporation was answerable
for the " farm " of the Borough to the King. Finally, it was
the Court Baron, not the Court Leet, that contributed what
became the predominant principle of eighteenth - century
Local Government common consent and local autonomy
the Homage being, unlike the Leet Jury, themselves the
judges of the Court, interpreting, and therefore developing,
the Customs of the Manor as if these concerned themselves
alone, without the intervention of the Lord or his Steward,
and without reference to the interests of the rest of the
community. To the lawyer the Court Baron of the Manor
might seem essentially a law court, " the lowest judicial unit
of the Kingdom." But " in practice though primarily a law
court, the Manor Court would also serve as the administrative
and, in some sense, as the legislative organ of the community
of the Manor." 2 " The majority of homagers," noted a learned
Steward of the seventeenth century, " sworn at the Lord's
Court, for the better preservation of order, have, time beyond
memory of all men, used, with the Lord's consent, to make
By-laws, as well for the stinting and limiting the number,
as for appointing times for the putting the tenants' cattle
into the common pastures, wastes, and commons of the
Manor. And- such By-laws, made with reasonable penalties,
and clauses for distress for such penalties, have, by the time
aforesaid, been binding and concluding to all the tenants of
the Manor. The like orders and consent bind for the mending
1 See Chap. III. "The Manorial Borough."
2 History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Prof. Ramsay Muir,
1906, p. 2.
20 THE LORD'S COURT
of tenants' ways, and for the establishment of the common
good, and preventing of public annoyances, provided that such
orders crossed not the law or statutes of the Kingdom." l It
may be that it was the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge
that gradually assumed the greater prominence in those places
in which the Lord's Court continued, without further develop-
ment, to be the local governing authority. But it is the
constitution and legal attributes of the Court Baron that we
shall presently find of equal, if not of greater, significance
in our description of the Manorial Boroughs and our analysis
of the Municipal Corporations.
Such being the importance of what we may term the
Court Baron aspect of the Lord's Court, we may be pardoned
for drawing the attention of the sociological student to one
of its attributes, unnoticed by the lawyers, which had, we
suggest, an adverse influence on its eighteenth-century develop-
ment. The common agreement upon which rests the authority
of a modern Municipality is that of inhabitants at large that
is, of the consumers of its services. The Court Baron, on
the other hand, was essentially the organ, not of the citizens
or consumers as such, but of the occupying owners of
agricultural land that is to say, it belonged to the genus of
Associations of Producers. 2 The student of other types of
Associations of Producers will not be surprised to find the
Homage resenting the intrusion of " foreigners " and the
invasion of the commons by " landless residents." The same
spirit led to the exaction of tolls and dues in the market and
at the landing stage from those who had not been admitted
as tenants of the Manor ; and led, even in unincorporated
villages, to the Reeve, as representative of the Homage,
1 History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, vol. i. p. 179
(quoting a document of 1662).
2 By the term "Associations of Producers" we mean societies or com-
munities of persons who are engaged in the production of commodities or
services, and who themselves own or control the whole or part of the material
instruments of production, or are otherwise self-directing. The best known
examples of such associations are the Merchant and Trade Gilds of the Middle
Ages and, in our own generation, what are called Productive Co-operative
Societies or "self-governing workshops" (to be distinguished from the so-called
Distributive Co-operative Societies or "stores," which do also much production,
and are Associations of Consumers). See, on the whole subject, The Co-
operative Movement in Oreat Britain, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb),
1900.
THE COURT LEET 21
charging a fee to such persons for the privilege of opening
a shop. It was, we suggest, the fact that the Court Baron
had the attributes that belong to an Association of Producers,
that caused it, as we shall see in our account of the Manorial
Boroughs, to develop into a close body, renewing itself by
co-option, from which the ordinary inhabitant was excluded.
(c) The Court Led
The Court Leet 1 and View of Frankpledge was, so the
lawyers held, not a private incident to a Manor, but a public
jurisdiction, a Franchise assumed to have been obtained by
Royal Grant to the Lord of the Manor, with a view to spare
his tenants the trouble of attending the Sheriff's Turn.
Such a grant can seldom be traced except in Charters to
Boroughs ; but in Manors in which a Court Leet had actually
been held time out of mind the grant was presumed. The
Court Leet, unlike the Court Baron, was a Court of Record,
and the Steward who presided was not merely its officer but
an integral part of the Court itself, 2 empowered summarily to
punish by fine any contempt committed in Court, and even
to commit the offender to prison in default of payment. He
could take a recognisance of the peace ; 3 and, in fact, " in
matters within the jurisdiction of the Leet, the Steward," so
the lawyers held, " had [in Court] powers equal with the
Justices " themselves in their own Courts. 4 It was a char-
1 " The word Leet ... is not to be found either in the Saxon law or in Glanvil,
Bracton, Briton, Fleta, or the Mirror (our most ancient law writers), nor in any
statute prior to 27 Edward III. c. 28 " (The Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by
J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 1 ; A Short Treatise of the History and Anti-
quities and Jurisdiction of all the Courts of Law, by Henry Aldridge, 1835, p.
193). The word seems to be of East Anglian local usage. "Towards the
end of the thirteenth century the word Leet (leta), which seems to have spread
outward from the East Anglian counties, was becoming a common name for
such a Court " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland,
vol. i. book ii. ch. iii. sec. 5, p. 568 ; see also Leet Jurisdiction in the City of
Norwich, by Rev. W. Hudson, 1892 ; Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, by F. W.
Maitland, 1889, pp. xvi and Ixxiii ; The Coventry Leet Book, by M. D. Harris,
1907).
2 Holroyd v. Breare and Holmes, in Reports of Cases, etc., by E. V. Barnewell
and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. ii. p. 473.
8 7 Henry VI. c. 12 (1429) ; 10 Henry VI. c. 8 (1432) ; 11 Henry VI. c. 7
(1433).
4 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896,
p. 441. For instances of the Court Leet becoming indistinguishable from the
Petty or General Sessions of the Peace, see pp. 350-352.
22 THE LORD'S COURT
acteristic feature of this Court that it had to be attended by
the people at large. In legal theory the obligation to attend
and, if required, to take part in the proceedings extended to
every male resident within the Manor over twelve some
said over sixteen years of age, who had dwelt there for a
year and a day. It was, perhaps, with reference to this
obligation that the 42nd section of Magna Charta had
provided that these Courts were " to be held but twice a year,
a mouth after Michaelmas and Easter." But though any
" View of Frankpledge " or enrolment in tithings had long
since been obsolete, the roll of the inhabitants was, in 1689,
still supposed to be called over, and every one had to answer
to his name. 1 New residents (or perhaps only new freeholders)
1 " You must call to the Constable for a Leet Bill, which should compre-
hend all inhabitants of the Leet within the precinct above the age of 16 "
(The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th
edition, 1728, p. 18). The Statute of Marlboroiigh (52 Henry III. c. 10)
excused from attendance at the Sheriff's Turn, and impliedly at the Lord's Court,
peers, ecclesiastics, and women. Prior to that statute it seems that every
one over 1 2, including servants and women, had to attend (Practical Treatise on
Copyhold- Tenure, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 438). But tenants
in Ancient Demesne were always held to be exempted (The Law of Ancient
Demesne, by J. P. Yeatman, 1894 ; Villainage in England, by P. Vinogradoff,
1892, p. 89 ; TJw Manor and Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, ch.
vii.). How long the View of Frankpledge was kept up is uncertain. Long
after the Lord's Court had lost its power of trying felonies, a great authority
incidentally tells us that it "retained the duty of viewing the frankpledges . . .
which it exercised, it is said, as la 1 e as 10 Henry VI. (1432) in Cornwall"
(The Tenures of Kent, by C. I. Elton, 1867, p. 154). We owe to Mr. Seebohm an
even later example. In 1470 we see the Court at Hitchin (Herts) still admit-
ting men into " the tithing of the Lord the King " ; and presenting that " John
Crouche is of the age of 12 years and more, and has resided within the precinct
of this View for one year and beyond, and is out of the tithing of the Lord the
King. Therefore he is in mercy, and it is ordered to distrain him to put him-
self on the tithing of the Lord the King " (translation from MS. Court Rolls,
Hitchin, portfolio 177, No. 60, in Public Record Office). We do not know
whether this fining of absentees from the Lord's Court, as we see it in the
eighteenth century, can be connected with the mediaeval chevagium(see Select Pleas
in Manorial Courts, by Professor F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xxxi). "The
strict theory of the law," we are told, " seems to have required that all the
frankpledges should attend the view ; but as a matter of fact it was usual
for none but the Chief Pledges to attend ; often, however, they had to bring
with them a sum of money which was accepted in lieu of the production
of their tithings " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W.
Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 557). It may be, as has been suggested, that the
Leet Jury was composed of, or in some way represents, the Headboroughs, and
that these were the heads of tithings, or Capital Pledges. In some cases, how-
ever, there seems to be no connection between the Jury and either Headboroughs
or Capital Pledges ; and the fining of all tenants of the Manor seems often to
be unconnected with the Leet Jury. These and other customary payments to
the Manor require further study. There is, for instance, the frequent custom of
THE COURT LEET 23
were then "sworn to be faithful and loyal to the King," all
absentees being subject to a fine. Here the legal function of
the ordinary inhabitant ceased. But the Bailiff or Reeve had
to summon not only the inhabitants generally, but also two or
three dozen of the more respectable and substantial residents
to serve as jurymen, either for the occasion of the coming
Court or Lawday, or, according to local custom, sometimes
during the ensuing twelve months. The principal functions
of this Jury were inquisitorial and judicial. It was " charged "
on its appointment to discover all persons who had committed
any offence against the commonweal, whether contrary to the
lawful customs of the Manor or to the law of the land ; and
to " present " such offenders to the Court. For though the
Court Leet was practically the Court of the Lord of the Manor,
and was presided over by his Steward, it administered, so the
lawyers said, not the Lord's will but the King's justice, and
the Lord himself could be " presented " in his own Court for
a breach of the law and condemned accordingly. The Court
Leet was, in fact, a local criminal court as the lawyers said,
the King's Court holden by the Lord, but the King did not
"common fine," payment made annually either by every tenant or resident,
whether present in Court or not, or by the officers of particular townships on
behalf of their townships. There is much reason to suppose, as Ritson declared,
that this " common fine," or " certum letoe," was a payment made to excuse all
the suitors but the Chief Pledges from appearing at the Court (Jurisdiction of
the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 120). At the Easter Leet of
the Manor of Wimbledon (Surrey) " the Headboroughs pay a Common Fine, for
Putney, 6s. 8d. ; Roehampton, 2s. ; Mortlake, 8s. 4d. ; Barnes, 5s. ; Wimbledon,
formerly 8s. 4d., but abated by reason of the parsonage to 6s. 8d." (The Law
of Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 554-556). In a
case brought before the Court of King's Bench a customary exaction of ten shil-
lings each from the jurymen as Chief Pledges was upheld (Term Reports, vol. ii.
p. 42 ; Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 1816, p. 100). On the
other hand, this view does not explain the cases in which a payment is exacted from
all and sundry, whether they attend or not. " Cert Money and Common Fine,"
says an eighteenth-century writer, " is a fine paid by resiants or residents of several
Manors to the lords thereof, for the certain keeping of the Leet, and sometimes
to the Hundred (as the Manor of Hook in Dorsetshire pays Cert Money to the
Hundred of Egerdon). And Common Fine is a certain sum of money which
the residents within the View of some Leets paid to the Lord thereof, called in
divers places Headsilver, in others Cert Money and Headpence ; and was first
granted to the Lord towards the charge of his purchase of the Court Leet,
whereby the residents had now the liberty of doing their Suit Royal nearer
home, and not be compelled to go to the Sheriffs Turn. As in the Manor of
Sheapshead in the County of Leicester, every resident pays a penny per head to
the Court held after Michaelmas, which is there called Common Fine" (The
Complete Steu-ard, by John Mordant, 1761, vol. i. p. 37). Other synonyms
were " King's Silver," "Headmouey," and " Chief Silver."
24 THE LOR EPS COURT
interfere either by appointing judges or other officers, or by
reviewing or controlling its proceedings. It was the Lord's
own Steward who presided over the Court, selected the
inhabitants who were to serve as the Jury, instructed them
as to their duties, and appointed, on their nomination, the
Constable, the Aleconners, and the other public officers of the
Manor, whilst all the fines imposed went into the pocket of
the Lord, or were the perquisites of the Manorial officers.
The Court Leet differed, however, markedly from a
modern criminal court both in its procedure and in the
practical range of its jurisdiction. The Court, it was assumed,
would act without instigation from any prosecutor, and needed
to issue no summons to a defendant. Everybody was, in
fact, presumed to be in attendance. The Jury presented
offenders out of their own knowledge, sometimes aided by the
reports of the various officers, and their presentments appar-
ently condemned such offenders, even in their absence. There
was no necessity to hear witnesses, and neither attorney nor
counsel would be present, 1 though the Court would listen to
a defendant in extenuation or denial of the accusation. In
their presentment the Jury not only declared the defendant
guilty of the offence mentioned, but also indicated the appro-
priate penalty. As the Court had no gaol at its command, and,
as seventeenth-century lawyers held, no power of imprison-
ment, 2 this penalty nearly always took the form of a money
1 " When they are discharged the same day," says Ritson, "it would seem
necessary for them to proceed chiefly upon evidence, and indeed there is gener-
ally, if not always, a proclamation for that purpose. . . . The proceedings
. . . are without expense, the suitor pays no fees, and advocates or attorneys
of course never enter it " (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd
edition, 1816, pp. 23-24). But, as above mentioned, lawyers did sometimes
attend the Lord's Court, which was at once Court Baron and Court Leet.
2 Coke, who always took a limited view of the power of the Lord's Court,
seems first to have asserted this (The Compleat Copyholder, by Sir E. Coke,
1630), and it became accepted. "The Court Leet," says a law book of 1745,
quoting Sir William Scroggs, " is the only Court which may fine but not
imprison" (The Justice of Peace, by Theodore Barlow, 1745, p. 159). The
stocks for drunkards (4 James I. c. 5), the pillory and tumbril for bakers and
brewers (51 Henry III. st. 1, c. 6), and the ducking-stool and brank (or scold's
bridle) were, however, available, and seem to have been lawfully inflicted as
punishments by the Court Leet (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph
Ritson, 1816, p. 12), at any rate in the Middle Ages (see for a case in 1290,
Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, *by F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. 98). Ritson com-
plained that Coke had taken an unduly limited view of the Court's powers
(Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, p. 19).
THE COURT LEET 25
fine or " amercement." The presentment was then referred
by the Steward to two Affeerors, 1 or officers appointed to
" affeer " the amercement, by which was to be understood its
final assessment at a definite money penalty, usually less
than the maximum indicated for the particular class of offence.
Such a fine, if not at once paid in Court, had to be collected
by the Bailiffs, or Beadles, or " Serjeants " of the Manor, or, if
no such officers had been appointed, by the Constable, who,
with or without a Manorial distress warrant from the Steward,
had power to distrain on the goods of defaulters. 2 The pre-
sentment of the Jury, made in one form and received by the
Steward in Court, might be " retired " or reversed the same day,
if the Steward chose to allow it, by another Jury ; but was, so
the lawyers held, " the day passed, as true and sacred as the
Gospel," not subject to traverse or appeal, in that or any other
Court. 3 Even more peculiar in modern eyes was the scope of
the Court Leet's jurisdiction. As we see it in the legal text-
books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had
already lost its authority over the great majority of criminal
offences. " Petty treasons and felonies," says Kitchin, " are
1 Whether the affeerors were chosen by the Steward or by the Jury is not
clear. In the Manor of Worplesdon (Surrey) it was customary, " for the Law-
day," for "one to be a freeholder, but if a Court without a Lawday " for both
to be copyholders (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 559-561).
2 "A Steward may by parole command a Bailiff to make distress " (Treatise
of the Antiquity . . . of the Ancient Courts of Leet, by Robert Powell, 1642, p.
33). "The Lord may have an action of debt or distrain for it of common
right ; and such distress may be taken in the streets, and be sold " (The Justice
of Peace, by Theodore Barlow, 1745, p. 159).
3 Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, pp. 9-10. But
though not subject to appeal, or, strictly speaking, to traverse, a presentment
that affected the party's freehold property might be made the subject of com-
plaint to the Court of King's Bench, which that Court would try. Moreover,
that Court's jurisdiction in other matters was not ousted by the fact that they
had been dealt with in the Lord's Court. Thus, when the Jury of the Lord's
Court of the Manor of St. Giles's in the Fields on complaint of the keeping of
over 400 hogs by a distiller near St. Giles's Pound, with a stench that was
abominable, had formally presented that this was no nuisance, such a decision
did not prevent an indictment being brought in the Court of King's Bench,
when the Jury found that it was a nuisance (R. v. Smart, 1734 ; see notes
of trial among the Hardwicke MSS. ; Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, by
G. Harris, 1847, vol. i. pp. 265-270). The lawyers drew a distinction between
offences. It was said by Hale, " that if there be a presentment in a Leet for a
personal misdemeanour it is a conviction, and conclusive ; but if it be for a
nuisance or any matter that concerns freehold, the party may come up after-
wards and traverse" (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 1816, p. 140).
26 THE LORD'S COURT
enquirable and presentable in a Leet, but not punishable
there." All matters of indictment had, indeed, been trans-
ferred to the assizes by a statute of Edward IV. The Court
Leet, meeting only once or twice a year, with its cumbrous
machinery of universal attendance and its inability to impose
sentences of imprisonment, was obviously unfitted for dealing
with petty police cases. The whole business of the conser-
vancy of the King's peace, including, therefore, every ase of
assault, was, in fact, taken over by the Justices of the Peace
in Petty or Quarter Sessions. It was to these Justices, and
not to the Court Leet, that Parliament throughout the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries confided the jurisdiction with
regard to the new statutory offences, which were superseding so
many of the old Common Law misdemeanours. Thus, by 1689,
there remained to the Court Leet, in the lawyer's view, little more
than the petty delinquencies connected with the Assize of Ale,
the Manorial market, and the use of the highways, together
with the wide and elastic offence denoted by a common
nuisance.
To the modern student, the Suppression of Nuisances
seems a comparatively insignificant part of Local Government.
But to the lawyer and the administrator of 1689 it comprised,
along with the Eelief of the Poor, practically the whole of
local administration. As we shall see in the subsequent
volume, in which we deal with the Suppression of Nuisances,
this was the root out of which sprang such services as the
Maintenance of Roads, the Drainage of Towns, the Paving and
Cleansing and Lighting of Streets, and the whole of what we
now call Public Health. " A common nuisance," says a con-
temporary lawyer, " seems to be an offence against the public,
either by doing a thing which tends to the annoyance of all
the King's subjects, or by neglecting to do a thing which the
common good requires." l When we come to describe the
regulative activity sanctioned by this definition we shall see
that it covers an amazing range of requirements, both positive
and negative; each generation with or without express
direction from the Legislature dropping out some offences
and adding others, the categories now swelling, now contract-
1 Justice of the Peace, by R. Burn, 6th edition, 1758, vol. ii. p. 432 ; citing
a dictum of Hawkins.
THE COURT LEET 27
ing, so that the volume of individual personal activity dealt
with was always varying. Thus, in the Courts Leet of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we find the Stewards directing
the Juries to present persons guilty of " eavesdropping " or
" theftbote," of maintenance or barratry, of " being a common
and turbulent brawler " or " a common scold," of " selling
unbaited beef " or " gashing hides." In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the more common " annoyances of all the
King's subjects," to which the Juries directed their attention,
were unscoured ditches or unmended highways, trees over-
hanging the road, refusing to pave the street in front of one's
house, or declining to serve as Ale -taster, Dog -muzzier, or
Scavenger. From the middle of the eighteenth century down
to the very end of the period with which we are dealing, we
find, in the roll of presentments, quite other kinds of personal
conduct stigmatised as common nuisances such as the
emission of smoke, heaping refuse on unoccupied land, per-
mitting privies and cesspools to drain into the newly-made
sewers, leaving cellar flaps open and unguarded, retaining
hanging signs, permitting dangerous bulls to go at large,
keeping mastiffs unmuzzled, or allowing pigs to roam in the
streets. In fact, it is difficult to find any kind of personal
conduct, whether intrinsically innocent or plainly criminal,
and whether or not expressly included among statutory
offences, which might not, at one period or another, have
found its way, as a common nuisance, into the presentments
of a Court Leet Jury.
Closely connected with this judicial business was the
power assumed to be possessed by the Court Leet, equally
with the Court Baron, of making new By-laws, binding on all
the residents within the Manor. The earlier legal writers
found the Court Leet making such By-laws, and accepted this
function as warranted by tradition. Gradually it became of
undoubted authority. " It seemeth that of common right,"
wrote Dr. Burn in 1756, "any Court Leet, with the assent of
the tenants, may make By-laws under certain penalties, in
relation to matters properly within the cognizance of such
Court, such as reparation of the highways and the like." 1
Within what limits this By-law-making power would have
1 Justice of tlw Peace, by Dr. R. Burn, vol. iii. p. 240 of edition of 1820.
28 THE LORDS COURT
been, in any particular generation, upheld by the King's
Courts must remain uncertain, as the point cannot be said
to have been very definitely determined. But whether or not
the King's Courts would have upheld their dicta, we find the
legal manuals unhesitatingly advising the Stewards that such
By-laws might be made.
The Court Leet exercised also another important function
which we do not nowadays associate with a criminal tribunal.
It had the duty of appointing whatever staff of public officers
to attend to the government of the locality that custom
required. There were, first of all, the officers charged with
" conserving " the King's peace within the Manor. In a small
rural Manor this meant only the appointment, year by year, of
one of the residents to serve as Constable. In larger parishes
there might be several Constables for different hamlets or
tithings ; they might be called " Chief Pledges," " Boroheads,"
" Borsholders," " Tithingmen," " Deciners," " Headboroughs,"
" Thirdboroughs," or by other ancient titles of which the
original meaning had been forgotten ; but their duty was
always to preserve order -in the little community. The legal
form seems to have been for the Jury to present one or more
persons as liable to serve the particular office, and for the
Court that is the Steward to appoint one or more of the
persons so presented. In addition to these officers, particular
Manors had, by custom, to appoint such others as Aleconners
or Ale-tasters, Carnivals or Carnals, the Finder, Pinner, or
Poundkeeper, the Dyke-reeve or Moss-reeve or Wall-reeve, and
the Burleymen or Bylawmen. Sometimes in an old " forest "
district the Court had to appoint a " Greave of the Forest,"
and various subordinate forest officers. In the numerous
unincorporated market towns it was the Court Leet that had
to appoint the Bread-weighers and Viewers or Inspectors of
Weights and Measures, the Market-lookers, the Searchers and
Sealers of Leather, the Pecksealers, and the indispensable
Bellman or Town-crier ; whilst in populous towns there might
also be Town Scavengers, Dog-muzzlers, Clerks of the Wheat,
Fish, and Butchery Markets, or even, as at Lewes, a " Clerk of
the Spars and Withs." l The whole official staff of a Court
1 The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824-32,
p. 174.
THE COURT LEET 29
Leet might thus be very numerous in exceptional cases even
exceeding a hundred. 1 In all these offices service was com-
pulsory upon all adult male residents within the Manor, and
could be enforced by summary fine and distraint on any
recalcitrants. It was taken for granted by the lawyers that
every respectable male resident was liable under legal obliga-
tion to serve the Manor in his turn, 2 without salary or other
remuneration. It was, in fact, no part of the conception of
local government, at the time when the Court Leet was in its
prime, that there should be anything that we should now call
the Municipal administration of public services, that is to say,
the employment of paid officers to do positive services for the
common enjoyment. Every service requisite for the simple
life of the little community was a duty imposed, as a condition
of tenure or an obligation of status, upon some individual
resident or another. If every man did his duty in obeying
the law of the land and the customs of the Manor if he
neither broke the King's peace nor committed a public
nuisance all would be well. But as men were perverse and
weak, there would be defaulters unless some one was responsible
for seeing that the Law and the By-laws were adhered to. In
the old system of frankpledge, the " Capital Pledge " was
apparently held responsible for his " tithing," or group of
inhabitants, on all counts. In the Court Leet, as we find
it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, each Manorial
officer was technically responsible for presenting the com-
mission of one specified offence throughout the whole Manor.
The Jury was responsible, on the information given by these
officers, for presenting and amercing all offenders. " The soul
of the system," says a learned antiquary, " consisted in the
universal obligation of every member of a tithing [that is, in
theory, every adult male] to disclose and bring to punishment
every breach of the laws and customs by which the community
1 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. vi. p. 241 (Court
of 5th October 1686, when 110 officers were appointed).
2 By Common Law, the Deputy Steward of the Salford Court explained in
1835, the choice of persons to serve as Constable rested with the Court, unless
there was a valid custom to the contrary. Such a custom existed in the town-
ship of Urmston, the "nomination of Constables by house-roll, so that each
person in the township bears the burden in his turn " (Manchester Times,
1835).
3 o THE LORD'S COURT
was bound." * It is this note of the social obligation of every
citizen, pervading both the legislation and the legal manuals of
the sixteenth century, that we find characterising, in particular,
the government of numerous little communities by the Court
Leet of the King holden by the Lord of the Manor.
1 Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, by Rev. William Hudson, 1892,
p. Ixxv.
CHAPTER II
THE COURT IN RUINS
WE now pass from the clear-cut theories of contemporary
lawyers to the actual constitution and working of the Lord's
Court between 1689 and 1835. It will be at once apparent
that we are dealing with an institution that is nowhere in its
prime, but in every instance falling into decay. In some
Manors the Lord's Court still provided the principal machinery
of Local Government; in others there survived only a mere
shred of a constitution. In many districts it is the manage-
ment of the land that has passed away ; in others, the function
of trying petty cases of debt and trespass ; in others, again, it
is the power of fining nuisance -mongers or of appointing
Constables that has been lost. What will become abundantly
clear is that the Lord's Court, as it actually existed, differed
widely from the lawyer's view of what it ought to have been.
In many of the cases that we shall describe there was no
separation, either in constitution or procedure, between what
the lawyers termed the Court Baron of the Lord, and the
Court Leet of the King. In these cases we see one and the
same Court, in a single undivided sitting, transacting, through
one set of officers and one Jury, without distinguishable order
or precedence, all the business of the little community, whether
this business related to the maintenance of the Lord's rights,
the conveyance of a plot of land from seller to purchaser, the
mutual arrangement of the common rights of the tenants, the
keeping up of fences and dykes, the crops to be sown in
particular fields, the dates at which the various agricultural
operations were to begin, the trial of civil actions, the present-
ment of public nuisances and minor crimes, the fining of
31
3 2 THE COURT IN RUINS
offenders, and the choice and appointment of an indefinite
variety of local public officers. We find, in fact, in the
majority of our examples, simply an Undifferentiated Court
This absence of the theoretical differentiation between Court
Baron and Court Leet will become apparent to the reader of
the descriptions alike of the Courts of the Hundred, Honour, or
Barony, and those of the Manor or Borough in the Middle
Ages, it may be said, all tribunals were Undifferentiated Courts
but we shall recur to it specifically when we come to the
Court of the Manor.
(a) The Hierarchy of Courts
The actual constitution of the Lord's Court was, however,
in some places more complicated than is described by the
lawyers. We discover still existing in some parts of the
country between 1689 and 1835 a curious array of Courts
above Courts, and jurisdictions within jurisdictions. We come
across Hundred Courts, Honour Courts, Soke Courts, Barony
Courts, Knight's Courts, or Forest Courts, wielding authority
over large districts within which are also various distinct
Halmote Courts, Courts Baron, Courts Leet, or Borough Courts.
In the ruinous condition into which these Courts had, by 1689,
everywhere fallen, we cannot with any certainty unravel what
relationship they had once borne to each other, except that
the smaller Courts stood in a certain position of inferiority
to those of wider jurisdiction. We cannot, for instance, say
that the relationship was ever one of Courts of First Instance
and Courts of Appeal there was, we imagine, in mediaeval
jurisdiction, taking the form of punishing defaults, nothing
corresponding to the customary modern right of a defendant
in a civil action to appeal against a decision of a Court of
First Instance. 1 Nor do we find evidence of any right of
1 Whether such a right of appeal had ever existed we do not assume to
decide. In one great ecclesiastical jurisdiction, at least, such a right of hearing
appeals was, in 1284, strenuously asserted on behalf of the Hundred Court,
and as strenuously denied on behalf of the Court of the Manor. At Crondal,
in Hampshire, where the Manor belonged to a priory, it was claimed by the
Bishop of Winchester, as Lord of the Hundred Court, that "where the Prior
and his Steward and his other ministers, for a bribe, or through partiality, or
in any other manner, refuse to do justice [in the Court of the Manor] to any
plaintiff of the Hundred of Crundale, the Lord Bishop of Winchester and his
Steward have power at the first Hundred [Court] at Blackheathfield to inquire,
terminate, and amend this wrong." To this the Convent, as owner of the Manor,
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 33
appeal to an outside or higher jurisdiction in the civil suits
between tenants of the Manor. But it seems clear that, in
some cases at any rate, the presentments of the inferior Courts
were enforced by actions taken at the head Court ; moreover,
there is reason to believe that the head Court did not always
refrain from dealing with cases which might have been within
the jurisdiction of the inferior Court ; and it certainly had
some sort of jurisdiction in default. 1 " It seems a good
prescription," says Sir William Scroggs, " for a Grand Leet
(to which other inferior Leets may be subordinate, as that
to the Torn) to oblige the Chief Pledges and a certain number
of the resiants or inhabitants of every town, etc., within its
precinct to appear at every such Grand Leet, to inquire into
such offences as were not inquired into in the inferior Leet." 2
We may perhaps infer that if an offence had not been presented
in the Court of a petty Manor, it might be presented in the
Court of the Honour or Grand Leet of some wider jurisdiction,
if such existed ; and if not presented at any subordinate Court,
then at the Court of the Hundred. 3 Hence, we venture
though without desiring in any way to imply a complete
subordination of one to the other to describe these interest-
ing series as Hierarchies of Courts.
made answer ' ' that it is altogether to be denied, because he [the Bishop] has no
right to intrude himself in the Prior's Courts ; because if bondmen, they have
no refuge except to their Lord, and if freemen, the King alone and his Justices
ought to hear and terminate complaints of a false judgment." It was admitted
that the tenants of the Manor owed suit and service to the Bishop's Hundred
Court, which held the View of Frankpledge for the whole Hundred ; and it
was eventually agreed that the tenants should not be called to account in the
Court of the Manor for anything already dealt with by the Hundred Court. We
gather that the jurisdiction in appeal or in default was left undecided (Records
and Documents relating to the Hundred and Manor of Crondal, by F. J. Baigent,
Hampshire Record Society, Part I. p. 16).
1 Ritson seems to have been unable to conceive of a Hierarchy of Courts.
He asserts that the jurisdiction of the " Leet of the Hundred " was only over so
much of the Hundred as was not within the jurisdiction of the Court Leet of a
Manor ; and similarly with the Sheriff's Turn (Jurisdiction of the Court Leet, by
J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 5).
2 The Practice of Courts Leet aiid Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edi-
tion, 1 728, p. 3 ; see History of English Law, by F. W. Maitland, 1 895, vol. i. p. 569.
3 Practical Treatise on the Law of Copyholds, by John Scriven, 7th edition,
1896, p. 436. It is noteworthy that, in the sixteenth century, the Hundred
was still regarded as the jurisdiction next above that of the Manor. In 1555,
when it was provided that the Courts Leet should deal with offences under the
first Highways Act (2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 8), the Stewards of Leets were
to render returns of all estreats and fines, not to the Justices of the Peace or to
any County officer, but to the Bailiff or High Constable of the Hundred.
VOL, II. FT. I D
34 THE CO UR T IN R UINS
For the most remarkable of these Hierarchies of Courts
we must go to the West of England. The wide area of the
Vale of Berkeley, comprising the ancient Hundred of that
name in the County of Gloucester, had been ruled over, time
out of mind, by a series of mutually related Courts of the Lord
of Berkeley Castle. There was, first, the Hundred Court for
the whole area; then the numerous Halmotes or Halimotes,
the Lord's Courts for the separate Manors within the Hundred ;
and, finally, certain differentiated Courts, called Borough Courts
or Leets, held in and for certain favoured townships, which
had, by ancient seignorial grants, been constituted Boroughs. 1
In 1689 this Hierarchy of Courts, which had existed
" time out of mind," was still in full, though somewhat formal,
operation. Twice a year the Lord's Steward issued his precept
to the -Bailiff of the Hundred, directing him to summon to
the Court of the Hundred and Honour of Berkeley also called
the Court Leet or Law Day " to be holden at the Booth
Hall in the town of Berkeley " ; to command the attendance
of the persons who were to form the Jury these in 1733
were thirty in number ; in 1V34, forty-two ; drawn from a score
of different Manors, and to require the Constables of the
Manors and the Tithingmen of the several parishes and
townships that " they give notice of holding the same in
the respective parish churches on the Sunday next before
the Leet," in order that not they only, but also all who
1 For information as to the Courts of the Hundred of Berkeley we are indebted
to the courtesy of the Earl of Berkeley, of his land steward, Mr James Peter,
and of Mr Hutton, steward of his Lordship's Courts, who kindly permitted con-
sultation of the records in the muniment room at Berkeley Castle ; as well as to
our friend Miss Hadley, Archivist to the London County Council, who was good
enough to devote part of a holiday to the work. A detailed description of the
Hundred Court at Berkeley in 1890 will be found in Gloucestershire Notes and,
Queries, vol. iv. p. 27 ; and some account of the Hundred Rolls in ibid. vol.
v. pp. 85-88. See also Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Common Law
Courts, 1833 ; House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and of
Courts of Request, 1840 ; The Berkeley Manuscripts, by Sir John Maclean,
3 vols., 1883-85 (Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society) ; and (for the
two Boroughs) First Report of Municipal Corporation Commissioners, 1835,
Appendix, vol. i. p. 19 ; Report of Royal Commission on Uureformed Corpora-
tions, 1880 ; History of the Town of Berkeley, by Rev. John Fisher, 1856 and
1864; "Corporation Insignia," in Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vol. v. p.
519 ; and " Extinct Corporations of Wotton and Berkeley," in Notes and Queries,
7th ser. vol. ii. p. 64 ; A New History of Gloucesterslwre, by Samuel Rudder,
1779, pp. 846-854; and Historical Notes relating, to the Borough of IVotton,
by W. H. Wright, 1872 (in Cheltenham Public Library).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 35
had business at the Court, might be present. The Tithingman
of Stinchcombe we know not why had to bring with him
two men. In the manuscript " Precedent Book," which has
been the guide of many generations of Stewards, we can almost
see before us the whole procedure of this ancient tribunal.
The Steward opens the Court by calling on the Bailiff for a
return of the Jury, which, together with that of the Tithingmen
and Constables of Manors, is formally called over, and the
absentees fined ; for attendance is compulsory, and right down
to the middle of the nineteenth century the fines are enforced.
The Constable of Bevington comes into Court near the Steward,
and, half -bent, prays for the prosperity of the noble family
of the Berkeley s. The Tithingman of Woodmancote brings
a " tag " with which to tie up Lord Berkeley's " writings "
under penalty of ten shillings fine. The Jury is sworn, in
groups of four, one Bible being supplied to be held by each
group, and the King's Proclamation against Profaneness and
Immorality is read. The Steward delivers his charge to the
Court, directing the Jury to inquire into every conceivable
offence committed within the Hundred, from manslaughter
down to the robbing of hen-roosts, from the unlawful pursuit
of game to conspiracies by artificers, from felony to forestalling
and regrating all still declared to be " presentable " in this
Court, even if successive Stewards have felt obliged to sub-
stitute that word for " punishable." Then the Jury examines
into the state of repair of the highways and bridges, the
stopping -up or diversion of footpaths and watercourses, and
the obstruction of the roads by encroachments or laying of
timber. All those who can give information relating to any
of these delinquencies are commanded to give it then and
there in Court. Various officers of the Hundred continue
to be appointed, at any rate the Bailiff of the Hundred and
the Haywards of the several Manors, even after the appoint-
ment of others had been discontinued. Various Acts of
Parliament are solemnly read and proclaimed. The present-
ments made at the last previous Court are read over, and those
which are reported to have been complied with are crossed off.
Meanwhile the Jury has completed its new presentments, which
are written out by the Bailiff, and signed by the several jury-
men. The Constables make their returns, and are sworn to
36 THE COURT IN RUINS
the truth thereof. The Steward, with such formal solemnity
as he can command, then closes the Court. Other sittings of
the Court are held by the Steward every three weeks, to which
the subordinate Manors owe no attendance, though the free-
hold tenants of the Barony are supposed to be present and to
form the Court. The business of these three-weekly sittings,
for which a Jury of householders was summoned when required,
was, at any rate in the nineteenth century, confined to the trial
of civil actions for debt arising anywhere within the Hundred
of Berkeley. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries this ancient Court continued to be held,
its formalities and ceremonies gradually dropping off one by
one its criminal jurisdiction already gone before 1700, its
presentments of nuisances hardly lasting beyond 1800, 1 its
hearing of civil suits passing in the middle of the nineteenth
century to the new County Court, its fines for non-attendance 2
not surviving the third quarter of the nineteenth century;
until, in 1900, the thousand -years' record is broken, and the
Court is silently discontinued.
We pass now to the Halimotes, or Courts Baron, held
on behalf of the Lord of Berkeley in the several Manors of
the Hundred. These were either " General Halimotes," held
normally once a year, or " Special Halimotes," held when
required for some urgent business. These Courts, we are
informed, dealt during the eighteenth century only with
admissions of new copyholders, transfers of property, 3 and
1 In 1801 the owners of the land adjoining a road, and the owner of a
footbridge over a brook were presented for not repairing these highways ; and
the latter Avas amerced in forty shillings, leviable on his goods and chattels (MS.
Entry Book, Berkeley Hundred Court, October 1801).
2 " We present that it appears by the oath of John Neale, Bailiff of the said
Hundred, that he, the said Bailiff, did, on 16th April, go to the dwelling-house
of N. W. of Cambridge in the Parish of Slimbridge within the said Hundred, to
levy on his goods and chattels the sum of five shillings, being an amercement
imposed on him for not attending at the last Court Leet for the said Hundred to
servo on the Jury. And we present that it further appears to us by the oath of the
said Bailiff that R. U. brother to the said N. U. did on the said 16th April in-
stant pay to the said Bailiff the sum of five shillings in discharge of such amerce-
ment for the use of the said Lord of the said Hundred " (MS. Entry Book, Berkeley
Hundred Court, 18th April 1803). A similar entry occurs six months later.
3 Here is a typical entry. " N. W., gentleman, came to this Court by
warrant of attorney from W. W. H., and surrendered a close of pasture late
Symonds, held by the life of the said W. W. H., and the estate of W. W. H.,
after which proclamation was made and J. H., the life in reversion, came and
was admitted" (MS. Court Rolls, "Wotton, 20th October 1732).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 37
purely Manorial offences. The Steward presided, the rest of
the Court consisting of what was called " the Homage," being
all the copyhold tenants of the particular Manor, who sat
without individual summons by virtue of their tenancy. In
the score or more of such Courts actually held in the year
1733, we noticed that the Homage numbered from two to
about a dozen. Attendance was compulsory, under penalty of
a fine of five shillings, which was usually " affeered " to one
shilling. 1 It is interesting, as bearing on the relationship of
the several Courts in this Hierarchy, to find it expressly stated
that the fines imposed by the Manor Courts were recovered
by action in the Berkeley Hundred Court at one of its three-
weekly sittings. 2 So far as we have ascertained, the only
business of these Halimotes during the eighteenth century
that can be said to relate to Local Government was their
appointment of a Eeeve of the Manor, who had power to
distrain on the cattle of the lands of any copyhold or lease-
hold tenant of the Manor for any amercement imposed by the
Court. 3 Service as Eeeve was compulsory on the copyhold
and leasehold tenants in rotation, " the furthest behind in
serving the office of Reeve " being always appointed, even if
a woman, or a group of officials like the Overseers of the
Poor, when these happened to have a copyhold or leasehold
workhouse. 4 But the office could always be served by a
1 MS. Precedent Book, Berkeley. At a Court Baron at Ham Manor
defaulters were amerced half a crown, affeered to one shilling (MS. Entry Book,
Court Baron, Ham, 14th October 1797); but at one at Cam, ten shillings,
affeered to two (ibid. Cam, 7th October 1833).
2 Gloucestershire, Notes and Queries, vol. iv. pp. 27-30.
3 " The Homage also present that the Reeve of this Manor in virtue of his
office may distrain for rent or for any amercement imposed in the Lord's Court
upon any copyholder or leaseholder, as well as the cattle of such copyholders or
leaseholders as of any other renting or occupying the copyhold or leasehold
land or tenements of such leaseholder or copyholder, provided the cattle be found
feeding upon the same copyhold or leasehold estate ; and further that the Reeve
is not bound to ascertain whose cattle those they may so distrain are, but
finding the same in or upon such copyhold or leasehold lands or tenements may
lawfully distrain them, as now and at all times out of memory hath been
accustomed to do " (MS. Entry Book, Courts Baron of many Manors, October
1810).
4 A woman is appointed Reeve "as being furthest behind," and serves by
deputy (MS. Court Roll Book, Court Baron of Hurst Manor, 14th October 1799).
"The Homage present that the Overseers of the Poor of this tithing are the
furthest behind in serving the office of Reeve for the house called the workhouse
on Berkeley Heath" (MS. Court Roll Book, Court Baron of Berkeley, 5th
October 1833).
38 THE COURT IN RUINS
" sufficient deputy." l Right down to the very end of the
nineteenth century these Manor Courts were still being held,
the Juries were presenting encroachments and Manorial
defaults, and petty officers were being appointed. 2
The third sort of Courts held within the Hundred of
Berkeley were those of the townships or so-called " Boroughs "
of Berkeley and Wotton. These were each styled " Court
Leet with View of Frankpledge and Court Baron," and separate
records were apparently in each case kept. But what was
actually held in each of these picturesque little towns was
only one Court. Once a year the Steward issued his precept
to the " Serjeant of the Borough," requiring him " to summon
all such persons as owe suit to the Court Leet and Court
Baron of the Borough," and to " warn a sufficient number of
the most able in the Borough to serve on the Grand Jury."
On the appointed day the Steward opened the Court by calling
on the Constable to read first the " Resiant Roll," with loud
proclamation to " all who live within the jurisdiction of this
Court " to come forward and do the suit they owe, and then
the " Jury Panel," those who did not answer to their names
being amerced. The jurymen were then sworn, in the same
groups of four that we have already described in the Hundred
Court. At each of these Courts there were two distinct
Juries, each usually exceeding a dozen in number the
Homage, composed of freehold, leasehold, and copyhold tenants
of the Manor ; and the " Grand Jury " or " Leet Jury," made
up merely of residents. The Juries both made presentments,
those of the Homage relating to surrenders and admissions,
conveyances and other property business, together with purely
Manorial defaults, such as suffering a messuage to decay,
allowing water from a new well to injure a neighbour's house,
or removing a gate and not replacing it, for which small
1 "At this Court it was found and presented by the Homage that G. S. is
the furthest behind in serving the office of Reeve for a close called Rowles Court
Leaze. We therefore order the said G. S. to take upon him the said office, either
by himself or his sufficient deputy, in one month's time under the penalty of
5, to be levied upon his goods and chattels, or to be recovered by action of
debt for the use of the Lord of the said Manor " (MS. Entry Book, Court
Baron of Slimbridge Manor, 12th October 1797).
2 See, for instance, the interesting description of the proceedings in 1887 of
"the Court for the Manor of Wotton Foreign," being 'so much of the Parish of
Wotton as lies outside the Borough, in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, vol.
iv. pp. 27-30.
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 39
amercemeuts are imposed. The Grand Jury or Leet presented
all manner of nuisances relating to highways and water-
courses ; unlicensed alehouses, scolds and eavesdroppers ; the
delinquencies of butchers and bakers ; pound breach and
rescue of cattle ; and encroachments on the streets. The
officers appointed at the previous Court then made their
returns of offenders against the laws and Bylaws concerning
their several departments handing in small scraps of paper
on which we fear they had too often perfunctorily written
" omnia bene," or words to that effect. 1 But the Court would
sometimes insist on the office being executed. " We present
E. C. and E. S.," reports the Grand Jury of Wotton in 1713,
" for neglecting their office, particularly not taking up vagrants.
We do fine them ten shillings each." 2 Then the officers of the
Borough for the ensuing year were appointed, the Grand Jury
presenting three names as suitable persons to be Mayor, and
two names in the case of other officers, for the selection of one
by the Steward. For each of the two Boroughs the Court
appointed a Mayor, a Serjeant, a Constable, and one or two
Ale-tasters, Carnivals, and Searchers and Sealers of Leather. 3
Sometimes other officers a Scavenger or a Surveyor are
mentioned as acting under the appointment and direction of
the Mayor. At Berkeley it was the custom we observe it
still in force between 1797 and 1804 for the Court to recite
and declare every year a string of heterogeneous rights or By-
laws, on the presentment, be it noted, of the Homage Jury.
ISTo pigs are to go at large, under penalty of three and fourpence,
the Hayward being ordered to impound any found wandering
and to take his own fee of twopence ; no " soil, dung, apple
must, or any other stinking matter " is to be deposited in
1 "We have served the office to the best of our knowledge and we have
found it all well " (Return of Searchers and Sealers of Leather, Court Rolls of
Wotton, 2nd October 1714). "We present that we have found no flesh nor
fish that have been brought to our market and exposed for sale, upon our
vigilant search, but what hath been fit and wholesome for the body of man ;
and that we have nothing more to present at this time " (Return of Carnivals,
ibid. October 1709). "We have took care that the bulls have been baited, ere
that the meat hath been sold for the same, and we have carefully looked after
all other meat and fish" (ibid. 30th September 1710).
2 MS. Court Rolls, Wotton, 3rd October 1713.
3 Aldermen are mentioned (among the Leet Jury) both in Berkeley and in
Wotton (MS. Entry Book, Wotton Court, 20th October 1737 ; Berkeley Court,
21st October 1745). These were (in 1833 at Berkeley) the twelve members of
the close Town Council.
40 THE CO VR T IN R UINS
Berkeley streets, under penalty of a pound, and the Scavengers
are ordered to sweep up all dirt into heaps every Saturday,
for the officers of the Lord to carry it out of the Borough ; no
timber or other obstruction is to be put in the streets; the
common pasturage on Berkeley Heath is not to be usurped or
surcharged ; every person coming into the Borough to carry
on business or set up a household we gather without having
been born or perhaps apprenticed within the Borough is to
pay the Mayor six and eightpence as of old ; nobody but the
Mayor shall put up any stall in the Market or Fair ; the right
of all persons to a free wharf or landing place on the river is
declared and perpetuated ; and there is a stern prohibition of
taking in " inmates " to be a nuisance to the Borough. On
the other hand, at "VVotton, it is the Grand Jury that we see
making presentment of stopped-up watercourses, broken gullies,
and filth thrown down the gutter in " a time of flood to the
great annoyance of" a certain mill. A butcher is presented,
on the knowledge of one of the jurymen, " for putting stinking
meat to sale in our market " ; and other frequenters for selling
goods " by weight unlawful being too light." So, too, we find
the Grand Jury ordering that no persons shall stand with
goods in a certain passage on market day, that posts and rails
be set up for the protection of foot passengers, that obstructive
encroachments be removed, and that certain unlawful windows
that overlook the almshouses be stopped up. 1
Another case of a Hierarchy of Courts continuing in active
existence is presented by the great Manor of Taunton, extend-
ing over nearly the whole of Taunton " Deane," or Vale, in
Somerset. 2 Here the Manor transcended even the Hundred,
1 " Item, we order that for the future no person shall lay dung ... in
the street called . . . (MS. Court Rolls, Wotton) ; all persons that do claim
any right to the Chipping Well shall pay their proportion toward the repairing
the same, upon the pain of five shillings " (ibid.).
2 The Customs of the Manor of Taunton and Taunton Dcane, by Richard
Locke, 1785 ; The Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer,
1821 ; History of Taunton, by Joshua Toulmin, 1st edition, 1791, 2nd
edition, edited by James Savage, 1822 ; History of Somerset, by John Collinson,
1791, vol. iii. pp. 225-240 ; General Account of West Somerset, by Edward
Jeboult, 1873 Part II. The Valley of the Tone, Part III. Taunton ; On the
Origin of Gilds, with a Notice of the Ancient Gildha.ll of Taunton, by J. H.
Pring, 1883 ; "The Customs of the Manor of Taunton Dcane," by W. A. Jones,
in Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol. xviii. pp. 76-99 ;
House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840, p. 140.
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS, 41
the Lord's Court at the head of the Hierarchy, which continued
to be held down to Victorian times, exercising jurisdiction over
no fewer than five Hundreds and many tithings and parishes.
Besides this Court, there existed minor Courts for the Liberty
(by which we understand the precinct of the Castle), and for
the " Hundred of Taunton Market " ; which (like Berkeley and
Wotton) had been granted exceptional autonomy, under the
name of a Borough. 1 The " ancient customs of the Manor,"
formally presented and recorded in 1647 and again in 1817,
enable us to gain some vision of this interesting Hierarchy.
The highest Court seems to have rejoiced in a number of
different names or nicknames, according to the date at which
or the purpose for which it was held. In 1647 it sat as a
Court of Survey. Twice a year it was the Court Leet or
Lawday. On the occasion on which, once a year, the Manorial
officers were chosen it was the " Choice Court." The sitting
" next after Michaelmas Lawday " was the " Fulfilling Court,"
when two tenants in each Hundred were sworn to view the
list of amercements for the past year, and to " affeer " them ;
it may be that there was a second " Fulfilling Court " in the
spring. There was the " Ossinge Court," or " Penn Court,"
of which the meaning is unknown to us. Finally there was
the " Three Weeks' Court," called also the Court Baron, held
every three weeks, primarily as a petty debt court, 2 though it
dealt also with defaults. This score or more of Courts
incidentally referred to as " Tenants' Courts " 3 all held in the
Great Hall of the Castle of Taunton, before the Steward or,
in the case of the Three Weeks' Court, by the Clerk of the
Castle had to be attended by all the customary tenants of
the Manor, but these, if not specially summoned as jurymen,
could escape on payment of small fines a penny each time,
or eightpence for the year, bought exemption from the Court
Baron or Three Weeks' Court, and threepence each time did
the same for the others. At the Leet or Lawday, twice a year,
1 " Outfaring Courts" are also mentioned (The Customs of the Manor of
Taunton and Taunton Deanc, by Richard Locke, 1785), which were perhaps
those held for the " Outfaring " part of the Vale, sixteen parishes which had been
alienated from the Manor by William I. (History of Taunton, by Joshua
Toulmin, 1822, p. 45).
2 House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and of Courts of
Request, 1840.
3 Customs of the Manor of Taunton and Taunton Deane, by R. Locke, 1785.
42 THE COURT IN RUINS
there was summoned a " Grand Jury," which seems not only
to have presented nuisances and Manorial offences, but also to
have heard and decided disputes relating to copyhold tenements.
At one of the two Leets or Lawdays the Grand Jury presented
suitable persons to serve as High Constable for the Hundred
of Taunton Deane, and as Tithingmen for one or two of the
tithings. It is not apparent how the numerous Petty Constables
or Tithingmen for the other tithings were appointed, though it
is stated that these all had to attend the Court Baron or Three
Weeks' Court to present defaults ; and also to attend the two
Leets or Lawdays. That this attendance had fallen into
desuetude, may be inferred from the fact that it was recorded
in 1647 that the Tithingmen of twenty-seven tithings had
to pay a shilling each yearly to be excused from bringing in
their bushel measures to be tried by the standard on the two
Lawdays. 1 At the Choice Court, the tenants had to make a
choice of persons to be appointed as " Eeceiver to receive the
Steward at the two Leets or Lawday Courts ; and one several
Eeeve for every Hundred to gather the Lord's rents ; and
Beadles to serve the Lord's Courts, and to gather the amerce-
ments and customary works, and to make account thereof to
the Eeeve as hath been accustomed within every Hundred." 2
The office of Eeeve had to be served in turn by the " bond-
land" tenants those having houses on their holdings
according to a rotation known as "the Eecognition of the
Manor." There were "certain plots of ground in each
Hundred, the profits of which are appointed to the Eeeves
for the time being." 3 Two tenants had also to be appointed
annually as Viewers, and sworn to present any customary
tenant neglecting to keep his house in repair. 4
Among the minor Courts of the Hierarchy, we know
1 Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821, Appendix,
p. 9.
2 Ibid. By 1821 the Bailiff had, it seems (in all the Hundreds except one),
superseded the Reeve in the collection of the Lord's rents and dues. It is to be
noted that, between 1781 and 1801, these included six heriots, varying from
42 to 84 each (ibid. pp. 92-93).
3 Ibid. p. 114.
4 Ibid. p. 107. Other officers of the Manor in 1647 were the Constable of
Taunton Castle, the Bailiff of the Castle, the Clerk of the Castle, and the
Porter, or Keeper of the Gate of the Castle all, we assume, appointed by the
Lord or his Steward ; the Woodward and the Overseers or Surveyors of the
Water-works, Wears, and Banks, of whom we know nothing (ibid. Appendix).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 43
nothing of the two Lawdays per annum and the " Three
Weeks' Courts," which the Clerk of the Castle is said to have
held for the Liberty of the Precinct of the Castle, nor of the
" Outfitting Courts," of which we have a bare mention. But
in the Borough of Taunton the Clerk of the Castle held not
only a " Borough Court " every fortnight, presumably for petty
debt business, but also two " Lawday Courts " annually, at
which were chosen, right down to Victorian times, the two
Portreeves, who collected the Lord's quit-rents in the Borough
and enjoyed the privilege of letting for their own profit the
standings in the market-place; 1 two Bailiffs, who seem to
have been 2 the chief executive officers of what had become a
flourishing market centre ; together with two Constables, six
Tithingmen, and one or more Ale-tasters. The two Constables
did much of the administrative work of the town under the
Bailiffs : billeting soldiers, managing the almshouses, and dis-
tributing various dole charities. In return they enjoyed the
patronage, presided at an annual " Constables' Feast," kept the
profits of the market scales, and succeeded to the more
lucrative office of Portreeve. 8 But the real rulers were the
Bailiffs, who had, by the end of the eighteenth century, made
themselves virtually permanent, and, after 1792, were recognised
by Parliament as the returning officers for the Borough. " The
Jury year after year empanelled are," we are told in 1821,
" called the Packed Jury. . . . One of the Bailiffs . . . did
publicly assert that the Bailiffs going out of office always took
care to assemble such persons as jurors as would return the
nominees of themselves. ... It is notorious that some years
ago a Jury was summoned, and it being rumoured that they
meant to alter the succession of Bailiffs, they were immedi-
ately dismissed, and another Jury empanelled. . . . For a
succession of years four individuals only have filled the office
of Bailiffs, two of them taking the same in alternate years." 4
This Court of the Borough of Taunton had in fact attained to
a measure of autonomy, the Jury electing the Bailiffs and the
1 History of Taunton, by Joshua Toulmin, 1821, p. 277.
2 Before 1627 and after 1792 the interval having been filled by a Chartered
Municipal Corporation.
3 General Account of West Somerset, by Edward Jeboult, 1873, Part III.,
Taunton, pp. 24-26.
* Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821. p. 130.
44 THE COURT IN RUINS
Bailiff selecting the Jury, without the interference of the Lord's
Steward. It had, moreover, developed a certain amount of
administrative structure. As such it falls into our class of
Manorial Boroughs, to be dealt with in a subsequent chapter.
We mention it here merely to complete our survey of the
Hierarchy of Courts.
Hierarchies of Courts were, of course, not confined to the
South and West of England. In Northumberland, for
instance, there continued to be held, down to the middle of
the nineteenth century, a whole array of Courts on the wide
domains of the Duke of Northumberland. 1
1 We were unable to examine the MS. records of these Courts, but there
seem to have been () Great Courts of the Baronies of Alnwick, Tindale, and
perhaps Prudhoe ; (6) Halmote Courts or Courts Baron for particular Manors,
of which fifteen were still being held in 1839, for petty debt cases, aud possibly
other business ; and (c) a Court for the Manor of the Borough of Alnwick,
nominally every three weeks, but actually only half-yearly, at which Burgesses
or Freemen were admitted, nuisances presented, Bylaws made, offenders amerced,
copyhold properties transferred, and the Borough officers formally appointed and
sworn. With the struggle of this Borough Court for autonomy we shall deal
later, when we describe the Manorial Borough of Alnwick. It would be interest-
ing to discover what exactly were the functions and the relations of the highest
members of these Northumberland Hierarchies. For instance, we hear of a
"Knight's Court," or "curia militaris," held at Alnwick Castle, nominally
attended by the great freehold tenants, and exercising jurisdiction over the
entire barony of Alnwick. Such Courts, though apparently disused between
1741 and 1791, were being held in the latter part of the seventeenth and the
beginning of the eighteenth centuries ; dealing, we infer, primarily with
successions and admissions, disputes between free tenants of different Manors,
encroachments of one Manor on another, and defaults not duly presented in
the inferior Courts. At the Knight's Coiirt held in 1707, for instance, "the
tenants of Chillingham, Fawdon, and Swinhoe were amerced 20d. each township,
who owe service to His Grace for watching the Fair according to ancient custom,"
for their default in not sending in the men whom they had to furnish to guard
the Borough of Alnwick at the great Alnwick Fair. Latterly, at any rate, the
"Knight's Court" appointed Constables for various Manors, for which Courts
were not held, and dealt with many minor offences and defaults throughout a
wide district. The Court of the Barony of Tindale, on the other hand, held at
Wark, seems to have survived down to 1846 as a petty debt Court, meeting three
times a year, and resorted to only in cases in which the defendants did not
reside within the jurisdiction of any subordinate Courts (MS. Records of the
Corporation of Alnwick, 1594-1835; Feudal and Military Antiquities of
Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, by Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, 1858 (being
vol. ii. of "Memoirs of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain, etc.," for
1852) ; History of Alnwick, by George Tate, 1869 ; History of Northumberland,
vol. i., by E. Batcson ; Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Law,
1833, pp. 170-171 ; House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and
of Courts of Request, 1840).
We do not even know whether the Alnwick "Knight's Court " is to be
identified with the Capital Court of the Barony, stated in 1483 to be held every
twenty days, harvest excepted. The term "Knight's Court " (curia militaris)
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 45
In the "Liberty of the Hundred of Macclesfield," in
Cheshire, where the Earl of Derby held sway, we find an
intricate series of jurisdictions within jurisdictions. There
was the Court for the Hundred of Macclesfield, held annually
as the " Court of Great Leet " and monthly as a Court Baron
or " Court of Trials," exercising authority over the whole of
the Liberty of the Hundred. The records of its annual Leet
sessions show it appointing Constables for those townships
which had no Courts of their own, and receiving presentments
from these Constables as well as from its own " Grand Jury,"
relating to offences throughout the Hundred outside the
Forest and the Borough of Macclesfield selling ale without
licence, various public-house disorders, breaking the Assize of
Bread, failure to repair pavement, " keeping two mongrel curs
unmuzzled," breaking the peace and making an affray, en-
croachments on the waste, " keeping a gun," and " keeping
a brace of greyhounds and killing a hare in Birtles ; is a
great killer and destroyer of hares," adds the Constable.
At its nominally monthly sessions, or " Court of Trials "
which gradually came to be only two or three times a
year the same Steward presided with the same Officers, but
an entirely different Jury was empanelled, the " Jury for
Trials," by which pleas of debt and trespass to an unlimited
amount were dealt with. Meanwhile the Forest of Maccles-
field, comprising part of the Hundred nine of the townships
being, in fact, partly in the Forest and partly outside it had
its own Courts. We do not know whether a Swainmote was
held later than that of 1616, of which we have seen the
records, but throughout the eighteenth century and down to
is unusual, but not unknown elsewhere. In the Honour of Forncett in Norfolk,
comprising several Manors having their own Courts, there was held, in the
fifteenth century, an Honour Court or "Knight's Court" (The Economic
Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906,
Appendix I.). In the Isle of Wight, right down to the middle of the nineteenth
century, there continued to be held the " Knighton Court or Knight's Court,"
by the Steward of the Governor of the Island, in the Town Hall of Newport,
every three weeks. Its functions became restricted to petty debt suits, in
which it exercised jurisdiction over the whole island except the Borough of
Newport. After the end of the eighteenth century even this function became
disused, and the Court continued in form only (House of Commons Return
of Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 46-47). The Archbishop of York held a
"curia militaris " for the Liberty of Ripon from, at any rate, the fourteenth
right down to the nineteenth oentury, In 1840 it was a Court for civil actions,
unlimited in amount (ibid. pp. 174-175).
46 THE COURT IN RUINS
the middle of the nineteenth we find a "Halmote Court,"
called subsequently " Court of Kecord for the Manor and
Forest of Macclesfield," held by the same Steward as the
Hundred Court, and eventually on the same day as the latter.
At the six-monthly meetings of this Court for the Manor and
Forest it acted also as a Court Leet, appointing Constables
for the several townships in the Forest. At the other sittings
of the Court conveyances of copyholds were made and an
extensive business was done in the trial of civil actions,
without limit of amount. Finally, there were also held, at
least in the sixteenth century, two separate Courts for the
Borough of Macclesfield, both using the Town Hall one the
" Portmote," or " Great Leet of the Borough," by Lord Derby's
Deputy Steward, which seems to have dealt with the usual
nuisances and affrays, false weights and measures, the regula-
tion of the common, and the trial of civil actions ; and the
other "the Mayor's Court," held by the Mayor of the Borough,
apparently for the trial of civil actions in which both parties
were Burgesses. How exactly these several Courts had
come into existence, and what was the precise demarcation
among them all, we have been unable to ascertain. What is
interesting is that all the resiants of the Hundred, including
those in the Manor of the Forest and those in the Borough,
owed suit and service to the Hundred Court; while all
those in the Borough, including the Mayor and Corporation,
owed suit and service also to Lord Derby's Portmote. A
dispute between the Earl of Derby and the Borough in 1569,
as to the relations of the two competing Borough Courts, led
to an award by two judges attempting to define their several
spheres, and giving separate keys of the Town Hall to the
Mayor and the Steward respectively. We gather that Lord
Derby's "Portmote," or "Town Leet," was discontinued
sometime in the seventeenth century, leaving the Mayor's
Court in possession of the field. This continued, as the
"Borough Court," to try personal actions without limit of
amount. Meanwhile the ordinary business of a Court Leet,
formerly done by Lord Derby's Portmote, was apparently
silently absorbed by the Mayor, ex-Mayor, and two Aldermen,
sitting as Justices for the Borough. A Charter of Charles II.
had made them Justices, and given power to hold general
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 47
Sessions of the Peace, but not to try felonies. This amounted
to little, if any, more jurisdiction than had been possessed by
the Portmote; and what we have, in fact, is a Court Leet
passing insensibly into what was called a Court of Quarter
Sessions. Thus in 1761-1762 we see the Borough Justices
in what they called Quarter Sessions appointing the Burley-
men, the Fish and Flesh Wardens, the Moss Lookers of
Densmoss (a part of the Borough Common), the Searchers
and Sealers of Leather, a Scavenger, a Pig-catcher, a Beadle,
and the two Common Lookers ; and dealing indiscriminately
with assaults and affrays, trespasses on the Common, wrongful
enclosures of the waste of the Borough, false weights and
measures, and exposing unwholesome meat for sale. 1
How far this hierarchical organisation of the Lord's Court
still existed in 1689, and how quickly the surviving remnants
disintegrated, we have been unable to ascertain. From the
scanty records that we have been able to consult, we infer
that it continued over large parts of England during the
eighteenth century, but everywhere becoming more formal
than real, and everywhere falling rapidly into decay. 2
1 MS. Records, Macclesfield Hundred Court, 1688-1835 ; MS. Court Books
of ditto, 1698-1808 ; MS. Records, Court Leet and Halmote Court of Maccles-
field Manor and Forest, 1684-1835 ; MS. Award of 1569 ; MS. Records,
Macclesfield Portmote, 1591 ; MS. Records, Macclesfield Borough Court, 1761 ;
MS. Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1761-1762 (all in Lord Derby's Macclesfield Estate
Office) ; House of Commons Returns of Petty Debt Courts, Hundred Courts, and
Courts of Request, 1828, 1839, and 1840 ; Fifth Report of Royal Commission
on Courts of Law, 1833, p. 35a ; 'Report on Certain Boroughs, by J. T. Hogg,
1838, pp. 51-74 ; History of Macclesfield, by John Corry, 1817 ; Maclesfelde in
ye Olden Time, by Isaac Finney, 1873 ; Contributions towards a History of
. . . Prestbury, by F. Renaud (Chetham Society, 1876) ; Host Cheshire, by J. P.
Earwaker, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 459-525 ; History of the County Palatine of Chester,
by Geo. Ormerod, 2nd edition, 1882, vol. iii. pp. 739-757.
2 We catch glimpses of a similar Hierarchy of Courts in the great episcopal
domains in various dioceses. The Hundred Court of Farnham, in Surrey, for
instance, still held, but shrunken to the mere copyhold business of Farnham
itself, apparently once had jurisdiction over a wide stretch of the Bishop of
Winchester's domains (see Collections of Records and Documents relating to the
Hundred and Manor of Crondal, by F. J. Baigent, Hampshire Record Society,
1891 ; The Manor of Manydown, Hampshire, by G. W. Kitchin, 1895 ; Victoria
County History of Hampshire, vol. ii. 1906, pp. 579-586), including the Manorial
Boroughs of Farnham and Alresford, the latter to be subsequently described. As
late as 1718 a " Court of the Bishopric " was held, at which representatives of a
score of Manors attended (MS. Manor Rolls, Farnham, 1718). We do not know in
what connection stood the " Cheyney Court," which we find held throughout the
eighteenth and for the first third of the nineteenth century ; latterly, at least,
at Winchester, within the cathedral precincts, and exercising jurisdiction
throughout the Bishop's temporalities, extending to over two hundred towns and
48 THE COURT IN RUINS
We suggest that it may possibly be that in the former exist-
ence of a Hierarchy of Courts we have the explanation of some
of the quaint instances in which the representation of a small
hamlet has survived in a comic form. In Dorsetshire, for
example, we read that " the Tithingman of Combe Keynes is
obliged to do suit at Winfrith Court ; and after repeating the
villages. In 1833 its business was confined to hearing petty debt cases (Fifth
Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, p. 88a).
Similarly, in the diocese of St. Albans, the Manor Rolls of Winslow (Bucking-
hamshire) in the time of Edward III. show that " in case of a dispute a Court
was held under the great ash tree at St. Albans, and the decision of this
superior Manorial Court of headquarters settled the question " (The English
Village Community, by F. Seebohm, 1883, p. 31). So the Abbot of Gloucester
in the thirteenth century held a ' ' Libera Curia " for his great freehold tenants,
whilst each separate Manor had its own Halmote (Select Pleas in Manorial
Courts, by F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xix). We may likewise infer a Hierarchy
of Courts in the great Honour of Clitheroe, of which " the customs of the copy-
holds " were ' ' ascertained by the Jury of Survey within the forest of Pendle in
the Manor of Igtenhill, 1666." Throughout the wide extent of the Honour
there were " Hamlet Courts" twice a year, which we may interpret as Halmote
Courts. There was also a Court of the Honour, attended by all th'e tenants. The
Homage or Jury presented a Greave or Bailiff. There was also a Deputy Greave,
elected in open Court by a majority of the tenants. All "real" plaints were
to be tried in this Court, by a Jury of twenty-four tenants (The Law of Copy-
holds, by 0. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, Appendix VIII.
p. 511). There was, moreover, within the Honour at least one Manorial Borough,
that of Clitheroe, where a ' ' Court of Record " sat weekly under a Recorder
(House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 68-69), and inde-
pendent administrative structure had been developed, to which we subsequently
refer (pp. 156, 205). Another instance of a Hierarchy of Courts, with subordin-
ate Manors and Boroughs of various degrees of independence, is presented by a
Welsh Lordship typical, we suspect, of other Welsh jurisdictions. The Manor
paramount of Cantref Moelynaidd comprehends four Hundreds of Radnorshire
and twelve mesne Manors. The Boroughs of Knighton, Cnwelas, New Radnor,
and Rhayader, together with the obsolete Boroughs of Pain's Castle and
Presteign, are also included in it. The Manor paramount continued, through-
out the eighteenth century, and indeed through most of the nineteenth, to exercise
jurisdiction over them all, except the Borough of New Radnor. The Steward
held a Court Baron for the whole lordship every three weeks, the business of
which had become confined to petty debt cases, for which a Jury of six men
was summoned when required. Courts Leet were also held within the mesno
Manors, and also (at least in the Bailiwick of Gladestry and Colfa) a Court
Baron monthly for small debts. Within the Boroughs, the Steward of the
Lordship also held Courts Leet, at which Juries of Burgesses nominated new
Burgesses, who were admitted and sworn and thereby became entitled to the
Parliamentary franchise for these Boroughs. The two ancient Boroughs of
Pain's Castle and Presteign either lost, or had never possessed, such Courts, and
the House of Commons disallowed in 1690 the claims of their Burgesses to vote.
The Borough of New Radnor (p. 236), on the other hand, had become largely in-
dependent of the Hierarchy, getting a Royal Charter establishing a close Cor-
poration, and holding its own Courts (History of Radnorshire, by Rev. J. Williams,
in Archceologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser. vols. iii. p. 26, andiv. p. 1, 1857-58 ; First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 357-362),
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 49
following incoherent lines, pays threepence and goes out with-
out saying another word :
" With my white rod,
And I am a fourth post,
That threepence makes three,
God bless the King, and the Lord of the Franchise,
Our Weights and Measures are lawful and true,
Good-morrow, Mr. Steward, I have no more to say to you.
" On default of any of these particulars the Court Leet
of Combe is forfeited." * It does not appear to be an
unwarranted inference that the Tithing of Combe Keynes,
though possibly having a minor Court of its own, had not
been granted the privilege of standardising its own weights
and measures, and had to do suit at the superior Court at
Winfrith by four men, of whom the Tithingman was the leader,
and eventually the proxy for the others, paying a penny each
for their absence. The attendance of the Tithingmen of the
whole Hundred was (as we have seen at Taunton) usual at
the Hundred Court. " If there be more than one Tithingman,
as always is in the Hundred Court," says a widely circulated
manual, "swear them all in like manner, and receive from
them the Common Fine or King's Silver. Then take from
them their resiant rolls or lists of their tithings ; call them
over and mark them that answer thus, ' appears.' " 2 The
attendance even of the Tithingman might be dispensed with, his
staff or rod of office being sent to represent him. Thus in
the Hundred of Twyford, in Kent, " there was," we read, " till
of late years a singular though a very ancient custom kept up
of electing a Deputy to the Dumb Borsholder of Chart, as it
1 History and Antiquities of Dorset, by John Hutchins, 1774, vol. i. p. 127 ;
Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821. Can "post" bo
derived from " prepositus, " the word used for Reeve ?
2 TJie Complete Courtkeeper, or Land Steward's Assistant, by Giles Jacob, 1st
edition, 1713 ; 8th, 1819, p. 30. We may catch a glimpse in 1774 of such
attendance of the Tithingman at the Court of the Hundred at Whitchurch in
Dorsetshire, comprising nineteen tithings. At the Court of this Hundred the
residents in all the tithings were supposed to attend, and (as in the Hundred
of Berkeley) to serve on its Juries. Two Constables were regularly appointed
for the Hundred. But subordinate Courts were also held in some, at any
rate, of the Manors within the Hundred, at which Petty Constables for these
Manors (or apparently for the tithings) were appointed. Only in twelve out of
the nineteen tithings did the Hundred Court appoint the Petty Constable (R.
v. Genge, in Reports of Cases, etc., by Henry Cowper, 1783, pp. 13-17).
VOL, II. PT. I E
5 o THE COURT IN RUINS
was called, claiming liberty over fifteen houses in the precinct
of Pizeinwell, every householder of which was formerly
obliged to pay the keeper of this Borsholder one penny yearly.
This Dumb Borsholder was always first called at the Court
Leet holden for the Hundred of Twyford, when its keeper,
who was yearly appointed by that Court, held it up to his
call, with a neckcloth or handkerchief put through the iron
ring fixed at the top, and answered for it. This Borsholder
of Chart, and the Court Leet, has been discontinued about
fifty years, and the Borsholder who is put in by the Quarter
Sessions for Wateringbury claims over the whole parish. This
Dumb Borsholder is made of wood, about three feet and half an
inch long, with an iron ring at the top, and four more by the
sides near the bottom, where it has a square iron spike fixed,
four inches and a half long, to fix it in the ground, or on
occasion to break open doors, etc., which used to be done " it
is said down to 1748 " without a Warrant of any Justice on
suspicion of goods having been unlawfully come by and con-
cealed in any of these fifteen houses." l
The Hierarchy of Courts that we find so well preserved in
the Vale of Berkeley and at Taunton Deane, and less perfectly
elsewhere, throws, we think, some light on the nature and
origin of the various other Courts, up and down the country,
that we find existing under the name of Hundred Courts,
without any apparent connection with separate Courts of
minor jurisdiction. When, in the fourteenth century, the
Hundred Courts were merged in the County Courts of the
Sheriffs if that is what happened those Hundred Courts
which had already passed, as valuable Franchises, into
private hands were not affected. 2 Not infrequently, therefore,
these continued to be held, and it may be that they went on
without intermission into the eighteenth century ; sometimes
1 History and Survey of Kent, by Edward Hasted, 1797, vol. v. p. 107 ;
Observations on Popular Antiquities, by John Brand, vol. i. p. 132 of 1841
edition; Kent's Capital, 1906. So, too, we read that, in Essex, "Lambourn
Manor was held by service of the Ward Staff" (i.e. the Constable's or Watch-
man's staff), which was carried into Court with quaint ceremonies (Ancient
Manorial Customs in the County of Essex, by R. S. Charnock, 1870, pp. 17-22).
2 Lex Maneriorum, by W. Nelson, 1728, p. 190.
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 51
held, as of old, like that of Fawsley, " beneath the spreading
branches of an enormous beech tree." l We are inclined to
doubt, however, whether the few specimens of which we have
particulars are all of the same species. In some cases the
surviving Hundred Court appears simply to have outlived
the Hierarchy, whilst often itself combining with the Court of
its principal Manor. In other cases we may suspect that the
term Hundred Court never has denoted the superior member
of any Hierarchy of Courts, and that it represents much the
same jurisdiction as was elsewhere exercised by the ordinary
Manor Courts. In rare instances, again, a so-called Hundred
Court is found among the various Courts held by Municipal
Corporations in and for their Boroughs, with no wider juris-
diction than a Borough Court. 2 As such it will fall to be
described in subsequent chapters.
What appears to be a common feature of the so-called
Hundred Courts between 1689 and 1835 is their extreme
attenuation of function. The majority of those that survived
into the eighteenth century seem to have been little more
than Courts for the trial of petty civil actions for debt and
damages, and, as such, hardly come within the scope of Local
Government as we have defined it. Other Hundred Courts,
whilst retaining traces of the Court Baron side, appear
1 This Hundred Court was thus held in Fawsley Park until the beginning
of the eighteenth century, when it was removed to Everdon (History and
Antiquities of Northamptonshire, by George Baker, 1822,- vol. i. p. 238;
Victoria Couiity History of Northamptonshire, vol. i. 1902, p. 298).
2 Such was the Colchester "Hundred and Foreign Court." Such, too,
was the " Hundred Court " of Kid welly, in Carmarthenshire ; and such were those
in the Cinque Ports (p. 378).
Less clear is the case of the Hundred Court of Gloucester, which continued,
as its Minutes show, to be nominally held by adjournment weekly before the
Mayor and the two Sheriffs of the City. What it did is not apparent, as the
Minutes contain, after 1680, little more than a perpetual repetition of the
names of the suitors, who were the owners of certain estates in Gloucestershire
and Herefordshire, the jurisdiction over which had, somehow or another, come
to belong to the Corporation of Gloucester. It swore in Constables (infra, p. 341).
During the whole period there was held also the Court Leet of the City of
Gloucester half-yearly, before the Steward of the two Sheriffs, the MS. Minutes
of which, between 1784 and 1819, show it to be making presentments of the
usual kind. Whether the "Hundred Court" of Gloucester was merely held
by the Corporation by right of its ownership of a Hundred, just as the Corpora-
tion of the City of London held the Bailiwick of Southwark ; or whether, as
Mr. Adolphus Ballard has suggested, it was a Court of the owners of those
lands within the County which had to maintain the city wall, we must leave
for antiquarian research.
52 THE COURT IN RUINS
chiefly as emasculated Courts Leet, appointing Constables and
occasionally presenting nuisances. Our general impression
is that these isolated Hundred Courts had once been un-
differentiated Courts, dealing with all sorts of business
indifferently, at one and the same Court, by one set of
officers ; 1 and that the appearance of specialisation has
resulted from the unevenness of the decay into which their
various functions were falling. Pending further study of
the records of the various Hundred Courts from the fourteenth
to the nineteenth century, we can do no more than set forth
such particulars as we have been able to glean of those which
existed after 1689.
A remarkable case of survival of an ancient Hundred
Court, detached from the Manor Courts within the Hundred,
is that of Salford, 2 in Lancashire, where we find the Steward
of the Earl of Sefton, throughout the eighteenth, and down
even to the middle of the nineteenth century, continuing to
hold " the Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court of
Eecord of our Sovereign Lord the King for his Hundred or
Wapentake of Salford." This Court evidently represented
an ancient tribunal of which the jurisdiction extended nomin-
ally to the whole of the modern Hundred of Salford perhaps
1 Thus we are told that the "Hundred Court of Perveth" in Cardiganshire
seems to have been held as a " Court Leet and Law Day " twice a year, and as
a ' ' Court Baron " fortnightly ; it maintained the stocks and regulated the
common, dealt with presentments and heard civil actions, and appointed both
Constable and Reeve (prepositus or "major") see Treatise on Copyholds by
C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, p. 503.
2 The archives of Salford, long neglected, scattered, and destroyed, are only
now being collected and studied. Some records of the Lord's Court from 1597
to 1669 apparently the active Court of the Seignorial Borough, comparable
with that of Berkeley or Wotton have lately been published (The Portmote,
or Court Leet, Records of tJie Borough or Town and Royal Manor of Salford,
by J. G. de T. Mandley ; Chetham Society, vols. xlvi. and xlvii., 1902). Stray
records of Salford Courts exist, both of earlier arid of later date, some being
preserved among the archives of the modern Salford Hundred Court of Record
in Manchester, while those from 1828 to 1867 are in a thick, leather-bound
volume now in the Salford Public Library. See also the particulars in House
of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840 ; and Fifth Report of Royal
Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833 ; and the occasional reports in
the newspapers, especially Manchester Guardian, 4th May 1833, 8th October
1836, 18th October 1837 ; Manchester Chronicle, 4th May 1833 ; Manchester
Times, 19th December 1835 ; and, on the whole subject, Med'Ueval Manchester
and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 9. The Manchester
Municipal Code, vol. v., 1899, gives the Acts and Orders in Council, 1868-1893,
with a short memorandum on the history of the Court (pp. 267-268).
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 53
to the whole of the ancient " Salfordshire," still described as
" the King's Manor of the Hundred of Salford," of which the
Earl of Sefton was not styled Lord but Steward, and which
included some fifty parishes or townships, among them being
Oldham, Bolton, Bury, arid Manchester itself. 1 Judging from
such fragmentary records as have survived, the Court of the
Hundred of Salford was in fact once as all-embracing as the
Court of the Hundred of Berkeley, having under it many
other Courts ; perhaps even the Court of the Barony of
Manchester itself, with its own subordinate Halimotes or
Courts Baron of the separate Manors, which we may assume
to have been un differentiated Courts, or (in the case of Salford
and Manchester at any rate), like Berkeley or Wotton, the
Leets or Moots of favoured townships which seignorial Charters
had made into so-called Boroughs. We shall describe
presently the vigorous life of the Manchester Court Leet.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there had been
another such Borough Court held at Salford itself, called the
Portmote, presumably under the charter of the Earl of
Chester and Lincoln of 1231. At some period between
1669 and 1828 apparently between 1738 and 1800
it seems to have coalesced with or been merged in the
Hundred Court, which presumably had continued to exercise
a wider jurisdiction. 2 When we are again enabled to take
1 Eoger the Poitevin retained the township of Salford in demesne when he
enfeoffed under-tenants for the rest of his estate, a separation which had
lasting consequences. "A stroke of a Norman baron's pen divorced Manchester
and Salford in all but their devotions, and what he sundered no one has been
able to bring together again, though they have long since ceased to be separated
by green fields sloping down to a trout stream. A stranger who found himself
in Deansgate, and wanted to know why two types of tram-car were running in
what seemed to him a single city, would be mightily astonished if we told him
that this was the doing of a foreign Count of the eleventh century. But so
it is. It may be doubted whether it occurred to any citizen of Manchester
resident in Broughton, who, during the recent deadlock between the two
tramway committees, was turned out of the car at the city boundary, and had
to walk several hundred yards in the rain to catch a Salford car, to curse the
memory of Count Roger the Poitevin. He might have done this with some
justice " (Hediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James
Tait, 1904, p. 10).
2 We imagine that in many other cases the Court of the Hundred had
become combined with that of its principal Manor. Thus, in the Hundred of
Crewkerne in Somerset, which constituted a single "Lordship," extending over
seven tithings, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries, there was
only one Court held, called the Hundred Court and Court Baron. At the
principal sessions of this Court each year the Lord nominated not only the
54 THE COURT IN RUINS
up the story in 1828, it is not the Portmote of the Borough
but the " Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court of
Record ... for the Hundred or Wapentake of Salford "
that is being held in Salford. By this time the Court, so
far as the area outside Salford Borough was concerned, had
ceased to stand in any relation whatever to such Manor
Courts as were still held within its ancient jurisdiction. In
1833, for instance, the Deputy Steward explained probably
on the authority of Joseph Eitson's learned book that " the
business of this Court solely applied to townships which had
not the benefit of Courts Leet of their own. This being
the Hundred Court Leet, it was their duty, therefore, to elect
Constables in such cases . . . and in the event of proper
persons not being returned by the townships to the Court,
or where two lists were presented, they must elect such
persons as would faithfully discharge the duties of the office." ]
We accordingly find the Salford Hundred Court in 1828
attended every half-year by the Constables, Deputy Constables,
Bailiff of the Hundred, but also the Portreeve of the little town of Crewkerue,
who collected the profits of its fair and market. The suitors of the Court
elected the Reeve, who was responsible for collecting the quit-rents and fines
due from the tenants. The other sessions held during the year were known as
the Three Weeks' Courts, and at these the Tithingmen of the several districts
were bound to attend, each bringing with them four of their neighbours, who
were called "four posts," and who had to make presentments (The Book of
the Art, by G. P. R. Pulman, 4th edition, 1875, pp. 247-250 ; quoting an
MS. Survey of the Manor in 1599). Possibly a similar case is that of the
' ' Manor, Hundred, and Borough " of Bradford in Wiltshire, which we see
holding its "Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court Baron" in 1819, and
appointing a Constable and an Assistant Constable for the Hundred, together
with a factotum, who combined in himself "the five offices of Bailiff of the
Hundred, Assistant Constable of the Hundred, Haywarden, Tithingnian of
the Old Town and Tithingnian of the New Town of Bradford." It is reported
to the Home Office that the new and zealous Constable has presented this
pluralist for making false presentments to the Quarter Sessions, swearing that
the roads were in good repair when they were not (Home Office Domestic State
Papers in Public Record Office, No. 10, 13th April and 1st May 1819, and
January 1820).
1 Report of Proceedings of Salford Court Leet, Manchester Chronicle, 4th
May 1833. This view was upheld by the Court of King's Bench in 1822,
as against the inhabitants of the Township of Failsworth, who claimed to meet
annually to elect their own Constable, but failed definitely to allege that they
did this by prescription. The action of the Salford Court in appointing a
Constable for this Township was confirmed (R. v. Lane, in Reports of Cases, etc.,
by E. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1823, vol. v. pp. 488-489). Ritson
had said that the Leet of a Hundred had jurisdictioii only over such parts of
the Hundred as were not within the jurisdiction of the Court Leet of any
Manor (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 5).
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 55
and Assistant Constables of forty out of the fifty townships
included within the Hundred; and enabling such nuisances
in these townships as noxious smells and smoke from factories,
obstructions of the highway, leaving roads unfenced in
dangerous places, foul ditches, exposing unwholesome food
for sale, and using false weights or measures to be presented
and fined. 1 The Court was always held at Salford. We
gather that the jurymen were chosen from residents of the
so-called " Borough " of Salford, not, as at Berkeley, from the
various Manors of the Hundred ; the so-called Burgesses of
Salford Borough were required to attend under penalty of
sixpence, and inhabitants of the Borough not being Burgesses,
under penalty of threepence ; new Burgesses had to be sworn
in ; and it is evident that the principal business of the Court
related to that Borough, for which, besides the officers of
the Hundred, it appointed annually a Boroughreeve, two
Constables, a Dog -muzzier, an Ale -taster, By law -men and
Inspectors of Flesh and Fish. The Hundred Court seems,
in fact, to Lave been the only active "police and sanitary
authority " which the township of Salford enjoyed, until the
rise, early in the nineteenth century, of a democratic Open
Vestry, and the advent, in 1829, of a statutory body of Police
or Street Commissioners ; and the fact that this Court
appointed the Boroughreeve, gave it complete authority in
what had already become a crowded and insanitary factory
town.
Meanwhile there was being continuously held at Salford
another series of Courts, from three weeks to three weeks, also
1 See, for instance, MS. Minutes, Salford Hundred Court Leet, 9th April
1828. We add two examples as typical: "The jurors of our Lord the King
upon their oaths present that at Aucoats Bridge within Ardwick in the said
Hundred of Salford ... is a manufactory for making sal ammoniac next to
the King's common highway there leading from Manchester to Ashton . . .
which emits great quantities of noisome and noxious fumes and vapours to the
great nuisance of all the King's subjects passing and travelling there, by the
default of Ebenezer Breillatt. . . . Therefore he is in mercy. . . . And they
amerce him in five shillings, and he is commanded to abate the same within
two months under the pain of one hundred pounds" (ibid. 9th April 1828).
In 1833 the Deputy Constable of Pendleton said he had been requested by the
respectable inhabitants of that township to present a number of owners and
occupiers of property abutting "the Black ditch . . . full to overflowing of
refuse of dyehouses . . . causing an intolerable stench . . . the most intoler-
able nuisance in the neighbourhood." The Jury thereupon presented the
offenders (ibid. April 1833).
56 THE COURT IN RUINS
purporting to be those of the Court of the Salford Hundred or
Wapentake. Every third Thursday one or other of the three
Deputy Stewards, whom the Earl of Sefton had appointed for
this special purpose, 1 held his Court for the trial of actions for
debt or damages under forty shillings within the wide limits of
the Hundred. Over a thousand such actions a year were being
dealt with by this Court in 1835, 2 notwithstanding the con-
current existence as petty debt tribunals of the Court Baron of
Manchester and of statutory Courts of Requests in and for
Manchester, Oldham, Bury, and Rochdale. 3
Amid the political agitation of 1829-32, the Radicals began
to chafe against the " self-elect " constitution of the Salford
Hundred Court, by which they meant exclusively the half-yearly
sessions for the appointment of Borough officers. They recalled
the fact that the Earl of Sefton, as a Whig peer, had supported
the Reform Bill ; and some of them urged him to be true to
his faith in representative government, and to cause his Deputy
Steward to leave off packing the Jury with Tories. Lord
Sefton fell in with this view, and from 1835 onward the jury-
1 In 1835, at any rate, and for many years previously, these Deputy Stewards
were the members of one of the leading firms of solicitors at Manchester, and
quite distinct from the Deputy Steward, a barrister, whom the Earl appointed to
hold the half-yearly Courts.
2 House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840 ; Fifth Report of
Royal Commision on Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 26a, 53a, 61a, 78<z, 108a,
132a, 16, 106.
3 Somewhat akin to the position of the Salford Hundred Court was apparently
that of Bradford at Wellington in Shropshire. This Court, held by the Duke of
Cleveland under Royal Letters Patent of 1672, had once exercised full jurisdiction
over the whole Hundred. By the nineteenth century, however, it had come to
exercise what we may call Leet jurisdiction, and to appoint Constables only for
those Manors within the Hundred which no longer held Courts of their own. It
continued, however, to sit fortnightly for the preliminary stages of civil actions,
and twice a year for the trial of causes arising anywhere within the Hundred.
At the two general Courts (one of them being utilised for the appointment of
Constables, etc.) it is said that the Constables of the Hundred had to attend
(Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 106ff,
167ffl, 168a ; House of Commons Return of Hundred Courts, 1839, p. 5 ; and of
Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 132-133). Here, too, we may mention the Courtof
the Hundred of Whitchurch (Dorset), which did not try civil suits, but appointed
two Constables for the Hundred and Tithingmen for such of the nineteen Tithings
within the Hundred as did not have Courts of their own. When a resident in
one of the Tithings for which a Manor Court was held had been appointed
Constable for the Hundred by the Hundred Court, he appealed to the Court of
King's Bench for exemption, on the plea that the Hundred Court had no right to
appoint a resident "within a private Leet." But he was held liable to serve the
Hundred (R. i>. Genge, 1774, in reports of Cases, etc., by Henry Cowper, 1783,
pp. 13-17>
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 57
men at the half-yearly meetings were taken by lot from a list of
the five hundred highest rated inhabitants. 1 At the same time
it became taken for granted that this Jury should accept, for
the offices of Boroughreeve and Constables, the nominations
made by the open Vestry Meeting. 2 Under these circumstances
there seems to have been no popular objection to the continu-
ance of the formal participation of the Hundred Court in the
Local Government of the Borough, and its half-yearly sessions
accordingly went on being formally held, and its annual appoint-
ments of Boroughreeve and other officers being made, down to
1867. No objection seems ever to have been made to the
three-weekly trial of civil actions, under which form, by virtue
of successive Acts of Parliament, and with only the slightest
change of name, the ancient Court of the Wapentake or Hundred
of Salford survives to this day. 3
On the South Coast of England we find, right down to
1855, at Brighton, in Sussex, the Court of the Hundred of
Whalesbone, or more properly, Wellesbourne. This was de-
scribed as " the Leet or Lawday and View of Frankpledge,"
not for any one Manor but for the whole of the Hundred, the
1 The reformer who secured this change was one J. S. Ormerod, who was pre-
sented with a gold snuff-box by his admirers. His reply contains the following
passages, which we give as specimens of the feeling that prevailed. ' ' When I
first thought of making an effort to prevent the Borough of Salford . . . from
being ruled and governed in its Municipal constitution by men who had nothing
to recommend them but superstition and bigoted Toryism ; when I found also
that these men were chosen by a class of individuals who were self-elected from
men possessing precisely the same politics as themselves ; when I found that
these men were so ignorant as to boast of having been upon that Jury thirty
years, some for more than twenty, others for twenty " he determined to
approach Lord Sefton, who made inquiry and directed his Deputy Steward to
adopt a new plan (Manchester Times, 19th December 1835).
2 See, for instance, Manchester Guardian, 8th October 1836.
3 In 1846 its jurisdiction was preserved and enlarged, so as to enable it to
deal with actions up to 50, by 9 and 10 Victoria, c. 126. In 1868 it was
amalgamated with the Court of Record held by the Manchester Corporation
under its Charter of 1838 and 17 and 18 Victoria, c. 84, and given the new
title of the Salford Hundred Court of Record (31 and 32 Victoria, c. 130).
The Earl of Sefton was thereby continued as High Steward, with a right to
receive one-third of the fees arising from such cases as would have been within
the jurisdiction of the old Salford Court, less a proportion of the expenses, but
in no case to amount to less than two hundred guineas a year (sec. 35). The
Boroughs of Oldham, Boltou, Heywood, and Rochdale successively got them-
selves exempted from the jurisdiction of the Salford Hundred Court, in all
matters in which the modern County Court has cognizance (Orders in Council
of 30th December 1878, 16th August 1886, and 15th March 1893, and the
Oldham Corporation Act 1886, 49 and 50 Victoria, c. 117).
$8 THE COURT IN RUINS
Lord or Steward of the Hundred being the Earl of Aber-
gavenny. The Hundred of Whalesbone comprised the parish
of Brighthelmston (now Brighton) with the " Boroughs " or
hamlets of Preston and Patcham a much smaller area than
the Hundred of Berkeley. Within the Hundred there were,
however, a number of reputed Manors and parcels of Manors,
inextricably confused by partitions and alienations. Bright-
helmston itself, in the days when its importance lay in its
fishing, had had an important Manor Court of its own, of which
the " ancient customs " had been of sufficient consequence to
be investigated by a special Royal Commission of 1580. 1
What Lord's Courts were held in the eighteenth century within
the Hundred, and exactly for what purposes, we have been
unable to ascertain. 2 But the Hundred Court continued
vigorously to exist, though, as we gather, principally, if not
entirely, for the purpose of appointing annually at Easter the
various officers of the Hundred : the High Constable, twelve
Headboroughs or Assistant Constables, 3 an Aleconner, and a
Searcher and Sealer of Leather. It had apparently only one
Jury, summoned by the Deputy Steward. It seems not to
have dealt with actions for debt or damages. Of the history
of this ancient jurisdiction during the eighteenth century we
know nothing. We find it after the Parliamentary election of
1825 coming into sharp conflict with the Vestry, which refused
to pass the High Constable's accounts. The items objected to
related to the swearing in of special constables " during the late
county election," and the payments to private persons for
apprehending suspected criminals and vagrants. 4 These items
appeared, in accordance with the provisions of 18 George III.
c, 19 (1779), in the Overseers' accounts, and as it had never
become quite clear whether the consent of the Vestry was
necessary to their validity, the County Magistrates did not
scruple to pass the Overseers' accounts containing the items
1 History of Brighthelmston, by J. A. Erredge, 1862 ; Compendious History
of Sussex, by M. A. Lower, 1870, vol. i. pp. 77-84 ; Sussex Archaeological
Collections, vol. ii. p. 38. We recur to this in the following chapter (p. 173).
2 There is evidence that Manorial Courts were held for property business ;
see, for instance, the reference to the surrender of certain tenements by the
Churchwardens of Brighthelmston " at a General Court Baron for the Manor of
Allingworth" (MS. Vestry Minutes, Brighton, 3rd February 1806).
3 Brighton Herald, 9th April 1825.
4 Ibid. 17th September 1825 and 29th July 1826.
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 59
objected to. 1 The friction between the Vestry and the Hundred
Court continued ; and in 1828 the Vestry sent an elaborate
memorial to the Earl of Abergavenny, as " the Lord of the Leet
of the Hundred of Whalesbone," protesting against " the great,
notorious, and crying abuse," that the outgoing High Constable
packed the Jury summoned to elect his successor, and " the
choice has consequently not been congenial to the wishes
of the inhabitants." 2 It appears that the same little set
of the Vicar, the County Justices resident in the town, and
other Tory magnates had appeared as jurymen year after year,
the Vicar acting always as Foreman. In answer to this
memorial the Steward addressed to the Vestry a long and able
description of the procedure of the Hundred Court. In future,
he adds, " I shall require the High Constable to return to me
... a list of at least fifty of the most respectable inhabitants
. . . and I shall advise that such list be made known to the
public. . . . From this list I shall select by ballot 2 3 to form a
Jury. ... If any reasonable and fair objection shall be stated
in Court ... to any gentleman so summoned ... I shall not
hesitate to dispense with the attendance of that juryman." 3
The result was that within a short time the Vestry and the
High Constable became on excellent terms, 4 and the Hundred
Court continued to be held for nearly another generation. 5
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Sussex, 20th October 1825. Such a case
had then recently occurred at the Cheshire Quarter Sessions, where the
Constable of Ashton-under-Lyne had laid his accounts before the Vestry, and
had an item disallowed (the expense of prosecuting a Dissenting Minister for
preaching in the streets) ; two Justices had nevertheless allowed the Overseers'
Accounts including this item. One out of the eight Overseers appealed to
Quarter Sessions, which confirmed the allowance. The Court of King's Bench
dismissed an appeal on the ground that it was not promoted by a majority of
the Overseers, without, therefore, deciding that the action of the Justices had
been wrong (R. v. Justices of Lancashire, in Reports of Cases, etc., by E. V.
Bamewall and E. H. Alderson, 1823, vol. v. pp. 755-758).
2 Brighton Herald, 2nd February 1828.
3 MS. Vestry Minutes, Brighton, 25th January and 22nd February 1828.
* Ibid. 20th January 1831.
6 For the so-called Hundreds of Sussex and Kent, and their relations to the
"Rapes "or " Lathes " of these Counties, see " The Hundred of Eastbourne and
its Six Boroughs," by Rev. William Hudson, Sussex Archaeological Collections,
vol. xlii. p. 189, 1899, and "Liberties and Franchises within the Rape of
Hastings," by W. D. Cooper, Sussex Archceological Collections, vol. vi., 1853,
pp. 57-70. " In Sussex," we learn of the thirteenth century, " each Hundred
seems to have had a Beadle, that is, a summoner, who was called an Alder-
man," and who sometimes performed the suit of court due by the tenants of
the Hundred at superior Courts (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 545). At Swanborough, one of these
60 THE COURT IN RUINS
The Hundred Courts which remained in private hands are
scarcely to be distinguished from the Courts of Franchises,
Liberties, Lordships, or Honours which had obtained exemption
from the jurisdiction of, or concurrent jurisdiction with, the
County Court. The Franchise or Liberty often included
several Hundreds. In the " Seven Hundreds " of Cirencester
in Gloucestershire, for instance, which had for five or six
centuries enjoyed great exemptions from the Sheriff of the
County, there continued to be held, in the eighteenth century,
a three-weekly Court under the Steward of Earl Bathurst.
Its business seems to have been exclusively the trial of
small civil suits, personal actions, and debts under forty
shillings. It was, we are told, regarded as " vexatious, dila-
tory, and expensive," and so was superseded in 1792 by the
effect of a Local Act, which created a Court of Bequests, under
seventy-five Commissioners, who took it in turn to sit as judges. 1
In Kent the " Seven Hundreds " constituted a Franchise,
having a Court of its own, held by the Bailiff. This Court
"Hundreds," which belongs to the Marquis of Abergavenny, and comprises
several parishes, " Boroughs," and Manors, the ancient Court of the Hundred
was held right down to our own day. There attended the Constable and
Alderman of the Hundred, the Headboroughs of the Parishes, and one or two
dozen jurymen. Annoyances and defaults were presented and amerced, and
civil suits under forty shillings were tried. The Jury presented persons to
serve as Constable and Alderman of the Hundred (down to 1860) and Head-
boroughs of the various parishes (down to 1842), of whom the Steward chose
one ("The Hundred of Swanborough," by J. Cooper, in Sussex Archaeological
Collections, vol. iv., October 1890). See also The Perambulation of Kent, by
W. Lambard, 1576, p. 21 ; Robinson on Gavelkind, 5th edition, by C. J. Elton
and H. J. H. Mackay, 1897, p. 211. Of the village of Lamberhurst we read
that "a fair is held here yearly on 10th October for toys and pedlary, the
profits of which the Portreeve of the Hundred of Milton receives of ancient
custom, which officer executed within this Hundred the office of Clerk of the
Market in all points whilst the Market was held, but it has been disused time
out of mind" (History of Kent, by E. Hasted, 1797 to 1801, vol. vii. p. 53).
For Tenterden Seven Hundreds, see History of the Weald of Kent, by R. Furley,
1871, vol. i. pp. 315-324, vol. ii. p. 555 ; History of the Weald of Kent, by
T. D. W. Dearn, 1814, pp. 162, 233-245 ; House of Commons Return of Courts
of Request, 1840.
1 History of Cirencester, by K. J. Beecham, 1887, pp. 162-170. This
Court of Requests was, like others, itself superseded after 1846 by the new
County Courts. We may mention here (though we have no information as to
their Courts) the analogous "Seven Hundreds" of Worcestershire, which had
of old such extensive immunities ; the Hundreds of Windsor Forest, and,
best known of all, the Chiltern Hundreds (Desborough, Stoke, and Bray in
Buckinghamshire), of which the Stewardship remaining, as it does, in the
gift of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has become a minor part of the
machinery of Parliamentary procedure (see The Stewardship of the Clillrrn
Hundreds, by F. 8. Parry, a privately printed Treasury Memorandum of 1893 ;
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 61
was held during the eighteenth century, and only discon-
tinued after the whole Franchise had been sold by the Crown
in 1817 to a private landowner. Within the Franchise, as
we learn from a survey of the time of the Commonwealth,
"there belongeth to each Hundred a Court Leet, where the
Constables and Borsholders are elected, and all nuisances are
amerced by the Steward and Jury, which Court is held when-
ever the Lord or Steward may appoint." In six of these "Seven
Hundreds" the Court used to be held by the Steward or Bailiff
for the profit of the Crown. In the seventh, comprising Tenter-
den, the chief town, the ownership of this so-called " royalty
of the Court of the Bailiwick of the Seven Hundreds" was
vested in the Mayor and twelve Jurats of the Municipal Cor-
poration, by whom the Court was, in 1814, still being held.
Throughout the wide area of Yorkshire there were Courts
in every Wapentake, the division corresponding with the
Hundred. We catch a glimpse of these Courts in 1641 in
the notebook of a Yorkshire farmer. "The baily [Bailiff] of
every Wapentake," he says, " is to keep a Court, which is
called the Wapentake Court, Three Weeks' Court, or Sheriffs'
Turn, where any petty cause or small trespass may be heard
and ended once within three weeks." In at least two Wapen-
takes these Courts continued to be held for more than two
centuries much as Henry Best describes them ; some remnants
lingering until the middle of the nineteenth century. 1
In Cheshire there continued to be held an active Hundred
Court for the Hundred of Wirral, which includes the town of
Birkeuhead. This was held on lease from the Crown until
1819, when it reverted to the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests, by whom it was sold in 1820 for 500 to a Liverpool
attorney. The Court continued for another generation to do
an extensive business in petty debt cases, especially those
arising in the rapidly growing town of Birkenhead. 2
" The Ancient Hundreds of Buckinghamshire," by Morley Davies, in Home
Co-unites Magazine, vol. vi. pp. 134-144 ; article by J. H. Round in Victoria
County History of Buckinghamshire, vol. i. 1905, p. 225).
1 Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641, by Henry Best, Surtees Society,
vol. xxxiii., 1857, p. 91 ; House of Commons Return of Courts of Request,
1840, pp. 170-171.
2 Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833 ;
House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and Courts of Request,
62 THE COURT IN RUINS
At least a score of other Hundred Courts continued to be
held in different parts of the country throughout the eighteenth,
aiid down to the middle of the nineteenth, century, 1 principally
as tribunals for the trial of small civil suits. We find them
also, here and there, appointing not only Bailiffs and Constables
for the Hundred or Liberty itself, 2 but also Constables and
Haywards for Manors within the Hundred, but not exercising
any other functions of the mediaeval Courts. Similarly, there
existed down to the same period a score of Courts of Honours,
Lordships, or Liberties, 3 which were not styled Hundred Courts,
1840 ; History of the Hundred of Wirrod, by W. Mortimer, 1847 ; Liverpool
Courier, 9th April 1869.
1 Among these other surviving Hundred Courts the principal were those for
the other Hundreds of Lancashire, Amounderness (held by a Steward for the
Duchy itself), West Derby (held by the Earl of Sefton), Lonsdale (held by the
Earl of Lonsdale) ; that held by the Duke of Richmond for "Richmondshire,"
comprising five Wapentakes of the North Riding of Yorkshire ; those of
Scarsdale and Chesterfield in Derbyshire, held by the Duke of Devonshire under
a grant of 1631 ; that of Bucklow (Cheshire), held on lease from the Crown by
the Egertons of Tatton ; that of Grumbald's Ash (Gloucestershire), held by the
Duke of Beaufort under lease from the Crown down to 1835, until which date
it appointed Constables and Haywards for the Manors within the Hundred, as
well as tried petty debt cases ; those of Chew Magna (Somerset), which ceased to
be held about 1836 ; Keynsham (Wiltshire), Portbury (Wiltshire), Whit-
stone (Wiltshire), Offlow (Staffordshire), Durnford (Sussex) ; St. Briavel's
(Gloucestershire), held by a Steward for the Crown ; Henbury (Gloucestershire),
Thornbury (Gloucestershire) ; Huntingstone (Huntingdonshire), belonging to the
Earl of Sandwich ; Penwith (Cornwall), Pain's Castle (Radnor), and the Duke of
Beaufort's Court Baron for the Hundred of Crickhowell (Breconshire). Some
particulars as to their activity in 1830-40 may be gathered from the Fifth
Report of the Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, and the House of
Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and Courts of Request, 1840.
2 " Bailiffs and Constables of Hundreds .are chosen annually at the Courts
Leet for the several Hundreds and Liberties within the County " (A Guide to
the Practice of the Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Somerset, by J.
Jesse, 1815, p. 20).
3 Such as the Nottinghamshire Peverel Court, held by Lord Middleton as
Steward, and exercising jurisdiction, concurrently with the two County Courts,
within the whole of the Counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire except the
Corporate towns ; Tutbury Honour Court, held by the Duke of Devonshire at
Tutbury (Staffordshire) every three weeks for civil actions by residents within
the Honour, which included parts of no fewer than six Counties and had its
own Coroner as well as its own Bailiff (Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals,
by J. C. Cox, pp. 71-84) ; the Court Baron of the Honour of Pontefract (York-
shire), with jurisdiction over 350 townships, in a district of 600 square miles,
and held twice a year each at Leeds, Bradford, and Huddersfield ; Allertonshire
Liberty Court (Yorkshire), held by the Bishop of Ripon every three weeks, for the
thirty-two townships within the Liberty ; the Court of the Liberty and Honour
of Pickering Lythe (Yorkshire), held twice a year only ; Skipton Honour Court
(Yorkshire), held under Letters Patent of 1307 by the Earl of Thanet as Lord
of the Honour ; Whitby Strand Liberty Court, held by the Cholmleys as Bailiffs
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 63
but which exercised jurisdiction over areas within which there
were at least several Manors, and which occasionally extended
to hundreds of square miles. We cannot help regretting that
so little examination has been made of the sixteenth, seven-
teenth, and eighteenth century records of these Hundred
Courts, and other Courts of wider jurisdiction than that of a
Manor, from which additional light might be thrown on
the relations of the different Courts of the ancient
Hierarchy. 1
of the Liberty, in succession to the Abbots of Whitby (Yorkshire) ; Kidwelly
Honour or Lordship and Liberty Court, held by the Earl of Cawdor for three
"commotes" of Carmarthenshire, comprising nineteen Manors and sixteen
Parishes ; Perfeth Court Baron, also held by the Earl of Cawdor, as Lord of
the Lordship ; the Court of Pleas for the Honour of Leicester, held by a steward
for the Duchy of Lancaster, in some connection with the Courts Leet of nine
Manors within the Honour ; the Ramsey Court of Pleas, held under ancient
charters by the Lord of the Liberty of Ramsey (Huntingdonshire) ; Ampthill
Honour Court (Bedfordshire), not held for the trial of actions after the
eighteenth century ; Bromfield and Yale Lordship Court (Denbighshire), held at
the beginning of the eighteenth century by the Grosvenors as Lords of the
Lordship ; and various other Welsh Lordship Courts, such as Chirk, which
ceased to be held in consequence of an adverse judgment of the Court of King's
Bench about 1827 (Williams v. Lord Bagot, Reports of Cases, by Barnewall and
Cresswell, vol. iii. pp. 235, 772, etc.). With these should perhaps be classed the
great Wakefield Court Baron held by the Lord of the extensive jurisdiction of
Wakefield, which included, by 1835, a quarter of a million inhabitants, and
exercised important functions in connection with weights and measures, as well
as dealing with a couple of thousand civil actions annually. Some information
about them in 1830-40 may be gathered from the House of Commons Returns
of Hundred Courts, 1838, and Courts of Request, etc., 1840, and the Fifth
Report of the Royal Commission on the Courts of Common Law, 1833.
1 We cannot pretend to deal with the various Forest Courts, held under
picturesque names in districts which were technically royal forests. The special
forest laws (as to which the various editions of John Manwood's Forest Laws,
from 1598 to 1665, were authoritative) apparently ceased to be enforced after
the Commonwealth, the Act " for the limitation of Forests," 16 Charles I. c. 16
(1640), having practically brought the old system to an end. Some attempt
was made to revive the Courts on the Restoration ; but we do not actually know
that either the six- weekly "Court of Attachment" or "Woodmote," the
"Court of Regard" every third year, or the "Court of Justice Seat" was held
after the Revolution (Life of Lord Justice Guilford, by the Hon. Roger North,
1808, vol. i. p. 75 ; The Rural Life of England, by William Howitt, 1838,
vol. ii. p. 59). But Courts continued to be held, sometimes under the
ancient forest name of "Swainmote" or "Swanimote," sometimes under that
of Halmote Court, in various forest districts, especially in the Forest of Dean,
though they seem to have decayed rapidly after the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, and to have become often formal only. To this day,
however, in the Forest of Dean, the Steward of the Crown holds his Court
annually at the '' Speech House," wearing a cocked hat, and equipped with a
sword. We may yet read The Rights of His Majesty's Forest Asserted, in a
Charge given at a Swanimote Court held . . . before the Verderers of the Forest
of Windsor, 1717, by Nathaniel Boothe, Steward of the Court, 1719; and
64 THE COURT IN RUINS
The Court of the Hundred, where it continued into the
eighteenth century, retained, as we have seen, little beyond its
function as a tribunal for petty actions of debt, combining
with this, in a few instances, the more or less formal appoint-
ment of Constables and other officers. This was not the case
with the innumerable Manor Courts that existed in 1689,
many of which continued, right into the nineteenth century,
to be active local authorities, managing the commonfields and
pastures, suppressing nuisances, providing the police, and trying
cases of debt and trespass in the little communities over which
they had jurisdiction. 1 It is, in fact, the existence of the
humble Court of the Manor, much more than that of the
enigmatical and pretentious Courts of the Hundred, Honour,
Barony, or Forest, that compels us to include the Lord's Court
in our survey of English Local Government between 1689
and 1835.
It is significant that this Court of the Manor, as we find
"The Rolls of the Court of Attachment of the Royal Forest of Walthara"
between 1713 and 1848 are printed as vol. v. of the Report of the Epping
Forest Commissioners, 1873. See Select Pleas of the Forest, by G. J. Turner
(Selden Society, 1901) ; Remarks on Forest Scenery, by W. Gilpin, 1791, with a
good list of Forests ; Historical Inquiries concerning Forests and Forest Laws,
by Percival Lewis, 1811 ; the statutes of 1817 and 1829 ; an able article in
Edinburgh Review, April 1902 ; Ihe Royal Forests of England, by J. C. Cox,
1905 ; and A History of English Law, by Prof. W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, pp.
340-352. Also the various reports of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and
Land Revenues, especially those of 1788 and 1853 ; that of the House of
Commons Committees on the Forest of Dean, 1874, and on the Woods and
Forests, 1889 and 1890 ; Report on the Forest of Dean, by H. C. Hill,
published by the Stationery Office, 19th July 1887 ; The Forest of Dean, by
H. G. Nicholls, 1858 ; an exceptionally well-informed article in The English
Historical Review, vol. xxi., 1906, pp. 445-459 ; The History of the Forest of
Dean in Gloucestershire, by John Nisbet ; History of Knaresborough, by Eli
Hargrove, 1798 ; Histoi'y of the Forest of Rossendale, by T. Newbigging, 1868 ;
The Honour and Forest of Pickering, by R. B. Turton (North Riding Record
Society, N.S., vols. i.-iii., 1894-96); The Forest of Essex, by W. R. Fisher,
1887 ; Annals of tlie Ancient Royal Forest of Exmoor, by E. J. Rawle, 1893 ;
The Great Forest of Brecknock, by John Lloyd, 1905 ; vol. ii. of the Victoria
County History of Hampshire, 1905, pp. 409-470, for the New Forest; and
chap, iv., "Forest Police," in The History of Police in England, by Captain
Melville Lee.
1 "Every Manor," it was said, "is a little Commonwealth whereof the
tenants are the members, the land the body, and the Lord the head" (The
Surveyor's Dialogue, by John Norden, 4th edition, 1738, p. 44).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 65
it existing after 1689 from one end of England to the other,
is an Undifferentiated Court. Whatever it may be termed by
the Steward, it combines and confuses in its actual procedure
and work the attributes which the sixteenth-century lawyer
ascribed to his three or four distinct tribunals. In the vast
majority of the Manors that we have examined, we see the
Steward giving notice, once or twice a year, that he would
hold, not the various separate Courts given in the text-books,
but, under one name or other, simply the Lord's Court. This
might be held in the open air, beneath some aged tree j" 1 it
might, as at Selborne in Hampshire, be in an ancient barn of
the Manor farm ; 2 it might be at the Lord's Manor-house
(perhaps for this reason in Southern England often called a
Court) ; 8 or occasionally in some old building in the village
known as the Court House, 4 or even, in a few cases, the Town
Hall, or Gild Hall. 5 It was a common practice to " open the
Court " at the ancient place and then instantly to adjourn to
the largest room of the village inn. 6 There would be a
customary date for holding the Court, which would be seldom
departed from it might be soon after Michaelmas or Easter ;
it might, as at Coggeshall in Essex, be on Whit Monday ; 7 it
might, as at Andover in Hampshire, be "the Sunday next
before St. Michael " ; 8 in many of the Manors of the Bishop
of Winchester we read of " the Turn of St. Martin," or " the
1 Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii.
p. 9. At Newton (Norfolk), in 1531, it was "under the oak " (The Manor and
Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, p. 132).
2 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by R. B. Fisher, 1794, p. 59.
3 Or " place, " which maybe from "placitum" (Treatise on Copyholds, by
Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 11). Mr. Seebohm connects
" Court " with " curtis," which. is "so often applied to the later Manor-house " ;
and with the " cohortes " around a Roman villa {English Village Community,
by F. Seebohm, 1883, p. 263).
4 So at Epworth in Lincolnshire (see History and Topography of the Isle of
Axholme, by Rev. W. B. Stonehouse, 1839, pp. 143-149).
6 At Coggeshall in Essex the Court was always held at the Shambles in the
market-place (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkius, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii.
p. 574). At Bungay it was held "in the Corn Cross," until the demolition of
that building in 1810 (History of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, p. 129).
8 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 9.
At Yardley Hastings, in Northamptonshire, the Court was always formally
opened in an ancient hall in the village, and then adjourned to the village inn
(Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 1816, p. 5).
7 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 574.
8 Firma Burgi, by Thos. Madox, 1726, p. 210; Treatise on Copyholds,
by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 477.
VOL. II. PT. I F
66 THE COURT IN RUINS
Turn of Hock " ; l it might even be, as in a Manor near
Kochford, Essex, "at cockcrowing, before the day was well
light." 2 At such a Court in different Manors called in-
differently the View of Frankpledge, the Court Baron, 8 the
Turn, the Court Leet, the Lawday, the Leet, or simply the
Great Court or the Little Court there would attend most of
the men of the village, whether freeholders or copyholders,
leaseholders or cottagers. In Manor after Manor we find
evidence that some sort of roll of names was read over, and
defaulters fined. Thus at Standon in Staffordshire, during the
eighteenth century, the fine for non-attendance was a shilling
for freeholders, sixpence for leaseholders and other tenants of
the Manor, and twopence for cottagers. 4 Elsewhere it often
seems to have been only the freehold or copyhold tenants of
the Manor whose attendance was insisted on. At Braintree
in 1653 the tenants who did not appear were severally fined
three shillings; in 1665, freeholders two shillings and copy-
holders one shilling ; whilst in 1732 the absent freeholders
had to pay only a shilling each and the copyholders half a
crown. 5 At Devonport, about 1800, we read that "all the
tenants are obliged to attend, or be amerced two and sixpence." 6
1 See MS. Manor Rolls, Farnliam, Surrey, 8th October 1717, for one of many
examples.
2 " The Honour of Eayleigh in Essex . . . hath a Custom Court kept yearly
the Wednesday next after St. Michael's Day ; the Court is kept in the night
and without light but as the sky gives, at a little hill without the town called
the King's Hill, where the Steward writes only with coals and not with ink.
And many men and Manors of great worth hold of the same, and do suit unto
this strange Court, where the Steward calls them with as low a voice as possible
he may ; giving no notice when he goes to the Hill to keep the same Court ;
and he that attends not is deeply amerced if the Steward will"' (The Surveyor's
Dialogue, by John Norden, 4th edition, 1738, p. 161). How much truth and
how much significance there was in this account of what was apparently nick-
named "the Lawless Court" we cannot say (see Law Dictionary, by John
Cowell, 1727, under this appellation ; Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins,
4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 9).
3 Court Barou is clearly "curia baronis," and the meaning of "curia
baronis " is significantly explained by the variant "curia nobilis viri R.R."
that we find as the title of the Braintree Court in the earliest roll (1616). It
was simply the Lord's Court. There seems to have been every variety in the
name borne by the Court in different Manors, and we can trace little connection,
in the period 1689-1835, between these variations of name and the equally great
variations in function.
4 The History of Standon, by Edward Salt, 1888.
6 MS. Manor Rolls, Braintree (Essex).
The, Plymouth Dock Guide, p. 28 (circa 1800). At Leamington the Earl of
Aylesford, as Lord of the Manor, revived the Lord's Court in that Manor in
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 67
An indisputable element in the Lord's Court, and the
primum mobile upon which all its action depended, was the
Jury or Homage, the sample of the inhabitants by which the
community as a whole was represented. The Jury was
always formally summoned by the Bailiff or Beadle, at the
command of the Steward, but exactly in what way the im-
portant task of selection was performed is seldom to be dis-
covered. It may be that, in some cases, the tenants of the
Manor were supposed to be taken haphazard in rotation. In
some Manors, as we have reason to believe, the choice
was controlled by the Steward. In the Manor of Dymock,
Gloucestershire, by ancient custom recorded in 1565 and
1657, the Steward chose one "free-bencher" and the tenants
another, these two jointly selecting the twelve tenants who
were to form "the Lord's Homage." In case of their dis-
agreement, the Steward decided. 1 On the other hand, a
learned lawyer writes in 1825 that, "So far at least as my
own experience extends, the Steward of the Court is totally
ignorant even of the names of the jurors until the delivery to
him by the Bailiff of the persons summoned as jurymen,
together with the resiant roll, or names of those who are
liable to perform suit to the Lord at the particular Court." 2
The Jury was sometimes appointed to serve until the
holding of the next Court, and sometimes appointed, sworn,
and discharged at each Court. 3 The number varied, twelve
1828, after ninety years' desuetude. "Over 900 householders answered to their
names and paid their fines" (Complete History of Royal Leamington Spa, by
T. H. B. Dudley, 1896-97, pp. 188-89). A Steward who holds Courts in many
Manors in the Southern Counties informed us (1906) that when he first took
in this duty he frequently found the villagers swarming to the Court, though
it was called a Court Baron, and they were neither freeholders nor copyholders.
These residents presented themselves as of old, believing vaguely that they had
some right or were under some obligation to attend ; and they were sometimes
much aggrieved at being told that they had no part in the ceremony.
1 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp.
487-491.
2 Treatise on Copyholds, by John Scriven, 2nd edition, 1823, vol. ii.
p. 845.
3 "The Jurymen," says Ritson, "in some Manors continue in office for a
whole year, while in others they are sworn and discharged in the course of the
day" (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, p. 9). "In
some Manors it is not the practice to summon a fresh Jury whenever a Court is
held, but the same tenants are summoned for successive Courts, vacancies in
the list being filled from time to time by the Steward, or by the permanent
Foreman and the Steward together " (Law of Copyhofds, by 0. I. Elton and
H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, pp. 197-198).
68 THE COURT IN RUINS
or more being the most frequent. Here again, whilst we find
some of the names used by the lawyers, we seek in vain for
some of their distinctions. In the Court at Braintree the
well-kept records make it clear that there was only one Jury,
which consisted, as the names reveal, of the ordinary house-
holders of the little town ; and which made all the present-
ments of the Court. In the Court of the "Honour and
Manor" of Hampton Court, between 1800 and 1808, we
find the twelve to fourteen jurors described as " the jurors as
well for the Court Leet as for the Court Baron and Customary
Court " there being, in fact, only one Jury for what was, in
practice, a single undifferentiated Court. So, in many scores
of Manors in ecclesiastical hands, within the dioceses of
Canterbury, London, and Winchester, of which we have been
permitted to consult the Manor Eolls, we find that the Jury
was sworn as the Jury of the King and the Lord; though
where business affecting property had to be done it was
frequently styled also the Homage. On the other hand, at
Epworth, in Lincolnshire, there were, in 17*76 at any rate,
clearly two Juries, but these were not called the Homage and
the Leet Jury respectively ; nor did their several functions
correspond with the lawyer's distinctions. They are referred
to as the Grand Jury and the Copyhold Jury. The " Grand
Jury and Inquest of the Manor" termed in 1587 "inquisitio
magna," when thirty persons were sworn apparently dealt
indifferently with pleas of debt, successions to property, pre-
sentments of such public nuisances as short weight in bread,
presentments of such common misdemeanours as assaults and
affrays, and presentments (in 1631) of such Manorial offences
as " trespasses in the sown fields " by wandering beasts.
"The Grand Jury," it was solemnly recorded in 1776, "may
settle disputes on freehold lands, as to the boundaries, etc.,
and the Copyhold Jury may do the same on copyhold lands.
The Grand Jury may make Bylaws, and compel observance
of the same." We gather that " offences within the Manor,"
including public nuisances, were presented indifferently by
either Jury. 1
1 "Notes from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Epworth," by Charles
Jackson, The Reliquary, vol. xxiii., 1883, pp. 44-48, 89-92, and 174-175 ;
History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme, by Rev. W. B. Stonehouse,
1839, pp. 143-149. On the other hand, we find the term Grand Jury used
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 69
The presentments of the Jury, when accepted by the
Steward, and (in the case of amercements) " affeered " or
revised by the affeerors, became the findings of the Court.
These presentments appear to have comprised indifferently
the recital of the customs of the Manor, the making of new
By-laws, the appointment of officers, the verdicts in the civil
actions tried, and the conviction and the fining of offenders,
whether in respect of public nuisances, Manorial defaults,
breaches of By-laws, or such misdemeanours as assaults, affrays,
and even petty larcenies. These presentments were made by
the Jury, either " on their own view and knowledge," or upon
the testimony of one or other of the officers of the Court or
other witnesses ; l or, in civil suits, after hearing the parties
to the suits, and, it may be, their counsel and witnesses. We
imagine that, in many instances, the presentments were dis-
cussed by the Jury, then and there, in open Court, and
written down by the most practised scribe among them. On
the other hand, there is reason to believe that these pre-
sentments were sometimes drawn up and signed by the Jury-
men in a separate meeting. "For the most part," writes an
experienced lawyer at the end of the eighteenth century,
" they generally come ready prepared with them, and deliver
a copy of them signed by the several tenants to the Steward
to enter in the Court rolls " 2 a duty which he sometimes
neglected to perform.
The officers of the Court might be few or numerous, and
they differed from Manor to Manor, in their numbers and in
their titles, far more according to the size and character
of the community than with any relation to the particular
name of the Court. The Lord's Steward summoned and
presided over the Court whatever it was called. The Bailiff,
though this title is sometimes used as synonymous with
Eeeve or Greave, was always the Lord's man, selected by the
Steward. The residents or homagers whose presence was
specially required as jurymen were warned to attend by the
simply for a Court Leet Jury ; as, for instance, in Jurisdiction of the Courts
Lcet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 3.
1 Where the Jury "are discharged the same day," says Ritson, "it should
seem necessary for them to proceed chiefly upon evidence ; and, indeed, there
is generally, if not always, a proclamation for that purpose " (Jurisdiction of
the C&urts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 24).
2 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 383.
70 THE COURT IN RUINS
Bailiff whether the Court was styled Court Baron or Court
Leet. We find Keeves, Hay wards, and Herdsmen appointed
at the same Court, whatever its appellation, as Constables,
Ale-tasters, and Scavengers. We find Courts calling themselves
nothing but Courts Baron nevertheless appointing Head-
boroughs, Constables, Ale-tasters, and Scavengers ; making
presentments on all sorts of subjects ; and seizing light weights
and short measures. 1 We find Courts calling themselves
nothing but Courts Leet nevertheless appointing Reeves and
Haywards and a variety of functionaries whose business it was
to manage the common pasture. It is extremely rare to find
any definite salary assigned to any of these officers 2 the
Court had, indeed, normally no Corporate funds out of which
such a salary could be paid but we suspect that some small
provision for the remuneration of some of them was not in-
frequent. Thus we read of " Constable's acres," " Eeevewick
lands," and " Beadlewick lands," which were either held by
the tenure of service in turn as Constable or as Reeve and
Beadle respectively, or else were enjoyed for the year by those
who served in those offices. 3 Sometimes there was a particular
profitable right attached to one of the offices, such as the
profits of the pound, the forfeitures of swine found unringed or
at large, or the money penalties incurred for breach of stint
of common. More usually, however, the officers found such
remuneration as they got in their power to exact small
customary fees. The profitable character of the Steward's
fees is often alluded to. " Court-keeping " on behalf of Lords
of Manors, or as deputy for their Stewards, was, at any rate
in the seventeenth century, one of the recognised means of
1 As, for instance, at Torquay ; sec History of Torquay, by J. T. White,
1878, p. 134.
2 The leading instance of a Lord's Court having salaried officers, and, down
to 1780, levying its own rate for their payment, is that of Manchester, which
we subsequently describe in detail (p. 99). In the Manors of Stepney and
Hackney, in 1622, then almost entirely rural in character, the Reeve was in each
case entitled to a salary of 2 : 13 : 4 and 3:6:8, together with a piece of
cloth for a coat (Treatise on Copyfwlds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 508-533).
3 The Village Community, by G. L. Gomine, 1890, pp. 274-275. We note
that in the fourteenth century, in Forncett Manor, there were 20 acres designated
"Reeveship lands," and 15 acres " Messorship lands," which were charged with
an annual burden of two shillings per acre for the 'benefit of the two tenants
serving those offices (The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-
1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906, pp. 50-51).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 71
livelihood for the young barrister. 1 But there were evidently
other fees. The Bailiff or Beadle of the Court might, for
instance, get a fee for administering the oath to persons
newly appointed. " He had been sworn in as a Pig-ringer by
the Court Leet, and paid fourpence for his oath," deposed
one of the parties to a settlement case in 1792, when the
judges held that this office was one " of great antiquity and
serviceable to the parish." 2 Whether the Court of the Manor,
calling itself either Court Leet or Court Baron, had any legal
authority to levy any compulsory tax, was never decided by the
Superior Courts. But it was not uncommon for the Jury, in
order to provide the Reeve or Hayward or Fieldsmen with the
small sums necessary to effect petty improvements in the
commonfields, or to carry out certain necessary repairs, to
order that a levy of a few pence or a few shillings per beast
should be made, the amount being collected from all the
users of the common lands by the officers concerned. 3 We
occasionally see this simple financial transaction expanding
into a system of buying and selling " stints," or rights of
common, either for the common benefit or for the convenience
of individual owners. We may even find instances (as at
Great Tew) of the levy being made, not per beast, but on the
annual value of all the tenements, like the Poor Bate. 4
.The Undifferentiated Court, as it existed between 1689
and 1835, might conceivably be the result of a gradual co-
alescence and merging of previously existing separate Courts ;
or it might, as we are inclined to believe, be a continuance of
1 1 James I. c. 5 (1603) ; see the Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North,
edited by Rev. A. Jessopp, 1887, for a good description of " court-keeping " about
1680. " Some few years ago there was a design of bringing a Bill into Parliament
for regulating the fees of Stewards of Manors, but the Legislature thought
it much too delicate a matter to interfere in, and the design was dropped "
(Treatise on Copylmlds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 454).
2 R. v. Inhabitants of Whittlesey, 4 J.R. 807 ; Fenland Notes and Queries,
vol. i. p. 253. In London, in the nineteenth century, the unfortunate house-
holder compelled by a surviving Manorial Court to serve as Constable was some-
times mulcted of half a crown by the officer of the Court who administered the
oath (Second Report on the State of the Police in the Metropolis, 1817, p. 394).
3 To cite one example out of many, the Court of Hitchin in 1819 levied
fifteen pence per beast (English Village Community, by F. Seebohm, 1883, pp.
443-453).
4 In a few exceptional cases, of which we shall subsequently describe
Manchester and Lewes as the chief, this levy by the Lord's Court became a
substantial rate for the purposes of urban government (pp. 103, 173).
7* THE COURT IN RUINS
a simple tribunal, in which the process of differentiation had
not yet begun. But it is not uncommon to find, where two
or more sessions of the Court are held each year, a certain
difference made between the business done at these several
occasions. What we have called the property business the
admissions and surrenders, and the receipt of fines and heriots
took place, if required, apparently at every Court. The
trial of civil actions took place, apparently, from three weeks
to three weeks, or whenever the Court was held, a Jury being
summoned only when required. The appointment of officers,
whether Keeve, Beadle, or Hay ward on the one hand, or
Constable, Ale-taster, or Scavenger on the other, occurred only
once a year, normally at the Michaelmas Court. Sometimes
the presentment of nuisances and other specifically Court Leet
business is confined to the same occasion, which is often
designated as the Lawday, 1 the View of Frankpledge, or the
Leet. 2 In the Manor of Wistow (Yorkshire) the particular
Sessions of the Lord's Court that was held at Lammas was
" the fearing (i.e. affeering) Court," at which apparently the
amercements of offenders were assessed. 3 During the eighteenth
century we meet with a certain number of cases in which the
Steward has plainly attempted to distinguish between the busi-
ness done by this Court. Thus at Braintree, from 1709 onwards,
the Steward tries to make a distinction in his records between
the Court Leet on the one hand and the Court Baron and
Customary Court on the other. There is still only one Court
held, and only one Jury summoned. But the appointment of
Constables and other officers, together with the presentments
of nuisances, are entered in the book under the heading " Visus
franc plegum cur." ; whilst a separate heading on the same
1 Thus the customs of the Manor of Worplesdon in Surrey prescribed that
Courts were to be held twice a year, once with a Lawday (Law of Copyholds,
by Chas. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 559). At Braunton in Devon-
shire there used to be "Monthly Courts" for dealing with civil suits, and four
times a year a " Law Court," at one of which a Reeve, Ale-tasters, Pound-keeper,
Crier, Beadle, and " Gatewardens " (perhaps from gate, meaning a lane) were
appointed ("The Customs of the Manors of Braunton," by R. Dymond, in Trails-
actions of the Devon Association, vol. xx., 1888, pp. 254-303).
2 In the Manor of Wimbledon (Surrey) the Easter Court was the one desig-
nated as the Leet, when the Headboroughs of the several tithings had to attend
(Law of Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 554-556).
3 History of the Parishes of Sherburn and Ccnvood, by W. Wheater, 1882,
p. 281.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 73
page, " Modo d. Cur. Baron et Customar," precedes the formal
presentment and fining of absent freehold and copyhold
tenants of the Manor, the admissions of new tenants, and the
recording of property transfers. 1 In the Manor of Hitchin,
where the rolls of 1471 describe the Court simply as "the
View of Frankpledge, with the Court held there," those
between 1721 and 1819 reveal a Court which styles itself
Court Leet and Court Baron, but having only one Jury,
called the Homage, doing all the business that was done
appointing Herdsmen and " Pit -keepers," regulating the
common herd and the enjoyment of the common pasturage,
levying a rate of fifteenpence per beast, and presenting
dangerous footpaths and other nuisances. 2 At the beginning
b
of the nineteenth century the language of the entries changes.
We hear not only of the Homage, but of "jurors for our
Lord the King," who make presentments of encroachments,
digging gravel on the common, and other offences for
which fines are imposed and made payable to " the Lord of
the Leet." But this same Jury is presently found equally
presenting the deaths of tenants of the Manor and the
admission of new ones. From 1819 onward the proceedings
become still more differentiated according to the lawyers'
formula. The Court still held as one Court only is now
styled " the Court of the View of Frankpledge of our Sovereign
Lord the King with the General Court Baron of W. W.,
Esquire." There are both " jurors of our Lord the King " and
" the Homage of this Court." They jointly declare " the
1 This is the common form adopted by the Stewards of some scores of Manors
in the South of England belonging to Bishops and chapters, of which, by the
kind permission of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, we have been enabled to
examine the rolls. But these Stewards have usually grouped, along with the
Leet presentments of the "Jury of the King and of the Lord," other present-
ments which clearly form part of the Court Baron business, such as those of the
deaths of freeholders of the Manor and of encroachments on the Lord's waste
confining those under the heading "Modod. Cur. Baron" to other property
business. We may here note that these ecclesiastical Manor rolls were mostly
kept in Latin down to the middle of the eighteenth century, or several genera-
tions later than was elsewhere customary.
2 MS. Manor Rolls, Hitchin (Herts), for 1470-1471, in Public Record Office
(portfolio 177, No. 60) ; and those from 1721 onward, in possession of the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests, to whom we are indebted for the privilege
of inspection. The roll for 1819 is printed in The English Village Community,
by F. Seebohm, 1883, pp. 443-453 ; see also History of Hertfordshire, by N.
Salmon, 1728, p. 162 ; The Royal Manor of Hitchin, by Wentworth Huyshe, 1906.
74 THE COURT IN RUINS
boundaries, extent, rights, jurisdiction, and customs of tho
said Manor." The Lord, they assert, has " Court Leet and
View of Frankpledge " twice a year, and also " General and
Special Courts Baron and Customary Courts at his will."
The Court Leet appoints two Constables, six Headboroughs,
two Aleconners, two Leather Searchers and Sealers, and one
Bellman, who acts also as Watchman and Crier. The Leet
Jury presents various nuisances. The Homage has its own
presentments about the customs relating to property, the
freedom of the market from tolls, and the obligation of the
Lord to provide the pound and stocks. Can we believe that
this new and sudden elaboration of what had, for three
centuries at least, been a single undifferentiated Court, with a
single Jury, indicates anything more than the historical
knowledge and antiquarian zeal of a new Steward of the
Manor ?
Whatever was the Court, its business was, it is clear, of
the most varied kind. Thus, in the little town of Brain tree in
Essex, which we have already described as being ruled by an
enigmatical Select Vestry, or " Four and Twenty," l we see the
Lord's Court, between 1616 and 1813, appointing Constables,
Ale-tasters, Fish and Flesh Tasters, and Leather Searchers;
presenting nuisances as distinguished from Manorial defaults ;
enforcing the Assizes of Bread and Ale ; punishing the usual
market offences; acting down to 1713 in conjunction with
the Company of the Twenty-four that we have already
described as the Parish Vestry ; and even levying rates
on the inhabitants for repairing the common pump and
scavenging the streets. At the same meetings of the Court
we have the admission of new tenants of the Manor, the
transfer of properties on death or alienation, and, by the same
Jury, the presentment of encroachments on the Lord's waste,
and the defaults of tenants in not scouring ditches. In the
little Manor of Standon, for which the rolls exist from 1338
to 1773, we see the Lord's Court, down to the first quarter of
the eighteenth century at any rate, equally combining both
Court Baron and Court Leet business making presentments
of highway and other nuisances and forbidding the harbouring
of vagrants and also dealing with admissions, heriots, convey-
1 English Local Government, Vol. I. The Parish and the County.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 75
ances, encroachments on the waste, defaults of tenants, and
other property matters. 1 So in the interesting Lord's Court
at Epvvorth that we have already mentioned, the " customs "
elaborately recorded in 1776 reveal a tribunal at which By-
laws were made, nuisances were presented, the common
pasturage was regulated, officers were appointed, offenders
were fined, new tenants of the Manor were admitted, the fines
for copyhold alienations were fixed, and civil suits between
tenants of the Manor were determined. 2 At Devonport, as we
are told by a local chronicler about 1800, 3 the Lord's Court
" has the privilege of Court Leet and Court Baron, which is
annually held some time in the month of October. ... It
has the power of fines and even of imprisonment for small
offences ; and all horses, cattle, implements, and utensils of any
kind which shall appear to a Coroner's Jury to have occasioned
the death of any person within the Manor, be it of whatever
kind or value, are liable to be forfeited to the Lord of the Manor."
A less familiar function of the Lord's Court, and one that
we suspect was, even in 1689, still of greater public interest
to every inhabitant of the village than those hitherto described,
was the management of the agricultural operations of the little
community. In nearly every Manor there were common
pastures ; sometimes woods into which the tenants of the
Manor might send their pigs ; sometimes valuable hay-meadows
shared by lot or by a primitive scramble ; more frequently
large open " commons " of coarse herbage ; and invariably
roadside strips and odds and ends of unoccupied land forming
part of " the Lord's waste." The simple acts of administration
which the enjoyment of these common rights involved formed
part of the business of every Manor Court. We see appointed
1 History of Standon, by Edward Salt, 1888.
2 History and Topography of the Isle o/Axholmc, by Rev. W. B. Stoneliouse,
1839, pp. 143-149.
3 The Plymouth Dock Guide (circa 1800), p. 28. The right of the Lord
of the Manor to deodand, or forfeiture of any article causing the death of a
human being, was not abolished until 1846 (9 and 10 Victoria, c. 62 ; see
The King's Coroner, by R. H. Wellington, 1905, p. 169). Besides knives and
bludgeons, horses and cattle, the wheel of a vehicle and a mill-wheel have been
thus forfeited. In 1841, after an accident on the Great Western Railway at
Sonuing, a railway carriage is said to have been taken by the Lord of the Manor
as a deodand. In 1840 the deodand was valued by the Jury at 2000 in the
case of an accident on the London and Birmingham Railway (Monthly Law
iic, vol. x.. 1841, p. 15).
76 THE COURT IN RUINS
such officers as Herdsmen, 1 to drive out and borne, and watch
over, the pigs, sheep or cattle, horses or asses that the individual
proprietors contributed to the common herd or flock. There
are Common Drivers 2 to see that only the cattle and horses
of the tenants of the Manor use the commons, and these only
up to the permitted number, or " stint of common," free from
disease and properly marked. There are Pig-ringers, whose
duty it is to prevent any swine wandering on the wastes
without being properly ringed. There is a Finder or Pound-
keeper, who arrests stray beasts or animals found at large in
contravention of any of the regulations of the little community,
and confines them in the Pound, until the owner redeems them
by the customary small fine or fee. It is part of the business
of the Lord's Court not only to appoint these officers, but also
to supervise their work, to make and revise the By-laws that
they enforce, and to give them any necessary instructions
from time to time.
The agricultural functions of the Lord's Court extended,
however, to much more than the administration of the common
pastures. The England of 1689 was still, in the main, a
country of " common fields " wide expanses of arable laud,
divided into innumerable narrow strips called "pieces," "selions,"
or "lands," all in separate ownership, but thrown open after
harvest to common pasture ; cultivated severally by their
owners upon a uniform system, usually that of the well-known
three years' course. 8 Each Manor had its particular order
of cultivation, by which, for instance, approximately one-third
of its arable area was devoted, in rotation, to "tilthgrain"
or winter corn, " etchgrain " or spring corn, and fallow. This
" open field " system of agriculture involved a great deal of
collective regulation, which fell, as we shall show, to the Jury
at the Lord's Court, acting through officers for whom the most
significant title was that of Fieldsmen. 4
1 Termed also Swineherds, Hogreeves, Neatherds or Noltherds, Common
Herds, Shepherds, etc. At Hornsea there was a " Nowtherd, whose office it was
to look after the sheep in the pastures" (An Accowni of Hornsea in Holdcrness in
the East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847-64).
2 Or Common Keeper ; often, we suspect, called Haywards, Finders, etc.
3 See, for instance, the evidence yielded by ' ' the Elizabethan Village
Surveys," described by W. J. Corbett in Transactions of Royal Historical
Society, N.S. ix., 1897, pp. 67-87.
4 Or Burlcymeu or Bylaw-men. In the Manor of Hornsea, four "sworn
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 77
We do not think that the extent and complication of this
agricultural business of the Lord's Court has been at all
adequately realised. Professor Maitland, for instance, to
whom we in common with all students of English institutions
owe the deepest gratitude, suggests that " so far as the arable
land is concerned, the common field husbandry, when once it
has been started, requires little regulation. . . . The truth is
that if you have cut up a field into acre strips, given a parcel
of dispersed strips to each of many men, and given to each man
a right to turn out his beasts on the whole field during a cer-
tain part of the year, you have made an arrangement which
maintains itself with unhappy ease. These men must follow
the accustomed course. If one man strives to break through
it, he must straightway trample on his neighbour's crops or
suffer his own to be trampled on, for only as a rare exception
is there a beaten way to a strip. . . . We underrate the
automatism of ancient agriculture and of ancient government." l
However true may be this suggestion about the common
agriculture of the English Manor of the thirteenth century
and on this we offer no opinion it was, we think, certainly
not true of many an English Manor between 1689 and 1835.
By that time, at any rate, even the simplest three -course
system included some variety and choice among crops. More-
over, even the smallest Manor was divided into more than
three parts, 2 and these parts necessarily differed among them-
selves in their requirements. The actual operations to be
performed during the year at the various parts of the area of
the Manor, were, even in 1689, not very different in number
or diversity from those performed over the same area to-day.
We suggest, in fact, that the Manor had, somehow or another,
to arrive at nearly as many separate small decisions in the
tenants of the Manor were annually appointed at the Court as Bylaw-men,
commonly two for Hornsea Fields and two for Southorp. Their office was, among
other things, to look after the stocking of the pastures by the fanners and
owners of common rights ; and they also directed the employment of ' the Town's
ploitgh ' or ' Common plough ' " (An Account of Hornsea in Holderness in the
East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847, p. 64).
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 25.
2 This was the case even in earlier times. Thus, in the Manor of Forncett,
Norfolk, in the fourteenth century, " the rolls contain no clear indication that
there were within the vill three great fields. . . . 'Campi' are mentioned,
but they were numerous and small " (The Economic Development of a Norfolk
Manor, 1086-1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906, p. 27).
7 8 THE COURT IN RUINS
course of the year as those which occupy the time and thought
of a modern farmer. It had to be settled each year which
seed wheat, barley, oats, rye, sainfoin, turnips, grass, clover,
rye-grass, " thetches " or peas * should be sown in each
of the numerous subdivisions of the great fields. The
dates at which these separate sections were to be opened and
closed to common pasture had to be fixed. There were
different kinds of common pasture to be arranged for in varying
proportions, according to the common needs sheepfolds in
such and such a field, up to such and such a date ; horses in
such and such a field ; the " cow common " to be in such and
such a place ; the " horse hitching " in another. In order to
keep the various parts of the land in good condition, the kind,
and still more the degree, of use to which they might be
severally put had each year to be determined with considerable
care, and portions set apart from time to time to be allowed
to lie a summer unused, in order that they might recover.
The various offences against the order of the Manor the
trespasses on each other's strips, the illicit use of the pasturage,
the straying of animals into the corn, neglecting fences, or
disobeying the orders as to the course or the dates of cultiva-
tion had all to be prosecuted and tried at the Court. 2 The
1 Even in the fourteenth century at least four crops were regularly cultivated
in England, and a choice had therefore to be made. ' ' The areas assigned to
the different kinds of crops varied somewhat from year to year " (ibid. p. 28).
2 We must own to being surprised at the paucity of the records of the actual
presentment and punishment of such predial offences. We imagine that the
village may have known how to compel obedience to the communal decisions by
sanctions less formal and less dilatory than the tardy amercement by the
Michaelmas Jury. But many examples can be found in the records of Manor
Courts if they are sought for. Thus the MS. rolls of the Court of the Manor
of Hitchin for 1470-71 record the presentment and amercement of persons for
allowing a hedge to grow on to a lane, ploughing up a greenway, encroaching
on a greenway, ploughing up a balk, and ploughing the end of a "Land" to
harm (Court Rolls in Public Record Office, portfolio 177, No. 40 ; an example
that we owe to the kindness of Mr. Seebohm). The rolls of the Court held at
Gnossall, Staffordshire, in the sixteenth century contain many references to
similar offences (The Manor mid Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1905, pp.
188, 191, 192, 195, 198, 201). So, at Epworth, at the end of the seventeenth
and beginning of the eighteenth century we see the Court fining persons for
allowing their cattle to stray into the cornfield, for suffering their fences to
lie down, for keeping sheep in the cornfield after the date fixed for their removal,
and for riding over the cornfield (" Notes from the Court Rolls of the Manor of
Epworth," by C. Jackson, in the Rfliquary, vol. xxiii., 1883, pp. 44-48, 89-92,
174-175). In our subsequent account of the Manorial Borough of Godmanchester
we shall give other examples (p. 184).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 79
common bull and boar had to be provided, and regulations
made for their use. 1 There were always gaps in the hedges
to be repaired, gates to be mended, paths and roads to be put
in order, ditches to be -scoured, and the walls of the pound to
be kept up. There might even be, as at Hornsea in the
East Riding of Yorkshire, the " town's plough " or " common
plough " to be looked after and managed. This, we are told,
" was an implement of great size, used for making deep furrows
in the fields for drainage ; and for this purpose, when the
ground was in a proper condition, the Bylaw-men, at their
discretion, called on the farmers for the requisite force for
managing the plough ; this was six or eight or more oxen (at
that time much used for draught), headed by two horses, with
several men and boys." 2 We shall, in subsequent chapters,
describe the large part that agricultural management of this
sort played in the business transacted by such a Manorial
Borough as Godmanchester, and by such a Municipal Corpora-
tion as Berwick-on-Tweed. Here we shall confine ourselves
to one leading instance of similar business performed, on no
inconsiderable scale, by the Court of the Manor.
The Manor of Great Tew in Oxfordshire, apparently co-
extensive with the Parish of the same name, distinguished in
history as the home and place of burial of Falkland, had,
during the eighteenth century, probably about as many
inhabitants as it has to-day, namely, between three and four
hundred. These three or four score of families were, nearly
all of them, engaged in and dependent on the cultivation of
the three thousand acres of the Manor. The management of
these agricultural operations nowadays performed individually
1 The provision of the Manor Bull and Boar is frequently made the subject
of presentments. In the Manor of Fulham the obligation was declared by the
Lord's Court to be on the Rector, in respect of his great tithea (Presentments of
1550 and 1680, in Fulham Old and New, by C. J. Feret, 1900, vol. ii. pp.
120-121). So it was in 1819 at Hitchin (English Village Community, by
F. Seebohm, 1883, pp. 443-453). The following is a common form of present-
ment in Manors of the South of England among the Court Leet business. " We
do present A. B. , being a tenant of the Lord of the Manor, shall keep a bull or a
boar for the tenants" (MS. Manor Rolls, l< Court of View of Frankpledge, "
Caddington, Essex, 22nd May 1713, among the archives of the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners). The custom is referred to in Shakespeare's Henry IV., Act ii,
scene 2, and in the last chapter of Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
2 This interesting survival continued, as one of the regular functions of the
Lord's Court, down to the local Inclosure Act of 1809 (An Account of Hornsca
in ffolderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847, pp. 64-65).
So THE COURT IN RUINS
by the half a dozen capitalist farmers as exclusively private
concerns formed, it is clear, the principal part of the business
of the " Vis. Franc. Pledg. cum Cur. Baron, prehonorabilis
Antonii dni. vice comit. de Falkland dni. Manerii," held every
October. The presentments of the Jury of this Court, probably
a majority of all the owners of the strips of land to be
cultivated, give us a picture of the variety and intricacy of
the decisions which had to be come to even in the Court of a
tiny village. We see how numerous and complicated were
these decisions, even in a normal year, without any alteration
of the customary three years' course. But we are able to do
more than that. We may even see the little community
deciding, in 1*761, on the revolutionary step of changing from
a three to a nine years' course at a date, be it noted, when
many a capitalist farmer was still wedded to the old-fashioned
routine, 1 thus indicating that agricultural administration by
the Lord's Court was not necessarily so inefficient nor so
unprogressive as is sometimes supposed. We append extracts
from the Court rolls for the years 1692, 1756, 1759, and
1761 respectively. 2
Orders of 2lst April 1692
We do order to make a horse hich [hitching] 3 for this year,
and we do agree that it shall be from the Pool head up the pool
1 A similar agricultural revolution is recorded of the village of Hunmanby
in Yorkshire, some time prior to 1794. By unintelligent cultivation, the
commonfields had become "worn-out." At last the co-owners of the strips
were persuaded to adopt a six years' course of (1) turnips fed off by sheep, (2)
seeds, (3) seeds, (4) seeds, (5) wheat, (6) oats or pease. The grass seeds,
hurdles and nets, and wages of the shepherd were paid for, and the sheep
supplied, by the co-owners in proportion to their holdings. The Field-reeves
and Shepherd were appointed, regulations made, and the dates of the various
operations determined, we are told, at meetings of those concerned, which
may have been simply Courts of the Manor (General View of the Agriculture of
the East Riding of Yorkshire, by Isaac Leatham, 1794, pp. 45-46; The English
Peasantry, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, p. 88).
2 We are indebted for these interesting records to Mr. M. E. Boulton, the
present Lord of the Manor ; and (for those of the latter years) to Mr. Adolphus
Ballard, M.A., Town Clerk of Woodstock, and Clerk to the Oxford Board of
Guardians, author of Notes on the History of Chipping Norton, 1893 ; Chronicles
of the Royal Borough of Woodstock, 1896 ; The Domesday Boroughs, 1905 ;
The Domesday Inquest, 1907, etc. Mr. Ballard's stimulating researches lead us
to look forward with interest to further historical work from his pen.
3 For other uses of "hitching the fields," "hitchland," and "hatching
ground," see The English Peasantry, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, pp. 23-30, 76, 81.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 81
side to Hollo Lake, and up Hollo Lake to the upper side of
William Watson's . . . and so along the hade [head ?] way to the
end of William Keynold's headland end. And so it shall come
for[e]lands [?] on the home side of the wat[e]ry balke in Millslads,
and every Land into the great Pool the head shall go with the
land ; he that maketh default shall forfeit to the Lord of the Manor
for every default 1.
And we do further order that the aforesaid hichin[g] shall
be tide [tied ?] with horses and e[a]ten of [f] by or before the
17th day of Aug. next, and none to be mowed or cut or carried
away, . . .
We do order that the winter corn-field shall be from the horse
hi[t]ching all up the west side of Wood Way, all up to the up[p]er
side of Whete [Wheat ?] land.
We do order to keep ten sheep for a yard-land for this summer
common and no more ; the defaulter shall forfeit to the Lord of the
Manor 4d. for every sheep and 1 pen[n]y to the tellers for every
default.
We do order to keepe the cow common on the 1 4th day of
May and not before, and all the gaps in Down he[d]ge and ... to
be stopped sufficiently, every man his own gaps, by or befor the
same day.
We do order to keep but one horse for the yard-land and no
more, and there shall be no mare nor mares tide [tied] in the
common field. . . .
We do order that no man shall ti[e] his horse or horses in the
corn-field. . . .
We do order the sheep and folds to be reed [?] out of
the corn-field by or before the 22nd day of this instant
April. . . .
We do order that no man shall baite his horse or horses in
hollters [halters ?] or out of hollters in the field, nor no man shall
ti[e] his horse or horses on mowed ground till the horses hi[t]ching
be reede [?]. . . .
And every man shall ty [tie] his own ground till a quarter of
the field be reede [1] of the grain that it was laid for under the
same fine.
And we do order that no man letteth any Land on the Sainfoin
Hill to any out-town man, he or they, be them whom they will,
shall have no more power after he hath taken of[f] his own crope
to ty [tie] any horse or horses to bait any sort of catill [cattle] on
the said grounds. . . .
We do order that every man shall scour up his trench at Hollo
Lake by or before May day next, . . .
We do order that every man shall fence his own pe[a]se Lands
from Butcher's Row he[a]d to Wood-way Ford and from Bryer
VOL. II. PT. I r :
82 THE COURT IN RUINS
Lands ford to Tew Park corner, by or before the 7th day of May
next. . . .
We do order the jury to mete [meet] on the 22nd day of
this inst. April by 8 of the clock in the morning, at Preston
Pool Hill. . . .
We do order the Fieldsmen and empower them [to set] 8 horse
commons and no more, and they are to set to every husbandman
that hath most need one apiece, to the millers 4 apiece if - need be ;
3/ to be for every common.
Orders of 28th October 1756
It is ordered by the Jury that no person shall keep more than
eighteen sheep to the yardland this winter, and every person shall
brand his sheep or mark them on or before 21st of November next,
and to lay as many upon the turnips as they will, which shall not
be deemed any part of the eighteen above mentioned ; the defaulter
to pay three shillings and fourpence. 1
. . . that the cows shall break the hangings of Horse Hill in a
fortnight after the Cow Hill is broke, and in a week after the
hanging is broke to break the hanging of Chescomb Hill and the
top of Chescomb Hill, or as the Fieldsmen shall direct; and the
herd not to break without the Fieldsmen's direction, the defaulter
for every default to forfeit to the Lord of the Manor three shillings
and fourpence.
. . . that every Cow Common occupied by any person that has
not at least a quartern of land in his occupation shall be deemed a
Cottage Common, and every person that occupies more than a
quarter of a Yardland and occupies more than two Cows Common
[a] yardland, all that is over shall and is hereby deemed Cottage
Commons ; and it is ordered by the Jury that every Cottage
Common, or the owner or occupier thereof, shall pay (in lieu of
having the hanging of Horse Hill and the top and hanging of
Chescomb Hill laid to the Cow Common this next Summer) the
sum of five shillings, which money is hereby ordered to be paid to
the Fieldsmen on or before the twelfth day of May next ; and if
any cottager shall not be able to sell his Common for fourteen
shillings a common, the Fieldsmen, upon having notice thereof on
the day aforesaid, he shall be obliged to pay him or them after the
rate of nine shillings a Common at Gunpowder Treason 2 following,
1 The opening and closing formal words of each subsequent order are
omitted from the text for the sake of brevity. All the penalties for disobedience
were increased from three and fourpence in 1756 and 1759 to ten shillings
in 1761, the year of the revolution in the course of cultivation.
2 Meaning, of course, the 5th November.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 83
which money so raised by the five shillings on every Cottage
Common shall be laid out in scouring the darnings [1 dammings],
trenching the Cow Common, mending the rudaAvay [1 roadway],
and doing other good husbandry throughout the Field without
regard to one's man ground rather than another, which nine
shillings a Common is to be rated upon the cattle that are laid
upon the Common, share and share alike. . . .
. . . that no person that is to occupy lands in the Common
Field of Great Tew shall have liberty to sell Sheep Commons to
any person that does not occupy at least a quarter of a yardland in
the Common Field, but if they have any Commons to sell they are
to give notice to the Fieldsmen a week before Martinmas next, and
if the Fieldsmen can't sell them to people that occupy at least a
quarter of a yardland, the Commons are ordered to be paid for
after the rate of ninepence a Sheep Common, to be raised by a levy
the same as the Poor's Lev} 7 . 1 . . .
. . . that the sheep shall be hained off the young sainfoin all
this winter, and the Park Hill sainfoin at Martinmas next ; and the
Little Oxenden sainfoin [is] to lie to the Common till Mayday
next, and Chescomb Hill its hangings to lie to the Sheep Common
till Mayday next. . . .
. . . that the horses shall be hained out of the Commonfield
on or before the 31st day of December next. . . .
. . . that the Farr Hill shall be broke up this winter for
turnips, and that Upper Barnwell shall be winter ploughed and
sowed grass seeds with the spring grain to be sown thereon next
spring ; and that the Hayward or Fieldsmen shall pound all
manner of cattle off the turnips the same as if the Farr Hill was
cornfield. . . .
. . . that the horse hitchin [? hitching] shall be from Park
Hill to London Way on the Old Hill next to Galleythorns, one
Land to a yardland, and that the remainder of the Hill shall lie for
a summer fallow, and Oxenden sainfoin to be fed with sheep next
summer with it. . . .
. . . that between the hedges, being the clover quarter, shall
be hained from the sheep on or before the Martinmas next, and
from all manner of cattle on or before the 31st day of December,
and the gaps in the Millway hedge and Alice hedge to be stopped
by the owners on or before the 31st day of December next; and
every person to mound their own Landsends. . . .
. . . that the Jury meet on Preston Pool Hill on the 16th
November next by ten o'clock to do such matters between tenant
and tenant and Lord and tenant as shall be wanting. . . .
. . . that Priest Croft and the Leys shall be added to the Cow
1 Note the change from a levy per head of cattle, or per right of common
to a levy upon the annual value of each tenement.
84 THE COURT IN RUINS
Common for the year 1758, and the Northfields both to be laid to
the Cow Common the year 1759. . . .
The Jury appoints T. L. and W. L. to be Constables.
The Jury appoints G. L., J. B., T. L., and J. M. Fieldsmen for
the year ensuing.
The Jury appoints J. B. to be Hayward for the year ensu-
ing.
The Jury presents the death of T. S., Quaker, by which there
is a yardland and a half, and a small close called the Longgreen,
fallen to the Lord of the Manor.
The Jury presents that Widow F.'s lifehold tenement (is) going
to decay, and that she ought to repair the same.
Orders of 12nd October 1759
It is Ordered by the Jury to sow all Little Oxenden, the
Furlong called the Plank Pitts, Ten Lands over Oxenden Bottom
next to Woodway, and Eight Lands next to Woodway in Ellden
Stump furlong, pease the next spring, being in the year 1760, and
in the spring 1761 to sow the same with barley, and to lay the
same down with ryegrass and clover, the defaulter for every
default to forfeit to the Lord of the Manor three shillings and
fourpence. . . .
... to sow turnips upon Wheatland, Piked and Broad Castors,
Hollow Marsh Hill, and to Alepath, except the furlongs next to
Woodway, the next spring, being the year 1760, and in the spring
1761 to sow the same barley and lay it down with ryegrass and
clover. . . .
. . . that Wheatland, Piked and Broad Castors, and Hollow-
marsh Hill, and from Churchway to Alepath, to be hained from all
manner of cattle next summer on the 14th day next after Old
Midsummer. . . .
. . . that the Slad from the Brook by Woodway side up to
Hollow Marsh, and all the furlongs shooting into Woodway, includ-
ing Mr. Nevill's Hadland [? headland] at Hoare's Stone, and all the
furlongs above Chipping Norton way from Woodway to Rattock,
be sowed thetches for a horse hitchin [? hitching] this next spring,
and to be sowed wheat as soon as the thetches are tied off, and in
the spring 1761 to be sowed barley and laid down with grass
seeds. . . .
... to sow Lent grain the next spring on the furlong below
Chipping Norton Way and all the rest part of the Westfield, and in
the spring or summer 1761 to sow the same turnips, and to hain
the said turnips from all manner of cattle on the 14th day next
after Old Midsummer 1761,
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 85
. . . that the hangings of Horse Hill and the hangings of
Chescomb Hill be pastured by the cows this next summer 1760,
and that Forest Croft and the Leys be pastured by the cows in the
summer 1761, and that the two North fields be pastured by the
cows in the summer 1762. . . .
. . . that the Lands' ends on Chescomb Hill be mounded by
the owners of the Lands ; and gates to be hung on the road by the
Constables on or before the 16th day of November next. . . .
. . . that the Lands' ends on Horse Hill be mounded by the
owners of the Lands on or before a fortnight before Old Ladyday
next ; and that the gaps in Down Hedge against Horse Hill and
the Hollow way side be mounded by the owners at the same time ;
and that the gates be put up by the Constable by the same
time. . . .
. . . that all Park Hill, and all Oxenden (except what is
before ordered to be sowed pease), ryegrass and clover this next
spring. . . .
. . . that the occupiers of land in the Commonfield shall have
the liberty of laying as many sheep on their turnips as they will
carry, which said sheep are not to be deemed any part of the
sixteen above mentioned.
But in case of wet weather while the sheep are at turnips they
are to have the liberty of Great Oxenden and Little Oxenden
before it is sowed and nowhere else ; and no person that has sheep
at turnips that does not occupy at least a quarter of a yardland
shall have the liberty of coming upon either of the Oxendens in
wet weather. . . .
. . . that the folds be hained out of the winter Cornfields on
or before the 21st November next ; and no person shall turn upon
his neighbour's winter corn (except what is sowed amongst the
turnips on the turnip division) after the 21st of November. . . .
. . . that the horses shall be hained out of the Commonfield on
or before St. Thomas, Old Style, next. . . .
. . . that Farr Hill shall lie for a sheepwalk all next summer
and that three sheep to a Yardland may be laid on the Farr Hill
three weeks before May Day next, which three sheep shall be over
and above the sixteen sheep laid upon the Winter Common, for the
encouragement of them and an inducement to all occupiers of land
that sow turnips. . . .
. . . that the Old Hill shall be mowed for hay next summer,
and the sheep to have it afterwards till Martinmas then next
following, and no longer. . . .
. . . that the Old Hill and Galleythorns be hained from sheep
to-morrow, and all Park Hill from all manner of cattle and folds at
the same time. . . .
. . . that Churchway be mounded on both sides from Ayles-
86
hedge to Woodway, by the Yardland, on or before a month before
Martinmas. . . .
. . . that the gaps in Ayle.shedge be mounded by the Owners
on or before Ladyday next. . . .
It is Ordered by the Jury to mound the sainfoin from Wood-
stock Way to the Mill hedge, every Land's end by the owner of
the Land ; and where the furlong shoots up the brook, to be
mounded by the two outside hides ; and to mound the wheat at
Huckerswell, every one their own Land's ends ; and to mound the
barley from Cloncil Corner to Barn well Ford, every man his
Land's ends ; and the barley in Brook Furlong and Long Furlong
to be mounded by the two outside hides ; and the gaps to be
stopped in Millway hedge on or before Mayday. . . .
Orders of 23rd October 1761
It is Ordered by the Jury that Horse Hill be mounded by the
two outside hides and the owners of the Lands' ends, on or before
the 16th day of November next; the defaulter for every default to
forfeit to the Lord of the Manor ten shillings.
. . . that the grass seeds on Alepath Furlong, Hollowmarsh
Hill, Wheatland and Broad Castors and Picked Castors, Little
Oxenden, the Plank Pits, Eldenstump Furlong, and all Great
Oxenden and Park Hill be hained from the sheep on the 22nd day
of November next ; and the said grass seeds and the sainfoin to be
hained from all manner of cattle on the 21st day of December
next, the defaulter for every default to forfeit to the Lord of the
Manor ten shillings.
. . . that the Cow Common be hained from horses on the
21st day of December next, and the Cow Common and Chescomb
Hill to be hained from all manner of cattle on the 23rd day of
March next. . . .
. . . that the sheepfolds be hained out of the Cornfields on the
22nd of November next. . .
. . . that the horse hitchiri [? hitching] be in the Fallowfield
beginning at the side next Cuckoo's Holt, a yard to a Yardland ;
and that the horses shall not be hitched or tied on any other
part of the Commonfield till after it is mowed, except on the
highways. . . .
. . . that all Huckerswell be sowed turnips this next summer,
1762, and sowed barley with grass seeds, spring 1763 ; mowed for
hay, summer 1764; sheepwalk, 1765; oats, 1766; fallow, 1767;
wheat, 1768; pease, 1769. . . .
. . . that between the hedges shall be sowed turnips in
summer 1763, and every year after for eight years after the
manner of Huckerswell.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 87
. . . that Upper Barnwell be sowed turnips, 1764, and every
year after for eight years after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that the Lower side of Woodstock way beyond the Brook
shall be sowed turnips, 1765, and every year after for eight years
after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that Galleythorns and the Old Hill be sowed turnips,
1766, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that Park Hill and Great Oxenden be sowed turnips,
1767, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that Upper Oxenden, Plankpits, and Ten Lands next
Woodway, in both Eldenstump Furlong and over Oxenden Bottom
and Wheatland and Broad and Picked Castors and Hollowmarsh
Hill to Alepath be sowed turnips, 1768, and every year after for
eight years after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that from Alepath to the Great Pool be sowed turnips,
1769, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that the Westfield from Alepath and Woodwayford be
sowed barley or oats next spring, and ryegrass and clover ; that it
shall be mowed for hay, 1763; sheepwalk, 1764; oats, 1765; fallow,
1766; wheat, 1767; and pease, 1768. . . .
. . . that the grass seeds at Great Oxenden and Park Hill
shall be broke for the sheep at Old Ladyday next and not
before. . . .
. . . that all the grass seeds sowed last spring shall be mowed
for and hay to Park Hill; and Great Oxenden to be sheepwalk,
and all the grass seeds besides after they are mowed, except
Chescomb Hill. . . .
. . . that the Hay ward shall pound all horses, pigs, hogs, etc.,
that are found grassing about the waste in the town.
The Jury elect S. D. Hayward, and agree to pay him two
shillings a yardland ; and he is to keep the crows from off the
wheat immediately that the wheat is out of danger ; and to keep
the crows five weeks before harvest from off the wheat till reaping
time; and' to keep the Field free from moles and wants, 1 and is to
employ his whole time in doing the said duty.
This vivid picture of the administration of commonfield
agriculture by the Lord's Court raises some interesting
questions. How did the twelve or fifteen members of the
Jury of Great Tew manage to formulate all these com-
plicated orders ? We learn from contemporary letters that
1 I.e. hedgehogs.
88 THE COURT IN RUINS
their discussions were prolonged and tempestuous. In 1755
the Court had actually to be adjourned because these " fathers
of the hamlet " could not arrive at an agreement by nightfall.
When the spring came round there arose " a great demur
amongst the town's people about some of them trespassing
the last Court Order " ; and the local representative of the
Steward was obliged to send to him for the original document,
or a copy of it, "for the Fieldsmen," who were to enforce it.
In October the Lord of the Manor himself writes to his solicitor :
" I am afraid I must trouble you to come and hold a Court
here, though I doubt 'tis probable we shall be obliged to
adjourn again as we did last year on account of squabbles."
Within five years, as we have seen, the reformers got their
way, and made the great revolution of adopting a nine years'
course. That this did not do away with argument and
discussion, we may realise from the fact that in 1763 the
Lord of the Manor reports that they " could not finish the
business of the Court till near ten this evening." ]
The problem remains why we possess so little record of
the agricultural decisions of the Lord's Court, which must,
in thousands of Manors, have been formulating orders
analogous to those of Great Tew. In Manor after Manor
we find the books of records kept by the Stewards between
1689 and 1835 giving attention to little else than the
admissions of new tenants, the surrenders of copyholds, and
other conveyancing business. There is a growing attenuation
of the record. Sometimes the appointment of officers is
recorded, sometimes not. The presentments of nuisances die
away. The pleas in debt and trespass, with the verdicts arrived
at, are often not entered at all, or entered in a separate book.
When, as at Great Tew, the Jury had long and elaborate
presentments, they prepared these on separate sheets of
paper, which they delivered, as we are elsewhere expressly
told, " to the Steward to enter in the Court rolls." 2 It is
plain that the Steward, who was not interested in the tenants'
agricultural operations, omitted the very heavy task of copying
1 MS. Letters from Great Tew to Edward Ryves of Woodstock, 9th April and
23rd October 1756 and 28th October 1763 ; in the possession of Mr. Ballard.
2 Treatise, on Copyholds, by C. "VVatkius, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 383.
The interesting presentments of the Jury of Great Tew are written on large sheets
of paper, those of each year being entirely distinct from those of other years.
THE BAM BURGH COURTS 89
these lengthy presentments into his book ; and the loose sheets,
like the corresponding loose papers of the Vestry, the Municipal
Corporation, and the Court of Quarter Sessions, have been far
less perfectly preserved, and even less carefully looked for,
than the bound volumes. 1
We might leave at this point our account of the Court
of the Manor, content with the foregoing generalised descrip-
tion of its constitution and procedure. But, to give greater
actuality to our survey, we take from our collection half a
dozen specimens for individual description. In these Manors
the Courts will be seen to range from a wholly undifferentiated
tribunal transacting all kinds of business, through Courts
calling themselves by composite names, but transacting only
one kind of business, up to Courts which correspond, in their
duality, closely with the lawyers' view of what the Lord's
Court ought to be. Whether this duality had always existed,
or whether it was merely the product of a disintegration of
function, we leave to the judgment of the historian.
(i.) The Ba/niburgh Courts
It has been observed that, in more than one respect, the
County of Northumberland has, in the past, been a century
or two later in constitutional development than the more
settled parts of the South of England. Accordingly, it is to
Northumberland that we turn for the best examples of
Manorial Courts continuing in full and unrestricted activity
throughout the eighteenth century. Along the six miles
of wild rocks and sandhills from Budle Point to Beadnell Bay
the little fishing villages and scattered agricultural hamlets
were under the dominion of the Lord of the Castle of
Bamburgh, 2 that rises to this day so picturesquely on its black
rock from amid the sweeping stretches of sparkling white
sand. Here we find a particularly full and varied Manorial
1 For another instance, at Laxton (Notts), see The English Peasantry, by
Gilbert Slater, 1907, ch. ii.
2 In 1704 the Bamburgh Manors, which had belonged to the Forsters, were
acquired by Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and were on his death in 1720
left in trust for charitable purposes. We are indebted to the existing trustees,
and to Mr. W. T. Hinclmarsh of Alnwick, for access to the MS. records from
1695, See also the History of Northumberland, by E. Bateson, vol. i. (1893),
in which some extracts are given (pp. 1G9-172).
90 THE COURT IN RUINS
jurisdiction extending throughout the whole of the period
under our consideration. In the hall of the ancient castle
two Courts were regularly held, the View of Frankpledge and
Court Baron of the Manor of the Castle, with jurisdiction
extending over the whole of the great Manor of about fifty
square miles ; and the Court of the Manor of the " Borough "
of Bamburgh itself, governing the little village that clustered
round the fortress. The Court of the Manor of the Castle
claimed, in 1689, the attendance of some two hundred suitors
of various grades. There were, first of all, the free tenants
of the Manor great personages residing in Scotland and the
South of England, who held lands of the Lord of Bamburgh,
and who, between 1689 and 1835, were regularly summoned
at his Courts, and as regularly " essoined." The real attend-
ants at these Courts were the more assiduous or the more
dependent of the eight or nine score of " Freeholders," " Copy-
holders," " Leaseholders," and " Cottagers " of the " demesnes "
of Bamburgh and North Sunderland, and of the three vills
or townships of Beaduell, Shoreston, and North Sunderland,
together with the " Resiants in Bamburgh Castle " itself, all
of whom are elaborately recited in the records. At this Court,
which was held only once a year (with frequent omissions
in the years between 1695 and 1774) all kinds of business
was transacted. Constables, Pounders, and Ale-tasters were
appointed for each of the three constituent townships. Minor
offences principally trespasses by animals in the common-
fields, nuisances, assaults, and affrays were presented and
amerced. The townships themselves were amerced for non-
repair of pinfolds and stocks. 1 New copyholders were admitted
and successions to property registered. Occasional orders
were made as to the management of the common pasture, the
particular fields in which horses were to be tethered, the
repair of the " headland," 2 and the obnoxious habits of some
of the inhabitants of Beadnell, who had started extracting fish
oil in the streets. 3 But the principal business of the Court
1 MS. Court Rolls, Manor of the Castle of Bamburgh, 1707, etc.
2 Ibid. 1st October 1705.
8 "Ordered that none of the inhabitants of Beaduell shall boil or extract
oil out of fish in the town streets, or within the houses there, the same being
not only noxious and offensive, but also dangerous to the neighbourhood "
(ibid. 22nd April 1719).
THE BAM BURGH COURTS 91
was the trial of civil actions between inhabitants of the
Manor for debts or damages not exceeding 39s. lid. In the
earlier years of the eighteenth century there was always an
array of such actions to be dealt with at every Court. It
was, indeed, a serious offence in any inhabitant to bring before
any other tribunal, whether civil or criminal, any matter
which could be dealt with at the Court of the Manor. In
1705, for instance, we find two of the tenants fined 39s. lid.
each, one for getting the other arrested on a writ issued
by the King's Court at Westminster, and the other for
indicting his adversary at Quarter Sessions. 1 Eight down
to the middle of the nineteenth century this Manorial juris-
diction in civil actions and petty offences was maintained and
continued ; though we note the stream of cases getting
gradually smaller, and all attempt at enforcing an exclusive
jurisdiction is abandoned. 2
The whole of the business of this Court seems to have
been transacted by the dozen or so of jurymen summoned by
command of the Steward. Down to 1707 there was one
Jury only, described as the " Jury of Inquiry and of Trial
of Actions." From 1707 onward we find in the records
always two Juries sworn, a " Jury of Inquiry " and a " Jury
for the Trial of Causes." But the two Juries were, in fact,
the same persons, though the names usually occur in different
orders. 3 It is to be noted that the differentiation of the
1 "Upon the oath of T. H. we present the said H. J. for causing T. H. to
be indicted at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the county,
whereas if he had any cause of action or complaint against the said T. H. the
same might have been redressed and punished in this Court ; for which he is
amerced 39s. lid. Upon oath of H. J. we present T. H. for causing the said
H. J. to be arrested upon a writ out of some of the Courts at Westminster at
the said T. H.'s suit; whereas the cause of action being under 39s. lid. . . .
and therefore cognisable in this Court, he might have had redress in this
Court ; we do therefore amerce him 39s. lid." (ibid. 1st October 1705).
2 The Court appears to have been held usually once a year, even for civil
suits ; but half-yearly meetings occasionally occur, and even (as between 1779
and 1786) other meetings. It was assumed in 1839 that it had the right to
three-weekly sessions, but was then, in fact, held only once a year, with an
average of only one or two cases (House of Commons Return of Courts of
Request, 1840, p. 114).
3 We suspect that the Jury was appointed to serve for the year. A possible
cause of the nominal differentiation between its two main functions of present-
ment and of trial is suggested by an entry of 1748. "In the cause between
Mills and Taylor, A. A. sworn on 'Jury instead of George Taylor" (MS.
Court Rolls, Manor of Bamburgh, 6th July 1748). It was obviously convenient
92 THE COURT IN RUINS
Jury into two Juries bore no resemblance to the lawyers'
distinction between the Homage of the Court Baron and the
Jury of the Court Leet. At Bamburgh the Jury of Inquiry
continued to act both as the Homage of the Lord and the
Jury for the King; admitting new copyholders, regulating
the commons, appointing Constables, and presenting public
nuisances. The second Jury was, as its name implies,
restricted to the trial of " plaints and pleas " between parties. 1
We pass now to the Manor of the Borough of Bamburgh,
for which the same Steward, assisted by the same Bailiff, held
entirely separate Courts. Here again we have the elaborate
array of classes of persons owing suit and service Free
Suitors, Freeholders, Cottagers, Leaseholders, and " Farmers,"
whatever may be meant by this term. 2 But the Court is,
down to 1719, termed, in its records, a Court Baron only;
and we do not feel sure whether (as we shall subsequently
describe in the case of Alresford) the Lord had not retained
the View of Frankpledge and Court Leet when granting to
the " Borough of Bamburgh " the privilege of a separate Court.
The " Borough of Bamburgh " had had, indeed, a long and
eventful history. For more than two hundred years it had
ranked as a " Free Borough," even receiving Royal Charters
and sending members to Parliament. But it was practically
destroyed in the Scotch wars of the fifteenth century ; and it
seems then to have reverted to a position of Manorial subordina-
tion, retaining of its former status nothing more than the
to be able to omit from the Jury for the Trial of Actions persons interested in a
particular suit, without necessarily omitting them from the Jury of Inquiry.
1 It is to be noted that there are (as we have seen in the Courts at Hitchin
and elsewhere) distinct signs that the Stewards latterly tried to make their
Courts what the lawyers were saying that they ought to be. Thus, from 1779,
we find the Jury which does all the main business termed the Jury for our
Lord the King, and the Jury which tries actions only is termed the Homage
Jury for the Trial of Causes (ibid. June and October 1779).
It is interesting to find that in the Manor of Blanchland, also belonging
to the Crewe Trustees, where the Courts were held by the same Steward as those
of Bamburgh, we find practically the same terms used. There is the same
recital of Freeholders, Leaseholders, and Cottagers, as liable to suit and service ;
and the same "Jury of Inquiry and for Trial of Causes." But in this remote
rural Manor there were, from 1785 at any rate, no "causes," and very few
presentments of nuisances, so that the holding of the Court was discontinued
after 1812, in spite of an urgent petition from the inhabitants (MS. Court Rolls,
Manor of Blanchland, 1785-1812).
2 We did not notice any explicit mention of Copyholders, so that it is possible
that " Farmers" here mean "customary tenants " by copy of Court Roll.
THE HAMBURG H COURTS 93
name of Borough, and the separation of its Court from that of
the rest of the Manor. 1 In its decay the Manor of the Borough
passed to the Priory of Nostell in Yorkshire ; which acquired
also the two neighbouring townships of Elford and Fleethani,
and apparently added them to the jurisdiction of the Borough
Court. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the owner-
ship of the Manor of the Borough was reunited with that of
the Manor of the Castle, and presently we find the Steward,
who held both Courts, giving them both the same title of View
of Frankpledge and Court Baron. 2 Both dealt, in fact, with
the same heterogeneous kinds of business, though in differing
proportions. The Court of the Borough, like that of the
Castle, actually empanelled only one set of jurymen for all
its business; and this remained as a single Jury until 1727,
when it became nominally differentiated into a Jury "ad
inquirendum " and a Jury " per treatione causae " (sic), but
nevertheless consisted always of the same twelve or thirteen
persons. The Court of the Borough had, however, its own
distinctive character, both in function and in structure.
It formally admitted new tenants to the " burgageship " of the
Manor of the Borough. It had far more presentments of
nuisances than the Court of the Castle, and these nuisances
were rather more distinctively urban in their character. It
dealt with weights and measures, with the mutual obligations
of millers and their customers, and with the clearing of the
lanes from loose stones. 3 ' It had to make a large number of
regulations for the use of the " Burrow Yards " (or Borough
Yardlands, commonfields under plough), as well as for stinting
the common pastures. 4 What is, however, still more distinctive
1 For Bamburgh as a Borough see History of Northumfierlaiid, by E. Bateson,
1893, vol. i. pp. 114-148. It is mentioned as a Borough in 1197 ; it received
Royal Charters in 1255, 1321, 1332, 1382, and 1405; it was represented
in the Parliament of 1295 ; and it was destroyed between 1419 and 1439.
Its population probably at no time exceeded a few hundreds, but it was divided
into four Wards, and elected four Bailiffs.
2 MS. Court Rolls, Manor of the Borough of Bamburgh, 1719, etc.
3 " Ordered that the several occupiers of the lands and grounds of Bamburgh
shall, upon notice from the Constables, assist to clear the lanes of stones and
molehills" (ibid. 23rd April 1719). "Every person within this Manor shall
grind at the mill they are accustomed to. ... The miller shall wait on his
customers to carry the grist to his mill and back again within forty eight hours'
warning" (ibid. 4th May 1731).
4 "None of the inhabitants of Bamburgh shall for the future put any of
their cattle to feed in any of the Burrow Yards (? Borough Yardlands) until ajl
94 THE COURT IN RUINS
is the fact that, throughout the whole proceedings, we are
conscious of the " Freeholders of the Borough " in the back-
ground, as constituting a standing part of the government,
with functions of their own. We have no records of the
meetings of these Freeholders we have not even any such
reports from them brought into Court as those presented by
the Jury of the Manor of Great Tew but we learn something
about them from the records of the Court itself. We must, of
course, visualise them, not as the owners of freehold houses in
a crowded city, 1 but as the owners of scattered strips of arable
land in the " Borough yards," or common-fields, with rights of
common pasturage. In 1 705 we find them entering into a
Corporate agreement with the Lord, duly ratified and recorded
at the next Court, as to their " free liberty " to depasture on
the Town Moor, to have " the eatage " of certain fields, and to
drive their cattle in summer on the seashore, whilst, if the
weather is very bad, they are to be free to use also the Castle
demesne ground. 2 We see them authorised by the Court to
make " a general rate or assessment " on themselves, in order
to raise a sufficient sum to make 'good the fences ; and to
collect the said rate or tax by one of themselves. 3 We even
find them on one occasion directed to decide upon and, by a
mere majority vote, to assess upon all the inhabitants of the
Borough, for repairing and cleansing the well, a compulsory
rate or tax, which the Court will enforce by distraint. 4 The
the corn groAving thereon shall be led in " (ibid. 9th September 1760). ' ' No stints
of horses shall be kept for sheep, nor sheep for horses, and the stinting Day is to
be 10th of May yearly " (ibid. 9th September 1760). " It is also ordered that the
several rabbit cuts in the said moor ought to be filled up at the end of every
hunting (i.e. shooting) season to prevent all mischiefs by the horses or cattle
falling therein" (ibid. 23rd May 1775). "The several holds in the said moor
which have been made for the purpose of burning for kelp ought to be filled up
at the end of every burning season, and the stones surrounding the same to be
removed" (ibid. 23rd May 1775).
1 We do, however, read that " no person living out of freehold mansion-house
shall keep any horses upon Hamburgh Commons" (ibid. 13th October 1722).
2 Ibid. 2nd October 1705. 3 Ibid. October 1790 ; also 1794.
4 " It is at this Court, by and with the consent of the Jury, thought fit and
ordered that the Freeholders of the Town of Bamburgh do, some time before the
next Court, . . . agree upon and lay an assessment upon every inhabitant or
householder . . . for and towards the repairing and cleansing the Kiln Well,
as to the said Freeholders, or major part of them, shall seem fit and expedient."
Any one refusing to pay was to forfeit one and eightpence, to be levied by distraint
(ibid. 16th October 1696). On the other hand,- the way to the well Avas
ordered to be repaired, not by a tax, but by the tenants of the adjoining lands
(ibid. 15th October 1699).
THE HAMBURGH COURTS . 95
existence in the fourteenth century of a chartered Borough of
Bamburgh makes it probable that the rights and privileges of
the Freeholders of this Manor were but the remnants of a
decayed autonomy. But for this historical probability, we
might almost have seen in them the nascent germ of what, in
other circumstances, developed into such Manorial Boroughs as
Alnwick or Arundel, presently to be described. 1
1 The records of the " Court of View of Frankpledge with Court Baron" of
the Manor of Tweedmouth and Spittal, between 1658 and 1663, with far less
full minutes down to 1819, offer an exceptionally clear view of an Undifferentiated
Court. This Manor, lying opposite the Borough of Berwick-on-Tweed, was
purchased for 570 by the Municipal Corporation in 1652-1657, in order that
the latter might be able to clear out ' ' the numerous company of disorderly,
uncivil, and lawless persons, principally Scotswomen of evil fame," who were
harboured there. The MS. records of the Courts that continued to be held by
the Corporate Lord of the Manor show the extreme heterogeneity of the business.
The fifteen Jurymen who were invariably sworn at each six-monthly Court dealt
indiscriminately, in their presentments, with the appointment of Constables
and the amercement of nuisance-mongers, with actions for debt and the punish-
ment of "a blood and affray," with the lack of a Pound and the admission of
new copyhold tenants of the Manor, with defective weights and measures and the
defaults of tenants in keeping their ditches scoured, with the harbouring of
"inmates " and the keeping of ducks and geese " to abuse the water," with the
grant of a portion of the waste and the ordering of the strangers to find security
that they will not become chargeable, with prohibitions of the boiling of salmon
in the village itself and the method by which "the assessment that was gathered
for repairing the highways" (1663) was to be accounted for by the Bailiffs.
The entries show that the Court passed higgledy-piggledy from one kind of
business to the other, whether it was the presentment of a nuisance, the admission
of a new copyholder, the appointment of a Constable, the verdict in an action
on the case between two inhabitants, or the punishment of a common scold.
But there are variations in the record. From 1658 to 1663 there are numerous
and extremely heterogeneous entries in English, including many civil actions.
From 1663 to 1732 the entries are in Latin, and relate exclusively to the property
business of the Manor. We see no reason to suppose that the busy local tribunal
came suddenly to an end, and we suspect that the presentments of the Jury
(as at Great Tew) were written on separate loose sheets, which a new Steward
neglected to copy into his book. From 1732 to 1764 the entries are in English,
but still exclusively relating to conveyancing, etc. Between 1764 and 1771,
whilst admissions and conveyances, etc., are recorded as by "the Homage"
evidently a new Steward had learnt that this was the legal formula there are a
certain number of " presentments of the Jury," and "orders of the Court,"
relating to the appointment of Constables, nuisances, and weights and measures,
which the Jury went round to inspect. After 1771, again, we have nothing but
conveyances recorded. The Steward makes no entry in this book of the findings
of the Jury in civil suits. Yet we know that this very Court, which determined
dozens of civil actions in the seventeenth century, was still determining them in
the nineteenth century, and had doubtless been doing so continuously. Over
200 summonses were taken out in 1839, over 100 cases heard, and half a dozen
judgments enforced by execution against property (House of Commons Return
of Courts of Request, 1840, p. 125).
96 THE CO UR T IN R UINS
(ii.) The Court Leet of the Savoy
In contrast with the little fishing ports of Northumberland
stands the so-called Precinct of the Savoy, in 1689 a tiny
scrap of densely populated, extra-parochial territory around the
ancient palace, prison, and chapel of the Savoy in Westminster.
Here the Manorial rights have continued to belong to the
Crown, in respect of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Lord's
Court to be regarded, apparently, as exercising only Court
Leet functions has been held uninterruptedly for at least
five centuries down to the present day. 1 Every year during
the past five centuries the Steward, as of old, has held this
ancient Court, the Bailiff formally notifying the residents to
attend, and expressly summoning about a score of them to
serve on the Jury. At the end of the seventeenth century,
and (as the records show) throughout the eighteenth century,
the Court was an effective local governing authority in the
absence of any effective Vestry, the only authority for the
Precinct, other than the much- occupied Middlesex Quarter
Sessions. 2 At the sessions of this Court were appointed the
four Burgesses and the four Assistant Burgesses, each serving
for life, a number to which the Precinct was entitled under
the Act of 1585, in imitation of the constitution of the Court
of Burgesses for Westminster. The Court also appointed
annually from among the respectable householders four
Constables, four Aleconners, and two Flesh-tasters, who were
1 The early records of this Court, mentioned as held in 1399, have dis-
appeared, but the proceedings between 1682 and 1789 are summarised in
precise detail in the Digest of the Proceedings of the Court Leet of the Manor and
Liberty of the Savoy, which Joseph Ritson, the learned antiquary, who was then
the Steward, published in 1789. For its work since that date there is its great
bound volume of current records, "The Court Book of the Manor and Liberty
of the Savoy," for access to which (and much information) we are indebted to
the courtesy of Mr. G. R. Askwith, the present Steward.
2 The Precinct of the Savoy, as an extra- parochial place, had apparently for
a long time no parish officers. We hear of a sort of Select Vestry in 1635 and
1732 (see Vol. I. The Parish and the County, p. 186), which may not have con-
tinued in authority. The inhabitants held annual meetings to choose Trustees
for regulating the Nightly Watch under 14 George III. c. 90 (1774). A body of
Paving Commissioners, similarly elected, was established by 5 and 6 William IV.
c. 18 (1835). When at last the Precinct was required in 1855 to take rank
among the Parishes of Westminster for the election of a member of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, the election was also made at the mooting of
ratepayers, which had by this time assumed to be an open Vestry,
THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY 97
required to serve their year of office, and severely fined in
default. 1 These officers were required severally to make their
presentments of nuisances and defaults to the next Court,
when the Jury did not fail to inflict substantial fines on
the offenders. Shopkeepers using fraudulent weights and
measures, 2 residents keeping houses of ill-fame, 3 traders ob-
structing the streets by leaving timber, casks, or packing-cases
about, or stopping up the footway by ladders ; 4 owners allowing
their premises to become structurally unsafe ; soap-boilers
conveying offensive soaplees along the Strand ; 5 the Keeper
of the Savoy Prison for ill-treating the military prisoners
detained there 6 even the proprietor of Exeter Change for
" keeping a tiger carelessly secured in a shed on Savoy Hill
to the great alarm of the neighbours " 7 found themselves
reprimanded, warned, and smartly fined for their delinquencies.
During the eighteenth century the " Commissioners of the
Pavement " and the " Commissioners of Sewers," both statutory
authorities for the City of Westminster, were repeatedly pre-
sented for their neglect. The condition of the "Strand
Bridge," of " Strand Lane Stairs," of " Essex Stairs," and of
" Surrey Stairs " was perpetually exercising the minds of the
Jury. 8 Nor did the Court lack its paid professional officers.
Besides the Bailiff, whose remuneration lay in his fees, there
was an Upper Beadle and an Under Beadle, each with a
gorgeous staff of office, and (in 1795) an Assistant Constable.
Year after year the proceedings go on, in the nineteenth
century growing steadily more perfunctory. The advent of
the new police in 1829 evidently accelerates the process of
decay. In 1861 the Court petitions Parliament to be in-
cluded, like the City of Westminster, in the abolition of the
1 As lately as 1791 an inhabitant was summarily fined 7 for refusing to
serve as Constable (MS. Records, Savoy Court, 1791).
2 "Upon the return of the Aleconners, they present Mr. F., Cheesemonger,
in Butcher Row, for having scales which they found deficient, and do amerce
him in the sum of forty shillings " (MS. Records, Savoy Court, 1785). Similarly
a baker, " for breaking the Assize of Bread," is fined forty shillings (ibid. 1792).
3 Ibid. 1809 (very frequently also between 1682 and 1789).
* Ibid. 1795.
6 Ibid. 1796, 1797, 1807, 1809, 1810 (30 fine).
6 1795 and 1798; in 1810 the Jury visited the prison and found "all well"
(ibid).
t Ibid. 1798.
8 Digest of the Proceedings of the Cowrt Leet of the Manor and Liberty of the
Savoy, by J. Ritson, 1789.
VOL. II. PT. I H
98 THE COURT IN RUINS
"Annoyance Jury." After this date the officers' presentments
cease, and the proceedings become formal only, though fines
continued to be nominally inflicted on keepers of houses of
ill-fame (as a method of driving them out of the Precinct)
down to 1880. The Court still (1907) continues to be held,
with elaborate ceremony, the Steward formally " charging "
the Jury, and insisting on its attendance. The proceedings,
however, are confined to a punctilious maintenance of ancient
boundary marks, and the five -centuries -old "Court of the
Steward, Bailiff', and Burgesses of the Manor and Liberty of
the Savoy," fully alive and active in 1807, lingers in 1907
only as a shadow of the past. 1
1 We may mention another extra-parochial place in the Metropolis, governed,
apparently, by a Lord's Court. The Tower of London has, time out of mind,
been the nucleus of a "Liberty," or area exempted from some or all of the
jurisdiction of the County. According to a statute of 1663 this Liberty of
"the Tower Hamlets" included no fewer than twenty-one places, comprising
Shoreditch, Hackney, and the whole eastern part of Middlesex, within which
were many separate Manors. These were, at any rate for militia purposes, under
the Constable of the Tower, who acted in many ways as Gustos Rotulorum and
Lord-Lieutenant. Whether anything in the nature of a Hundred Court was
ever held we cannot tell ; but Courts of Quarter Sessions were regularly held in
the Tower itself until the reign of James II., when they were removed, as the
concourse of people within the fortress was deemed unsafe. Meanwhile a Court
was being held in the Tower, exercising Leet jurisdiction over the "Liberties"
of the Tower in a narrower sense, extending, in fact, only to "the circumference
without the Tower" and to extra -parochial places close by, such as Little
Minories, Old Artillery Ground, and Wellclose Square. We hear in the sixteenth
century of the presentments of "Her Majesty's Inquest of the Tower." Those
of the "Leet Jury" for 1679 are preserved. The official orders and Letters
Patent of James II. expressly mention this Court Leet of the Tower, and con-
firm the immunity of the "Liberties" from the authorities of the Cities of
London and Westminster. Whether this Court of the " Precinct " of the Tower,
as this adjacent " Liberty " came to be called, in any way represented a shrunken
Court for the whole of the Tower Hamlets, superior to the Courts of the Manors
within them, we cannot ascertain. Even as the Court Leet of the Precinct, it
apparently faded away early in the eighteenth century. From an interesting
petition of 16th February 1727 (preserved in War Office Ordnance Records,
Misc. No. 1, Entry Book re Tower Liberty, in Public Record Office), we gather
that the Court was held under the Steward of the Constable of the Tower, and
that the Jury presented persons to serve as officers of the Precinct, including,
since 1601, two Overseers of the Poor, who accounted regularly to the Court.
The Court disposed of various funds, including fees paid by publicans for
licences ; the rent of a shed on Tower Hill built by the Court itself, and of
another on Tower Wharf; "the disposal of the Bulwark Bar" (apparently a
toll) ; fines imposed for oaths ; fees on burials at the chapel of the Tower ; fees
on licences to watermen to work the Tower ferries on Sundays ; voluntary con-
tributions at the Chapel, and otherwise ; and, finally, a rate levied on the
inhabitants of Tower Hill. With these revenues the Court relieved the poor
and administered the government of the Precinct. Latterly, however, by the
neglect of Governors and of the Court, " the late Gentleman Porter" has
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 99
(iii.) The Court Leet and Court Baron of Manchester
The Manor of Manchester affords an example of a Lord's
Court continuing to serve as an active local governing authority
for a vast population and one of the greatest of English
provincial towns, 'not merely between 1689 and 1835, but
right down to 1846, under conditions very different from
those of the rural fishing villages of Bamburgh, and even from
those of the Precinct of the Savoy. 1
The first point that we notice is that at Manchester there
appropriated the income of the Bulwark Bar, and some of the other revenues
have been left unclaimed, with the result that the rate on the inhabitants has
been increased. The military authorities are therefore requested to restore the
privileges of the Court Leet. We have been unable to trace any of the records
of this Court or to find out when it actually ceased to be held (see The Survey
of London, by John Stow, vol. i. p. 77, of Strype's edition of 1720 ; History and
Antiquities of the Tower of London, by John Bayley, vol. ii. pp. 654-670, and
Appendix, pp. 112 and 121 of 1st edition only, 1825).
1 Owing to the public-spirited action of the Manchester Town Council the
records of this Court from 1552 to 1846 have been printed in full (see The
Cowrt Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, in twelve volumes, edited, with
notes and introduction to each volume, by J. P. Earwaker, 1884-1890). Extracts
from these rolls had already been edited by John Harland in two volumes of
the Chetham Society's publications (1864 and 1865). The Town Council has
also published The Constables' Accounts of the Manor of Manchester (1612-1776),
three vols., edited by J. P. Earwaker, 1891-1892. For the early history of
the Manor see the scholarly treatise by Professor James Tait, Mediaeval Manchester
and the Beginnings of Lancashire, 1904 ; which does not, however, clear up the
complicated relationship between the Hundred and the Manor, the Manor and
the Parish, and the Parish and the Townships. Something is to be gathered
on these points from Chapters from the Early History of the Barony, Lordship,
Vill, etc., of Manchester, by J. Harland, 1861-1862 (vols. 53, 56, and 58 of the
Chetham Society); the article on "The Feudal Baronage," by W. Farrer, in
the Victoria County History of Lancashire, vol. i., 1906 ; and from the series
of histories of the several chapelries in course of publication by the Chetham
Society, viz. those of Denton, by J. Booker (vol. 37) ; Didsbury and Chorlton,
by J. Booker, 1857 (vol. 42); Stretford, by H. T. Crofton, 1899-1903 (vols.
N.S. 42, 45, and 51); Birch, by J. Booker, 1857 (vol. 47); and Newton, by
H. T. Crofton, 1904-5 (vols. 52-55), for some of which references we are indebted
to Dr. W. E. Axon. See also Didsbury, Sketches, Reminiscences, and Legends, by
Fletcher Moss, 1890. For incidental references to the Manorial Court, see the
account of the customs enrolled in 1623 (History of Boroughs, by H. A. Merewether
and A. J. Stephens, 1835, vol. i. pp. 541-545) ; A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph
Aston, 1816, pp. 27-30, 168 ; An Essay on English Municipal History, by
James Thompson, 1867, ch. xiv ; Manchester Guardian, 18th October 1817,
4th May and 19th October 1833, 12th October 1836, 25th October 1837,
13th January and 10th February 1838 ; Manchester Courier, 15th October 1836 ;
and the case of Rutter v. Chapman, 1839. The close of its history is described
in the introduction to vol. xii. of The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, by J. P. Earwaker, 1890 ; Alderman Cobden, by Sir E. W. Watkin,
1891 ; Cobden as a Manchester Citizen, by W. E. A. Axon, 1904.
loo THE COURT IN RUINS
was, at any rate in the nineteenth century, not one Lord's Court,
but a pair of Courts two separate and distinct tribunals, held
in different places, at different times, by different officers of the
Lord of the Manor, served by different staffs of subordinates,
and preserving entirely distinct records. There was the
" Court Baron of the Manor of Manchester," a " Three Weeks'
Court," of which the functions seem to have been confined to
the trial of civil actions under forty shillings. 1 There was the
"Court Leet and View of Fraiikpledge held in and for the
Manor of Manchester," which, as we shall see, closely resembled
what the lawyers thought that a Court Leet ought to be. It
is true that at this Court the Jury elected a Boroughreeve, an
officer whose title would have led us rather to expect his
election at the Court Baron. But the Boroughreeve of
Manchester had nothing to do with collecting the Lord's rents
and dues from his burgage or other tenants, nor had he even
to manage any of the common affairs of the tenants of the
Manor. For the period with which we are concerned he was
merely the head police officer, 2 superintending the two Con-
stables and representing the little community to the rest of the
world. Whatever inter-mixture of the agricultural or other
common interests of the tenants of the Manor there may have
been in preceding centuries, the Manchester Court Leet between
1689 and 1835 was concerned exclusively with the suppression
of the ever -increasing urban nuisances, the making of the
usual By-laws for the regulation of the streets, and the appoint-
1 Particulars as to the actual work and character of the Court Baron for
Manchester are scanty ; see the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on the
Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 53a, 75a, 78a, and especially 1-5& ; A Picture
of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 30 ; History of Lancashire, by John
Corry, 1825, vol. ii. p. 477.
2 "We came on to Manchester, one of the greatest, if not the greatest mere
village in England. It is neither a walled town, city, nor Corporation ; it sends
no members to Parliament ; and the highest magistrate there is a Constable
or Headborough ; and yet it has a Collegiate Church, besides several other
churches ; takes up a large space of ground ; and, including the suburbs, or that
part of the town on the other side of the bridge [Salford], it is said to contain
above 50,000 people. ... I cannot doubt but this increasing town will, some
time or other, obtain some better face of government and be incorporated, as it
very well deserves to be " (A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain,
by D. Defoe, vol. iii. pp. 219, 220 of edition of 1742). Defoe greatly exaggerated
the population of Manchester and Salford, which on his visit probably did not
reach 20,000. In 1689 Manchester alone was put at about 6000 ; in 1774 at
41,000 ; in 1801 it was 84,000, and in 1831, 122,000.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 101
ment of the multitudinous public officers requisite for these
objects. 1
The Court Leet of the Manor of Manchester is remarkable
for its highly developed organisation. Held always by the
Steward of the Lord of the Manor, with a Jury appointed at
the preceding Court, it seems from the earliest recorded times
to have claimed the attendance of every " Burgess " of the
Township of Manchester, or his eldest son or wife, under
penalty of threepence fine. This obligation on every holder of
a burgage tenement may be connected with the grant of the
charter of 1301 and the practice of the Portmanmoot of the
Township. 2 In the eighteenth century, when the meaning of
the custom had been forgotten, it seems to have been assumed by
the Court that every male resident over twelve years of age was
under obligation to attend ; and we have evidence that an im-
mense list of names -was actually called over, with a view to
imposing, for the profit of some of the officers, a fine of three-
pence each on those who did not answer to their names. 3
1 We must leave to the historians of earlier centuries to decide whether the
Court Baron and Court Leet of Manchester, as we find them in 1689, were
descended from one Court of the Manor or from more than one Court. In the
fourteenth century there had been a Court Baron of Manchester, sitting from
three weeks to three weeks, exercising jurisdiction over the whole Barony of
Manchester. Professor Tait supposes this Court, in shrinking in jurisdiction to
the township of Manchester, to have become what we find, in 1552, as the
Court Leet (Mediaeval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James
Tait, 1904, p. 35). On the other hand, the Charter of 1301 gave the
inhabitants of the township a "curia burgi," "Portmanmoot," or Borough
Court of their own, which elected the head officer or Reeve, and had jurisdiction
over the Burgesses of the narrower area of the township in debt and assault.
This Court seems to us more likely to have been the ancestor of the Court Leet
of the earliest records of 1552. What is revealed in those records is exactly a
Borough Court. It is never described as a Court Baron. We suspect that the
Court of the Barony of Manchester at no time coalesced with the Portmanmoot,
Borough Court, or Court Leet of the Township. The so-called "Court Baron of
Manchester " of the eighteenth century may have been the direct descendant of
the Court of the Barony. On the other hand, it is possible that the Great Court
of the Barony was simply discontinued. We suggest that the Court Baron
that we find in the eighteenth century, exercising jurisdiction only over the
Township, may be the descendant of the Halmote Court held by the Lord for
the Manor of the Township alone, the Court Baron side of which he retained in
his own hands when he granted to his new Burgesses the right to hold a
separate Portmanmoot.
2 There was a similar obligation at Salford and Stockport, which had received
baronial Charters in the thirteenth century, on which the Manchester Charter of
1301 was probably modelled (Mediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of
Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 51).
3 In the formal charge to the Jury of the Steward for 1788 (Roberts) we
have it stated that the poorer inhabitants, "to avoid payment of the threepence,
102 THE COURT IN RUINS
But the distinguishing feature of the Manchester Court
was the unusually large number of officers who were nominated
by the Jury and formally appointed by the Court. These
officers were required to serve their term of twelve months,
all of them originally without remuneration. At their head
was the Boroughreeve, the executive chief of the little com-
munity, who presided at all public meetings, and though with-
out any of the authority of a Justice of the Peace, in many
ways acted as the representative of the town. " In no Corpora-
tion," says a writer of 1816, "is the Mayor for the time being
treated with more respect, the paraphernalia of a mace-bearer
excepted, than the Boroughreeve of Manchester." 1 Second
only to the Boroughreeve were the two Constables, who were
always appointed together, and who acted jointly and severally
as his principal lieutenants, without, so far as we can ascertain,
any distinction of function. But besides these dignitaries, the
Court appointed annually an ever-increasing array of other
officers, who, by 1689, had come to number over one hundred. 2
Among these were the usual Aleconners and Scavengers, with
innumerable others, such as Market-lookers and Muzzlers of
Mastiff Dogs. It seems long to have been the practice, when-
ever the need for any new function or any particular nuisance
or abuse forced itself upon the attention of the Jury, for a new
and compulsorily serving officer to be appointed 3 to see that
attend the Court and listen to the calling over an immense roll of names, until
they answer to their own, by which the greater part of the day is lost. ... As
to the common practice of calling over all the names of so populous a Manor as
Manchester, it occasions loss of time to the poor, is productive of no advantage,
no emolument but a trifling perquisite to the inferior officers of the Court, and
the liberality of the present Lord of the Manor would induce him to correct this
practice " ("Charge of 1788," reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor
of Manchester, vol. ix. p. 244).
1 A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 27. At Birmingham
and Bolton, as well as at Salford, the Chief Officer of the Lord's Court bore the
same title, which we have not found elsewhere, though Portreeve is not uncom-
mon in the South of England, and Headborough, Boroughhead, and Borsholder
are frequently met with.
2 Already in the earliest record, that of 4th October 1552, we find 59 officers
appointed (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. i. p. 1) ;
the number rising to 110 on 5th October 1686 (vol. vi. p. 241), and to 138 on
15th October 1756 (vol. viii. p. 1).
3 The Burgesses had possessed a right to pasture their pigs in the woods
and on the waste of the manor. "In the sixteenth century pigs wandering
about the streets and even into the churchyard became such a nuisance that a
public swineherd was started, who assembled his charges with a horn in the
morning, and led them out to the Lord's waste at Collyhurst " (Mediaeval Man-
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 103
the regulations of the Court were enforced ; and once an office
was created, it continued to be filled year after year, even if its
functions had become obsolete. These compulsory offices were,
however, rapidly becoming merely honorary sinecures. " Many
of these offices," said the learned Steward of the Manor in
1788, "have an appearance of throwing a degree of indignity
on the possessors, and it not infrequently happens that the
muscles of the gravest are relaxed when they hear the most
respectable names being annexed to the offices of Scavengers,
Market-lookers, and Muzzlers of Mastiff Dogs." But the duties,
he explained, were more easy and dignified than the titles im-
plied. " If a Scavenger see any person obstructing the streets
in any manner whatever; or if a Market-looker find any un-
wholesome meat exposed for sale, he has nothing to do but to
make a memorandum of the offender's name, and the time of
committing the offence, and to give information thereat at the
next Court Leet, and the offender will be amerced." * Unlike
most other Manorial Courts, that of Manchester levied a rate
on the inhabitants we find " Mysegatherers " appointed as
early as 1554, and the "Town Lay" is regularly mentioned
down to 1780, when it was merged in the Poor Eate levied by
the Overseers. 2 Either out of this rate, or else by customary
Chester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 49). The
Court even appointed its own public musicians in the form of the " Town Waits,"
who were ordered by the Court to play through the town on every Thursday
evening "according to the ancient custom." They were evidently remunerated
by voluntary gifts from the inhabitants (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, 5th October 1669 and 16th April 1672, vol. v. pp. vi, 99, 166).
1 A Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet of the Manor of Manchester,
by William Roberts, 1788 ; reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor
of Manchester, vol. ix., Appendix I., p. 251.
2 Thus, in 1590, the Jury present the stairs leading to the river as in a bad
state, and they order the "Myselayers for the time being, calling unto them the
Constables, with six other honest neighbours, shall assess the inhabitants of the
town for the repairing of the stairs ; and have appointed A. B., etc., to receive
the same moneys so gathered, and to bestow the same, and give an account of
the remainder to the next Jury " (ibid. vol. ii. p. 50). It was probable that
such " Town Rates " or " Constables' Rates " were elsewhere levied by the Lord's
Court (instead of by the Vestry as Church Rates), but the only other case of
which we have definite mention is that of Lewes (Sussex), where, in 1772, at the
" Lawday " it was " resolved that the Constables and Jury at the Court Leet or
Lawday chosen shall and do continue to have power to make and collect a town tax
for defraying the necessary expenses of the borough " (signed by 86 inhabitants).
In 1822-1823 the Constables were still levying a "town tax" of a shilling in
the pound (The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824-
1832, p. 211 ; see infra, p. 173).
104 THE CO URT IN R UINS
fees, paid officers could be remunerated, and already in the first
half of the seventeenth century there were evidently such
deputies in existence. In 1648 we see the Court appointing
a permanent officer, the Deputy Constable, 1 who serves continu-
ously year after year, on whom most of the work is gradually
devolved, and to whom an ever-rising annual salary is awarded. 2
Presently other salaried officers are added, in the shape of one,
two, and eventually four Beadles, resplendent, a century ago, in
" livery of brown, with scarlet collars, coat, waistcoat, breeches,
and leggings." 3
The Court thus constituted and served attempted
courageously to cope with all the needs of the growing
town. " Cows, horses, sheep, pigs, dogs all required regula-
tion, and had it. Pigs, as the most perverse animals, required
the firmest and most rigorous handling ; and hundreds of
folio pages of Jury orders relate to swine alone and their
numerous misdeeds and nuisances, their eating corn in the
market and desecrating the churchyard." 4 We see the Jury
not only enforcing the Assize of Bread and Beer, but also
insisting that all the innumerable officers should duly make
the presentments incidental to their several offices, from the
use of unlawful weights and measures and the exposure for
sale of " unbaited " beef, up to the enforcement of the obligation
1 10th October 1648. "It is ordered by this Jury that whereas there is
found much inconveniences by paying Deputy Constables' wages per particular,
and that the said Deputy Constable, that shall be made choice of by and for the
assistance of these Constables, shall have for all the service and attendance due
and appertaining to the said office of Deputy Constable the sum of ten pounds
per annum, and that to be paid by fifty shillings per quarter " (The Court Leet
Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. iv. p. 25).
2 It was 20 in 1756, 30 in 1762, 80 in 1778, 150 in 1786, the same
in 1802 when Nadin was appointed; 200 in 1805 ; in 1821 Lavender was
appointed at 350, and raised in 1822 to 600, at which figure it remained until
his death in 1833. Beadles, at first one and ultimately four, begin at 5 only,
but end with 78 a year each (ibid. vols. iv. to x.). These salaries and many
other expenses were charged in the Boroughreeve's accounts, which were annually
submitted to the Court and passed by the Jury (for these accounts from 1612 to
1776, see The Constables' Accounts of the Manor of Manchester, by J. P. Ear-
waker, 3 vols., 1891-1892). In the nineteenth century, as described in a pre-
vious volume, we find them presented to and passed by the Open Vestry, prior
to their inclusion in the Poor Rate, in accordance with 18 George III. c. 19 of
1778, which prescribed this for the accounts of the ordinary Parish Constables.
3 Reminiscences of Old Manchester and Salford, by an Octogenarian, 1887,
p. 18.
4 Manchester Court Leet Records, by John Harland, Chetham Society, vol.
63, 1864, p. viii.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 105
to keep watch in turn, and the execution of various new By-
laws forbidding waggons to stand in the streets or the playing
of football or " tipcat " in the streets. 1 We gather that the
presentments were made either by the Jury as a whole, by
any of the officers, or even by individuals not officers, whose
complaints occasionally led directly to orders by the Jury. 2
The majority of the presentments and orders between 1731
and 1846 relate either to market offences, the sale of unwhole-
some or " unmarketable " meat or fish, " blowing veal," the use
of deficient weights or short measures, or the cutting or gashing
of hides ; or, on the other hand, to the innumerable nuisances
of a growing city, from allowing swine to roam in the streets,
or not repairing or cleaning the pavement, up to such modern
annoyances as excessive factory smoke, 8 the stench from gas
lime, 4 mock auctions, and the firing of pistols. 5 What is
remarkable in the Manchester Court is the freedom with
which it used what it conceived to be its power of making
By-laws, by which it did not scruple to create new punishable
offences. Thus in 1731 we find the Jury, "upon complaint
made by several persons of people bringing milk to town
suffering their horses to stand in the street with their cans on,
whilst they sell their milk," peremptorily ordering the milk-
sellers " that they shall not suffer them to stand in the streets,
but that they shall set down their cans and put their horses
in some stables ; or we do amerce them five shillings apiece." 6
In 1732 the Jury orders that "the Scavengers do see that the
1 The Court Led Records of the Manor of Manchester, 12th October 1608, vol.
ii. pp. vi, 239-240.
2 Thus, 18th April 1733, "whereas complaint hath been made to us that
W. B. . . . suffers his large bull-dog to go abroad unmuzzled," the Jury orders
that the dog is to be muzzled in future, or that in default W. B. shall be fined
twenty shillings " (ibid. vol. vii. p. 20).
3 Inl801,asa local annalist records, " the Court Leet Jury presented eleven
owners of factories for not consuming their smoke ; they were fined respectively
100, but the fines were respited to allow time for their being altered"
(Manchester Historical Recorder, 1874, p. 65).
4 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 20th October 1820
(vol. xi. p. 6).
Ibid. 21st October 1831 (vol. xi. pp. 257-258).
6 1st October 1731 (ibid. vol. vii. p. 7). The By-law is repeated two years
later, when the fine is raised to ten shillings, and the Jury "order that the
Bellman shall publish this order three several times, in one week's time, at the
Milk Market, and that the Constable pay him for his pains" (ibid. vol. vii.
p. 26). It is again repeated in 1744, when the fine is raised to thirty-nine
shillings (ibid. vol. vii. p. 131).
io6 THE COURT IN RUINS
dirt swept together shall not be left in heaps, but orders to be
given to the usual inhabitants to remove the same, and not
suffered to lie in heaps in the middle of the street." l At the
same Court it is recorded that "we ... upon complaint
made to us of servants and persons employed in looking after
horses do frequently bring their horses into the public streets,
and there dress them, which becomes a nuisance . . .do order
that no person shall presume to do the like for the future, and
that this be made public." 2 Next year it is commanded that
" no person does for the future break any hogsheads ... in
the street called Millgate ... or any other hogsheads within
this Manor, without immediately cleansing and sweeping the
same, on penalty of forty shillings for each offence." 8 In
1737 it is ordained that "for the future no tanner or other
person shall lay down raw hides in the street or passage beside
the shambles," under penalty of twenty shillings for each
offence. 4
The Court had also, in a sense, important administrative
functions. The most valuable incidents of the Manor were
the profits of the Soke Mill and Oven, 6 and of the Market.
The large and growing revenues yielded to the Lord by these
1 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 5th May 1732 (vol. vii.
p. 11).
2 Ibid. 5th May 1732 (vol. vii. p. 10).
8 Ibid. 18th April 1733 (vol. vii. p. 20). "Long Millgate was," down to
Victorian times, "a leading thoroughfare, the highway to the North of England "
(Reminiscences of Old Manchester and Salford, by an Octogenarian, 1887, p. 43).
4 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 6th October 1737 (vol.
vii. p. 66).
6 Trie Charter of 1301 had continued the obligation of the Burgesses to
grind their corn at the Lord's mill, to dry their malt at his kiln, and bake their
bread at his oven. These monopolies continued to be actively enforced, for his
profit, by his lessees and agents, giving rise, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, to constant friction ; and, it is said, between 1550 and 1758 to no
fewer than sixty lawsuits. The exactions of the lessees of the Soke Mill in
1757 provoked the serious riots of that year, which led, in 1758, to a Local
Act restricting the monopoly to the drying of malt. The monopoly had passed
to the Trustees of the Manchester Grammar School, who were accorded, in partial
compensation, a perpetual exemption from all local rates and taxes (32
George II. c. 61). The remaining monopoly of the malt kiln continued in
their hands, their profit or tax being twopence a bushel. This was said to
induce brewers to settle outside the boundary (A Picture of Manchester, by
Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 168). Nevertheless it was, in 1825, productive of no
less than 2250 a year (Mediaeval Manchester and the beginnings of Lancashire,
by James Tait, 1904, p. 50). This impost continued until the premises were
sold to a railway company and the mill was discontinued (History of Corn-
milling, by E. Bennett and J. Elton, 1898-1904).
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 107
monopolies were either leased or else collected under the
direction of the Steward, who himself appointed his toll-
gatherers and other agents. 1 But the Burgesses, the jurymen,
and the officers of the Lord's Court had also their part to play.
The annual Fair, for instance, held under a grant of 1227 at
" Four Acres " or " Acrefield," represented, it is clear, an
interference with ancient rights of commonfield agriculture
and common pasture. 2 In the course of the eighteenth century
this three-days' Fair became in the main a popular holiday,
and in the nineteenth century a saturnalia. It yielded, however,
no small revenue to the Lord, and was therefore continued in
ancient form. 8 " On the second day the Steward of the Lord
of the Manor (accompanied in procession by the Boroughreeve,
the- two Constables, and a few persons who represent Burgesses
who owe suit to the Court of the Lord) proclaims the right of
the Lord of the Manor to hold the Fair in that place." 4 More
important was the participation of the Court in the adminis-
tration of the ancient prescriptive Market, which had been
held weekly since at any rate 1282. Though the Lord
collected his own dues, it would seem that the actual manage-
ment of the various market-places and the making of market
rules and By-laws were, like the presentment of offenders
against them, in the hands of the Court. We find the Jury
deciding the hour at which the markets for flour, wheat, and
oats respectively shall be opened by the ringing of a bell, and
ordering " that no person does hereafter presume to sell any
1 In 1731 the Court amerced the "Receiver of the Tolls" ten shillings, for
*not keeping a certain street clear (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, vol. vii. p. 8).
2 ' ' An ancient custom obtained of pelting the first animal driven into the
Fair with acorns and striking it with whips. This has been very conjecturally
explained as a survival of an original protest of the inhabitants against the
interference with their grazing rights by the establishment of the Fair"
(Mediaeval MancJiester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904,
p. 45). The Fair days were the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of September. From
fair-time till February the Acrefield was common pasture ; from February till
fair-time under arable cultivation. " As late as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, corn growing on Acrefield had sometimes to be hastily cut and carried
away before the fair or the people would have trampled it down " (ibid. p. 45).
3 In 1708 Lady Ann Bland got a private Act enabling her to enclose the
Acrefield and build St. Ann's Church ; but she had to submit to the condition
that a space 30 yards wide should be left open for the Fair.
4 A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 215. The Fair grew
to be such a nuisance in the nineteenth century that it was moved, first to
Shudehill, and then to Campfield ; but it was not finally abolished until 1876.
io8 THE COURT IN RUINS
meal before such bell rings, on pain of punishment." l They
order the " cheese market " to be removed from one place, and
the " fish market " from another, assigning new sites at their
discretion. 2 They insist on stopping the butchers from selling
meat right into the night of Saturday, and even on Sunday
morning, imposing a closing time of eleven o'clock at night. 3
They forbid, under penalty of a fine, any sack of oats to be
offered for sale that contains less than 18 strokes, Winchester
measure ; or any horseload of coal weighing less than two
hundred pounds, six score to the hundred, sack included ; or
any cartload less than twelve hundred pounds. 4 They prohibit
fruit stalls at this place or that, and exclude hucksters from
the market. 6 In 1774 they remove the earthenware market
which had grown up " in the street called Smithy Door " to
f the north side of the old churchyard. 6 They exclude all dogs,
whether " male or female," from the flesh market. 7
How far these administrative decisions with regard to such
important a source of Manorial revenue as the Manchester
market were really left to the discretion of the Jury, and
how far they represented only a convenient method of
strengthening and promulgating the decisions of the Manorial
officers, we cannqt now determine. What is clear from the
records is that year by year the Court went on appointing
its officers, making its presentments, and imposing its fines
with unslackened zeal, and doing an undiminished amount of
work right down to the nineteenth century. Meanwhile
the township of Manchester which had in 1774 still only
41,000 inhabitants had sprung rapidly into a densely
crowded, populous city. The mere " keeping the peace " in
this heterogeneous aggregation of factory operatives, newly
gathered together from all parts, soon transcended the scanty
powers wielded by the Boroughreeve and his two Constables.
As officers of the Court Leet they were not Justices of the
1 The Court Led Records of ike Manor of Manchester, 16th April 1735,
vol. vii. p. 38.
a Ibid. 29th April 1736, vol. vii. p. 48.
3 Ibid. 27th April 1738, vol. vii. p. 70.
* Ibid. 29th April 1736, vol. vii. p. 49.
6 Ibid. 6th October 1737, vol. vii. p. 66 ; 22nd October 1741, vol. vii.
p. 110.
6 Ibid. 12th October 1774, vol. vii. p. 159.
f Ibid. 14th April 1828, vol. xi. p. 189.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 109
Peace, and the whele city had to depend for a police court
on the good pleasure of half a dozen of the neighbouring
country gentlemen, who took it in turns to ride into the
town and commit offenders to the County gaol. 1 The nightly
" watching " of such a town was utterly beyond the power
of the two wealthy warehousemen or merchants who had been
appointed Constables; and the obligation really enforced in
the seventeenth century on all the inhabitants to " watch "
in turn, bringing " each a Jack, a Sallet, and a Bill," 2 " or
hire some sufficient person to do it," 3 was manifestly im-
practicable among a wage-earning, factory-working population.
In 1765, and again in 1792, Acts of Parliament were
obtained by the principal inhabitants establishing a body
of Police Commissioners for Manchester and Salford, with
power to appoint paid watchmen, light the streets, and levy
a police rate ; but so great was apparently the reluctance
to these new measures that until 1797 practically nothing
was done, and the dignity of the Court Leet remained un-
impaired by any rival authority. As late as 1799 we find
the Steward declaring the " new constitution of local govern-
ment " to have been a failure, and urging the Jury to be
active and all-embracing in their presentments. 4
1 " The towns of Manchester and Salford and the adjacent towns and villages
now united with them by contiguous streets and buildings comprise a popula-
tion far exceeding 100,000, and form together the largest provincial town in
Great Britain ; yet among this vast community there is not one resident Magis-
trate nor any Municipal government but the officers of the Court Leet, among
whom there is no permanent authority above that of a Petty Constable. . . .
For the local administration of justice, five Magistrates of the County residing
nearest to the place have, much to their honour, undertaken the whole of this
tiurthensome duty ; one of them resorting to the town for this purpose every
Monday, and two every Thursday, by a rotation among themselves " (Report
of the Committee appointed to secure Reforms, etc., 1808).
2 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 6th October 1568,
vol. i. p. 123.
3 Ibid. vol. vi.
4 "Now, Gentlemen," said the Steward to the Jury in 1799, "what has
happened since the erection of the new constitution of local government ? During
the wet and dark winter months the streets have remained uncleansed and
without lights ; for some time no watchmen or patrols were appointed security
and temptation were thus afforded to plunder, and none could pass through the
streets in safety ; escaping personal violence, they were in imminent personal
danger from the numerous unguarded cellar-pits and various obstructions that
everywhere interrupted their passage. . . . Though innumerable buildings are
everywhere rising up and crowded together ... no party walls have been
erected. . . . Streets are still crowded with annoyances which the power of the
new Act was calculated to remove. Offenders are everywhere encouraged by
1 10 THE CO URT IN R UINS
A new period opens for Manchester with the nineteenth
century. In its opening years, as we shall describe in a
subsequent volume, the Police Commissioners began at last
actively to bestir themselves, and they gradually organised
something like an efficient service of watching, cleansing,
and lighting the town. For the first eighteen years of the
century the Police Commissioners were, however, completely
dominated by the officers of the Lord's Court. The Borough-
reeve for the time being not only presided at all the meetings,
but also acted as Treasurer and as Chairman of the General
or Finance Committee ; whilst the two Constables acted as
Chairmen of the two principal administrative departments,
namely, the Watch Committee and the Committee for Lighting
and Scavengering. Such police force as existed, either night-
watchmen or " patrols," was thus under their personal command.
Many of the offences which had formerly been presented at
the Lord's Court had now been forbidden by explicit clauses
in the Police Commissioners' Acts, and were therefore sum-
marily dealt with by the Justices, but the Commissioners
went on making use also of the Lord's Court as a convenient
tribunal, and the Jury did not discontinue its own activity,
especially with regard to false weights and measures and
unwholesome food. We even find this energetic Court at the
beginning of the nineteenth century presenting and fining
mill-owners for letting their cotton factories get into a dirty
condition, whilst the most common of all nuisances punished
at this date was the emitting of large quantities of smoke by
the new steam engines. The Lord's Court remained, in fact,
a dignified and influential tribunal. The Steward was a
learned barrister, who opened the six-monthly " Court Leet
and View of Frankpledge" with an elaborate proclamation.
The jurymen were chosen by the Steward from among the
wealthy leaders of the commercial and manufacturing class,
always predominantly Tory and Anglican in opinion. The
annually nominated Constables were invariably local magnates
belonging to the industrial aristocracy of the town. In turn
one of the past Constables served as Boroughreeve. 1 Down to
the impunity with which their trespasses are committed" ("Charge of John
Cross, Esquire," reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester,
vol. ix. Appendix II.).
1 "It has long been a rule in the choice of the Boroughreeve to select those
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER in
1818, at any rate, all the "police and sanitary" government
of Manchester remained unchallenged in the hands practically
of the little knot of leading inhabitants who were summoned
as jurymen to the Lord's Court and who took it in turns to
serve as Boroughreeve. This supremacy was made possible,
first, by the genuine public spirit which they showed in dis-
charging the onerous duties of the Manorial offices ; and,
secondly, by their practical wisdom in admitting into the
governing circle not only the Churchwardens, Overseers, and
Surveyors of Highways, but also the principal Whig and Non-
conformist merchants and warehousemen.
We have already described the advent, at Manchester in
1818, of a turbulent Democracy, which first showed itself in
tumultuous Vestry meetings at the Collegiate Church, and
proceeded, about 1827, to swamp the Police Commissioners
by qualifying, in hundreds, for membership of that body.
This Democracy, made up for the most part of the small
shopkeepers and publicans, felt itself completely excluded
from the choice of Boroughreeve and Constables. The Steward
did not summon its members as jurymen to the Lord's Court,
still less were they appointed to any of the Manorial offices
or as special constables. But the Constables' accounts, in-
cluding the salary of the Deputy Constable, had, by statute,
to be presented by the Overseers to the Vestry meeting, and
had to be passed by that assembly. We have seen, in a
preceding chapter, how eagerly the Eadicals seized, from 1820
onward, this opportunity of cavilling at every item of the
expenditure of such "unrepresentative" authorities as the
Boroughreeve and Constables. At Leeds, it will be re-
membered, it was the action of the " unrepresentative " Mayor
and Corporation that was similarly objected to. The
Manchester officers had neither the authority of Justices
of the Peace nor the power to levy a County Rate. But
they were backed up by the neighbouring County Justices,
and above all, they were supported by the opulent Whigs of
Manchester itself a class which at Leeds, where it was
excluded from the Corporation, had made common cause with
the Democracy. The result was that, though between 1818
gentlemen who have already served the office of Constable " (A Picture of
Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 27).
112 THE COURT IN RUINS
and 1837 there were uproarious scenes at the Vestry and
Police Commissioners' meetings, from which the Boroughreeve
was once forcibly ejected, 1 the governing circle of the Lord's
Court held its own to the end. When in 1828 the constitu-
tion of the Police Commissioners was reformed by a new Act,
the Boroughreeve and Constables dominated the new elective
body as successfully as they had the old one. The growing
force of night and day police remained effectively under their
control. The Lord's Court went on presenting offenders and
enforcing its fines. Finally, with the change in public feeling
which came with the Keforin Bill, and perhaps still more with
the change in social habits which was inducing the wealthier
inhabitants more and more to live outside the town, this
opulent governing circle became tired of its duties. It was
found increasingly difficult to find a suitable person to act
as Boroughreeve, 2 and in 1836 and 1837 the individuals
nominated preferred to pay heavy fines, running up to 100,
rather than serve. 8 Eichard Cobden, then a young but
prosperous calico printer, summoned as a juryman in 1837,
drew up a protest calling for some change, which his
colleagues on the Jury consented to sign. 4 Out of this
1 " At a meeting of the Commissioners (1827) party spirit ran so high that
the Boroughreeve, C. Cross, Esquire, who presided, was assaulted and forcibly
ejected" (The Manchester Historical Recorder, 1874, p. 92).
2 We have already mentioned (Vol. I. The Parish and the County, pp. 19, 63)
that the Tyburn Ticket, exempting the holder from parish offices, fetched a much
higher price in Manchester than elsewhere. In 1804 the two persons appointed
Constables claimed exemption as holders of such tickets, but the Court refused to
allow it. The case was carried to the King's Bench, which maintained the
exemption (Mosley v. Stouehouse and Railton, llth February 1806 ; The Court
Led Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. ix. pp. 215, 216).
3 Manchester Guardian, 12th October 1836.
* We append this protest, which is of interest as the earliest publication by
Cobden, as published in the Manchester Guardian, 25th October 1837. "The
Jury serving at the Court Leet of the Lord of the Manor of Manchester cannot
separate without publicly making known the very great difficulties they have had
to encounter in the discharge of their most important duty, the selection of a
Boroughreeve for this township. From the great increase of the trade of the
places and the consequent conversion of the dwelling-houses situated in the centre
of the town into warehouses, the manufacturers, merchants, and other principal
inhabitants of Manchester have, with a very few exceptions, removed their
residences into the out-townships ; but as the jurisdiction of this Court does not
extend beyond the ancient and circumscribed limits of Manchester, the Jury have
been placed in a difficult position, owing to the very restricted number of residents
who are eligible to serve the office of Boroughreeve, and the difficulty is materi-
ally increased by the aversion which now and for some time past has been mani-
fested by the individuals selected to fill the office. In proof of which, at the
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 113
grew the movement, headed by Cobden and the Brothers
Potter, for the incorporation of the Borough. " Is Man-
chester," indignantly asked Cobden at a public meeting, " to
be governed from Rolleston Hall, in Staffordshire ? " l
last Court Leet the person named for Boroughreeve voluntarily incurred a large
pecuniary penalty rather than accept the office ; and again, on the present occa-
sion the individual appointed has declined to serve, and thus subjected himself
to a still heavier fine. But so far from there being a prospect of any diminution
of this difficulty in future, the Court has deemed it necessary to declare that,
seeing the fear of pecuniary penalties is insufficient, it will proceed by indictment
against all such as may refuse to accept its appointment. In the meanwhile the
changes of abode referred to are still going on, and it is known that many indi-
viduals, to escape from the jurisdiction of this Court, are now preparing to remove
to the out-townships ; from which the Jury are of opinion that the difficulties of
their successors at the next Court Leet will be much increased, and possibly
they 'may be compelled, in the absence of proper persons, to make choice of an
unfit individual to hold the most important office in the town. The Jury regard
such a state of things as highly inimical to the best interests, and derogatory to
the just dignity, of this the second town of the Empire, and they earnestly hope
and recommend that immediate steps may be taken to remedy the evil." This
was signed by the whole fifteen jurymen, among them being such leading indus-
trial magnates as Daniel Broadhurst, William M'Connel, and Edmund Potter,
as well as Richard Cobden himself.
1 Manchester Guardian, 10th February 1838. Rolleston Hall was the resid-
ence of the Lord of the Manor. A Charter was granted in 1838, but, owing to
political and legal difficulties, it was not until 1842 that it was confirmed by
Act of Parliament. In 1846 the Town Council bought from Sir Oswald Mosley,
for the enormous sum of 200,000, the Manor and all the rights and incidents ;
and the Lord's Court, regarded as a symbol of feudalism and a remnant of the
past Tory supremacy, was allowed quietly to lapse. The Manor had iieen worth
in 1282, 131 ; in 1665 (with shrunken area), 212 ; in 1579 it was sold for
3000 ; in 1596 a Mosley bought it for 3500 ; the town might have bought
it in 1808 for 90,000, but thought the price excessive ; by 1846 unearned
increment had brought it to 200,000 ! (see figures given in Mediaeval Man-
chester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 37).
Some of the smaller towns of Lancashire seem to have had, between 1689
and 1835, a local government under the Lord's Court, on the same lines as that
of Manchester. ' ' The towns of Great and Little Bolton the two Boltons, as
they were commonly called had from time immemorial . . . been subject to
the local authority of the Lords of the respective Manors. . . . Once a year in
each place there was a Court Leet, the agent of the Lord of the Manor being the
presiding authority, and this Court would proceed to appoint a Boroughreeve
as head officer, and a staff of officials as Constables, Ale-tasters, Pig-ringers, Bell-
men, and other functionaries." As at Manchester, "the powers of the Courts
Leet were not extinguished or absorbed on the establishment in 1792 of a
statutory body of Street Commissioners, and the annual Court Leet visit to
Church on the first Sunday morning after election, preceded as it was by a grand
breakfast the same morning at one of the leading inns, used to be a ceremonial
invested with much consequence" (Annals of Bolton, by James Clegg, 1888,
sec. 2, p. 9). Latterly, at any rate, there was a paid Deputy Constable with paid
assistants (Autobiography of a Lancashire Lawyer, by John Taylor, 1883, p. 32).
Much the same conditions existed at Rochdale, though we do not gather that
its chief officer was styled Boroughreeve (History of Rochdale, by Henry Fishwick,
1889, p. 62) ; and at other towns in South Lancashire and Cheshire.
In the ancient town of Ashtou-under-Lyne, we have an instance of the
VOL. II. PT. I I
ii 4 THE COURT IN RUINS
(d) The Prevalence and Decay of the Lord's Court
We have now set before the reader a description of each
of the types of Lord's Courts that we find exercising any of
the functions of Local Government between 1689 and 1835.
It remains to be considered how widely these types prevailed
in the England and Wales of that period, and at what rate
their activities gradually dwindled away. On these points we
effective survival of the Court of the Manor as a local governing authority.
The owner of the township in the nineteenth century waa the Earl of Stam-
ford and Warrington, drawing, in 1844, a rental of 30,000 a year from some
two thousand tenants. Though a body of Street Commissioners had been
established under Local Acts, the admirably preserved records of the "Court
Leet and View of Frankpledge and Court Baron of the Manor of Ashton-
under-Lyne," confirmed by a full account of its proceedings for the year 1844,
make it clear that, down to the middle of the nineteenth century at any rate,
it was this Court that was the most important local governing authority.
What we may call its Court Baron side, the trial of civil actions, though
mentioned as active by Aikin (1795) and Corry (1825), had apparently fallen
into disuse after the establishment of a Court of Requests by Local Act of 1808.
The ancient Manorial sokemill had long been disused. But throughout the whole
of the nineteenth century the Steward annually proclaimed, by placards and adver-
tisements in the newspapers, the date of the approaching Court at the ancient
Manor Courthouse, issuing special summonses to the existing Jury and officers, and
also to the persons elected by him to serve as jurymen for the ensuing twelve
months. At nine o'clock, we are told in 1844, " the Court is opened by proclama-
tion. The Foreman of the Jury delivers in a written verdict," in which, at the
Michaelmas Court, proper persons are " presented " to serve. The " verdict " of
the Jury then proceeds to present ' ' the several offences that had been inspected
during the preceding six months, which the Steward reads in a loud voice in the
hearing of every one present ; and at the conclusion of the reading undertakes,
as far as Lord Stamford is concerned, to remedy without unnecessary delay the
grievances presented in the verdict." The presentments (which, when they
related to freehold property, were sometimes "traversed" by the defendant ; see
a case, 29th April 1795) were numerous and important. The Manor contained a
considerable number of small freeholders, or holders of leases for long terms or
several lives, who, in their sub-lettings, often proved "careless or avaricious
landlords, whom neither the Local Acts nor common law could effectually reach."
Hence the presentments of the Jury were used, both by Lord Stamford's agents
and by the Street Commissioners, as convenient means of compelling such land-
lords to provide proper sanitary conveniences, to maintain pavements and fencing,
to provide and cleanse drains, and to repair the roads. "When the Steward
had finished the reading of the verdict, he uniformly directs one of the
officers of the Leet to call over the names of the suitors which comprehend
all the tenants of Lord Stamford, and also all the freeholders (or frankpledgers,
as they were anciently called) without the Manor, whether they be tenants of
his Lordship or not. In cases where the suitors appear by proxy, when their
names are called in Court a charge of twopence per head is exacted as an
acknowledgment, and one of the Bailiffs of the Court receives the same in a
leathern purse attached to the end of a rod ten or twelve feet in length. . . .
The Steward then addresses the Jury from the bench on the matters to be
PREVALENCE AND DEC A Y OF THE LORDS COURT 115
do not find ourselves able to give any very accurate information.
No list or other systematic record of these Courts has ever
been made. Their proceedings were never reported in the
newspapers nor recorded by any superior tribunal. There is
reason to believe that the Steward, interested only in the
business relating to the properties of the several tenants of the
inquired of by them, embracing the subjects laid down in the law books (see
Kitchin on Courts) as coming under the cognisance of Courts Leet ; and as
occasion requires, he directs their attention to special circumstances like a
Judge of Assize. ... It is customary for about sixty or eighty of the gentle-
men of the town and neighbourhood to dine together at the Commercial
Hotel, the Steward of the Manor in the chair. The interchange of goodfellow-
ship that takes place on these occasions between the representative of Lord
Stamford and his tenantry contributes in no small degree to diffuse in Ashton-
under-Lyne a feeling of attachment to his Lordship's person and family ; and to
perpetuate from one generation to another a tacit acquiescence in the verdicts of
his Court Leet Jury, and to preserve from oblivion and extinction many of the
ancient rights, liberties, and customs of the Manor." The decisions of the Court
were, in fact, fully enforced. The fines imposed on defaulters and offenders
were included in a Manorial distress warrant, given to the Bailiffs after every
Court by the Steward. When any person contumaciously refused to pay, the
Bailiff of the Manor simply seized his goods without further authority and sold
them under the hammer.
The Ashton Court is remarkable as continuing down to the present day (1907)
not only to be held, but actually to exercise local government functions. Every
year the Court is held in ancient form, a " Mayor of the Manor, two High
Constables, four Constables, twelve Bylaw-men, one Inspector of Weights and
Measures, one Pounder, one Ale-taster, and three Bellmen " being appointed,
together with a Jury of thirteen and a foreman. Presentments of nuisances are
still regularly made by the Jury, to the number of half a dozen or so annually,
and the persons in default are amerced. What is perhaps more remarkable is
that the proceedings are still fully effective. The persons presented pay the
fines imposed and remedy the nuisances complained of. No resistance is met
with, but in case of default we are informed by the Steward of the Manor that
he would have no hesitation in issuing a warrant and distraining for the fine.
The presentments now refer usually to the highways, the persons presented
being the Municipal Corporations, district councils, and other highway authorities,
or occasionally private individuals. Even such great potentates as the Town
Council of Manchester and the London and North-Western Railway Company
are similarly treated (MS. Records, Manor Court of Ashton-under-Lyne, 1795-
1906, for access to which we are indebted to the present Earl of Stamford and
the trustees of the estate, and to Mr. Hall, the courteous Steward of the Manor ;
the graphic account of the actual proceedings of the Court in 1844, given
by the then Steward for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of Large
Towns and Populous Districts, Appendix to First Report, vol. ii. pp. 71-73 ;
Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, by J.
Aikin, 1795 ; History of Ashton-under-Lyne, by J. Butterworth, 1823 ; another,
by the same, 1827 ; Historical Account of Ashton, by E. Butterworth, 1842 ;
Illustrations of the Customs of a Manor in the North of England, by S.
Hibbert-Ware, 1822 ; Custom-Roll and Rental of the Manor of Ashton, 1422, by
J. Harland (Chetham Society, vol. Ixxiv. 1869) ; History of the County Palatine
and Duchy of Lancaster, by Edward Baines, vol. ii. pp. 300-329 of edition of
1888-1893 ; History of Lancashire, by John Corry, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 497-523 ;
Mediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904).
1 16 THE CO URT IN R UINS
Manor, often omitted to enter the lengthy presentments of
the Jury about the management of the commonfield agriculture,
the petty nuisances of the hamlet, and the appointment of
Fieldsmen and Finders. Such scanty archives as the Stewards
did keep are now for the most part hidden away among title
deeds of property in family muniment rooms or solicitors'
offices. 1 Even where antiquarian zeal has led to the printing
and publication of Manor Eolls, this has, in almost all cases,
chosen rather the earlier periods and has stopped short of the
eighteenth century.
At the outset of our inquiries we shared the common
opinion that these Manorial jurisdictions had, so far at any
rate as Local Government functions were concerned, come
silently to an end before our period. 2 But as we extended
our researches from County to County this impression wore off.
1 We are even inclined to suggest that, in 1689, the holding of
a Manorial Court for the suppression of nuisances, the manage-
ment of the common pasture, and, less frequently, of the
commonfield agriculture and the appointment of Constables
and other officers for the district, was, in the thousands of
Manors that must still have existed, the rule rather than the
exception. It is true that already in the middle of the
seventeenth century we hear that the Lord's Court is held " in
some lazy lordships not at all, but left as a thing obsolete and
useless." 8 At the Restoration it was even thought necessary
1 The collections of Manor Rolls of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
most easily accessible to the student arc those of the Manors in the hands of
such public authorities as the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land
Revenues (a list of about 100 of whose Manors is given in a Parliamentary Paper
of 6th July 1845), and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who have in their
London offices at least as many. To both collections we have most courteously
been permitted access. The extensive collections at the Public Record Office
(see its List and Index, No. 6), the British Museum, Lambeth Palace, the
Bodleian Library, and the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges seem to relate
principally to the earlier centuries. A useful list of Manor records in the
principal public depositories is given in The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 243-301.
2 So competent an antiquarian as the late F. B. Bickley could state that by
1700, " and indeed as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, the Lords
of the Manor had lost the jurisdiction they possessed in earlier times, and the
rolls become merely registers of the transfer of land by succession, surrender,
sale, or mortgage" (History of Dulwich College, by W. Young, 1889, vol. ii.
chap. ii. on the Court Rolls, by F. B. Bickley, p. 266).
3 Pacts Consultum, a Directory to the Public Peace, briefly describing the
Antiquity, Extent, Practice, and Jurisdiction of Several Country Corporation
Courts, especially the Court Leet, by Judge Jenkins, 1657, p. 2.
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 117
to provide that where the Lord's Court had for any reason not
appointed a Constable, two Justices might temporarily exercise
that power " until the Lord of the Leet shall hold his Court." 1
A somewhat later writer complains that "through the ignorance
of unskilful Stewards this Court is almost become a shadow,
so that in many places Justices of the Peace swear the
Constables, and the inhabitants present the nuisances at the
Sessions which ought to be presented here, whereby the Lord
loses the benefits of his fines and amercements, and in time
may totally be divested of the whole jurisdiction and profit of
his Leet, of which inconveniences some Lords are less sensible
because they never knew the true value and benefit of this
jurisdiction." 2 On the other hand, as evidence that these
Courts had not become a negligible quantity, we may note
that the celebrated " Orders and Directions " of the Privy
Council of 1630 definitely placed no small share of the
responsibility for the enforcement of local police regulations
upon the Stewards of the Lord's Courts. 8 These Courts had,
indeed, still so much vitality in 1659 that an ardent Utopian
of that date thought it necessary to propose " that all Lords of
Manors keeping constant Courts Baron and Courts Leet or
either of them shall discontinue the same, and shall have the
value of the profits of their Courts," on a ten years' average,
paid to them out of public funds ; whilst it was also to be
1 13 and 14 Charles II. o. 12, sec. 15.
2 Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, by Sir Henry Chauncy, 1700, p. 100.
3 Among these "Orders and Directions" were the following: "That
Stewards to Lords and Gentlemen, in keeping their Leets twice a year, do
specially inquire upon those articles that tend to the reformation or punishment
of common offences and abuses : as of Bakers and Brewers for breaking of
Assizes ; of Forestallers and Regraters ; against Tradesmen of all sorts for selling
with under weights, or at excessive prices, or things unwholesome, or things
made in deceipt. Of people, breakers of houses ; common thieves and their
receivers ; haunters of Taverns or Alehouses ; those that go in good clothes
and fare well, and none know whereof they live ; those that be night-walkers ;
builders of Cottages and takers in of inmates ; offences of Victuallers, Artificers,
Workmen, and Labourers. That the petty Constables in all Parishes be chosen
of the abler sort of Parishioners, and the office not to be put upon the poorer
sort, if it may be : Watching in the night and Warding by day, and to be
appointed in every Town and Village for apprehension of rogues and vagabonds
and for safety and good order" (MS. Register, Privy Council, 1631 ; Orders
and Directions, together with a Commission for the Better Administration of
Justice, 1630 ; see The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i. p. 156 ;
History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, by C. J. Ribton-Turner, 1887, p. 152 ;
Early Histoi-y of English Poor Relief , by E. M. Leonard, 1900, p. 158).
ii8 THE COURT IN RUINS
ordained that " all Hundred Courts " were " to cease, and to
be for ever hereafter discontinued." l And we have indirect
evidence of the continued activity of the Lord's Court in the
fact that neither the Minutes of Vestries nor the orders of
Petty and Quarter Sessions during the seventeenth century
contain, so far as we have noticed, any references to the
appointments of Constables by the Justices. 2 The proceedings
of the Middlesex Justices at the end of the seventeenth and
the beginning of the eighteenth century contain, indeed,
frequent references to the Constables appointed, not by the
Justices but by the various Lord's Courts. In 1727 Parlia-
ment expressly directed the Turnpike Act of that year " to be
read at every Leet." 3 Even as late as 1788-1793 we find
the Quarter Sessions of Somersetshire and Oxfordshire thinking
it worth while formally to recommend " to Lords of Leets "
and " to Stewards of Courts " that they should take care to
appoint none but efficient and trustworthy Constables. 4
Nevertheless, though thousands of Manorial Courts were
being held, no student of the records can fail to become aware,
from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, that these
ancient tribunals were being rapidly superseded by other
forms of social organisation. To take first the Court Baron
side. The progress of enclosure during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries must have greatly diminished the
business of the Courts. The lack of any standing administra-
tive machinery, and of explicit Corporate rights to the land
even the absence of publicity and the want of Corporate
personality and perpetual succession disabled the tenants of
the Manor and the Jury of the Court from withstanding the
constant pressure for the substitution of complete individual
ownership for the ancient communal management of the
cornfields and the hay meadows. In the course of the
eighteenth century, the rapid succession of Inclosure Acts, of
1 Chaos, an interesting anonymous scheme for reconstruction, 1659, p.
26.
2 In 1706, in the Vestry of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, "the Foreman of the
Leet Jury is desired to move the Court that another Constable and Headborough
be added for the first and second divisions of the parish " (Account of the
Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, by J. Parton, 1822, p. 282).
8 1 George II. c. 19.
* MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Somerset, Epiphany, 1788 ; Bristol Gazette,
24th January 1788 ; Oxford Journal, 18th May 1793
PREVALENCE AND DECA Y OF THE LORD'S COURT 119
which, between 1689 and 1835, over 4000 were passed, 1
deprived thousands of Manorial Courts of their business
connected with the co-operative management of agriculture,
which had once formed so large a part of the Local Govern-
ment of the village. 2 Along with this agricultural revolution
must be noted the steady decline in the number of copyholds
and customary freeholds, which in Sir Edward Coke's time
had made up one-third of England, 8 but which, in the course
of the next two centuries, were always becoming enfranchised
into complete freeholds, or merged in larger properties. There
remained to many a Court Baron only one public function,
that of the decision of petty actions for debt and trespass. But
the " Homage " of freeholders and copyholders, even when free-
holders and copyholders still attended the Lord's Court, hardly
afforded the best judicial tribunal for civil suits. Moreover,
in the vast majority of Manors there came to be no freehold
tenants liable to escheat to the Lord, and the copyholders
shrunk up in number, or entirely ceased to exist. Whether
or not from this cause, the hearing of petty debt cases was
generally discontinued ; 4 and we see this function passing
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on Agricultural Distress, 1836,
p. 501.
2 " A strangely large proportion of the Inclosure Acts . . . sounded the
death -knell each for one Manorial Court" (North Riding Quarter Sessions
Records, by Rev. J. C. Atkinson, vol. vii. p. xxiii). It must be remembered that,
over a large part of England, the enclosure of the commonfields had taken place
without statutory authority (see The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517-1518, by
I. S. Leadam (Royal Historical Society, 1897); "The Movements for the In-
closure and Preservation of Open Lands," by Sir R. Hunter, in Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, June 1897). Of the 2000 Inclosure Acts of the
eighteenth century, a large proportion related to south-east England ; and this
is true, though to a lesser extent, of the 2000 Acts of 1800-1835. These
Inclosure Acts, and the facts with which they deal, have, until lately, escaped
proper study. Much light is thrown upon them by the work of Dr. Gilbert
Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Comrnonfields (1907).
3 Bagnall v. Tucker, in Reports of Divers Choice Cases, etc., by R. Brown-
low, 1675, vol. ii. p. 156 ; Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition,
1825, voL i. p. 6.
4 The history of petty debt courts does not fall within our scope, but we
may mention that we have found it impossible (as we did also in the analogous
cases of the County Courts and Hundred Courts) to form any idea of the extent
to which the Manorial Courts continued actually to serve in this capacity
between 1689 and 1835, or how they fulfilled this duty. Our first impression
was that this particular function of the Lord's Court had become almost entirely
disused. Thus we find the Privy Council in 1664 establishing, by a grant
under the Great Seal, "a Court of Record to try small actions," in response to
a petition from the inhabitants of Stepney and Hackney, who alleged that these
Manova formed "a Liberty exempt both from the Sheriff's Bailiffs or the Knight
tio THE COURT IN RUINS
silently away to the " Courts of Conscience " or " Courts of
Bequests," established by particular statutes of the eighteenth
century. Presently the Lord's Court, as a Court Baron, in
distinction from a Customary Court and a Court Leet, comes
to be held only in the exceptional cases (such as Epworth)
Marshal's men " (MS. Acts of Privy Council, 14th and 21st September 1664).
The Manorial Courts were not mentioned, although we know that they were
held ; and we can only assume that they did not then deal with pleas of debt.
We read indeed, in 1728, that "of late this authority is seldom executed in some
Manors, for that Courts Baron, which at first were held every three weeks, are
now held no oftener than Courts Leet, viz. twice in the year. But . . . many
Manors still retain their ancient power and authority in this particular "
(Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition,
1728, pp. 195-200). Further investigation into Manor records showed us that
a large number of Courts continued in vigorous activity as petty debt tribunals.
In not a few cases (as we have mentioned in the case of Bamburgh, Northumber-
land) we find tenants of the Manor fined for venturing to take their petty debt
cases to any other tribunal. In 1774 we hear that the Court Baron sits every
three weeks in the Manor of Trematon, Cornwall, and we see its Bailiff arresting
a defendant who had been condemned to pay over 14 for damages and costs.
On appeal its action was upheld by the King's Bench (Rowland v. Veale, in
Reports of Cases by H. Cowper, 1783, pp. 18-22). "Down to about 1800,"
says the historian of an Oxfordshire Manor, "it appears from the Court books
cognisance was taken of causes under forty shillings at Courts held in Bampton "
(History of Bampton, by J. A. Giles, 1st edition, 1847, p. 104). On the other
hand, when, in 1764, the Lord of the Manor of Warrington, Cheshire, sought
to revive the jurisdiction in civil suits, his action seems to have been resisted
as an innovation (Annals of the Lords of Warrington and Bewsey from 1587,
by W. Beamont, 1873, pp. 116-117). We see the civil suits gradually falling
into desuetude in the Manor of Havering atte Bower in Essex, where its Court, in
1822, had heard no pleas of debt since 1776, none of replevin since 1790, and
none of ejectment since 1806 ; but was, as we have already mentioned, never-
theless required by the Court of King's Bench in 1822 to entertain a petty debt
suit (R. v. Steward of Havering atte Bower; see p. 18). So, in 1817, the
Court Baron of the great Manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire, was found in full
activity as a civil debt court (Holroyd v. Breare and Holmes, in Reports of Cases,
etc., by R. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. ii. p. 473). Up and down
the country, it is clear, there were, especially in the North of England, scores
of such Courts still hearing pleas of debt and trespass up to forty shillings,
right down to the reign of Victoria. Yet so little was heard of them that it
could be said by a great authority in 1825 that actions were at that date "now
very rarely, indeed, if ever brought" in the Court Baron (Treatise on Copyholds,
by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 382). In 1833 these tribunals
were included in the inquiries of a Royal Commission, and they were incident-
ally reported as deciding civil actions in scores of places from Northumberland
to Cornwall (Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law,
1833, pp. 6, 20, 69, 77, 103, 133, 146, 191, etc.). In 1840 a return describes
more than fifty Courts Baron in Northumberland, more than a score in Durham,
half a dozen in Yorkshire, half a dozen in Wales, and half a. dozen elsewhere
(besides Hundred Courts, Honour Courts, and Borough Courts), still acting as
petty debt Courts, and dealing, in some instances, with hundreds of pleas
annually (House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840). The
County Courts Act of 1846 (9 and 10 Vic. c. 95) allowed Lords to surrender
their civil jurisdictions, to be merged in the new County Courts ; and the
amending Act of 1867 (30 and 31 Vic. c. 142) formally deprived them of any
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 121
" where a body of freeholders have a set of customs relating
to fines, heriots, regulation of commons, and the like, resembling
the customs of copyhold tenants." *
The Court Leet function of the Manorial Court the
suppression of public nuisances, the enforcement of personal
obligations, and the appointment of police officers was
simultaneously being eaten into by newer forms of social
organisation. After the first quarter of the seventeenth century
we do not find Parliament conferring any jurisdiction upon
outstanding jurisdiction in matters falling within thatf of these Courts (Treatise
on the Law of Copyholds, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 434 ; see article
in Nineteenth Century, October 1897 ; A History of English Law, by Prof.
W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, p. 418).
1 Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition,
1893, p. 300. Where the Lord's Court has long since abandoned any functions
of Local Government, and has become purely formal, we sometimes find it still
making presentments of encroachments on the ' ' Waste " of the Manor. Thus
in the records of the "General Court Baron" of the Manor of Titburst and
Kendalls in Hertfordshire (access to which we owe to the kindness of Mr. E. C.
Phillimore), though any local government work had long before fallen into
desuetude, we find, on 22nd June 1801, two presentments of persons making
enclosures of the waste of the Manor. So at Barnes (Surrey), where the Lord's
Court is still (1906) held, we read of a proclamation of the Court on 27th July
1894 against a tenant illegally digging gravel, and of his being "fined" 50
by the Lord of the Manor (History of the Parish of Barnes, by J. E. Anderson,
1900, p. 11).
More usually the Lord's Court became simply an opportunity for recording
alienations of copyhold property, when a complacent Steward entertained at
dinner a score of the Lord's tenantry. The Court was sometimes revived for
this purpose after long desuetude. Thus " the Reeve and Constable of the Leet
of Tunstall, . . . important civil officers in their day," had apparently ceased to
be appointed after 1691. "But in the year 1826," the Lord's Court "was
revived and has been since held annually as an audit for chief rents, for swear-
ing in Constables, etc., and as a festive meeting and bond of connection between
the Lord and his tenants" (The Borough of Stoke on Trent, by John Ward,
1843, p. 78). It is interesting to note that as early as three centuries ago the
dinner had already become an important part of the ceremony. At Worplesdon
(Surrey) the customs of the Manor formally recite that "the Homage and
officers attending the Court and the Lawday have their dinner at the Queen's
charge," the Queen owned the Manor, "but on a special Court at the charge
of the party desiring it." Similarly, at Dymock (Gloucestershire), Whiston
and Claines (Worcestershire), Alvechurch (ditto), and many other Manors. In
the Manor of Earl's Court (Middlesex), it is expressly provided that "any
tenant may call a Court at his own charge, without suit unto the Lord ; the
Steward and tenants to have their dinner provided and the Steward to be
pleased for his pains" (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
pp. 487, 545, 548, 549, 559). In the Manor of Bishopstoke (Hants), in 1752,
the Jury "present that the Lord Bishop of the Manor ought at every Court
to find and allow unto the Jury and Homage a dinner of plain butcher's meat
and something in moderation to drink, in lieu of the pains and trouble they are
at in attending and doing the business of the same Court, agreeably to the
customs of this and other Manors belonging to the bishopric" (MS. Manor
Rolls, Bishopstoke, 1752).
1 22 THE CO URT IN R UINS
the Court Leet. 1 From the very beginning of the eighteenth
century we become aware of the rapid supersession of its
functions, sometimes by new statutory bodies of Street
Commissioners or Turnpike Trustees to be hereafter de-
scribed ; sometimes by the Vestry of the Parish ; sometimes
by the Justices of the County. The presentments at the
Lord's Court become steadily more perfunctory, often de-
generating into a careless return of " omnia bene," or, as
in a Welsh Manor in 1804, "all well but the pigs." 2
In some large and relatively populous parishes, such as
Woolwich and Tooting, we see the Vestry assuming the
right to pass the By-laws which elsewhere would have been
considered the business of the Lord's Court. 8 In the same
years the Middlesex Justices in Quarter Sessions were taking
upon themselves freely to quash particular appointments of
Constables made by the Lord's Courts, discharging some
persons 4 and appointing others as they thought fit. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century it is not uncommon to find
Vestries nominating Constables. Presently their appoint-
ment by the Justices, in default of the Lord's Court, became
the common form. In 1800, for instance, we gather that in
the extensive district of the Newport Three Hundreds of
Buckinghamshire, there were only four parishes in which the
Constables were still appointed at the Lord's Court. 8 By
1829 we are told that " Petty Constables, though sometimes
appointed in Court Leet according to ancient practice, and
occasionally sworn into office either by the Lord of such
1 The last instance is 21 James I. c. 21 (1623), as to innkeepers' offences.
8 MS. Manor Roll, Maenol (in Diocese of Bangor), 1804, among the archives
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
3 See our preceding volume, The Parish and the County, pp. 56-60, 105, etc.
4 In contrast, we may note that when, in 1652, a Constable for the Hundred
of King's Wimborne in Hampshire complained to the Judge at Assizes that he
had not been relieved of his office, though his year had expired, the Court would
not do more than direct the Steward for the Manor of King's Wimborne to
choose another person (MS. Circuit Books, Western Circuit, 9th July 1662).
6 These were Bow, Brickhill, Castlethorpe, Haversham, and Stoke Ham-
mond. The words "Court Leet "are written against these in MS. Minutes,
Quarter Sessions, Buckinghamshire, Easter, 1800. Nevertheless in Gloucester-
shire, and doubtless elsewhere, every appointment by the Justices continued for-
mally to be made only ' ' until the Lord of the Leet shall hold his Court and
appoint another in his stead " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Gloucestershire,
Epiphany, 1825 ; see for a similar form, A Guide to the Practice of the Court of
Quarter Sessions for the County of Somerset, by John Jesse, Junior, 1815, p. 22),
PREVALENCE AND DEC A Y OF THE LORD'S COURT 123
Court or by Justices out of session, are now generally
nominated by their respective Parish Vestries, and sworn
into office by the Justices at the Quarter Sessions, which is,
on every account, the better and more regular mode." l " In
the rural districts," wrote Chadwick only a few years later,
"the Courts Leet have generally fallen into desuetude." 2 Here
and there some valuable source of revenue kept the Lord's
Court alive right down to Victorian times ; it might be, as
in the case of the Great Court of the Manor of Wakefield,
the right to inspect and exact fees for standardising the
weights and measures over an area of 230 square miles; 8
it might, as at Bradford, 4 Devonport, 6 and various other
places, be a profitable market, with its power to levy toll ;
it might, as at Farringdon in Berkshire, be a prescriptive
right to levy a " toll traverse " on cheese and corn arriving
in the Manor; 6 or it might, as at Manchester, Leeds, Wake-
1 Practical Guide to the Quarter Sessions, by W. Dickinson and T. N. Tal-
fourd, 1829, p. 60.
2 Poor Law Commissioners' General Report on the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population, 1842, p. 296.
3 See Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, by W. P. Baildon, vol. i.
(1274-1297), 1901 ; History of Wakefield, by Thomas Taylor, 1886. The
Manorial rights to this inspection of weights and measures, when actually exer-
cised, were preserved in 22 and 23 Vic. c. 56, sec. 10 (1859), and 41 and 42 Vic.
c. 49, sec. 49 (1878). The Act 55 and 56 Vic. c. 18 enabled local authorities
to buy out the owners of such rights. The West Riding County Council had to
pay 5000 in compensation in 1892 to get the function into its own hands (Our
Weights and Measures, by H. J. Chaney, 1897, pp. 54-55). In the Manors of
St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Stepney, Middlesex, the Manorial officers continued
to be chosen for this purpose during the eighteenth century, and to levy fees and
fines on persons using faulty weights and measures. These rights were upheld
in the Court of King's Bench ; see Duke of Bedford v. Alcock, 1 Wils. 248 ;
Sheppard v. Hall in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and J. L. Adolphus,
1833, vol. iii. p. 433 ; Morning Advertiser, 4th January 1806 ; Treatise on Copy-
holds, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 435. Similar jurisdictions con-
tinued to be exercised in these and other London Manors during the early part
of the nineteenth century (see, for instance, a case in Clerkenwell, in 1832,
Wilcock v. Windsor and Others, in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and
J. L. Adolphus, 1833, vol. iii. pp. 43-50).
4 Historical Notes on the Bradford Corporation, by W. Cudworth, 1881,
citing the case, Rawson v. Wright, in which this monopoly was successfully
maintained in 1825.
6 It is interesting to note that at Devonport, where the market yielded to
the Lord of the Manor in 1830 a profit of nearly 3000 a year, the Lord's Court
continued to appoint annually twelve "Constables for the Manor," even after
the local Justices in Petty Sessions had taken to appointing fifteen Constables of
their own (Brindley's Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse Directory, 1830).
8 In this case the Lord of the Manor in 1822 successfully maintained his
right to exact and distrain summarily for sixpence on every ton of cheese and a
124 THE COURT IN RUINS
field, Bradford, and Ossett, be a Soke Mill, in which the Lord
had known how to maintain a lucrative monopoly. 1
It is, of course, impossible to ascribe to any one cause,
or to assign to any one year, the setting in of the decay of
the Lord's Court as an organ of Local Government. Just as
no statute had created it, or endowed it with jurisdiction, so
no statute ever abolished it, or even abrogated its powers.
Its gradual fading away was, in fact, spread over several
centuries. The persistent hostility of the King's Courts at
Westminster, to be" traced even in the thirteenth century,
became specially accentuated in Sir Edward Coke, and
was strengthened by the influences of the Commonwealth,
which gave a shake to all feudal forms from which they
never recovered. But apart from this disfavour of the
King's Courts, at all times the jealous rivals of local juris-
dictions, and apart from the disintegrating influences of seven-
teenth-century politics, the very ideas on which the Court
of the Manor was based became ever more out of harmony
with the new conceptions of social organisation. The
principle of Government by the Common Agreement of the
persons immediately concerned the principle which lay at
the root of such local autonomy as existed in the Court
Baron was ever more undermined by the growing tendency
to base all civil relations on the strictly ascertained legal
rights of the individual as an individual. Moreover, the
Common Agreement on which the Court Baron rested was,
as we have mentioned, essentially that of an Association of
Producers, enjoying in individual ownership the use of the
land, coupled with the power to levy taxes on the landless
residents, who presently became the bulk of the population,
and naturally resented their exclusion.
The Court Leet side of the Manorial Court was, as we may
now see, equally out of harmony with the ideas and the needs
of the eighteenth century. The limitation of the Leet to
penny on every quarter of corn ; he had in return to maintain market-house,
lock-up house, pound, two pairs of stocks, and the stalls of the market ; to
provide a brass bushel measure, and to repair half a bridge over the Thames
(Rickards v. Bennett and Another, 1822, in Reports of Cases, etc., by J. Dow-
ling and A. Ryland, 1823, vol. ii. pp. 389-398).
1 History of Committing, by R. Bennett and J. Elton, 1898-1904, vol. iii.
cbap. viii., " Feudal Laws and Customs."
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 125
yearly or half-yearly meetings was specially inapplicable to
the suppression of urban nuisances. 1 Its whole procedure, in
its successive stages of presentment, amercement, affeering, and
distraining for small fines was cumbrous and often ineffective ;
and the absence of any provision against a recurrence of the
offence gave the locality the very minimum of protection.
But we suggest that the break-up of the Court Leet is to be
attributed, in the main, to the abandonment by the English
people of the root-principle on which the Court depended.
This principle, to put it shortly, was that, however men might
differ in faculties or desires, they were all under an equal
obligation to serve the community, by undertaking, in turn, all
the offices required for its healthy life. This principle is
manifested in the annual nomination of officers, their com-
pulsory service, and its limitation to a single year. It is seen
in the supremacy of the Jury, taken haphazard from the
neighbours, and deciding, without experts, and even without
witnesses, " on their own view and knowledge." It lies at the
base of the usual absence of any permanent staff or Corporate
revenue, and of the inability to see the necessity for more
frequent meetings of the Court, or for its separation into
committees. It accounts for the fact that Parliament was
disinclined to endow this shifting Jury and perpetually
changing group of amateur officers with any new functions,
even if it ever occurred to any year's Court to ask for new
powers, to be executed in future years by successive new
groups of jurymen and officers whose character no one could
foresee. We may recognise a noble element in this idea of
universal equality of social obligation the opposite, be it
observed, of the eighteenth-century idea of universal equality
of civil and political rights. But when this universal equality
of social obligation meant each citizen taking, in turn, an
" equal and identical " share in the service of the community,
it proved impracticable for any but the most primitive society.
Division of labour, implying specialisation of structure and
1 The Court might have sat more frequently by the device of adjournment,
but this was a device it seldom learned to use, and which had certainly not been
contemplated in Magna Carta. In a case in 1832, an adjournment of a Court
Leet from May to December was held to be not improper (Wilcock v. Windsor
and Others, in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and J. L. Adolphus,
1833, vol. iii. pp. 43-50).
126 THE COURT IN RUINS
function, became in fact a necessity of progress. Yet the
twentieth-century student will perhaps regret that it was not
the element of an identical equality, but the very notion of
social obligation itself, which was swept away by the rival
panacea of universality of civil and political rights.
CHAPTER III
THE MANOKIAL BOROUGH
WE have now to describe a somewhat heterogeneous collection
of local governing authorities which appear to us to be inter-
mediate between the Lord's Court and the autonomous
Municipal Corporation creating its own Justices of the Peace.
The bulk of these authorities are plainly " Manorial " in their
constitution. They are made up of such familiar parts as
the Jury of Presentment, nominating or appointing Reeves,
Constables, and other officers ; they transact the public business
at " Courts," called indifferently Leets, Views of Frankpledge,
Courts Baron, Courts of Pleas, Courts of Record, Three Weeks'
Courts, or Burghmotes; they exercise seignorial powers over
the inhabitants at large often absorbing indeed all the
privileges of the Lord. They are frequently, we might almost
say usually, termed " Boroughs " or " Free Boroughs." But we
shall find, as Professor Maitland indicates, that " the Borough
community will be closely related to the village community." l
In some instances the so-called Boroughs are members of the
seignorial Hierarchies of Courts that we have already described.
In other places they are merely the urban parts of large
Manors, becoming, by the grant of a measure of autonomy,
what we shall term " Lord's Boroughs," the rest of the Manor
being often designated " the Foreign." In a small minority of
cases we find functions analogous to those of the Lord's
Borough exercised by rudimentary authorities, which, so far as
the accessible evidence is concerned, cannot actually be proved
to have ever had any connection with a Lord's Court. But all
these authorities, whether demonstrably seignorial in origin, or
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 51.
127
128 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
doubtfully so, occupy, between 1689 and 1835, a similar
position in the local government of the country, between the
Parish and its officers on the one hand, and the Lord-Lieutenant,
High Sheriff, and Justices of the County on the other. Hence
we group the whole of these authorities under the loose
designation of Manorial Boroughs a phrase which we use
merely to distinguish them from the Municipal Corporations
empowered to create their own Corporate Justices of the Peace. 1
We must leave it to the historian of the Manor to decide
whether some of the authorities which, between 1689 and
1835, fell within this class are appropriately designated
" Manorial." In order that the student may bear this
reservation in mind, we begin with those instances which seem
to have least connection with the Lord's Court, and in which
the constitutional structure is most rudimentary.
(a) The Village Meeting
The most rudimentary it may possibly be the least
significant of quasi-manorial administrations existing in 1689
were the recurring village meetings, unchartered and unnamed,
that regulated the commonfield agriculture, the town's plough,
the customary privilege of gleaning, 2 the bull and boar, the
common herd, the pasturage on the commons and the waste,
and sometimes the quarry and the fishing grounds, without
any obvious relation to any Lord of the Manor. No one has
yet explored the extent to which such customary sharings of
user of land, with or without legal ownership, have existed
1 We know of no general description of the class of local authorities that
we term Manorial Boroughs. The phrase "Manorial Corporations" was used
in the analytic index and tables of the Municipal Corporation Commission's
Report, 1835-1838, to designate some of the towns which they excluded from
their list of Municipal Corporations ; but they did not define its scope. Their
separate reports on such of the Manorial Boroughs as they investigated, together
with those of the Commission of 1876-1880, are the principal accessible
materials ; but, as will be seen, we have made great use of the MS. archives of
such towns as Alnwick, Alresford, Altrincham, Aruudel, Beccles, Birmingham,
Christchurch, Godmanchester, Lymington, Tetbury, and Wisbech ; and of the
local histories. See also Miss Bateson's articles in English, Historical Eeview,
1900-1902 ; and her Borough Customs (Selden Society, 1904 and 1906).
2 The gleaning rules of Helpston in Lincolnshire in 1722 seem to have been
the following: "That no person shall glean peas or beans till the peas or
beans be carried by the owners thereof, nor to carry away grain in sheets or
blankets, but to glean in bands only " (Fenland Notes and Queries, vok iii. p. 304).
THE VILLAGE MEETING 129
up and down England and Wales ; nor enumerated the
different forms under which some assembly or committee of
the " commorants " arranged for the enjoyment of these
" dolewoods " or " oxgangs," these " cattlegates " or " sheep-
heaves," these " stints " and " horseleazes," these " pasturegates "
and " cowsgrasses." 1
An interesting example of village government of this sort
is afforded by the little village of Berwick in Sussex. Here,
as we gather, nothing in the nature of a Manorial Court has
been held for centuries. The inhabitants in 1721 are found
governing themselves by voluntary agreement, then embodied
in writing, in which the Eector joins. The arable fields,
known as " tenantry-land," were unenclosed, and owned in
severalty in the usual scattered strips. We have no record
of decisions, like those of the Lord's Court of Great Tew, as
to the crops to be sown. But each owner was to contribute
a certain quota of sheep 2 to a common flock, to be placed
in charge of a shepherd, and folded on the cornfields after
a certain date. From information that we have gathered
privately, we learn that, for the pasture lands, the Commoners
cast lots annually for the parts of the common meadow they
were severally to use during the ensuing year. As it was
not thought seemly for the Eector to cast lots, he was allowed
to use always the lot next to the brook. These rights to use
the common lands seem to have been gradually bought up
and exchanged by the principal landowner. But to this day
(1907), as we are informed by the daughter of the late
incumbent, the Parish Clerk has, by virtue of his office,
the right to turn out one bullock upon what was formerly
a commonfield, between certain fixed dates in the year ; and
this " right " is annually purchased from him by the farmer
of those particular fields. 3
Another curious survival is seen in the ancient village of
1 See the Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd
edition, 1893, p. 16.
2 "Agreed that the sheep that are stocked for the Tye shall be stocked in
this proportion, namely [the Rector] 16 for his privileges there ; Widow Godly,
16 ; S. Stace, 8 ; Thomas Susan, 14 ; and those which have no land but their
privileges shall keep only 3 ewes to their privileges, and no more."
s "Berwick Parochial Records," by Rev. G. M. Cooper, in Sussex Archaeo-
logical Collections, vol. vi., 1853, pp. 240-241 ; supplemented by private
information.
VOL. II. PT. I K
130 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Yarnton in Oxfordshire, where there are three so-called "Lot
Meadows," containing over 200 acres of valuable hay-fields.
These have, time out of mind, been divided among the two
tithe owners and the thirteen owners of shares, some of which
are still appurtenant to neighbouring farms, whilst others
are held by persons neither owning nor farming land. What
is interesting is that, with the exception of the two " tidals "
or " tithals," the shares of the co-owners, although all bearing
distinct names, such as " Dun," " William of Bladon," " Eothe,"
etc., and dealt with as incorporeal hereditaments, are not repre-
sented by any definite pieces of land, but only by the right
to draw lots annually for a thirteenth part in each of the
" drafts " or sections into which the fields are then and there
divided. The following description is by one who witnessed
in 1905 a ceremony that was plainly of ancient usage :
" On the day on which the meadows are appointed to be
drawn . . . the Headsman meets the owners of these shares
at the tidals in Oxhey. He has with him a bag containing
thirteen boxwood balls of about 1^ in. in diameter, on each
of which is written the name of one of these shares. At the
first post, one of those present dips his hand into the bag
and withdraws one of the balls ; the name on the ball is
called out, and a man with a scythe cuts half a dozen swathes
to make a bare place, on which the owner of the lot cuts his
initial. The whole company then walks on to the next stake,
and a second ball is withdrawn. The man with the scythe
again cuts half a dozen swathes, and the owner cuts his
initial in the turf; and the performance is repeated till all
the thirteen balls have been withdrawn, and every one of the
thirteen owners has obtained his lot in the first draft. . . .
In order to divide the lots, a man walks through the high
grass from one post to the corresponding post on the other
side of the field, and the track thus trodden shows the boundary.
... It is obvious that this is the best way to divide the
growing grass on unenclosed meadows. Every owner has his
lot in each of the eight drafts, and the chance of the lot
renders it most improbable that one man will get the pick
of the field while his neighbour gets all the worst portions.
As one of the farmers present said to me, ' They must have
been clever old folk who thought this out.' To show how
THE VILLAGE MEETING 131
the lot works out, it will be sufficient to state that the owner
of the share called Dun drew Lot 1 in the first draft of Oxhey,
9 in the second, 12 in the third, 4 in the first draft of the
West Mead, 3 in the second, 1 1 in the third, 1 1 in the fourth,
and 8 in the fifth." l
Similar village organisations connected with common
agricultural interests may be found by the explorer in other
parts of England. 2 It is, however, rare to find them getting
1 "Till the beginning of the last century all three fields had to be cut the
same day as they were drawn ; Oxhey on the first Monday after old St. Peter's
Day, West Mead on the second Monday, and Pixey on the third. This custom
was the cause of much disturbance and riot : outside labour had to be employed,
and there was an influx of disorderly harvesters into the village ; but, in 1817,
the vicar of Yarnton persuaded all parties to agree to a change, allowing the
grass to be cut at any time before the cattle are turned into the meadow.
"The owner of each complete share is entitled to turn on to the meadows
ten beasts after the grass is cut, but in so doing he must be careful to send no
sheep or entire animals. The meadows are thrown open for stock on the
Monday after August 12th, but there appears to be no rule fixing the date
when the meadows are again laid up for hay ; in practice it is found, however,
that as the meadows are very liable to floods, the cattle begin to lose flesh
before the end of October, and they are, therefore, taken off" (" Lot Meadows,
an interesting survival," by Adolphus Ballard, Country Life, 18th Nov.
1905 ; see also Three Oxfordshire Parishes, by Mrs. Staple ton, Oxford Historical
Society, 1893, pp. 307-310). " Traces of a similar sharing of meadows by lot are
said to be found to-day in the Lammas grounds in Hackney Marshes ; and old
deeds of the thirteenth century in the chartulary of Godstow speak of Lot
meadows at Cassington, the adjacent parish to Yarnton, and at Bletchingdon
in the Cherwell Valley. The St. Frideswide's chartulary speaks of Lot meadows
at Eynsham, which is the next parish to Cassington. "
We have already mentioned elsewhere the common organisation of the four
villages in Northamptonshire that share among them the Ashe Meadow ;
appointing six "Fieldmen" to lay out the meadow in lots, which were drawn
for at an annual gathering, and mown under the direction of "Crocusmen"
(History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, by John Bridges, 1791, vol. i.
p. 219 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, p. 269). Similar
lot meadows existed at Bestmoor (Oxon) ; see The English Peasantry and the
Enclosure of Common Fields, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, p. 35.
2 For instance, near the villages of Congresbury and Puxton in Somerset,
there was, down to 1811, an extensive common, called the Dolmoors, running
into both the parishes, the householders of which had the right of pasturage.
This common was divided into twenty-four parts, and was managed by two
officers, called Overseers of the Dolmoors, who served for one year and then
nominated their successors. Every year, on the Saturday before Midsummer
Day, a meeting was held in Puxton Church, by sound of bell, in the early
morning, at which the villagers attended. The business was to draw lots for the
privilege of having the use of twenty-three of the parts for the ensuing year,
and to let by auction, by "inch of candle," the twenty-fourth part, "the
Outdrift " or " the Outlet," for a sum of money varying from about one to three
pounds, which was devoted to defraying the incidental expenses of the year.
This ancient custom was only terminated by the 1816 award under the Inclosure
Act of 1811 (History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, by J. Collinson,
1791 ; Delineations of the North- West Division of the County of Somersetshire
1 32 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
beyond the undeviating maintenance of an ancient custom,
without other administrative machinery than a public meeting
and an officer the " Headsman," Common Herd, Fieldsman,
or " Overseer," paid by customary fees or contributions. 1
But "between village and Borough," as Professor Maitland
tells us, " there is no insuperable gulf, and if our villages had
* remained lordless they might perhaps in course of time have
exhibited the decisive symptoms of Corporate unity." 2
The first step in such an evolution might be the establish-
ment of a standing committee. Of this the leading case is
that of Aston and Cote, 3 two hamlets in the parish of
Bampton, Oxfordshire, where the commoners had, time out of
mind, down to Victorian days, maintained a " Sixteens," or
standing administrative committee, on which each served in
turn, every four yardlands annually furnishing one member.
This body, as we learn from the case which the Lord of the
Manor submitted to Counsel in 1657, had, from time
immemorial, been accustomed " to make orders, set penalties,
choose officers, and lot the meadows, and do all such things as
are usually performed or done in the Courts Baron of other
by J. Rutter, 1829, p. 36 ; The Sea-Board of Mendip, by F. A. Knight,
1902, pp. 228-232 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, pp. 268-
269 ; Archceologia, vol. xxxv. p. 471 ; Notes and Queries for Somerset and
Dorset, vol. vi. p. 109).
1 We ought not to forget that Domesday Book itself testifies to the existence
of some entirely "lordless" villages (Domesday Book and Beyond, by F. W.
Maitland, 1897, p. 133 ; The Domesday Inquest, by A. Ballard, 1906, pp. 138,
146 ; article by J. H. Round in Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, vol. i.
1905). Moreover, it seems worth considering whether some of these apparently
autonomous village organisations may not have been, as the ' ' berewicks " of
Domesday possibly were, colonies or off-shoots from a Manor, forming distinct
agricultural units in new settlements, and gaining a practical autonomy as
they removed from the parent stock (see Domesday Book and Beyond, by F. W.
Maitland, 1897, p. 114 ; The Growth of the Manor, by P. Vinogradoff, 1905,
p. 224 ; History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906,
p. 3 ; article by F. M. Stenton in Victoria County History of Derbyshire, vol. i.,
1905, p. 311). 2 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitlaud, 1898, p. 35.
3 For the discussion of this interesting case, see Professor F. W. Maitland's
article, ' ' The Survival of Archaic Communities, " in Law Quarterly Review, vol. ix. ,
July 1893 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, pp. 158-170 ;
Villainage in England, by P. Vinogradoff, 1892, pp. 392, 450 ; History of
Bampton, by J. A. Giles, 1847, p. 79 ; The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 12-13 ; Archceologia, vol. xxxiii. p. 269 and vol. xxxv.
p. 470 ; The Jurist, New Series, vol. xii. part ii. p. 103. Journal of Archaeo-
logical Institute, vol. xliv. p. 405 ; Qentleman's Magazine, 1839, vol. ii. p. 640 ;
Proceedings of Society of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 62, vol. iii. pp. 54, 86 ; and the
Inclosure Award, 1855.
THE VILLAGE MEETING 133
Manors." The orders of the Sixteens were formally proclaimed
from the Town Cross, and were then universally accepted as
binding on the community. Four of the most influential
members of the Sixteens were annually chosen to be Grass
Stewards, and also to represent the men of Aston and Cote at
the Lord's Court of Bampton, to which the hamlets apparently
owed suit of court. The Sixteens had also to provide every
season four two -year- old bulls to run on the common pasture.
In return they were authorised to levy a fee for each cow
placed on the Common, and to sell the bulls at the end of the
season. The Sixteens appointed all the officers of the village,
allotting to each the particular share of the " Town Hams "
that custom assigned for the remuneration of the post the
Constable's Ham, the Herd's Ham, the two Water Stewards'
Hams, the Hayward's Ham, the Water Hayward's Ham, and
so on. The remainder of the " Town Hams " were " disposed
of at the discretion of the Sixteens, some for the public use of
the Town, as for making of gates, bridges, etc., and some sold
to make ale for the merry meeting of the inhabitants." We
need not in this work describe the elaborate arrangements that
were still in force in 1657 for the annual sharing out by
lot of the common meadow among the owners of strips in
the commonfield ; the gathering of the villagers under the
direction of the Grass Stewards and the Sixteens, when the
grass was ripe to cut, and the eager rushing of each man with
his scythe to mow the part allotted to him. Nor does it
enter into the plan of this work to go into the hotly debated
question of the probable origin of this remarkable organisation,
or to discuss whether it can be sufficiently accounted for by
the supposition that it represented a district shared between
three separate Manors. 1 It suffices us to note that the
1 It maybe important to trace the constitutional influence of "intercom-
moning," or the use of pasture lands more or less jointly by several villages,
parishes, or Manors ; of which traces may be found in Marshland Fen (Norfolk)
and in Lincolnshire fenlands, and also in the Essex marshes (see Domesday
Book and Beyond, by F. W. Maitland, 1897, p. 367 ; The Forest of Essex, by
W. R. Fisher, 1887, pp. 265, 277, 289 ; and the article by J. H. Round in
Victoria County History of Essex, vol. i. pp. 369-374).
We may briefly note some other cases of village organisation. " The people
of Ibthorpe," we read of a hamlet in the parish of Hurstbourn Tarrant,
Hampshire, "are Lords of their own Manor, and to this day exercise their
Manorial rights, in respect of which they have exclusive common rights on the
seventy acres of common land at Pillheath, including a right to everything that
t 3 4 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
attempt made in 1657 to reduce the inhabitants to a position
of ordinary Manorial dependence did not succeed ; and that
the rule of the Sixteens, curiously resembling, as we shall see,
that of the simplest Manorial Boroughs, continued until the
middle of the nineteenth century.
(b) The Chartered Township
If the Village Meeting, desiring legal authority for the
management of its common estate, obtained a Eoyal Charter,
it might develop, out of a rudimentary constitution analogous to
that of Aston and Cote, a form of government even approaching
a Municipal Corporation.
Among the possessions of the wealthy Abbey of St. Edmund
was a fen or marsh of 1400 acres near the village of Beccles
in Suffolk, which the Abbot had been accustomed for centuries
to let to the townsfolk, getting his annual rent from four
" Fenreeves " whom they elected at a public meeting. At the
grows on this common, with liberty to take it away for their use in Ibthorpe,
but not for sale " (Paper by Mr. T. W. Shore, in The Antiquary, vol. xvii.
p. 52, 1888 ; TJte Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, p. 260). In
other villages we find ancient regulations resting on the agreement of a public
meeting of the villagers. Thus the inhabitants of Wiuteringham in Lincoln-
shire framed in 1685 a formal code of By-laws, said to be agreed to "at a parish
meeting." "Item, 13 it was ordained, "that none shall burne or bake at any
unlawful time of night, on paine of 3/4. Item, none shall dry any hempe or
flax by the fire upon paine of 3/4. Item, none shall smoke tobacco on the streets
upon paine of 2/- for every default " (History of Winterton and the Adjoining
Villages, by W. Andrew, 1836, p. 105). Similar "fire rules" are found in
other villages, though whether promulgated at the Lord's Court or Parish Vestry
or merely by common agreement it is not easy to determine. At Helpston,
in Lincolnshire, it was ordered in 1722 that no person was to " fetch fire from
any neighbouring house without the same being carried in a lanthorn or wanning
pan, for every offence to pay ten shillings." Also it was ordered "that no
person whatsoever shall smoke tobacco in the town, street, or in any stable, barn,
or outhouse, without a sufficient muzzle, hood, or cover for the same, under the
penalty for every offence of five shillings " (Fenland Notes and Queries, vol. iii.
pp. 303-306).
Other villages had "Gild Halls" and "Town Bailiffs." At Leverington, in
the Isle of Ely, there was an ancient "Gild Hall," used latterly as free
tenements for paupers, and an annually chosen "Town Bailiff." This
distinction seems to have been due to its possession of "townlands," producing
no less than 300 a year, which were vested in trustees, one of whom served
annually as Town Bailiff (Historical Account of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827,
p. 471 ; History of Wisbech, by K Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 503 ;
History of Wisbech, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p.- 380). It is now, with a
population in 1901 of 1124, governed by a Parish Council, with its endowments
held for charitable purposes by separate trustees.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 135
dissolution of the abbey, the townsfolk, by judicious payments
to the King, got this arrangement continued in slightly varied
form, the position being regularised by Koyal Letters Patent
and Charter of 1584 and 1605 respectively, which definitely
established a Corporate body of " the Portreeve, Surveyors, and
Commonalty of Beccles Fen." l This anomalous Corporation,
created primarily to regulate a large common pasture rather
than to govern a town, consisted of two Chambers, one of
twelve and the other of twenty-four members, each filling
vacancies by co-option. The members of the Twelve were
alone eligible to serve as Portreeve, on election by the two
Chambers of the Corporation voting together. The whole
body of the commonalty, including the members of the two
Chambers, met to enact "statutes, laws, articles, rules, and
orders touching the pasture and fen," which made up all
their property, and " also concerning the good rule, state, and
government of the Commoners of or in the same fen " who
seem to have been all the householders of Beccles, for whose
" common benefit and utility " the revenue was to be expended.
The Charter had granted or continued to this Corporation the
right to hold, quite apart from the Manorial Courts, its own
Court of Justice, the so-called " Fen Court," at which the
Portreeve and the two or three Surveyors were the judges,
and in which the principal part was played by the " Common
Clerk " of the Corporation, and by the Inquest or Jury of the
Commoners. This was a Court of Eecord for " plaints con-
cerning the Fen," having power to punish by fine or imprison-
ment, or by exclusion from "commoning in the Fen." But
neither the Portreeve nor the Corporation had ever been
granted magisterial powers or regulative authority in anything
beyond the management of the Fen.
Notwithstanding this limitation of their legal authority,
we see the Portreeve, Surveyors, and Common Council of
Beccles Fen gradually slipping into the position of administer-
1 The MS. records of the Beccles Corporation are imperfect, no book of
minutes having been found, and we were able to consult only a collection of
scraps of orders, etc., from 1719 to 1832, and various presentments, charges,
orders, etc., of the Manorial Court, 1628-1842. See also First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2133 ; Some
Account of the Corporation of Beccles Fen, 1807 ; and the History and Antiquities
of the County of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, vol. i. pp. 1-35.
136 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
ing much more than their common pasture. Their property,
which came eventually to yield over 1000 a year, made them
practically the dominant influence in this little town of a
couple of thousand inhabitants. The Lord of the Manor had,
indeed, the stallage of the market, and held his Courts a
Court Baron, a " Land Leet," l and also (for the regulation of
the fishing and navigation of the Eiver Waveney) a " Water
Leet." But the Manorial Courts evidently became very
perfunctory, the presentments of the Homage and Juries
steadily declining in number and importance, and the sessions
of the Courts becoming less frequent. 2 After the middle of
the eighteenth century, these Manorial Courts do practically
nothing but present persons to serve as Constables, Flesh-
searchers, and Ale-founders, with occasionally a Headborough.
As the need for some more regulative authority becomes felt,
we see the Corporation and its Portreeve coming more and
more to the front. Their " Fen Court " is, indeed, abandoned,
the last sessions having been in 174 1. 3 But it is the Portreeve
and his two Serjeants at Mace who enforce such of the Fen
By-laws of 1613 as are not obsolete. It is the Portreeve,
Surveyors, and Commonalty who in 1740 make the new
regulations necessitated by the growing habit of keeping geese
to supply the London market, 4 and who in 1762 revise the
stint for sojourners, "certificate -men," householders "not
paying task," and those who "pay task to the king"
respectively. 6 It is the Portreeve's Feast, provided annually
at the Corporate expense, which is the great event of the year
in Beccles. In 1785 it is the Portreeve who, by the Deputy
Steward of the Corporation and out of the Corporation funds,
prosecutes before the County Justices those inhabitants who
commit encroachments and nuisances in the streets. 6 It is
1 This "Land Leet" called its Jury "The Jury of Headborough s " (MS.
records, Beccles Manor, 23rd September 1728, 24th September 1729), which
may be compared with the Jury of Constables mentioned in The Parish and the
County, Book I. Chap. III. "The Court of Quarter Sessions," pp. 464-466.
2 Between 1750 and 1800 there were, for instance, only five "Water Leets."
3 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix,
vol. iv. p. 2138.
4 MS. records, Beccles Corporation, 31st March 1740. 5 Ibid. 1762.
6 Ibid. 1st September 1785. It is interesting to notice that, in 1760, the
Chief Constable for the Hundred of Wangford had before the Corporation of
Beccles Fen had taken up this Municipal duty presented Beccles nuisances at
Quarter Sessions (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, 6th October 1760).
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 13?
the Corporation revenue which provides most of the relief of
the poor and maintenance of the roads. At last, in 1796,
legal authority is given to this government by a Local Act
for paving, lighting, cleaning, watching, and improving the
streets of Beccles, 1 under which the Portreeve and Surveyors,
ex officio, with several other members of the Corporation
named in the Act, were made Commissioners to carry out the
new duties, with power to levy a rate on the inhabitants.
From 1796 to 1835, when the population of the town
was increasing from 2500 to nearly 40 OO, 2 the activities of
the Corporation of Beccles Fen were indistinguishable from
those of the Beccles Street Commissioners, who were, in fact,
practically the same persons. When in 1804 the Commis-
sioners decided to pave the town, the Corporation sold part
of the Fen for 3000 to meet the cost. The payments for
watchmen, fire engines, lamps, and repairing the pavements
come sometimes out of one fund and sometimes out of another.
This was the less material in that practically all that was left
over of the Corporate income was paid " in relief of the town
for Poor, Lamp, Church, and (Highway) Composition Kates,"
this subsidy amounting, on an average, to 792 a year. 3 By
1835, in short, the Portreeve, Surveyors, and Commonalty of
Beccles Fen, originally only the managing committee of an
extensive common pasture, had, whilst letting slip even such
judicial powers as they had once exercised, assumed practically
the whole government of the town, and were accordingly
recognised as such and reformed by the Municipal Corporations
Act of 1835. 4
1 36 George III. c. 51.
2 History of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, vol. i. p. 34.
3 MS. Records, Beccles Corporation, 7th April 1831.
4 We may name here the Corporation of the ' ' Warden, Assistants, and
Commonalty " of Godalming in Surrey, incorporated by successive Royal
Charters, evidently governing the little town, but apparently entirely uncon-
nected with any of the Courts of the several Manors that existed in the parish.
Without property, taxing power, or magisterial jurisdiction its position in the
town became, already by the end of the seventeenth century, titular and
honorary only, the government passing to the Justices and to a body of Street
Commissioners established by Local Act in 1825 (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 735 ; Parish and Church
of Godalming, by S. Welman, 1900).
Such a Corporation of " Bailiff and Burgesses " existed, too, at Great Dunmow
in Essex, under sixteenth-century Royal Charters a self-renewing Society of
Twelve, who owned the markets, collected such tolls as they could, and gave
themselves an annual feast entirely unconnected with the Manor. It remained
138 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
An even more remarkable instance of the development of
a committee for managing a landed estate into something very
near to a fully developed Municipal Corporation is presented
by the " ancient seaport " of Wisbech, in the Isle of Ely, with
its Town Bailiff, ten Capital Burgesses, and Commonalty of forty-
shilling freeholders a quasi-municipal government which may
with some warrant claim to have furnished between 1689
and 1835 the most pure, energetic, and enlightened urban
administration in the Kingdom. 1
We do not need in this work to trace the origin of the
Wisbech town government in the religious Gild of the Holy
Trinity, the richest of all the Wisbech Gilds, that dominated
the town from at least 1379 down to 1549. 3 Here it suffices
to relate that on the dissolution of this fraternity by the
reforming zeal of Edward VI. the townsfolk succeeded in
obtaining, or rather in purchasing, through the good offices of
their Lord, the Bishop of Ely, not only the property of the
Gild, but also a Eoyal Charter which incorporated them for
the purpose of managing this landed estate, maintaining the
Grammar School, providing for the poor, and looking after
" banks, shores, and streams," with an implied authority to
uphold and enforce the customs of the little community.
Perhaps because it primarily concerned the management of
a common property, and did not expressly convey any powers
unreformed in 1835, and was dissolved only after the Municipal Corporations Act
of 1883. This town of nearly 3000 inhabitants, having been twice refused a
Charter of incorporation, is now (1907) governed only by a parish council (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2215;
ditto, 1880, part i. p. 37, partii. p. 294 ; History of Dunmow, by J. W. Savill,
1865).
1 For Wisbech we have had the advantage of examining the well-kept records
from 1616 to 1835 ; see also Report of House of Commons Committee on
Corporations, 1833 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835
Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2551 ; Report of Historical Manuscripts Commission
1883 ; Reasons . . . against embanking the Salt Marsh belonging to Sutton
1720 ; Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson, 1791
Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827
History of Wisbech, with an Historical Sketch of the Fens (Anon.), 1833 ; History
of Wisbech and the Fens, by Neil Walker and T. Cradock, 1849 ; History of
Wisbech, 1848-1898, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898. The population, said to have
been 1705 in 1676, was 4710 in 1801, and 8777 in 1831.
2 The existing records of the Gild begin in 1379 ; see Report of Public
Record Commissioners, 1837 ; Report of Historical Manuscripts Commission,
vol. ix. p. 293 ; Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson,
1791 ; History of Wisbech and the Fens, by N". Walker and T. Cradock, chap.
Hi. pp. 280-301.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 139
of government, this Charter was, for a Tudor instrument,
unusually democratic in form. Ten of the " better, more
honest, and more discreet inhabitants " l called at first " the
Company of the Ten," and afterwards " Capital Burgesses "
were to be freely elected at an annual assembly, or Common
Hall, of all the inhabitant householders. During the next
century and a half this simple constitution was rendered
somewhat more definite, the choice of Capital Burgesses being
first confined by agreement of the householders to forty-
shilling freeholders, and then the constituency, by Charter of
161 1, 2 being at the instance of the Corporation itself, alarmed
at the disorder of the public assemblies, similarly limited.
This franchise, whilst it excluded the mere hired man, cottager,
and temporary sojourner, still admitted, as we believe, most of
the independent householders of the little fishing and trading
port, which had, by 1689, a population under two thousand.
In contravention of the common legal theory, no provision
was made in the Charters for any head of the Corporation, but
local custom, transmitted from the Gild, had established a Town
Bailiff, an officer who represented the township to the County
and executed the decisions of the Capital Burgesses and
assemblies of freeholders. 3 Between 1689 and 1835 we
find the office filled by the Capital Burgesses in annual
rotation, though in some cases a successful and public-spirited
administrator remained for several years in succession. 4 We
find no trace of the Lord of the Manor the Bishop of Ely
holding any Court in Wisbech after the dissolution of the
Gild. 5 The townsfolk themselves levied tolls and dues, took
the waste on long lease, and in 1786 acquired the lease of
the market rights. The parish officers, whether Churchwardens,
Overseers, or Surveyors, appear, throughout the eighteenth
century, as humble subordinates of the Bailiff and Burgesses ;
and it is only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that
1 The terms used at first were "gratia eminentiae " and "de melioribus "
(Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson, 1791, pp. 8, 15).
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 319-321.
3 A Town Clerk was first appointed in 1679.
4 In a few instances one in 1565 the Town Bailiff seems not himself to
have been a Capital Burgess (History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock,
1849, p. 306).
6 The "Company of the Ten" themselves heard civil cases during the six-
teenth century as a sort of voluntary arbitration tribunal (ibid. pp. 308-310).
HO THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
the Open Vestry of inhabitants rises to any position of
importance. Above all these authorities we are conscious of
the Justices of the Peace of the Isle of Ely, meeting in Quarter
Sessions at Ely and holding Petty Sessions at Wisbech, but
only intervening in the affairs of the town when requested to
do so by the Town Bailiff and Capital Burgesses. The records
from 1689 to 1835 make it clear that the freeholders obeyed
the directions of their first Charter in electing and re-elect-
ing at the Annual Meetings that were always held in the
Gothic hall of the ancient Grammar School the ten " of the
better, more honest, and more discreet inhabitants," the Vicar
figuring nearly always in the list, the others comprising several
" Esquires," " Gentlemen," and " Captains," whilst a few only,
designated "Mr.," served to represent the shopkeepers or
farmers of the township.
It would be an interesting subject for special inquiry why
it was that this simple constitution produced, for the whole
century and a half that we are considering, a government of
remarkable excellence. About the fact the student of all the
available evidence can, we think, have no doubt. The elabor-
ately kept records, coupled with current traditions and the
actual state of the town, demonstrate the existence of an
administration which possibly first taking on a distinctively
Municipal and governmental character in the emergency of the
plague in 1586 * combined, from decade to decade, the three
great qualities of popular assent, purity of administration, and
continuity of enlightened policy. The note of what the
historians of the town term the "direct control of the
people" ' is particularly strong. Even in 1669, at an
epoch when Municipal Corporations were being stripped of
all popular features, the freeholders of Wisbech managed, by
prompt and vigorous action at Court, to prevent the trans-
formation of their ten Capital Burgesses into a Close Body, 3
and, whilst retaining their privilege of popular election, even
secured the definite recognition, in the new Charter, of the
obligation of the Capital Burgesses, not only to allow in-
1 Historical Account of . . . Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, p. 207.
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 347.
3 Historical Account of . . . Wisbech, by W.. Watson, 1827, p. 219;
History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 329-331 ; First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2551.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 141
spection of all their accounts, but also to submit them to the
" Common Hall " for its approval. 1 It was perhaps a per-
sistence of this pugnacious watchfulness that induced suc-
cessive Capital Burgesses to consider themselves the ministers,
and not the masters, of the town. 2 Though the Charter made
necessary only one meeting of the freeholders annually, we
find a frequent consultation by the Capital Burgesses of their
fellow-freeholders or the inhabitants at large. Thus even
when they have to appoint a schoolmaster in 1690, this is
done "at a meeting in the Town Hall . . . the Capital
Burgesses being seven in number, by and with the consent
of eleven others of the Burgesses." 3 When in 1699 the
Capital Burgesses think it necessary to prohibit the squatting
of cottagers upon the Lord's Waste, and to arrange for the
erection of a wall at the Town Bridewell, they lay these
matters before Assemblies of Burgesses, and obtain their
express consent, and even their active co-operation in the
work. 4 So intimate and informal was the relationship between
the Capital Burgesses and the Burgesses at large, that it is
often impossible to distinguish from the records which of the
meetings were confined to the smaller and which were open to
the larger body of governors ; our own impression being that
whenever any important new departure was contemplated, the
Capital Burgesses made a point of calling their constituents
into council to approve the proposal. Nor did the Capital
Burgesses always confine their consultations to the freeholders.
When in 1775 a local drainage Bill before Parliament seemed
likely injuriously to affect the interests of the town, the
Capital Burgesses summoned all the merchants and tradesmen
to a Public Meeting, for which a special report was prepared,
and from which authority was obtained to oppose the Bill at
1 Charter of. 21 Car. II. 1669 ; see First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2552. From 1818 the accounts were
printed and published.
a Thus it was formally resolved in 1826 that no alterations should be made
in the Free Grammar School ' ' without the direction of the Burgesses at large
being taken thereon at a public meeting " ; that a similar meeting should be held
before any Bill was promoted altering the existing Local Act, or effecting any
improvement in the town, or in the navigation (MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corpora-
tion, 2nd November 1826).
3 Ibid. 6th June 1690 ; so again, 31st January 1707.
Ibid. 1699 ; 22nd February 1700 ; 6th November 1720.
142 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
an estimated cost of 200 from the Corporate funds. 1 It was
after friendly consultation with " the clergy and some of the
principal inhabitants of the town " that the Capital Burgesses
submitted to the assembly of freeholders resolutions "for
considering the best means of extending education among
children of the poor/' and started a " Lancastrian " School. 2
From 1809 onwards we find coming in the inhabitants in
Vestry assembled, the Capital Burgesses habitually deferring
to any express resolution of this public meeting. It was in
consistency with this constant reliance on popular assent that
we find the Bailiff and Burgesses of Wisbech in 1833 warm
in their welcome of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners,
and uncompromisingly outspoken in their advocacy of a
popularly elected Town Council as the leading feature of
the Municipal Corporations Reform Bill, against which the
governing bodies of nearly all the Municipalities in the land
were protesting. 8
This dominant fact of popular control does not seem at
any time to have impaired the executive efficiency of the
Capital Burgesses. Though the " Company of the Ten " was
annually elected by the public meeting of freeholders, which
seems to have been an occasion of some public interest, even
the scene of sharp electoral contests lasting till midnight, at
which between one and two hundred freeholders voted, 4 it
appears to have been fairly stable in its membership. At no
time was it the close preserve of party exclusiveness 5 or the
plaything of political struggles ; the substantial inhabitants,
indeed, took their share of service as a public obligation and
not as a private advantage. And their duties were far from
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 21st December 1775 ; 8th January
1776.
2 Ibid. 27th March and 19th April 1811.
3 Ibid. 16th and 28th March 1833 ; 6th January 1834 ; Report of House
of Commons Committee on Corporations, 1833 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2551 ; History of Wisbech, by N.
Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 337 ; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 150.
4 The quaint customs of the election are described in the Historical Account
of . . . Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, pp. 230-233 ; History of Wisbech
(anon.), 1833, pp. 145-146.
5 As the Test Act applied to the Wisbech Corporation, the Capital Burgesses
had to be at least "occasional conformists"; and when in 1819, 1821, and
1822 an avowed Nonconformist was elected, he was .passed over (ibid, (anon.)
1833, p. 150 ; ibid, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 335 ; ibid, by
F. G. Gardiner, 1898, p. 93).
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 143
light. They met frequently sometimes twenty times in a
year and attended regularly, deciding such issues as arose, or
formulating them for submission to the popular assembly.
But it was on the one among them who served as Town Bailiff
that they relied for the daily task of town administration. It
was the Town Bailiff whom they ordered to set the poor to
work, pave the streets, scour the ditches, cleanse the market-
place, collect the rents, and promote or oppose Bills in
Parliament, exactly as if he had been their salaried servant,
though such phrases as " at his convenience," " as he shall
judge necessary," " at his discretion," or " as occasion offers "
soften the peremptory tone of their multitudinous orders.
Over the financial transactions of the Town Bailiff the Capital
Burgesses throughout maintained the strictest censorship.
" Ordered that no Town Bailiff shall expend upon any one
work above forty shillings without a particular order from
the Hall, and also that no workman's bill that exceeds the
sum of forty shillings shall be paid by the Town Bailiff
without being first perused and having the consent of the
Hall thereto." l He was not even allowed to let the smallest
tenement without the consent of his colleagues. 2 On the two
occasions in 150 years on which a Town Bailiff neglected to
deliver up, on quitting his office, a precise account of his
stewardship, he was prosecuted with relentless rigour. 8 In
1774 we note the beginning of a system of executive com-
mittees, always consisting of the Town Bailiff* and two other
Capital Burgesses. From this date committees to light the
town, to settle the rates of tolls and dues, to audit the
accounts, and to let the lands become practically continuous.
These committees seem to have been little more than devices
for strengthening the authority of the Town Bailiff, for, as
decade follows decade, we find the activity and importance of
this dignitary constantly increasing. We gather, indeed, that
towards the end of our period his official work became so
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 8th November 1694, 9th November
1725, 26th October 1730.
2 "Ordered that no Town Bailiff do put any person into any town house
without the consent of the Hall " (ibid. 8th November 1765).
3 Ibid. 1752-1756, 26th October 1778 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker
and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 332. Subsequent Bailiffs were required to give
security for 500 (MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 26th October 1778).
144 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
continuous that it was not easy to keep up the succession of
citizens with sufficient leisure, ability, and public spirit to
undertake this onerous unpaid office a difficulty which, in
1829, nearly brought the government of the little town to a
standstill, 1 and may have accounted for the enthusiasm with
which the Capital Burgesses accepted the reforms of 1835.
When we survey the administrative results obtained by
Wisbech in the course of a century and a half, we are able to
appreciate the pride and satisfaction of the whole body of
inhabitants in their local government. At no time and for no
purpose did the Corporation levy a rate. From first to last
the Capital Burgesses, in a spirit of what their historians call
" a healthy poverty," 2 made shift with the rents of the Gild
property, together with the ancient tolls and dues yielded by
the trade of the port. Already in 1689 we find them
managing their landed estate on the most approved modern
principles. At a time when other Corporations were dealing
with their property in secret conclave, conceding to their
members beneficial leases, granting long terms for trifling
fines, and improvidently alienating their freeholds, the Capital
Burgesses of Wisbech were habitually letting their farms and
town tenements by public auction for a term of twenty years,
with carefully drafted covenants, which seem to have been
strictly enforced. In 1751 they were quick to take advantage
of the lowering in the current rate of interest, successfully
negotiating a reduction of the rate on their loans to 4 per cent ;
and in 1774, alarmed at the slow rate at which this bonded
debt was being reduced, they arranged for its conversion into
life annuities. 3 Unlike the practice of so many other towns, in
restricting contracts to members of the Municipal Corporation,
the Capital Burgesses forbade any of their own number to be
pecuniarily interested in the Corporation work or directly or
indirectly to undertake the work of a paid office. 4 At no time
did the Burgesses put forward any claim to exclude non-
freemen from trading. 5 Such Corporate feasting as the habits
of the time demanded were enjoyed by all the Burgesses in
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 14th November 1829.
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 347.
3 Ibid. pp. 333-334.
4 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 14th December 1795.
6 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 338.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 145
common ; the maximum sum to be spent was carefully limited, 1
and the whole of them were finally discontinued in 1767
owing to a growing sense of decorum. After that date, at any
rate, the Capital Burgesses paid even for the annual dinner
that they allowed themselves. 2 To the same growth of decorum
we may perhaps attribute their success in suppressing, in 1786,
the annual custom of " bull running," which had prevailed at
Wisbech, as at Stamford and elsewhere, "time out of mind,"
and had degenerated into a carnival of brutal disorder. 3
This strict and economical administration of the Corporate
revenues was combined with an active policy according to the
best light of the time. When the relief of the poor was the
main function of the Capital Burgesses, we see them, instead of
giving doles and pensions, providing hemp on which to set the
poor to work; building a workhouse in 1720 out of bricks
made on their own land; establishing in 1691, and again in
1764, regular schools of spinning; and supplying the children
with both religious and industrial instruction. 4 When most
other towns were still relying for their Municipal services on
the performance by each individual householder of his ancient
personal service, Wisbech was already being paved, sewered,
cleansed, lighted, watched no doubt very imperfectly, but at
least on some general plan by paid officers or public contracts,
at the expense of the Corporate funds. 5 But the householder
was not allowed to escape. From the middle of the eighteenth
century onward, we find the Town Bailiff issuing printed
notices to the inhabitants, insisting on the cessation of this or
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 26tli October 1692 ; 5th November
1767 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 324-325.
2 Historical Account of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, p. 230.
3 History of Wisbech, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 25.
4 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 20th February 1622, 7th July 1691,
14th November 1720, 1764, etc. ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and
T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 327, 424 ; ibid, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 312.
They even anticipated by seventeen years the statute requiring the outdoor
paupers to wear a badge, resolving in 1680, "to pay for the stamp and 180
badges provided for the poor " (ibid. p. 327).
5 Items for paving the streets, repairing the causeways, and maintaining
bridges occur in the minutes in 1689, 1690, 1692, 1694, 1697, 1699, 1700,
1703, 1705, 1709, etc. ; for sewers to carry away waste water in 1693 and 1715 ;
for the maintenance of the five town pumps in- 1696, 1708, 1714, etc. ; for
sinking a new well and erecting a new pump in 1714 ; for cleansing the streets
and scavenging in 1621, 1705, 1721, 1723, 1725, etc.; for repairing the town's
fire engines in 1707 ; for increasing the number of fire buckets in 1716 ; for
watching the town in 1618, 1708, 1733. 1735 ; for lighting the town in 1715 ;
VOL. II. PT. I L
146 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
that street nuisance or encroachment, and following up these
notices by prosecutions before the Justices of those who disobey
such injunctions. 1 In 1810, when the population and trade
were rapidly increasing, the Capital Burgesses strengthened
the police powers thus exercised by the Town Bailiff by
obtaining a Local Act, in which, among other things, the
definition of public nuisance was enlarged and a more speedy
summary remedy provided. A paid Town Inspector was then
appointed to enforce the law. 2 Meanwhile the navigation of
the tidal river, on which the prosperity of the town depended,
was, from 1710 onwards, constantly being improved at the
public expense. The buoys and beacons were the object of
continual attention ; a special officer, the " Beaconer," was
appointed to look after them ; the channels, always liable to be
silted up, were dredged and deepened ; pilots were licensed and
a harbour-master was appointed ; a public crane was erected
as early as 1719, a public warehouse built in 1788, and a
special timber wharf constructed in 1 7 9 5 ; 8 a more com-
modious "custom house" was provided in 1801, whilst
throughout the whole period we see the Capital Burgesses
carefully watching the numerous drainage schemes or canal
Bills promoted by the neighbouring Fenland authorities, lest
any new project should interfere with the depth of the river
channel. 4 The " ancient seaport," as we find it described in
1720, remained for a century more one of the most important
of English havens for the coasting trade, with several scores of
ships belonging to it, exporting to London, it was said, more
oats and vegetable oil than any other port, and sometimes as
much as 8000 firkins of butter in a year. 5 In 1786 the
Capital Burgesses succeeded in buying up the lease of the
and so on. It was about this time that Defoe found Wisbech "a well-built
market town . . . esteemed the best trading town iu the Isle (of Ely), as
having the convenience of good water-carriage to London, whither they send
great quantities of oil and butter (A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great
Britain, by D. Defoe, vol. i. p. 84 of 1748 edition).
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 10th November 1785 (as to deposit
of dirt) ; 28th June 1785 (as to hogs wandering in the streets).
2 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 16th July 1810 ; 50 George III.
c. 206 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 339-340.
3 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 5th June 1795.
4 Ibid. 13th July 1719, 12th February 1744, 26th December 1749;
Reasons . . . against embanking the Salt Marsh belonging to Sutton, 1720,
6 Ibid.; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 249,
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 147
market rights, which had been granted by the Bishop of Ely to
a private lessee, when they at once provided standard Weights
and Measures and set to work to enforce market regulations.
At first they let the tolls by public auction. In 1810, how-
ever, their Local Act l gave them increased market powers, and
during the next few years, when agricultural prices and rents
were alike high, the Capital Burgesses used these powers to
erect a public exchange and commodious market buildings for
corn and fat cattle respectively ; they freed the shambles ; 2
they established a fish market; they provided a spacious
public warehouse for the storage of wool; they contrived an
elaborate system of allotting the stalls in the corn market by
ballot, so as to avoid favouritism ; 3 they appointed their own
collectors of market tolls and a Market Beadle; and in 1829
they were far-sighted enough to decide " with a view to
increase the beneficial purposes of the several markets, and to
induce the public to resort to the town in greater numbers,"
on a policy of drastic reduction in the amount of the market
tolls. 4 Space does not permit us even to mention all the
manifold public enterprises successfully administered by these
Wisbech Burgesses their constant struggle to reclaim the
" drowned lands " of their estate ; their replacing of the old
wooden bridge in 1756-1758 by a handsome stone one ; 5 their
erection of public stairs at a precipitous descent ; 6 their pro-
vision of flat pavements for their footways in 1811; their
active and generous co-operation in the provision of facilities
for religious worship; and their liberal subscriptions to such
enlightened enterprises as the provision in 1826 for public use
of hot and cold salt-water baths, the maintenance of an iceboat
to prevent any stoppage of the drainage current by frost, 7 and
the provision of a savings bank. But it was perhaps in their
zeal for public education that the Capital Burgesses of Wisbech
were most in advance of the rulers of other towns. The
Grammar School, for the maintenance of which they had been
originally incorporated, was always the subject of their liveliest
interest and constant attention. The master whom they
1 50 George III. c. 206. f
2 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 16th July 1816.
3 Ibid. 13th September 1811. 4 Ibid. 2nd November 1829.
6 Ibid. October 1756, 21st October 1757.
6 Ibid. 21st March 1690. 7 Ibid. 6th January 1802.
I 4 8 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
appointed, though always in holy orders, was expressly for-
bidden to accept a living, or even to officiate as a clergyman.
He was not allowed to become a Magistrate or even a Capital
Burgess. He was, relatively to the standard of the times, paid
a liberal salary and provided with skilled assistance. 1 In
addition to this ancient Grammar School, the Capital Burgesses
started a Sunday school in 1786, and, in co-operation with some
of the principal inhabitants, in 1811-1813, also a " Lancas-
trian school " for the children of the poor. 2 They were even
so exceptionally enlightened, at the very early date of 1714,
as to rearrange and open to the public a library of books,
apparently provided by a voluntary book club in the seven-
teenth century, which was subsequently expressly designated a
" public library " ; 3 providing new shelving, getting the books
catalogued, and appointing a paid librarian, whose catalogue
was " to be lodged in the Town Hall for the public use."
(c) Tlie, Lordless Court
We pass now to the bulk of Manorial Boroughs, a hetero-
geneous crowd of authorities exhibiting in 1689 every variety
of constitutional structure, but all alike falling short of
autonomous Corporate Magistracy, and all connected in some
way with the Manorial jurisdiction, from which they may prob-
ably have sprung. We group these into the three sub-classes,
not very clearly distinguishable, that we term respectively the
Lordless Court (where there was practically no Municipal
structure), the Lord's Borough (where Municipal structure had
been developed, but this had remained connected with the
Lord's Court), and, derivative from one or other of these, the
Enfranchised Manorial Borough.
An interesting example of the Lordless Court is furnished
by the little "Borough" of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in
Northumberland, which held its markets and fairs by Royal
grants of 1309 and 1319 and had in 1382 even sent
members to Parliament. This little port, in 1689 a mere
fishing village, had shaken itself loose from any control or
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 1st November 1 6 8 9 , 6 th November 1704.
2 Ibid. 27th March and 19th April 1811.
3 Ibid. 6th August 1714 ; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 164 ;
ibid, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 214.
THE LORDLESS COURT 149
interference by the Lord of the Manor. It had been incorpor-
ated by no Charter, either from the King or from its Lord.
But the Lord of the Manor, Lord Widdrington, had apparently
let slip his rights; and after his attainder in 1715, no Courts
were held on behalf of any Lord until 1741. This long
abandonment of the village to an unchecked autonomy, and
the confusion and uncertainty into which the seignorial rights
had fallen, seem to have led to the assumption by the Free-
holders that they had no superior but the King. Accordingly
these proprietors of the ancient " freeledges " or farms, into
which the township had been divided from time immemorial,
themselves held an annual " Court," which we can trace,
from about 1730, continuously for at least a hundred years.
During the eighteenth century, at any rate, they held the
markets and fairs for their own profit, and even levied
" quayage " dues on all ships entering their little harbour,
according to Eoyal Letters Patent of 1316. To the Crown
they paid an ancient fee-farm rent of a little more than 10
a year. " Whereas," they declared, " the Freeholders of the
Town of Newbiggin . . . have time out of mind made
orders among themselves for the stinting and eating of the
Common Town Green and Loaning belonging to Newbiggin
aforesaid, we whose hands are hereunto subscribed and put,
being the present Freeholders of the said Town ... in pursu-
ance of the said custom, do unanimously consent and agree"
to various orders and regulations. In 1720 Lord Widdrington's
estates and Manors were bought by the York Buildings
Water Company of London, apparently as a speculative
investment ; and in due course the Company took steps to
reduce the Freeholders of Newbiggin to due Manorial subjection.
In 1731 we see the Freeholders contributing "a shilling a
freehold " to defend their rights and privileges. But more
expensive proceedings were at hand. In 1733 a long
Chancery suit was begun against them, which lasted ten
years, but ended in some inconclusive way, leaving their
privileges unimpaired.
" The proceedings of this suit," writes Dr. Creighton,
"show us a community completely self-governed, with no
interference from a Lord, and little from the Crown. ... In
1730, back to which date the Freeholders' books survived, we
ISO THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
find the arable laud already divided, but the pasture land still
held in common. The Freeholders meet and make By-laws
for the pasturage. They appoint Constables, Ale-tasters, and
Bread-weighers. They levy tolls on boats and ships, and
receive payments for carts loading seaweed from the shore, for
lobster- tanks in the rocks, for stones quarried on the fore-
shore. The money they receive from these rents is divided
among the Freeholders in proportion to the ancient freeledges
or farms." 1 They even took to themselves all wrecks thrown
upon their rocky coast, and sold the privilege of gathering
seaweed. For nearly a century after the Chancery suit we
find them governing the little town; declaring, in 1730, that
the Ale- tasters whom they appointed " are to have at every
alehouse in the town one quart"; in 1753 ordaining "no
ducks to be kept in town"; in 1762 "that the Constable
weigh all butter and bread that shall be offered for sale iii
the said township." Similar entries occur down to 1829.
This humble government remained undiscovered by the
Municipal Corporation Commissioners of 1835, and even by
those of 1876-1880. The little group of Freeholders seems
gradually to have let drop its public functions, whilst retaining,
and even enlarging, its proprietary rights. It has enclosed
parcels of land, let them on lease, and allowed quarries to be
opened. The shares have (1907) gradually become con-
centrated, it is said, in the hands of a couple of owners, who
have bought up many of the " stints " of their colleagues,
separately from their freeholds, taking conveyances of these
separated " stints " as transferring all rights in the collective
ownership. Meanwhile the little town, growing again into a
port with some little trade and a population of a couple of
thousands, has equipped itself with the commonplace machin-
ery of an Urban District Council under the Public Health
Acts, apparently leaving all its quondam public possessions
to become exclusively the private property of these two
proprietors. 2
1 "The Northumbrian Border," by Mandell Creighton, in Archaeological
Journal, vol. xlii., 1885, p. 62.
2 The two Freeholders who are reputed to have got control of all the shares
find, it is said, some difficulty in disposing of the property, owing to the ambiguity
of their title, and we believe that litigation is pending (1907). To a similar
difficulty experienced by their predecessors we owe much of our information.
THE LORD LESS COURT 151
The origin of some of the governments that we have called
Lordless Courts may be suggested by the history of the so-
called Borough of Tetbury in Gloucestershire. 1 Here we find
a large Manor owned by the Berkeleys, extending five miles by
three, and divided into two parts, " the Borough " and " the
Foreign." Early in the seventeenth century "the Borough"
had already, under successive seignorial Charters, acquired a
certain degree of independence. At the Court held by the
Lord's Steward every October, the Jury presented the names
of three persons, out of which the Steward had to choose one
as "King's Bailiff," whilst the other officers Constables,
" Wardsmen " (who were " Assistants to the Constables "),
Carnals, Ale-tasters or " Assizemen," and a Searcher and Sealer
of Leather were freely elected by the Jury. The market tolls
were strictly limited by ancient custom; the Lord had granted
" common of pasture " over Tetbury Warren between certain
Copy of the case submitted to counsel two generations ago passed into the hands
of the late Mr. Woodman, and furnished Dr. Creighton with his facts. That
copy has disappeared from among the Woodman MSS. ; but Mr. J. Crawford
Hodgson has another copy of it, which he kindly allowed us to see. The
Chancery suit was Gregory ;;. Pattinson, 1733 to 18th June 1743. See also The.
History of Northumberland, by Kev. J. Hodgson, vol. ii. part ii., 1832, pp. 213-
220; paper on "The Northumbrian Border," by Rev. M. Creighton, in
Archaeological Journal, vol. xlii., 1885, p. 62.
1 For the history of Tetbury we have had the advantage of consulting the MS.
records of the Feoft'ees, including minutes, accounts, and records of the Manorial
Courts, etc. ; a unique copy of the presentments of the Court in 1623, setting
forth the then constitution of the Borough ; Articles of Agreement anno VII.
Car. I. for tJie purchase of the Manor, Tolls . . . with Judge Coxes opinion on,
some cases concerning the same, 1782 ; By-laws made for the Borough, London
Gazette, 12th September 1687 ; a "Case on the Tolls of the Fairs and Markets,"
1790 ; 54 George III. cap. cxliv. (Tetbury Inclosure Act, 1814); 57 George III.
cap. ii. (Tetbury Paving Act, 1817) ; 2 and 3 Vic. c. 7 (Sale of Advowson
Act, 1839); Further Report of Commissioners to inquire into Charities, 1828,
p. 351 ; History of the Town and Parish of Tetbury, by Rev. Alfred T. Lee,
1857 ; also New History of Gloucestershire, by Samuel Rudder, 1779, pp. 727-
733.
Gloucestershire had other reputed Boroughs, such as Chipping Sodbury,
which had between 1681 and 1688 Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses, and
afterwards a Bailiff nominated by the Homage Jury at the Lord's Court ; Dursley,
with much the same organisation ; Newnham, electing annually a Mayor and six
Aldermen, but actually governed by two "Beams" or Constables (First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. i. pp. 37, 49 ; ditto,
1880, part i. p. 33, part ii. p. 406 ; Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire,
by R. Atkyns, 1768, pp. 347-354 ; New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder,
1779 (for Chipping Sodbury, pp. 671-676) ; Chapters of Parochial History
(Dursley), by J. H. Blunt, 187 7 ; "Notes on the Borough and Manor of Newnham,"
by R. J. Kerr, in Transactions of Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological
Society, vol. xviii., 1893). We refer separately to Chipping Campden (p. 180),
152 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
dates, and there was also pasturage all the year round on
certain other wastes of the Manor. 1
This Manorial constitution was destined during the seven-
teenth century to be developed, by the gradual transfer of the
Lord's rights, into an almost complete autonomy. A wealthy
Alderman of the City of London, Sir William Romney, first
took the market on lease from the Lord, at a substantial rent,
together with the ancient " Tolzey " ; and then in 1610
bequeathed the remainder of his lease, partly for charitable
purposes and partly for the common good, to a body of trustees
for the town, of whom he named the first thirteen, empowering
them to co-opt their successors. Some years later we find
this charitable trust made the subject of inquiry by commis-
sioners for the Court of Chancery, who were, in fact, some of
the neighbouring magnates, with a view to placing it on a
more permanent basis. In consultation with the " King's
Bailiff" for the time being (who was elected, it will be
remembered, at the annual Court of the Manor), and the
principal inhabitants, the Commissioners recommended the
consolidation of the authorities of the town into a recognised
governing body, 2 consisting of the Bailiff, and twelve " Brethren
and Assistants," known as the " Thirteen," representing, we
may assume, the original trustees, and a " company or society
called the Four-and-Twenty " ; the Thirteen to fill vacancies
by co-option from out of the Four-and-Twenty ; and recruits
for the Four-and-Twenty to be chosen by the two bodies
jointly. The Thirteen were, by a provision as to which the
legal authority might be questioned, to have the power to levy
a rate upon the inhabitants, in supplement of their trust funds,
and to appoint the Schoolmaster, the Lecturer, and the inmates
of the almshouses. This constitution was sanctioned by the
Court of Chancery, and embodied in an instrument under the
Great Seal. 8
But a further stage was yet to come. In 1632 the Lady
Berkeley and her son, Lord Berkeley, being concerned to
promote the welfare of their principal Borough of Berkeley,
1 This constitution is described in the presentments of the Court held in
October 1623, of which a unique MS. copy has been placed at our disposal.
2 The resemblance of this constitution to that of.Beccles should be noted.
3 Further Report of Royal Commission to inquire into Charities, 1828,
p. 351.
THE LORDLESS COURT 153
and needing ready money, offered to sell the Manor of
Tetbury, both " the Borough " and " the Foreign." It seems
that, possibly because there was no large estate within the
Manor, but four or five score small occupying freeholders, the
noble owners intimated their willingness " not only that every
particular tenant . . . might for their own particular and
private uses buy the inheritance of their several tenements
. . . but also that such parts thereof as might be convenient
and necessary might be bought and purchased for the public
and general good of the said Borough to have continuance
for ever for their public good and benefit." " Therefore," we
are told, "the Bailiff and the rest of the Thirteen and other
of the inhabitants of the said Borough . . . did consider and
treat among themselves what might be fit for them to do ...
and upon mature and deliberate consideration had at several
meetings in public, they did think it fit for the general good
of the said Borough " to subscribe among themselves the sum
of 840, with which to buy not only the whole Manor with
its Courts, warren, waste lands, rents, royalties, liberties, and
franchises, but also an existing lease of the warren, and even
the advowson of the living, so that the Borough might appoint
its own clergyman. The "Articles of Agreement" then
concluded between the Lord and Lady Berkeley on the one
hand and the principal inhabitants of Tetbury on the other, 1
afford a charming vision of a great deal of public-spirited
activity in the town. Unlike most Charters and other
instruments of this period, this agreement aimed at placing
the property in trust, not for the members of the governing
body, or of any Corporation, or even for a class of Burgesses,
Freeholders, or Freemen, but for all the inhabitant house-
holders for the time being. Thus all the residents were free
to trade, to use the market, and to worship in the church.
The existing Commoners agreed to forgo their rights of
pasture over certain lands, in order to permit these to be
ploughed and sown with corn until the proceeds had sufficed
to complete the reimbursement to the trustees of any sums
1 The MS. copy of the Articles of Agreement in our possession shows that
the formal agreement was made with (a) four trustees, (b) the Bailiff and the
rest of the Thirteen, (c) " the company or society called the Four-and -Twenty,"
and (d) 44 persons "all of the number called the Commonalty " (who were possibly
the freeholders).
154 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
that they had expended. The pasturage was subsequently
to be enjoyed, not only by the owners of " the ancient
messuages," but also by those of " newly erected messuages
or cottages," and even by immigrants into the Borough after
they had lived there seven years, or on payment of the sum
of 5, immediately they took up residence. 1 This remark-
able co-operative purchase of the Manor, under carefully
drawn Articles of Agreement, incidentally, and possibly un-
intentionally, led to a change in the constitution. The legal
ownership was vested in seven Feoffees, filling vacancies among
themselves by co-option, who were jointly Lords of the
Manor, and as such held the Courts. These became, it is
clear, along with the Bailiff, the Executive of the Borough,
acting in more or less consultation with the Thirteen, who
were, we are told, always " the gravest, chiefest, and discreetest
townsmen " ; and who continued to audit the accounts and
give a sort of confirmatory authority to the actions of the
Feoffees and the Bailiff. The Bailiff was " usually the senior
Thirteen who had not yet served that office." The Four-and-
Twenty seems to have had no function beyond that of
furnishing recruits to the Thirteen, and we do not gather
that it continued to meet otherwise than as the Jury which
the Bailiff summoned to the Court of the Feoffees, with which
it is believed to have become identical. 2
Under this Corporate government Tetbury continued to
flourish, growing in population from about 1200 in 1700 to
about 3500 in 17*79, when it ranked as "the third town in
Gloucestershire," 3 buildingfor itself in 165 5 a market hall, setting
up public pumps, and even widening its streets, out of its not
inconsiderable Manorial revenues. The Feoffees' six-monthly
Courts, with the two Juries, one for " the Borough," the other for
" the Foreign," occasionally included among their presentments
orders to the Feoffees not to dispose of any of the " Town's
Stock " without the consent of the inhabitants, complaints as
to the condition of the streets, and formal indictments of
1 In 1640 the last remnant of the Lord's rights was got rid of by the
purchase, for 1400, of the reversion of the Markets and Fairs after the expiry of
the lease. This purchase had been provided for, by anticipation, in the Articles
of 1632, and the trustees had saved up money for it.
2 MS. note recording old tradition.
3 New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder, 1779, pp. 727-733.
155
officers for neglect of duty. This Court was also used by the
Feoffees publicly to let by auction to the highest bidder both
the tolls of the market and the manure of the streets. But
from a case submitted to Counsel in 1790 we gather that
the Feoffees found difficulty at that date in enforcing their
authority, and were doubtful as to the powers that either they
or their " Court Leet and Court Baron " could actually put in
force against nuisance-mongers. How far and how rapidly the
Feoffees, the Jury, and the Bailiff were, in the early decades of
the nineteenth century, superseded by the County Justices,
who had come to hold regular Petty and Special Sessions in
the Borough, or by the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, we
have been unable to ascertain. In 1814 the Feoffees cordially
assisted in obtaining an Inclosure Act, and in 1817 a Paving
and Lighting Act.
Meanwhile the little town of Tetbury was being rapidly
left behind by the changing course of trade and industry.
The market had been, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the most frequented in the district, large quantities of
wool, yarn, and serge, as well as of corn, bacon, cheese, and
cattle, changing hands : so much as 1000 being dealt with on
a single day. Gradually, however, it decayed ; the population
declined to half the total of 1779 ,- the Corporate revenues fell
away to a few pounds annually ; the functions of the Bailiff,
the Feoffees, and the Thirteen silently diminished to next to
nothing, until the so-called " Borough " of Tetbury became
almost indistinguishable in its government from the neighbour-
ing villages. 1
1 It was not discovered by the Municipal Corporation Commissions of 1835
and 1876-1880. It became first a Local Board and then an Urban District
Council, under the Public Health Act (population in 1901, 1989, or little
over half the highest point reached more than a century previously). The
Feotfees now regard themselves exclusively as trustees of a. small charitable
endowment.
Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, may be cited as an analogous case of a
benefaction to the town becoming the basis of local autonomy (see An Essay on
English Municipal History, by James Thompson, 1867, pp. 146-152 ; the
various papers by Thomas North in the Transactions of the Leicestershire
Architectural and Archaeological Society, vols. iii. and iv., 1874-1875). Here lands
were leased and purchased by the inhabitants in 1549-1565 and vested in
Feoffees, the money being found by a quite extra-legal special levy. At first we
gather that Town Wardens and " Spinny Wardens, " Overseers for Pavements
and Bridgemasters, Constables and Swineherds, a Hay ward and a "Town's
Husband," were all elected annually at a public meeting of the inhabitants.
156 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Here and there we discover examples of Lordless Courts
of less obvious origin than the Borough of Tetbury. In the
wild and mountainous region that separates the verdures of
Windermere from the spreading sands of Morecambe Bay, we
find a "Society and Fellowship of the Four -and -Twenty," a
Close Body meeting at the ancient abbey church of Cartmel,
which we have assumed to be a Parish Vestry analogous to
that of Braintree in Essex, and have already described it as
such. 1 It seems, however, to have itself possessed Manorial
jurisdiction over the seven townships of the parish, and
to have held its own Manorial Courts for the appointment
of officers and the regulation of the life of the inhabitants. 2
How the Four -and -Twenty "Sidesmen" of Cartmel, as
they were eventually termed, came to possess this great
Manor ; how the unincorporated parish could legally hold
it without its being vested in feoffees or trustees ; how
the Sidesmen got the right to receive the fines and
amercements of the Courts held by a Steward on their
But an executive committee was chosen in 1582, and in 1628 we find "ten or
twelve of the principal men of the parish " acting as a Close Body, which seems
to have ruled, with the Trustees and Town Wardens, for over a century. By
1775, however, even this Close Body had fallen into desuetude, and discontent
began to be manifested at the Trustees ruling alone. After some years' struggle
a deed of compromise was signed in 1793, by which the town gave itself a new
constitution, the whole authority resting in the annual public meeting, which
chose all the officers. This, though a troublesome and occasionally turbulent
authority, continued without legal warrant for three quarters of a century, until
the administration passed under the Public Health Acts, first to a Local Board
and then to an Urban District Council (population in 1901, 7454).
As possibly analogous to Tetbury and Melton Mowbray, we may cite the
so-called Borough of Clitheroe, one of the townships of the great parish of
Whalley in Lancashire, and formerly part of the extensive Honour of Clitheroe,
with a population increasing from 1368 in 1801 to 5213 in 1831, which had
received a seignorial Charter in the twelfth century. Here the government was
in the hands of the owners of the ancient burgage hereditaments, who,, having
been duly admitted as Burgesses, elected annually two of themselves as Bailiffs,
and were eligible to be summoned by the Bailiffs on an " Inquiry Jury," which
served as a sort of occasional council. The Bailiffs acted as Lords of the Manor,
holding (with their Recorder) a Borough Court for the trial of personal actions
of any amount, and (by their Town Clerk as Steward) a Court Leet, at which a
series of Manorial officers were appointed (including a paid "Well-cleaner").
See First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol.
iii. p. 1483 ; Ancient Charters and other Muniments of the Borough of Clitheroe,
by J. Harland, 1851 ; History of the original Parish of Whalley, by T. D.
Whitaker, vol. ii., 1876, pp. 68-99 ; and pp. 48, 205 of the present work.
1 The Parish and the County, Book I. Chap. V. Section (a), The Close
Vestry by Immemorial Custom.
2 Annals of Cartmel, by James Stockdale, 1872; Cartmeltoniana, by Rev.
W. ftbliott, 1854 ; Tfie Rural Deanery of Cartmel, edited by R. H. Kirby, 1892.
THE LORDLESS COURT 157
behalf ; * what exactly had been their relation to one particular
township of their great parish, Flookburgh by name, which
possessed ancient Municipal regalia and a sword of office and
was reputed once to have been a Chartered Borough; 2 how
they acquired the power of disposing at their will of the waste
and commons, eventually dividing up the whole area under
Inclosure Acts among some 300 freeholders; 3 how they
managed to take deodands and forfeitures, 4 and even to
appropriate the proceeds of wrecks upon the shore, 5 we must
leave as interesting inquiries to the historian of a preceding
period.
But government by a Lordless Court was not always
confined to small and isolated communities. The best t
example of such a government is furnished, indeed, by the
Manorial Borough of Birmingham. 6 The town of Birmingham,
having in 1689 probably under 12,000 inhabitants, and fifty
years later not more than twice that number, sprang, like
Manchester, in the second half of the eighteenth century, from
a mere manufacturing village, which had forgotten that it was
ever called a Borough, into a densely crowded, great industrial
1 Annals of Cartmel, by James Stockdale, 1872, p. 168.
2 Ibid. pp. 121, 291. 3 Ibid. pp. 326-384.
4 " It is ordered that (three names) shall be appointed to collect these sums
of money hereafter mentioned, being deodands and forfeited goods, viz. of J. F.
53/- ; of R. S. 40/- for horse and wheels ; W. H. for the running gear of Staveley
watermill, 48/4 ; of C. B. for 10 lent by M. K for L. R.'s horse and saddle ;
and that these sums be paid before Christmas next or else the same be put in
suit. Also that the men aforesaid do view a cockboat at N. and do sell the
same" (Minute of 1653, ibid. p. 83).
6 Ibid. pp. 293-295. Cartmel was not inquired into either by the Municipal
Corporation Commissioners of 1833-1835 or by those of 1876-1880.
Throlcmorton's Survey of the Borough and Manor of Birmingham, 1553,
by W. B. Bickley and Joseph Hill, 1891 ; Memorials of Old Birmingham, by
J. Toulmin Smith, 1863 ; The Gild of Holy Cross, Birmingham, by Lucy
Toulmin Smith, 1894; History of Birmingham, by William Button, 1st edition,
1781, 7th edition, 1840 ; Hints for a History of Birmingham, by James Jaffray,
1855 (?) ; History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, vol. i.,
1878 ; Tlie Duty of the Respective Officers appointed by the Court Leet in the
Manor of Birmingham, 1789 ; A Concise History of Birmingham, 1817 (?) ; The
Picture of Birmingham, by James Drake, 1825 ; Historical and Descriptive
Sketch of Birmingham, 1830 ; The State of the Court of Requests and the Public
Office of Birmingham, by Joseph Parkes, 1828. The Court Leet records exist
only from 1799, and are unimportant ; the MS. Minutes of the Street Com-
missioners are available from 1776 ; whilst we have only been able to find MS.
Vestry Minutes for St. Martin's (the principal) parish back to 1795. On the
other hand much may be gleaned from the newspapers (of which a large sample ; '
is to be found in A Century of Birmingham Life (1741-1841), by J. A. Langford,
1868) ; and contemporary references.
158 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
centre, containing by 1835 a population of more than 150,000.
Like Manchester, too, it had no Municipal Corporation, and
was dependent for all magisterial authority on the Justices
of the Peace of the County. But though Birmingham
remained, equally with Manchester, under a Manorial form
of government, the actual working of it was very different.
It was not merely that at Birmingham the more important
Municipal services had, from 1776 onwards, increasingly passed
into the hands of a statutory body of Street Commissioners,
which we shall subsequently describe. 1 What was even more
important, Birmingham had, already at the end of the seven-
teenth century, shaken off nearly all the authority of the Lord
of the Manor, and, by the beginning of the nineteenth century,
had ousted him from the last remnant of power. The govern-
ment, nominally Manorial, took the form of what was practi-
cally a Lordless Court. As at Manchester, the chief officers
of the town were chosen annually at the Court Leet, 2 presided
over by the Lord's Steward. But by long tradition the
selection of the Jury was not in the hands of the Steward,
but was left to the "Low Bailiff" chosen at the previous
Court. 8 The Lord of the Manor had, in fact, let slip all
his authority over the Court Leet, except the formal presiding
of his Steward ; and the Court itself had, in the nineteenth
century, 4 allowed its own powers to lapse. There was a busy
Manorial market, but in 1806 the Street Commissioners
1 Book IV. Chap. IV. The Street Commissioners.
2 The formal procedure of the Court Leet is given in The Duty of the, Respec-
tive Officers appointed by the Court Leet in the Manor of Birmingham, by Thomas
Lee, Steward of the Manor, 1789, partly reprinted in the History of the Corpora-
tion of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878, vol. i. pp. 4, 19, where the Court
Leet is described.
3 " The function of the Low Bailiff is to summon an annual Court Leet, at
which he chooses a Jury, who elect all the officers for the ensuing year. . . .
The choice, therefore, of all these virtually rests with the Low Bailiff, as holding
the absolute choice of the electing Jury " (The Picture of Birmingham, by James
Drake, 1825, p. 18). In 1722, and again in 1792, this custom of leaving the
selection of the Jury to the Low Bailiff was contested. In order to secure the
election of Church and Tory officers, the Steward on each occasion chose the Jury
and elected his nominees. On each occasion the Whig Nonconformists fought
the issue at the assizes, with the result of establishing the customary right of the
Low Bailiff (History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878,
vol. i. pp. 17, 19).
4 Hutton, writing in 1794, observes that the "duties of office are little
known except that of taking a generous dinner, which is punctually observed.
It is too early to begin business till the table is well stored with bottles and too
late afterwards" (History of Birmingham, 3rd edition, 1795, p. 144).
THE LORDLESS COURT 159
farmed the tolls and the management from the Lord, who
thus lost all interest in the appointment of officers, and the
Court Leet itself lost all practical control over market
regulation. It continued to appoint annually a whole
hierarchy of Manorial officers, as it was said, "to govern
the town." "A High Bailiff, who inspects the markets and
sees that justice is observed between buyer and seller,
rectifying the weights and dry measures ; a Low Bailiff,
who summons a Jury who choose all the other officers, viz.
two Constables and one Headborough ; two High Tasters, who
" examine the goodness of the beer and its measure ; and two
Low Tasters, or Meat Conners, who inspect the meat exposed
for sale, and cause that to be destroyed which is unfit for food.
Deritend, being a hamlet of Birmingham, sends its inhabitants
to the Birmingham Court Leet, where a Constable is elected
for them, and at which all the Town Officers are chosen and
sworn in ; the whole in the name of the Lord of the Manor." l
But these officers did not in practice pay any attention to
their nominal duties. After the end of the eighteenth century,
at any rate, 2 they reported no offenders, the Jury made no
presentments, and the Court levied no fines. The annual
holding of the Court was transformed into an elaborate
luncheon given by the retiring Low Bailiff to his friends and
the principal inhabitants, at which the formal appointment of
officers for the ensuing year was made. 3 There was not even
the interest of religious or political rivalry, it having long
been " customary to chose the High Bailiff from the Church-
men and the Low Bailiff from the Dissenters." The only
functions really performed were ceremonial. " To the High
Bailiff," we are told, " is conceded by custom the duty
formerly exercised by the Constables of convening and
conducting the business of all public meetings in the town. . . .
He proclaims the two fairs, one at Whitsuntide, the other at
Michaelmas, going in procession with the other town officers,
1 A Concise History of Birmingham (anon.), 5th edition, 1817, pp. 38-39.
2 The History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878,
vol. i. p. 13, gives a few instances of amercements for market offences between
1779 and 1796.
8 Thus, in 1825, "the Court Leet assembled ... at the Public Office
about 1 2 o'clock and proceeded from thence to the Royal Hotel, where they par-
took of a sumptuous cold collation, after which the following gentlemen were
chosen to fill the offices" (Birmingham Journal, 29th October 1825).
160 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
the Jury of the Court Leet, and a retinue of his personal
friends, attended by a band of music to enliven the scene." l
Yet in the eyes of the Birmingham Radicals of 1830 the
Court Leet and the High Bailiff loomed large as a relic
of feudal tyranny, "a close, self -elected, in-and-in body,
irresponsible to or uncontrolled by public opinion." 2 . . .
" It is true that they have no power in the vulgar accepta-
tion of the word. . . . But the assumed power of conferring
on public meetings a character of Town's Meetings, and
stigmatising other meetings regularly and openly convened
by public requisition as not Town's Meetings ; of defraying
the expenses of some and refusing the costs of others is a
species of bastard power which must and will be soon
extirpated. This rusty machinery may, in fact, be said to have
usurped the right of petition and public meetings. It was
aforetime always necessary to ask the Manager of the Court
Leet whether he would let his man-servant the High Bailiff
call such and such a meeting, and if cold water was thrown
upon the meeting by the power behind the throne no meeting
was called." 3 Yet the annual Courts Leet continued nomin-
ally to be held, and High and Low Bailiffs to be appointed for
Birmingham, after the town had been definitely incorporated
as a Municipal Borough, and, in fact, down to 1854, when the
practice was silently discontinued. 4
(d) The Lord's Borough
From the Lordless Court we pass by slight distinctions to
the Lord's Borough, itself developing with almost imperceptible
gradations into the Enfranchised Manorial Borough. Of the
Lord's Borough the specimens range themselves in a practically
1 An Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Birmingham, 1830, pp. 85-87.
This "proclaiming the fair" is described in the Birmingham Journal, 20th
May 1826, from which it appears that the function ended with a "sumptuous"
dinner, given by the High Bailiff.
2 Birmingham Journal, 16th October 1830.
3 Ibid. 30th October 1830. The High Bailiff " became chairman of all
Town's Meetings and the nominal leader of the town in all public affairs "
(Birmingham Journal, 26th November 1864 ; Modern Birmingham and its
Institutions, by J. A. Langford, vol. ii. p. 266).
4 The Town Clerk informs us that the Birmingham Corporation, though
owning the market rights, has never bought the Manor, which remains, as mere
property, in private hands.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 161
continuous series, from merely rudimentary examples, through
the so-called Boroughs of Berkeley and Wotton, described in
the last chapter as mere subordinate parts of a Hierarchy of
Courts, up to the Borough of Arundel, where the dependence
on the Court of the Lord was more nominal than real. What
marks this series off from the Lordless Court is the presence,
even in its lowest members, of new constitutional structure,
additional to that of the most highly evolved Lord's Court :
constitutional structure, which, in the highest members of the
series, becomes itself the supreme, if not the only governmental
authority of the town.
We may take as a specimen of the merest rudiment of a
Lord's Borough the tiny community of Holy Island, off the
Northumberland coast. Passing over all its celebrity in
ecclesiastical history, we find Holy Island in 1689 under a
primitive constitution. There are two Bailiffs, twenty -four
Burgesses, and an unlimited number of Stallingers. 1 The
Burgesses, called also " Freemen," are the owners of the ancient
freehold tenements of the Island, which are twenty-four in
number. They claim and are accorded an exceptionally large
" stint " of pasturage on the commons of the Island. They
alone elect one of the Bailiffs, the other being the nominee of
the Lord. The Stallingers have no share in the election of a
Bailiff, and but small stints of pasturage. But they have to
attend the Lord's Court, and there they may possibly serve on
the Jury, which presents nuisances and nominates a Serjeant,
Constables, Aleconners, Bread- weighers, and other petty officers,
though whether they may share in the trial of petty debt
cases is less certain. This constitution went on until 1793,
when an Inclosure Act ignored the distinction between Bur-
gesses and Stallingers, which faded away. 2
If a village community such as Holy Island had " received
a few Chartered privileges from a mediaeval baron," it might,
1 " Stallangiator " is used about 1270 for "a staller, or tenser, a foreigner
who paid for a stand in the market and did not enter the Freedom of the
Borough" (Borough Customs, by Mary Bateson, vol. i., 1904, p. 112). The
student will not fail to notice the close analogy between the twenty-four "Bur-
gesses" of Holy Island and the usual " Four-and-Twenty " of a Northumber-
land parish (see The Parish mid the County, 1906, pp. 179-181).
2 History of North Durham, by T. Raine, 1852, p. 161. Holy Island
(population in 1901, 405) is now governed by a Parish Council of its own.
VOL. II. PT. I M
162 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
as Professor Maitland points out, even be " allowed a precarious
place on the roll of English Boroughs." l But such Chartered
Boroughs, for all their pretensions, might amount, in fact,
constitutionally, to no more than Holy Island. Thus, the
ancient " Borough of Petersfield," in Hampshire, returning
two Members of Parliament, was, in 1689, hardly to be
distinguished from a mere Court of the Manor. But at the
Annual Leet or Lawday the officers appointed comprised (in
addition to the Bailiff, Constables and Tithingmen) a Mayor,
and two Ale-tasters, who were called Aldermen. The Jury
was selected and summoned by the Lord's Steward, so that the
Mayor and Aldermen, like the other officers, might be said to
be indirectly the mere nominees of the Lord. Moreover, the
Lord retained in his own hands all the jurisdiction, the profits
of the Courts, and the administration of the market. Yet the
Mayor and Burgesses of Petersfield claimed to be a Corporation ;
the town called itself a Borough and returned Members to
Parliament as a Borough; it seems once to have had a
Merchant Gild ; and the Mayor and Burgesses had, in the
past, even asserted that their Corporation owned the Borough,
and had been, time out of mind, legally seized of its fairs and
markets. The Burgesses of Petersfield, had received seignorial
grants and Charters of the fifteenth century, purporting to give
them the same rights as were enjoyed by the citizens of
Winchester; and but for the fact that a case was decided
against them in 1613, might eventually have made their
Manorial Borough independent of the Lord of the Manor. 2
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, pp. 16-17.
2 We have not been able to discover any MS. archives of Petersfield, beyond
the Charters. Most information is to be found in the Report of the Case of the
Borough of Petersfield . . . determined by ... the House of Commons in 1820
and 1821, by JR. S. Atcheson, 1831, and the volumes on Parliamentary election
cases by Thomas Carew(1755), Douglas (1775-77), Cockburn and Rowe (1833),
and Perry and Knapp (1833) ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commis-
sions, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 797 ; Report of ditto, 1880, Part I. p. 90 ;
Evidence, p. 76 ; The Gild Merchant, by C. Gross, vol. ii. p. 387. See also
General History of Hampshire, by B. B. Woodward, T. C. Wilks, and C.
Lockhart, 1861-69, vol. iii. pp. 317-322.
In much the same position as Petersfield were, we imagine, several small
Manorial Boroughs of Devonshire, such as Bovey Tracey, which had a Portreeve
or Mayor, as well as a Bailiff, annually chosen at the Lord's Court, with a
"Mayor's Riding," or " Mayor's Show, " on "Rood mass Day," and a "Portreeve's
Park," or field, of which the Mayor for the year had the profits ; or Harton or
Hartland, where the Portreeve was chosen at the Court Leet ; or Modbury, with
a great nine days' fair, proclaimed by the Portreeve and Borough Jury at the
THE LORDS BOROUGH 163
The men of Alresford, only twelve miles distant from
Petersfield, counted themselves more fortunate. 1 Here the
ecclesiastical potentate of the south of England, the Bishop
of Winchester, had, in 1570 or 1572, granted a written
constitution to " our Borough and Town of New Alresford,"
making the local governing authority independent of the
Manorial Court. "Know ye therefore," runs this verbose
seignorial Charter, "that we, the said Bishop, have granted,
and for us and our successors for ever ordained, that for the
future there shall be for ever within our Town and Borough
of New Alresford aforesaid one Bailiff and eight Burgesses
of the better and more creditable inhabitants." In the
involved legal phraseology of the day, the Bishop proceeds
to name the first holders of these offices, but he provides that
they shall choose from among themselves the Bailiff year by
year, and fill vacancies in their own number by co-option.
The Bishop does more than this. He starts this seignorial
Corporation with two Courts of its own : one termed a Court
Baron or Three Weeks' Court, for the settlement of disputes
and debts among the inhabitants, and the other, a Court of
Pie Powder, for the regulation of the great fair of Alresford
to which the whole country-side then resorted. Moreover,
he expressly relinquishes to his nascent Corporation certain
of the powers usually connected with the holding of the Court
Leet or Lawday, such as "Bloodshed, together with the
amercements and pains thereof " ; the " Assize of Bread, Ale
and Wine " ; the making orders " and constitutions among the
site of the old market cross ; or Newton Abbot and Newton Bushell, two
moieties of one parish, each governed by its own Portreeve, chosen annually at
the Lord's Court (History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth, 1895, pp. 240,
307, 319; "Early History of the Manor of Hartland," by R. P. Chope,
in Proceedings of Devonshire Association, 1902, vol. xxxiv. pp. 418-454 ;
Modbury, by G. A. Cawse, 1860 ; Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1880, Part I. pp. 17, 37, Part II. pp. 840, 860 (Bovey Tracey and
Harton) ). Such, too, may have been Colyford in Dorsetshire, reputed to have
been a chartered Borough, and having a Mayor who took the profits of the fair
(The Book of the Axe, by G. P. R. Pulman, 4th edition, 1875, pp. 789-790).
1 For Alresford we have seen only MS. copies of the Charters ; the MS.
archives of the Manorial courts, 1657-1720, 1781-1835 ; and sundry unconsecu-
tive archives of 1628-1705, jurors' book, 1825, etc. A minute book of the
Corporation, mentioned in 1880, was not found. See also Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1880, Part I. pp. 8, 141 ; report of local inquiry by
the Charity Commissioners in Hampshire Chronicle, 26th March 1887 ; also
Sketches of Hampshire, by John Duthy, 1839, pp. 107-108.
164 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
artificers and other inhabitants of the Borough " ; the " con-
trolling and correction of weights and measures " ; and the
making of By-laws " for the public good " and their enforcement
by fine and distress. The Corporation was to act as Eeeve,
and thus secure to its own officers the collection of the
Bishop's rents. The Bishop even ceded the fair and the
markets, with their profits and tolls. Yet he retained his
Hundred Court and his Court Leet or Lawday, at which the
Bailiff and Burgesses, together with all the adult male in-
habitants, were bound to appear.
Notwithstanding these liberal concessions and express
stipulations of autonomy, fortified by all the paraphernalia
of parchment and seal, we do not find, in actual practice, that
the Bailiff and Burgesses of Alresford amounted to much more
than the Mayor and Aldermen of Petersfield. Discouraged
by a great fire in 1689, which swept away church, market
buildings, and council house, they gave up holding the Three
Weeks' Court, which was their only machinery for making
By-laws, etc. Throughout the eighteenth century we see
them, without jurisdiction of their own, contentedly using the
Bishop's Court to get' their officers including even the
Bailiff appointed and their regulations enforced. The
markets and fairs became steadily less frequented and less
valuable. But the little Corporate body still derived some
revenue from stallage and tolls, and retained the ownership
of a few cottages, which kept up some fragments of Municipal
dignity, allowed of a few charities, and provided an annual
feast. Undiscovered by "the Municipal Corporation Com-
missioners of 1835, this miniature Corporation, having only
one paid officer, the Deputy Hayward, with twenty shillings
a year, lingered on until 1887, when its property was, by
scheme of the Charity Commission, transferred to trustees for
charitable purposes, and the Corporation itself was finally
dissolved. 1
1 The Bishop of Winchester created other Manorial Boroughs on his vast
estates, enjoying various degrees of autonomy. One of these was Gosport, which
always styled itself a Borough, and in 1684 strenuously defended its independ-
ence against the claim of the Mayor of the adjoining Borough of Portsmouth to
exercise jurisdiction and take certain ancient dues. From the MS. records
of the Bishop's " Court Leet and Court Baron" which we have consulted from
1623 to 1835, we gather that this Court was held by the Bishop's Steward
twice a year. There was, however, also a "Three Weeks' Court" held by the
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 165
In the little " Borough " of Altrincham 1 in Cheshire in
1689, and for long after, probably numbering only a few
hundreds of families we have an interesting example of a
Lord's Borough of great antiquity, having, in strict law very
little autonomy, and still less of independent Municipal
structure, and yet contriving to perform, throughout the
eighteenth century, practically the whole civil government of the
town, including most of the work done elsewhere by the Parish
Vestry and the Justices in Petty Sessions. The " Court Leet
and Court of Pleas," which we may regard as the descendant
of the Portmanmoot or Borough Court conceded by Seignorial
Charter about 1290, was one of the Hierarchy of Courts of
the Barony of Dunham Massey. 2 Held every six months
Clerk or Bailiff, nominally on behalf of the Lord of the Manor. The principal
part was played by the Homage or "Grand Jury," the members of which were,
we imagine, summoned by the officers whom the former Jury had itself
nominated. This Jury submitted annually the names of persons to fill the
offices of "Bailiff"' (called also Beadle in 1701), Constable (at first one only,
latterly twelve), Overseer of the Ferry or Passage, Ale-taster or Aleconner,
Coal-meter, and Cryer. We find the Jury in 1623 levying a rate for erecting
a cage and stocks, and making various regulations for the cleansing of the
streets and ditches. A sixty years' gap in the records at this point may have
coincided with the encroachments of Portsmouth. From 1684 to the middle
of the eighteenth century the presentments show us a government of the
ordinary type, the Jury struggling to maintain the authority of the Court,
fining absentees, presenting the common nuisances of obstruction of the streets,
filthy hogsties, dirt and dung left unremoved, pigs wandering at large, etc.
In 1698 "a standing law" is made that "every housekeeper do once every
week for ever cleanse the kennel " ; and another that ' ' no person do from
henceforth keep above one boat to let, to work " in the passage or ferry by
which so many of the men of Gosport lived, and then to let it only to "settled
inhabitants." From about 1750 the presentments become rapidly fewer, and
the Court sinks to a mere apparatus for annually appointing the Bailiff and
Constables. Without Charter, without property, and without a Corporate
Magistracy, the claims of Gosport to be a Borough seem to have been forgotten ;
it was not discovered by the Municipal Corporation Commission in 1835 ; and
it remained without effective local autonomy until the formation of a Local
Board (now Urban District Council) under the Public Health Acts.
1 For Altrincham the student should consult the MS. records of the Courts
of the Barony of Dunham Massey, 1689-1835, and of Altrincham, 1658-1835,
for access to which we are indebted to the Earl of Stamford and to Mr. Hall,
the courteous Steward of the estate ; First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2575 ; ditto, 1880, pp. 9 and 652 ; Historical
Antiquities, by Sir Peter Leycester, 1673, pp. 203-204 ; History of Cheshire, by
G. Ormerod, 1819, vol. i. pp. 399, 417 ; in 1828 edition, vol. i. p. 536, etc. ;
History of Altrincham and Bowden, by A. Ingham, 1879.
2 At the Court of the Barony of Dunham Massey we see amerced inhabitants
and officers (e.g. Surveyors of Highways) of Altrincham among other places.
New Freeholders are presented by the " Freehold Jury." Among the names of
the "Leet Jury " we note those of Altrincham residents.
166 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
before the Lord's Steward and the "Mayor of the Borough,"
and attended by a " Grand Jury " or Grand Inquest of
Freeholders of the Borough, it elected annually all the officers
of the town ; presenting, in the case of the Mayor, three
names from which the Steward chose one. Besides a
Mayor, a Bailiff, and two Constables, along with such usual
officers as Burleymen, Finders, Ale-tasters, Dog-muzzlers,
Scavengers, and Market-lookers, we see this tribunal appoint-
ing its own " Laylayers " to assess and collect the rates that it
levied; and even, throughout the eighteenth century, the
Surveyors of Highways and the Overseers of the Poor. 1 In
the background (just as we were at Bamburgh) we are conscious
of separate meetings of the Burgesses or Freeholders some-
times of " the Mayor and Burgesses " who may perhaps have
carried on the executive government between the six-monthly
Courts. These Burgesses were, for the first half of the
eighteenth century, systematically " admitted " by the Jury at
the Lord's Court, and sworn by the Steward, on their succession
to their burgages, serving in due course the various offices in
rotation. After 1759 this formal admission seems to have
been disused, and the Freeholders fade out of sight. A
remnant of the former custom was, however, preserved, in the
presentment, year by year, of one Freeholder as a " colt " or
recruit to the Grand Jury.
What was remarkable at Altrincham, down to the latter
part of the eighteenth century, was the amplitude of the
jurisdiction of the Borough Court. It not only regulated its
extensive Town Field, cultivated in the usual strips, and the
wide common pastures, 2 but also sanctioned the enclosure and
1 The appointment of "Lay lay era" or Assessors at the Court continued
down to 1839, at least. Assessors of the Land Tax were also appointed by the
Court. We suspect that the nomination or appointment of Overseers of the
Poor and Surveyors of Highways passed out of its hands early in the nineteenth
century, when a church was built at Altrincham, and we assume that local
Vestry meetings then began to be held.
2 " Ordered that the Town Field be enclosed ... on the 2nd of February
each year, and that person that neglects making up his payments by that
time appointed shall be amerced in ten shillings. . . . That the Pinners of the
Town Field neglecting doing his office from the 2nd day of February yearly till
such time as the last or least parcel of corn or hay therein shall safely be gotten
out by the owner thereof ; that if any damages should happen by either horse,
cow, sheep, or swine, etc., . . . the Pinners shall be liable to make good treble
damage, . . . and that for every default made by tethering, or leasowing in the
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 167
improvement of successive portions of land by individual
owners. It closed footpaths when it thought fit upon any
lands within the Borough. It was exceptionally active in
enforcing the scouring of ditches, and also in defining the
boundaries between individual properties. 1 But the same
Grand Jury of Freeholders paid equal attention to what we
may call police and sanitary functions. They dealt with
tumults and affrays, finding in 1716 that one J. E. " has
made a disturbance and tumult of a high nature," for which
they "do amerce him in ten shillings." 2 The Altrincham
Court even rivalled the Manchester Court Leet in the
elaborateness of its By-laws regulating the personal conduct
of the inhabitants, especially as regards Sabbath breaking,
the harbouring of " inmates," carrying " fire from house to
house uncovered," 8 and the fouling of the Town Wells. 4 It
gradually accumulated a long array of officers, each charged
to enforce some particular obligation. The Court was a
particularly active Market authority, though all the profits of
the Market, like those of the Cornmill, 5 went to the Lord. It
even performed various Municipal services, paving and
lighting the streets, maintaining a water-supply by public
pumps and fountains, keeping a fire-engine, 6 and undertaking,
by a Municipal Bakehouse, to provide accommodation for all
the baking for hire within the Borough even enforcing, for
the sake of regulating the hours, etc., a strict monopoly of
this service, and laying down the " rules of baking." T
night, shall forfeit ten shillings " (MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 26th
April 1699).
In 1698 the Pinners of the Town Field present persons for "tethering his
little blind mare in the same Town Field and breaking the tether, and going
loose eating George Clayton Junior's pease," and for "tethering his nag and
breaking the tether in the Town Field in the open day to the damage of the
corn" (ibid. 12th October 1698).
1 Ibid. 20th October 1773 ; 14th October 1778.
2 Ibid. 25th April 1716. 3 Ibid. 15th April 1719.
* " If any one wash his hands or feet at the Town Well [he] shall pay
twelvepence " (ibid.).
6 In 1712 various persons were amerced for "withdrawing their grist from,"
or "not grinding at" the Lord's mill at Dunham (ibid. 23rd April and 1st
October 1712).
8 Ibid. 15th April 1762.
7 " We do make an order that no one do make a common practice to allow
others to bake in his oven to the hindrance of the Common Bakehouse of the
Town, on pain of sixpence" (ibid. 21st October 1696).
" We find by a former order that the Baker of the Bakehouse has disregarded
168 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
But what distinguishes Altrincham, so far as we know,
from the Lord's Courts and Manorial Boroughs in other parts
of England, was its curious usurpation of all the civil powers
of the Parish and its Vestry. The Court, by its Grand Jury,
not only appointed, in flagrant disregard of the statutes, the
Surveyors of Highways and the Overseers of the Poor, 1 but
also received and allowed their accounts, and gave them
frequent and peremptory orders. 2 We find the Court even
deciding what Statute Labour and Team Duty should be
exacted for the roads, and contracting in the matter with
the Turnpike Trustees. The Court took repeated action
against the harbouring of inmates. 3 It governed the poor,
ordering those in receipt of relief to be " badged," 4 directing
particular children to be apprenticed, 5 compounding with
putative fathers for bastard children, 6 appointing a salaried
Overseer, and, in 1750, contracting at eighteenpence per
week per head for the maintenance of all the inmates of the
workhouse. 6 We discover the same all-embracing Court
ordering the destruction of sparrows (" a very injurious bird
within the limits of this Township ") r ; paying for the prose-
the order of drawing it at such an hour, being six o'clock in the evening ; and
do make a further order that the said Baker of the Common Bakehouse for the
future do heat the oven at a sufficient time that he may draw for supper at six
o'clock" (MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 4th April 1711).
In 1741 the Baker was again peremptorily ordered "to set bread in the
public oven at seven o'clock " in summer, and eight o'clock in winter, "and not
before" (ibid. 14th October 1741).
In 1743 the tenant of the Bakehouse was ordered to bake "so early in the
morning as that the inhabitants . . . may have their puddings, pies, and other
eatables out of the oven precisely at twelve o'clock " (ibid. 1 2th October
1743).
Owing to the " Public Bakehouse " being insufficient, a new one is ordered to
be built, and the prohibition of other baking for hire is repeated (ibid. 19th
April 1769). The Baker continued to be negligent, and was amerced (ibid. 21st
October 1772). Two Jurymen were deputed to inspect, and "to regulate the
rules of baking" (ibid. 6th May 1778).
1 Ibid. 26th April 1720.
2 See, for appointment of Surveyors, ibid. 15th May 1717 ; for instructions
to them, 7th October 1725 ; for regulation of Team Duty and Statute Labour,
22nd October 1760 ; for agreement with the local Turnpike Trustees, 20th
October 1773.
s In 1709, for instance four Aldermen were ordered to " go through the Town
and review what inmates are come into the Town, and give a full account to the
Overseers" (ibid. 12th October 1709).
4 Ibid. 15th April 1719. " 6 Ibid. 26th April 1720.
e Ibid. 13th April 1758.
7 Ibid. 16th October 1755, 19th April 1763, and 22nd April 1789.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 169
cution of felons l ; and finding (by hiring substitutes) the
quota of militiamen demanded from the Township or
Borough. 2 There was, in fact, throughout the eighteenth
century no Vestry meeting in Altrincham.
The Altrincham Court continued to be held long after
the close of the eighteenth century continues, in fact, even
to this day (1907), formally to elect its "Mayor" and other
officers. But after the close of the eighteenth century we
see its functions shrinking gradually into those of a mere
Leet, presenting petty nuisances. The trial of civil suits,
which we find down to 1662 recorded in the same minutes
as the other business, seems, in the course of the eighteenth
century, to have become detached as a separate Court Baron, 8
which went on hearing an ever-dwindling number of pleas
down to 1793. The regulation of the commonfields gradually
ceases, presumably with the progress of enclosure. From the
first quarter of the eighteenth century we are conscious of
" Town's Meetings " of inhabitants, occasionally ordered and
paid for by the Borough Court, at which various common deci-
sions were taken. 4 Towards the end of the eighteenth century
the Constables, the Surveyors, and the Overseers seem increas-
ingly to have regarded these Town's Meetings as their real
superiors, rather than the Borough Court, with its Jury of Bur-
gesses, now representing only a small minority of the residents.
In 1802 the Borough got a church built having hitherto wor-
shipped at the church of the extensive Parish of Bowden and
presently started Churchwardens of its own, and formal Vestry
meetings, with which the Town's Meetings probably became
merged. 6 As the local organ of civil government, the Borough
Court had been superseded by the Township Vestry and the
Petty and Special Sessions of the County Justices of the Peace. 6
1 MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 12th May 1736.
2 Ibid. 15th October 1759.
* In 1712 the Borough Court fines a man twenty shillings " for proceeding
at law against R. C." presumably before some other tribunal "contrary to
several orders of this Court" (ibid. 1st October 1712).
4 " We agree to have no more Town's Meetings but what's at the expense of
those that appear, and to meet at the Court-house" (ibid. 5th May 1742).
6 We see them, for instance, adopting the Lighting Act, just like an ancient
autonomous parish. Provision was specially made in the Municipal Corporations
Act of 1883 for a continuance of the ancient appointments of Mayor, etc., at
Altrincham (46 and 47 Viet. c. 18, sec. 23).
8 The neighbouring Borough of Stockport, also established by Seignorial
i;o THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
More remarkable in various respects was the working
constitution of Lewes, an ancient market-place and " Borough
Charter in the thirteenth century, had many features in common with Altrinc-
ham. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century, whilst their formal con-
stitutions were almost identical, the Lord's Steward seems, at Stockport, to have
retained the real power. It was the Steward who selected the Jury of the Great
Court Leet or Portmote, from among the freeholders (who were all required to
be sworn and admitted as Burgesses) ; the Steward chose annually four persons
as suitable to be Mayor, of whom the Jury elected one ; the Steward paid the
Mayor a small salary from the Lord's funds, and required him to be in attend-
ance at the Lord's Court ; the Steward even selected the Constables, for formal
appointment by the Court. But the industrial development which, in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, transformed the two square miles of rural town-
ship around the village of Stockport into an irregular agglomeration of mills,
factories, and workmen's cottages, and numbering, by 1801, more than 14,000,
and by 1831, more than 25,000 persons, deprived the Lord of the Manor of all
control over anything but his actual rents. The jurisdiction of his Court Baron
in petty debt cases quietly faded away about 1764 ; the presentments of nuisances
at his Court Leet became steadily more perfunctory and less respected, partly, no
doubt, because the disparity between them and the actual needs of the town
became ever more glaring ; an Inclosure Act in 1805 and a Court of Requests Act
in 1806 incidentally superseded ancient seignorial rights ; until finally, in 1826,
the principal inhabitants completed the decay of the Manorial authority by
obtaining a Local Act, under which the paving, cleansing, lighting and watching
the town was taken over by a body of Street Commissioners. As at Altrincham,
there had been, at Stockport, no Vestry meetings ; not even for the great parish
of which the township formed only a part. By a peculiar custom the four
Churchwardens were, down to our own day, chosen annually by the four Lords
of Manors in the parish, who were called (from 1464 at least), the " prsepositi "
or "the four posts" of the parish. This was all the more remarkable in that
the lands of these proprietors were exempt from the Church Rate, their share
being paid out of the Poor Rate for the whole parish. The Churchwardens so
chosen rendered no accouuts to any Vestry (Stockport Ancient and Modern,
by H. Heginbotham, vol. i., 1877, pp. 199, 211, 268).
Notwithstanding the absence of any Royal Charter or Corporate Justices,
and the complete decay into which had fallen any powers that this Manorial
Borough may once have exercised, Stockport was included in the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835 as a Municipal Borough, whilst Manchester and
Salford, having similar thirteenth - century Seignorial Charters, were, like
Altrincham, denied this privilege. We attribute this distinction partly to the
insignificant fact that Stockport's chief officer was called a Mayor, and not
a Boroughreeve ; and partly to the accident that the Municipal Corporation
Commissioners had no detailed information showing the purely Manorial
character of Stockport before them, owing to the refusal of T. J. Hogg, one of
their number, to present, with what he considered undue haste, the reports on
the towns that he had visited.
For Stockport we have relied on the Report on Certain Boroughs by T. J.
Hogg (Municipal Corporation Commission), 1838, p. 129 ; Home Office Domestic
State Papers and Magistrates Book (in Public Record Office) for 1818-1819 and
1835 ; Stockport Ancient and Modern, by H. Heginbotham, 1882-1892 ; History
of the County Palatine and City of Chester, by G. Ormerod, vol. iii. pp. 788-806,
edition of 1882 ; East Cheshire, by J. P. Earwaker, vol. i., 1877, pp. 329-421 ;
Stockport Inclosure Act, 45 George III. c. 91 (1805) ; Stockport Court of
Requests Act, 46 George III. c. 114 (1806) ; Stockport Paving and Lighting
Act, 7 George IV. c. 118 (1826).
THE LORDS BOROUGH 171
Town " of Sussex, once of considerable importance, and in
1689, though much decayed, still sharing with Chichester the
honour of being the capital of the county. 1 We find it at
that date without anything in the nature of a Chartered
Corporation, divided into four parishes ; styled a Borough, and
governed for all Municipal purposes as a single unit, under a
peculiar close body. " There is, and always hath been," records
the Steward of the Manor in 1662, " time out of mind within
this Borough a Society of the wealthier and discreeter sort of
the townsmen, commonly called ' The Twelve/ out of which
society the Constables are always chosen, the elder, of course,
according to his seniority ; the younger is chosen by the elder,
with the consent of the greater part of the Jury (sworn at the
Lawday), out of such of the Society as were never formerly
Constables within this Borough ; for never was it known that
any man was twice younger Constable or twice Headborough ;
and these Constables then elected make choice of their Head-
boroughs with consent as aforesaid (of the greater part of the
Jury) and of the other officers before remembered, at the Law-
day, without any contradiction or altercation by the Steward.
The Society known as 'The Twelve' are never so few as
twelve, nor more than twenty-four, and upon death or removal
are supplied by election of the greater part of the subsisting
Society. Town charges disbursed by the Constables for the
common good of the inhabitants are yearly viewed, examined,
allowed, and taxed in August or September by the Twelve,
who in confirmation thereof subscribe their names to the
Assessment, which is a sufficient warrant to the Headboroughs
for the collection thereof. Now, town charges are of this or
the like nature, viz. 40s. per annum to the Clock-keeper and
1 We have not examined the MS. records of Lewes, which have been well
extracted in Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston, by
William Lee, 1795, and The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Hors-
field, 1824-1827 ; see also the papers by W. Figg and Rev. E. Turner on "Old
Lewes " and ' ' The Ancient Merchant Gild of Lewes and the subsequent Muni-
cipal Regulations of the Town" in Sussex Archaeological Society's Collections,
vol. xiii., 1861, and vol. xxi., 1869, pp. 90-107; The Gild Merchant, by C.
Gross, 1890, vol. ii. p. 145 ; History . . . of Sussex, by T. W. Horsfield,
1835, vol. i. p. 201 ; Historical . . . Account of the Coast of Sussex, by J. D.
Parry, 1833, p. 325 ; History of . . . Surrey and Sussex, by Thomas Allen, 1829-
1830, vol. ii. p. 543 ; Victoria County History of Sussex, vol. i., 1905, pp. 382-383.
It was overlooked by the Municipal Corporation Commission of 1835, but was
reported on by that of 1880 (Report, Part I. pp. 60, 144-145).
172 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Bell-ringer; payment for mending and repairing the market-
house, sessions house, bridge, stocks, cucking-stool, pillory,
butts for whipping rogues, conveying malefactors to gaol, for
the suppression of disorders and restraining offenders ; also of
later times disbursements for King's provision of wheat, oats,
coals, carriages, etc. ; brazen weights and measures ; charges
on the shire town." l
What may once have been the exact distribution of
authority in Lewes between the Manorial Court and the
peculiar Fellowship of the Twelve, is not easy to determine.
During the seventeenth century, at any rate, we see the power
of the Twelve steadily waning, their functions of passing By-
laws and taxing the town being gradually assumed by the
Leet Jury. Towards the end of that century, we are told,
" political and religious divisions . . . seem to have paved the
way for the above-noted encroachments on the ancient rights
of the Fellowship," until in 1709 the record of their meetings
comes to an end, and in 1720 their last surviving member
dies. From this time forth Lewes was governed by its two
" High Constables," annually presented by the Jury at the
Lord's Court, and sworn in by the Steward; by the Head-
boroughs nominated by the High Constables ; by the Lord's
Court itself, which occasionally made By-laws and suppressed
nuisances ; and by quite " extra - legal " meetings of the
inhabitants, " publicly convened in their Town Hall " by the
High Constables. The government of Lewes, in fact, during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bears a singular
resemblance to that which we have described at Braintree,
which did not claim to be a Borough, but which had the same
kind of Fellowship or Company, working in close connection
with the Lord's Court, equally coming to an end at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, to be in both cases
succeeded by public meetings of the inhabitants. But Braintree
was a single parish, and its Fellowship was regarded as merely
1 History of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, p. 174, quoting an account of,
1662. "The Constables, in conjunction with the Twelve, exercised the
privilege of decreeing laws for the due regulation of the town, and even pushed
their authority so far as to commit to prison, or to the stocks, those who
ventured to question the legality of their decrees, and refused to conform to their
requirements" (ibid. p. 176). There had also been a subordinate body called
the Twenty-four ("The Ancient Merchant Gild of Lewes," by Rev. E. Turner,
Su&sex Archaeological Collections, vol. xxi. , 1869, pp. 90-107).
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 173
a Close Vestry, to be in due course replaced by an Open
Vestry. 1 The four little parishes of Lewes, claiming collectively
to rank as a Hundred, cannot be supposed to have had one
Vestry in common, either close or open. Moreover, the Lewes
Fellowship levied a " Town Tax " upon the whole Borough for
the Constables' expenses, including whatever was laid out for
the common purposes of the town, whenever the little property
of the Borough did not suffice. Payment of this rate which
certainly seems of doubtful legality was apparently usually
made without question, but it was spasmodically resisted as
early as 1584, when it was enforced, as it had been "time out
of mind," by distraint and sale. 2 We find it again resisted in
1 So too, at Brighthelmston, the little fishing village whose development
into the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton we have already described, there
seems to have been in the sixteenth century a government like that of Lewes
or Braintree we know not whether to call it a Manorial Borough. " From
time immemorial the government of the Borough (or Lower Town) with which
the [Upper] Town was connected, was entrusted to two . . . Headboroughs who
sat alternately in the Borough Court, or together if necessity required it, and
the Jurors, or sworn Assessors of this Court, were selected from such of the
Decenners or Frankpledges as were in attendance, having no causes to be tried.
Hence the origin of the Society of the Twelve, of whom such frequent mention
is made in the Books of Customs, and whose duty it appears to have been to
act as a Committee of Counsel to the Headboroughs, thereby securing to them-
selves rights and privileges which ' the landmen ' [of the Upper Town] did
not possess. . . . They claimed the exclusive right of composing the Jury
of the Borough Court, and on the Lawday. The choice of the Constable,
as well as of the Headboroughs, rested chiefly with them. They filled up
vacancies in their own body, and pleaded immunity from the Borough Common
Fine." But this supremacy of the fishermen did not endure. The Elizabethan
Commissioners of 1580 revised the "customs" so that the government was
shared equally between those "of the sea" and those "of the land." The
prosperity of the Lower Town seems, however, rapidly to have declined, and
it was finally ruined by the great storm of 1703. The Society of the Twelve
each of whom, as at Braintree, had once had his own "street or circuit" to
superintend came to an end about 1772 ("The Early History of Brighton,"
by Rev. E. Turner, in Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. ii., 1849, pp. 38-52).
As at Braintree, the fact that Brighton formed but one parish resulted in
the quasi - municipal powers lapsing to the Open Vestry already described.
Another case of connection between the Lord's Court and a "Twelve" is
afforded by East Stonehouse, Devonshire, a Manor included in the parish of
St. Andrew's, Plymouth, but never in Plymouth Borough. In 1594 it was
completely under the rule of its Lord, but regulations were made with " the
consent and frank assent of twelve discreet and able persons of and within the
said town and liberties" (History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth, 1895, pp.
226-229).
2 "Here I think fit to remember," says an old authority, "that about the
twenty-sixth year of Queen Elizabeth, ten of the most aged of the Twelve came to
John Shirley, Esq., afterwards Serjeant at Law, whose clerk I then was, to
have his opinion what course might be taken against such refractory persons
as refused to pay town charges assessed as aforesaid. But before he delivered
174 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
1721, when the members of the Court Leet Jury agree to
indemnify the Constables for any costs they might be put to
in enforcing it. 1 In 1765, when the Borough had lost most
of its property, and the Town Tax was more than ever needed,
an adjourned Lawday results in a similar indemnity by " fifty-
six of the most respectable inhabitants of the Borough." 2
Finally, in 1772, the public meeting resolves "that the
Constables and Jury at the Court Leet or Lawday chosen,
shall and do continue to have power to make and collect a
Town Tax for defraying the necessary expenses of the Borough." 8
Thus fortified, the High Constables and Jury seem to have
gone on levying such a Town Tax as was required, in 1822-
1823 amounting even to as much as one shilling in the pound. 4
Another variety of the Lord's Borough one exhibiting
all the worst features of the close Municipal Corporations
that we shall hereafter describe is seen in the Mayor and
Burgesses of Arundel, the little town nestling under the
ancient Sussex castle of the Duke of Norfolk. 5 Here the
his resolution he demanded of them what they used to do formerly in the
like cases. Their answer was that, time out of mind, they had ever levied such
taxation by distress after three days, the tax not satisfied, to sell the goods
distrained, rendering the overplus to the owners thereof which course he told
them was warrantable by usage, and so justifiable by law. Distresses, by
opinion of Serjeant Heath and Mr. Foster, are justifiable by law, and may
legally be maintained, being made and confirmed by common consent of the
inhabitants of the whole Borough time beyond all memory, consisting of four
parishes, attendant at one Lawday, and that the charges are public, lying
upon the whole inhabitants as in one Borough, and not as divided parishes "
(Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston, by William Lee,
1795, pp. 191-192).
1 Ibid. p. 211. a Ibid. p. 212.
3 History of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, p. 211.
4 Ibid. p. 229. This little Manorial Borough, not being reported on in
1835, went on unchanged, the High Constables and Jury levying annually their
extra-legal Town Tax to eke out the Corporate revenues. By 1880, when the
population had grown to 6000, it yielded 70 a year. In 1806 the principal
inhabitants had obtained a Local Act constituting a body of Street Commissioners
to pave, light, cleanse, and watch the Borough (ibid. p. 223, and Appendix,
p. xliii). Lewes was created an ordinary Municipal Corporation in 1881,
contrary to the recommendation of the Municipal Corporation Commission of
1880 (Report, Part I. p. xi).
6 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 1539-1835; ditto of "Borough
Court," 1758-1835; MS. Archives, Court Leet, 1722-1740; First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 672 ; History
and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, by Rev. M. A. Tierney,
1834 ; Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. vii. 1854 ; History of . . .
Western . . . Sussex, by J. Dallaway, 1815-30, vol. ii. Part I. pp. 90-183 ;
History . . . of Sussex, by T. W. Horsfield, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 122-132 ;
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 175
organisation of an ancient "Borough," mentioned in Domesday,
had been defined by " articles of agreement " ratified and
recorded by two of the Judges of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
on the occasion of some dispute, 1 and this working constitution,
unfortified by any Charter, remained practically intact down
to 1835. In the various manuscript records of the old
Corporation between 1689 and 1835, we can watch the
administration carried on in the name of the Borough by
the " Company " or " Society " of Burgesses, a close body of
indefinite number, 2 consisting in practice only of about a
dozen members, and open only to those whom the existing
members chose to admit. This body, existing independently
of any other authority, owned valuable water meadows,
cottages, market and quay dues, and the Town Shambles. It
held the " Borough Court " every three weeks, which like
the Court Baron granted to the men of Alresford not only
determined pleas of debt and trespass, but also made By-laws,
confirmed the appointment of officers, and received and acted
on presentments of nuisances, short weights and measures,
and individual defaults.
Meanwhile the Lawday, or Court Leet and View of
Frankpledge of the Earl of Arundel, was being held annually
by his Steward. At this Court the members of the
" Company " or " Society " of Burgesses, and indeed all the
adult male inhabitants, were bound to attend, and the Mayor
was chosen. But the members of the Jury, who, as we
have seen, were the primum mobile of such a Court, were
selected by the outgoing Mayor, who was expressly bound
to return to the Steward a majority of the Company or
Society of Burgesses, adding to them " so many other of the
principal inhabitants as shall make up the full number of,
four-and-twenty according to the ancient custom." 8 Thus
History of the Counties of Surrey and Sussex, by T. Allen, 1829-1830, vol. ii.
pp. 520-524 ; Victoria County History of Sussex, vol. i., 1905, pp. 383-384.
1 In these "articles" (to be found in the MS. records of the Borough)
the men of Arundel make good their claim to be free from any interference
from the officers of the Hundred Court of the Earl of Arundel, thereby re-
minding us of the existence of a Hierarchy of Courts in the once more extensive
Honour of Arundel, which, in the eleventh century, included the two whole
Rapes of Chichester and Arundel, and more than 90 square miles.
2 There are traces of its having been twenty-four in number.
8 Compare the similar custom at Alnwick, described at p. 191.
176 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
it was the Close Body of the Company or Society of Burgesses
that controlled the Jury. The Jury chose two of the Close
Body, out of whom " the Commons, not being of the Jury," or,
as we read later, " the scot and lot men," elected one to be
Mayor for the ensuing year. All the other officers two
Constables, two Portreeves, two Aleconners, two Searchers
and Sealers of Leather, and two Affeerors were nominated
by the Jury, which also " presented " the usual urban nuisances.
We need not describe the complicated interaction of
the Company or Society of Burgesses and the Lord's Court.
To all intents and purposes this exclusive little group of
Burgesses, though preserving the form of subordination to the
Lord's Court, had become the sole Municipal authority of the
town, and completely master of their own proceedings. We
cannot discover that, beyond maintaining a certain Municipal
pomp and ceremony, this Company or Society of Burgesses
was of any appreciable utility to the inhabitants. It is true
that they held the Borough Court, but they charged high
fees to suitors, and they let both the civil and criminal sides
of this tribunal gradually sink to mere forms. 1 At one time
half the Church Rate was contributed from Corporate funds,
to the ease of the inhabitants, but this was refused after 1822.
The Mayor and Burgesses claimed to be the " Bridgemasters "
of the ancient stone bridge over the Arun, but they threw
the cost of its repair upon the Poor Rate. They levied all
the dues they could on the scanty market. They owned the
quay, and exacted tolls on all goods landed from the river. 2
They reserved for themselves the filling of all the local offices,
the ex-Mayor even by custom always becoming one of
the parish Overseers for a year. 3 But all this became, during
the eighteenth century, mainly a matter of ceremony and
routine, the duties being neglected or left to the two or
1 It seems from the scanty records that the so-called "Borough Court"
took over from the Court Leet after about 1740 the work of dealing with the
presentments of the usual urban nuisances and defaults, which we find the
Constables and Portreeves making between 1758 and 1800 in the Borough
Court, after which these, too, become perfunctory and formal.
2 The paving, cleansing, lighting, watching, and improving the town had
been abandoned to a body of Street Commissioners, established by Local Act
(25 George III. c. 90) in 1785. The Mayor and Burgesses were ex officio
Commissioners, along with other citizens named in the Act, and qualified by
property ownership.
8 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 4th April 1769.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 177
three paid subordinates. The scanty manuscript records of
their proceedings make it plain that the Burgesses regarded
themselves, not as trustees, but as absolute owners of their
revenues, which they shamelessly shared among their members.
The pasturage on the water meadows was reserved exclusively
for the members' cattle ; the members got profitable allotments
in severalty and beneficial leases. 1 Serving the office of
Mayor, a privilege which came round to each Burgess every
eight or ten years, was rewarded by an allowance of 100,
" the profits, dues, rents, and benefits arising from the quay
and the butchers' shambles," and other perquisites. 2 The
" feastings " of the little company were almost incessant. At
each three-weekly meeting of the Borough Court there was
a feast to the Burgesses and their wives and all the officers.
At every meeting of the Burgesses there was a dinner. At
the annual Court Leet there was a dinner for the Burgesses
and Jury. On the annual receipt of a buck from the Duke
of Norfolk there was a " venison feast." 8 At " the going
forth " of the retiring Mayor there was a " great feast." At
every admission of a new Burgess there was "a handsome
entertainment of eatables and drinkables for the Mayor and
old Burgesses and their wives." 4 If we mistake not, the
Mayor and Burgesses of Arundel must have provided them-
selves with a costly banquet nearly every other week
throughout the year. Nor were these feasts extended to
the town at large. The Burgesses repeatedly instruct the
Mayor not to invite non-burgesses, under penalty of a fine. 5
So profitable and attractive was membership of this convivial
Company, closely cemented by family relationship, identity of
religious creed and similarity of political opinions, that the
fee exacted from those who were favoured with the privilege
of Admission was gradually raised from 7 in 1726 to no
less than a hundred guineas in 1828, in addition to a
sumptuous banquet. 6 By 1833 the Company, now styling
1 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 30th April 1744 ; History of . . .
Arundel, by Rev. M. A. Tierney, 1834, p. 709.
2 See the list of Mayors, 1798-1826, in MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation.
8 Discontinued after 1831, ibid. 7th June 1831.
4 Ibid. 8th Oct. 1741 and 27th Nov. 1830.
5 Ibid. 12th Sept. 1649 ; ditto, 1701.
6 Ibid. 3rd Oct. 1726, 21st Sept. 1738, llth March 1789, 17th Nov. 1796,
17th April 1828, and 27th Nov. 1830.
VOL. II. PT. I N
178 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
itself a Municipal Corporation, though claiming no Corporate
Magistracy, had definitely shrunk to a fixed number of thirteen
Burgesses, one of whom served as a Mayor. Their admitted
Corporate revenues seem then to have amounted to about
300 a year. With the record that we have indicated it
is not surprising that the Mayor and Burgesses of Arundel
thought it prudent, in 1833, to keep all inquiries at arm's
length. They refused to allow even the Duke of Norfolk's
chaplain to complete his ducal history from their records. 1
The Government fared only slightly better. The Mayor and
Burgesses of Arundel formally declared that they regarded
the issue of a Koyal Commission for an inquiry into the
Municipal Corporations as "an exercise of the prerogative
which they are advised is illegal, and which they think would
be dangerous to the liberty of the subject ... a violation of
the Bill of Rights, an intrusion on the rights of Englishmen " ;
and though they did not persist in refusing to have anything
to do with the Commission, they confined their information
to the barest minimum. 2
(e) The Enfranchised Manorial Borough
It is, as we already stated, not easy to draw a line between
a Manorial Borough in which the Corporate body was as
practically autonomous as that of Arundel, and those Boroughs,
demonstrably Manorial in their origin, in which the connection
with the Lord's Court had become only formal. In the two
neighbouring Boroughs of Christchurch and Lymington, in
Hampshire, 3 where the population in 1831 was between one
1 History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, by Rev. M. A.
Tierney, 1834, preface, p. vii.
2 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii.
p. 667.
3 For Christchurch, see the large MS. volume in which an extensive series
of miscellaneous records (1485-1857) is bound up ; MS. Acts of Privy Council,
9th and 18th November 1670 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 1251; ditto, 1880, parti, p. 24 ; part ii.
p. 108 ; The Antiquities of the Priory of Christchurch . . . with some general
particulars of the Castle and Borough, by Benjamin Ferrey and E. W. Bayley,
1834 and 1841. For Lymington, see MS. Minutes of Corporation, 1574-1835;
First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p.
743 ; History of Lymington, by David Garrow, 1825.; Records of the Corporation
of the Borough of New Lymington, by C. S. Barbe, 1848 ; Old Times revisited in
the Borough and Parish of Lymington, by Edward King, 1879 and 1900. See
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 179
and two thousand, the connection with the Lord of the Manor
had, by the end of the seventeenth century, sunk into nothing
more substantial than the ceremonial swearing in of the in-
dependently chosen Mayor and other officers at the Lord's
Court, and the payment of a fee-farm rent to the representative
of some ancient grantor. In each of these Boroughs there
was a Close Body of Mayor and Burgesses, of unknown origin,
existing by prescription independently of any other authority,
occasionally called " the Company," appointing all the officers, 1
and disposing of the trifling town lands and the equally
insignificant tolls and dues of market and harbour. Neither
Corporation held any Court, though there are traces of informal
arrangements among the Burgesses for compulsory arbitration
in disputes. 2 During the seventeenth century both these
Corporations had been active in making By-laws for the good
government of their Boroughs, organising the " Watch and
Ward," setting the Assize of Bread, repairing bridges and
causeways, paving the streets, and even " paying the poor."
In the latter part of that century we see their activities
dwindle away. They continued, however, to control their
markets and their little harbours, and maintain some Municipal
dignity. 8 By the end of the eighteenth century they had still
also, for both these and other neighbouring Boroughs, the paper on "Early
Boroughs in Hampshire," by T. W. Shore, in Archaeological Review, vol. iv.
1889; Topographical Remarks relating to . . . Hampshire, by Richard Warner,
1793 ; General History of Hampshire, by B. B. Woodward, T. 0. Wilks, and 0.
Lockhart, 1861-1869.
1 At Christchurch the earlier dependence of the Borough had left a mark in
the oath of the Burgesses, who swore on admission to "maintain all accustomed
and ancient services of right belonging to the Lord of the Castle of the Honour
of Christchurch, and now in the inheritance of the Right Honourable Henry
Earl of Clarendon, whose Burgesses you are" (MS. Records, Corporation of
Christchurch, 20th September 1693, etc.). There seems originally to have been
only "a Portreeve or Prepositus, of late time," it was said in 1670, "for
better credit called a Mayor," but merely the "sworn servant" of the Lord
(MS. Acts of Privy Council, 9th November 1670). In the eighteenth century
we find the Company of Burgesses nominating three of their number for Mayor,
of whom the "Commonalty" or resident householders chose one (see the full
description in MS. Minutes, Christchurch, 19th November 1805 ; and First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii.
p. 1254).
2 MS. Minutes, Christchurch Corporation, 25th January 1641.
3 At Lymington the Corporation exacted a licence fee (in 1563 and 1699)
from any person who should " drag for oysters upon the haven " (MS. Minutes,
Lymington Corporation, 1699) ; and from 1711 onwards this fishery was let on
lease, with reservation to the Corporation of power " to set a moderate price for
all such oysters" (ibid. 3rd December 1711).
i8o THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
further declined, existing thenceforth only for the election of
members of Parliament, the periodical leasing of the remnant
of their property and their dues, and the expenditure of the
proceeds on an annual " Mayor's Breakfast " or other festivity, 1
latterly paid for by the " patron " of the Parliamentary seat. 2
At the very top of our series of Manorial Boroughs we
place the little rural township of Godmanchester in Hunting-
donshire, for many centuries completely enfranchised from
seignorial influence, fortified by successive Eoyal Charters,
occasionally enjoying a Commission of the Peace of its own,
and only falling short of the full status of a Municipal
Corporation in never actually acquiring the power of creating
its own Corporate Magistracy. 8 Yet, looked at from another
1 History of Lymington, by David Garrow, 1825, p. 48.
2 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol.
ii. p. 1255.
Chipping Campden, in North Gloucestershire once an important wool-
stapling centre received a Royal Charter in 1604, confirming a then existing
prescriptive Corporation of the Bailiffs and Burgesses. This Corporation con-
sisted of a Common Council, made up of fourteen Capital Burgesses (two of them
serving as Bailiffs) and twelve Inferior Burgesses. The Capital Burgesses were
alone eligible for election as Bailiffs, and it was they alone who elected the
Bailiffs, and filled vacancies among the Capital and Inferior Burgesses alike.
But there was also a body of Freemen, recruited by Birth and Apprenticeship,
and the payment of half a crown as fee. In ancient times the privilege of
trading or pursuing any craft had been confined to the Freemen, and in 1780
and 1794 the Common Council vainly strove to enforce this monopoly. There
was a Court of Record, held every four weeks, at which civil actions up to
6 : 13 : 4 had once been tried, but which had come by 1689 to be merely a
name for the periodical meetings of the Bailiffs and Burgesses. The town was
by this time in slow but continuous decay ; the revenues of the Corporation
gradually sank to next to nothing ; and it came more and more under the
influence of the chief local landowner, the Earl of Gainsborough, who was always
appointed High Steward. Undiscovered by the Municipal Corporation Com-
missioners in 1835, it lingered on, with population dwindling to under 2000, until
1886, when it was finally dissolved under the Municipal Corporations Act of
1883 (46 and 47 Viet. c. 18), and its little property vested by scheme of the
Charity Commissioners in 1889. See MS. Minutes, Chipping Campden
Corporation and Town Trust and also those of Vestry ; Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1880, part i. pp. 23-24; "The Manor and
Borough of Chipping Campden," by Rev. S. E. Bartleet, in Transactions of the
Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol. ix., 1884, pp. 134-195 ;
Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire, by R. Atkyns, 1768, pp. 161-
168 ; New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder, 1779, pp. 319-324 and
Appendix.
3 Our chief sources of information as to Godmanchester have been the elaborate
MS. Archives (" Stock Book," "Book of Entries," and " Court Book ") of the Cor-
poration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries ; see also First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2235 ; and
History of Godmanchester, by Robert Fox, 1831.
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 181
standpoint, the Parish and Borough of Godmanchester is only
one step removed from the Chartered Township, such as we
have seen in Beccles and Wisbech, or from such Lordless
Courts as Cartmel and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea ; full, indeed, of
survivals from the still more rudimentary Village Meeting or
Court of the Manor of the primitive agricultural community.
It does not fall within the plan of this work to trace the
rise of Godmanchester from its position as a Manor in Ancient
Demesne, nor to describe how its residents got from King John,
in return for the substantial fee-farm rent of 120 a year, a
grant of the Manor itself, with all its profits and prerogatives.
Confirmed by various subsequent Royal Charters and Letters
Patent, the "men of Godmanchester" maintained their
privileges and immunities until, by Charter of 1604, they
were expressly incorporated as the Bailiffs, Assistants, and
Commonalty of the Borough of Godmanchester. From that
time forth we find the Borough governed by two Bailiffs,
chosen annually out of their own number by a Close Body
made up of the two Bailiffs for the time being and twelve
Assistants, which met as a " Burghmote," recruited itself by
co-option, and was served by a Sub-Bailiff, Recorder, Deputy
Recorder, and Town Clerk of its own appointment. The
Borough had its own Coroners by prescription, this office being
always filled for a year by the retiring Bailiffs ; its own three-
weekly " Court of Pleas " for civil suits of trespass and debt,
as well as for conveyances of property ; its own annual Court
Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court Baron; and its own
Fair or Mart, with the customary Court of Pie Powder.
Within the wide area of the Borough, which extended over
seven square miles of cornfield and meadow, there was except
the somewhat distant jurisdiction of the County Justices no
competing authority. 1 The Borough Corporation had not even
to fear the rivalry of the Parish Vestry, for by a peculiar and
almost unique custom, the Bailiffs and Assistants of Godman-
chester were themselves the Vestry of the conterminous parish,
appointing the Churchwardens and Sexton, nominating the
Overseers and Surveyors, making the Church Rate, and acting
1 The Bailiffs and Coroners were even sworn in at the Borough's own Court,
though they were afterwards resworn, and their names enrolled, at Quarter
Sessions (History of Qodmanchester, by R. Fox, 1831, p. 152).
1 82 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
in all respects on behalf of the parishioners. 1 Finally, we
have to add that this all-embracing little Corporation took for
itself escheats and deodands within its own area ; and as Lord
of the Manor owned all the extensive wastes and commons.
It is the popular administration and collective use of the
seven square miles of commonfields, water meadows, and
valuable pastures that form the characteristic feature of the
Godmanchester of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Borough, as James the First declared in his Charter, con-
sisted " altogether, or for the most part, of agriculture and
husbandry," the few hundred families concentrated in the four
ancient streets 2 proudly turning out in procession, if we may
believe Cotton and Camden, no fewer than " nine score ploughs
in a rural pomp " to welcome any monarch who passed through
their little village community. 8 The Borough records abundantly
reveal the character of the local industry. Much the most
important part of the work of the Bailiffs and Assistants
between 1604 and 1803 was connected with the commonfield
agriculture and the management of the town lands, the
elaborate stinting of the common pastures, the sharing of " the
Freemen's Fen" between the separate herds of the two sides
of the town, 4 the preservation of the " wood, willows, or
1 In this combination of Select Vestry with Manor ownership Godmauchester
comes near to Cartmel, with its sixteenth-century "Fellowship of the Four-
and-Twenty " ; it has obvious resemblances to Braintree on the one hand and
Lewes on the other ; in some respects we are reminded of Newbiggin-by-the-
Sea ; but the only other case known to us in which a definitely incorporated
Municipal body acted as the Select Vestry is that of St. Ives in Cornwall
(History of St. Ives, Lelant, and Zennor, etc., by J. H. Matthews, 1892). We
have not investigated the actual origin of the Select Vestry in either of these
cases. In Godmanchester the habit of the Bailiffs and Assistants to act as the
Vestry was challenged in the ecclesiastical court in 1712 ; but they " appeared,
justifying the custom for sixty, seventy, or eighty years, so that the prosecution
slept" (MS. Minutes, Godmanchester Corporation, 14th October 1712; a
precedent of 1624 is printed in the History of Godmanchester by R. Fox, 1831).
2 We do not know how far the traces of ancient divisions in the Bonnigh
may be significant ; there was a " West Side " and an " East Side," each having
its own Coroner, its own "cow-commons," and its own common herd daily
driven out and home by its own Neatherd ; moreover, at the annual Court, when
twelve Jurors were sworn, three were taken from each of the four streets.
3 History of Godmanchester, by R. Fox, 1831, p. 322.
4 MS. Records, Godmanchester Corporation, 7th May 1707. It is not quite
clear to us who exactly were the Freemen, or what were their peculiar privileges.
The Municipal Corporation Commissioners of 1833-35 seem to have been
convinced that the Freemen comprised all sons or daughters of Freemen, as well
as persons admitted by purchase ; and that Freemen were alone eligible to be
Assistants, aloue entitled to trade within the Borough, alone eligible to serve as
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 183
bushes," l and the discreet felling or cutting of these " to hedge
in calves' pasture " or " to hedge the causeway." 2 As the
arable land, though owned in severally by the possessors of
the " nine score ploughs," was divided into the usual innumer-
able strips, parted only by green grass balks, and cultivated in
great commonfields, we see the Bailiffs in 1700 summoning
" all the farmers to appear at Court Hall to appoint a Hadland
Day according to the old custom ; who did agree that none
should sow barley [in the commonfield] before Friday 21st
March, and that day only badlands [headlands ?]." 8 In 1792
it is still necessary that the Bailiffs, Assistants, and inhabitants
generally, in public meeting assembled, should agree, " in order
to secure the grain from trespass," to obtain more control over
the use of the commonfield for pasture, by imposing a tax of
two shillings for each horse turned out. 4 As in the more
primitive village communities, some of the meadows were
annually divided up by lot for individual mowing ; and we see
the Bailiffs and Assistants solemnly ordaining in 1Y28 that " no
Lot Grass shall be mowed for the year ensuing." 5 They make
formal order " that no gleaners do go into the [Corn] Field to
glean until Wednesday next, and that they come not into the
Pease Field until harvest be done." 6 They have also to
regulate and, when they will, to let on lease the profitable
Free Suitors in the Court of Pleas, and alone entitled if they owned or occupied
" commonable " houses, being ancient tenements within the Borough to share
in the common pastures. But the Charter of 1604 does not create " Freemen,"
but only " Burgesses," and mentions none of the above privileges. It expressly
authorises the co-option of Assistants from among the " Burgesses and
inhabitants. " It was the inhabitants (or at any rate the owners or occupiers of
the ancient tenements) who were entitled to the immunity from toll anywhere in
England, and exemption from Jury service outside the Borough, as Tenants in
Ancient Demesne. We noticed no trace in the records of the enforcement of
any exclusive right of trading. It was probably the owners and occupiers of
the ancient tenements who were referred to as Burgesses. It was to them not
their sons and daughters residing elsewhere that the full privileges of commoners
on the Borough pastures had been originally confined, but during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the owners and occupiers of divided and new tenements
were more and more admitted. In 1803 the Inclosure Award "assigned the
right to the owners and occupiers of commonable houses without reference to the
qualification of Freedom," and this was confirmed by a judgment of the Court of
Common Pleas, 20th November 1830 (History of Godmanchester, by R. Fox,
1831, p. 154).
1 MS. Records, Godmanchester Corporation, 13th December 1697.
8 Ibid. 14th April 1698 and 13th February 1699.
8 Hid. 12th March 1700. * Ibid. 7th August 1792.
6 Ibid. 3rd October 1728. Ibid. 23rd July 1691.
1 84 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
common fishery in the Ouse, 1 to insist on the millers down
stream opening the sluices in due time to prevent floods ; 2 and
to construct proper " overshots or water flashes " to keep their
water meadows irrigated and yet not drowned. 8 The most
important Municipal enterprise in the whole history of the
Borough is, in 1792, the draining of the flooded meadows,
which is carried out at the expense of " an equal acre tax on
all and singular meadows " within the Borough. 4 The busiest
officers of the little community during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were not the Constables or the Ale-tasters,
but the Haywards, Field Reeves, Grasshirers, Holmekeepers or
Greenkeepers, Neatherds, Gamekeepers, and Mole-catchers. The
presentments which these officers make to the Borough Courts
relate, not to the usual urban nuisances, but to such offences as
" turning his horse foot-loose into the meadows," 5 " for his horse
being stalled upon a common balk before the grain was carried
away on both sides," 6 " turning his horse into the holmes
contrary to the Constitutions " ; 7 " going into the stubble with
his sheep, being twice taken . . . before Michaelmas," 8
"keeping two calves upon the waste-ground before Ascension
Day " ; 9 " not keeping a bull upon the commons," or " keeping an
insufficient bull " ; 10 " setting his fold in the tilth-field after
Michaelmas " ; n or " feeding his flock of sheep in the Pease
Field before Martinmas " ; 12 or " mowing a balk . . . abutting
against West Gores." 1S Almost the only nuisance that may be
called urban in its character is the " chimney out of repair, and
very dangerous of fire " in the street of thatched cottages, that
the Jury was constantly presenting at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. 14
With the high price of corn, and the desire for improve-
ments in agriculture, the temptation to the Burgesses of
Godmanchester to obtain an Inclosure Act became at last
irresistible, and in 1803 all the commonfields were redivided
1 MS. Records, Godmanchester Corporation, 7th October 1725.
2 Ibid. December 1689, 22nd October 1725.
8 Ibid. 4th February 1726. * Ibid. 13th December 1792.
6 Ibid. 10th July 1690. Ibid. 7th and 28th August 1707.
* Ibid. 21st September 1699. 8 Ibid. 7th August 1707.
9 Ibid. 30th April 1691. 10 Ibid. 12th May 1692, 7th July 1698
11 Ibid. 9th November 1693. 12 Ibid. 4th November 1714.
13 Ibid. 12th August 1714
14 Ibid. 15th January 1691, 12th October 1732.
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 185
among the owners of the strips and enclosed in distinct free-
holds. With them seems to have gone most of the vitality of
the Corporation. The business of the " Court of Pleas "
dwindled away to a few petty debt cases, and after 1805 the
meetings became formal. The Court Leet continued to be
held twice a year, chiefly for the appointment of Bailiffs,
Coroners, and Constables, the presentments becoming more and
more perfunctory. There still remained roadside wastes and
five separate commons to be regulated, weights and measures
to be occasionally inspected, and various ancient charities to be
administered. Godmanchester increased between 1801 and
1831 in population, and presumably in material productivity,
if not in prosperity. Yet it is impossible for those who have
read its" seventeenth and eighteenth century records to watch
without regret the passing away of the earlier life, when these
couple of hundred little farmers, with their nine score ploughs,
pastured their common herds, drew lots annually for the
privilege of mowing the several plots of meadow grass, in Open
Court decided what crops to sow in each part of their common
demesne, simultaneously ploughed and sowed and reaped their
scattered strips in the common tilth-fields, and made what use
they could of the long grass balks by which the strips were
divided. This collective agriculture may have been primitive
and uneconomic in its character. The agricultural revolution
which we saw taking place at Great Tew may have been
difficult to accomplish. Yet as we watch the common life in
the little community of Godmanchester, and watch the dying
out of the spirit of fellowship, of the sense of common interests,
and of what we may call a communal consciousness, that the
common agriculture cannot fail to have promoted, we must
realise how grievous was the accompanying social loss, when it
was replaced, in the English rural village, by capitalistic
farming on an exclusively commercial basis. 1
1 The class of Enfranchised Manorial Boroughs seems to have included, by
1835, about a score of other towns in different parts of England, having
populations in 1831 of between 500 and 3500. The governing authority was
either a close council or officers practically nominating each other, without any
real control by a Lord of the Manor, but without, on the other hand, any
Corporate Magistracy. Such, we imagine, were Appleby (Westmoreland) ;
Brackley (Northamptonshire) ; Calne, Chippenham, and Westbury in Wiltshire ;
Camelford, Grampound, Marazion, and St. Ives in Cornwall ; Chard, Ilchester,
and Yeovil in Somerset ; Garstang (Lancashire) ; Newtowu and Yarmouth in
186 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
(/) Manor and Gild
We pass now to a little group of Boroughs in which the
government was shared between a Manorial Court and one or
more Trade Gilds. The existence of Merchant or Trade Gilds
or Companies was, as we shall presently show, characteristic
in 1689 of a small but important class of Municipal Cor-
porations, including the City of London. Even in the other
Municipal Corporations we find, as a rule, a class of Freemen
recruited by Apprenticeship an institution from which it
may possibly be argued that Trade Gilds must have once
existed. But whether in a fully developed form, or only as
a rudiment or remnant, Gild structure is almost universally
absent from the scores of Manorial Boroughs of which we
have given samples. In so far as there existed, within these
jurisdictions, any class of Burgesses or Freemen, these were
connected either with the tenure of land or with mere inhabit-
ancy the " suitors " of a Court Baron or the " resiants " of a
Court Leet. To this generalisation the Manorial Boroughs of
Northumberland and Durham present a remarkable exception.
The most interesting example of this group is the Borough
the Isle of Wight (Hampshire) ; Ruyton in Shropshire ; Sudbury (Suffolk), and
Tenterden (Kent), to the latter of which we have already referred (p. 60). As
to most of these, see First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
Appendix, vols. i.-iv. ; Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1880 ; for
Chard (not then reported on) see Proceedings of Somersetshire Archaeological and
Natural History Society, vol. xxvii. parts i. and ii., 1882-1883, and The Book of the
Axe, by G. P. R. Pulman, fourth edition, 1875 ; for Sudbury (also not reported
on) see R. v. Mayor of Sudbury, in Reports of Cases, etc,, by J. Dowling and A.
Ryland, vol. ii., 1823, pp. 651, 660 ; and Election Cases, by J. Philipps, 1782,
pp. 131-216. A town might acquire not only the Manorial rights, but also
a Charter from the King, and yet not develop. James I. incorporated the
town of Blandford in Dorsetshire, and granted it the Manor, but conferred upon
it no magisterial authority. The Bailiff and Burgesses continued until 1835 a
Close Body, recruiting themselves by co-option, holding, by their Steward, their
own Court Leet, but letting their Court of Record go into desuetude about
1780. Without any important Municipal functions, they were kept alive by
possessing a revenue of a hundred pounds a year or so from rents and market
tolls which was spent mainly in paying a few subordinate officers, with some
Corporate feasting. With an unprogressive population of between two and
three thousand, it is not easy to understand why this Manorial Borough was
included in 1835 as a Municipal Corporation, whilst others were omitted (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 1133 ; History
and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, by J. Hutchins, vol. i., 1861, pp. 214-
246). Hemel Hempstead (Herts), chartered by Henry VIII., remains to this day
(1907) unincorporated (History of Hertfordshire, by N. Salmon, 1728, p. 116).
MANOR AND GILD 187
of Alnwick already mentioned as part of a Hierarchy of
Courts which, except for the interpolation of a Trade Gild,
would have been included in the common class of Lord's
Boroughs. But even as a Lord's Borough Alnwick would have
had a distinguishing characteristic. Instead of showing any
progressive emancipation from its Lord, it was, between 1689
and 1835, brought more completely under his control. It
might, indeed, by 1835 almost have claimed a class by itself,
as a disfranchised Lord's Borough. 1
What exactly had been the status of the Burgesses of
Alnwick ,in former centuries, and at what period of their
history the Trade Gild or Gilds had been added to the Manorial
structure, we are not here concerned to discover. At the
Revolution the government of the little town was shared
between two distinct but closely interwoven authorities the
Chamberlains, "Four -and -Twenty," and "Common Gild" of
Freemen on the one hand, and on the other the Court Leet
and Court Baron of the Earl of Northumberland for the
" Manor and Borough."
The constitution of the extra-manorial body, the Chamber-
lains, "Four-and-Twenty," and "Common Gild," was determined
by no Charter or other instrument. It had apparently been
developed in the course of centuries by mere usage. The base
was the whole body of Freemen of the Borough, recruited by
Birth, Apprenticeship, and occasional co-option. At the end of
1 We have sought to unravel the intricacies of the constitutional history of
Alnwick from the voluminous MS. Records of the Corporation, which extend
over three centuries ; from the scanty MS. Records of one of the Trade Com-
panies (the Tanners) ; the ' ' Articles of Agreement " between the Borough and
the Duke of Northumberland, 1762 ; Seven Letters to the Freemen of Alnwick
respecting their differences with the Four-and- Twenty upon Borough affairs, by
an Old Craftsman, 1782 ; Address to the Burgesses and Freemen of the Borough
of Alnwick, by the Chamberlains, 1782 ; An Address to the Freemen of the
Borough of Alnwick, by T. H. Bell, 1815 ; Address to the Freemen of Alnwick,
1816 ; An Appeal to the Public on the present existing Grievances of the Burgesses
or Freemen of the Borough of Alnwick, 1819 ; 8 George IV. c. 27 (Alnwick
Paving Act, 1822) ; an anonymous History of Alnwick, 1822, in the Newcastle
Public Library ; Historical . . . View of Northumberland, by E. Mackenzie,
1825, vol. i. pp. 433-484 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iii. pp. 1411-1419 ; " Feudal and Military Antiquities of Northumber-
land, etc., "by Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, 1858 (vol. ii. of Memoirs of Archaeological
Institute for 1852) ; the valuable History of the Borough, Castle, and Barony of
Alnwick, by George Tate, 1866-1869; Report of Municipal Corporation Commis-
sion, 1880, part i. pp. 6-8 ; The Alnwick Corporation Act, 1882 (1901) ; and the
recent Annual Accounts of the Chamberlains now printed for the information
of the Freemen.
1 88 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
the seventeenth century these Freemen apparently included
most of the householders of the town, and probably all the
journeymen who were not householders. 1 They were like
the Freemen of Newcastle and Durham, Morpeth and Hexham
grouped in separate Trade Companies, 2 each with its own
Alderman and other officers, its own Corporate funds, its own
periodical meetings, and its own internal regulations. The
rule was that a candidate for the " Freeledge," 8 or Freedom of
the Borough, had first to be admitted to one of the Trade
Companies, and then passed as qualified by the "Four-and-
Twenty." In the seventeenth century, at any rate, and during
the first decade of the eighteenth, this body of Freemen was
occasionally also convened in " Common " or " Public " Gild,
for the purpose of deliberating upon and assenting to the
projects of the " Four-and-Twenty." *
1 From 1650 to 1835 the number of Freemen seems always to have been
between 250 and 300. In 1801 there may have been 700 or 800 houses ; in
1689 probably not more than half that number.
2 Of these Companies, ten were still existing in 1833 (those of the Merchants,
Cordwainers, Skinners and Glovers, Weavers, Black and White Smiths, Tailors,
Butchers, Carpenters and Joiners, Tanners and Coopers). A detailed study of
these Companies, in connection with those of Morpeth and Hexham, Durham
and Gateshead, and in comparison with those of Newcastle-on-Tyne, might
prove of interest and value. Their old records are to be found in the custody
of surviving members ; see also History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1866-1869,
vol. ii. ch. xvii. pp. 320-350.
3 This use of "Freeledge" as equivalent to "Freedom" of a Borough or a
Trade Company seems peculiar to Northumberland and Cumberland ; see the
cases of Newbiggin and Holy Island, pp. 149, 161. It may be of significance that
the ancient "farms" of Northumberland were called "freeledges" (see the
preceding volume, The Parish and the County, pp. 179-181).
4 From a cursory inspection of the MS. Records prior to 1689, as well as
from what is in print, we gather that Common Gilds were held fairly frequently
in the first half of the seventeenth century, both for passing the Chamberlains'
accounts and for sanctioning the proposals of the Four-and-Twenty. After
the Restoration they seem to have been held less frequently, and to have been
restricted to making By-laws as to the "stint" of the Town Moor. After
1711, aa we shall explain, they ceased to be held. From that date, whenever
the Four-and-Twenty (now calling themselves the Common Council) desired
the opinion of the Freemen, we see the Aldermen of the Companies invited to
call meetings of their several Companies, and to submit the question to them.
In 1815 we notice the Four-and-Twenty inviting the Aldermen only to meet at
the Town Hall and deliberate on their proposals (An Address to the Freemen
of the Borough of Alnwick, by T. H. Bell, 1815). We are told that "very early
and frequent opposition was made to this assumed authority, as appears from
the Order Books of the different trades, wherever the Freemen are threatening
that if the Four-and-Twenty neglected to hold the Common Gilds, they would
throw down the inclosures, and lay into common again those parts that had
been taken in" (Hist-ory of Alnwick, anon., 1822, pp. 328-329).
MANOR AND GILD 189
By 1689 the "Gentlemen of the Four-and-Twenty" had
absorbed into their own hands at any rate all the executive
authority of the Borough and much of the legislative power. It
was the Four-and-Twenty that annually selected from among
its own members four persons to serve as Chamberlains, who
were, in fact, the executive officers of the Borough. It was the
Chamberlains and Four-and-Twenty that enacted By-laws on
all sort of subjects, even determining their own constitution
and the rights of the Freemen at large. 1 It was this body that
managed the Town Moor and the charitable endowments, the
school and the place in which the market was held. It was
this body that appointed the " Minister," Clerk, and Sexton of
the parish church ; that chose the Surveyors of Highways ; 2
that raised the money required for the train-bands ordered by
the Deputy-Lieutenants of the County, 8 and levied rates upon
the inhabitants for the repair of the highways and the primitive
requirements of an urban community. 4 It was the " Four-and-
Twenty " who were the sole judges of the validity of the claims
to the " Freeledge," as well as the sole grantors of the privilege
of admission to persons other than those entitled by Birth or
Apprenticeship. 6 Finally, it was the members for the time
being of this mysterious "Four-and-Twenty," which often
comprised twice that number, who alone filled vacancies in
their own ranks, and increased or limited the total membership
of this governing clique. 6
1 MS. Book of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 7th August 1677.
8 Ibid. 9th April 1675.
3 Ibid. 17th October 1690.
4 For instance, in 1694, a "Sess laid on all the houses and lands . . .
three times according to the Book of Rates," for water-supply (ibid. 7th August
1694); "four times the Book of Rates" for the highways (ibid. 23rd April
1729).
6 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1866-1869, vol. ii. p. 239.
6 In 1623 the body numbered 24 ; in 1647, 28 ; in 1667, no fewer than
57 ; in 1690 and 1694 there were at least 43 and 35 members respectively, and
in 1709 there were at least 38 (History of Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. ii. p. 256).
In 1717 it is "ordered by the Chamberlains and Four-and -Twenty that no man
be admitted a Four-and-Twenty man for the future till the death of another,
and that upon the death of any of the present Four-and-Twenty so many new
ones shall be chosen in the room or stead of such dying " (MS. Book of Orders,
Corporation of Alnwick, 7th October 1717). "In the Borough books," we
are told, "there is an order to this effect, We, the Chamberlains and Four-
and-Twenty, sensible of the inconvenience of a too extended Executive, and
disregarding the vulgar opinion that there is wisdom in a multitude of counsellors,
do hereby agree that the Four-and-Twenty shall for the time to come consist of
190 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Meanwhile the other governing authority of the town-
the Court Leet and Court Baron of the Earl of Northumberland,
with its Steward, its Bailiff, and its Jury for the Earl and for
the King was nominally in a position of superior dignity.
It was the Bailiff appointed by the Lord who was the nominal
head of the town, 1 and who is found, at any rate from 1537
down to 1697, joining with the Chamberlains and Four-and-
Twenty in the administration of Borough affairs. 2 It is at the
Lord's Court that the Chamberlains and all the other Borough
officers the Constables, the Keepers of the Causeway, the
Tasters of Ale, Overlookers of Bread and Flesh, the Moorgrieves,
the Herds, the Market-lookers, the Keeper of the Pinfold, the
Manager of the Town Clock, and the Keepers of Pants and
Pumps, are presented, appointed, and sworn. It is the Jury
of this Court that, in the seventeenth century, passes By-laws 8
for the good government of the Borough, and even gives specific
orders to the Chamberlains and Four-and- Twenty. It was
this Court that, throughout the whole period from 1689 to
1835, punished those who committed nuisances and decided
civil actions between the inhabitants. But in spite of all this
show of power, the Lord's Court had sunk, by 1689, into
being a mere appanage of the Chamberlains and " Four-and-
no more than seven-and-twenty " (History of Alnwick, anon., p. 824). We
have not found such an order ; and from other allusions (see An Appeal to the
Public on the Present Existing Grievances, etc., 1819), we infer that the order of
7th October 1717 is that referred to. At no time (until the modern revolution
of 1882) was the body elected either by the Freemen at large or by the
Companies.
1 It was part of the Earl's case in 1758 that his Bailiff "ought to be the
chief officer and the person of greatest pre-eminence and authority in the govern-
ment of the Town and Borough." This pre-eminence and precedence was
conceded by the Four-and-Twenty in the Articles of 1762, though it was stipu-
lated that he should not be a member of the Four-and-Twenty unless he was a
Freeman (History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1868-1869, vol. ii. pp. 291, 295).
In 1799, when the Lord insisted on this pre-eminence being recognised, the Four-
and-Twenty took counsel's opinion "whether the Acts of Parliament which
come directed ' To the Chief Magistrate or Head Officer of Alnwick ' shall be
received by the Chamberlains or given up to his Grace theDuke of Northumberland's
Bailiff." The answer may be inferred from the fact that the Four-and-Twenty
presently ordered such communications to be delivered to the Bailiff (MS. Book
of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 18th and 28th January 1799).
2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 255.
3 On 17th April 1654, for instance, the Court Leet and Court Baron made
regulations as to the customary annual horse-races, the enjoyment of the common
pasture, and paving and cleansing the streets (MS. Book of Accounts and Orders,
among Alnwick Corporation Records).
MANOR AND GILD 191
Twenty." The Jury, upon whose presentments and verdicts
everything depended, was, by ancient usage, confined to Freemen
of the Borough, and, in practice, to members of the " Four-and-
Twenty." l So long, therefore, as the " Gentlemen of the Four-
and-Twenty " were united among themselves, and retained a
preponderating influence among the Freemen, their practical
autonomy was tolerably secure from interference by the Lord's
officers. But there was a weak point in the claim of the
Borough to this autonomy. The powerful family of the
Percies had, it was true, somehow or another, permitted an
extra - manorial constitution to grow up at the very
gates of the Castle. They had apparently conceded to
the Burgesses, at some period or another, undefined rights of
user over the "Forest of Aydon," or Town Moor, a large
tract of land outside the walls of the Borough. But none of
the ordinary franchises had been parted with ; " Markets and
fairs, tolls and wastes of the town, and all other royalties," 2 the
Manor and its Courts, belonged to the Lord and to the Lord
alone. Moreover, the Lord owned the public bakehouses, and
even when others were allowed to grow up he exacted an
1 "At these early periods," says the local historian, "most of the jurors, if
not all of them, were members of the Four-and-Twenty. ... At an early
period the Court Leet Jury and the Four-and-Twenty may have been the same
body. ... A Corporate record . . . says ' a note of the Twenty-four, as the
addition is put to them for making up the number at the Court holden the 27th
day of April 1647,' and this is followed by twenty- eight names." . . . "Early in
the seventeenth century . . . the Jury of the Court Leet . . . were . . . the
Four-and-Twenty " (History of . , . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1868-1869, vol. i. p. 348,
vol. ii. pp. 239, 256). This, however, is not proved. All that is certain is that, in
the eighteenth century, it could be said that " the Freemen exclude all freeholders
who are not Freemen from the Juries " (ibid. vol. ii. p. 256).
2 Case submitted to counsel on behalf of the Lord in 1753 (History of . . .
Alnwick, by George Tate, 1868-1869, vol. ii. p. 289).
"Though the tolls of the markets and fairs were claimed by the Lord of the
Manor, the Market Place belonged to the Corporation, who exercised control and
directive power both over it and over the streets of the town. They paid to
Thomas Harvies, in 1637, ' Is. for going with the drum at the fair both Sunday
and Monday ' ; at an earlier period, in 1612, market keepers were paid by them.
The Common Bellman, or Town's Servant, enjoyed a perquisite from stalls in
the Market Place, for when one was appointed in 1675, it is said 'he shall have
all the perquisites to that office excepting six stalls to Jane Grey. ' They were
at the expense of cleaning the Market Place and keeping it in repair ; in 1720
it was paved for them, and at the same time the old and new crosses were
repaired. 'The Corn Market' was paved in 1755 at the cost of 5 : 8 : ;
in the following year they paved 'the Horse Market' ; in 1761, 'paving the
Market Place' cost 10 : 12 : 4 ; and in 1765, 'for Market Place paved round
the Shambles ' 17 : 18 : 9 were paid " (ibid. vol. i. p. 447).
192 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
annual fee from each of them. 1 He had owned the public
brewhouse, and he still levied a similar annual fee on every
alehouse in the Borough. 2 He even claimed a toll on salt,
and exacted a small annual fee from every retail shop that
sold this necessary article, as an acknowledgment of his ancient
feudal claim. 3
From 1689 to 1750 we see in the manuscript records the
" Four-and-Twenty " successfully pursuing their policy of
concentrating in their own hands all the government of the
Borough. Throughout this period the Castle dominating the
town lay in a ruinous condition, and the heirs of the Percies
were absentees. The representatives of the Lord of the Manor
evidently became the boon companions of the principal
Burgesses who made up the Four-and-Twenty, who, as the
accounts show, " treated the officers of the Lord of the Manor,
even in Alnwick Castle itself, with no meagre supply of wine
and other spirituous liquors." 4 In return, the Steward and
the Bailiff evidently failed to inquire too curiously by what right
the Four-and-Twenty sank shafts for coal in the Town Moor, 5
took money for the quarrying of freestone there, and even, in
order " to augment and increase . . . the revenues belonging
to our Town ... for the good of the said Town, and for the
maintaining of its rights and privileges," enclosed hundreds of
1 This fee continued to be taken until about 1800 (History of . . . Alnwick,
by G. Tate, 1868-1869, vol. i. p. 448).
2 Not relinquished until 1860 (ibid. vol. i. p. 448).
3 Down to about 1830 (ibid.).
4 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 264. Here are a few specimens out of many :
" 1635. For a gallon of burnt wine bestowed on the Lord's Commissioners, 4/.
"1658. Wine bestowed on my Lord's officers, 6/.
"1718. To the Castle three quarts canary, 7/6 ; 3 quarts white wine, 6/6 ;
3 bottles claret, 7/6.
" 1728. Sent down to the Castle, 6 bottles of arrack punch, 18/ ; 4 bottles of
French wine, 10/ ; 3 bottles of white wine, 4/.
"1748. One dozen of French claret, 2:5:0; paid to servants at the
Castle, ll/."
After 1753, when, as we shall see, the Lord and the Borough went to war,
these payments ceased.
6 In 1693 it was ordered by the Four-and-Twenty, "Whereas there was a
former order . . . that every several Trade of the Town was to pay out of their
respective Trade Monies for the carrying on of winning a colliery in our
Common, . . . that . . . those that have not paid such sums to the Chamberlains
shall pay in the said sums that is behind to the present Chamberlains . . .
that upon refusal . . . the Chamberlains shall sue every such Alderman for
such offence in the sum of 38/ by way of action " (MS. Book of Orders,
Corporation of Alnwick, 22nd May 1693).
MANOR AND GILD 193
acres of this common pasture, and let them in farms, 1 without
any compensation to the Lord of the Manor. They even went so
far as publicly to declare, without contradiction by the Lord or
his officers, that " time out of mind the Freemen or Burgesses of
the Town and Borough . . . have had and now have the free-
hold and inheritance of Alnwick Moor or the Forest of Aydon." 2
In this policy of improvement the Four-and-Twenty some-
times found themselves out of harmony with the general body
of Freemen. The enclosure of so much of the Town Moor,
and the letting of the farms to the highest bidder, for instance,
roused in 1711 a storm of indignation. " Idle and disorderly
persons," noted the Four-and-Twenty, " enemies to the well-
being and good government of our Town and Borough, on two
several times in the night privately pulled down great part of
the inclosures. 8 The Four-and-Twenty put down this rebellion
with vigour, not merely prosecuting and disfranchising the
rioters and their abettors, but also ceasing, from that time
forward, to summon any " Common Gild," so that the Freemen
lost even their last remnant of control over the administration.
" Quiet men," writes the apologist of the Four-and-Twenty,
" disliked Gilds, which tradition said presented scenes of
uproar and confusion ... So bad a fame, indeed, did Gilds
enjoy as to become proverbial ; often when boys were engaged
in noisy, uproarious play have I heard the exclamation, ' Bairns,
what a gild ye are making ! '" 4
For the first half of the eighteenth century we may
watch the vigorous little oligarchy of the Four-and-Twenty
administering the affairs of the Borough at its own will and
discretion regulating the common pasture, letting the farms,
providing a water-supply by a rate, rebuilding the shambles,
widening streets, and erecting ornamental gates out of the
Town Stock, subscribing 400 towards a turnpike road on
condition that the gates were placed some distance away from
the town, 5 scrutinising the indentures of apprenticeship to
prevent the multiplication of Freemen, 6 maintaining the
1 MS. Book of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 24th June 1698.
2 Ibid. 3rd May 1711.
3 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1868-1869, vol. ii. 276.
4 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 272.
6 MS. Book of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 23rd and 28th August 1752.
6 It was found that youths living in the country were being nominally
VOL. IT. PT. I
194 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Freemen's monopoly of carrying on trade, protecting the
humbler members of the Trade Companies from oppression by
the " Great Brethren/' l administering the common school,
wrangling with the Four-and-Twenty, or Select Vestry, of the
Parish as to the choice of a clergyman, and successfully
insisting, by threatening to withdraw the stipend, upon the
appointment of an Englishman and no Scot ; 2 supporting, by
fair means or foul, their own candidates for the representation
of the County ; 3 expelling members of their own body for
misbehaviour, and disfranchising Freemen who dared to dis-
pute their will. 4 But this autocracy was tempered through-
out by a good-natured sympathy with popular amusements.
" Jolly men," it was said, " were the authorities of the town
in these days, and diligent in seizing on public events as
occasions for indulgence in drinking, feasting, and uproarious
enjoyment ; . . . they had one unvarying creed : whoever was
king, and whatever occurred, they must be jolly. Though
modest in amount at first, these indulgences reached a pitch of
extravagance towards the middle of the eighteenth century." "
Horse-racing, bull-baiting, 6 the music of the Town Waits,
apprenticed to Freemen, in order to gain admission ; and it was ordered " that
forever hereafter no man shall take an apprentice unless the said apprentice
serve his master in his own house in the Town for five years " (MS. Book of Orders,
Corporation of Alnwick, 25th April 1695 ; see also Orders of 22nd February and
25th April 1698, 21st November 1699, and 25th April 1705).
1 ' ' Whereas there hath a great difference happened between the Free Tailors
of this Borough and the Great Brethren of that trade, for the determining of
which, according to the ancient custom of this town, the Free Tailors have
appealed to the Chamberlains and Four-and-Twenty, who upon a full hearing of
the Free Tailors and the Great Brethren, . . . ordered . . . that the box,
orders, and other writings belonging to the said Company of Tailors be forthwith
delivered to the Free Tailors, and shall from henceforth be ever kept by the
Freemen and their successors" (ibid. 2nd October 1691).
2 Ibid. 12th September 1660, 29th September 1697, and 8th August 1722.
It adds to the difficulty of understanding the government of Alnwick, that there
was from at any rate 1693, and probably for a century earlier, a "Four-and-
Twenty of the Parish," which we have described as a Select Vestry (The Parish
and the County, 1906, pp. 179-181), quite distinct from the Four-and-Twenty
of the Borough ; and that it was nevertheless the latter body which provided
the salary of the clergyman, and chose both him and the Parish Clerk and
Sexton.
3 MS. Book of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 4th February 1748 ; History
of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. i. p. 474.
4 MS. Book of Orders, Corporation of Alnwick, 18th June 1700.
6 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. i. p. 321.
c The Alnwick bull-baiting was renowned. " When a bull was baited, the
Market Place was crowded with spectators thousands were sometimes there ;
and such exhibitions were not infrequent ; towards the close of last century as
MANOR AND GILD 195
who were perpetually parading the Borough in yellow plush
breeches, blue coats, and gold lace, and above all, the annual
carnival on St. Mark's Day, when the boundaries were ridden,
and the curious ceremony of the admission of young Freemen
by their " leaping the well " 1 was performed, were all provided
for the entertainment of the inhabitants at the expense of the
Borough funds. If the Chamberlains and the other " Gentlemen
of the Four-and-Twenty " brightened their wits at the tavern
almost every Thursday at the public expense, 2 they were
certainly not niggardly in their provision of popular amuse-
ments. And they were, at any rate, stalwart guardians of the
independence of the Borough and the rights of the Freemen,
perpetually stretching these to the utmost possible point.
But an evil day was at hand for the independence of
the Borough of Alnwick. In 1749 Sir Hugh Smithson,
many as seven bulls were baited in the course of one winter. . . . The rope by
which the bull was fastened to the ring was tied around the root of the horns,
and was about fifteen feet long, and dog after dog was let loose upon htm and
endeavoured to tear his flesh, till, maddened with rage, he sought to gore his
aggressor or toss him into the air. Sporting men then kept and trained bull-dogs
and gloried in their achievements, and the masters were careful and watchful
of them while engaged in the fight ; and if any was likely to fall exhausted
before the power of the bull, the master would rush forward, and drag the dog
away all foaming at the mouth, and covered with sweat and blood, and plunge
him into the cool water of St. Michael's Trough ; and then, refreshed it may
be with the bath, back he ivould be brought to try again his prowess with the
bull. Sport this may have been to vitiated tastes ; but cruel sport it was to
the bull, and to many of the dogs it was death. On October 25th, 1773, a bull
was baited in Alnwick, and treated with such brutal wantonness that he lay
down and expired. On November llth, 1783, another was so baited, that
enraged he threw down two tradesmen, one of whom had his leg broken, and the
other received a severe wound in the head. One bull broke loose and galloped
wildly through the streets, tossing dogs lifeless into the air, and trampling down
those blocking his way. ... I recollect the two last bull-baitings in Alnwick.
Though a miserable, it was an exciting scene ; the market was crowded with
women as well as men ; they were clustered in the windows, on the cross, on the
Town Hall stairs, and on the Shambles. I still seem to hear the loud
bellowings of the bull, the deep barkings of the dogs, the shoutings of the men,
mingled with the shrieking of the women, as the crowd swayed to and fro with
the changing fortunes of the fight" (History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate,
1866-1869, vol. i. p. 432).
1 For contemporary notices of this somewhat ridiculous ceremony, which was
made the occasion for a popular festival, see Report of Historical Manuscripts
Commission on the Portland MSS., vol. vi. p. 108 ; Gentleman's Magazine,
February 1756, vol. xxvi. p. 73 ; Journal of John Wesley, 25th May 1753 ;
Observations on Popular Antiquities, by John Brand, vol. i. p. 240 of 1841
edition; The Provincial Souvenir, by W. W. Fyfe, 1845; and History of
. . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1866-1869, vol. ii. pp. 241, 251.
2 Thirty meetings are expressly mentioned in 1771, with tavern expenses
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 266).
196 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
inheriting through his marriage the north -country estates of
the Percies, and becoming Earl (and presently Duke) of
Northumberland, fixed on Alnwick Castle as his residence.
Combining the business habits of a successful London doctor
with an overweening sense of the importance of the Percies,
he started to define and enforce his powers as Lord of the
Manor. We need not enter into the intricacies of the nine
years' litigation that followed, when semi-mythical Charters
were invoked against casual inquisitions by County Juries ;
ancient customs pleaded in opposition to feudal rights, and
the arbitrary usurpations of one of the parties balanced
against the mean encroachments of the other. 1 But the
Four-and-Twenty, with their scanty store of Town's Stock,
were no match for the great nobleman's unlimited resources
in money and patronage. As might have been expected, he
soon found agents, even among the Four -and -Twenty, for
securing his will. A compromise became inevitable, and
"Articles of Agreement" were made in 1762 between the
Lord on the one hand and the Common Council on the other.
It is characteristic of the eighteenth century that both the
Municipal Constitution of the Borough and the property rights
of the Freemen were settled by these Articles for more than
a century, without any decision either of the Legislature or
of the judicial tribunals on the subject. Broadly speaking,
the then existing Constitution was confirmed. 2 The close
body of the Four-and-Twenty was to continue to govern the
Borough without the intervention of the Freemen. In
return, the Four-and-Twenty had to admit that the Earl of
Northumberland was, in the fullest sense, Lord of the Borough
and Manor. His Bailiff, though not necessarily one of the
Four-and-Twenty, was to be the titular head of the Borough.
The soil and the " royalties " of the whole Borough, and of
the Forest of Aydon, which the Burgesses called the Town
Moor, were acknowledged to be vested in the Earl, the rights
of the Freemen over the Moor being definitely limited to
certain specified uses. It followed that no part of this
1 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, 1866-1869, vol. ii. pp. 288-293.
2 The principal constitutional alteration was that, instead of four only, eight
persons were annually to be presented for Chamberlains, of whom the Steward
chose four.
MANOR AND GILD 197
extensive area could thenceforth be enclosed or improved
without his consent.
What remains of the history of the Borough of Alnwick
is not exhilarating reading. For a few more decades the
" Gentlemen of the Four-and-Twenty " persist in their attempt
to develop the Municipal revenue, but they find themselves
perpetually thwarted in any proposals of inclosure by the
Lord's insistence on the lion's share of the advantage to be
gained. Meanwhile, partly, it is said, at the instigation of
the Lord's agents, 1 the Freemen once more strove to recover
their control over the Borough affairs. From 1780 onwards
we see the Four-and-Twenty repeatedly assailed by the dis-
contented townsfolk. 2 For the last quarter of the eighteenth
and first two decades of the nineteenth centuries, there raged
in the little town a war of pamphlets and excited controversy
for and against the autocratic rule of the Four-and-Twenty.
This eventually led to years of tumult and litigation, from
which the Close Body in 1819 emerged triumphant. 3 But
in the contest its spirit had been broken ; and though it
triumphed over the Freemen (whose ancient monopoly of
trade had gradually become unenforceable and disused), it
found itself definitely in a position of subserviency to the
Lord of Alnwick. From this time forward, far from claiming
to be the government of the Borough, the members of the
Common Council welcomed every occasion of abandoning
1 "About three years ago," it was said in 1781, "several of the Freemen
were sent for in a private manner at different times by some agents of the Duke
to a certain public-house, and their minds were poisoned with artful insinua-
tions, and alarmed with apprehensions as to their rights and privileges " (Seven
Letters to the Freemen of Alnwick, by an Old Craftsman, 1782, Letter III.). This
able pamphlet was written by the Clerk of the Corporation, and paid for by it
(History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. ii. p. 299).
2 Apart from accusations of secrecy and irresponsibility, with some occa-
sional extravagance, we gather that the differences between the Four-and-
Twenty and the rank and file of the Freemen turned on the policy to be pursued
with the Town Moor. The Four-and-Twenty wished to effect permanent im-
provements, even at the cost of some immediate sacrifice of income, and to spend
a part of the income on public objects needed by the Borough as a whole. The
rank and file of Freemen resented anything that curtailed the present use of the
Moor by themselves, and they objected to any expenditure, whether on the
improvement of their property for the future or on objects of public utility, which
diminished the sum to be divided in the current year. We shall describe
subsequently the calamitous results of a similar attitude of the Freemen of
Berwick-on-Tweed (see Chap. IX.).
3 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. ii. pp. 296-305.
198 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
public obligation and public authority. In 1822, with the
help of their patron, they got passed a Local Act, throwing
upon the rates various services formerly paid for out of the
Town's Stock, and incidentally establishing a body of Street
Commissioners, 1 which became the effective governing authority
of the Borough. When in 1833 the Municipal Corporation
Commissioners came to Alnwick, the Four-and-Twenty and
their officers loudly protested that they were not a Municipal
Corporation at all. With their enthusiastic approval the
Duke of Northumberland managed, in spite of the fact that
Alnwick was now a crowded town of nearly 7000 inhabitants,
to get it struck out of the schedule of Boroughs to which the
Municipal Corporations Act applied. 2 The statutory body of
Street Commissioners accordingly went on ruling the town,
and levying rates for services once performed by the ancient
Corporation. 8 In 1854, after fourteen years' renewed agita-
tion, the long dispute with the Duke as to his rights in the
Town Moor was brought to an end by an Inclosure award,
which conceded to him, in compensation for his purely
honorific rights as Lord, no less than 237 acres as his own
unincumbered freehold, and vested the remainder, discharged
from any pasturage rights, in trust for the Freemen and their
widows. 4 The final stage in the century-long process of
disfranchisement of the ancient Corporation of Alnwick was
reached in a Parliamentary committee room in 1882. Here
the ignorance of the Legislature and the indifference of the
Government Departments concerned, permitted, in direct con-
tradiction of the recommendation of the Municipal Corporation
Commission of 1876-1880, the passage into law of a Bill 5
which converted the Corporation into nothing but the trustee
1 3 George IV. c. 27 (Alnwick Paving Act, 1822). The population had
grown in 1821 to 5927.
2 History of . . . Alnwick, by G. Tate, vol. ii. pp. 305-307.
3 This body of Street Commissioners was eventually merged in an Urban
District Council, established as a Local Board in 1850 under the Public Health
Acts. The Municipal Corporation Commission of 1876-1880 recommended the
incorporation of Alnwick as an ordinary Municipal Borough, but this course
has not been adopted. On the contrary, the Municipal Corporations Act, 1883
(46 and 47 Viet. c. 18, sec. 19), expressly exempted it.
4 Award of 27th February 1854, confirmed by the Inclosure Commissioners,
2nd March 1854 ; for the preceding agitation, see History of . . . Alnwick, by
G. Tate, vol. ii. pp. 307-315.
6 45 and 46 Viet. c. 23 (Aluwick Corporation Act, 1882).
MANOR AND GILD 199
of a group of property owners, and finally transformed what
had once been the Corporate inheritance of the town into
the private freehold, subject only to devoting 500 a year
to keep up the Freemen's School, of the existing Freemen,
with their widows and descendants. 1
1 The County of Northumberland had a number of other towns which
claimed to be " Boroughs by prescription," and may at one time have possessed
some of the characteristics of Manorial Boroughs. The principal were Hexham,
Haltwhistle, Mitford, Corbridge, Alnmouth, Bamburgh, and Warkworth, some
of which had had old Seignorial Charters. Practically no remnant of Municipal
structure remained in 1689 in any of them, except Hexham, which still had its
four Craft Gilds or Trade Companies, each electing annually its Alderman and
other officers, like those of Alnwick and Morpeth. The Borough was divided
into four "Wards, from each of which six members were taken to form a ' ' Four-and-
Twenty " remarkably like the Fellowships of Braintree and Lewes respectively
which greatly declined towards the close of the seventeenth century, up to
which time it had been levying rates, and (in conjunction with the Bailiff,
Constables, the Companies, and the Lord's Court) governing the Borough. The
Bailiff, the former Seneschal of the Archbishop for the Palatine Liberty of
Hexhamshire, was appointed by the Lord for life, and continued during the
eighteenth century to be the principal authority in the Borough. At the Hier-
archy of Courts which he held for the Manor of the whole Liberty, and especially
at the Court for the Borough of Hexham, a whole array of officers were ap-
pointed, usually one for each of the four Wards, including Constables, Market-
keepers, Appraisers and Sealers, Ale-tasters, Surveyors of Highways, Pounders,
Townherds, Waits, and Scavengers. The Steward held twice a year a Court of
Record, styling itself Court of Pleas, claiming power to try all civil actions
without limit, which is mentioned in the House of Commons Returns of Courts
of Law of 1828 and 1840. There was also a "Side Court," or Court Baron,
held before the Bailiff quarterly, or oftener if required, for petty debt cases.
But the Courts and Companies of Hexham rapidly faded into insignificance
during the eighteenth century, until there was little more than the survival of
ancient titles to distinguish it from a mere parochial and Manorial administra-
tion. It was not inquired into by the Municipal Corporation Commissions of
1835 or 1880, any more than the other extinct Northumbrian Boroughs, and to
this day it has no more than an Urban District Council (An Essay towards a
Histoi'y of Hexham, by A. B. Wright, 1823 ; Historical . . . View of Northumber-
land, by E. Mackenzie, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 267-284 ; Northumberland County His-
tory, vol. iii., 1896, by A. B. Hinds, pp. 20-104, 254-295).
In the ancient City of Durham we have a Manorial Borough exhibiting some
of the peculiarities of Alnwick. We have the same curious intermingling of
Manor and Gild, the same independent existence of Craft Gilds or Trade Com-
panies, and the same practical supersession of seignorial authority by a popular
body. But at Durham the evolution had been registered by successive Charters
of the Bishop, whose power as Lord of the Manor was merged in his authority
as Palatine Lord, which enabled him to create recognised Municipal Corpora-
tions. The last of these Charters established in 1780 a Council of twelve Alder-
men and twenty-four Common Councillors, annually electing one of the Aldermen
to be Mayor for the year. The Aldermen served for life, vacancies being filled
by the Council as a whole. The Common Councillors, on the other hand, were
to be chosen annually by the Mayor and Aldermen from among the twelve Com-
panies, two from each. The Companies had their own several administrations,
annually electing officers to enforce the By-laws, which were in 1728 formally
revised and re-enacted by the Corporation as a whole. None were permitted to
200 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
(g) Arrested Development and Decay
To present any accurate summary of this long series of
pseudo-municipal authorities is no easy task. We find them,
as has been shown, all over England ; from Northumberland
trade unless free of one or other of these Companies. Those entitled, to become
Freemen had to be proposed at three successive quarterly Courts of the Corporation,
and to be approved by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors. All this rigidity
and exclusiveness, upheld in the Court of King's Bench in 1756 (Green v. Mayor,
etc., of Durham, Reports of Cases, etc., by Sir J. Burrow, vol. i. p. 127), broke
down in 1761 under the temptation to create new Parliamentary electors ; when
we gather that all trade restrictions ceased to be enforced. The Bishop had
even ceded to the Corporation in 1602 his right to hold the Manorial Courts in
that part of the Borough which was in his own Manor ; and what was called the
Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court Baron of the Borough, was regularly
held at the Gildhall twice a year, when all the Burgesses had to answer to their
names, some minor Manorial business was formally transacted, and petty debt
cases were tried the Town-Clerk, and not any Manorial officer, issuing the
summonses and taking the fees. The administration of the market and the
revenue from tolls had equally passed into the hands of the Borough authorities.
The Bishop even included the Mayor for the year, together with the Mayors of
his other Manorial Boroughs of Stockton and Hartlepool, in the Commission of
the Peace for the County, and appointed him one of the Judges of the Court of
Pleas.
Local Acts had been obtained in 1790 (30 George III. c. 67) and 1822 (3
George IV. c. 26) establishing a body of Street Commissioners, of which the
Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors were members ex officio.
We were informed that no minutes or other records of the Corporation exist
of a date prior to 1835, or indeed prior to the present generation. See the
First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iii.
pp. 1511-1512 ; History and Antiquities of Durham, by W. Hutchinson, 1787,
vol. ii. pp. 13-36 ; General View of the Agriculture of Durham, by J. Granger,
1794, p. 9 ; Historical and Descriptive View of the City of Durham, 1824, pp.
63-80 ; Historical . . . View of Durham, by E. Mackenzie and M. Ross, 1834,
vol. ii. pp. 419-427 ; History of Durham, by R. Surtees, vol. iv. 1840, pp.
72-78 ; Extracts from the Halmote Court of the Prior of Durham, 1296-1384
(Surtees Society, vol. Ixxxii., 1889) ; Memorials of St. Giles, Durham (ibid. vol.
xcv., 1896) ; The County Palatine of Durham, by G. T. Lapsley, 1900 ; Victoria
County History of Durham, by the same, vol. i., 1905, pp. 306-309.
The Bishop of Durham, as Lord Palatine, created other Boroughs, such as
Barnard Castle, Darlington, Gateshead, Hartlepool, Northallerton (in Yorkshire),
Stockton, and Sunderland, which seem to have had the characteristics of what
we term Manorial Boroughs, none of them having their own Corporate Magis-
tracy, and all of them being connected in some way with the Lord's Court. In
Barnard Castle, Darlington, and Northallerton, practically no remnant of Muni-
cipal organisation survived to 1689, the government during the eighteenth
century being purely Manorial and parochial. Darlington was made a Municipal
Corporation in 1867 ; the other two have still only Urban District Councils.
In Sunderland a new Charter of 1634 was allowed to lapse, and though the
"Capital Burgesses" and " Stalliugers " continued to exist, and to maintain
rights of common on the Town Moor (Hicks v. Clark, 1722, in Reports of Cases,
etc., by Sir C. Levinz, vol. ii. p. 252), the government of the Borough was carried
on by the Lord's Court, with its Bailiff, and (from 1717) by the Harbour Com-
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DEC A Y 201
to Cornwall, from Lancashire to Kent ; on the borders of
Wales, amid the fens of the Eastern counties, and in the heart
of the Midlands. In respect of their number and of the area
of their jurisdiction, these Manorial Boroughs stand, as a class,
midway between the thousands of active Lords' Courts and the
missioners under a series of Local Acts. In Gateshead, where there were even
separately incorporated Craft Gilds or Trade Companies chartered between 1557
and 1671, analogous to those of Durham, the Borough organisation had been
crushed by the jealousy of Newcastle-on-Tyne, to which it was actually annexed
in 1553 by the short-lived statute 7 Edward VI. No. 10. When this was re-
pealed the Bishop leased the Manor and its Courts, the Borough Tolls, and the
valuable " Salt meadows," in such a way that these all fell into the hands of the
Corporation of Newcastle. The last Bailiff was appointed in 1681. Between
1626 and 1740 there were four " Wainmen " appointed to collect a small toll on
loaded waggons, but this was resisted in 1740 and abandoned. Nothing re-
mained to the Burgesses or burgage owners of Gateshead but their rights of
common, the only local officers being the two Stewards and the four Grassmen
whom, from 1695 onwards, they annually appointed in public meeting ; the
Reeve and Hayward of the purely Manorial Halmote Court held by the lessee of
the Manor ; and the parochial officers appointed by the Close Vestry of the
Four-and-Twenty that we have already described. Hartlepool and Stockton
were more fortunate in having " Mayors " whom the Bishop could include in the
Commission of the Peace for the County, and appoint to be Judges in his Court
of Pleas. At Stockton, indeed, the Burgesses or burgage owners elected the
Mayor annually, though this had to be done at the Bishop's Court Leet ; and
the Steward of the Bishop acted as Recorder, and sat with the Mayor at the
other Manorial Courts of the year. Ex- mayors were styled Aldermen, but seem
to have had no powers or duties. There was a Town's Serjeant, who was appointed
Constable, and walked in procession before the Mayor "in a large wrapping
cloak trimmed with lace." Stockton, Sunderland, and Gateshead were accepted
as Municipal Corporations in 1835, and made such and duly reformed by the
Act of that year. Hartlepool was not so accapted, and was only incorporated in
1851. See History and Antiquities of Durham, by "W. Hutchinson, 1794 ;
History of Durham, by R. Surtees, 1816-1840 ; Historical . . . View of
Durham, by E. Mackenzie and M. Ross, 1834 ; History and Antiquities of
Durham, by W. Fordyce, 1857 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835 ; Antiquities of Gainford . . . comprising the . . . history
of . . . Barnard Castle, by J. R. Walbran, 1846 ; History and Antiquities of
the Parish of Darlington, by W. H. D. Longstaffe, 1854 ; paper by the same on
" The Trade Companies of Gateshead " in Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xiii. 1862 ;
Memorials of the Life of Mr. Ambrose Barnes (Surtees Society, 1866) ; History
of Hartlepool, by Sir Cuthbert Sharp, 1851 ; History and Antiquities of North-
allerton, by C. J. D. Ingledew, 1858 ; History of Northallerton, by J. L.
Say well, 1885 ; Parochial History and Antiquities of Stockton-on-Tees, by J.
Drewster, 1796 and 1829 ; Historical View of Monkwearmouth . . . and . . .
Sunderland, by George Garbutt, 1819 ; History of Sunderland, by J. Burnett,
1830 ; History and Antiquities of Sunderland, by J. W. Summers, 1858 ; Sunder-
land, by T. Potts, 1892.
Sheffield already in 1689 a town of several thousands of people, and destined
to reach, by 1835, a population of nearly 80,000 presents us with a remarkable
example of unco-ordinated local jurisdictions. This Manorial Borough had a
very early Seignorial Charter analogous to those of Manchester and Stockport ;
yet it resembles Beccles in getting also a Royal Charter in Elizabethan times ;
Wisbech in its government by the Freeholders ; Tetbury in its connection with
202 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
couple of hundred of Municipal Corporations, in the Cities and
Boroughs that were entitled to create their own Justices of
the Peace. In diversity and complexity of constitution these
Manorial Boroughs occupy a similar intermediate position.
What is remarkable is the almost fantastically minute gradua-
trust property, and Alnwick both in its relations with the Lord of the Manor
and in the interpolation of a Gild. At Sheffield, however, all the various
jurisdictions remained distinct. In 1297 the Lord Furnival conceded by
Charter to his "free tenants" of Sheffield, that they should hold in fee farm,
on payment of a small annual sum, all the lands they had hitherto held of him
upon other obligations. Whether from this origin or from older date, we find
various pieces of land in the town owned and administered by what was called
the "Common Burgery" of Sheffield, meaning, apparently, public meetings of
Freeholders or " Burgesses" electing a "Town Collector." A Royal Charter of
1554 established a second body, the "Twelve Capital Burgesses and Commonalty
of the Town and Parish of Sheffield," a close council of twelve, renewing itself
by co-option, to administer certain property which had been forfeited under
Edward VI. as being for superstitious uses, and which was then restored. The
Capital Burgesses and the Common Burgery, though distinct in their origin,
their membership, their property, and the purposes to which this was devoted,
were apparently long closely connected. They even used the same seal. The
Capital Burgesses were in effect, we are told, a self-elect "Court of Aldermen."
They remained, however, a distinct Corporation, and came more and more to
regard themselves as an ecclesiastical body, having as their primary duty the
repair of the parish church and the provision of stipends for three clergymen.
Accordingly they were eventually often styled the "Church Burgesses." But
they always devoted part of their income to relieving the poor and repairing
bridges and highways. There was a third Corporate body, the Cutlers' Com-
pany, under Act of Parliament of 1624, empowered not only to make regulations
for the trade of cutlery, but to enforce such regulations over the whole of
Hallamshire. Meanwhile the Duke of Norfolk, as Lord of the Manor, continued
not only to administer the market and to take the other profits of the Manor,
but also to hold both a six-monthly "Court Leet, Grand Court Baron, and
Court of the Honour or Assembly Inquest," called briefly the " Sembly Court "
and regular Three Weeks' Courts for petty debt cases. " Upon every
Sembly Tuesday," we read in 1637, "is assembled upon Sembly Green, where
the Court is kept, ... at least 139 horsemen with horse and harness provided
by the . . . tenants to appear before the Lord of the Manor." The Common
Burgery, as the Freeholders of the Manor, or the Homage, retained, notwith-
standing their separate organisation, also a close connection with the Lords'
Courts. Their accounts, from 1567 onwards, show that they paid for the
dinner and the writing out of the lengthy presentments of the "Jury of the
Sembly Quest," which was probably (as at Alnwick), composed exclusively of
their members. The Jury appointed two Constables, two Searchers of Flesh,
Fish, Bread, and Ale, two officers to compel all butter and eggs to be sold only
in the market, two others to do the same for corn, six Overseers for mending
Highways, four Searchers and Sealers of Leather, three officers to protect the
town wells from pollution, two persons to see that swine were ringed, and four
more to collect the Swineherd's wages. The Jury also made By-laws and dealt
with nuisances. During the seventeenth century (as at Tetbury), Commissioners
inquired into the administration of the trust property, and a decree was made
in 1681 vesting the property of the Common Burgery in thirteen persons,
vacancies among whom were (unlike Tetbury) to be filled by election of the
" iuhabitauts," by which (as was eventually settled in 1817) was to be under-
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DECA Y 203
tion of the steps by which the different members of the series
pass one into another. There is, as Miss Bateson pointed
out, " every gradation from a subjection only very slightly t
modified by privilege to a complete system of burghal self-
government." l If a single highly evolved organisation had,
at all the various stages of its development from the Lord's
Court of a rural Manor right up to the most fully
developed Municipal Corporation, been successively photo-
graphed for the information of future generations, these different
pictures could hardly have represented the several stages more
strikingly than do the hundreds of distinct local authorities
simultaneously existing in the eighteenth century. We seem
to see crystallised before us at various stages organisms that
were proceeding along two converging lines of development.
As compared with the subordination to the Lord and his
officers, which is the mark of the Lord's Court, both series
stood freeholders. In the eighteenth century one of these ' ' Town Trustees "
was called "Town Regent" or "Town Collector," and the others were known
as Assistants. Occasional "Town's Meetings" of Freeholders were held to
choose a Collector, to elect new Assistants to fill vacancies, to appoint a Town
Clerk (in 1707), and, now and again, to pass some resolution as to the property.
These meetings seem to have been attended only by between ten and a hundred
persons. There was a Beadle ; there were Town Waits ; there were presently
Town Scavengers.
Exactly how the functions of government were, divided among these four
distinct authorities (in addition to the Parish Vestry and its Poor Law and
Highway Officers) varied from generation to generation. What is remarkable
is that they all remained in full and separate activity right down to 1835, and,
it may almost be said, down to the present day. A Local Act in 1818
established a fifth authority, a body of Street Commissioners, and relieved the
Burgery of its obligations in cleaning, lighting, and watching the streets.
Another Local Act of 1827 regulated the procedure of the Burgery, and com-
pelled publication of its accounts. A Charter established, as a sixth authority,
an ordinary Municipal Corporation in 1843, which presently absorbed the
Street Commissioners, but left all the other jurisdictions unimpaired. For
Sheffield, we have not seen the MS. records, which have been fully extracted
in Records of the Burgery of Sheffield, by J. D. Leader, 1897 ; see also Add.
MSS. 27,538 in British Museum, as to the negotiations with the Lord of the
Manor, 1719-1727 ; Hallamshire, by J. Hunter, 1st edition, 1819, 2nd edition,
1869 ; New and Complete History of the County of York, by T. Allen, 1828-1831,
vol. iii. ; The Picture of Sheffield, 1824 ; various papers in Associated Architectural
Societies' Reports and Papers, vols. xii. and xiii., 1874-1876; Yorkshire Past
and Present, by T. Baines, vol. ii., 1877; Extracts from the Earliest Book of
Accounts belonging to the Town Trustees of Sheffield, by J. D. Leader, 1879 ;
Chapters in the History of Sheffield, 1832-1849, by J. Parker, 1884 ; Character-
istics of some Inhabitants of Sheffield at the close of the Eighteenth Century, by
W. Smith, 1889 ; Old Sheffield Jottings, by J. D. Leader, 1891 ; The House of
Waltheof, by S. 0. Addy, 1893 ; Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century, by
R. E. Leader, 1901.
1 Medieval England, by Mary Bateson, 1903, p. 395.
204 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
exhibit an ever-growing autonomy. Both series exhibit also a
steady increase in extra-manorial or pseudo-municipal structure,
especially in the form of a standing administrative organisation
existing between the meetings of the Courts. In one set of
cases autonomy seems to precede the growth of structure ; in
the other set of cases, the growth of new structure antedates any
kind of autonomy. Thus, at Chipping Sodbury we see the begin-
ning of a partial autonomy in the right conceded to the Jury of
the Lord's Court to present three persons for the appointment
of one of them by the Steward to be head of the town, with the
correlative right of this head, whether called Bailiff, Portreeve,
or Mayor, to select the Jury for the following year. Even
Birmingham in 1800, for all its importance and magnitude, is
constitutionally to be distinguished from a Lord's Court only
by the fact that, somehow or another, the Bailiffs had come to
* choose the Jury and the Jury to elect the Bailiffs, independently
of the will of the Lord or his Steward. 1 At Gosport and
Clun, where exactly the same arrangement prevailed within
the Lord's Court, the Bailiffs held also a separate Court for
the settlement of civil actions among the inhabitants. At
Alresford this separate Court had been expressly granted by
Seignorial Charter, along with the Fairs and Markets, the
Court of Pie Powder, and a great deal of Leet jurisdiction,
though the Lord still held his View of Frankpledge or Lawday.
Finally, at Tetbury, where the sixteenth-century constitution
was almost identical with that of Birmingham in 1800, we
may actually watch the development in the course of the
seventeenth century of a Bicameral Close Body, strangely
similar to that of many Municipal Corporations, entirely
replacing the Lord of the Manor, and concentrating in itself
the whole of the Manorial powers. We may trace a similar
growth of autonomy, leading to a development of new structure,
1 We may see something like local autonomy conceded even with regard to
the appointment, not only of the Bailiff, but even of the Steward of the Court.
In the Privy Council in 1676, "a report from Attorney General, about appoint-
ing a Steward to hold a Leet on Whitmonday yearly at Kingsborough, within
the Isle of Sheppey, as also a certificate under the hands of the most substantial
inhabitants, principal land occupiers, and ancient jurymen of the Court called
Kingsborough . . . representing P. T. , gentleman, as a fit person to be Steward
of the said Court, was read. Ordered that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
determine as to the fitness of P. T., and pass a grant under the seal of the
Exchequer under such small rent as he shall think fit " (MS. Acts of Privy
Council, 17th May 1676).
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DEC A Y 205
in a series of cases in which the Lord of the Manor had either
been non-existent, or had let his powers fall into abeyance.
From such mere village communities as Berwick in Sussex,
and Aston and Cote in Oxfordshire, we ascend by examples
like Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, to such Chartered autonomous
townships as Beccles and Wisbech, the powers of which are
indistinguishable from those of a Municipal Corporation except
for their inability to create their own Justices of the Peace.
On the other hand, a different series begins with Holy Island,
with its standing " Four-and-Twenty," existing by virtue of
tenure, and yet in attendance as a Jury at the Lord's Court.
We might adduce scores of interesting variations dependent
upon the ownership of certain ancient burgage tenements,
developing into self-renewing " Common Councils," with more
or less connection with the Jury of the Lord's Court, and more
or less the creatures of the Lord's Steward. 1 More interesting
is it to trace the series through Lewes, with its " Company of
the Twelve " of unknown origin ; and Arundel, with its
" Fellowship " gradually taking on all the paraphernalia of
Municipal pomp, but still revolving round the Lord's Court ;
up to Christchurch, where the connection with the Lord of the
Manor had by 1689 become shadowy; and Lymington, elect-
ing its own member of Parliament, and virtually identical with
the common type of Municipal Corporation, but for the lack
of Corporate Justices. Elsewhere we may see the new
structure beginning, not with any development of the Homage
Jury, but with a glorification of the Eeeve and Headboroughs
into a Mayor and Aldermen, 2 at first combined, as at Wotton
and Berkeley, or as at Altrincham, with complete subordination
to the Lord. This may be carried a stage farther, with growing
autonomy, in instances such as Chipping Campden and Stock-
port. Finally, in Godmanchester and Blandford Forum, with
Eoyal Charters, we have this type of Manorial Borough attaining
complete emancipation from any Lord, and wielding all the
Manorial powers, but not those of Justices of the Peace. In one
1 Thus at Clitheroe, in Lancashire, it is the two Bailiffs and " the Inquiry
Jury " which acts as a permanent Common Council ; vacancies on the " Inquiry
Jury" being filled by co-option from among the "Freemen," that is, those
occupiers of "Free Borough Houses" who have been duly "presented" as
Freemen by the "Inquiry Jury" in the Borough Court (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1485 ; and supra, pp. 48,
156). 2 Or elsewhere Portreeve or Bailiffs,
206 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
small group of Manorial Boroughs, concentrated in Northumber-
land and Durham, we may even see this progressive autonomy
and growth of extra-manorial structure associated with a con-
stit utional development peculiarly typical of the most advanced
of the Municipal Corporations, namely, a body of Freemen,
recruited by apprenticeship to Freemen, and organised in Gilds
or Trade Companies for the regulation of their several crafts. 1
It is a curious paradox, significant of the way in which the
Manorial Borough runs into the Municipal Corporation, that
one town, Morpeth, merely because it happens to have assumed
the power of creating its own Corporate Justices, has to be
omitted altogether from the class of Manorial Boroughs ;
though it was even more dependent on its Lord than Alnwick,
and was, in fact, the Borough in which the special peculiarities
of the Northumberland and Durham group of towns were most
markedly developed. And throughout the Principality of
Wales the combination of subordination to the Lord, with
rudimentary Gild structure and the power to create Corporate
Justices of the Peace, is so frequent, that we have found it
impracticable to draw any line at all between the different
Boroughs, which we leave to be described together in a separate
chapter. 2
It is interesting to note that, if we may assume the
Manorial Borough to have arisen out of the Lord's Court, it
is the Court Baron side, not the Court Leet, which, at any
rate in the great majority of instances, furnished the oppor-
tunity and the means of pseudo- municipal development. 8
1 Apart from the Northumberland and Durham towns, we may almost say
that apprenticeship, as a method of admission to Borough or Corporation
privileges, is unknown in the Manorial Boroughs. The burgess-ship or "free-
ledge " is usually connected with an estate in land ; sometimes, as at Clitheroe
and Godmanchester, in certain ancient tenements ; sometimes, as at Stockport
and Wisbech, in any freehold. Very occasionally, as at Alresford and Tetbury,
it is the whole body of inhabitant householders who are regarded as Burgesses,
but in these cases the governing authority is always a close body, renewing
itself by co-option. Only in two or three cases (outside Northumberland and
Durham) do we find, in a Manorial Borough, any mention of apprenticeship in
connection with civic rights, and then only (as at Chipping Campden and Berkeley)
in the form of apprenticeship to any inhabitant householder of the Borough,
which may be regarded as no more than a method of "gaining a Settlement"
under the Poor Law, entitling the apprentice eventually only to the rights of a
settled inhabitant.
2 See pp. 232-260, Chap. V. "The Boroughs of Wales."
3 The incident in this connection puzzled a learned lawyer well versed in
the practice of the Lord's Court. ' ' How the Mayor of a Corporation conies to
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DEC A Y 207
This applies both to the function of hearing pleas of debt
and to that of managing the common interests in the land.
In many cases, as at Chin, Gosport, and Arundel, we find the
Manorial Borough holding a " Three Weeks' Court," or other
tribunal for the settlement of disputes, whilst the Lord con-
tinues to hold his own Court Leet and View of Frankpledge.
At Alresford we actually see the Lord granting to his " Free
Borough" the privilege of holding the Court Baron, whilst
retaining for himself the View of Frankpledge or Lawday.
At Christchurch and Wisbech there is evidence that the
nascent Manorial Borough found it desirable to take to itself
the power of settling disputes among the inhabitants, even
without definite authority, by establishing a voluntary arbitra-
tion tribunal. Elsewhere, as at Chipping Campden, the Manorial
Borough would get a similar jurisdiction conferred upon it by
Eoyal Charter, under the name of a Court of Eecord, whilst
leaving unimpaired the Lord's Court Leet. It is only in a
few cases, such as Tetbury, Clitheroe, and Godmanchester, that
we find the Manorial Borough attaining to the dignity of
holding its own Court Leet for the presentment of nuisances
and amercement of offenders ; and then only as an incident of
the ownership of the Manor itself. And, corresponding with
this course of development, we shall see when we come to the
Municipal Corporation that it was almost invariable that the
Corporate body should possess what we may call Court Baron
powers, and hold a civil debt Court, whilst in some instances
the Court Leet would still be held by an external Lord of the
Manor.
The connection of the Manorial Borough with the Court
Baron, rather than with the Court Leet, is still more clearly
seen on the property side. Practically all the Manorial
Boroughs had commons and wastes to manage, even if few
were in the position of Godmanchester, with its commonfield
agriculture. It is, in fact, these common rights to landed
property that gave substance and strength to the embryo
Corporate body. "Not much is involved," says an able
be elected in this Court by the burgage-holders, suitors to the Court Baron, is
a paradox which the editor is unable to solve " (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet,
by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 8). The learned Steward of the Savoy
could have discovered the explanation in the development of the Manorial
Borough from the Lord's Court.
208 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
modern historian, " in being a Free Borough. Any little rural
township became a Free Borough so soon as its Lord turned
the holdings of his serfs into burgages, abolished villein
services, and took money rents instead." l But to convert
this nominal " Free Borough " into a continuously existing
Corporate entity, with perpetual succession, what was needed
in practice was the guardianship and administration of a
common stock. Professor Maitland tells us in fact, that " the
evolution of a Borough Corporation is very closely connected
with . . . the emergence of a freely disposable revenue which
the Burgesses will treat as the income of the town." 2 This
common stock might, as at Tetbury, begin in a charitable
donation. It might, as at Melton Mowbray and Wisbech,
arise in a co-operative purchase by the inhabitants. But in
the great bulk of instances the common stock consisted of the
proceeds of the rights of user of the commons and wastes, or
even the ownership of lands and tenements at a quit rent.
" A Corporate personality," observes Professor Maitland, " is
hardly required until there is a Corporate income " ; and it
was the agricultural interests administered by the Homage
Jury of the Lord's Court, not the jurisdiction over the conduct
of the inhabitants furnished by the Jury of the King, that, as
at Beccles, provided the earliest Corporate income. And it
was these interests in land that were often destined to increase
in value. " A considerable part," in the change from a loose
aggregate of joint owners to the evolution of a Borough Fund,
says Professor Maitland, was " played by those leases of waste
and common land which the community begins to grant in
answer to an increasing demand for building sites."
Whether the governing council of a Manorial Borough,
where such existed, developed out of the Homage Jury, and
the ownership of ancient burgages ; or out of a Leet Jury of
resiants perpetuating itself into a Common Council, we watch
it always tending to become a Close Body, renewing itself by
co-option. This was, we can now see, constitutionally inevit-
able. The ownership of rights of common, or of the ancient
1 A History of Municipal Government in Liverpool to 1835, by Professor
Ramsay Muir, 1906, p. 15 ; see also History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 640 ; Mediceval Manchester and the Be-
ginnings of Lancashire, by J. Tait, 1904 p. 62.
2 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 204.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DEC A Y 209
burgage tenements, was concentrated in a definite section of
the population, which exhibited no inclination to lessen its
possessions by admitting new-comers to participation. On the
contrary, we see the descendants of the original co-owners
taxing the " foreigner " or " stallinger " by market tolls, fees
for opening shops, and wharf dues. 1 Even when the governing
authority of a Manorial Borough had little or no common
property, and had arisen merely from the absence or in-
difference of the Lord of the Manor, possibly from the Court
Leet of resiants, the fact that (as at Birmingham) this Jury
was summoned by the Bailiffs, and the Bailiffs were chosen by
the Jury, necessarily created a permanent body into which no
outsider could force himself. And except in the little group
of Northumberland and Durham Boroughs, the oligarchy which
arose out of the Court of the Manor was, in the Manorial
Boroughs, not widened by the existence of a class of Freemen.
In many of the Municipal Corporations, as we shall see, it
was this class of Freemen, into which outsiders were always
entering by the humble portal of trade apprenticeship, that
established, and in a few cases preserved to the last, a
Democracy of craftsmen as the very base of the Corporate
structure.
But the Manorial Borough drew from the Court of the
Manor also the seeds of decay. Its very separation from the
Lord of the Manor lessened its authority. The fact that it
1 In the Manorial Boroughs, at any rate, there is no connection to be traced
(outside Northumberland and Durham) between the exceptional taxation of
" foreigners " and the maintenance of a monopoly of trading by a Gild or Gilds
of merchants or craftsmen. Where ' ' foreigners " were required to pay a fee on
opening a shop (as at Berkeley, Gosport, Godmanchester, etc.), or where
exceptional tolls were exacted from them in market or on the landing stage,
this exaction was, in its intention, fiscal and not prohibitory. It represented
either the claim of those who had entered into obligations (as, for instance, to
pay a fee farm rent for the Borough) to compel others to contribute, or else
(where the Borough owned the land in fee simple or the Manorial rights) merely
the assertion of proprietary rights. It was not that the co-owners were not
monopolistic ; we find them, in fact, not only eager to exclude from their
Borough "inmates" or lodgers, and the non-settled poor generally, but also
perpetually striving to prohibit the assignment of "stints " to foreigners (as at
Arundel), and even the letting of the freeholder's right to ferry passengers for
hire (as at Gosport). We find no trace of any particular Craft defending a
monopoly. In fact, almost the only trace of Municipal craft regulations in
these Boroughs is that at Alresford, in 1570, the Lord expressly granted to his
new Borough the power to make orders and regulations amongst artificers,
though in whose interest it is not clear.
VOL. II. PT. { ?
210 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
seldom acquired the Court Leet powers, and the growing
insufficiency of these powers even where it possessed them,
prevented it from building up the police authority over
negligent or turbulent citizens, which the growth of an urban
population required. Moreover, the Homage Jury which had
made By-laws and levied contributions without question, so
long as it coincided approximately with all the principal
inhabitants, lost both these powers when it became a Close
Body in the midst of a large population excluded from its
counsels. These Twelves or Four - and - Twenties, these
" Companies " and " Fellowships " the direct descendants of
the Homage Jury drew their authority to regulate and tax
from the ancient principle that a common agreement among
a majority of the freehold tenants of the Manor was binding
on the whole of them. This authority could hardly be
stretched, even by the assumption of the title of Common
Council, to cover a regulation and taxation of persons quite
unconnected with the Manor. But perhaps the greatest blow
to the authority of the Manorial Boroughs as to the Lord's
Court was the Inclosure Act, which in so many cases trans-
formed common uses into unrestricted individual ownership,
and thus made unnecessary any collective administration of
the land. Finally, in the constant aggrandisement by Acts of
Parliament of the Justices of the Peace, the Parish Vestry,
and the new Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes, the
Manorial Borough found itself progressively superseded in its
quasi-municipal functions, and tended to revert to the status
of a mere Lord's Court. 1 Of this reversion the City and
Borough of Westminster offers the most complete instance ;
1 In some cases this reversion had taken place before 1689, and the town
accordingly finds mention in our preceding chapter. Thus, if we had been
describing Manchester in the fourteenth century, with its Seignorial Charter,
granting to the Burgesses the right of electing the Boroiighreeve, the privilege
of deciding civil suits among themselves, and of holding their own Port-
manmote, we must have included this among our Manorial Boroughs. But
by the end of the seventeenth century the Manchester Burgesses had for some
reason lost their autonomy, and the Manorial Borough had become no more than
a highly evolved specimen of a Lord's Court. Thus, Miss Bateson says that
"many village groups, Boroughs in little else but name, showed no commercial
vitality, and became Manors again both in fact and in name, when villainage
had lost its onerous character. Manchester is a case in point" (Mediccval
Englaiid, 1066-1350, by Mary Bateson, 1903, p. 395). It thus affords an
interesting analogy to other cases of reversion, such as the so-called City and
Borough of Westminster.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DEC A Y 211
one all the more striking, because the Manorial Borough in
this case was the seat of the National Legislature and the
home of a swarming urban population ; because it had been
dignified by the higher title of City ; and because its pseudo-
municipal structure was of comparatively modern growth, and
its constitution had been deliberately fortified by the authority
of an Act of Parliament.
CHAPTER IV
THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
WE end our survey of Manorial Boroughs by the most anoma-
lous of them all, the so - called " City and Borough of
Westminster." l We shall not inquire how it had come about,
as was subsequently recited, that " the government of the
Borough of Westminster and the Liberty thereof was, by
several grants of princes and by immemorial usage, in the
Abbot and Convent of Westminster, and was in all times
executed by officers by them appointed and in the Courts to
them belonging." 2 What seems to have existed, in the early
part of the reign of Elizabeth, was a highly developed Manorial
government, of which no actual records have yet been found,
1 The constitutional history of Westminster appears to have been very
inadequately investigated by the numerous authors who have dealt with its
more picturesque features. Besides the abundant MS. Minutes of the Vestries,
the Paving Commissioners, and the Court of Sewers, elsewhere referred to, the
student will consult those of the -Court of Burgesses, which exist (imperfectly)
from 1611 ; the "Act for the Good Government of the City and Borough of
Westminster," 27 Elizabeth, c. 17 (1585) ; the Orders and Ordinances made
under it, 1585, 1719, and 1720, reprinted in House of Commons paper, No. 666,
of 27th June 1853 ; the Acts 29 George II. c. 25 (1756), and 31 George II. c. 17
(1758) ; A Brief Account of the Powers given to and exercised by the Burgess
Court of Westminster, by an Inhabitant (n.d., about 1720) ; The Case of the Dean
and Chapter , . . with regard to the Bill for regulating the Nightly Watch,
1720 ; A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Bill for regulating the
Nightly Watch, 1720 ; Instructions and Orders given in charge by the Deputy
Steward . . . to the Jury, 1734 ; The Power and Practice of the Court Leet of
the City and Liberty of Westminster displayed, 1743 (attributed to Sir Matthew
Hale) ; Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster, by E.
Sayer, 1784 ; Inquiry into the Nature and Duties of the Office of Inquest Juryman
. . . also the law for . . . Westminster, by a Citizen (James Newell), 1824 ;
Report of House of Commons Committee on the State of the Nightly Watch,
1812 ; ditto, on the State of the Police of the Metropolis, 1816 ; ditto, 1822 ;
Report of Westminster City Council for 1902-1903.
2 The Case of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster with respect to the Bill
for Regulating the Nightly Watch, 1720.
212
BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION 213
but which evidently had a High Steward, a Deputy Steward,
a High Bailiff who exercised within the Liberty all the
authority of a Sheriff, a High Constable, a Town Clerk, a Clerk
of the Market, a " Searcher of the Sanctuary," and the " Mayor,
Society and Clerk of the Staple." * The so-called * City and
Borough " was at that time divided into twelve Wards, and
was served by at least two Juries, and a bevy of Scavengers
and Constables. In the year 1585 the office of High Steward
happened to be filled by the Queen's principal minister, Lord
Burleigh, and he seems to have been concerned, as well he
might be, at the rapid increase of houses ; " the parting and
dividing of ... tenements " ; the aggregation, around the
ancient Sanctuary, of people " without trade or mystery . . .
given to vice and idleness, living in contempt of all manner
of officers within the said City " ; the wandering of unringed
hogs on " the common at Tuthill," and even in the streets ;
the unchecked depositing of dung and filth in all public places,
and the utter lack of any provision for cleansing or lighting
the noisome thoroughfares. The powers of the Manorial
officers to " correct and reform " these abuses being " not
sufficient in law," Burleigh induced Parliament to reinforce
them by a statutory enactment.
(a) Burleigli's Constitution
The Act of 1585, whilst recognising and implicitly con-
firming all the existing authorities, established, as part of the
Manorial constitution, an entirely new Court. This tribunal,
the Court of Burgesses, consisted of twelve Westminster
tradesmen two of them designated Chief Burgesses
appointed for life by the High Steward, with twelve others
as Assistant Burgesses, appointed by the whole Court. Both
Burgesses and Assistants were unpaid, and obliged to serve
for at least one year under penalty of a fine- To each
Burgess there was committed the entire charge of one Ward,
it being expressly enacted that he should, with his Assistant,
" do and deal in everything and things as Aldermen's Deputies
in the City of London lawfully do or may do." Sitting as
a Court, the Burgesses were to make " Orders and Ordinances,"
and to " hear, examine, determine, and punish according to
1 All referred to as already existing in 27 Elizabeth, c. 17 (1585).
214 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
the laws of this Eealm, or laudable and lawful custom of the
City of London," certain limited classes of offences" matters
of incontinences, common scolds, and of inmates, and common
annoyances " only. The Act was only to continue until the
end of the next ensuing Parliament. 1
What Burleigh had in view in this experiment was to
make some provision for the prevention of nuisances in West-
minster, without setting up at the gaes of the Eoyal Palace
any such independent Corporation as the City of London, or
even as the ordinary Enfranchised Manorial Borough that
we have described. With this object the appointment of
the Burgesses was left in the hands of the High Steward,
without any intermixture of popular election, or even of co-
option. Neither individually nor as a Court were the
Burgesses made Justices of the Peace, the full authority of
the Middlesex magistrates being expressly preserved intact.
The Burgesses, who were to be "merchants, artificers, or
persons using any trade of buying or selling," were, in fact,
given the powers, not of Aldermen of the City of London, but
of the Aldermen's Deputies only. What these Westminster
shopkeepers were intended to do, as appears from their first
"Orders and Ordinances," evidently drawn up under the
direction of Burleigh himself, 2 was, Ward by Ward, to keep
a constant supervision over their neighbours, to report to the
Court the delinquencies of these neighbours in the grievous
matter of the " harbouring of inmates " ; in the use of un-
lawful weights and measures, the sale of diseased meat, and
other market offences ; in the neglect of the householder's
obligation to pave, cleanse, and light the street opposite his
frontage ; and in the constant failure of duty of such of them
as served as Constables and Scavengers. Above all, they
were peremptorily to put down the wandering hogs, the festering
dung-heaps, and the manifold other nuisances of the streets.
We have been unable to explore the early history of this
1 This Statute, treated as a private Act, "being omitted from the Statute
Book and very little known" (The Power and Practice of the Court Leet of the,
City mid Liberty of Westminster displayed, 1743, p. 7), was separately published
in 1730 and 1806, and included in A Collection of Acts of Parliameid relating
to the Local Government of . . . Westminster, 1837.'
2 Orders and Ordinances of 27th May 1585, reprinted in H. C., No. 666, of
27th June 1853.
BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION 21
interesting experiment. The Act of 1585 was seven times
successively renewed for short terms, until, in 1640, it was
possibly, it seems, by legislative inadvertence made
permanent. 1 From the scanty records that we have seen,
we derive the impression of a body of no little activity,
meeting every Tuesday as a Court of petty police, receiving
abundant presentments from individual Burgesses and the
officers, and severely fining, whipping, and imprisoning offenders
against their By-laws. 2 In the dislocations of the Eebellion
the Westminster Court of Burgesses evidently suffered from
its dependence on the Dean and Chapter, and may even have
gone for a time into abeyance. 3 When in 1705 the records
enable us to resume the story, the Court is again at work,
but with sadly diminished authority. The power of making
By-laws had become practically disused. 4 There had grown up
in the meantime, in the powerful Close Vestries on the one
hand, and in the Westminster Commission of the Peace on
the other, two rivals for the government of Westminster,
between which Burleigh's makeshift supplement to the
Manorial authority was destined to be flattened into a mere
formality. During the first half of the eighteenth century
we may watch the gradual failure of the Court of Burgesses
to maintain its position, and the supersession of this or that
part of its authority by the Vestries or the Justices. This
1 31 Elizabeth, c. 10 (1589) ; 35 Elizabeth, c. 7 (1593) ; 39 Elizabeth, c. 18
(1597) ; 43 Elizabeth, c. 9 (1601) ; 1 James I. c. 25 (1603) ; 21 James I. c. 28
(1624) ; 3 Charles I. c. 4 (1627) ; 16 Charles I. c. 4 (1640).
2 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 1611-1616.
3 In 1645 an Ordinance of the Long Parliament made the provision required
by the cessation of the Dean and Chapter (see The Pageant of London, by R.
Davey, 1906, vol. ii. p. 240). Between 1660 and 1689 the Privy Council
displayed great and constant activity with regard to Westminster affairs. We
find it perpetually intervening to secure the better paving and cleansing of the
streets, the organisation of the Scavengers and their relation to the Raker,
the measures to be taken in visitations of the plague, the repair of the highways,
and the multiplication of vagrants and beggars. But the Council deals always
with the Justices and the Vestries, and never once alludes to the Court of
Burgesses (MS. Acts of Privy Council, 1660-1689). We may note that the
High Constable of Westminster successfully petitioned for the grant of a scarlet
cloak to wear at the coronation of James II. (ibid. 8th April 1685).
* "This power," it was said later, " has seldom been exercised to any great
extent. . . . Most probably this neglect arose from the refusal of the in-
habitants to comply with the Ordinances of the Court of Burgesses, and the
want of a fund in that Court to support the expense of enforcing the observance
of them " (Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster, by
E. Sayer, 1784, p. 8).
2i6 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
failure was due, no doubt, in great part, to the change of
principle that we have elsewhere described, which was every-
where gradually superseding the obligatory service of the
householder, enforced merely by Manorial authority, by a rate-
paid staff of professional subordinates, under the supervision
of the Justices of the Peace, the Vestry, and the Parish Officers.
But Burleigh's experimental constitution had its own -inherent
weaknesses. Government by the Westminster shopkeepers,
especially when it took the form of the exercise of individual
authority behind the screen of a Corporate jurisdiction, though
this, as was afterwards noted, had " neither a power to make
Freemen, nor erect a Corporation of Trade " l was, in the early
years of the eighteenth century, found to rival in corruption
and petty oppression the analogous administration of the con-
temporary Trading Justices themselves.
During the first half of the eighteenth century, at any
rate, the Court of Burgesses kept up both the paraphernalia
of a judicial tribunal and the dignified ceremonial of the Court
of an ecclesiastical potentate. On a stated day in November
of every year, " the Deputy Steward, Burgesses and Assistants,
High Constable and Clerk, met in Court between the hours
of 10 and 11 in the forenoon, where, after they had put on
their gowns, they went (all the Beadles belonging to the
several Wards 2 . . . going before them with their silver-
headed staves . . .) to the Deanery of Westminster, where,
when they came, they were immediately admitted into his
Lordship's presence in the Jerusalem Chamber, whereupon his
Lordship, with his attendants and the whole Court following
him, went to the Court House." 3 At this annual sessions the
Dean himself presided, and there would be received any
important communications from the great nobleman who
filled the office of High Steward ; a new Deputy Steward
or new Town Clerk would occasionally be sworn in ; messages
from Ministers of State would be transmitted by the High
1 A New and Complete Survey of London, by a Citizen and Native of London,
1742, vol. ii. p. 1198.
2 It was "ordered that no Beadle belonging to this Court do presume to
appear in Court without his blue livery coat on " (MS. Minutes, Westminster
Court of Burgesses, 25th September 1705).
3 Ibid. 24th November 1713. The Dean of Westminster was at this date
also Bishop of Rochester.
BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION 217
Steward for consideration, and other formal business would
be transacted. Of more practical importance was the less
dignified sessions of the Court in October, when, under the
presidence of the Deputy Steward, the " Leet Jury and Jury
of Annoyance " would be sworn and formally charged, and the
forty or fifty Constables, together with various Scavengers
and other officers, would be appointed. By December of the
same year this " Leet Jury and Jury of Annoyance " would
have handed in to the Court the last of its several rolls of
presentments, and would be discharged. At the same meeting
another Jury, called the "Wardmote or Christmas Jury,"
would be appointed, apparently to collect certain monies
allocated to the discharge of poor debtors, the feeding of poor
prisoners, and the relief of the poor generally. 1 This Jury was,
in its turn, discharged early in the following January. At an
April sessions of the Court another " Leet Jury and Jury of
Annoyance" would be sworn to make the same sort of pre-
sentments as its autumnal predecessor. For the next two
months these presentments would come before successive
meetings of the Court, some of them being allowed to be
traversed, when we presume they were tried before an ordinary
Traverse Jury. 2 Besides ceremonial business and the sup-
pression of nuisances, the Court dealt, now and again, with
other matters appertaining elsewhere to a Municipal Corpora-
tion. We find it, now and again, setting the Assize of
Bread. 3 It licensed the twenty-four Members of the Society
of Bridge-porters who alone enjoyed the privilege of trans-
porting burdens to and from "the Queen's Bridge" in New
Palace Yard and all the wharves of the City. 4 There was
even a body of Waits, or town musicians, who were sworn
into office, and enjoined to provide themselves with silver
1 High Steward's letter, in MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses,
20th December 1726.
2 See, for instance, a case in which a woman was presented on the 24th
January 1710 by the Jury of Annoyance for the combined offence of "keeping
a disorderly house " and ' ' also for a house of office very nauseous and offensive " ;
and her traverse was tried on 31st January 1710, when she was found not
guilty (ibid. 24th and 31st January 1710).
3 Ibid. 28th April 1710 ; 20th March 1741, etc. A broadsheet of the
Assize so set in 1735 is in the British Museum.
4 Ibid. 9th December 1707 ; 28th July and llth August 1713. The
" Queen's Bridge " was a landing-place probably a short pier close to the
Palace of Westminster.
218 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
badges bearing the Westminster arms, that they might be
known as entitled to the privilege of playing in the streets. 1
For the transaction of all this business we reckon that there
were some thirty sessions of the Court in each year, always
held on a Tuesday at the ancient Court House.
But the individual work of the Burgesses must far have
exceeded that done by them as a Court. At the beginning
of the eighteenth century the extensive duties that Burleigh
had originally cast upon them in the way of personal inspec-
tion of street and market had, it is true, to some extent been
superseded. It was now for the Constables and Beadles,
together with the members of the " Jury of Annoyances," to
clear the Wards of " inmates " and vagrants ; to discover
broken pavements, heaps of muck, encroachments on the
thoroughfares, and other nuisances, and to present the various
market offences. But new and important duties had been
placed upon the individual Burgesses and Assistant Burgesses.
The drunken revels and brutal manners of the citizens of the
Eestoration, together with the robberies and assaults com-
mitted by the criminals of an unpoliced city then approaching
100,000 in population, had become sufficiently scandalous to
make imperative the systematic organisation of " watch and
ward " in the streets by night and by day. The appointment,
payment, direction, and superintendence of this force was, for
each of the Wards into which the City continued to be divided, 2
left entirely in the hands of the Ward Burgess and Assistant
Burgess. The only paid assistance at their command was
1 Their privileges are protected against certain parochial rivals (MS. Minutes,
Westminster Court of Burgesses, 17th and 24th January 1710) ; they ask to have
their particular "walks" rearranged (21st October 1735, 8th December 1741) ;
and are ordered to share equally all their receipts (22nd December 1741). Fifteen
years later they are divided into five divisions, each consisting of "two hautboys
and a bassoon," allocated to a particular "walk " (ibid. 9th December 1756).
2 The twelve ancient Wards were increased to sixteen on the creation of
separate new parishes in the seventeenth century. Gradually, as it was found
necessary to augment the staff of Constables, Beadles, etc., a multiplication of
Wards took place without any change in the number of Burgesses, the word
being thenceforth used in a new sense for a smaller division, more analogous to
that of the Precinct of the City of London. " Of late years," it was complained
in 1743, "since the increase of buildings, they have of their own accord divided
each parish into almost as many Wards as twelve, and they don't choose the
Burgesses for any particular Ward, but, in general, for the Liberty " (The Power
and Practice of the Court Leet of the City and Liberty of Westminister displayed,
1743, p. 11).
BURLEIGWS CONSTITUTION 219
that of the Beadles, several of whom were appointed by the
Court, apparently on the nomination of the Ward Burgess,
and paid between 25 and 45 a year each. Meanwhile the
number of householders who were annually compelled to serve
as Constables (or to provide deputies) had been steadily
augmented ; and it was the Ward Burgess who had to
determine which householders should be summoned to the
October meeting of the Court, and forced to accept this
onerous office under penalty of a fine. The nightly watch,
too, had been greatly increased, and the individual Burgesses
were ordered to enforce on every householder the performance
of this unpaid service ; and to bring to the Court " the
number of houses in their respective Wards that do pay to
watch [in lieu of personal service], what number of [paid]
Watch [men] are maintained, and what further number is fit
to be increased." l It was the Burgess of the Ward who had
to organise, inspect, and command this primitive police force.
He had to " appoint in writing the courses and turns of the
Constables and of the said watch, and the order wherein the
several persons . . . shall appear and keep watch." He had
even to turn out at night to inspect them, and to see that the
watch was " kept with men of strong and able bodies " ; and
that " the Constables, Beadles, and Watchmen " duly attended
to their work night by night. He had to assess, according to
his discretion, the sums to be paid by the householders who
wished to escape personal service ; to organise the collection
of this optional rate ; to record and account for the proceeds ;
and to direct the expenditure of this money, over and above
the salaries of the Beadles, in the hire of suitable Watchmen,
paid by the night, whom the Burgess had himself to appoint. 2
To the obligation imposed by Burleigh on the selected
Westminster shopkeeper of acting as Inspector of .Nuisances
and forming part of a petty tribunal, there had accordingly
been added, between 1660 and 1720, the responsible duties
of Superintendent of Police and Collector of Eates involving,
1 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 9th July 1706.
2 The Burgesses evidently clung to their authority. A Constable who had
taken upon himself to appoint a new Watchman in place of one who had
resigned, was formally reprimanded by the Court (ibid. 25th July 1717). They
refused to admit the Parish Beadle of St. Clements Danes as a paid Watchmaff
(ibid. 20th November 1750).
220 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
day by day aud night by night, the personal direction of an
untrained and incompetent force of Ward police, as well as the
assessment, collection, and expenditure of the semi-compulsory
levy by which alone the service could be maintained.
Such being the kind and amount of unpaid public work
exacted, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, from
every member of the Court of Burgesses, we might have
expected to find the shopkeepers and artificers of Westminster
pleading excuses, or paying the statutory penalty of 10 to
escape this onerous service, or at any rate refusing to
continue in office beyond the obligatory year. The records
reveal exactly the opposite. At a time when the citizens of
Westminster were perpetually evading, or " fining " for, the
offices of Constable, Churchwarden, and Overseer, we find no
one ever refusing to serve as Burgess or Assistant Burgess.
No Burgess is found laying down his office until advanced age
or infirmity absolutely compels retirement, whilst there are
plaintive appeals from Burgesses and Assistant Burgesses
against being removed from office for neglect or misbehaviour. 1
Admission to the Court of Burgesses became, in fact, a coveted
privilege. From 1706 onward we find it ordered that every
new Burgess or Assistant Burgess shall "pay his footing" to
the extent of 10 and 5 respectively, euphemistically called
" the necessary " charges of the Court, and apparently devoted
to some form of conviviality. 2
What exactly formed the attractiveness of the office of
Burgess we can only conjecture from indirect evidence. The
Westminster Court of Burgesses, unlike most Close Corpora-
tions, had no Corporate property, 3 and levied as a Court no
rate. The Burgesses had only power, but of this a profitable
use could be made. From a communication of the High
Steward in 1726, it appears that every Westminster citizen
had still to pay " head money " perhaps as " essoin pence "
formerly a revenue of the Manorial authorities, but now
1 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 3rd April 1711.
2 Ibid. 4th March 1706.
3 The Burgesses complained of their Corporate poverty. " There is," it was
said, " no public fund out of which the Burgess Court can defend their authority
against . . . contemners, as in most other Cities and Corporations " (A Brief
Account of the Powers given to and exercised by 'the Burgess Court of West-
minster, 1720, p. 16).
4 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 5th October 1714.
BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION 221
devoted to charitable purposes ; and that this was collected
and distributed by the Burgesses. The High Steward had to
appeal to them not to abstract more than 100 a year from
this charitable fund as their own personal perquisites. 1 We
catch occasional glimpses of such unexplained items as "paid
to sixteen Burgesses 1 : 5s. each." 2 Of far greater amount
was the levy for the expenses of the watch, " than which," we
are told in 1714, "nothing is more abused." 3 In the absence
of any fixed basis of assessment, of any definite pound rate, of
any regular system of collection, of any adequate book-keeping,
and of any effective audit, each Burgess was, it seems, left
to raise what he liked, or rather what he could, from the
grumbling householders of his Ward. The expenditure of this
Ward revenue was equally uncontrolled. The Burgess seems
to have appointed whom he chose as Watchmen, to have paid
them what he thought fit, and to have dismissed them at his
pleasure. What happened to the payments which the house-
holders nearly always preferred to make rather than serve as
Constable is not clear, except that the Court displayed a most
suspicious eagerness to swell this source of revenue, levying
(as was said in 1720) "great sums on the inhabitants under
colour of fines." 4 "If a man pays his fine," it was com-
plained in 1743, "the payment they pretend does not excuse
him from serving the office except for that year, but he is
eligible and may be elected in the following or any other
succeeding year, as if he had never fined, by which means
they harass any inhabitant of the Liberty they have a mind
to in a most extraordinary manner, for most people will
sooner fine than serve the office, because it requires so
continual an attendance that a man acting as Constable can
do nothing else. This choice is no way confined to take the
oldest or properest inhabitants, but a man just come in is
often chosen, when people who have lived there half their
lives (by coming down properly) are omitted and forgotten." 5
1 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 20th December 1726.
2 Ibid. March 1711.
3 Parochial Tyranny, by Andrew Moreton (i.e. Daniel Defoe), 1714, p. 13.
4 A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Sill for regulating the
Nightly Watch in the City and Liberties of Westminster, 1720, p. 25.
6 The Power and Practice of the Court Leet of the City and Liberty of
Westminster displayed, 1743, p. 13. In 1726 the Court resisted an attempt of
222 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
But besides the fines exacted by the Court, there is evidence
of a system by which the individual Burgess levied blackmail
on householders, who willingly gave bribes in order to escape
being nominated as Constables or jurors. 1 Such corrupt
dealings of the Burgesses and Assistant Burgesses led naturally
to corruption among the jurymen and the officers, high and
low. It was fondly supposed " that no method can be more
just to inquire into offences than by such a Jury " as that of
the Westminster shopkeepers, for, it was said, "they see the
offences themselves and do not trust the evidence of others,
so that they cannot be imposed upon by false evidence, or
aggravating circumstances, or misrepresentations of things by
partial and prejudiced persons." 2 But the members of the
Annoyance Jury could, it is only too plain, be placated,
and induced not to cause trouble by presenting particular
nuisances. 3 The High Bailiff and the High Constable became
notorious in their several spheres for systematic blackmail and
oppression taking bribes for passing over jurors, " compound-
ing fines with the keepers of gaming and other disorderly
houses," 4 favouring publicans in the billeting of soldiers, 5 and
the High Bailiff to take these fines for himself (MS. Minutes, Westminster
Court of Burgesses, 8th September 1726).
1 Ibid. 6th November 1716, 21st October and 20th December 1718.
2 A Brief Account of the Powers given to and exercised by the Burgess Court
of Westminster, 1720, p. 14.
3 The Court investigated in 1726 "a complaint . . . against the Foreman
of the Annoyance Jury and other jurymen for corruption and a notorious breach
of their oaths as jurymen." One of the extensive "keepers of hogs," who
were fed on the waste products of the London distilleries, had been amerced by
the Jury for this nuisance, but had induced the Jury subsequently to withdraw
this interference with his business. The Foreman and some other members of
the Jury confessed their guilt, and were fined 10 and 5 each (MS. Minutes,
Westminster Court of Burgesses, 9th February 1726).
4 An Account of the Endeavours that have been used to suppress Gaming
Houses, 1722, p. 9. The special position occupied by the High Bailiff made
him, in many respects, virtually an independent officer, controlled neither
by the High Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, nor by Quarter Sessions,
with results that were sometimes scandalous. Thus it was reported to the
Prime Minister about 1760, that "William Morris or Morrice . . . son-in-law
to Bishop Atterbury, whilst High Bailiff . . . acted in that office in a very
vile and scandalous manner, taking yearly pensions of gaming houses and
bawdy houses to remit their fines when convicted at the Sessions " (Add. MS.
33,053, p. 223).
6 "Your Memorialists during the time of their being Constables have had
frequent opportunities to hear, and have found several oppressions on the
victuallers by the undue and illegal billeting or quartering of soldiers by Mr.
Arthur Rawlinson, High Constable of the City and Liberty. Your Memorialists
have found that the said Arthur Rawlinson hath quartered two soldiers upon
MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 223
exacting excessive costs in all the proceedings of the Court.
At the bottom of the hierarchy the venality of Under Bailiffs, 1
Beadles, Constables, and Watchmen became proverbial.
(6) Municipal Atrophy
The eighteenth century saw a continuous shrinking up of
the Court of Burgesses that we now proceed to describe. We
wish that we could attribute this shrinking up to any recogni-
tion, by Parliament or public opinion, of the defects inherent
in the very form of Burleigh's experimental constitution to
a conviction, for instance, of the inevitability of the misuse of
power when entrusted to uncontrolled individuals "of mean
degree," each acting in and for his own neighbourhood. Un-
fortunately, the local authorities by which, between 1720 and
1756, the Court of Burgesses was gradually superseded the
local Justices of the Peace and the Close Vestries were
equally defective in their constitution, and no less corrupt
perhaps even more oppressive in their administration.
some poor people who retail beer, not near the quantity of others who have one
and some no soldiers quartered on them, and hath been guilty of other irregu-
larities and oppressions in his office " (MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of
Burgesses, 27th October 1741; see also 20th April 1725). At the Parlia-
mentary election of 1741, the High Constable ordered all the Petty Constables
to vote for the two candidates that he favoured, and threatened all the publicans
with extra billeting if they dared to vote for any one else (Review of the late
Election of Members of Parliament for the City of Westminster, 1741).
1 "The summoning Bailiffs pay 20 per annum each to the High Bailiff . . .
for liberty to summon the Juries. So great a power being lodged in such low
hands, the Justices found the consequences ; for at a Quarter Sessions, where
several (keepers of gaming houses) were to be prosecuted, the summoning
Bailiff did (as he has since declared upon oath), by the direction of two
Burgesses, summon ten persons, and those tea persons . . . who . . . were
found to be, several of them, tradesmen that were daily employed by those very
persons that were to be prosecuted ; others were bail for the prosecuted. . . .
And he owned that he knew them so to be when he returned the panel " (An
Account of the Endeavours to suppress Gaming Houses, etc., 1722, p. 10). It is
therefore not surprising to read, a little later, that "by having all fines and
forfeitures belonging to him, his place is rendered very profitable" (A New
and Complete Survey of London, by a Citizen and Native of London, 1742, vol. ii.
p. 1198). The High Bailiff usually bought the office from the previous holder
latterly for as much as 4000 and paid 150 a year rent for it to the Dean
and Chapter, making out of the fees, so it was alleged, only 450 a year
(Report of House of Commons Committee on the Office of High Bailiff, see
Hansard, vol. xx., Appendix Ixv. 1811). It is clear that, as Home Tooke
declared in 1806, "the High Bailiffs office is a very lucrative one; it is
purchased openly of the Dean and Chapter ; they have great emoluments, and
the holding of the election is one of their privileges " one which enabled the
High Bailiff to mulct Home Tooke, as a candidate in 1794, of nearly 400
(Home Tooke refuted, by Veritas, 1807).
224 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
Burleigh had expressly reserved to the Justices of
Middlesex their general County jurisdiction over the City and
Borough of Westminster. Down to the Eebellion these
Justices seem to have refrained, as a rule, from encroaching
on the sphere assigned to the Court of Burgesses. Under the
Protectorate, however possibly because of the abeyance of a
Court dependent on an ecclesiastical potentate we gather
that a separate Commission of the Peace was issued for
Westminster. We hear of " His Highness's Justices assigned
to keep the public peace within the Liberty of the late Dean
and Chapter," meeting periodically to deal with vagrants,
ale-houses, etc. 1 After the Eestoration this separate Commis-
sion of the Peace continued to be issued, and though we find
the Court of Burgesses again sitting, the Justices of the Peace,
whether acting for Westminster or for Middlesex as a whole,
never relinquished the authority over the Westminster in-
habitants which they had assumed. They seem, in fact,
constantly to have sought to abstract additional powers from
what they regarded as an upstart rival jurisdiction.
We note first the growth and activity of the Westminster
Justices in Petty and Quarter Sessions. The Minutes that
exist from 1707 onwards show them, as we have elsewhere
described, to have met frequently, and to have exercised an
active and minute control over the Overseers of the Poor
and the Surveyors of Highways of the several Westminster
parishes. But they were also exercising authority over the
Constables, who, as we have seen, were the officers of the
Court of Burgesses ; we find them, too, supervising the
Scavengers whom the Burgesses considered as exclusively
their own servants ; whilst the entire control of alehouses,
vagrants, and " inmates " had evidently passed to Quarter and
Petty Sessions. 2 By 1720 we see the Justices taking upon
themselves freely to remove from office Constables whom the
Court of Burgesses had appointed ; to audit the accounts of
1 Several Orders inade and agreed upon by the Justices of the Peace for the
City and Liberty of Westminster, 1655.
2 It was noted, about 1720, in defence of the Court of Burgesses, that
whereas their unrepealed By-law of 1586 fixed the maximum number of ale-
houses in Westminster at 100, the Justices had permitted them to increase to
over 2000 (A Brief Account of the Powers given to and exercised by the Burgess
Court of Westminster, circa 1720, p. 12).
MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 225
Scavengers, 1 and to punish them for neglect of duty ; and to
insist that the Constables for Westminster, like those for other
parts of the County, should make regular presentments to
Petty and Quarter Sessions. 2 In 1720, when London was
alarmed at the approach of the Plague, then raging in
Marseilles, the Justices, both in Quarter and Petty Sessions,
took up the whole range of street nuisances, and entirely
ignoring the Court of Burgesses set themselves to discover
what steps could be taken to improve the public health. In
a remarkable report laid before the Middlesex Quarter Sessions
in 1721, we see the Justices dealing with exactly the kinds of
nuisances for the suppression of which Burleigh had, more
than a century before, created the Court of Burgesses the
dangerous harbouring of " inmates " in the overcrowded tene-
ments, the myriads of hogs, the noisome accompaniments of
the slaughterhouses, the accumulation of dung and filth in the
streets, the broken pavements and unscoured kennels, and so
forth. 3 The Westminster Justices even took upon themselves
to order the Constables and Beadles to make a complete
survey, street by street, of the pavements of particular parishes,
and report all defects to them. 4 The Constables, Beadles, and
Scavengers did not know which authority to obey; and we
find them refusing to execute the orders of Justices, whilst
more than ever neglecting the duties assigned to them by the
Burgesses. 5 In 1722 the conflict comes to a head in an
almost insolent resolution of the Middlesex Justices which
directly challenged the right of the Court of Burgesses even to
exist. The Court of Quarter Sessions, " being informed that
the Burgesses within the City and Liberty of Westminster in
this County do keep Courts and set fines on several of His
Majesty's liege subjects . . . and also appoint Scavengers,
1 MS. Minutes Petty Sessions, Westminster, 27th October 1720.
2 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Middlesex, 16th April 1718. The Govern-
ment in 1719 seems to have been on the side of the Justices. In that year the
Secretary of State took counsel's opinion as to whether the Justices could not
themselves appoint Constables, ignoring the Court of Burgesses. The opinion
was in the negative (Home Office Domestic Entry Book, in Public Record
Office).
3 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Middlesex, 12th October 1721.
* MS. Minutes, Petty Sessions, Westminster, 29th September 1721.
5 The Court complains that "many of the Constables and Beadles have
thought fit to retuni to the Court omnia bene " (MS. Minutes, Westminster
Court of Burgesses, 19th December 1723).
VOL. II. PT. I Q
226 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
make rates, and collect great sums of money on pretence of
cleaning the streets within the said Liberty without any legal
authority so to do," 1 refers it to a committee of its own
members to inquire what Courts are actually so held, and by
what authority.
Meanwhile a struggle had been going on as to which body
should exercise the new statutory powers that Parliament was,
in this generation, conferring. Over Watch and Ward the
Court of Burgesses maintained its authority for three-quarters
of a century after the Eestoration. When, for instance, in
1678 and 1685 the new parishes of St. Anne, Soho, and St.
James's, Westminster, were created, "new Wards and new
Burgesses ... for the government thereof" were duly consti-
tuted, and new Watchmen appointed. 2 In 1706, and again in
1720, Bills for a reorganisation of the service under the
control of the Justices and the several parishes were rejected
by the House of Commons. 3 In the latter year the " Lords
Justices " then administering the government in the absence
of the King on the Continent called upon the Court of
Burgesses for a report of its organisation of the Watch, suggest-
ing certain improvements, which, the Burgesses adopted, and
were then able to claim to have, as against the Magistrates,
the support of the Lords Justices' approval. 4 But the Justices
of the Peace presently made a flanking movement. When at
last public opinion was prepared to substitute a rate-paid staff
for individual personal service, the most plausible proposition
was to entrust the direction of the new force to bodies claim-
ing to represent the inhabitants of each locality, and already
levying "pound rates." Thus, when Bills were put forward
by the Vestries of the several parishes of Westminster
bodies which, as we have described, were in close alliance with
many Justices and Members of Parliament we find the
Legislature, in spite of constant protests by the Dean and
Chapter and the Court of Burgesses, endowing one parish after
another with full and complete power to organise, under the
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Middlesex, 7th December 1722.
2 The Case of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster vrith respect to the Bill
for regulating the Nightly Watch now depending in Parliament, 1720.
3 House of Commons Journals, 7th February 1706, etc.
4 Additional Rules and Ordinances of 22nd September 1720 ; reprinted in
H. C. No. 666, of 27th June 1853.
MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 227
general supervision of the Justices, its own parochial Watch. 1
Before the middle of the eighteenth century the authority of
the once-powerful Burgesses over the Watch was treated as
entirely at an end, and they had to content themselves with
the power of annually selecting about fifty of their neighbours
to fill the hated office of Constable a power which was
evidently made to yield an income to the Court in the shape
of fines apparently appropriated to the so-called expenses of
the Court meetings.
With regard to paving and cleaning the streets the
Burgesses were more quickly routed. Already in 1662 an
Act of Parliament, confirmed by others in 1670, 1690, and
1697, 2 had entrusted, not to the Burgesses, but first to Special
Commissioners and then to the Justices, the enforcement of
the householder's obligation to pave and cleanse in front of
his house down to the kennel. The authority of the Burgesses
under their Act of 1585 was, however, not thereby abrogated ;
and between 1720 and 1730, in particular, we watch the two
rival powers striving one against the other for the control of
this service. When it was proposed to have two Surveyors
for each Ward to see to the scavengering, under the control of
the Justices, the Court of Burgesses retorted that the streets
outside Westminster over which the Justices already had
control were worse than those within its boundaries. 8 The
Justices insisted that the Constables should make presentments
to Sessions of all negligent householders, whilst the Burgesses
1 House of Commons Journals, 28th February, 18th and 28th March 1735,
8 George II. c. 15 (St. George's, Hanover Square, and St. James', Piccadilly),
1735, amended as regards St. George's by 29 George III. c. 75 (1789), 7
George IV. c. 121 (1826) ; 9 Geo. II. c. 8 (St. Martin's-in-the-Fields), 1736 ; 9
George II. c. 13 (St. Paul's, Covent Garden), 1736, amended by 10 Geo. IV. c.
68 (1S29), House of Commons Journals, 16th February 1736 ; 9 George II. c.
17 (St. Margaret's and St. John's), 1736 ; 9 George II. c. 19 (St. Anne's, Soho),
1736 ; 4 George III. c. 55 (St. Clement Danes), 1764, amended by 49 George
III. c. 113 (1809) ; 14 George III. o. 90 (St. Mary le Strand and Precinct of
the Savoy), 1774, which also amended the prior Acts of the other Westminster
parishes ; 50 Geo. III. c. 84 (Liberty of the Rolls), 1810. See Report of the
Westminster City Council for 1902-1903, pp. 33-36. An attempt to reorganise
the Watch under the Burgesses, with new powers, did not succeed (A Proposal for
Regulating the Nightly Watch within the City and Liberty of Westminster, 1755).
2 13 and 14 Charles II. c. 2 ; amended by 22 Charles II. c. 12 ; 2 William
and Mary, sess. 2, c. 8 ; 8 and 9 William III. c. 37.
3 The Case of the Inhabitants of the Liberty of Westminster against the Clauses
proposed by the Justices , . , to a Bill now passing to require Quarantine, 1700
or 1720(?).
228 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
required the Jury of Annoyances to present them to the
Court of Burgesses. 1 We need not here describe the stages
by which the service of scavengering was transferred 2 either
by agreement between the Close Vestries and the Justices, or
later on by Local Act 3 from the unpaid Scavengers, enforcing
the householder's obligation and co-operating with the
" Raker," who contracted to take away the heaps of filth, to
Committees of the Vestries, employing contractors or their
own labourers to sweep the streets and remove the whole
refuse of the City. Nor can we here recount the similar
evolution of the service of street lighting. 4 What, however,
we have to notice is the conviction, gradually forced upon
Parliament, that the substitution, for the irregular pavements
laid down by the householders defective and constantly in
bad repair of a complete and uniform roadway for the ever-
growing wheeled traffic, was an operation far beyond the
means and capacity of any of these authorities. A special
statutory body had at last to be established by Acts of 176 1-
1765, entitled the Westminster Paving Commissioners, 5 with
rating and borrowing powers more nearly adequate to what
turned out to be the most costly Municipal enterprise of the
eighteenth century. 6
By the middle of the eighteenth century the Court of
1 In 1724 the authority of the Burgesses to appoint Scavengers was disputed,
the parish of St. Margaret's taking upon itself to appoint its own. The Grand
Jury thereupon presented the parish officers, and claimed that the appointment
of Scavengers ought to be made by two Justices. Against this view the Court
of Burgesses indignantly protested (MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of
Burgesses, 30th June 1724).
2 In 1728 the Court of Burgesses tried to strengthen itself by new officers,
appointing, in imitation of the Corporation of the City of London, two
" Serjeants or Yeomen of the Channel " an office which does not seem to have
lasted long.
3 Among such local Acts were 12 George I. c. 25. (St. James's Square),
1725 ; 24 George II. c. 27 (Golden Square), 1751 ; 25 George II. c. 23 (St.
Margaret's and St. John's), 1752, see House of Commons Journals, 28th March,
10th April 1753 ; 6 George III. c. 56, private (Berkeley Square), 1766 ; 14
George III. c. 52 (Grosvenor Square), 1774.
4 When, in 1737-1738, the Court of Burgesses contemplated getting powers
to put up lamps to light the streets, the Vestries protested that this service
" should be parochial and not general " (MS. Vestry Minutes, St. Martin 's-in-
the-Fields, 9th and 17th March 1738).
6 2 George III. c. 21 (1761) ; 3 George III. c. 23 (1763) ; 4 George III. c.
39 (1764), and 5 George III. c. 50 (1765).
6 We trace the history of the Westminster Paving Commissioners in our
subsequent volume, Book IV. Chapter IV. ("Street Commissioners").
MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 229
Burgesses had shrunk, we are told, to "but a shadow of
power." They had become " unable to chastise the insults
offered to them in their own Court." l Parliament now made a
last attempt to galvanise into activity the ancient method of
local administration the enforcement, by a Jury of Present-
ment, of the householder's obligation to do all that the common
good requires, and to refrain from doing anything that is
injurious to the King's subjects. By the Act of 1756 the
Juries of the Court of Burgesses were placed on a new
statutory footing. Twice a year the Court was to appoint an
" Annoyance Jury " of not more than forty-eight householders,
who were expressly empowered to present all manner of
nuisances, active and passive. It was significant of the low
estimation into which the Burgesses had fallen that Parliament
expressly transferred from them to a second Jury, to be called
the " Leet Jury," made up of one or more householders from
each parish, not exceeding thirty, the selection and nomination
of the whole of the Constables for Westminster, now grown to
eighty in number ; and required these to be formally appointed,
with the High Constable, at a " Court Leet," to which the
Burgesses might be invited if the High Steward chose. 2 The
Burgesses thus lost the last remnant of their profitable power,
and the pseudo-municipal government set up by Burleigh
reverted to what was practically a Lord's Court, equipped with
two statutory Juries and a statutory power of adjournment, to
which the once potent Burgesses and Assistant Burgesses
formed no more than a sort of honorary council.
For a few years this Annoyance Jury, summoned by the
High Bailiff and prodded on by the Deputy Steward -these
officers sharing between them a large part of the amercements 3
annually paraded the streets of Westminster. Divided into
three detachments, each under its own foreman, these forty-
1 Reasons for the Petition for better Paving, Cleansing, and Lighting the Streets
of Westminster, 1753 (?).
2 29 George II. c. 25 (1756), amended by 31 George II. c. 17 (1758) and 3
George III. c. 23 (1763).
3 By the Act of 1758 (31 George II. c. 17) the High Bailiff was entitled to
retain for himself one-fourth of the amercements. By order of the Court of
Burgesses of 1757 small salaries and gratuities were assigned out of the balance
to the Town Clerk, the Deputy Bailiff, and the Cryer and Mace-bearer ; and the
remainder was to be divided equally between the Deputy Steward and the
Chief Burgesses "for the use of the Court" (MS. Minutes 5th April 1757).
230 THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER
eight Westminster shopkeepers went up and down for a
fortnight, inspecting Weights and Measures and viewing
" encroachments," handing in long rolls of presentments at
successive Courts. But as decade follows decade the rolls
grow shorter and more perfunctory, and the annual perambu-
lation becomes increasingly a mere occasion for a convivial
meeting; so that it could be said in 1812 that the Jury was
made up of favoured householders put on in order to enable
them to escape service as Constables. 1 Already in 1784,
when a careful writer set out to describe " the Police or Civil
Government of Westminster," he could omit all reference to
this Jury, and dismiss the Court of Burgesses itself as a mere
Leet at which the ceremony of swearing in the Constables
was gone through. The Constables themselves, he said, were
under no effective direction. 2 The High Steward in Court
Leet could fine them for neglect, but had no authority to give
them orders. The Justices assumed a right to give them
orders, but had neither power to appoint nor power to punish
them. The prevention of street nuisances became year by
year increasingly the subject of specific legislative enactment,
enforced by parochial officers and the summary jurisdiction of
the Magistrates, first under various clauses in the Local Acts
which the Vestries and other local bodies were promoting, and
then under the general statute for the Metropolis which
Michael Angelo Taylor piloted through Parliament in 1817.
43y this time, at any rate, if not before, it was clear that all
the real powers of government had passed away from the
statutory supplement which Burleigh had added to the
Manorial structure of the so-called " City and Borough " of
Westminster. But the anomalous Court of Burgesses was not
swept away, nor even formally stripped of its statutory or
customary powers. Eight into Victorian times the High
Steward, the High Bailiff, the High Constable, 3 the Leet Jury,
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the State of the Nightly
Watch, 1812, pp. 36, 80, etc.
2 Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster, with a
Proposal for a Reform, by Edward Sayer, 1784, p. 12.
3 Early in the nineteenth century the High Constable continued to be
appointed by the High Steward and Court of Burgesses, and received a small
.stipend (apparently 30 a year) from the Deputy Steward for relieving him of
part of his work. He had under his supervision the thousands of public-houses
in Westminster. "The inadequacy of the sum to the performance of the duty
MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 231
the Annoyance Jury, and even the Burgesses and Assistant
Burgesses, continued to exist and to walk through their parts,
their position and functions becoming ever more exclusively
ceremonial. In 1766 they were provided, by the generosity
of the Duke of Northumberland (who purchased the ancient
Guildhall for the purpose) with a permanent meeting-place. 1
On every possible occasion they laid loyal addresses at the
foot of the throne. The last important entry that we find in
their Minutes is a pompous protest, extending over many
pages, at the negligence of some Court official in omitting
formally to notify to " this ancient jurisdiction, coeval with
our very monarchy itself," the arrangements made for Nelson's
funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral. 2
of the office," reports a Stipendiary Magistrate in 1812, "occasions that officer
to resort to other means. The moment, therefore, he is appointed, he commences
coal merchant and dealer in tobacco for the express purpose of serving the public-
houses with these articles, thereby placing himself under obligations to the
very people whose conduct he ought jealously to watch. . . . The last High
Constable about eighteen months ago absconded with some public money in his
hands, and his brother, quite a youth, has been appointed " (Sir K. Birnie to
Home Secretary, 14th January 1812, Home Office Domestic State Papers in
Public Record Office, No. 845 of 1812). This office was allowed to fall into
abeyance in the middle of the nineteenth century, but cannot be said to have
been abolished until the final abolition of the Court of Burgesses in 1901
(Annual Report of the Council of the City of Westminster for 1902-1903,
pp. 31-32).
1 MS. Minutes, Westminster Court of Burgesses, 23rd October 1766.
2 Ibid. 20th January 1806. The Annoyance Jury continued until 1861,
when it was abolished by 24 and 25 Viet. c. 78, which authorised the Court of
Burgesses to appoint instead one or more Inspectors of Weights and Measures,
a power itself superseded by 52 and 53 Viet. c. 21 (1889), which made the Lo: ion
County Council the authority for this purpose. The Court of Burgesses itself
went on meeting, as a friendly social gathering, maintained by an annual
subvention of 500 from the Government, the object or origin of which had
been forgotten. By the Court of Burgesses' Scheme, 1901, made under the
London Government Act, 1899, this obsolete and anomalous tribunal was
finally abolished, and its property a mace, a loving-cup, a snuff-box trans-
ferred to the Metropolitan Borough Council of the then newly created " City of
Westminster" (Report of the Westminster City Council, 1902-1903, p. 31).
CHAPTEK V
THE BOKOUGHS OF WALES
So far we have dealt only with local governing authorities
which fell short of the powers of full Municipal Corporations
in not being able to create their own Corporate Justices of the
Peace. We have seen by what minute gradations the various
classes of authorities were separated from each other, and how
markedly they resembled a continuous series. Even the line
dividing what we have termed the Manorial Borough from the
Municipal Corporation will be seen, on closer examination, to
be blurred by intermediate forms. It is, we think, a con-
firmation of this view that, when we come to consider the
fifty or sixty so-called Boroughs in "Wales, we find them
exhibiting these very characteristics to an even greater degree
than the Boroughs of England, to such a degree, indeed, that
we have been unable to make any lines of division among
them. The different specimens, as we find them co-existing
between 1689 and 1835, creep so closely one on the heels of
the other that we are compelled to include, in a single chapter,
the whole continuous series, from the most rudimentary village
constitutions, scarcely to be distinguished from the Lord's Court
of a rural Manor, up to fully fledged Municipal Corporations,
with their own Quarter Sessions and their own Sheriffs;
sometimes Counties in themselves ; and in one case unique
among Boroughs anywhere in England or in Wales even
having a separate Gustos Eotulorum and Lord-Lieutenant.
We accord the more willingly a separate chapter to the
Welsh Boroughs, notwithstanding their resemblance to those
of England, in that they formed, between 1689 and 1835 at
any rate, an exceptionally important part, and a specially
232
THE BOROUGHS OF WALES 233
characteristic feature of the Local Government of the Princi-
pality. Whether owing to the late introduction of English
Manorial forms, or to the systematic organisation that followed
the conquests of Edward I., we find the privileges of a " Free
Borough" scattered more lavishly about Wales than about
England, possibly with the view of attracting settlers round
the castles and creating English garrisons, 1 whilst these
" Free Boroughs," nevertheless, remained more generally under
the rule of the Lord of the Manor or of the Lordship, the
Constable of whose great castle was frequently the titular
Mayor of the Borough. Thus we see among the Welsh
Boroughs, much more frequently than among the English, a
relatively high development of Municipal structure coupled
with a low degree of autonomy. We find Boroughs with
elaborate constitutions, a full array of Municipal officers and
Borough Courts of their own, returning members to Parliament,
and possessing Eoyal Charters, remaining nevertheless in strict
subordination to the Lord of the Manor. We may even find
fully fledged Chartered Municipal Corporations, with their own
Justices of the Peace and their own Quarter Sessions some-
times even excluding the officers of the County and never-
theless subject to a very real control by the Lord. The
burgageship was, except in half a dozen Boroughs, closely
connected with the tenure of property, the new Burgess being
admitted at the Lord's Court, sometimes only with the Lord's
express sanction. Only in half a dozen cases could admission
be claimed by Birth or Apprenticeship. 2 The Lord's Steward,
who was often the Constable or Deputy Constable of the
Castle around which the Borough had been founded, usually
1 "One of the features of Welsh society . . . was the marked distinction
between the people of the towns and the country districts." The towns, once
" practically Norman-English garrisons," only slowly became assimilated by the
Welsh-speaking rural districts; "and it was not difficult, even at the com-
mencement of the (nineteenth) century, to find a market town distinctly English,
while the surrounding country was occupied by people who habitually spoke
the Welsh language " (The Welsh People, by J. Rhys and D. Brynmor-Jones,
1900, p. 479).
2 In the following Welsh Boroughs there were, between 1689 and 1835,
Trade Gilds or Companies, viz. : Haverfordwest, Carmarthen, Brecon, Cardiff,
Denbigh, and (a mere remnant) Ruthin. On the other hand, Dr. Gross finds
evidence of the existence in the fourteenth century of the Merchant Gild in no
fewer than thirty Welsh towns, among which Brecon and Ruthin do not occur
(The Gild Mercliant, by C. Gross, 1890, vol. i. pp. 16-18).
234 THE BOROUGHS OF IV ALES
performed the functions of a Kecorder, and his Deputy some-
times even bore that title. In marked contrast with England,
this general Manorial supremacy throughout all Wales was
recognised and confirmed by Act of Parliament as late as
1535-154 3, 1 when the Stewards of Manors and Lordships
were expressly authorised to hold their Courts Leet and Courts
Baron and Lawdays ; to decide civil suits up to forty shillings ;
and to exercise full Manorial jurisdiction even if they had not
formerly done so, without any words exempting from such
jurisdiction the Boroughs within the Lordships or Manors.
On the other hand, the same statutes conferred generally upon
the Mayors, Bailiffs, and head officers of Corporate towns in
Wales, whether subject to the authority of the Lord of the
Manor or not, a privilege never generally conferred by statute
upon the English Boroughs, viz. the right to try personal
actions by Juries of six men. The result was" to increase, in
the fifty or sixty tiny "Boroughs," each numbering in 1689
only a few score or a few hundred families, a confusion of
Manorial and Municipal jurisdictions and rights that was
already almost beyond unravelling. 2
1 27 Henry VIII. c. 26 (1535) and 34 and 35 Henry VIII. c. 26 (1543) ;
The Welsh People, by J. Rhys and D. Brynmor-Joues, 1900, pp. 368-383.
2 Exactly how many Welsh Boroughs there were in existence between 1689
and 1835, and precisely which of them enjoyed an independent Corporate
Magistracy, we have been unable to determine. Their title of Borough, and to
some extent their status, was confirmed by the legislation of 1535-1543. The
statute providing for the Parliamentary representation of Wales (27 Henry VIII.
c. 26, 1535) established one Member for each "Borough being a shire-town,"
their pay being collected from all the "ancient Boroughs." This was ap-
parently felt as an injustice by the Boroughs which were not shire towns, and
35 Henry VIII. c. 11 (1543) enabled all the Cities and Boroughs in each
county to share in the election of the Borough Member assigned to that county
(History of the Parliamentary Representation of the County of Cardigan, by John
Hughes, 1849). There were, we gather, nearly sixty places reputed to be
Boroughs and sharing as such in electing Members of Parliament. (See the
various papers relating to the Charters to Welsh Boroughs, by Henry Taylor,
R. W. Banks, G. G. Francis, and others, in Archceologia Cambrensis, especially
vols. iv. ix. and x. of 4th series, and vol. ix. of 5th series ; The Parliamentary
History of the Principality of Wales, by W. R. Williams, 1895 ; The Representa-
tive History of Great Britain, by T. H. B. Oldfield, 1816, vol. vi. p. 118).
But these Boroughs must have been extremely small. The whole population of
Wales in 1689 cannot have exceeded 350,000 ; and it only rose, by 1801, to
550,000 (without Monmouthshire). It seems doubtful whether there was, in
1689, any Borough of 3000 population. Even in 1831, after great expansion,
there were only eight Boroughs with more than 5000 population, whilst the
most populous of all (Carmarthen) did not reach 10,000. Eighteen Boroughs
in Wales were confirmed aw Municipal Corporations, and reformed, by the Act
of 1835.
INCIPIENT A UTONOM Y 235
(a) Incipient Autonomy
It is difficult, amid the dozeiis of decrepit little hamlets
among the "Welsh hills that called themselves Boroughs, to
know which to pitch upon as the most embryonic specimen.
We ignore for this purpose the dozen or more of tiny villages
in which Borough privileges had become obsolete, leaving
behind them nothing more than the memory of ancient grants
or Charters, and perhaps a titular Mayor, without powers or
functions, it might be, as at Prendergast in Pembrokeshire
(which is said to have once been a separate jurisdiction exclud-
ing the County officers), nothing more than a custom to elect
as Mayor him " who had been oftenest drunk through the
year." J Perhaps the least to be distinguished from a mere
rural Manor was the Bailiwick of Gladestry and Colfa, a part
of the Hierarchy of Courts of the Lordship or Manor of
Cantref Moelyuaidd in Radnorshire, that we have already
referred to. Here the Lord's annual Court Leet and monthly
Court Baron was the sole governing authority. But by
prescription " the right of the estrays " belonged, we are told,
" to the Freeholders, and a Freeholder in one of the said town-
1 Haverfordwest and its Story, 1882, p. 128 ; Abergwilly, too, elected a
Portreeve (Carmarthen Journal, 15th October 1830). Among such entirely
obsolete Boroughs may be classed the town of Mold (Flint), which, even in the
days of Leland, had but "the name of a Mayor," and continued throughout
the eighteenth century to hold a burlesque election of a "mock Mayor" in the
"Wake week" (Cambro- Briton, March 1820, p. 259); Overton, in the same
county, Chartered in the thirteenth century (First Report of Municipal Corpora-
tion Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2819 ; ditto, 1880 ; Overton in Lays Gone By,
by G. J. Howson, 1883) ; Abergele, in Denbighshire (see Records of Denbigh
and its Lordship, by J. Williams, 1860, p. 225) ; Bala, in Merionethshire (see
Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849, vol. i.) ; Builth, in
Brecknockshire (ibid.) ; Caerphilly, in Glamorganshire (ibid.) ; Caerleon, in
Monmouthshire ("Caerleon," by T. Wakeman, Archccologia Cambrensis, vol. iii.
1848, pp. 328-344) ; Fishguard, conjectured to have been Chartered by John
("Antiquities of Northern Pembrokeshire," by Idrison in ibid. 3rd series, vol. i.,
1855, p. 271); Harlech, in Merionethshire, "reduced to a few poor cottages"
("Documents relating to the Town and Castle of Harlech," by W. W. E. Wynne,
in ibid. vol. i., 1845, and vol. iii., 1848 ; " Letters concerning Harlech," by the
same, ibid. vol. iv., 1858) ; Holt, in Denbighshire, with a Mayor chosen at the
Court Leet (R. v. Roland, Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and Alderson,
vol. iii. p. 130) ; Kevin, in Carnarvonshire (Report on Certain Boroughs, by
T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 97-105) ; Newport, in Pembrokeshire, a mere Lord's
Leet appointing a Mayor (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 353 ; Description of Pembrokeshire, by G. Owen, edited by
H. Owen, 1892, preface, p. x), and Newtown, in Montgomeryshire (Report on
Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 107-112 ; "Newtown, its Ancient
Charter and Town Hall," by R. Williams, in Poun/sland Club Collections, vol. xi.,
1879).
236 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
ships was alternately and annually returned at the Court
Leet to take the estrays, as also to serve the office of Chief
Constable." In the person of this representative of the
Freeholders, keeping for them a common purse, we seem to
have the merest germ of autonomous structure. Within the
same Lordship we find several Boroughs, with minutely
graduated increases in complexity and independence. 1
Presteign, a Borough by prescription, was hardly more
advanced than Gladestry and Colfa. It had no Burgesses
entitled to vote for Members of Parliament, and its Bailiff,
the Head of the town, was appointed at the Lord's Court.
At Ehayader and Knighton the Boroughs had Burgesses,
being Freeholders admitted and sworn at the Lord's Court,
but no more elaborate organisation than a Bailiff, who
collected the rents, estrays, and fines, and governed the town.
But there was a beginning of autonomy in the constitution of
the Court. In both Boroughs the practice was for the Bailiff
for the time being to present two other names with his own,
and for the Steward to choose one of them ; but if any of the
Burgesses made another nomination of three persons, the
choice of which trio should be presented to the Steward was
made by vote of the resident Burgesses, still leaving the final
selection to the Steward. The Burgesses of Knighton had the
further privilege that any two of them present at the Court
Leet might object to the admission of any new Burgess ; that
the eldest son of a deceased Burgess could claim admission ;
and that the Burgesses collectively might nominate any person
1 For the Radnorshire Boroughs, see supra, p. 48 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, vol. i. p. 355 ; "History of Radnorshire," by J. Williams,
in Archceologia Cambrensis, 3rd series, vol. iv. Another of them, New Radnor,
which covered a fifth of the whole County, but had, even in 1833, only 2461
inhabitants, was much further advanced in Municipal structure. It had
an independent Close Body of a Bailiff, two Aldermen, and twenty-two other
Capital Burgesses, renewing itself by co-option. The Bailiff and the Aldermen
acted as Justices, and the Borough had a Recorder who presided at Quarter
Sessions. But for all this show of autonomy, the Corporation was, throughout the
eighteenth century, absolutely subservient to the family of Lewis, a member of
which filled the post of Recorder for generation after generation. In the survey
of the Manor of Avan Wallia in 1659, we see a Borough (A van Burgus) where
a Court was held monthly before a Portreeve, and there were Burgesses who
placed three names before the Lord's Constable, who appointed one of them to
be Portreeve ("Manorial Particulars of the County of Glamorgan," by G. T. C.
in Archceologia Cambrensis, 4th series, 1879, vol. ix. pp. 125-127). There
were probably many such incipient Borough organisations in the Wales of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
INCIPIENT A UTONOMY 237
to be a Burgess, whether a freeholder or not. They were also
exempt from the tolls of the Borough Market ; their Bailiff
had the profit of the wool weights in the Town Hall and half
the " pitching dues " at markets ; and they had once owned a
wood and exercised powers over the wastes of the Manor. 1
More elaborate structure than these Eadnorshire Boroughs,
but scarcely greater autonomy, is seen at Caerwys 2 in the
County of Flint, Chartered by Edward I. in 1290, a little
market town sharing with the other Flintshire Boroughs in the
privilege of electing a Member of Parliament, but of which
the population can never have exceeded a few hundreds.
Here we find a Eecorder, two Bailiffs, a Cryer, and a body of
Burgesses forming what claimed to be a Borough. But it was
the King, or his agent, who appointed both the Eecorder and the
Cryer, to hold office during his pleasure ; it was the Eecorder
1 Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire, may perhaps be classed with these
Radnorshire Boroughs, though there the Portreeve was, by 1833, beginning to
take upon himself some of the minor functions of a Justice of the Peace (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 287-288). Its
ancient dignities were specially preserved by the Municipal Corporation Act,
1883 (46 and 47 Viet. c. 18, sec. 20). The Boroughs of Hay and Crickhowell, in
Brecknockshire, had nothing but Bailiffs appointed at the Lord's Court (History
of Brecknockshire, by E. Poole, 1886, pp. 210, 220).
At this grade of structure and autonomy, though with numerous minute
variations, we may place N"ewborough in Anglesey, which once had a Merchant
Gild and a Hanse, but had dwindled by the end of the seventeenth century into
no more than a village possessing a Mayor, and some Burgesses, with a rapidly
decaying civil Court. Deprived of the parliamentary Franchise in 1709, by
1833 it was all but obsolete (Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis,
1849, vol. i. (under Beaumaris) ; " Antiquitates Parochiales," by Rev. H.
Rowlands, in Archceologia Cambrensis, vol. i., 1846, pp. 305-307 ; First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2807). On the other
hand, though Bardsey, on the island of the same name, off the coast of
Carnarvonshire, had a Recorder as well as a Bailiff and a Constable, appointed
at the Lord's Court, it was not called a Borough (Short History of Bardsey,
by Evan Richard, in Cambrian Register, vol. iii., 1818, p. 198). Tregaron, in
Cardiganshire, had really been a Borough with a Mayor, its Burgesses voting for
Parliamentary representatives, but we cannot find that it had any other
Municipal structure at all ; and, 1742, the House of Commons decided that it had
forfeited its Charter (Cardiganshire, by G. E. Evans, 1903, p. 101 ; Parlia-
mentary History of Cardiganshire, by John Hughes, 1849 ; "Account of the
Parish of Caron"in Cambrian Register, vol. ii., 1796, p. 386). Wiston, in
Pembrokeshire, was also a Parliamentary Borough, and had a Mayor and a Grand
Jury of Burgesses, but the Lord of the Manor was supreme, and the government
was practically that of an ordinary Manor (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 421).
2 "The Place of Caerwys in Welsh History," by E. Owen, in Archwologia
Cambrensis, vol. viii. of 5th series, pp. 166-183 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2610 ; ditto of 1880, p.
21 ; Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849, vol. i.
238 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
who held the Court which transacted all the business ; it was
the Cryer who nominated the Bailiffs; the Bailiffs selected the
Burgesses who were to form the Jury ; and the Jury admitted
at its pleasure other inhabitants to be Burgesses. 1 Sometimes
the Lord's authority was manifested both at the base and at
the head of the Corporation. Thus, at Llanelly, in Carmarthen-
shire, in 1689 a tiny fishing village of a few hundred in-
habitants, but nevertheless an ancient Borough, it was the
Lord's Steward who selected the Jury, which presented persons
to serve as Portreeve, Serjeants at Mace, " Layerkeeper," Town
Cryer, Haywards and Ale-tasters as well as inhabitants to be
Burgesses for appointment or admission by the Steward.
Practically all the interest of the Burgesses was concentrated
in the administration of the commonfields ; and when in 1807
an Inclosure Act vested these in a body of trustees, no new
Burgesses were admitted. 2
1 Similar conditions existed at Rhuddlan (Flint), also a Royal Borough,
Chartered in 1284 (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. pp. 2835-2840 ; ditto of 1880, p. 100). We gather from the scanty MS.
records of Aberavon in Glamorganshire, a decrepit little fishing port of a few
score families, that this ancient prescriptive Borough, Chartered by the Lords of
Glamorgan, had no more elaborate structure or greater autonomy. The Lord's
Steward chose the Portreeve out of three persons nominated by the Jury of the
Lord's Court. The twenty-five senior Burgesses enjoyed each three acres of
Borough Land (MS. Minutes, Corporation of Aberavon, 1847-1863, preserved
in a volume of extracts only ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 163 ; "Lords of Avan,"in Archceologia Cambrensis, 3rd series,
vol. xiii., 1867, p. 3 ; Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849,
vol. i.). Here, too, we may place Pwllheli, in Carnarvonshire, though the
townsmen are said to have elected the Bailiffs and Town Steward (Report on
Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 113-125 ; Carnarvon Herald, llth
October 1834). In a similar position was Llanidloes, in Montgomeryshire, an
ancient reputed Borough, which had once done a great trade in flannel, but
chose its Mayor at the Lord's Court, and was entirely subjected to the Mostyns
and the Wynns (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 43-56 ;
"Parochial Account of Llanidloes," by E. Hamer, in Powysland Club Collections,
vols. iii., iv., v., vi., vii., viii., and ix., 1871-1876).
Scarcely more advanced beyond the mere Lord's Court was the ancient
Borough of Flint, with Royal Charters, a population in 1831 of 2216, and all
the paraphernalia of Mayor, Bailiffs, and Burgesses. These all depended on the
Court Leet of the Constable of the Castle, who was himself Mayor ; his Deputy
was Recorder, chose the Jury, and made all appointments (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. pp. 2679-2682 ; Historic
Notices of Flint, by Henry Taylor, 1883).
At Criccieth, "a pleasant fishing village" in Carnarvonshire, an ancient
prescriptive Borough, the office of Mayor was said to be hereditary in the family
of Ormsby, Constables of the Castle and Lords of the Manor (Report on Certain
Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 24-28 ; North Wales Chronicle, 9th
October 1832).
2 Llanelly Inclosure Act, 1807; Cambrian, 18th September 1818; Car-
INCIPIENT AUTONOMY 239
In the little fishing port of Swansea with a population of
some 1700 persons, and as yet unconscious of its destiny as a
great metallurgical and mercantile centre the Lord's authority
was at the end of the seventeenth century less apparent. 1
There was a considerable development of Municipal structure,
and under Charters of the Commonwealth the head officer of
the town had even presumed to call himself Mayor. Besides
the Court Baron of the Lord there was an independent Court
of Pleas of the Borough, having a civil jurisdiction unlimited
in amount, which was held from three weeks to three weeks.
There was throughout the eighteenth century what was
unusual in Welsh Boroughs, an indefinite body of Burgesses,
admitted by rights of Birth, Marriage, and Apprenticeship, as
well as by simple gift. There was an independently existing
Close Body a Portreeve and twelve Aldermen recruiting
themselves by co-option from the Burgesses. There existed
Corporate property yielding 1800 a year, and a revenue from
tolls of 1000 a year, burdened, however, by a debt which, in
1833, seems to have amounted to over 20,000. On the
surface the Corporation maintained the appearance of inde-
pendence, subject only to a right in the Lord of the Manor to veto
any improper appointment. But it is clear that, beneath the
narvon Herald, 24th May 1834 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, Appendix, vol. i. pp. 305-310 ; ditto of 1880, pp. 61-62; Old
Llandly, by J. Innes, 1902. Llanelly became in the nineteenth century an
important port and metallurgical centre the subject of no fewer than twenty-four
Local Acts and Provisional Orders with a population in 1831 of 4173, and in
1901 of 25,617. It obtained a Local Board (nowan Urban District Council) in 1850.
An example of the same type is furnished by the little Borough of Usk, in
Monmouthshire, where we see the Lord's Court attended by an indefinite body of
Burgesses who elected a Portreeve, but these Burgesses were themselves recruited
by the nominees of the Lord. It was at his Court that the Bailiff was appointed.
The Lord also had the appointment of the Recorder, who held his Court,
summoned to it which jurymen he chose, and evidently controlled the Portreeve,
under whose direction the Bailiff and Constables acted. When in 1821 the
Jury wanted to present a new Burgess, the Recorder declined to admit him on
the ground that the " Lord of the Borough " (the Duke of Beaufort) had given
him no instructions to admit additional Burgesses (Cambrian, 3rd November
1821). See Report of House of Commons Committee on Corporations, 1833 ;
First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. i. p.
413 ; ditto of 1880, pp. 117-118.
1 Swansea Charters, by G. G. Francis, 1867 ; Siluriana, by D. L. Isaac,
1859, p. 244 ; Contributions towards a History of Swansea, L. W. Dillwyn,
1840 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix,
vol. L p. 383 ; House of Commons Return as to Freemen, 1840 ; Cambrian for
1818-1834. Swansea was included as a Municipal Corporation under the Act of
1835.
240 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
surface, the Lord enforced his will whenever he chose to do so.
Legally he may have let lapse all beyond the right, through
his Steward, of vetoing any appointment of an Alderman to be
Portreeve, a Burgess to be Alderman, or any person to be
Common Attorney, Layerkeeper, or Water Bailiff. But this
right of veto sufficed to make him the supreme authority in
every department. These various positions entitled their
holders to what became, with the growth of the port, lucrative
privileges and emoluments. The result, if we read the story
aright, was simply a scramble among Burgesses and Aldermen
for the Lord's favour. 1
1 By 1801 the population had increased to 6099, and by 1831, if we include
certain suburbs, to more than twice that figure. Other Boroughs at about this
grade were Loughor (Glamorganshire), with a Recorder, Portreeve, Serjeants at
Mace, and other officers, chosen at the Court Leet of the Lord (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 315) ; Newport (Pembroke-
shire), with a Mayor and a Court Leet Jury selected by him, the Jury admitting
new Burgesses, and the Lord appointing the Mayor from among three persons
nominated by the Jury (ibid. vol. i. p. 353 ; "Description of Pembrokeshire"
by G. Owen, in Cymmrodorion Record Series, No. 1, 1891) ; Llantrissant
(Glamorganshire), population in 1831, 956, with a Portreeve appointed in much
the same way, twelve Aldermen, and other officers (" Llantrissant Castle, " by J. S.
Corbett, in Archceologia Cambrensis, 6th series, vol. i., 1901, p. 5 ; First Report
of Municipal. Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 311) ; Kenfig (Glamorgan-
shire), with a somewhat elaborate Municipal structure, ultimately dependent on
the Constable of the Castle, who was the Lord's agent (ibid. vol. i. p. 269 ;
" Kenfig Charters" in Archceologia Cambrensis, 4th series, vol. ii. 1871 ; " The
Borough of Kenfig," by R. W. Llewellyn, ibid. 5th series, vol. xv.) ; Lampeter,
in Cardiganshire, with a population in 1831 of 1197, with a Portreeve and
Burgesses chosen at the Lord's Court ; re-established as a Borough by a new
Charter of 1814, but practically subject to the Lord of the Manor (First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission 1835, vol. i. pp. 283-285; "Charters
connected with Lampeter," by Rev. "W. H. Davey, in Archceologia Cambrensis,
5th series, vol. xv., 1892, pp. 308-314 ; Lampeter, by G. Eyre Evans, 1905 ;
MS. Acts of Privy Council, 27th May, 14th August, and 13th December 1813).
On the other hand, the prescriptive Borough of Kilgerran, in Pembrokeshire,
had become independent of any Lord, though without progressing far in
structure. This "Lordless Court" was presided over by a Portreeve whom the
last Jury of Burgesses had appointed, and who himself summoned the new Jury,
and appointed Bailiffs (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 279). Much the same seems to have been the position of St.
Clears, in Carmarthenshire, with a population of 1083 under a Portreeve and
Court Leet (ibid. vol. i. p. 377). Llandovery (Carmarthenshire), with a popula-
tion in 1831 of 1766, had secured great autonomy by its Charter of 1485, the
Burgesses freely choosing their Bailiff, who held "Hundred Courts" monthly
for trial of civil and criminal cases. But all this had long before fallen into
decay, none but the annual Court of the Lord was held, and practically no other
Municipal structure existed in 1833 than a Bailiff, elected by the Burgesses at
the Lord's Court, who appointed six Constables, committed offenders for trial,
and administered the Town Hall and the Markets (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 301).
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 241
(6) The, Welsh Manorial Borough
We select from our materials two of the most typical of
the Welsh Manorial Boroughs, of which we happen to have
explored the manuscript records between 1689 and 1835, for
that more detailed description which alone can convey an
impression of the actual working of these quaint constitutions.
The little Denbighshire town of Euthin, clustering round the
castle built by Edward the First, was one of the places at
which the County Justices met in Quarter Sessions, using an
ancient building known as the Town Hall. 1 At the same
Town Hall the Steward of the Lord held his Court twice a
year " for the Lordship and Borough of Kuthin." This Court
was served by two separate Juries called by the Steward ; and
two sets of officers presented by the Juries for the Lordship
and the Borough respectively. There was the " Grand Jury "
or " Grand Inquest " of the Lordship, acting for an extensive
district, attended by Constables and Tithingmen for the several
townships ; nominating persons sometimes by custom from
house to house 2 to serve as Constables ; presenting roads
and bridges out of repair, defective stocks and pinfolds, foot-
ways stopped up, gates and fences lying low between neigh-
bours, 3 ditches and sewers unsecured and overflowing, land-
owners enclosing commons, cottagers squatting on the wastes,
and Freeholders " abstracting " their suit of Court. Within the
Lordship was the little town of Euthin, which had been made
a " Free Borough " by Charter of Henry VII., but had fallen
into decay as early as 1636. It is not easy to make out from
the scanty records of the Court what exactly was the relation
of the Borough government, the jurisdiction of which extended
for " half a league " in all directions from the centre of the
town, to the Courts of the Lordship. There was a Borough
Jury, or " Borough Inquest," nominating two of the inhabitants
to serve as "Aldermen and Chief Magistrates" 4 for the en-
1 MS. Records of the Manor of Ruthin, 1722-1798, in the Public Record
Office ; Court Rolls of the Lordship of Ruthin, by R. A. Roberts (Cymmrodoriou
Record Society (1893) ) ; First Report of the Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iv. p. 2849 ; papers in Syegones relating to Wales and t/ie Border
Counties, 1876-1877 ; An Account of the Castle and Town of Ruthin, by R. New-
come, 1st edition, 1829 ; 2nd edition, 1836. Ruthin was included in the Act
of 1835. 2 MS. Minutes, Ruthin Coxirt, 20th October 1759.
3 "For wanting of a gate that is necessary to keep neighbourhood between
neighbours" (ibid. 17th April 1755). * Ibid. 22nd October 1754.
VOL. II. PT. I R
242 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
suing year ; presenting four others as Constables, four as Town
Serjeants, and two as " Leavelookers " ; amercing Burgesses and
resiants who failed to attend the Court ; making their own set
of presentments, distinct from those of the Grand Jury of the
Lordship ; fining innkeepers without licences, and butchers
selling " blown " meat ; presenting dangerous structures, de-
fective causeways or pavements, 1 noxious smells, outstanding
steps, uncovered cellars, filthy hogsties, and the innumerous
other nuisances of a little town. The Aldermen were assisted
by a Close Body of " Capital Men " or Common Councillors,
sixteen in number, who were chosen jointly by the two
Aldermen immediately after their own election, and who
assumed the right to be summoned to serve on the Jury which
chose the Aldermen. By immemorial custom they were all so
summoned, and most of them attended claiming, indeed, that
the proceedings would be invalid unless the Jury was composed,
to the extent of at least a majority, of Common Councillors.
The two Aldermen for the year received and controlled all the
funds of the little Corporation ; they had the privilege of
nominating the two Churchwardens of the parish, and their
joint consent was necessary to the admission of any new
Burgesses by the Council. Whether the two Burgesses
annually chosen as Aldermen had any right to act as Magis-
trates is far from clear. The County Justices disputed their
jurisdiction, but the action that was brought did not con-
clusively decide the point. It was reported in 1835 that the
Aldermen had, during the eighteenth century, held Petty
Sessions, but we do not feel sure whether such magisterial
action as they occasionally took went beyond committing
offenders for trial, and exercising the sort of authority that we
find often used by a Mayor. The four Constables, one for each
Ward, were appointed by the Aldermen and Common Council
jointly, and sworn in at the Court. In 1766 one of the Con-
stables presented the Borough " for not erecting a pillory and
stocks," when " the sum of four pounds will build the same " ;
and in this sum the Borough was apparently amerced. 2 More
real, perhaps, was the quaint array of "Javelin Men," perhaps
identical with the Town Serjeants, whom the Town main-
1 MS. Minutes, Ruthin Coiirt, 17th April arid 18th October 1735.
* Ibid. 27th April 1766.
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 243
taiued, "dressed in handsome liveries, armed with old-
fashioned halberts," to give a little colour to the Aldermanic
processions. In a single entry of 1748 we catch a glimpse
rare in these Welsh Boroughs of Gild organisation, confirmed,
it appears, by Charter of Henry VII., and also centring in the
Lord's Court, at which " encroachers " upon the privileges of
the duly apprenticed Company-members are presented for
amercement. 1 There was evidently a well-frequented market,
which had at one time yielded a considerable revenue to the
Borough; and the tolls were, even in 1835, leased for 110 a
year. How the actual administration of this Manorial Borough
was divided among the Recorder, the Aldermen for the year,
the Common Councillors, the Borough Jury, the several Trade
Companies, and their officers, and how far during the
eighteenth century all alike stood in subordination to the
Lord's Steward, who presided at the Court, and to the County
Justices who rode in to hold Sessions in the Town Hall, we
must leave to be unravelled by the local antiquary. By 1835,
it is clear, the owner of the Manor had come to possess over-
whelming influence : nominating inhabitants to be Burgesses,
addressing a letter to the Foreman of the Jury recommending
the two persons to be chosen as Aldermen, continuing the same
persons in that office year after year, giving one of the two
places to the deputy Steward of the Manor, who had in
1 "We, the Stewards of the Companies of Grocers, Tailors, Halters, and
Smiths, and in behalf of all the several traders of the said Companies and
Fraternity of the whole, do present the persons as under-named that have not
served their apprenticeships with any of the said Fraternity, nor have gained
their settlement within this Borough or the Liberties thereof, who are now at
this time encroachers upon the said Fraternity (ten names) " (ibid. 7th May
1748). One of the Companies continued to exist down to 1835 ; this was that
of the Cordwainers, which had apparently absorbed the former Companies of
Tanners, Curriers, Skinners, and Saddlers.
We might class as a decayed or undeveloped Ruthin, the tiny Borough of
Dinas Mawddwy, in Merionethshire, in 1793 a mere cluster of "mud cottages with
rush-clad roofs " (Letters written during a Tour through North Wales, by Rev.
J. Evans, 3rd edition, 1804, p. 75) ; which had a " Mayor" who claimed to be
a magistrate, and who did actually participate in the licensing of beershops.
He was in effect appointed by the Lord of the Manor, and in form chosen at an
annual assembly of Burgesses grandiloquently called ' ' the General Sessions of
the Peace," which was in fact a Court of the Manor, from three persons
nominated by the Lord. The Steward of the Lord acted as Recorder and held
the Manorial Courts (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. pp. 2673-2674 ; " Relics of Dinas Mawddwy," by E. L. Baruwell, hi
Arch&ologia Cainfrrensis, 3rd series, vol. xiv., 1868, p. 202).
244 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
practice the selecting of the Jury ; and appointing the Recorder
(who acted as Clerk to the Aldermen) during pleasure.
But the best vision of these Welsh Manorial Boroughs
is afforded by the archives of the little port and market
town of Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire, of which the population
in 1689 was probably only a few hundreds; in 1801, 1758;
and in 1831, 4128. l To the little community that gathered
round the new castle, erected at the mouth of the Paver Eheidol
by Edward I., there had been granted by him in 1278 a
Charter, making the town a " Free Borough," with two fairs
and a weekly market, and an exclusive right of trading in the
persons admitted as Burgesses. This Charter of 1278, con-
firmed and extended by several others, does not refer specifically
to any organisation for government. What Edward the First
conceded to the fishermen and traders of Aberystwyth in this
respect was apparently the privilege of holding the Manorial
Court (heretofore, we assume, held by a Steward for the King),
exercising its jurisdiction without seignorial interference, and
taking its profits for the local communal purposes. The
lordship or ownership of the Manor itself, apart from its
profitable Court, seems never to have been formally conveyed.
Nor is it clear whence was derived the title and office of
Mayor. The earliest recorded mention of such an officer is in
1615, and in 1673 the town is described as "governed by a
Mayor and other sub-officers." 2 In 1689, and annually down
to 1834, we find the Mayor for the time being issuing at
Easter and Michaelmas, in the name of the King, a writ to the
two Bailiffs of the Borough, requiring them to proclaim the
holding of the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge ; and to
summon between thirty and forty of the leading Burgesses,
1 See MS. Presentment Book, Court Leet, Aberystwyth (Cardiganshire)
(extant only from 1690) ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, 1739-
1835 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commissioners, 1835, Appendix,
vol. i. p. 171 ; Aberystwyth Guide, 1816 ; Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by
Rev. G. Eyre Evans, 1902 ; The New Aberystwyth Guide, by T. J. Llewellyn
Prichard, 1824 ; Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849, vol. i. ;
New Guide to Aberystwyth, by Thomas Owen Morgan, 1848 ; Old Aberystwyth,
by David Samuel, 1890 ; History of Cardiganshire, by S. R. Meyrick, 1810 ;
Carmarthen Journal, 17th October 1834, 8th May and 27th November 1835 ;
Carnarvon Herald, 29th November 1834 ; A History of the Parliamentary
Representation of the County of Cardigan, etc., by John Hughes, 1849.
2 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. Gi E. Evans, 1902, p. 9 ;
Britannia, by Richard Blome, 1673, p. 268.
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 245
whom the Mayor himself designated in the writ. 1 At the
"Easter Leet" and "Michaelmas Leet," thus held by the
Mayor in person, the Jury, consisting of such of those
summoned as attended, the number being made up in Court
to at least twelve persons, calling themselves, by the way,
the " Grand Jury for the Town, Liberty, and Borough of
Aberystwyth," 2 admitted new Burgesses, heard complaints
from any one who chose to prefer them, and made presentments.
At " the Michaelmas Leet " the Jury annually " presented " the
persons to be appointed officers of the town for the ensuing
year the Mayor, the Coroner, and the two Bailiffs and the
two Constables. 3 Apparently the choice of the Jury was, in
fact, final. But the phraseology is merely that of submission
of a name for confirmation. " We, the said Jury, do present
A. B., etc., to be a fit person to be Mayor of the said town," etc.
We see, as a matter of fact, the Mayor-Elect always presenting
himself to the next Court of Quarter Sessions of the County
for the purpose of taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; 4
but there seems no case in which the selection made by the
Jury, for this or any other office, was objected to. The Mayor
was not a Justice of the Peace ex qfficio, nor was the person
chosen usually (or possibly ever) included in the Commission
for the County. This Court Leet, meeting normally only twice
a year (and not, in fact, making any effective use of the power
of adjournment), was, with the officers that it annually appointed,
the only governing authority 5 belonging to the town, other than
the usual institutions of the parish. Hence it is not surprising
to find that the County Justices in Quarter, Petty, or Special
Sessions, and the High Sheriff himself, had, as a matter of fact,
no less jurisdiction in the "Town, Liberty, and Burgh of
1 From the lists of 1737-8 it seems that the same persons did not, at that
date, serve year after year ; though this seems, later, to have become the
practice.
2 Aberysluiyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, p. 5 ; MS.
Presentment Book, 13th October 1809.
3 In 1708 we see the Court Leet appointing two "Searchers and Sealers of
Leather," under Act of 1 James I. (ibid. 18th May 1708). Occasionally it
selects persons to be Constables.
4 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, llth January 1786.
6 Between 1736 and 1835 various persons are, in the contemporary docu-
ments, designated Aldermen (Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. .
Evans, 1902, pp. 10-14). It does not appear how these were appointed, or what
position they held, but they were presumably those who had served as Mayor.
246 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
Aberystwyth " than elsewhere in Cardiganshire ; except that
the Borough chose its own Coroner, and claimed to be exempt
from the jurisdiction of the County Coroner ; l and except that
it formed a district outside those of the High Constables of the
County, and that its own Mayor seems to have acted as High
Constable. 2
We shall realise more clearly the position of this " Free
Borough" if we run over the various functions of the local
government in such a town, and see by whom they were
performed between 1689 and 1835. In many respects the
most important of these functions, as we see them in the
contemporary English Boroughs, were those exercisable only
by Justices of the Peace. In Aberystwyth there were no
Municipal Justices. For all the services of the " Single
Justice " and the " Double Justice," the town was dependent
on the nearest resident gentry who happened to be in the
County Commission of the Peace. Without their help the
profane swearer could not be fined, the drunkard set in the
stocks, or the vagrant whipped. We do not find that the
Mayor had even the power of committing to the county gaol,
for trial by Quarter Sessions, or to the next " Grand Sessions
of Wales " (which took the place of the English Assizes),
persons accused of larceny, assault, or felony. The only
offences which the town dealt with by its own officers were
the nuisances cognisable by the Court Leet, such as failing to
fulfil the householder's common obligations to keep the street
pavement clean and in repair, and disobeying the numerous
regulations as to the enjoyment of the common pasture.
Unlike many Boroughs, Aberystwyth had not even a lock-up,
1 Though the Court Leet had elected a Coroner from the date of the earliest
extant records, his right to act did not go unchallenged. In 1810 the Jury
indignantly "presents " that one of the Coroners of the County "has encroached
upon the rights and privileges of this Town, Burgh, and Liberty by holding
three several inquisitions within the limits and boundaries thereof." The
Court thereupon amerces him in the sum of 2 (MS. Presentment Book,
Aberystwyth, 14th May 1810). We do not gather what was the result of the
dispute, but the Court Leet continued to appoint its Coroner to the last.
2 The Mayor of Aberystwytli, like the Mayor of Cardigan and the Portreeve
of Lampeter the two other "Boroughs" within the county was always
reported to the Court by the Sheriff, in obedience to the command in the writ
issued to him and recorded on the Sessions Roll, along with the five High
Constables of the Hundreds of the County, and the five Bailiffs for these divisions.
(See, e.g., MS. Sessions Rolls, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, Trinity 1765 ;
ibid., Easter 1775, from which the Portreeve of Lampeter is omitted.)
247
or any sort of prison under its own administration, the House
of Correction in the town being erected, maintained, and
administered by Quarter Sessions. 1 Similarly, we see the
town unable to license its own alehouses, or to authorise the
performance of stage plays 2 in the building that was called
the Gild Hall or Town Hall, though it was the County that
owned it, and paid its keeper, as it had paid for its erection. 3
It was, too, the County Magistrates who appointed the Overseers
of the parish, supervised their relief of the poor, gave them
instructions, and allowed their accounts. It was the County
Magistrates who appointed the Surveyor of Highways, instructed
him what streets to repair, enforced for him the performance
of Statute Labour, and authorised now and again his levy of a
Highway Kate. 4 When we turn to the specially urban services
of paving, cleansing, lighting, and watching the streets, we see
the town making shift with the powers of the Court Leet ;
presenting and fining householders " for want of mending and
clearing the gutter " in the cobblestone pavement in front of
their respective houses, for making dunghills in the public
street, for not making the gutters level with the rest of the
pavement, for " not clearing their mixen from the street," for
leaving carts and waggons in the street, or " for laying of
rubbish, dirt, dust, or dunghills before their respective doors." 5
But it is long before the town ventures upon any collective
service of this kind. When the inhabitants wish to have a
Scavenger it is to the County Justices that they resort, and
Quarter Sessions appoints such officers for the town, under the
1 It had its own stocks and whipping-post, which (like any mere parish) it
had to maintain. The Jury, in 1708, "present the stocks, whipping-post, and
common ground ... to be out of repair, and ought to be repaired by the
inhabitants of the said town and liberty " (MS. Presentment Book, Aberyst-
wyth, 18th May 1708). The whipping-post is not mentioned after 1761, and
after this date we hear, too, no more of the want of a ducking-stool, but
presentments as to the stocks occur down to 1810, and they were not removed
until 1821 (Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp.
97-104).
2 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, 15th July 1812.
3 Ibid., llth January 1786, 10th January and llth July 1821.
4 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, 3rd April 1832, autho-
rising a rate of a shilling in the pound on the whole town for the repair of the
Marine Terrace.
5 MS. Presentment Book, Aberystwyth, 21st April 1812 ; Aberystwyth and
its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 110-115 under dates 1713-
1774.
248 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
powers provided for unincorporated towns by the Act of 17 15. 1
Presently the Court Leet takes it upon itself to appoint a
Scavenger, who seems to have served without payment. 2 Even
after 1801, when the town increased by leaps and bounds,
doubling its population within thirty years, it failed to accomplish
any paving or lighting at the public expense, or the provision
of night watchmen. Its power of organising Municipal
services was, indeed, limited, for the Court Leet could levy no
rate. The income from the town property was small, and it
does not seem to have occurred to any one that, if no influential
person seriously objected to the expenditure, the Parish Vestry
might have included any necessary item in the Church Rate, if
not in the Poor Eate. We see, however, no indication that
there was any desire for the organisation of such common
services. By far the largest part of the business of the
Court Leet was concerned with the management of the
common pasturage and wastes adjoining the town, over
which their Eoyal Charters had given the Burgesses inde-
feasible rights, not, however, differing in kind or degree from
those exercised elsewhere by Manorial authorities. 3 Next in
importance to the common pasturage were the markets and
fairs and the haven afforded by the river. Over all these
the Court Leet exercised such scanty regulative power as in
fact existed. We see the Jury vainly striving, by repeating
its general denunciation of offenders, to get the weights and
measures inspected. 4 It was the Justices in Quarter Sessions
who appointed and paid the Clerk of the Market and Inspector
of Corn Eeturns ; and the Justices at last instruct him to
procure standard weights and measures and to inspect those
1 1 George I. stat. 2, c. 52 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire,
13th January 1747 ; 10th January 1759, llth January 1786.
2 It is interesting in 1811-1815 to find the Scavenger paying 8 or 10 for
the privilege of holding the office doubtless for the value of the manure and
ashes. Later on we see the Churchwardens and Overseers for the year formally
appointed Scavengers, in order that they may employ the paupers on the work
(MS. Presentment Book, 22nd October 1811 ; Aberystwyth and its Court Led,
1902, p. 26).
3 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 157-164.
In 1740 the Court Leet appoints an officer to "survey" the common lands to
prevent geese, swine, and mangy horses being placed upon them (MS. Present
ment Book, Aberystwyth, 10th April 1740) ; and in 1812 two such officers are
appointed "to oversee the wastes," the Mayor "to. pay them that which he
thinks reasonable" (ibid. 21st April 1812).
4 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 79-81.
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 249
in use. 1 In order to get any expensive improvements effected
in the Market or the Harbour, these had both to be placed in
other hands: the market, in 1823, by lease to six inhabitants
who undertook to erect a building; and the harbour, in 1780,
by a Local Act vesting it in trustees. 2 Though the Court
Leet had, by Charter, the right to exclude all but Burgesses
from trading, and to admit new Burgesses only at its own
will, 3 we see this exclusive privilege becoming obsolete early
in the eighteenth century. The Court Leet makes spasmodic-
ally a few presentments against " foreigners," which evidently
fail to be enforced. 4 In fact, from 1740 onwards, practically
the only valuable incident of the status of Burgess apart
from the right to turn out beasts on the common was the
Parliamentary Franchise that it carried. The main importance
of the Court Leet lay in its power of admitting new Burgesses,
and thus controlling the share of the town (along with the
four other Boroughs of Cardiganshire) 5 in the election of a
Borough Member. Between 1740 and 1778, and again
between 1812 and 1817, such new Burgesses were admitted
in great batches ; over nine hundred, mostly not resident, on
payment by each of two pounds eleven and sixpence in fees,
being thus introduced just prior to particular elections. 6
The scanty records that alone exist of the Municipal
government of Aberystwyth do not permit us to infer with any
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cardiganshire, llth January 1786,
15th July 1795.
2 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 88 ; 20
George III. c. 26 ; New Guide to Aberystwyth, by T. 0. Morgan, 1848.
3 In 1734, three of the persons "presented" by the Jury for admission as
Burgesses were " not allowed by the Mayor " (MS. Presentment Book,
Aberystwyth, 1734 ; Aberystioyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans,
1902, p. 144), which we do not understand.
4 ' ' We present D. R. and J. L. for buying sheep and goat skins, lamb and
kid skins within the said Town and Liberty aforesaid, not being qualified as
Burgesses and Freemen of the said Town, to the nuisance and inconvenience of
those that are so qualified and exercise the trade of Skinners " (MS. Present-
ment Book, Aberystwyth, 18th May 1708). We have found but one other case
of a person specifically presented for this offence, viz. a "periwig-maker and
barber" in 1739 (Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902,
p. 79), but general presentments of " foreigners" are made at intervals down to
1743, after which the Burgesses' trading privilege ia not mentioned.
6 Viz. Cardigan, Lampeter, Adpar (disfranchised in 1742), and Tregaron
(disfranchised in 1730) (House of Commons Journals, 7th May 1730 : History
of Cardiganshire, by S. R. Meyrick, 1810 ; History of the Parliamentary Repre-
sentation of the County of Cardigan, by John Hughes, 1849, p. 8).
6 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 145-156.
250 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
confidence how the constitution actually worked, or whether it
underwent between 1689 and 1835 any important change.
From first to last the fishermen and little traders who made
up the resident Burgesses appear to have been overshadowed
by the neighbouring gentry, notably by the family of Pryse of
Gogerthan. Down to about 1730 we gather that the govern-
ment was in the hands of the gentry ; a Pryse is frequently
Mayor ; the office is held by other landed proprietors ; and
the jurors all sign their names and affix their seals. Between
1*730 and 1780 a great change takes place, probably not
unconnected with two separate proceedings in the Court of
King's Bench on writ of quo warranto, and a more strict enforce-
ment of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. 1 From 1730
the mayoralty comes apparently more and more to be filled by
the middle-class folk of the town, though for a generation the
Jury continues to be made up of persons who could at least
sign their names and affix their seals. From the middle of
the eighteenth century we see the administration putting on
more and more of the forms of the close Municipal Boroughs
of the period. The presentments of the Jury at the Court
Leet are made to serve as resolutions of a Town Council. No
longer confined to the designation of persons to serve offices,
neglects and defaults to be remedied or punished, and offenders
to be amerced, they take on both legislative and executive
form. New rules are made, decisions on policy are formulated,
expenditure is ordered to be incurred, bills are directed to be
paid, and even leases of land are granted all under the
ancient formula of presentment. The Court takes it upon
itself to create new offices, and to give new titles to the old
ones. A Chamberlain is appointed from 1763 to hold the
funds of the "Corporation of Aberystwyth." 2 The Bailiffs
become " Serjeants at Mace," and one of them eventually the
Bellman. At last there is even appointed a Town Clerk, an
office created towards the end of the eighteenth century, and
filled by the chief Tory solicitor of the town. 3 At the same
time we see a distinct worsening in the status of the members
of the Jury, who evidently become more than ever subservient
to the real rulers of the town. Out of the seventeen members
1 Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, pp. 20-21, 170-
171. 2 Ibid. p. 25. 3 Ibid. p. 26.
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 251
of the Jury of 1779 only six can sign their names, the others
making their marks. From the latter part of the eighteenth
century, at any rate possibly from an earlier period the
whole administration was evidently in the hands of a small
clique of well-to-do merchants and shopkeepers, mainly Tory
in politics and largely Anglican in religion, who took it in
turns to fill the different offices, summoned the same persons
(principally non-resident tenants of the local squire and
Member for the Borough) year after year to serve on the
Jury, and perpetuated their own rule, to the exclusion of all
the other inhabitants, 1 until an elected Town Council was
established by the Municipal Corporations Act. It is to be
recorded to their credit that, under the influence of the
leading local merchant, they kept all their little communal
property together, refusing always to sell the freehold, and
granting, even to their own members, only leases for terms of
years. 2 That such leases were sometimes granted on unduly
favourable terms to members of the ruling clique was the
subject of popular allegation in 1834, 3 which the records now
show to have been not without foundation. 4 It is needless to
say that the accounts were not published ; nor, save for being
perfunctorily laid before the Jury at the Michaelmas Leet,
either audited or inspected. 5
1 During the fifty years 1786-1835, the mayoralty was monopolised by
fifteen persons only one, the leading merchant, serving at least twelve times.
2 Aberystwyth audits Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, p. 15.
3 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commissions, 1835, Appendix, vol. i.
p. 173.
4 The Court Leet Jury of 1780 presented that a lease for ninety-nine years
of a plot of land should be granted to the Mayor for the time being, without
any entry of the presentment being made. The Mayor promptly sold the lease
for 100, and this sum was never credited to the town. It was found necessary
in 1828 to buy back the lease at the town's expense {Aberystwyth and its
Court Leet, by Rev. G. E. Evans, 1902, p. 49).
6 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix,
vol. i. p. 173.
A stage further than Aberystwyth was, perhaps, the shire town of Cardigan,
the population of which by 1831 was only 2795. Here, too, there were no
Corporate Justices, and the only Court was the Court Leet of the Manor, which
the Corporation owned, which it designated the Mayor's Court, and at which
new Burgesses were admitted. At the Michaelmas Court the Mayor and
Coroner, together with the Constables, were appointed, on the presentment of
the Jury or "Grand Inquest" of Burgesses, summoned by the two Bailiffs,
whom the outgoing Mayor had appointed. But, unlike Aberystwyth, Cardigan
had also the characteristically Municipal feature of a standing Common Council,
of thirteen Burgesses, serving for life, which appointed the Town Clerk,
administered the 200 acres of uninclosed common land, and transacted all the
252 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
Whilst the Municipal Government of Aberystwyth arose
out of the Court Leet aspect of the Lord's Court, that of
Neath in Glamorganshire seems to have been closely inter-
woven with the Court Baron jurisdiction and its Municipal
analogue, the Court of Pleas. From the scanty MS. records
we infer that this reputed Borough Corporation, admitted as
such by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, had been
gradually developed from a series of Courts, one styled a
Court Baron ; one, less subordinate to the Lord's Steward,
business of the Corporation. It so happens that we have recorded the be-
ginning of this Common Council, and can see its simple development from the
Jury of the Court of the Manor. In 1653 it was presented at the Lady-day
Court ' ' that it was necessary that a Council of Twelve, being Aldermen and
sufficient Burgesses of the said town, should be added to the Mayor for the
time being, to advise him for the good of the Corporation." Twelve persons
were accordingly named by the Jury as the first Council ; and vacancies
subsequently occurring from time to time were filled by presentment of the
" Grand Inquest " (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. pp. 197-200 ; History and, Antiquities of the County of Cardigan, by
S. R. Meyrick, 1810 ; Cardiganshire, by G. Eyre Evans, 1903, pp. 6-14 ;
Lampeter, by the same, 1905, p. 197 ; Carmarthen Journal, 21st March and
2nd May 1828, 3rd, 17th, and 31st July 1835).
At Carnarvon, on the other hand, autonomy had progressed further than struc-
ture. This ancient shire town, with Charters from 1284, was in form governed
by the Constable of the Castle, appointed by the Crown to be Mayor during its
pleasure. There was no Council, and there were no Courts beyond the Court
Leet (designated the Borough Court), no Corporate magistrates, and legally no
Municipal officers but a Recorder or Town Clerk, whom the Mayor appointed
and who acted as Deputy Mayor ; and two Bailiffs. But there was an indefinite
number of Burgesses who had to be admitted at the Court, and who were
entitled to various immunities ; and the Crown had tacitly devolved on them
all the current administration. At the Court Leet the Burgesses at large
elected the two Bailiffs, who really governed the Borough, together with Town
Stewards, who acted as Treasurers, a Coroner, Serjeants at Mace, Constables,
etc. Under this simple organisation, Carnarvon, from the opening of the
nineteenth century, advanced in population and trade, having, in 1831, 6877
inhabitants. The Corporation bought fire engines, made new gates through the
old walls, built markets, provided a new water-supply, and (in 1832) even
followed Manchester in erecting its own gasworks piling up, it must be added,
a debt of 9000 (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
in summary tables only ; Account of Dolgelly and Carnarvon, anon., 1820 (?) ;
Old Karnarvon, by W. H. Jones, 1882 and 1889; "Charter granted by
Edward I. to the Town of Carnarvon, 1284," by H. L. J., in Archceologia
Cambrensis, 3rd series, vol. iii., 1857, pp. 173-178 ; Carnarvon Herald, 1832-
1834, passim ; North Wales Chronicle, 20th March and 2nd October 1832).
The little Borough of Conway in the same county seems to have been in a
similar constitutional position, but remained on a much smaller scale (Report
on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, pp. 14-21 ; "Conway Municipal
Records," by E. Owen, in Archceologia Cambrensis, 5th series, vol. vii., 1890,
p. 226 ; History and Antiquities of the Town of Aberconway, by R. Williams,
1835, p. 96 ; Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849 ; Conway
Parish Register, by A. Hadley, 1900, p. xi).
THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH 253
called a Borough Court; and one termed a Court of Pleas,
forming part of a Hierarchy of Courts in the wide domains
of the Abbey of Neath. We catch a glimpse at the end of
the seventeenth century of a Court held before " the Constable
of the Castle and the Portreeve," a Court at that time styling
itself a Court Leet, at which " the Grand Jury and Homage "
make the usual presentments, admit Burgesses, and appoint a
Portreeve and the ordinary officers. We have a vision of a
thriving little town, having its own Court apart from that of
the Lord, owning Corporate property, maintaining an organised
Watch, and enjoying a large measure of autonomy. But the
Lord encroaches on their rights and seeks to bring them into
subjection to his own Court; and, in spite of resistance,
apparently succeeds in his aim, the records between 1759 to
1797 showing the town business as transacted at the Lord's
" Court Baron." Meanwhile there was also being held every-
month " His Majesty's Court of Pleas," also before the Steward
and Portreeve, at which the Aldermen and Burgesses attended.
At this Court occasional civil suits were tried before a Jury,
Constables were appointed, the rota of inhabitants to serve
the Watch was regulated, and defaulters were fined. By 1813
the meetings are called " Hall Days," the trial of actions is
silently dropped, and we read definitely of the election of
officers for the Borough of three persons being chosen, out
of which one is appointed Portreeve, and similarly in the
case of Aldermen, Common Councillors, Common Attorneys,
Serjeants at Mace, Ale -tasters, Sealers and Searchers of
Leather, Layerkeepers, Constables, and Burgesses. In 1818
the minutes become styled " Minutes of the Corporation of
Neath " ; the meetings are uniformly called " Hall Days,"
except that formal entries of a " Court of Pleas " are inter-
polated, without any but formal business being recorded ;
and for the ensuing seventeen years, down to 1835, the
proceedings become more and more assimilated to those of
an ordinary close Corporation. 1
1 MS. archives of the Corporation of Neath (old notebook without date ;
proceedings of the "Court Baron," 1759-1797 ; ditto of the "Court of Pleas,"
1759-1818; Minutes of the Corporation, 1818-1835); Cartce et alia munimenta,
by G. T. Clark, vol. ii. ; Original Charters and Materials for a History of Neath
and its Abbey, by G. G. Francis, 1835 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 333.
254 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
(c) The Welsh Municipal Corporation
In the ancient Borough of Cardiff population in 1689
only a few hundreds, and even by 1801 no more than 1870 1
we see a transitional form between Swansea and Aberyst-
wyth on the one hand, and (as we shall presently describe)
Brecon and Carmarthen on the other. We need not recount
the foundation of Cardiff as a " Free Borough " by Seignorial
Charter of 1183, or the gradual elaboration of its privileges. 2
By Royal Charters of 1600 and 1608, the Bailiffs,
Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Town of Cardiff became a
close Corporation. " The Aldermen," we are told, " fill up
their own body ; the Common Council fill up the vacancies
among the Chief Burgesses ; and the sole power that is
exercised by the Burgesses at large (who may themselves be
appointed in any number by the Bailiffs) is that of electing
four of the self-elected Aldermen, out of whom the Constable
of the Castle is to appoint the two Bailiffs." 3 To this close
Corporation more extensive powers had been accorded than to
any of the Welsh Boroughs that we have hitherto described.
The Bailiffs, Aldermen, and Burgesses of Cardiff held the markets
and fairs, took the tolls, administered the little harbour and the
river, and collected tonnage dues on shipping, and an import
duty on slates, owned houses and lands within the Borough, and
hundreds of acres of heath in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed
a Municipal income that, by 1833, reached over 1000 a
year all upon a nominal quit rent to the Lord of the
1 Even in 1796 Cardiff "was chiefly an agricultural centre for the surround-
ing district ... a centre for markets and fairs " (The Welsh People, by
J. Rhys and D. Brynmor-Jones, 1900, p. 525). By 1831 its population had
risen to 6187, and the transformation had just begun.
2 We have not examined the MS. records of Cardiff, four volumes of which
have been elaborately printed by the Corporation (Cardiff' Records, edited by
J. H. Matthews, the "Archivist to the Corporation" ; see the review in English
Historical Review, vol. xvi. p. 550, by W. H. Stevenson). See also House of
Commons Journals, 20th January 1774, and the Paving and Lighting Act of
1774 ; Cambrian, 15th and 22nd May and 2nd October 1818, 31st July 1819,
and 15th December 1821 ; Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis,
1849, vol. i. ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i.
p. 187 ; History of the Town and Castle of Cardiff, by "W. L. Jenkins, 1854 ;
Growth of Cardiff from 1875 to 1880, with some Particulars of Cardiff in the last
Century, 1880 ; Cartce et alia munimenta quce ad dominium de Glamorgan
pertinent, by G. T. Clark, vol. ii. ; The Gild Merchant, by C. Gross, 1890.
3 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 190.
THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 255
Borough. 1 There was an independent body of Burgesses or
Freemen, recruited by Birth, Marriage, and Apprenticeship, as
well as by gift, organised in Gilds or Trade Companies, each
under its own Master and Assistants. 2 The Freemen were
not only exempt from the tolls and dues levied by the
Corporation, but also from most of those levied in other
cities and towns an exemption which Cardiff dealers suc-
cessfully maintained " in various parts of England in the
first half of the nineteenth century ... on production of a
Certificate showing that the claimants were Freemen." 3
Finally, the Corporation had large magisterial powers in-
dependent of the County. The two Bailiffs were the Judges
of the Court of Eecord, the Coroners for the Borough, and
the Eeturning Officers at the Parliamentary election. The
Corporation had its own Borough gaol ; it alone held Courts
within the Borough ; its monthly Court of Kecord under the
Bailiffs had unlimited jurisdiction to determine civil suits,
whilst its two Bailiffs, its Steward, and the senior of its
Aldermen were (with the Constable of the Castle) Justices of
the Peace, with jurisdiction exclusive of the County Justices,
and power to hold Quarter as well as Petty and Special
Sessions. Yet, with all these large and indefinite powers of
a full Municipal Corporation, Cardiff combined a subjection
to the Lord of the Borough greater, in fact, than that in
which lay many a humbler Borough. Some of the steps by
which the little community of Burgesses had during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries gradually attained the forms
of constitutional autonomy are, indeed, still to be traced.
The Constable of the Castle (or, as some said, the Lord's
Deputy Constable), who was the Lord's nominee and agent,
was, according to the terms of the earlier Charters, himself
the Mayor of the Borough and its chief officer, and long
presided over the " Town Court " or Common Council. He
was the first magistrate of the town, and he remained through-
out a necessary part of the quorum of the Bench, the other
Justices being, in fact, merely additional to himself. The
1 In the seventeenth century the Earls of Pembroke ; from 1683 to 1775
the Viscounts Windsor; from 1775 the Marquises of Bute, were successively
Lords of Cardiff.
2 Cardiff Records, by J. H. Matthews.
3 Ibid. vol. i., 1898, p. 3.
256 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
Court of Quarter Sessions itself, which the Cardiff Justices
came to hold, seems to have arisen merely by a silent and
imperceptible transformation of the Court Leet of the Lord. 1
All the elaborate Municipal structure of the Borough depended
on appointment by his Constable. The Town Clerk, who was
the officer of the Court of Eecord, and seems to date only
from 1729, was his own nominee, appointed under his seal.
Most of the other officers of the Borough the Ale-taster, the
Serjeants at Mace, the Water Bailiffs, the Toll- Gatherers, the
Keepers and Clerks of the Markets, Shambles, and Fairs,
the Common Attorneys of the Court of Eecord were finally
chosen by him from a list of persons submitted by the Bailiffs.
Even the Bailiffs themselves were similarly selected by him,
out of a list of four of the Aldermen submitted by the
Burgesses on Charter Day. The Lord was thus able, through
the Constable or Deputy Constable of his Castle, to favour
those Burgesses who forwarded his views, and especially to
exclude permanently from lucrative or honourable office any
person whose action or opinions he disliked. 2 The result was,
as we are told, that " from the reign of Anne to that of
George the Fourth, the vitality of the Corporation lay
dormant, while the Lords were increasingly strengthening the
1 The Borough, as we learn from a memorandum by the Town Clerk of
1818-1825, was "divided into four Wards, and the Jury presented in each. . . .
The parties presented generally submit and pay three - and - fourpence each,
together with the fees of process, by way of fine " (Cardiff Records, by J. H.
Matthews, vol. ii., 1900, p. 128). The uniform amercement is, as we have seen,
characteristic of Courts Leet. In the seventeenth century the "Grand Jury"
of the Court was diligently presenting nuisances, and "intruders in the Town " ;
we find it also presenting the boundaries of the Borough, and by no means
restricting itself to finding true bills. In 1666, indeed, we see the Court held
as a Court of Survey of the Lord, declaring the customs of the Manor, including
the obligation of every Burgess to do suit and service (ibid. vol. ii. p. 68). Only
later does the Court take on the distinctive characteristics of Quarter Sessions.
This Cardiff Court, expressly reported in 1824 the ablest Municipal lawyer of the
day (H. A. Merewether), " considering the matters presented by the Jury, will,
I have no doubt, upon proper inquiry and accurate search, be found to be also
the Court Leet ; and the ancient title of the Court will, I imagine, be found to
have been Sessio Pads et Curia Domini Regis." To this opinion the editor
of the published records appends the footnote, "This surmise is undoubtedly
correct " (ibid. vol. ii. p. 130). In the following chapter we shall describe a
similar evolution, by imperceptible gradation, of the Court of Quarter Sessions
out of the Leet jurisdiction of the Manorial Court, in Dorchester, Pevensey,
and other English Boroughs (pp. 350-355).
2 For a spasm of rebellion in 1818, see Cambrianj 8th, 15th, and 22nd May
1818 ; and Cardiff Records, by J. H. Matthews.
THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 257
ties which bound the town to the Castle. The Council
Chamber in the Gildhall became an office for the transaction
of Castle business ; and the rarely held meetings were occupied
with little more than the installation of Bailiffs and Aldermen,
who were nominees of the Lord, and devoted to his service." l
1 Cardiff Records, by J. H. Matthews, 1900, vol. ii. pp. 112-113.
Various other Welsh Boroughs in which there were Chartered Justices of the
Peace were in a position of real dependency similar to that of Cardiff. Thus,
at Montgomery the Burgesses, who obtained their burgess rights by birth, claimed
to own the Manor, and nominally elected their two Bailiffs, who licensed the
beershops and did a few other magisterial acts. But the Lord of the Lordship
disputed this claim, and unquestionably appointed the High Steward, who
(along with the Coroner) presented a list of six persons, from among whom the
Burgesses made their choice. The High Steward or his deputy held the Court
Leet, which was the only tribunal of the town (after a three-weekly Court of
Record had become disused in the middle of the eighteenth century) ; and the
County Justices dealt with all the offences. In practice, the Borough was
entirely under the thumb of the Lord of the Lordship (Mr. Hogg's Report on
Certain Municipal Corporations, 1838, pp. 85-89 ; Antiquities of Shropshire, by
II. W. Eyton, vol. xi. ; "Ancient Charters of the Borough of Montgomery," in
Powysland Club Collections, vol. xxi., 1887). We gather that Cowbridge in
Glamorganshire was in a similar constitutional position to Montgomery (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 221-224 ;
Cambrian, 15th September, 2nd October, and 20th November 1834). So, too,
may have been Llanfyllin, in Montgomeryshire, with a somewhat complicated
constitution (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, p. 35 ;
"Llanfyllin, some Additional Items of Municipal History," in Powysland
Club Collections, vol. xxiii. p. 121).
The Borough of Welshpool in Montgomeryshire had two Bailiffs, a Recorder,
and a Steward, who were Justices of the Peace, and held both civil and criminal
Courts. They were nominally elected by the Burgesses, but were chosen in
practice by the Jury of Burgesses at the Court of the Lord of the Lordship, by
whom they were really appointed (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg,
1838. pp. 140-145 ; Correspondence in Archceologia Cambrensis, vol. xiii., 1882 ;
"Welshpool : Materials for the History of," by M. C. Jones, in Powysland Club
Collections, vols. vii., xii., xiii., xiv., xv., xvii., xix., xxi., and xxiv.).
We have little information as to the actual position of Beaumaris in Anglesea ;
in 1831 a Borough of 2500 inhabitants, with a close body of "Mayor, Bailiffs,
and Burgesses," which exercised the powers of the Lord of the Manor, but held
no Manorial Courts. By Charter the Mayor, Bailiffs, and Recorder were
Justices of the Peace. A Court of Record was held down to 1779 (Topographical
Dictionary of Wales, by 8. Lewis, 1849, vol. i. ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. pp. 2583-2590).
So, too, at Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire (population in 1801, 1150 ; and in
1831, 1435) there was a Chartered Corporation of Mayor, Aldermen, Bailiffs,
and Burgesses ; with a close body, recruiting itself by co-option, and admitting
new Burgesses by birth or gift ; and a Corporate magistracy, with Quarter
Sessions, besides a disused Court of Record and an obsolete Hundred Court
(First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 273-276 ;
"Kidwelly Castle," by G. T. Clark, in Archceologia Cambrensis, 2nd series,
vol. iii., 1852, p. 3 ; Description and History of the Castles of Kidtcelly, et-c., by
G. T. Clark, 1852 ; The Welsh People, by J. Rhys and 'D. Brynmor- Jones,
1900, p. 423).
The neighbouring Boroughs of Pembroke and Tenby in Pembrokeshire
VOL. II. FT. I. S
258 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
Few and far between were the Welsh Boroughs that had
attained to greater heights of real autonomy, to a more elaborate
Municipal Constitution, or to a larger independence of the
County Magistracy than Aberystwyth or Cardiff. But although
differing from these in working constitution only by minute
gradations, Brecon, Denbigh, Carmarthen, and Haverfordwest
reach, in form, a level more closely corresponding with that of
the English Municipal Corporations that we shall presently
describe. In each of these Boroughs there was a Corporation
nominally independent of any Manorial Lord ; each had Trade
Gilds or Companies of Freemen ; each held its own civil and
criminal Courts, and took the fees and fines for its own
Corporate purposes ; each created within itself its own Justices
of the Peace, with whom the County Justices could not
interfere. Carmarthen, moreover, which was between 1689
and 1835 the most populous town in all Wales, 1 was a County
of itself ; and Haverfordwest, in 1791 " the handsomest, the
largest, and genteelest town in South Wales " which had a
body of nearly 300 Freemen, recruited by Birth, Apprentice-
ship, Marriage and gift, who met in Common Hall, and elected
their Mayor, Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and Common Councillors by
popular vote, was not only a County of itself, but also had its own
Gustos Eotulorum and Lord Lieutenant, thus reaching a degree
of independence of the County attained in England only by the
City of London. 3 These four Corporations so closely resembled
present a curious twin autonomy, the same persons long continuing to be the
dominant members of both Corporations, which had practically emancipated
themselves from seignorial control. Nominally the Mayor was elected by the
Burgesses, but practically the whole power was in the hands of a Close Body in
each case, which was more interested in maintaining its influence in electing
the Member of Parliament for the Pembroke Boroughs than in Municipal
administration, which became, however, of importance when the population of
Pembroke rose, by 1831, to 6511, whilst that of Tenby only reached 1942. In
both Boroughs the Mayor was chosen alternately from "town and country,"
and acted as Magistrate (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. pp. 365, 402 ; History of Little England beyond Wales, by E. Laws,
1888 ; Welshman,. 1832-1834).
1 Population in 1801, 5548 ; rising by 1831 to 9955, beyond which it has,
in over seventy years, scarcely increased.
2 A Tour to Milford Haven, by Mrs. Morgan, 1791, p. 195, etc. The
population in 1831 was 5240, beyond which it has during seventy years scarcely
increased.
8 As we have already explained ("The Parish and the County," Book II.
pp. 311-312), all the English Boroughs, even those that were Counties of them-
selves, were nevertheless in some respects within the jurisdiction of the Lord
THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION 259
in form the English Municipal Corporations about to be
described that we spare the reader any detailed description
of their constitutions. What need here be said is that they
all reveal traces of an earlier Manorial status not essentially
dissimilar from that of Swansea or Cardiff, out of which they
had in some way or another emerged. The Men of Brecon
had, down to the sixteenth century, had a Bailiff appointed by
the Lord, and though they bought their Manor for a substantial
fee farm rent, they seem to have parted with many of their
Manorial lights ; and though their Eoyal Charter gave the
Corporation great apparent autonomy, we find it, in practice
at any rate, after 1754 as abjectly subservient to the Morgans
as Aberystwyth was to the Pryses. 1 Denbigh, which had
started with a Seignorial Charter, fortified this by nearly a
dozen Eoyal Charters, extending over three centuries, and
made itself independent of any Lord, and even of the County
Sheriffs ; and the Corporation exercised all the Manorial powers,
as well as holding Petty and Quarter Sessions. 2 Carmarthen,
which had formerly had Provosts and Bailiffs for the two halves
of the Borough appointed by their respective Lords, became
apparently completely emancipated, but sank into such chaos
in 1762 that its Corporation lapsed by non-appointment to
fill vacancies, and a new Charter had to be obtained from the
King, establishing a Corporation exactly like those of the
English Boroughs. 3 Finally, Haverfordwest, which chose its
Lieutenant of the County at large in which they were geographically situated,
though the Liberty of the Cinque Ports ranked in this respect as a County.
The City of London, the only exception, had no Gustos Rotulorum or Lord
Lieutenant, but a Commission of Lieutenancy under the Lord Mayor.
1 "The Corporation," it was said in 1828, like all the other Corporations
in Wales, "are . . . the tools of the patron, who conducts all their motions
like figures in a puppet show" (Article on "Welsh Boroughs" in Carmarthen
Journal, 19th September 1828). See MS. Minutes, Corporation of Brecon,
1668-1807 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i.
p. 177 ; History of the County of Brecknock, by T. Jones, 1805, vol. ii. ;
Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1849, vol. i. ; Illustrated
History of Brecknockshire, by E. Poole, 1886 ; Carnarvon Herald, 18th October
1834 ; Welshman, 12th December 1834.
2 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv.
pp. 2661-2669 ; An Account of the Castle and Town of Denbigh, by R. Newcome,
1829 ; Ancient and Modern Denbigh, by J. Williams, 1856 ; Review of this in
Archceologia Cambrensis, 3rd series, vol. i., 1855, pp. 69-72, 185-190 ; Records
of Denbigh and its Lordship, by J. Williams, 1860 ; Carnarvon Herald, 6th,
13th, and 20th December 1834.
3 Cambrian, 1819-1822; Carmarthen Journal, 1824-1836; Welshman,
1832-1834 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i.
260 THE BOROUGHS OF WALES
Mayor and other officers at what was called a Hundred Court,
found itself governed, in practice, for all its apparent Democracy
and autonomy, by a set of Justices of the Peace commissioned
by the King and nominated by the Lord Lieutenant whom the
King had appointed to rule over the " County of the Borough " ; 1
and this potentate seems, indeed, to have exercised as
dominating an influence in the actual working of its
constitution as did the Constable of the Castle at Cardiff. 2
p. 203 ; Royal Charters and Historical Documents relating to the Town and
County of Carmarthen, by J. R. Daniel - Tyssen and A. C. Evans, 1878;
Carmarthen and its Neighbourhood, by W. Spurrell, 1860 and 1879.
1 Although the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Recorder, whom the Burgesses chose
at the "Hundred Court," were, by Charter, Justices of the Peace, the King
issued his own Commission of the Peace for the County of the Borough of
Haverfordwest, including the leading notables of the town ; and as the persons
appointed to the Chartered offices were, as a matter of fact, always taken from
those in this Commission, they never acted as Justices by Charter, but always
with their colleagues as Justices by Commission.
2 Haverfordwest and its Story (anon.), 1882 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 233 ; House of Commons Return as
to Freemen, 1840 ; Carmarthen Journal, 1829-1835 ; Welshman, 4th May
1832 and 3rd October 1834. It is interesting to see the Town Council of
Haverfordwest, in evident succession to a Manorial Court, deciding (like the
Lord's Court of Great Tew) upon the course of cultivation of its commons, and
making a levy to defray the working expenses. In 1665 it is "ordered that
the commons called Portfield be set out for ryeland ; Burgesses to pay 6s. 8d.
per acre, and strangers 13s. 4d. per acre, and inhabitants paying in the Royal
Aid 8s. per acre" (Town Council Minutes, 2nd March 1665, in ffaverfordwest
an/l its Story, p. 100).
CHAPTER VI
THE MUNICIPAL COKPOEATION
OUR survey of the ascending series of partially enfran-
chised communities, enjoying various degrees of privilege or of
exemption from County jurisdiction from the rural Manor
under its Lord's Court up to such essentially Municipal
governments as Arundel or Alnwick brings us at last to the
Municipal Corporation. In this chapter we abandon, for the
time, our presentation of individual type specimens, in order to
lay before the student a systematic analysis of the constitutional
elements of the Municipal Corporation as it existed at the
Ee volution, and of its development between 1689 and 1835.
And this analysis must, we fear, be long ; for it is true to-day,
as Madox quaintly said nearly two centuries ago, that " whoso
desireth to discourse in a proper manner concerning Corpora ted
Towns and communities must take in a great variety of matter,
and should be allowed a great deal of time and preparation." l
1 Firma Burgi, by T. Madox, 1726, preface. Perhaps because the sources
for an account of the Municipal Corporations between 1689 and 1835, though
abundant, are bewildering in their extent, variety, and local dispersion, we have
not found any previous analysis of much use. The MS. Minutes are in nearly
all cases preserved and accessible to the student. Especially at Liverpool, Leeds,
Bristol, Plymouth, Norwich, Beverley, Newbury, Gloucester, York, Nottingham,
Leicester, Southampton, Derby, Coventry, Exeter, Ipswich, Berwick-on-Tweed,
Peuzance, Deal, Cambridge, Reading, Winchester, Romsey, Oxford, Chipping
Norton, Woodstock, Dorchester, and above all, the City of London, have we
found these admirably kept volumes of great use. Some of the Corporations
(among which those of London, Leicester, Northampton, Cardiff, Bristol,
Norwich, Nottingham, and Colchester may be honourably mentioned) are proceed-
ing to print and publish their earlier records. In other cases (as at Liverpool,
Southampton, Bath, and Carlisle) this is being done by voluntary effort. It
is to be hoped that these enterprises will be continued down to at least 1835.
The numerous town histories, so conveniently catalogued in Dr Gross's Biblio-
graphy of English Municipal History, unfortunately seldom contain much in-
formation about local government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
261
262 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
Our first difficulty was to arrive at any precise definition
of the subject-matter. When in 1833 the Whig Government
appointed the well-known Royal Commission to inquire into
all the Municipal Corporations of England and Wales, it was
found impossible even to frame an exact list of those which
were in existence, still less to give any precise definition of
what constituted a Municipal Borough or a Municipal Corpora-
An exception must be made for the quite admirable History of Municipal
Government in Liverpool, by Professor Ramsay Muir, 1906. On the other hand,
the voluminous report and appendices of the Municipal Corporation Com-
missioners, comprising nearly 4000 pages, afford a picture of the constitution
and working of the boroughs reported on, as they were in 1833, unparalleled
in extent, systematic completeness, and elaboration of detail. The actual
evidence taken by the Commissioners was not officially recorded, but local
summaries exist, in more or less detail, of that given at Boston, Cambridge,
Dover, Gateshead, Hull, King's Lynn, Liverpool (two versions), Newcastle-on-
Tyne (two versions), Norwich, Nottingham, Poole, Reading, Warwick, and
Yarmouth. No reports were published on Carnarvon, Colchester, New Romney,
Saffron Walden, Sudbury, or Yarmouth, though for the last-named we have
the summary of the evidence. The whole report is summarised, not very
accurately, in A. J. E. Cockburn's Corporations of England and Wales, 1835,
and Sir J. R. Somers Vine's English Municipal Institutions, 1879. More
valuable is the paper contributed by Joseph Fletcher (who had worked as
assistant secretary to the Commissioners) to the Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society (vol. v., 1842) ; and the elaborate analytic index to the First Report and
its four volumes of appendices, which was published in 1839 (unfortunately not
invariably accurate). The Second Report (1837), relating to the City of London,
and the Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg (1838), were not included
in this index. The Report and Evidence of the House of Commons Select
Committee on Municipal Corporations, 1833, must also be referred to. Refer-
ences to other material for particular towns, and to the Municipal Corporation
Reform Act itself, are given elsewhere, though we have preferred, in this chapter,
to cite principally the 1835 Report (as being most accessible), on those points as
to which we have ground for belief that its description applied equally to 1689
as to 1833. The titles of the principal general treatises on English Borough
Corporations will be found in Dr Gross's Bibliography (pp. 15-48), to which
must be added the various works of Mary Bateson and F. W. Maitland both
lost, alas ! to English historical scholarship in 1906 which we have found
of the greatest use. We must mention, too, Mrs. J. R. Green's brilliant Town
Life in the Fifteenth Century, 1894 ; the admirable work done by Professors
Ramsay Muir and James Tait on Liverpool and Manchester respectively ; that
of Rev. W. Hudson on Norwich ; and that of Mr. Adolphus Ballard on The
Domesday Boroughs. Of French and German authors, Gneist, in his Self -Govern-
ment, 1871, gives a good historical, legal, and statistical analysis of Municipal
history, and of the situation before and after the 1835 Act ; and Dr. Joseph
Redlich's Englische Local- Verwaltung (1901 ; translated as English Local Govern-
ment, by J. Redlich and F. W. Hirst, 1903) affords an admirable critical
survey. The English reader will find in Surveys Historic and Economic, by Pro-
fessor W. J. Ashley, 1900, pp. 167-249, and in the History of Modern Liberty,
by J. Mackinnon, 1906, vol. i. pp. 142-144, a brief summary of the Municipal
theories of Savigny, Arnold, Nitsch, Gierke, Hegel, von Maurer, Keutgen, Flach,
Varges, von Below, Wilda, and Sohm ; see also " L'Origine des Constitutions
Urbaines au Moyeu Age," by H. Pirenne (Revue Historiquc, vol. liii., 1893, and
vol. Ivii., 1895).
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 263
tion. 1 The privilege of incorporation, with the rights of legal
personality and perpetual succession, and the use of a common
seal, had been granted by Charter or statute to all sorts of
bodies, religious, commercial, or educational, having no connec-
tion with local government. We cannot be sure that all the
existing or reputed Charters were genuine ; still less is it
beyond dispute what exactly they meant. The muniments of
Municipal Corporations are obviously incomplete, and have not
always been in proper custody. Moreover, many Corporations,
like those of the City of London, Bedford, and Oxford, claimed
to exist by mere prescription, and to have possessed Mayors,
Aldermen, or Burgesses, wielding extensive powers of govern-
ment, and enjoying large privileges, long prior to their receipt
of a Charter recognising their incorporation. It may possibly
be true, as Miss Bateson has urged, that, in strict law, some
formal act was necessary for the formation of a Borough.
" In the Middle Ages," it is said, " towns did not grow, but
were made. A village, just because it was a large one, could
not gradually come to be called a Borough any more than it
can nowadays. A definite legal act was necessary to sever it
from a Hundred, and give it a Hundred Court of its own.
Wherever we can go back to the beginning this formal act of
creation can be traced." 2 The trouble is that, just in those
cases in which we find no such legal act, there is no beginning
to go back to ; and we cannot simply assume that every
Municipal Corporation had its own Hundred Court. Many
towns, as we know, " long ago received a few Chartered privi-
leges from a mediaeval baron," who had declared that they
1 A list of 302 "cities, boroughs, and towns corporate" was appended to
the House of Commons Committee Report on Promulgation of the Statutes (Dec.
1796), but it does not seem to have been supplied to the Commissioners or
known by them, as it includes places into which they did not inquire, and
excludes others into which they did inquire. At least a third of the total
cannot be said to have had Municipal Corporations. The Commissioners them-
selves found the definition quite impossible. It would have been equally
impossible, we are told, to give any precise definition of a Municipal Borough
or a Municipal Corporation in the thirteenth century (History of English
Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 653). Comyns'
Digest could give no better definition than that " Borough imports an ancient
town of principal note, and which enjoys particular privileges " (first edition,
1762, vol. i. p. 613). "No accurately exhaustive list of our Corporate Boroughs
ever was or ever could be made " (Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland,
1898, p. 23).
2 Mcdiceval England, 1066-1356, by Mary Bateson, 1903, p. 125.
264
should be " Free Boroughs," and they were accordingly, though
without Hundred Courts of their own, " allowed a precarious
place on the roll of English Boroughs," l which might harden
into permanence. Others, again, like that of Arundel, did in
fact possess all the attributes of incorporation without having
at any time received any Charter whatsoever. " There were,"
it is true, things which a Borough " could not do unless it
obtained a privilege from the King. It could not, for example,
institute Coroners, for that would have disturbed the justiciary
scheme of the shire of which the Borough formed a part. It
could not declare that its own officers should do that work of
summoning, distraining, and arresting which had theretofore
been done, even within Borough walls, by the Sheriff. Nor
could it take from the Sheriff the power and duty of collecting
those rents and tolls which were due to the King." 2 But
none of these rights, as will hereafter abundantly appear, was
indispensable to a Borough or to a Municipal Corporation.
We might have expected to find some line of demarcation in
the completeness with which the particular urban community
had actually enfranchised itself, whether with or without a
Charter, from the control of its Lord. 3 But this, as we have
seen, would compel us to rank as Municipal Corporations
Birmingham and Newbiggin, where the Lord had long ceased
to intervene, and to omit from this class such Chartered Muni-
cipalities as Morpeth and Cardiff, where the Lord of the Manor,
notwithstanding the existence of Borough Justices of the Peace,
and even of Borough Quarter Sessions, was still the mainspring
of the constitution. Nor does the right to return representa-
tives to the House of Commons afford us any guidance.
Members of Parliament were elected by places which had
never been imagined to be Municipal Boroughs, or to possess
any sort of Corporate government, whilst many undoubted
Municipal Corporations never exercised this privilege. The
terms used in the various communities are equally distracting.
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 17.
2 The Charters of the Borough of Cambridge, by Mary Bateson, with intro-
duction by F. W. Maitland, 1901, pp. viii-ix.
3 Comparatively few of the couple of hundred undoubted Municipal Corpora
tions of 1689 were in towns which, like "the Leicester of Domesday Book,
stood, as a Free Borough should, on no man's land, and in no Hundred "
(Records of the Borough of Leicester, by Mary Bateson, vol. i., 1899, p. xii).
See The Domexdny Borowjhs, by A. Ballard, 1&04.
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 265
Some obvious Municipal Corporations had no Mayors and no
Aldermen, but merely a Bailiff just as Tetbury had ; a Port-
reeve like many a Devonshire village ; a Warden recalling a
hospital or a college ; or a pair of Bailiffs just as Birmingham
had. On the other hand, many a village, like Fishguard and
Overton, completely dependent on its Lord, and without
magisterial jurisdiction, called the petty officers appointed at
the Lord's Court by the high-sounding titles of Mayor and
Aldermen. Similarly, whilst some Municipal Corporations
knew nothing of burgage tenure, nor of Freemen or Burgesses,
Lords' Courts up and down the country swore in new Free-
holders and other immigrants as Burgesses or Freemen ; whilst
at Alnwick, which can rank only as a Manorial Borough,
there was, as we have seen, a numerous body of Freemen,
recruited by Birth, Apprenticeship, Marriage, and Co-option,
and organised into Trade Gilds, which dominated the town
government down to the middle of the nineteenth century.
Nor was the size or population of the town any certain guide.
There were Municipal Corporations in villages of a few
hundreds, or even of a few scores, of inhabitants ; whilst
flourishing communities, like Blakeney in Norfolk, during the
Middle Ages, and Manchester and Sheffield in the eighteenth
century, had noner Not all Municipal Corporations possessed
markets, whilst many places without pretension to incorpora-
tion had enjoyed them from time immemorial. 1 It may be
that, in the Middle Ages, the distinction turned on whether or
not the place paid to the subsidies at the rate of one- fifteenth
(like the rest of the County), or, as a Borough which the King
himself had created or recognised as existing by prescription,
at the rate of one-tenth. 2 But this arbitrary distinction,
which affords us, in the absence of complete lists of the
1 ' ' Considering the great part that the market plays in certain theories as
to the origin of Boroughs, it is noteworthy that of the forty-two markets
mentioned in Domesday Book, only eleven are situate in places that are called
Boroughs" (The Domesday Inquest, by A. Ballard, 1906, p. 181).
2 Mediaeval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait,
1904, p. 54. Thus the town of Stretton, in Rutland, being charged as a
Borough with its share of a tenth, appealed in 1453, and produced Royal
Letters Patent conceding to the inhabitants that they should not be charged to
tenths " with the King's Burghs and Towns of Ancient Demesne," notwith-
standing that they may have paid such in the past, but that they should be
"taxed and charged to all Quimiines and Quotas of Quiimmes together with
the men of the Geldablc" (Firma Luryi, by T. Madox, 1726, pp. 80, 81).
266 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
places which paid tenths instead of fifteenths, but little
historical guidance, fails us completely by 1689, when tenths
and fifteenths were alike obsolete. Similarly, we cannot, in
1689, take as our test the assumed distinction in the repre-
sentation at the ancient County Court or at the Assizes, where
the Township, it is said, appeared by the Eeeve and four men,
whilst the Borough came as an independent Hundred by its
own twelve men. 1 We come at last to the fact of enfranchise-
ment from the County officers, and this we think the really
significant attribute. Even this proves too indefinite to mark
off with any precision the Municipal Corporation from the
Manor. The whole of the individual type specimens that we
have described in the preceding five chapters resemble each
other and the true Municipal Corporations to be presently
analysed, in enjoying exemption from the jurisdiction of one
or other of the officers of the County. None of them, nor yet
the Municipal Corporations themselves (with the exceptions of
Haverfordwest, Berwick on Tweed, the City of London, and the
Liberty of the Cinque Ports), were wholly exempt from County
jurisdiction just as none of them, not even the City of
London, could exclude either the King's Judges on their
circuits, or the officers of the King's Courts at Westminster.
Nevertheless it is in this direction that we find the line of
demarcation for the period between 1689 and 1835, between
those members of the series which can, and those which
cannot, conveniently be classed as Municipal Corporations.
As we saw in our preceding volume, 2 it was the Justices of
the Peace who became, in the eighteenth century, the real
rulers of the County. Similarly, we find that it was the
Borough Justices of the Peace who, in this period, more and
more became the dominant influence in the Municipal Corpora-
tion. We shall therefore, in the following chapters, include as
true Municipal Corporations all those communities which,
whether by prescription or Charter, actually enjoyed the
privilege of clothing one or more of their members or officers,
1 In the sixteenth century St. Albans pleaded that it was a Borough
because it had sent members to Parliament. "A test by which, perhaps, they
really set more store was the sending of a Jury of twelve Burgesses to answer
for the Borough before the Justices in Eyre" (Afediceval England, 1066-1550,
by Mary Bateson, 1903, p. 396).
2 English Local Government, Vol. I., "The Parish and the County," Book II.
THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION 267
within the limits of the Borough, without personal appoint-
ment by the Crown, with the well-known powers elsewhere
given by the Commission of the Peace. 1 It is upon these
Boroughs numbering in England and Wales about two
hundred that we shall, for the rest of this volume, focus our
attention, 2 though we shall not abstain from citing the many
features in which the members of the series below this arbi-
trary line resembled those above it.
(a) The Instrument of Incorporation
To the lawyer of the seventeenth century, as to his
successor of to-day, it seemed clear that the privilege of
incorporation the creation of a fictitious person, as a legal
entity having perpetual succession could be obtained on)y
from some legal instrument; in fact, omitting the mediaeval
possibility of incorporation by the Pope and the modern inter-
vention of an Act of Parliament, 3 only by a grant from the
1 Merewether pointed out in 1822 that the holding of Petty Sessions has
been typical of incorporated Boroughs since, at any rate, the sixteenth century,
when the "tourn or leet" lost its criminal jurisdiction. A "usual clause in
Queen Elizabeth's Charters ... is that which makes the Mayor and some of
the Aldermen Justices of the Peace, and gives the Borough the power of holding
Sessions of the Peace " (A Sketch of the History of Boroughs and of the Cor-
porate Right of Election, etc., by H. A. Merewether, 1822, p. 22). Maitland,
too, drew attention to the importance of the special Royal Peace conferred on
fortified places as marking off the Borough from the village (English Historical
Review, vol. xi., 1896; Domesday Book and Beyond, 1897, pp. 184-185, 192-
193).
2 We estimate the number in England and Wales in 1689 as between 199
and 205, according to the view taken of certain anomalous cases. For even the
possession of magisterial jurisdiction does not afford an absolutely certain test.
In some cases, as we have seen among the Boroughs of Wales, it cannot be
stated with certainty whether any Corporate member or officer actually exercised,
or was legally entitled to exercise, magisterial powers. In a few other cases
(Brackley, Clun, Thornbury, etc.) magisterial powers had fallen completely
into disuse. In some Boroughs (those of the County of Durham, for instance)
the Corporate body could not create a Justice ; but its Mayor for the time being
was, as a matter of fact, always included, virtute offitio, in the Commission of
the Peace for the County. Omitting all these cases, we make the total of true
Municipal Corporations in 1689 to have been 199.
3 Statutes determining or modifying the constitutions of Municipal' Corpora-
tions were, of course, not unknown prior to 1689. The early Acts relating to
Southampton, Plymouth, Hull, and the City of London are notable examples,
whilst the governing Council of Northampton was changed from an elective to a
close body by Act of 1487. But such cases of statutory intervention were,
prior to 1689, comparatively rare. Nor must we quite ignore other formal
instruments. The whole question of the Instrument of Incorporation, and its
268 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
Crown, which was usually expressed in a Koyal Charter. It
might, therefore, be supposed that the constitutions of the
couple of hundred of Municipal Corporations of 1689 were all
definitely fixed and easily to be ascertained. This was very
far from being the case. By 1689 most Boroughs had
received successive Charters inconsistent with each other,
and it became open to question which of them was the more
authoritative. 1 This uncertainty as to which among several
Charters was to be considered the " Governing Charter " was
immensely increased by the events immediately preceding the
accession of William and Mary. 2 It does not fall within the
plan of this work to describe the assaults which had been
made, first, by Charles the Second, and then by James the
Second, upon the independence of the Municipal Corporations.
The proceedings taken against the Corporation of the City of
variation from age to age the relative prevalence and the particular degrees of
validity and scope of Seignorial Charters confirmed or unconfirmed by Royal
authority, Palatine Charters, Royal mandates directing constitutional changes,
Royal grants, Royal Letters Patent, Royal Charters of original grant or of con-
firmation, or of inspeximus of lost Charters, accepted or not accepted, surrendered
and enrolled or not enrolled, authorised or not authorised by statute, charitable
trusts or agreements enrolled in the Court of Chancery, decrees of that Court,
Gild ordinances enrolled by the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief Justice pursuant
to statute of 19 Henry VII. c. 7 (1503) or not so enrolled requires further
investigation. We have taken the Royal Charter as the most common instru-
ment. What we say as to the uncertainty as to what it prescribed, its omissions,
its frequent failure to prevail over contrary " immemorial " custom, and its sub-
sequent supersession by mere usage or the enactment of a By-law, all applies
equally, as far as we can make out, to the other formal documents by which
particular groups of persons assumed to become Corporations. The Municipal
Corporation Commissioners of 1835 obtained particulars of 1357 Royal Charters
to Municipal Corporations, to which a few more might be added. Of those
analysed, 61 dated from before the time of King John (1199) ; 566 from between
1199 and 1485 ; 598 from between 1485 and 1688 (the Tudors and Stuarts),
making 1297 in all prior to the Revolution. Between 1689 and 1835 only 60
were issued (Index to First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1839,
p. 104).
1 Thus, no fewer than nine Royal Charters had been granted to the Corpora-
tion of Havering-atte-Bower in Essex, from 1465 to 1665 ; but the Corporation
elected to act under those of 1465 and 1559, and ignored whatever in the others
was inconsistent with them (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. v. p. 2878). At Carlisle there had been "two Charters subsequent
to the Governing Charter, viz. 16 Charles II. and 36 Charles II. These, however,
were not accepted, and the Corporation always continued to a.ct under the former
Charter, 13 Charles I." (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1469 ; compare S. R. Gardiner's
Commonwealth, vol. iii., 1901, p. 260, etc.).
2 History of My Own Time, by Gilbert Burnef, 1833, vol. ii. p.' 332 ;
History of England, by L. von Rauke, 1875, vol. iv. pp. 169-171 ; State Trials,
vol. viii., 1810, pp. 1039-1388.
THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION 269
London in 1683, when the servile judges, on a writ of Quo
Warranto, pronounced the Corporation to have forfeited, not
only its privileges, but also its very existence, struck terror
into the hearts of Mayors, Aldermen, and Common Councillors
all over the kingdom. Most of the Corporations were induced
voluntarily to surrender their Charters, on the assumption
that they were in some way forfeit ; and to solicit new ones
from the Crown, in which power was reserved to remove
members or officers at will, whilst the appointment of the
more important officers was often made subject to the Eoyal
approval. Nor would it be worth while attempting to unravel
the complicated proceedings in the several Corporations during
these seven years. Charters were declared forfeit or were
voluntarily surrendered. " It was much questioned," says
Buruet, " whether these surrenders were good in law, or not." l
New Charters were given, and again revoked. Sometimes the
surrenders of the old Charters were formally enrolled ; some-
times this registration, supposed to be necessary to the validity
of the surrender, was neglected. Sometimes the new Charters
were formally accepted, sometimes not. In some cases they
were acted upon, in others not. Mayors, Aldermen, and
Councillors were sometimes appointed according to the new
constitutions, sometimes under the old ones. Those who were
obnoxious to Charles the Second, as being disaffected to the
Court, were removed in 1683-84; those who were obnoxious
to James the Second, as being hostile to Roman Catholicism
and the dispensing power, were removed in 1686-87 ; and it
was often uncertain whether the removals, together with the
consequent new appointments, were valid. When the invasion
of the Prince of Orange became imminent, James the Second
hastily restored the old Charters of the City of London, and
issued a proclamation purporting to restore the constitutions
of all the other Corporations, except those of which the
Charters had been declared forfeited by legal judgments, and
those of which deeds of surrender had been formally enrolled. 2
1 History of My Own Time, by G. Burnet, 1833, vol. ii. p. 332.
2 MS. Acts of Privy Council, 17th October and 1st November 1688. The
Charters of the Boroughs incorporated since 1679 were annulled. All Corpora-
tions of which deeds of surrender had not been enrolled, and which had not had
judgments entered against them, were to continue as Corporations, and were to
fill up vacancies, notwithstanding that the time for so doing had elapsed ; all
370 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
Some of them acted on this proclamation and some did not.
Those that were excluded from the proclamation were left in
a position of exceptionally doubtful legality. Some continued
to act on the Charters of James the Second, while others
treated them as null and void. 1 Eventually an Act of
Parliament declared the illegality of the judgment against the
Corporation of the City of London, and restored its rights and
privileges in the widest terms ; whilst for the next few years
the student of the archives of the Privy Council finds that
body busy with petitions about new Charters, or Letters
Patent deciding various points in dispute. 2 It was a necessary
consequence of the destructive proceedings of the seven years
1682-1688 that, for the whole of the eighteenth century,
hardly any Municipal Corporation could feel assured that any
particular element in its constitution, or any particular form
that it affected in its practice, would be upheld by the Courts
at Westminster, if any person chose to dispute an election. 8
members of such Corporations claiming by Charter, Letters Patent, or Grant,
since the surrender or judgment, were to be removed ; the Attorney-General was
to cancel the surrenders made but not enrolled ; all Corporations of which deeds
of surrender had been enrolled, or against which judgment had been duly entered,
were to have their ancient Charters restored, and the former members and
officers reinstated, etc. It is not clear exactly how much was supposed to be
effected by the proclamation itself as distinguished from the steps which it
promised should be taken. By a second proclamation, a fortnight after the
first, the Corporation of Exeter, which had been excepted from the first by mis-
take, was declared to be within its terms ; and the ancient Charters of four
other Corporations, against which judgment had actually been entered, or the
surrenders of which had actually been enrolled, were nevertheless declared to
be restored.
1 The Corporation of Oxford, which, besides older instruments, had Royal
Charters of 1606 and 1684, chose to ignore the latter, and only partially to act
on the former. On an information "filed by the Attorney-General in 1697 for
the purpose of enforcing a clause contained in it, the Corporation, in their answer,
disclaimed the obligation of that Charter, in any points which abridged their
previous liberties and privileges, and were supported in their position by the
judgment of the Court" (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 98).
2 MS. Acts of Privy Council, 1689-1699, relating to Winchester, Coventry,
Nottingham, Dunwich, Colchester, Plymouth, Bewdley, Southwold, Deal,
Tewkesbury, etc.
3 Thus Portsmouth found its Charter of 1684 upset when litigation arose,
on the technical point that the surrender of the previous Charter had not been
enrolled, and was therefore invalid ; whilst the invalidity of this surrender,
which had been recited as forming the consideration for the new Charter, made
the latter fail for want of consideration, and rendered its acceptance a nullity
(Butler v. Palmer, in Reports of Cases, etc., by William. Salkeld, pp. 190-191 ; see
Practical Treatise on the Laio of Corporations, by James Grant, 1850, p. 46).
The Corporation thereupon resumed under the old Charter (First Report of
THE INSTRUMENT OF 1NCORPORA TION 271
But there was a further ground for uncertainty as to what
was legally the constitution of a Municipal Corporation.
" During the Middle Ages," wrote Maitland, " the function of
the Eoyal Charter was not that of ' erecting a Corporation,' or
regulating a Corporation which already existed, but that of
bestowing liberties and franchises upon a body which, within
large limits, was free to give itself a constitution from time to
time. 1 ... It was very free ... to develop a conciliar
organ, one council or two councils, to define the modes in
which burgherhood should be acquired, to adopt the ballot or
the open vote, and generally to be as oligarchic or as democratic
as it thought fit. And at least from the fourteenth century
onwards a large use was made of this liberty. Elaborate
constitutions were established, and after a few years abolished,
and some of our Boroughs had revolutions enough to satisfy a
South American Eepublic." 2 Nor did these revolutions come
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 802). At Bewdley the new
Charter of 1685 was acted upon as valid for thirteen years, until, in the keen
struggle for power between the two great families of the town in 1708, a flaw
was discovered, litigation ensued, the Charter was declared void, and the old
Charter of 1606 was reverted to. In 1708, "At the single instance of a noble
lord, a new Charter was forced upon an ancient Corporation " (Speech made in the
House of Commons upon the late Ministry's forcing a New Charter on the Town
of Bewdley without a surrender of the Old, 1710, Somers' Tracts, vol. xii., 1814,
p. 671). The other party did not relinquish its hold, and " for two years, in con-
sequence of the Charters, Bewdley had two Corporations, and two Bailiffs who
fulminated against each other like rival Popes " (History of Bewdley, by John
R. Burton, 1883, pp. 44-45). With the change in the political complexion of
the House of Commons in 1710 came a resolution declaring the Charter of 1708
to be void. Steps were taken for its repeal ; but the restoration of Whig power
in 1714 found it still in being, and it was not subseqiiently disputed (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1771).
1 The "men" of Bedford, for instance, had received numerous Royal
Charters and Letters Patent varying and increasing their Corporate powers and
privileges, but none of them had denned the constitution (ibid. vol. iv.
pp. 2103-2105). The ancient Borough of Ludlow, governed by a "Twelve and
Twenty-Five " from time immemorial, and furnished with an array of Royal
Charters granting to the Bailiffs, Burgesses, and Commonalty the widest
range of liberties, franchises, and immunities, had no constitution fixed by Royal
Charter until that of 38 Elizabeth (1596). "Know ye that we, willing that
the aforesaid old and ancient manner and form of governing in the Town or
Borough aforesaid be from henceforth for ever inviolably in all respects duly
observed " appears as the preamble of the elaborate constitution prescribed in
that year (Copies of the Charters and Grants to the tmvn of Ludlow, n.d. pp. 103-
104). In 1537 Henry VIII. had issued what was called a "Decretal Order,"
confirming the ancient usage, and in 1597 the Court of Exchequer pronounced
another " Decretal Order" to the same effect (ibid. pp. 213, 222).
2 Cambridge Charters, by Mary Bateson, with introduction by F. W. Mait-
land, 1901, pp. viii, ix. The student of Charters will note that in all Charters
272 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
to an end in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century. Only
a small number of Corporations thought it worth while to
strengthen their position during the eighteenth century by
applying for new Charters. 1 But we could give innumerable
instances, in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of
radical changes in the constitution of particular Municipal
Corporations, brought about merely by the adoption of a new
By-law or standing order.
The most common of these changes during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries was exactly similar to that which
we have shown to have taken place at this very period in
numerous urban and rural Parish Vestries the establishment
of a Close Body to stand in the place of the general body of
Burgesses. The " Twenty-Four," recites one of these Municipal
By-laws, " shall be instead of the whole commonalty, and no
other of the commonalty to intermeddle upon pain of five
pound." ' A lesser revolution might be effected by a By-law
relating to the election or qualifications of the Common
Council, the Aldermen, or the Justices of the Peace; usually
of a restrictive tendency, either in transferring the right to
appoint to a smaller body, or limiting the persons eligible for
after the Restoration not only in the Charters granted by Charles II. and
James II. but also m those granted by William and Mary and by the subsequent
monarchs the exact constitution of the Municipal Corporation is the dominant
consideration. Few Municipal Corporations were, however, governed by these
later Charters, which usually effected only particular amendments of the local
constitutions.
1 Among them, Minehead in 1716, Pontefract in 1717, Lostwithiel in 1731,
Tiverton in 1737, Maidstone in 1743, Colchester in 1757, and Saltash in
1774. Most of these applications for new Charters to existing Municipal
Corporations were occasioned by some lapse in the succession of members or
officers, or some failure. to fulfil the obligations of the Corporation. See, for
Minehead, Home Office Domestic State Papers in Public Record Office, vol. v.,
1716; for Pontefract, ibid. vol. x. 30th September 1717, and MS. Acts of
Privy Council, vol. ii. p. 45, 17th October 1717 ; for Lostwithiel, ibid. vol. ii.
pp. 460, 624, 25th October 1731 and 20th April 1732 ; for Tiverton, new
Charter of 1737 ; for Maidstone, MS. Acts of Privy Council, vol. viii. pp. 316,
580, 617, etc., 15th February 1743, 7th November 1744, 8th January, 8th and
17th July 1745, 14th May 1747 ; for Colchester, ibid. vol. xvi. p. 620, etc.,
8th November 1757 and 9th February 1758, 21st December 1761, 2nd January
1762, and 29th April 1763 ; for Saltash, new Charter of 1774.
2 MS. Minutes, Corporation of Romney Marsh (Kent), 1604. By its ancient
Charter this Corporation comprised the whole commonalty of the Marsh, who
had, down to 1604, administered their affairs in public meeting, and chosen
from among themselves a Bailiff and ten Jurats. From that date the
whole work was done by the Close Body, filling vacancies in its own ranks by
co-option.
THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION 273
appointment. 1 Many of the officers actually at work in the
Municipal Corporations, exacting fees and controlling the
conduct of the inhabitants, had no better sanction for their
existence and activities than resolutions of the governing
body or immemorial custom. 2 And with regard to the
qualification to be required in a Burgess or Freeman, though
this was, in a sense, the very foundation of the Corporation,
the changes were so frequent and so casual that it is clear
that they were hardly regarded as alterations in the
constitution. 3 In the early years of the nineteenth century the
spirit of the age led a few close Corporations voluntarily to
open their ranks to a somewhat larger circle, by resolutions
reviving the assembly of Freemen in Common Hall, and by a
transfer to such assemblies of the election of some of the great
officers, and more or less of the administrative control. 4
1 Thus, at Maidstone, in 1764, the Common Council made a By-law
abrogating the right of Burgesses to vote either for Common Councillors or on
the admission of new Burgesses. This, however, was set aside by the Courts in
1766 (The Charters and other Documents relating to th-e King's Town and
Parish of Maidstone, by W. R. James, 1825, p. 228). A By-law of the Municipal
Corporation of Chester in the reign of Henry VIII. confined the choice of
Aldermen to members of the Close Body, although neither the previous nor the
subsequent Charters contained any such limitation. Notwithstanding litigation
on the point in 1735, the By-law continued in force down to 1835 (Gentleman's
Magazine, April 1735, vol. v. p. 217 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2622). So at Romsey, Hampshire, the Municipal
Corporation did not scruple, in 1742, to enact by By-law that the Aldermen
should henceforth be chosen only from among the Capital Burgesses, and the
Mayor only from among the Aldermen, although the Governing Charter of 1608
had imposed no such limitation, and had expressly made every Burgess eligible
for either place (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1331). At Cambridge, which had received
numerous Charters from the reign of Henry I. to that of Charles I., an extremely
complicated method of choosing the Mayor had been arranged by By-law as
early as 1345. This was varied by another in 1568, which was abrogated in
1786, when the old method was reverted to (Newling v. Francis, in Reports
of Cases, etc., by Durnford and East, vol. iii. p. 189 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2185 ; Practical Treatise on the Lav:
of Corporations, by James Grant, 1850, p. 81).
2 This does not apply merely to Constables, Ale-tasters, or Beadles inherited
from the Lord's Court or accreted from the Gilds and Companies, but also to
such powerful functionaries as the Chamberlains and Town Clerks of some
Municipal Corporations.
3 Thus, at Monmouth, where the Charters contained no provision as to the
admission of new Burgesses, both the method of admission and the qualifications
were altered from decade to decade according to the will of the dominant
majority (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i.
p. 324). The Corporation of Poole, Dorset, made residence obligatory (ibid.
vol. ii. p. 1321).
4 Tims, at Plymouth, Devon, a By-law of 1803 led to the four or five hundred
Freemen being summoned to Common Hall nearly every month, to elect the
VOL. II. PT. I T
274 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA T10N
There were, however, some Corporations, and not a few
institutions in many others, for which no better warrant was
claimed than prescription. Many of these, as we found to
be the case with the Close Vestries, we suspect to have had
their origin in By-laws adopted at comparatively recent dates,
the record of which had been lost or forgotten. " It was," we
are told, " in the fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign that
the judges, upon the application of the Privy Council,
determined that from usage, within time of memory, a By-law
may be presumed, restraining to a select body the right of
election of the principal corporators, though vested by the
ancient constitution in the popular assembly." l The Courts
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries continued to
accept long-sustained usage as evidence of there having been
a By-law instituting the practice. 2 We have accordingly to
relinquish the idea of discovering the constitutions of the
Municipal Corporations from their Charters, or of confining
our examination of them to what may be supposed to have
been the strict law. To the student of English Local
Government between 1689 and 1835, what is important is
what actually existed, not what subsequent lawyers might
eventually decide ought legally to have existed. With the
Municipal Corporation as with the Parish and the County, it
was the actual local usage that was significant, rather than
law and the lawyers. 8
Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, etc., and a standing Committee of twenty-one
(MS. Records, Plymouth Corporation, 1803-1835 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 579, 581). At Chipping Wycombe
(Bucks) a similar change was made in 1832 with regard to the election of new
Burgesses (ibid. vol. i. p. 41).
1 The Law of Municipal Corporations, by J. W. Willcock, 1827, p. 8.
2 Thus, at Nottingham, the choice of Aldermen was, in practice, confined to
members of the Close Body, with a tradition of a By-law prior to the earliest
records, which commence in 1575. "In 1810 this mode of election was called
in question in the case of the King against Ashwell, in which an information Quo
Warranto was granted." In proof of the alleged By-law, which could not be
produced, the defendant ' ' gave evidence of the usage of the Corporation as far
back as the records of the Corporation went. A verdict was given for the
defendant as to the fact of such a By-law having existed, and the Court of King's
Bench . . . held the By-law to be reasonable " (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1990 ; Reports of Cases, etc., by East,
vol. xii. p. 22 ; Practical Treatise on the Law of Corporations, by James Grant,
1850, p. 81).
3 In the nineteenth century, on the other hand, we iind the Courts
upholding the words of the Charters, as against the constant usage of the
Corporation. At Truro, for instance, when a Capital Burgess had been elected
CORPORA TE JURISDICTIONS 275
(6) Corporate Jurisdictions
Although not defining constitutions, the legal instruments
whether Seignorial Grants, Royal Charters and Letters
Patent, or deeds of agreement or trust enrolled in the Court of
Chancery were highly valued by the corporators who so
jealously preserved them under threefold lock and key in
ancient town chests. What these documents conveyed was
not only real estate, but also acquittances, immunities,
franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions. The character and
the constitution of the Corporate body was, as Haitian d suggests,
largely left to shape itself according to the concessions made
to it. The area over which the Municipal Corporation
extended, its membership, and the number and character of its
officers, for instance, were, as we shall see, dependent on the
kind and extent of the powers which it possessed. The
development, and even the structure of its governing body,
between 1689 and 1835, was, as will subsequently appear,
largely influenced by the amount of its property and by its
obligation or privilege of electing " Burgesses " to sit in the
House of Commons. Hence, before we proceed to our analysis
of the constitution of the Municipal Corporations, we must
make a rapid survey of the general character of the jurisdictions
that they exercised. Some Corporations, as we shall see,
possessed all these jurisdictions ; some only a selection among
them, with every variety of combination ; and some, again,
literally only one of them. The only jurisdiction, in fact,
that was universal to all Municipal Corporations, as we have
defined them, as it was the only one that was peculiar to them,
was that involved in the possession of a Corporate Magistracy.
One of the most important of the powers of the Municipal
Corporation of 1689 was that connected with real estate,
within or without the Borough ; a power which had come to
include a varied series of Corporate rights, amounting, over
certain lands in nearly every Borough, to complete ownership
according to custom, but contrary to the directions of the Charter of 1589, his
election, on being objected to, was, in 1823, declared void (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 657). So at Monmouth,
where the Common Council had long usurped the right to elect the Mayor,
which a Charter of 1550 had given to the Burgesses at large, the Courts, on
appeal made in 1818, upheld the right of the Burgesses, in spite of long-
continued usage (ibid. vol. i. p. 322).
276 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
in fee simple. There might still be traces, in the form of
burgage tenements held at fixed quit-rents which had become
nominal, of the earliest seignorial commutation of villein
service into money payments ; there might be remnants of
Corporate accountability for such quit-rents to the Crown or
other superior Lord ; the Borough itself might be held in
fee farm upon an annual payment. Moreover, among the
successive concessions by the Lord of the Borough there
would usually have been various Manorial customs as to the
administration of the commonfields, the stinting of the
pastures, and the utilisation of the waste, out of which the
emerging Corporation would have built up autonomous and
vaguely defined rights over all the land within its area, so
far as this had not been reduced to complete individual manage-
ment. 1 The entire complex of rights that we term the Manor
might even have been acquired by the Corporation, and witli
it, therefore, not only the power to hold Courts, to which we
shall presently allude, but also the right to estrays, escheats,
and other profitable incidents connected with land. But the
Corporation might own other real estate properly acquired
from a dissolved Gild or religious house, or simply purchased
from the King or other owner, or inherited from some pious
founder for the fulfilment of a trust or merely for the
" common good." It was for greater assurance in these cases
that the Charters so often expressly gave the Corporations the
right of holding, administering, and selling real estate.
But although the Borough had, even in 1689, nearly
always some interest in agriculture, it was, of course, pre-
dominantly a community of traders, master craftsmen, retail
shopkeepers or dealers of one sort or another, together with
1 It must not be forgotten that the typical Borough of 1689, like that of
the thirteenth century, still had, within its boundaries, " fields as the neigh-
bouring villages had fields ; vast, hedgeless, fenceless tracts of arable land, in
which the strips of divers owners lay interspersed ' hide meal and acre meal ' "
(Township and Boroiujh, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 4). The Borough of
Nottingham, for instance, extended over no less than 15 square miles, and
included, even as late as 1833, "a considerable quantity of forest, meadow, and
common land without the walls of the town" (First Report of Municipal Cor-
poration Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1985). The Borough of Queenborough,
in Kent, included about 240 acres of open land (Hid. vol. ii. p. 823) ; the
Corporation of Canterbury exercised jurisdiction over 4 square miles of rural
"liberties" (ibid. vol. ii. p. 709); that of Coventry over agricultural areas
20 miles in circumference (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1795).
CORPORATE JURISDICTIONS 277
their journeymen or assistants. Thus the "Association of
Producers" in agriculture had become gradually transformed
into an " Association of Producers " in commerce and manu-
facture. This transformation was reflected in the Corporate
jurisdictions. To the control of the land there was gradually
added a control of trading. We have seen this in its simplest
form in some of the most rudimentary Manorial Boroughs,
innocent of anything like Gild organisation, where the Mayor
would exact a fee from every newcomer who opened a shop.
We need not consider such vexed questions as, what was implied
in the grant of a Merchant Gild so frequent in the thirteenth
century, or in the rise of the Craft Gilds ; or how far the
Gild orders were confirmed by the clauses giving the Corpora-
tions the right to regulate artificers ; or superseded by the
Statute of Apprentices under which, as a matter of fact, the
eighteenth-century Corporation usually preferred to take its
proceedings to prevent "foreigners" (by which was meant
simply persons not " free " of the Corporation) from interfering
with the profits of the Burgesses.
The Burgesses of the Borough desired, however, to attract
to their town, under certain conditions, both sellers and buyers
from outside its area. This could best be done by the
Borough obtaining the right to have a Market on certain days
of the week or month, or a Mart or Fair on certain days
in the year. Hence we find this concession frequently made
by Lord or King to the Municipal Corporation, though, as we
have mentioned, it was by no means exclusively confined to
Corporate towns. The privilege might be the right to establish
a new Market or Fair, or merely the transfer of the ownership
in a previously existing Market or Fair. This Franchise was,
even after the Eestoration, still an object of ambition in a
town aspiring to become a Municipal Corporation. " Our
being dependent on Sandwich," said the inhabitants of Deal,
in 1698, "for every article of food, places the people in a
very great strait, incapacitates the ship-agents and boatmen in
sending daily supplies to the shipping, and enhances the
price, causing general complaint among the whole population,
now exceeding three thousand souls." l But it was more than
1 Reasoiisfor seeking a Charter for Deal, 1698 ; reprinted in History of Deal,
by S. Pritchard, 1884, p. 146.
278 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
a matter of convenience. A weekly market not only saved
the inhabitants the trouble and expense of taking their wares
or their custom to another centre, but also furnished the
Corporation with new sources of revenue and power.
But in the period between 1689 and 1835, the most
notorious of all the privileges and franchises of a Municipal
Corporation, was that possessed by the majority of them of
returning their own " Burgesses " to sit in the House of
Commons. This had formerly been an onerous obligation, or,
if an advantage, it was mainly in being exempt in the matter
from the jurisdiction of the County Sheriff and from the duty
of contributing to the expenses of the Knights of the Shire.
By 1689, however, and still more between 1760 and 1832, it
had become a valuable privilege, with important results, to be
afterwards described, upon the constitution and administration
of those Corporations which possessed it.
We pass now to the administration of justice in its
various branches, the most prized among Municipal jurisdic-
tions. It was, as we shall subsequently show, this function
more than any other that determined the evolution of the
working constitution of the Municipal Corporation and its
relation to the local inhabitants. For the moment it must
suffice to point out that the right to hold a Court of Justice
was an integral part of many of the Franchises that we have
already described. The mere concession by the Lord to his
tenants of any measure of autonomy in the administration of
their land was frequently accompanied by permission to hold
their own Court for the settlement of cases of debt and
trespass among themselves. 1 When the Burgesses acquired
the Manor itself, they obtained with it the right to hold the
Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court Baron. Similarly,
the grant of a Market or a Fair implied the right to determine
the disputes and punish the defaults of buyers and sellers,
either in distinct tribunals, such as the Court of Pie Powder
1 Jurisdiction in civil suits often limited to personal actions, and still more
frequently to actions of small amount, but in about fifty towns extending to all
actions of any amount was exercised in 1689 by nearly all Municipal Corpora-
tions, there being, as far as we can make out, only about a dozen exceptions.
Among these were Bossiney, Brading, Chesterfield, Glastonbury, Kidderminster,
Louth, Macolesfield, Pembroke, and Pevensey. In some Boroughs the Court
Baron of the Lord still exercised civil jurisdiction.
CORPORA TE JURISDICTIONS 2^9
or the Court of the Clerk of the Market, or in such other
Courts as the Borough possessed. Nor did the jurisdiction of
the Borough Courts stop at those Borough boundaries which
were annually perambulated with so much ceremony. Some
of the market jurisdictions, for instance, extended miles
beyond. A Municipal Corporation, too, might own land
outside its own Borough, and might even be, in its corporate
capacity, Lord of a Manor, the Bailiff to whom a " Bailiwick "
had been granted, or the Steward or Lord of a Hundred.
The King, moreover, had often conceded to the Corporation
express jurisdiction of particular kinds over wide stretches of
land, many miles of river, and even adjacent parts of the sea.
The Mayor might be " Conservator " of this or that river, or
" Admiral " over a whole estuary, entitled to exercise specific
civil and criminal jurisdiction even over other Boroughs.
The investment of one or more members of a Municipal
Corporation with the well-known powers and authorities else-
where conferred by the Commission of the Peace brings us to
a new range of jurisdiction. The function of creating a
Magistracy for the town of holding Petty Sessions, and even
Quarter Sessions was, as our subsequent chapters will
abundantly show, the most potent of Municipal Franchises.
To say that it characterised all Municipal Corporations
whatsoever, is merely to repeat that we have made the
possession of this Franchise the logical differentia of the class.
However elaborate may have been the organisation of a
Borough and however complete its autonomy, we have left it
behind us as a Manorial Borough unless it could clothe one
or more of its citizens with the jurisdiction of a Justice of the
Peace. After 1689, indeed, the desire of a town to have its
own Magistrates was the most frequent reason for seeking a
Charter. 1 But even this essential characteristic does not
furnish us with a sharp dividing line. The Portreeve or
1 The inhabitants of Deal, in their Reasons for seeking a Charter (1698),
stated " that they are obliged to go to . . . Sandwich, whenever they need a
J.P. for signing Poor's Cess, removal of paupers, etc. ; and sometimes from
caprice these things have been denied us ; ... that Sandwich puts upon us
fines for licences of public-houses and does whatever it pleases, and keeps that
money, and returns none of it to us, which would assist our rates if we were
separated from that place ; . . . Sandwich monopolises all law and justice "
(MS. Records, Corporation of Deal ; History of Leal, by S. Pritchard, 1864,
pp. 144, 146).
280 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
Bailiff of many a Manor or " Lord's Borough " often assuming
the title of Mayor claimed vague rights of acting as " Con-
servator of the Peace," whatever this might mean ; and even
felt himself warranted, by the ambiguous way in which the
statutes had sometimes referred to the Mayors, in acting as a
Justice. 1 Even more perplexing from the standpoint of
classification were those Boroughs which had no right to
create their own Corporate Justices, but which had, as a
matter of fact, acquired the privilege of having the Mayor
for the time being, and even some other members of the
Corporation, invariably included in the Commission of the
Peace for the County at large. There might even be a
separate Commission of the Peace issued for the Borough ;
and if this separate Commission was continued decade after
decade, it might make the Manorial Borough almost in-
distinguishable in practical working from a Municipal Corpora-
tion. On the other hand, there were genuine Municipal Corpora-
tions in which,- although a Corporate Magistracy nominally
existed, this had become attenuated by disuse, or had even
fallen into abeyance. The Borough Court of Quarter Sessions
was not infrequently allowed to lapse. Sometimes even the
Borough Petty Sessions became merged in that held in the
town by the County Justices for the surrounding district.
Such Municipal Corporations were in process of retrograding
to the status of a Manorial Borough, or even to that of a
mere Lord's Court.
The criminal jurisdiction exercised by these Corporate
Justices varied greatly in scope. At the bottom of the scale
stood those Corporations nearly forty in number which
had no Court of Quarter Sessions and had been granted power
to try and punish only such offences as fell within the jurisdic-
tion of Petty Sessions ; such as drunkenness and disorderly
conduct, minor assaults, and the ever-growing series of
nuisances which the statutes allowed to be dealt with
summarily. Persons accused of graver offences had to be
committed for trial at the County Quarter Sessions or the
1 Thus Dinas Mawddwy, a place which had no Charter, and was governed by
its Lord's Court, had a Mayor, chosen by the Leet Jury from among three
persons named by the Lord's Steward. This Mayor -granted ale-house licences
ab if he were a Justice (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. p. 2673).
CORPORA TE JURISDICTIONS 28 1
Assizes. 1 Next in order came those Corporations 2 where the
Justices could try and punish all misdemeanours, however
grave, but not even the smallest felonies. Others 3 could try
and punish all felonies "not affecting life or member," or all
felonies except manslaughter and murder. 4 Above these
stood the Corporations 5 in which the Justices could deal with
all felonies whatsoever in one case 6 even expressly including
high treason.
A more definite sliding scale of jurisdictions, by which
one Municipal Corporation was distinguished from another,
was the degree of its emancipation from the jurisdiction of
the Justices of the County at large. The lowest grade of
Municipal Corporations in this respect were those about
1 Among the Corporations which had no higher jurisdiction than this were
Chesterfield (First Keport of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii.
p. 1790) ; Graveseud (ibid. vol. v. p. 2866) ; Ripon (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1710) ;
and Truro (ibid. vol. i. p. 657). But it is to be noted that, however restricted
might be the criminal jurisdiction of the Borough Justices, they had, in all
other respects, the full powers of a County Justice so far as the Borough area
was concerned. In one respect, indeed, the Justices of the Peace of the most
insignificant Borough were in a superior position. ' ' The authority of these
is not revocable as the Commission of the Peace is " (The Justice of Peace, by
Theodore Barlow, 1745, p. x).
2 About fifteen in number, in all but four of which the jurisdiction was
exclusive.
3 About eighty-seven in number, in two-thirds of which the jurisdiction was
exclusive.
4 Leeds (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii.
p. 1621).
6 About forty-seven in number, all but three (Boston, Buckingham, and
Wallingford) having exclusive jurisdiction.
6 Chester (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2623), by the so-called "Crown-mote Court." It
is to be noted that the extent of the criminal jurisdiction enjoyed by a Municipal
Corporation was often out of all proportion to its size and importance in 1689,
still more so in 1835. Among the Corporations entitled to try all
felonies were not only those of most of the English shire towns, Counties
Corporate, and Cinque Ports (though some of each of these classes were restricted
to felonies not touching life or limb), but also such small towns as Dunwich,
Eveshara, Maldon, Romney Marsh, and Southwold, and (concurrently with the
County Justices) Buckingham and Wallingford. The tiny Corporation of Ban-
bury in Oxfordshire had had a gallows formally granted to it, and its Justices
at the Borough Quarter Sessions long tried even capital cases. An execution by
their sentence took place about 1746 (ibid. vol. i. p. 11). On the other hand,
Carmarthen (a County Corporate), Maidstone (a shire town), and so important a
residential centre as Bath, were restricted to misdemeanours. " The want of all
power to try felonies," we are told in 1833, "has been long felt at Bath, as an
evil of serious importance. With a population exceeding 50,000 in the city and
immediate neighbourhood the most trifling case of larceny must be sent to be
tried at the County Quarter Sessions or Assizes, which are held at Wells,
Bridgwater, and Taunton, at the distance of 18, 39, and 50 miles respectively
from Bath" (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1116).
282 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
thirty-five in number in which the Borough Justices had
only concurrent jurisdiction in the town along with the County
Justices, and could only hold Petty and Special Sessions.
A higher stage was that of having exclusive jurisdiction within
the Borough for a Borough Court of Quarter Sessions,
whether in respect of misdemeanours only, or also of felonies.
The highest of all these Corporate jurisdictions was possessed
by those Boroughs over forty in number which absolutely
excluded the Justices of the County at large from any inter-
meddling with cases of even the gravest felonies that arose
within the Borough ; three or four of which not only held
their own Courts of Quarter Sessions, but also regular Sessions
of Oyer and Terminer and of Gaol Delivery. 1
From the standpoint of the Municipal Corporation, the
right to administer civil and criminal justice carried with it
three inestimable privileges immunity from attendance at
the Courts held in other places and by other authorities, the
settlement of all cases by the Corporate officers themselves,
and the retention by the Corporation of the fees, fines, and
other compulsory payments by plaintiffs and defendants.
What those inhabitants who were not members of the
Corporation most appreciated was the saving in time, trouble,
and expense caused by having a tribunal on the spot, with
magistrates always at hand. It was the popular appreciation
of this Municipal service that inspired most of the petitions
for incorporation between 1689 and 1835. On the other
hand, the monopoly of this magisterial power possessed by
the Close Body, together with the partiality and oppression to
which, in a few of the worst cases, this gave rise, were among
the grievances of the Municipal Eeformers of 1832-35.
An incident in this local administration of justice, as we
have already seen in the Court of the Manor and in the
1 Exeter held sessions of Gaol Delivery (First Report of Municipal Corpora-
tion Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 490) ; Bristol, of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol
Delivery (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1171). Southampton held sessions of Oyer and
Terminer and Gaol Delivery, apparently under a special Commission from the
Crown, down to 1725 ; and claimed that its Town Clerk should officiate, without
the Clerk of Assize. We see the Corporation arranging for such separate sessions,
possibly held by the Recorder, from time to time. Since 1725, however, the
town has been simply included in the Western Circuit of the Judges (Speed
MSS. pp. 73-74, in MS. Records, Southampton Corporation ; History of
Southampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883, p. 188).
CORPORA TE JURISDICTIONS 283
Manorial Borough, was the power of prescribing in advance
what should be the obligations of the inhabitants. It was, as
we have seen, taken for granted that the Court which dealt
with individual cases should also formulate By-laws. Nor do
we find, in fact, that the autonomous Courts of the Municipal
Corporation exercised in this capacity any more extensive
legislative powers than did the Courts of the Manorial Borough,
or even those of the Hundred or the Manor. All alike
regulated the use of the common lands. All alike defined
what would be punished as a public nuisance. All alike
formulated particular obligations of the individual inhabitant
to do what the common good required. If the Municipal
Corporation had obtained the insertion, in one of its Charters,
of a clause giving express power to make By-laws, this gave
no new sanction, and did not even extend the scope of its
law-making power beyond that actually exercised by a
Lord's Court. In one direction, it may be thought that the
Municipal Corporation had an additional By-law-making power,
namely, in the regulation of artificers. We do, indeed, find
that By-laws made by the Corporate body, or by a Gild with its
sanction, regulating apprenticeship, the right to trade, the
quality of the wares, and the charges to be made for specific
services, were, between 1689 and 1835, much more frequently
characteristic of Municipal Corporations than of Manorial
Boroughs ; whilst such regulations were almost unknown in
the Courts of Manors. We find, too, the Municipal Corporations,
even in the eighteenth century, making new constitutions for
their Trade Companies, and actually incorporating new ones for
the regulation of particular trades. 1 But the examples of
Alnwick and Sheffield sufficiently prove that both Gild
structure and trade regulation might exist in places dependent
only upon Seignorial Charters, and still under the dominion of
the Lord of the Manor. The only real advance in the
legislative power of the Municipal Corporation, as compared
with that of a Lord's Court or a Manorial Borough, was, in
1 As in the City of London, Dover (MS. Records, Dover Corporation, 23rd
July 1713), Bristol (MS. Records, Bristol Corporation, 17th November 1714),
and Exeter (MS. Records, Exeter Corporation, 30th March and 22nd December
1685, 23rd August 1737). At Gateshead, as perhaps at other Boroughs in the
County of Durham, which we have classed as Manorial Boroughs, Gilds had
been incorporated by separate Charters from the Bishop as Lord Palatine.
284 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
fact, that exercised by its Justices of the Peace, and this was
analogous to that already described in the Quarter Sessions
of the County.
The power of the Municipal Corporation to levy taxation
sprang, it need hardly be said, from the jurisdictions that we
have described. We may pass rapidly over the right of the
Corporation to assess upon its own members or . upon the
burgage tenants, their shares of fee farm rent or other
Corporate liability; and no less rapidly over such mediaeval
powers of levying taxation over all the householders of the
Borough as were involved in the Eoyal or statutory grants of
murage or pavage. More significant to us, as regards tho
Municipal Corporation of 1689, is its power to levy taxes
within its area on the persons buying or selling, or exercising
a craft. This fiscal power might be connected either with the
concourse of traders and customers at its Market or Fair, or
with the monopoly of trading enjoyed by its Burgesses.
We may regard as merely a development of this power of
levying contributions upon the operations of traders, such not
infrequent Corporate rights as the exaction of petty customs,
" thorough toll " or " toll traverse," and various forms of octroi,
whether derived merely from prescription, from ancient
Manorial rights, or from Eoyal grant. What is significant in
all these Municipal taxes on trading is the series of exemptions
from them enjoyed by the members of the Corporation, or
by other privileged groups of traders, master craftsmen, or
journeymen ; coupled with powers, in one or other authority,
of regulating admission to these privileged circles, or of
levying extra taxation on those who were excluded from them.
Closely connected with these powers and immunities within
the area of the Corporation was a series of immunities, enjoyed
by members of the Corporation under Eoyal grants, from
some or all of the analogous powers of taxation exercised
by the Corporations of other Boroughs, an exemption some-
times so extensive as to free the privileged citizens from such
local taxation throughout the King's dominions. Hence by
1689, though the widest of these exemptions was becoming
somewhat difficult to enforce, there was not only a prefer-
entially taxed class within the Borough; but also, in strict law,
small and scattered sets of licensed " free traders " passing to
CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS 285
and fro amid an intricate network of local octrois covering no
small proportion of the Kingdom. But, just as we have seen
with the By-law-making power, all these taxes and immunities
occur among Manorial Boroughs, and even mere Manors for
instance, those in Ancient Demesne 1 as well as among
Municipal Corporations. What was peculiar to Municipal
Corporations, and that only to those which could hold Courts
of Quarter Sessions to the exclusion of the County Justices,
was the power to tax for gaols, maintenance of prisoners,
vagrants, etc., by a County Rate ; or (in the case of Boroughs
not being Counties of themselves) by a rate " of the nature of
a County Eate."
(c) Corporate Obligations
To the member of a Municipal Corporation this organisa-
tion seemed, as we have indicated, a complex of immunities
and franchises, rights and privileges, which might, in their
extent and variety, be equivalent to a valuable Corporate
income. To the King and his ministers, as we may believe,
the Municipal Corporation appeared in another light. Besides
the Corporate jurisdictions, which were sources of advantage
and privilege, there were onerous Corporate duties to be
performed and burdensome Corporate responsibilities to be
fulfilled. To the mediaeval statesman, we may imagine, the
Municipal Corporation was, like the County and the Parish,
primarily an organ of obligation, by means of which, in
particular localities, the services required by the community as
a whole could be performed and exacted. There was, to
begin with, some Corporate payment to be made in com-
mutation of, or in substitution for, the tribute formerly
exacted from individuals. 2 The exemption from the jurisdiction
of the County Sheriff was accompanied by a corresponding
1 For the peculiar privileges of Manors in Ancient Demesne, see pp. 22, 183.
2 The Corporation of Southampton, which had in the Middle Ages enjoyed a
valuable trade with the Mediterranean, paid 200 a year. " In 1552 the
King ordered that when the customs of the port did not amount to 200, and
no ships called carracks of Genoa and galleys of Venice should enter the port to
load or unload, the town should . . . pay . . . only 50. To this day
certificates are still prepared every year on 9th November that no carracks of
Genoa nor galleys of Venice have arrived at the port" (Town Life in the
Fifteenth Century, by A. S. Green, 1894, vol. ii. p. 305 n. ; History of the Customs
Revenue, by Hubert Hall, 1885, vol. i. pp. 134, 310, vol. ii. p. 114).
286 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
obligation to collect the King's revenue and to execute the
King's writs within the limits of the Borough. The Head of
the Corporation, if he enjoyed precedence and social consider-
ation inside his Borough, was also the officer to whom the King
addressed his orders, and upon whom rested the responsibility
for the Borough. In the Middle Ages the Municipal
Corporation had been responsible, if not for the defence of the
Borough against a foreign enemy, at any rate for the upkeep
of the wall and the provision of the necessary " harness "
and arms to equip the citizens ; an obligation succeeded by
that of duly keeping the Nightly Watch, and above all of
maintaining the King's Peace within the Borough and
enforcing the laws of the land. The obligation to send one
or two Burgesses to sit in Parliament, and to pay their wages,
was part of the burden of the Corporation ; special obligations
were incurred in connection with grants of Pavage and
Murage, 1 of Lastage and Pontage, of Markets and Fairs, of
Bridge Tolls and Ferries. It was in order to enable the
Municipal Corporation to fulfil its Corporate obligations that
it was empowered to command and enforce the personal
service of its members in any of its offices, and to levy upon
them such taxation as might be necessary. Nor was this
Corporate obligation only nominal. Frequent cases show that
any failure of a Municipal Corporation to fulfil any of its
responsibilities, or neglect of any of its duties, might be
sharply punished by a fine leviable on any member of the
Corporation, by imprisonment of its Head or other officers,
by the Borough being temporarily " taken into the King's
hands " and exposed to the tyrannies and exactions of his
officers, and even by the forfeiture of the privilege of incor-
poration itself. 2 Moreover, in addition to these national
obligations, the Municipal Corporation had, in nearly every case,
1 The grant of petty customs or other dues might be coupled witli an
obligation to perform particular services ; thus it was alleged that the valuable
dues levied by the Bristol Corporation had originally been granted " for the
paving of the city, for the repairs of the city walls and of the Quays purposes
and objects which have all long ceased, or for which other and most ample
rates are provided by the Legislature" (Felix Farley's Journal, 1826).
2 In 1341, as the Municipal Corporations of Hythe and Romney had not
provided the ships which they were required to find, "the collector of the subsidy
as well as the King's collectors of wool in Kent, were ordered to ignore their
Franchises, and tax them just like other men " (Cinque Ports, by Montagu
Burrows, 1888, pp. 140-141).
CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS 287
undertaken more or less responsibility in the capacity of what
we may call Public Trustee. It had often received grants of
land or bequests, charged with payments for this or that
charitable and public object, or left generally in trust for the
poor. It had in many towns succeeded to, or stepped into the
shoes of, religious Gilds, and had made itself more or less
responsible for continuing part of their work. A large part
of what afterwards became the statutory provision for the
poor was, down to the sixteenth century, provided by the
Municipal Corporation. 1 It had established, often by means
of gifts, collections, or bequests, causeways and bridges,
hospitals for the aged, schools for boys, and other public
services, for the maintenance of which it had incurred a
moral if not a legal responsibility. Down to the end of the
sixteenth century, when the administrative functions of the
Parish and the County were still small in amount, the couple
of hundred Municipal Corporations were performing, we may
estimate, the greater part of all the services of Local Govern-
ment that existed.
By 1689, however, though considerable remnants of these
Corporate responsibilities still remained, they had very largely
lapsed. The particular duties which the Municipal Corporation
had undertaken had, one after another, become attenuated or
entirely disappeared. The old duty of the defence of the
Borough against a foreign enemy had passed out of memory.
The fee farm rent, or other annual payment for the Borough,
had, with the alteration in the value of money, become almost
a nominal charge, and had often been redeemed. The
maintenance of the poor had been taken over by the Over-
seers of the parishes under the Elizabethan statute. The
obligation of finding Burgesses to sit in Parliament had changed
from being a costly burden into a much valued privilege,
which might be profitable to the Borough, if not even a
source of pecuniary gain to the Corporation itself. Many
other obligations had become obsolete, or continued only as
matters of routine. The King, moreover, and his ministers
no longer importuned the Municipal Corporations with
commands ; and ceased, in the eighteenth century, even to
hold them in any practical way responsible for the Boroughs.
1 Early History of Eiujlisli Poor Relief, by Miss E. M. Leonard, 1900.
288 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
To the Hanoverian Monarchs, as to Sir Robert Walpole and his
successors, it never occurred to connect the existence of a
Municipal Corporation with any responsibility for meeting
even the long-standing requirements of its Borough, still less
the new or changing needs of the inhabitants. The one duty
of the Corporation that was still recognised was that of
providing the local Magistracy, and even this was not
enforced. If a Municipal Corporation let this duty drop, and
allowed its criminal jurisdiction, like its civil tribunals, to fall
into abeyance if it ceased to hold Quarter Sessions, and let
its Petty Sessions dwindle into mere opportunities for com-
mitting offenders for trial elsewhere the County Justices
were always ready to take up the work, and virtually to
reabsorb the Borough in the County. And apart from this
provision of a Corporate Magistracy, the function of a Municipal
Corporation as an organ of national obligation was, by the end
of the eighteenth century, almost forgotten.
(d) The Area of the Corporation
Paradoxical as it may seem, the Municipal Corporation
had, in the vast majority of cases, no one area over which it
exercised authority. A Municipal Corporation, like the
Manor and unlike the Parish and the County, was, in fact,
not primarily a territorial expression. It was a bundle of
jurisdictions relating to persons, and only incidentally to the
place in which those persons happened to be. The persons
were, it is true, always assumed to be connected with some
geographical centre they were the " Burgesses," the
"Approved Men," the "Mayor, Masters, and Councillors,"
or "the Mayor, Jurats, and Commonalty," of some Borough
or City. But it follows from our account of the acquittances,
franchises, liberties, and immunities which comprised the
total jurisdiction of a Municipal Corporation, that the areas
over which authority was exercised might differ widely for
the different powers, and might in some cases be susceptible
of no geographical definition whatever. It is true that, where
a Municipal Corporation had no other powers or functions
than those of local Magistracy, its area may be said to have
been strictly that part of the County within which its Justices
THE AREA OF THR CORPORATION 289
exercised their authority. But beyond this simple form, every
additional jurisdiction, it is scarcely too much to say, involved,
for its operation, a separate and different geographical area.
Thus we find Municipal Corporations wielding this or that
power over the areas of one or more Manors ; other powers
over the areas of one or more Parishes. 1 Their Market,
Conservancy, and Admiralty jurisdictions might extend for
miles into adjacent Counties ; far up rivers and creeks, and
along estuaries and seas ; including wide stretches of upland
and commons, scattered hamlets and fishing-ports. The area
within which some of their immunities might be enjoyed
to which, therefore, their power of securing exemption
potentially extended was actually co-extensive with the
Kingdom. It was even wider. There was one at least of
the Municipal Franchises that had no geographical limits
whatever, though it is precisely the one which to-day we
associate most directly with definite boundaries, namely, the
right to return Burgesses to sit in Parliament. Not a few
Municipal Corporations made wide use of their power of
admitting to membership persons residing elsewhere, and they
could have extended the right to share in their political
franchise to all British subjects wherever domiciled. Thus,
the geographical extension of a Municipal Corporation can be
represented only by an indefinite number of circles, differing
among themselves from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. One of
these as we think the most important was the area over
which the Corporate Justices exercised their magisterial
powers. This it was, generally coincident with an older
1 In a few exceptional instances one or other of the Chief Officers of a
Municipal Corporation had even jurisdiction extending far beyond any of its
ordinary boundaries. We shall mention subsequently the jurisdiction exercised
by the Coroners and other officers of the Corporations of the Cinque Ports over
their Non-Corporate "Limbs" or "Members." The Mayor of Wareham in
Dorsetshire, who was ex-officio Coroner for that Borough, exercised the powers
of Coroner also over Brownsea Island and the whole of the so-called Isle of
Purbeck (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii.
p. 1360). We do not know whether this fact, or that of Poole being a County
of itself, has any connection with there having occasionally been a separate
Lord- Lieutenant for the Isle of Purbeck, and a separate Commission of the Peace
for Poole. The Corporations of Wareham and Poole were always quarrelling
about their respective rights in Poole Harbour, the one to be exempt from
" Keyage," the other to levy it (see, for instance, MS. Acts of Privy Council,
10th February, 20th May, 15th June, and 20th July 1664).
VOL. II. PT. I U
2QO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Manorial or Parochial area, 1 that was usually regarded as
specially the Borough or City, the boundaries of which were
periodically perambulated with so much pomp. It is the area
of this jurisdiction that we find some Municipal Corporations,
both before and after 1689, intent on extending by Royal
Charter, in order to prevent the upgrowth, sometimes of rival
authorities, sometimes of lawless Alsatias, through the neglect
of the County Justices, or their scarcity around the busy
trading port or inland manufacturing centre.
This particular area it was, too, that, in two or three
dozen towns, we find divided into Wards, divisions of great
antiquity and unknown origin, which were, more frequently
than not, non-coincident with the numerous small Parishes
into which the larger Boroughs were usually parcelled out.
The number of Wards might be two, four, five, six, eight,
twelve, twenty-one, or twenty-five ; and, contrary to a
common impression, we do not find that this division had, in
the majority of cases, any connection with the Aldermen of
the Corporation. 2
1 This area was sometimes (as at Leeds and Maidstone) coincident with a whole
Parish ; sometimes, as in most of the older shire towns or cathedral cities, it
included several Parishes (in the City of London, over a hundred) ; in many of
the smaller Boroughs it was (as we have seen in the cases of so many Manorial
Boroughs) confined to one Township of a Parish, or to one Manor. But
occasionally the area was defined by Charter quite irrespective of any of these.
The Municipal Corporation of Penzance, for instance, exercised its jurisdictions
within exactly half a mile radius from a central point {infra, Chap. VIII. ; First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 571).
2 It may, of course, be true of those particular towns, that, " in London, as in
Norwich, Yarmouth, Ipswich, and Canterbury, Aldermanries, Wards, and Leets
were in fact synonymous " (History of Boroughs and Municipal Corporations, by
H. A. Merewether and A. J. Stephens, 1835, vol. i. p. 549). But this does
not nowadays appear quite so certain as it did. It is true that besides the
better-known cases above mentioned, the Municipal Corporation of Salisbury
had five persons called Aldermen, chosen by the Corporation on Charter Day,
who, by tradition, ought to have presented all misdemeanours and disorders in
the several Wards to which they were assigned, and who had formerly super-
intended the ' ' victualling " of the population. So at Wilton. At Canterbury the
Aldermen were even more definitely connected with the Wards, to each of which
two were assigned. In each Ward they held a Court annually, of the nature of a
Court Leet or Wardmote, at which Constables and Borsholders were appointed.
In "1719, the Aldermen were paid forty shillings each towards holding the
Courts at their respective Wards " (Canterbury in the Olden Time, by John
Brent, 1879, p. 105 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 699). So, too, at Winchester, Aldermen were assigned one to each
Ward ; and at Exeter, two to each Ward. On the .other hand, no such connec-
tion can be traced in various other Boroughs, such as Pembroke, which
had two Wards ; Ruthin, St. Albans, Ludlow, and Monmouth, which each
THE AREA OF THE CORPORATION 291
What was, however, almost universal was a connection
between the Ward, the provision of a Constable and the
obligation of defence, or at least of service in the Nightly
Watch. In one small Borough where the Corporation was at
one time under obligation to find, when required, twenty-one
ships for the King's service, the Borough was deliberately
divided into twenty-one Wards for this purpose, each Ward
being required to provide one ship, and being requited by the
privilege of having one packet-boat in the profitable passage
service to and from the French coast. 1 But however the
Wards had been formed, they were, in 1689, commonly made
use of for the appointment of Constables and the organisation
of the Watch, and they were not infrequently each placed (as
we have seen to be the case also in such an unincorporated
Parish as Braintree and in such a Manorial Borough as the
City of Westminster), under the individual charge of one of the
Members of the Governing Council it might be a Jurat or
Alderman, it might be a mere Common Councilman 2 who
acted as " Captain of the Watch," or at any rate was
responsible for " setting the Watch," and was exempted from
had four ; Alnwick, Carmarthen, Oswestry, and Reading, which had five ;
Llandovery, which had six ; or Haverfordwest, which had eight. York had
only four Wards, though it had twelve Aldermen ; Brecon had twelve Wards
though it had fourteen Aldermen ; Chester twelve Wards though it had
twenty-four Aldermen ; and Tenby twelve Wards with an indefinite number
of Aldermen. At Cambridge there were four Wards, presided over, not by
Aldermen, but by four Bailiffs. Though Bristol and Sandwich had each
twelve Wards and placed each of them under an Alderman or Jurat, the
Aldermen and Jurats were appointed quite independently of the Wards, which
had originally numbered only five in one Borough and eight in the other. And
at Norwich, where the twenty-four Aldermen were actually assigned to twelve
districts of the City, these were themselves merely subdivisions of the four
ancient Wards, apparently made expressly for the purpose. The City of
London (where, as we shall subsequently describe, the twenty-five Wards were
subdivided into Precincts, which were Constablewicks) may have been in a
different position ; though there seems some reason to suppose that, even there,
the Wards were, as at Bristol, Norwich, and Sandwich, really made for the
Aldermen, rather than that the Aldermen sprang from the Wards.
1 Dover, see Cinque Ports, by Montagu Burrows, 1888, p. 82.
2 Thus, at Dover, when all the householders were required to watch " in
their turns," the Mayor, Jurats, and Common Councilmen were to be " Captains
of the Watch," and "to set the Watch," but were exempt from other service
(MS. Minutes, Dover Corporation, 1st July 1689). Sandwich " was formerly
divided into eight Wards for purposes of defence, in each of which were two
Constables ; but from the year 1437 there have been twelve Wards or districts,
and a Jurat presides over each of them, and annually nominates his Constable
and Deputy Constable therein, who are sworn " (Collections for a History of
Sandwich, by W. Boys, 1792, p. 787).
292 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
other service. Or they might be made use of as magisterial
districts, for the administration of justice within each of which
a particular Borough Justice was made specially responsible. 1
We must add, too, that within the Municipal boundaries
there were often enclaves, wholly or partially exempt from the
jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation sometimes con-
nected with an ancient castle, a cathedral, a shire hall, or an
ecclesiastical foundation which were usually termed Precincts.
These were to be found to a greater or less extent in most of
the ancient shire towns and cathedral cities ; 2 and they often
led to a tangle of jurisdictions and a complication of responsi-
bilities which it is impossible to unravel. Occasionally, too,
the limits of the various jurisdictions were so vaguely defined,
and so much in doubt, as to be practically unknown. 8
(e) The Membership of the Corporation
What may be termed the membership of the Municipal
Corporation is as difficult to define as its area. Who of right
belonged to this " society of mortal men," by Charter or
prescription rendered " immortal, invisible, and incorporeal " ?
For, as it was said by Madox in 1726, " the Kings of England
having in several ages past granted divers liberties to their
towns, it became in some cases doubtful what persons were
entitled to those liberties. For men that lived together in a
town were not all of a sort. There were townsmen and
suburbians, townsmen and co-inhabitants : in fine, some that
were of the Gild or Gilds of that town and some that were
not. Many were willing to have the benefit of the common
liberties but were unwilling to have a share in the common
1 As at Southampton, MS. Ordinances, 1606 ; in MS. Records, Southampton
Corporation.
2 Also in the City of London, Ludlow, Pontefract, Scarborough, etc. At
Hereford the " Bishop's Fee" extended to half the city, and within it he alone
had jurisdiction, held his own Courts, appointed his own Manorial Officers,
and committed offenders to his own prison (Collections towards the History and
Antiquities of the County of Hereford, by John Duncomb, 1804, vol. i. p. 293).
The common use of the term Precinct for an exempted area must not be confused
with its use, as we shall hereafter describe, in the City of London, for a sub-
division of a Ward. We know of no other town besides London and Norwich
in which the Ward was subdivided.
3 As at Kiugston-on-Thames (First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, vol. v. p. 2892).
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION 293
burdens or payments." l Occasionally, indeed, the membership
or method of constitution of the governing body of the
Corporation was set out in the legal instrument by which it
had been created or ratified. But the recruiting of the
Corporation that is, the admission of new Freemen or
Burgesses 2 and the extent of the participation of these in the
Corporate immunities and Franchises, was seldom provided for,
except by local tradition, interpreted and amended by successive
By-laws. And yet, as we shall see, it was exactly the
character of this membership whether it was great or small
or resident or non-resident; and how far it included or
excluded one or other class or classes of the inhabitants
that determined in each case the working constitution and the
nature of the administration of the couple of hundred Municipal
Corporations throughout the Kingdom.
It is, we think, significant of the course of development of
the Municipal Corporation that, just as the government of the
Manor rested almost wholly upon the Homage of the Court
Baron, and as the burgess-ship of many Manorial Boroughs
depended on the holding of land, so too, among Municipal
1 Firma Burgi, by T. Madox, 1726, pp. 50, 279.
2 ' ' The fact is that none of the early Charters . . . provide for the admis-
sion of Freemen or Burgesses ; and very few of the more modern Charters "
(History of tlie Boroughs and Municipal Corporations, by H. A. Merewether and
A. J. Stevens, 1835, vol. i. p. 248). We do not discuss the controversial point
as to whether, by the word "communitas " or otherwise, reference was ever made
in earlier times to any but a privileged class of inhabitants. ' ' Some hold, " said
a learned antiquary of 1700, "communitas to be a general term that compre-
hended all persons whatsoever that resided within the Borough ; but the
Commonalty cannot be taken in this sense, for then they would extend to all
sorts of people, men, women, children, servants and labourers, who would have
equal right in the choice of officers and in the government of the Borough,
which was in no age known. . . . With us the word communitas comprehended
only a select company chosen for their wisdom and long experience to advise the
Chief Officer of the place " (Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, by Sir Henry
Chauncey, 1700, pp. 241-242). Between 1689 and 1835, at any rate, it was
always authoritatively assumed that the privileges implied in Municipal incorpora-
tion were granted, not to all the inhabitants of the place mentioned, but to the
particular persons or classes designated. See Firma Burgi, by Thomas Madox,
1726 ; An Historical Treatise of Cities and Burghs or Boroughs, by Robert Brady,
1704 ; History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations, by H. A. Mere-
wether and A. J. Stephens, 1835 ; Essay on English Municipal History, by
James Thompson, 1867 ; Town Life in the Fifteenth Centuri/, by A. S. Green,
1894 ; History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland,
1895 ; Domesday Book and Beyond, by F. W. Maitlaud, 1897 ; Township and
Borough, by the same, 1898 ; The Domesday Borouglis, by Adolphua Ballard,
1904.
294 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Corporations, we find some limiting their membership to Free-
holders within the Borough. It is true that these Municipal
Corporations were, in 1689, few in number ; but it is no less
significant that they were among the most archaic in type,
and characteristic of towns of small and stationary population.
Membership of this kind sometimes extended to all the Free-
holders of the Borough, 1 and in other cases only to the owners
of certain ancient " burgage tenements," or immemorial hold-
ings, 2 to the exclusion of newer houses or other holdings of
land. Sometimes, the heir-at-law of a Free Burgess, succeeding
to his freehold tenement within the Borough, was entitled to
be admitted as a Free Burgess at the Manorial Court ; though
the purchaser of a freehold within the Borough had to be
formally presented by the Jury before he could obtain
admission. In one or two other cases succession to, or
acquisition of, a freehold tenement within the Borough,
though, by 1689, no longer the only avenue to membership
of the Municipal Corporation, was one among several ways
by which the Freedom could be obtained. 3 In practically
all these cases, the Freeholders had to go through the
ceremony of admission to the burgess-ship (including an oath
of fealty) at a Manorial Court a Court sometimes owned
and held by the Corporation, sometimes by an individual
Lord of the Manor.
In a large class of Municipal Corporations about two-
fifths of the whole Servitude of Apprenticeship in the Borough
was one of the ways by which the Freedom could be acquired.
This apprenticeship had always to be to a master who was, at
the date of its beginning, himself a Freeman, and usually a
resident in the Borough. Occasionally there would be further
restrictions. The apprentice might not be entitled to " take
up his Freedom," unless his servitude had been for seven
complete years entirely within the Borough ; unless he had
lived in his master's household ; unless his master had
remained a Freeman during the whole period ; unless his
master had himself in his time served a similar apprentice-
1 As at Bossiney (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. p. 453), Havering-atte- Bower (ibid. vol. v. p. 2878).
2 As at Pontefract (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1676).
3 As at Carmarthen (ibid. vol. i. p. 207), Dover (ibid. vol. ii. p. 944), and
Sandwich (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1046).
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION 295
ship; or unless he paid a substantial fee. 1 How far the
system of Corporate recruiting by apprenticeship to a craft
may be considered as a remnant of previous Gild structure,
or how far it was merely analogous to the acquisition of a
parochial settlement under the Poor Law by service of
apprenticeship within the parish, we must perforce leave to
be settled by the historian of the Middle Ages. What is
clear is that, by 1689, this method of recruiting by Servitude
was, in some Boroughs, rapidly disappearing, and in others it
was losing its reality. We shall notice hereafter the persistent
efforts made by one Municipal Corporation after another,
between 1689 and 1835, to tighten up the conditions, with a
view either of preventing merely colourable apprenticeships or
of absolutely restricting their number. But in spite of the
tendency of this avenue to membership to close up, it continued
right down to 1835 in all the populous towns in which
Municipal Corporations existed, and must therefore be ranked
as one of their most typical characteristics. It was to this
method of recruiting the Municipal Corporation that England
owed its patches of exuberant low-grade Democracy which
gave a peculiar flavour to the electoral history of the principal
populous ports and trading centres. 2
The recruitment of Corporate Membership by Apprentice-
ship had the peculiarity that, so far as the Municipal Corpora-
tions of 1689 are concerned, it never stood alone, as the only
avenue to admission. The acquisition of the Freedom by
Apprenticeship was nearly always supplemented by a power
in the Corporation, usually exercised by the Governing Council,
to admit other persons by co- option, with or without the
1 As at Aldeburgh (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iv. pp. 2093-2094). In the Corporation of Queenborough, in Kent,
it was even enacted by By-law that no person should take an apprentice until
he had himself been nine years a Freeman ; and in 1824 also that no Freeman
should take a second apprentice until the expiration of the term of the first,
even if his indentures were cancelled (ibid. vol. ii. p. 827).
2 At Liverpool, where there were between three and four thousand Freemen,
nearly all admitted by apprenticeship to the various handicrafts connected with
shipbuilding, the discontented bankers, merchants, and householders asserted in
1833 that the " restrictions on obtaining the Franchise have the natural effect of
limiting it chiefly to mechanics and labourers, and to persons of very limited
education and property, who are consequently very much dependent on the will
of others, and peculiarly exposed at elections to the temptations of bribery and
undue influence " (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2705).
296 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
exaction of a substantial fee. And along with admission by
Apprenticeship, we find nearly always admission by Eight of
Birth, and sometimes also admission by Eight of Marriage.
The sons of Freemen sometimes only sons born within the
Borough or after the father's own admission to the Freedom,
sometimes only the eldest son or the first born after the father's
admission were entitled on coming of age to take up their
Freedom. The husband of a Freeman's widow or daughter
acquired in some Corporations a like privilege. 1
A small but very important class of Municipal Corpora-
tions based their membership upon local Gilds or Trade
Companies. We cannot attempt to explore the history of the
Merchant Gild or of the later organisations of the Crafts ; or
even to speculate upon the manner of their interpolation into
Municipal constitutions, or the extent to which, in their prime,
they influenced the working of the Corporations. Our
impression is that the establishment of Gilds had affected the
constitutions of the Corporations, as we see them in 1689, in
four main features. It was, we imagine, the Gild which had,
in many cases, given body to the nascent Corporation, by
providing the " common stock " or corporate fund, which, as
we have seen reason to suspect, was both a cause and a sign
of the growth of the sense of Corporate personality. 2 It may
1 Admission was (besides frequent or occasional co-option) by Servitude of
Apprenticeship only, in Aldeburgh, Coventry, and Daventry ; by Apprenticeship
or Birth in about sixty Corporations ; by Apprenticeship, Birth, or Marriage in
about seventeen. In Fordwich, Hythe, Kidwelly, Ludlow, Malrnesbury, and
Ruyton, admission was by Birth or Marriage, but not by Apprenticeship ; in
Dunwich, Hastings, Higham Ferrers, Huntingdon, Lyme Regis, Macclestield,
Montgomery, Pevensey, Preston, Rye, Welshpool, and Wenlock, it was by Birth
alone (together with co-option). The Right by Birth was confined at Boston to
the sons of Aldermen and the eldest sons of Common Councilmen (First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2152) ; and at Lyme
Regis to the sons of Capital Burgesses (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1306). The Right by
Marriage might be confined to the widow, or to a daughter, or to a daughter
born after her father's admission, or to the eldest daughter. At Hereford it
was limited to the eldest living daughter in cases in which there was no son
(ibid. vol. i. p. 257) ; at Exeter only to daughters of Aldermen (ibid. vol.
i. p. 488).
2 In Liverpool, at any rate, ' ' the Gild . . . was from an early date, and
perhaps from the first, simply an aspect of the Borough community. Its officers
were the Borough officers ; its Freemen were admitted in the Portmoot, and this
admission gave them full burghal rights. . . . Until the creation of the Gild
the Borough Court and officers would have no funds to dispose of. ... The
Gild had revenues. . . . It is the Gild, therefore, which gives birth to the first
vague idea of the Borough as having a Corporate existence, distinct from the
existence of the individuals who compose it " {History of Municipal Govern-
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION 297
not improbably have been to the Gild that the Corporation
owed some of its most distinctive administrative officers its
Chamberlains, Cofferers or Keymasters, its Common or Town
Clerk, and, so far as titles are concerned, its Warden, and
even possibly its Aldermen. It may have been to the Gild
that the Corporation owed its transformation from an associa-
tion of owners and occupiers of agricultural land the
Homage, the freeholders, the group of holders of burgages or
" burgess parts " into an association of traders and craftsmen,
with the accession of members who had served an apprentice-
ship, or had otherwise acquired the " Freedom " of the Borough ;
together with the consequent relative " democratisation " of
what would otherwise have been an entirely Close Body.
Finally it was, we think, from the Gild that the Corporation
had derived the peculiar feature of the Court of Common
Hall the exercise, by a general assembly of Freemen, of the
supreme or ultimate authority. By 1689, however, the
social importance of the Gilds had long since passed away,
and the influences which they had exercised had either ceased
or had been themselves transformed. Nevertheless, in nearly
a score of Boroughs definite Gild structure still existed, more
or less interwoven with the Municipal Corporation. 1 In
tnent in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906, pp. 34-35). And at Leicester, Miss
Bateson thought that the Four-and-twenty Jurats of the Borough were probably
identical with those of the Gild (Records of the Borough of Leicester, by Mary
Bateson, vol. i., 1899, p. xlvi).
1 Among these were Berwick- on -Tweed, Carlisle, Chester, Dorchester,
Haverfordwest, Hereford, Kingston -on -Thames, Lichfield, London, Ludlow,
Morpeth, Newcastle - on - Tyne, Richmond (Yorks), Ruthin, Shrewsbury,
Southampton, Wells, Winchester, and York. It will be remembered that
Gilds or Companies existed also in the Manorial Boroughs of Alnwick, Durham,
Gateshead, and Sheffield. Other Boroughs in which Merchant Gilds or Trade
Companies appear to have existed, but where we have been unable to trace any
definite organic connection between them and the Municipal Corporation at
any rate between 1689 and 1835, included Andover, Bath, Brecon, Bodmin,
Bristol, Cambridge, Carmarthen, Chichester, Coventry, Daventry, Dover,
Exeter, Faversham, Guildford, Hertford, Kingston-upon-Hull, Lancaster, Leeds,
Lynn, Monmouth, Norwich, Preston, Reading, Salisbury, St. Albans, and Walsall.
Thus, in about three-fourths of the two hundred Municipal Corporations of 1689
we have discovered no trace of Merchant or Craft Gilds or Trade Companies
having played any part in the town life, or even existed, for at least three
centuries. On the other hand, Dr Gross has shown (The Gild Merchant, 1890)
that the Merchant Gild possibly not the Craft Gilds or Trade Companies
existed at an earlier date in many other towns, without, however, necessarily
being connected with the Municipal Corporation. Some of the Gilds of Bristol,
Kingston-upon-Hull, Preston, Southampton, and York may have been survivals
of this form. The whole subject of the Gild (to which we shall recur in our sub-
298 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
some of these places, including the greatest of all Municipalities,
admission to the Freedom of the Corporation was conditional
upon the applicant having already acquired the Freedom of
one of the Companies. In other cases no person could
become " free " of a Company, and thus entitled to participate
in its privileges or immunities, unless he was already " free "
of the Municipal Corporation. In other cases, again, the
Freedom of either body entitled the possessor to the Freedom
of the other. Finally (as with the holding of land), we see
the Freedom of a Trade Company ranking only as one among
various methods of acquiring the Freedom of the Corporation.
In the other cases (about a score) in which the Gilds can be
shown to have existed in the towns, we have not been able to
find any evidence that they were organically connected with
the Municipal Corporations.
In about forty of the Municipal Corporations of 1689 a
fifth of the whole number whilst there was a distinct class
of Freemen or Burgesses, we can trace no connection between
the Freedom and either landholding or the exercise of a trade.
Admission to the Corporation was obtained, not by succession
to a tenement or by Apprenticeship, but solely by Gift,
Eedemption, or Purchase that is to say, by co- option
usually exercised by the Governing Council at its discretion,
though sometimes qualified by traces of Eight by Birth. In
the great majority of Municipal Corporations, moreover,
admission by co-option accompanied and supplemented the
other avenues to the Freedom. 1 In all these Boroughs, as
was pointed out in 1827, the Corporation "may make every
man in the Kingdom a Burgess and voter, and thereby
introduce universal suffrage, on the one hand ; or by omitting
to elect new Burgesses as the old ones die off, they may, on
sequent chapters in connection with Morpeth, Berwick -on -Tweed, Ipswich,
Leeds, Coventry, Bristol, Norwich, and London) needs further study, and
especially further investigation of the MS. records.
1 Admission by simple co-option, whether styled admission by Gift, by
Redemption, or by Purchase, prevailed in nine-tenths of the Corporations. It
does not seem to have existed (at any rate between 1689 and 1835) in those of
Bishop's Castle (Right of Birth only) ; Malmesbury and Ruyton (Right of Birth
or of Marriage only) ; Carlisle, Lichfield, and Stafford (Apprenticeship or Right
of Birth only), or Abingdon, Bossiney, Brading, Clitheroe, Orford, Pontefract,
Romney Marsh, Southwold, Tregony, Warwick, and Weymouth, in which
various forms of ownership, occupancy, or payment of scot and lot alone con-
stituted membership.
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION 299
the other, establish the oligarchy of two or three persons only
returning the representatives to Parliament," l and, as may be
added, permanently filling all the offices in the Corporation,
and disposing of its property. As we shall subsequently
explain, the Corporations from 1689 to 1835 often passed
successively from restriction to lavish admission. It is possibly
owing to a policy of restriction in preceding centuries that we
find many Corporations without any separate class of Burgesses
or Freemen.
There were some fifty Municipal Corporations a quarter
of the whole which had no Freemen or Burgesses; that is,
the membership of the Corporation was identical with that
of the Governing Council, a Close Body, filling vacancies by
co-option from outsiders. In a few of these cases we have
proof that a separate class of Burgesses or Freemen had once
existed ; 2 in others, the Charters contained provisions for the
admission of persons to be Freemen which do not seem to
have been acted upon ; in others, again, the former existence
of a separate class of Freemen may perhaps be inferred
from the fact that the process of co-option to the Governing
Council included a formal admission to the Freedom of the
Corporation. In the majority of these cases, however, we are
left doubting whether there ever had been in these Boroughs
a distinct class of Burgesses or Freemen. All these fifty
freeman -less Corporations had, in 1689, one attribute in
common. They all belonged to small or stationary popula-
tions. Moreover, the bulk of them had distinct resemblances
in their Manorial character to those archaic Municipal Corpora-
tions of which the Burgesses were occupying owners of land.
But instead of bearing traces of connection with the Homage
of the Court Baron, they seem to revolve round the Jury of
the Court Leet. In many of these little Municipal Corpora-
1 A Collection of Ancient Records relating to the Borough of Huntingdon, by
Edward Griffith, 1827, p. 8 n.
2 It is significant that, in the important Corporation of Leeds, established
by Charter as late as the seventeenth century, the very existence of a separate
class of Freemen had, by the end of the eighteenth century, become entirely
forgotten ; although the MS. Records reveal the existence, in the latter part of
the seventeenth century, of incorporated Trade Companies, with apprentices and
Freemen, and a "Common Assembly" of the Borough, which had to be
summoned to make ordinances "touching the working, dyeing, or sale of
woollen cloth within the Borough " (infra, Chap. VIII. ; First Report of Muni-
cipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1617).
300 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
tions of the South-Western Counties and the Welsh Border,
we seem, in fact, to be not far removed from that large class
of Manorial Boroughs that we have described as arising out of
the Leet aspect of the Lord's Court. We might class with
these the one or two Municipal Corporations in which the
Close Body alone enjoyed the powers and privileges of the
Corporation, but in which the Jury of the Manorial Court
would admit to absolutely nominal membership any " resiant "
within the borough, sometimes any person paying scot and
lot, or any inhabitant householder, irrespective of landholding
or apprenticeship, birth or marriage. In these cases the so-
called " Freedom " of , the Borough was little more than
certified inhabitancy. It is this tiny fraction of the couple of
hundred Municipal Corporations a fraction which cannot
even be elevated into a class that alone bears out the far-
fetched theory of Municipal freedom invented by the Whig
lawyer Merewether on the eve of the Municipal Eevolution of
1835. "No plausible solution," he says, "of that difficulty
[of determining who was by right entitled to the Freedom]
can be surmised, but that obvious one which the Common
Law suggests of their being admitted, sworn and enrolled at
the Court Leet of the Borough, in respect of their resiancy
within it whereby being Freemen of, or belonging to the
Borough, they were its Burgesses." *
It is characteristic of Municipal Corporations that
wherever Freemen existed, the individuals had always to be
formally " admitted " to membership of the Corporate body.
This admission was, in the more archaic Corporations, by
presentment of the Jury in a Manorial Court, which, as we
have seen, might be of the nature either of a Court Baron, or
of a Court Leet, held by the Corporation itself or by a private
Lord ; in a few of the Corporations of great towns, by the
Court of a Trade Company ; and in the great majority of
Corporations, by one or other of the " Courts," or assemblies,
of the Corporation itself. Just as recruits had to be formally
admitted, so also could existing members be extruded from
the Corporate body. This " disfranchisement " might be by
consent, either through the desire for relief from Corporate
1 History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations, by H. A. Merewether
and A. J. Stephens, 1835, vol. i. p. 248.
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION 301
obligations, or for a temporary purpose, such as giving evidence
in a case in which the Corporation was a party. On the
other hand, the disfranchisement might be penal in character,
in retribution for some action deemed to be inimical to the
Corporation. Provided that all the proper forms were ob-
served, a Corporation could legally disfranchise a member for
any reasonable cause ; such as a breach of duty to the
Corporation or even the commission of an infamous act or
indictable crime. 1 The fact that members of a Municipal
Corporation had to be formally admitted, and could be legally
extruded, emphasises its character as an arbitrarily selected
group of persons ; in complete contrast, we may point out,
with a modern Municipality, which is regarded as necessarily
and irrevocably including all the inhabitants of a given
geographical district.
By 1689 what was of importance to the Municipal
Corporation was not so much the particular methods by
which the Burgesses or Freemen of the Corporation were
recruited, as the numerical strength of this class of inhabitants
privileged in some way or another to participate in the
Corporate administration or the Corporate advantages. The
number of the Freemen had, however, a close connection with
the method by which the Freedom could be acquired. "When
admission to the Freedom depended on the ownership of
land, the Freemen necessarily remained only a tiny fraction
of any growing urban population. Again, if the Freedom
depended on the grant of consent of a Jury or of the Close
Body of the Corporation, there was a tendency to restrict
recruiting to the number required to supply candidates for the
Corporation offices. Nor was the number of Freemen
substantially increased by admissions by Eight of Birth and
Eight of Marriage ; the accessions in these cases being
usually more than balanced by losses through the decay of
families, migration, and the inability or unwillingness of
qualified citizens to take up their Freedom. Hence, the
1 Thus at Exeter, in 1692, three Freemen were disfranchised for refusing to
watch, and two for accepting poor relief (MS. Records, Exeter Corporation, 28th
March and 12th September 1692). In the next year it was "ordered that
henceforth no Freeman who receives parish alms, or who ... by reason of his
poverty cannot perform his duty of Watch and Ward, shall give any voice at
any election of Mayor or Barons to Parliament" (ibid, llth September 1693).
302 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Municipal Corporations which restricted their admissions to
persons recruited in any or all of these ways were constantly
slipping into the already extensive class of Corporations
having no Freemen outside the membership of the Governing
Council or Close Body. Moreover, all these ways of becoming
free of a Municipal Corporation were compatible with non-
residence, and did, as we shall see, lead to the creation of
non-resident Freemen with no concern in the good government
of the Borough. The only broad avenue to the Freedom of a
Municipal Corporation the only way in which a residential
Democracy actually came into being was, in fact, the device
of Apprenticeship to a Freeman in order to exercise a trade
within the Borough. 1 In those Municipal Corporations in
which the Freedom acquired by Apprenticeship was
accompanied by valuable privileges in connection with
manufacture or trade, we find, as might have been expected, a
constant pressure to get into the ranks of the Freemen. Thus,
the Boroughs which had, in 1835, the largest number of
Freemen relatively to the population the only ones in which
the population of Freemen exceeded ten per cent of the adult
male householders had Municipal Corporations in which
Freedom by Apprenticeship was a reality, especially if the
Freemen were organised also in active Trade Companies.
How far these Freemen Democracies really shared in the
responsibilities of government or the privileges of the Corpora-
tion we must leave to be considered in our section on
Municipal Constitutions.
(/) The Servants of the Corporation
If we inquire what, to the rural inhabitant who came into
the town, would have seemed most novel and strange in the
Municipal Corporation of 1689, the answer may perhaps be
the prominence and all-pervadingness of the public officers
who concerned themselves about the little community. It
1 The Corporation of Preston, though it had by 1833 no fewer than 3300
Burgesses, without recruiting by Apprenticeship, is hardly an exception. Over
3000 of these were non-residential, and admitted only for political purposes,
whilst there were also 300 " Foreign Burgesses " or " Out Burgesses," admitted
only for market privileges (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iii. pp. 1687-91 ; Preston Court Lcet Records, by A. Hewitson, 1905).
THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION 303
was not that the particular officers would, taken one by one,
be unfamiliar to him. Many of them, in fact, alike in title
and in function, were common to both rural Manor and urban
Corporation. The Municipal Borough, even as late as the
eighteenth century, continued in most cases to be an agri-
cultural community, sometimes keenly interested in arable
comrnoufields and hay meadows, and nearly always in common
pastures. 1 The Corporations had therefore a whole array of
what we may call agricultural functionaries of one sort or
another Haymakers, 2 Grassmen, 3 Pound-keepers or Pound-
drivers, Woodwards, Tenders of the Town Wood, 4 Neatherds,
Pasturemasters 5 or Field-drivers, 6 Common-keepers or " Tenters
of the Common," 7 Mole-catchers, Swineherds or Hogdrivers. 8
Under some Municipal Corporations 9 he would even have
found " Burleighmen," whom he would identify easily with
the familiar " Burleymen " or " Bylawmen."
Nor would the most bucolic visitor be surprised to find as
officers of the Municipal Corporation the usual Beadles and
Constables, Borsholders and Tithingmen, who might be called
" Dozeners " or Common Wardsmen, who would sometimes
exercise also such offices as those of Pound-keepers, Ale-tasters,
or Searchers of the Market. Moreover, if he had come from
1 At Newcastle-on-Tyne, where every Freeman had his two cows on the
Town Moor, the Corporation appointed a couple of Noltherds [Nowtherds or
Neatherds], salaried officers of some importance, who provided two bulls for the
Moor, and whose duty it was " to collect the herd twice a day at milking time,
and drive them to the precincts of the town, where they . . . find their way
of themselves to their several owners. " Eight down to the reign of Victoria, as
we are told by a visitor, "five or six hundred, or more, of these matronly
animals may be seen daily on their march homewards, in two grand divisions,
the one of which enters the town by Percy Street, and the other by Gallowgate,
all ... immediately on their arrival in the town instinctively broke off into
detachments, each departing through the cross streets as occasion required, and
these again subdividing into twos and threes . . . through intricate streets and
lanes to their places of abode " (A Home Tour through the Manufacturing
Districts, by Sir George Head, 1840, vol. i. pp. 339-342 ; First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. pp. 1646, 1647).
2 As at Rochester (ibid. vol. ii. p. 848).
3 As at Newcastle (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1646).
4 As at Congleton (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2654).
6 As at York and Beverley (ibid. vol. iii. pp. 1739, 1455).
6 As at Bedford (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2108).
1 As at Derby (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1851).
8 The Town Swineherd was an important Municipal officer at Shrewsbury ;
the Hogdriver at Hythe ; and the Swine-catcher at Congleton.
9 As at Beaumaris (ibid. vol. iv. pp. 2583, 2585).
304 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
such a highly developed Manorial government as that of
Manchester, he would have become accustomed, not only to
such other Municipal officers as Scavengers and Street-wardens,
but also to the multifarious officers concerned about the
quality of the wares offered for sale and the management of
the markets. He would find in some towns " Breadweighers "
to see that the loaf was of due weight, and " Butter -searchers " l
to test the quality of the butter. There would be Ale-tasters
or Ale-conners or Ale-founders, enjoying, as a definite perquisite,
a glass of ale yearly from each publican ; 2 or half a pint out of
each brewing. 3 Most Corporations, like many Manors, had
their Searchers and Sealers of Leather; or there would be
general " Searchers of the Market," " Market Sayers," " Leave-
Lookers," or " Markets-Lookers." There might be Herring-
Packers or Fish Washers. 4 Under many Corporations we find
Carnals or Carnivals, sometimes known as " Fish and Flesh
Searchers," 5 or " Flesh wardens." 6 In all markets people were
accustomed to pay toll, and it was merely a slight peculiarity
when the Corporation had a special Egg-Collector, who took
the toll of one egg from each basket, which was the Mayor's
perquisite ; 7 or when there was a Sample-man, who levied a
similar perquisite of coals, called the Mayor's Sample, out of
every consignment. 8 The Municipal Corporations at the
great ports would have their Coalmeters and Cornmeters,
Cornmeasurers or Cornprizers ; some of them " Water Bailiffs,"
and others Bridgemen, Bridge-keepers or " Bridge Wardens."
All these officers were either to be found in the more developed
among the Manorial governments that we have already
described, or were obvious variations of them.
But although the great majority of the minor officers of
the Municipal Corporation of 1689 would be familiar to the
denizen of the rural Manor although, in fact, there was
1 As at Stockton (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iii. p. 1729).
2 As at Congleton (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2652).
3 As at Barnstaple (ibid. vol. i. p. 431).
4 As at Dover (MS. Records, Dover Corporation, 8th September 1701) and
Rye respectively.
5 As at Bedford (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. pp. 2108, 2109).
e As at Ipswich (ibid. vol. iv. pp. 2295, 2304).
7 As at Newcastle-on-Tyne (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1646).
8 As at Hull (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1548).
THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION 305
scarcely any among them who could not have been found in
one or other of the Manorial Boroughs that we have described
the Municipal Corporations, as a whole, were distinguished
alike by the greater number and variety of the officers at any
one place, and by the more important part that they played in
the town life, than in the rural Manor, or even in the typical
Manorial Borough. This was connected with the fact that
they held their offices continuously throughout the year ;
giving up their whole time to their duties, and being habitually
paid, usually by fees, but sometimes by annual salaries. It
is in the Municipal Corporation that we find them most
frequently rejoicing in gorgeous uniforms, and equipped with
wands or staves of office. 1 The Constable or humble Beadle
develops into a Town Serjeant, a Mayor's Serjeant, a Serjeant
at Mace, 2 or even a Sword-bearer. The Bellman becomes the
" Town Crier " or the " Town Drummer." The amateur and
honorary Scavenger develops into a " Street Keeper," an
" Overseer of the Streets," or a " Street Warden," or into a
" Scavenger to gather the money," having humbler subordinates
to collect the dirt. 3 On the other hand, the primitive
Scavenger might be specialised into an organised staff, a
" Cleaner of the Castle Walks " at a shilling a week ; a
" Cleaner of Water Grates " at 4 a year ; a " Cleaner of Flags "
(foot pavements) at half that sum ; a " Sweeper of Streets "
at four guineas a year ; a " Weeder of Footpaths " at three-
pence a week ; and even a special " Cleaner of Chandeliers "
at ten shillings a year. 4 The "Water Bailiff" would, in the
Municipal Boroughs having ports, blossom into a " Water
Treasurer," a " Haven Master " or a " Harbour Master," with
1 At Sandwich " the Hogmace, or Serjeant at Brazen Mace, is first mentioned
(as Overseer of the Streets) in 1471. He bears a stout staff with a brazen head,
has a salary of 3 and a livery ... a blue plaited vest with black velvet cuffs
. . . and a gold-laced hat. . . . The Beadle . . . carries a stout staff with a
brazen end at the top. His office is to take up vagrants and upon conviction
to punish them ; and he is to look after hogs and other nuisances in the streets.
His livery is a laced brown great-coat and a gold-laced hat " (Collections for a
History of Sandwich, by W. Boys, 1792, pp. 785, 786).
2 At Southampton, of the four Serjeants at Mace, two "were gaolers, one of
the Debtors', the other of the Felons' Prison ; the third collected the tolls
of the poultry and vegetable market; and the fourth was Water Bailiff"
(History of Southampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883, p. 211).
3 As at Rochester (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. ii. p. 855).
4 As at Richmond (Yorks, ibid. vol. iii. p. 1702).
VOL. II. PT. I. X
306 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
the custody of the " Silver Oar," a mystic symbol which was
always taken by him when he accompanied an officer charged
to make an arrest, or to execute the process of the City Courts,
on a ship in the current of the river. 1 But in spite of the
increase in the number and the variety, the dignity and the
pomp of these officers in spite, too, of their greatly extended
power of interfering with the conduct of their fellow-citizens,
and of exacting fees for their activities they had, in the
process of becoming permanent paid functionaries, lost their
ancient independent status and authority. The Constable or
the Scavenger, the Dog-muzzier or the Finder of the Lord's
Court, was an independent citizen, under no man's orders from
Leet to Leet, and even at the bi-annual Court acting more as
an independent initiator of the Jury's presentments than as a
subordinate official submitting his report. In the Municipal
Corporation those who bore the same, or even more dignified
titles, were day by day under the orders of the Chief Officers,
whom we have now to describe, and subjected to constant
direction by the Governing Body. The Officers of the Manor
had, in fact, become the Servants of the Municipal Corporation. 2
(g) The Chief Officers of the Corporation
There were in all Municipal Corporations certain great
officers, usually belonging by virtue of their office to the
Governing Body, and clothed by Charter or prescription with
specific authority, for the due exercise of which they were
responsible only to the law. The number of these officers,
with their titles and their powers, differed from Corporation
to Corporation. In some Municipalities we find scarcely
more than the Head of the Corporation, whether styled
1 As at Bristol (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 1169).
2 It may be mentioned that several Corporations, from the City of London
down to the little Borough of Congleton in Cheshire, kept their packs of hounds,
with a "Common Hunt," or a "Huntsman," and various "Dog Whippers "
(ibid. 1835, vol. iv. p. 2652). The Corporation of Congleton long maintained its
"Bearward," though we do not know whether the "Town Bear" outlived the
Commonwealth (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2652 ; in 1621 it was ordered that a new bear
should be obtained by the Bearward, the Town Bear having died). Various
Municipal Corporations, too, had, like Nottingham, Hythe, and Doncaster,
their Gamekeeper, or like Scarborough, their 'Warrcner and Gamekeeper.
Norwich had its " Swanner," to look after the Corporation swans in the River
Yare (Hid. vol. iv. pp. 2461, 2465).
THE CHIEF OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION 307
Portreeve or Warden, Alderman, Bailiff, or Mayor. At the
other end of the scale stood those Municipal Corporations
which had added to the important staff of the wealthiest
and most autonomous Manorial Boroughs the responsible
functionaries of a County at large. For the purpose of this
analysis we can divide these great officers into three classes.
First, we have officers with whom we have, in our series
of Lord's Courts and Manorial Boroughs, already become
familiar, as the recipients of the authority ceded by the
Lord of the Manor Bailiffs, Mayors, Eecorders, Stewards.
Secondly, there are those that we have watched developing in
the more important Manorial Boroughs for the transaction
of their business and the management of their property
Common or Town Clerks, Chamberlains or Treasurers,
Attorneys or Eemembrancers. Finally, we see emerging in
the Municipal Corporation the functionaries of a County
the Sheriff, the Coroner, the Justices of the Peace and, quite
exceptionally, the Lieutenancy. We do not wish to suggest
that this rough-and-ready classification by functions necessarily
corresponds to any rigid lines between officers. The Mayor
and the Recorder, sometimes also the High Steward, the
Bailiffs and the Town Clerk, of a Municipal Corporation
would combine with their offices the powers and duties of
Justices of the Peace ; the Mayor might also be the Coroner ;
the Bailiff might perform the functions of Sheriff; the Town
Clerk might, as Steward, hold the Borough Courts, and act as
Clerk of the Peace at the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions.
Our third class of officers those resembling the officers of
the County at Large had, in perhaps the majority of instances,
no separate existence, the powers and obligations being added
to those of one or other of the Chief Officers inherited from
the Lord's Court or the Manorial Borough. Only in the
most privileged Boroughs sometimes the largest, sometimes
merely those of ancient dignity or importance do we find
separate officers holding such County offices as those of
Sheriff and Coroner.
To take first those Chief Officers who seem to have been
developed from the Court of the Manor. In our view of
Lord's Courts, Lordless Courts, Lord's Boroughs, and Enfran-
chised Manorial Boroughs, we have watched, stage by stage,
308 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
the gradual rise in activity and power of the nominees of the
little community of tenants or residents ; and the correspond-
ing decline in influence of the representatives of the Lord
of the Manor. Thus, in an ordinary Manor the Lord's
Steward and the Lord's Bailiff are the rulers, the tenants
having no other representatives than the Homage or the
Jury, summoned by the Lord's officers. It was a step in
advance when the Homage was allowed to present one of its
number to be Eeeve, who collected the sums due from the
tenants, and executed the necessary distraints. Such an
officer perhaps gained intangibly in dignity when he was
called Portreeve or Boroughreeve, Bailiff, Alderman, or Mayor.
It was a further stride in independence, perhaps coincident
with the privilege of paying only a commuted lump sum
in lieu of all demands, when the inhabitants were accorded
the right to choose even the "King's Bailiff" (or the Lord's
Bailiff), either as sole Bailiff, or in addition to the " Town's
Bailiff." When this stage is reached, there may be practically
complete autonomy, as it is the Jury which presents the
Bailiff or Bailiffs by whom the Jury itself is selected and
summoned the Lord's Steward becoming a merely formal
president of the Court, recording its will. It was usually
only a recognition of this practical autonomy when the Lord
permitted the Mayor or Bailiffs to hold a separate Portman-
mote or Borough Court, for the settlement of disputes among
the tenants, altogether independent of the Lord's Steward.
The division of duties between the two Bailiffs now becomes
decisive one, usually termed the Mayor, becomes the president
of the Court and the Head of the Corporation, whilst the
other sinks to the position of a mere subordinate agent. 1 The
cession to the Borough, by King or Lord, of the View of
Frankpledge or right to hold a Court Leet, often led to the
1 Thus, at Sandwich, when the Freemen acquired the privilege of electing
the Head Bailiff or Mayor, "the King's Bailiff became a mere Custom House
officer, subordinate to the Chief Magistrate " (Civvque Ports, by Montagu Burrows,
1888, p. 202). It may be that it was from this point that the office of Mayor
took its origin. At Liverpool, for instance, "the Mayor . . . began by being
simply the major ballivus, the chief of the two Bailiffs ; but very soon an
additional Bailiff was appointed, and the Mayor became a distinct and quite
superior officer." Here, as elsewhere, we find one of the Bailiffs "called the
'Mayor's Bailiff ' and . . . nominated by the Mayor after his election, the other
Bailiff being popularly elected " (History of Municipal Go-vernment in Liverpool,
by Ramsay Muir, 1906, p. 49).
THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION 309
appointment, by the nascent Corporation, of a Steward of its
own sometimes called a Eecorder to hold the Borough
Court of criminal jurisdiction. The Lord's Steward was then
apt to become a remote personage, only dealt with when some
application to the Lord had to be made. What is interesting
throughout this growth of autonomy is the transposition in
importance of the officers of the Lord and those of the tenants,
together with the tendency, in both alike, to a fission into
several offices, each having its own specialised status and
function. Instead of the Steward of the Manor, whom the
Lord appointed, we often find, in a Municipal Corporation,
an honorific personage dignified by the appellation of High
Steward, and a working lawyer styled Recorder, both alike
appointed by the Corporation. 1 Instead of the humble Reeve
of the Manor, we see, in the Municipal Corporation, its real
Head, whether styled Mayor or " the Bailiffs," and, as mere
subordinate officers, one or more Bailiffs whose duty it was to
execute the processes of the Courts over which the Head of
the Corporation presided.
(h) The Head of the Corporation
The most distinctive officer of the Municipal Corporation
was its Head in the majority of the Boroughs styled the
Mayor, but sometimes alternatively the Bailiff, or " the
Bailiffs," the Portreeve, the Alderman, or the Warden 2 who
1 After the Restoration the appointment of Recorder was frequently made
subject to the approval of the Crown, or was reserved to the Crown and made
by a congi d'dlire. These "approbations" are a familiar form of entry in the
Royal Warrant Books of the eighteenth century (in Public Record Office).
2 The normal title became that of Mayor ; in the Cities of London and York
early dignified into Lord Mayor. Kidderminster had a High Bailiff, and more
than a dozen Boroughs (among them Andover, Bewdley, Blandford, Brecon,
Chippenham, Daventry, Leominster, Llandovery, Lydd, Pevensey, Romney
Marsh, and Seaford) were presided over by a Bailiff. Some of the Welsh
Boroughs (like Beccles, Chard, Langport and Yeovil among the Manorial
Boroughs of England) called their head Portreeve. At Bury St. Edmunds,
Grantham, and Wokingham he was styled Alderman ; at Godalming, Louth, and
Sutton Coldfield, Warden. In more than a score of Boroughs the most con-
spicuous being Ipswich, with its neighbours Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Eye, and
Southwold ; also Cardiff, Ludlow, Montgomery, Welshpool, Tewkesbury, Tam-
worth, Droitwich, Wenlow, Bridgnorth, Lichfield, Scarborough, and East Retford
the headship of the Corporation was held by a pair of officers, the two
Bailiffs (at Denbigh and Ruthin the two Aldermen), who were appointed
simultaneously, and who exercised jointly all its powers and duties.
310 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
filled a large part in the town life, and on whom great
power and dignity was heaped. There was, it is true, nothing
in his title to distinguish him from the heads of many of the
Manorial Boroughs, which also had their Bailiffs, their
Portreeves, their Aldermen, and even their Mayors. But the
head of the Municipal Corporation, whether styled Warden,
Portreeve, Alderman, Bailiff, or Mayor, had always been
named as such in the Charter, and specially invested by that
instrument with large and indefinite powers. He presided at
all the assemblies of the Corporation, whether meetings of
Freemen or Burgesses, or sessions of the Council or other select
body ; l he acted, in the smaller Boroughs, as the Treasurer or
Eeceiver of the Corporate revenue ; 2 and in most of the im-
portant municipalities having Chamberlains or Treasurers he
still retained, with or without the concurrence of these officers,
large executive powers in the management of the Corporate
estates between the meetings of the council. 8 He was, during
his term of office and usually for some time afterwards, a
Justice of the Peace ; and he was always referred to as
the " Chief Magistrate." He presided at the Borough Quarter
Sessions. He held whatever Courts the Corporation main-
tained, often sitting alone as judge, or jointly with the
Recorder; or deputing the Recorder or other officer to hold
the Court on his behalf. He might unite in his person a
number of offices connected with the various jurisdictions of
the Corporation. He was usually ex-ojjicio Coroner for the
Borough, and Clerk of the Market, and sometimes also King's
Escheator, 4 Keeper of the Borough Gaol, Examiner of "Weights
and Measures, and Admiral of the Port. But this was not
all. The Head of the Corporation nearly always enjoyed the
privilege during his year of office of making one or more
persons " free of the Corporation." He invariably appointed
some or all of the minor officials of the Corporation ; and in
a few cases all the offices, great or small, were in his gift,
1 Except at Norwich. 2 As at Bodmin and Bossiney.
3 See the "Rules made to be observed by Mayor," 14th July 1665, in MS.
Records, Winchester Corporation.
4 Though the office of Escheator, which had, by 1689, become merely
nominal, was mostly held by the Mayor or other Head of the Corporation,
at Grantham, by exception, a separate Escheator was annually appointed
(First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2242).
THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION 311
with the exception of the half a dozen chief posts specifically
named in the Charter. 1 In the Municipal Corporation of the
latter part of the seventeenth century, though possibly not
quite to the same extent as two centuries previously, it is not
incorrect to say, that " the Mayor has taken the place of the
Lord of the town." 2 And sometimes he was a vigilant Lord.
We are told, for instance, of one Mayor in the latter part of
the seventeenth century, that he " kept a strict eye on inferior
officers that they did not unmercifully squeeze those whom
they had in their custody. . . . [He] was a spy upon all base
practices as amongst attorneys, Serjeants, notaries, tidewaiters,
wardens, gaolers, tollers, key -masters, chamberlains, and
collectors. He was a terror to those who corrupted the
meanest office. . . . [He] took order about the Assize of
Bread and deserved no less than Minutius, by preventing the
frauds of forestallers and regraters. No fish or flesh was
brought to the shambles, but what was wholesome. Provision
was made for the poor, there was no inequality of rates, the
parishes were eased of foreigners and vagrants, public build-
ings kept in good repair, cozenage banished from the
market, ale-houses limited, hospitals put under the tuition
of honest, discreet overseers, public charities applied to the
1 As at Rochester.
2 History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906,
p. 49. "The vast extent of the powers exercised by the Mayor is among the
most striking features. He is almost omnipotent, and all the other officials of
the Borough are little more than his servants. He is the administrator of the
property of the Borough, the president of its Courts, its chief judge, the
regulator of its trade, the manager of its frequent co-operative trading enter-
prises " (ibid. p. 50). He was, to use the significant phrase of the Court of
Plympton Earle, the ' ' Head and Chief Governor of the Town " (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 600). "By our institu-
tions," said the Town Clerk of Bristol in 1718, "the honour of the city subsists
in the person of our Mayor, who within the boundaries is superior to and presides
over our Lord -Lieutenant and every other subject; and also the supreme
authority which runs through every branch of the government of this City
subsists in his person" (MS. Records, Bristol Corporation, 26th June 1718).
At Southampton it was expressly ordained in 1606, that "the Mayor shall be
the principal officer of the Town, according to the grant, and shall be so reputed
and taken as he hath been time out of mind ; and he is principally to the
uttermost of his power to have care, and to travail also, that the statutes, laws
and ordinances of the Town and Franchise be observed and kept, and he shall
have the first voice in all elections and other things that concern the town, and
in case the Burgesses' voices be equal, then to have a second voice " (MS.
Ordinances, 1606 ; among Records of Southampton Corporation. This is
differently given in History of Southampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883).
312 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
uses they were intended for, and the coal trade put into such
a method with the keelmen and fitters that the public has
long after found the benefit of that regulation." l Occasionally,
when a specially zealous fanatic became Mayor, he could
become, temporarily, an effective censor morum. We cannot
refrain from reproducing the naive diary of 1703, in which a
pious Mayor describes the manner in which he reformed the
morals of his Borough, then a prosperous naval port and
Admiralty centre, enjoying all the licence of war-time. On
his election, as he writes, " the Bench were treated at my
house, with the Commonalty and the Freemen. I ordered
half a barrel of beer at four several houses. . . . Before I
was sworn I caused the Queen's Proclamation to be nailed up
in the Court Hall. Some of the Bench was very inquisitive
to know what that was so nailed up. I told them it was the
Queen's Proclamation to suppress vice and immorality, and
that it was my purpose and resolution to put it into due
execution. After I was sworn such an oppression and terror
fell upon my spirits that I feared I should have sunk under
it. However, I made a sort of speech to the officers of the
Parish that were there present, and told them it should be my
endeavour to do my duty in the office I was entrusted with ;
and I should punish all officers under me who did not do
theirs. . . . The same terror and amazement followed me
several days, inasmuch that several persons questioned in
themselves, as they have since told me, whether I might not
wholly have gone beside my senses." His first step was to
cause a proclamation against tippling and trading on Sunday
to be called by the Common Crier. The following Sunday,
he tells us, " I took a walk into the street with my staff in
order to observe how far the Town had complied with my
order. ... I found the public-houses took no notice . . .
but kept their doors open as formerly ; upon which I made
them shut them. ... I also met with several shop-keepers
who had their doors half open, but I made them shut them.
... I met with some turbulent spirits who opposed me, and
told me this was a new thing they did not understand why
could they not have liberty to do as they pleased in their own
1 Memoirs of Mr. Ambrose Barnes (Mayor of Newcastle-on-Tyne), Surtees
Society, 1867, pp. 101-102.
THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION 313
houses ; and truly they would not shut up their doors to stifle
themselves for want of air for any upstart, although the
Mayor. I told them ... I was resolved on a reformation in
Deal. I charged the servants and the seamen, when I met
them, that they took care they did not swear, get drunk, nor
be disorderly as they had formerly been, for that this rod in
my hand should be a severe scourge to all manner of vice,
profaneness, and immorality. Thus I went through the three
streets proclaiming my intentions : I did not pass one door
that was open till, by argument and by threatening, I made
some of the household shut it. ... Saturday ... I took a
seaman by the collar amidst all the people in the market-
place, and caused him to be put in the stocks for profane
swearing, and gave him a charge to tell his companions of it.
... I likewise gave notice to the market people that I would
punish all disorders in all sorts of people, and especially any
breaches of the peace committed in the market, of which I
was then Clerk. On the same day, about an hour after, I
took up a common prostitute, whose conduct was very
offensive, brought her to the whipping-post being about mid-
market, where was present some hundreds of people I caused
her to have twelve lashes ; and at every third lash I parleyed
with her, and bid her tell all the women of the like calling
wheresoever she came that the Mayor of Deal would serve
them as he had served her. . . . After which, I gave her a
groat, and sent her, by a Constable, out of the Town. On the
following morning, no less, as I was informed, than five-and-
twenty such-like characters left the Town . . . uttering the
most fearful oaths, and vowing vengeance on me for what I
was doing, and declaring aloud that they would not come
again to Deal till the present Mayor was dead and damned ;
and then, whenever it should happen, they would come back.
... In the afternoon (Sunday) the Jurats and Common Council
came to my house to go with me to Church, as was the
custom. . . . As I came by the ' India Arms ' Inn, I saw a
coach making ready to start for Canterbury. I sent for the
coachman, and told him, if he was not upon the King's business,
he should not go till the next morning. He complied with
my request. . . . When I came to Church I observed the
clergyman . . . about to commence the service by reading the
314 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Common Prayers, without his surplice ; upon which I sent
my Serjeant to him, and gave him my service, desiring him
to put on the surplice. . . . After prayers, when we came to
sing psalms, being part of the 75th Psalm, and at particular
verses, which were very appropriate to certain persons present,
I stood up, spreading my hands, pointing round the Church to
some whose ill lives I knew, as well as their conversations,
which this Psalm most peculiarly hinted at. After church, as
we came home, I discovered some public-houses open ; I made
two men pay twelve pence each for being found in one of
them ; and threatened that, if on another Lord's Day any men
were found there, I should fix a fine on the house. During
the following week some of my Brethren on the Bench told
me they were tired, and said they would not keep my company
nor support me, if I took such extreme measures. I replied I
had begun a good work and . . . would not abandon it. ... I
felt it a duty to be more zealous for that than my own
worldly affairs, though I hoped I should find time to attend to
both." He describes how he continued, Sunday after Sunday,
to perambulate the Town with his Serjeant, shutting up
public-houses and shops. " But at length," he continues, " I
found they paid no attention to my orders nor to my threaten-
ings, so I determined that, wherever I found any person in a
public-house drinking, or selling of goods in shops, they should
be fined. On one Sunday, I found six houses that had
company, and three tradesmen selling goods. The next day I
caused a warrant to be made out, and made them all pay a
fine ; which struck a terror over the rest. After this, I could
walk through the Town on a Sunday and not see a door open,
either in a public-house or shop. If any company is within,
'tis very privately done, whereas before they used to keep them
open." He then relates how he had copies of the Queen's
Proclamation against vice and immorality hung up in the
public-houses and barbers' shops ; and how he sent one to the
schoolmaster, saying, " Which I desire you will affix in some
convenient place in your school, letting your scholars know
from me that, if any of your boys for the future shall be
guilty of blaspheming the name of God, or be seen playing in
the streets on a Sunday, or disturb the congregation at church,
or shall be found robbing of orchards, or any other like crime,
THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION 315
I shall cause them to be severely punished which is what is
needful at this place." We need not be surprised to learn, as
he adds, that " the strict observation of the Sabbath, the
putting a stop to the tippling, trading, and profane swearing,
etc., by the execution of the law, and my earnest zeal in all
places of public resort, and in all companies wherever I
came, made many persons I had a regard for slight me.
Some took the liberty to lampoon me in song and verse, in
no measured terms ; while others resorted to ridicule and
banter all which I disregarded, but still kept on following
the heat whilst it was hot, though it like to have proved very
fatal to my own health. Upon divers occasions I received
letters containing verses, reflecting on me harshly, but I did
what I thought right, and that was my recompense." l
Between 1689 and 1835 we shall note a relative decline
in the importance of the Mayoralty ; owing partly to the
ever-growing activity of the Borough Justices sitting as a
Bench of Magistrates in Petty and Special Sessions, and
partly to the ever-increasing minuteness of the Council's
control of the Corporate property. But the reader of the
wonderful day-by-day record of the travelling and preaching
of John Wesley, between 1735 and 1790 will remember how
frequently he comes in contact with the Mayors of the towns,
who themselves permit or prohibit his preaching, command
the local Constables, initiate or suspend proceedings, and
generally act as local potentates.
With all this power and pomp of the Head of the .Corpora-
tion, the question arises to what extent he was provided with
a salary or allowance for expenses. In some archaic Corpora-
tions, the Head continued to receive the customary small
emoluments of the Eeeve of the Manor. He might enjoy
during his term of office the use of the proceeds of a given
piece of land, a larger " stint " on the Common, or three turns
of the Town Fishery. 2 In most Corporations, as in some
1 "The Sayings and Doings of Thomas Powell, Mayor of Deal in the year
1703, written by himself" ; in History of Deal, by Stephen Pritchard, 1864,
pp. 156-163. It should be added that Powell greatly distinguished himself in
the great storm of 1703, when over 200 shipwrecked men were saved, largely
by his "humane and spirited exertions" (ibid. p. 172). He was re-elected
Mayor in 1708 (MS. Records, Deal Corporation).
2 The Mayor of Fordwich in Kent had the right of fishing in the Corpora-
tion's river "until he takes a tnmt," and then "two nights together" in
316 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Manorial Boroughs, the Mayor took for himself, if not the
whole of particular tolls or dues, at any rate a part of these
exactions it might be a hundred oysters out of every barrel,
the second-best fish out of every boat, a bushel of coals from
every load. In many Corporations he received the profits of
the Fair, 1 or the fees of the Borough Court, or shared with
the Bailiffs the profits of executions. In the larger Munici-
palities these perquisites had been wholly or partially
commuted for fixed allowances and were often supplemented
by definite stipends, which in one or two instances came to
exceed a thousand a year. But it may safely be assumed
that even the largest of these allowances never did more than
cover the out-of-pocket expenses of the holder of the office,
and seldom sufficed to meet the innumerable charges in the
way of fees, the salaries of an enlarged household, the liveries
or uniforms of " the Mayor's servants," the maintenance of a
State coach, and the incessant eatings and drinkings of Juries
and committees, the banquets to the Assize Judges, the
convivialities of the " Mayor's Counsellors " and the " Mayor's
Brethren" not to mention the hospitality to visitors of the
Borough which custom required. The Headship of the
Corporation, whatever its nominal emoluments, was, in fact,
in 1689 as in 1835, always an honorary office of considerable
personal labour, rewarded only by the prestige, power, and
social consideration universally conceded to the Chief
Magistrate of the Borough.
So important a part in the working constitution of the
Municipal Corporation was played by its Head, that we must
necessarily relegate the method of his appointment to our
analysis of Municipal Constitutions. But whether he was
addition, whereas other Jurats and Freemen only had a night each " in course
as they severally dwell according to the course of the sun, from the house of the
Mayor for the time being." Moreover, the Mayor had the refusal of all fish
caught for sale, until 1721, when it was agreed that he should " have one night
before the outmen, in consideration of the Freemen having liberty to sell their
fish or turns to whom they please " (" Book of Decrees," 1671 ; in " Fordwich
Municipal Records," by Rev. C. E. Woodruff, in Archceologia Cantiana,
vol. xviii., 1889, p. 96 ; Privy Council Register, 10th July 1685 ; History of
the Tovm and Port of Fordwich, by the same, 1895, pp. 205-206). The
excellence of the Fordwich trout and their great commercial value were com-
mended by Isaac Walton (The Complete, Anc/ler, edition of 1823, pp. 68-69).
1 As at Wai-eliam (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 1360).
THE HEAD OF THE CORPORA TION 317
simply "presented" at the Court of the Lord of the Manor,
by the Homage or other Jury ; whether he was selected by a
Court of Aldermen or by a Common Council from among
their own members ; or whether he was elected by all the
Burgesses or Freemen of the Corporation, or even by the
householders of the Borough, it is, we think, significant of his
ancestry that his appointment nearly always took place some-
where near Michaelmas in each year, after the arable crops
had been got in, and the commonfields had been thrown
open again to the Town Herd, exactly at the season when
the Lord's Courts and Manorial Boroughs were appointing
their Eeeves or other officers. And however little was the
participation of the mere inhabitants of the Borough in the
selection of a new Head of the Municipal Corporation, it was
perhaps a reminiscence of popular satisfaction at emancipation
from the control of the Lord of the Manor if not a reminis-
cence of the Anglo-Saxon theory that the King's Peace died
with the monarch and had to be set up afresh by his successor
that the whole of the inhabitants shared, on " Charter Day,
in a sort of Carnival of pleasurable disorder. In one Borough
it was customary that " on the election of a Bailiff, the
inhabitants assemble in the principal streets to throw cabbage-
stalks at each other. The Town-house bell gives signal for
the affray. This is called the lawless hour. This done (for
it lasts an hour), the Bailiff-elect and Corporation in their
robes, preceded by drums and fifes (for they have no Waits),
visit the old and new Bailiff, Constables, etc., attended by the
mob. In the meantime, the most respectable families in the
neighbourhood are invited to meet and fling apples at them
on their entrance. I have known forty pots of apples
expended at one house." 1 In many other Boroughs public
festivities on the annual appointment of the Mayor were
maintained in full force. The accounts of the expenses, with
their items for " the tenders [attendants] on the newly elected
Jurat or Mayor ; the band, consisting on the first occasion of
four fiddles and two drummers ; the women at sixpence a
head strewing herbs in the path of the newly elected ; the
ribbon for cockades ; the ' colourmen ' [men bearing flags] ; the
Freemen paid for their votes even when absent from home ;
1 At Kidderminster. See Gc'/tileman's Magazine, 1790, vol. be. p. 1191.
3i8 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
and the winding up with a grand smash of broken windows,
glasses, pots, and punch ladles, form altogether a vivid
Hogarthian picture of the proceedings." 1
(i) The Bailiffs
There is perhaps no more interesting proof of the
haphazard development of the Municipal Corporation than
the wide range in dignity and status of the personages who,
in one or other Boroughs, were styled Bailiffs. 2 As we have
already seen, in forty Municipal Corporations, the Bailiffs
usually a pair were actually the Heads of their several
Corporations, with all the powers of Mayor. In about a
hundred Municipal Corporations, on the other hand, the
officers termed Bailiffs were so insignificant that they appeared
only as part of the subordinate staff of half-obsolete Courts,
mentioned, if at all, among such petty officers as Constables,
Poundkeepers, Cryers, and Serjeants. In about thirty
Municipal Corporations, however, the Bailiffs occupied an
intermediate position. Whilst not the Heads of their
Corporations, their offices, as we shall presently describe,
were named in the Charters, and clothed with independent
jurisdictions. But whether the Bailiffs were the Heads of
their several Corporations, petty officers of the Borough
Courts, or dignified functionaries of independent status, they
always retained traces of an apparent descent from the Eeeve
or Bailiff of the Lord's Court. As Head of the Municipal
Corporation, the Bailiff was, as we have seen, nothing but a
glorified Reeve. As a petty officer of the Borough Court, the
Bailiff retained the function of his Manorial ancestor in
collecting fines and making distraints. And when the Bailiff
takes rank below the Mayor among the Chief Officers of the
Municipal Corporation, he resembles, as we shall see, the Bailiff
of a Franchise or Liberty, who, on behalf of his Lord, excludes
the Sheriff or his officers from executing processes within the
exempted area.
1 " Extracts from the Account Book of Captain John Harvey, R.N., Mayor
of Sandwich, 1774-1775," by Thomas Dorman ; in Archccologia CatUiana,
vol. xx., 1893, p. 222.
2 Possibly the wide use of the term Bailiff may be due to the loose
terminology of early documents, especially translations. The word " Bailivus "
was nearly as general as ' ' minister. "
THE BAILIFFS 319
In nearly all the Boroughs in which the Bailiffs were
Chief Officers of the Corporation subordinate to the Mayor,
there were two Bailiffs, often distinguished from each other,
as the High Bailiff and the Low Bailiff, 1 the Senior Bailiff
and the Junior Bailiff, 2 Bailiff of the Brethren and Bailiff
of the Commons, 8 the Land Bailiff and the "Water
Bailiff, 4 or historically most significant the King's
Bailiff and the Town's^ Bailiff. 5 In fewer than a dozen
Boroughs do we find any exception to this duality of
the Bailiff; six Corporations had only a single Bailiff as
a Chief Officer, 6 subordinate to the Mayor, whilst two rejoiced
in four. 7
The functions of the Bailiffs, in all these Corporations in
which they were Chief Officers subordinate to the Mayor,
had, by 1689, come to differ widely from town to town. We
see them most frequently having some responsibility for the
selection or summoning of Juries, and for the execution of
the processes of one or other of the Borough Courts. They
are often responsible for accounting for fines ; for the
collection of rents and fees ; and sometimes for performing
all the duties of Treasurer and Accountant. 8 We see them
sometimes discharging the offices of Coroner, Keeper of the
Borough Gaol, Clerk of the Market, and even those of Billet-
master - and Poundkeeper. But they were often, by Charter
or by usage, clothed also with judicial powers; they were
frequently included among the Justices of the Peace; they
sat as Judges in the Court of Pleas or other Borough
Court ; they held the Court of Pie Powder. They often
held the Corporation's Manor Courts, and exercised the powers
of the Lord of the Manor. They sometimes acted, either
alone or jointly with the Mayor, as Eeturning Officers for the
1 Winchester. 2 Southampton.
3 Lancaster. * Queenborough.
6 Dartmouth.
8 Lydd, Axbridge, Chichester, Plyrnpton Earle, Salisbury, Sandwich.
7 Exeter and Berwick-on-Tweed. At Cambridge also there were four, but
they had by 1689 shrunk into Petty Officers.
8 At Exeter we are told, in 1584, " the Receiver is always one of the four
Bailiffs, and hath the like and the same charge as every one of them hath ; but
the office of Receiver is particular to himself, and none is chosen thereunto
except he be of the number of the Common Council or Four-and-Twenty " (The
Antique Description and Account of the City of Exeter, by John Vowell, 1765,
p. 165).
320 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
.Borough. 1 They reached, perhaps, their highest status and
greatest dignity in those Boroughs in which they fulfilled the
duties of Sheriffs in the return of writs and the execution of pro-
cesses ; sometimes to the exclusion, either wholly or partially,
of the Sheriff of the County at large. 2 In one Corporation at
least though the Borough was not a County in itself the
two Bailiffs were actually called Sheriffs of the Borough, and
acted separately as such. 3
By 1689 the Bailiff or Bailiffs who were Chief Officers
had come to be chosen by the Corporation, and nearly always
by its Governing Council or Close Body. What is interesting
is to notice the traces of a former duality in the method of
their appointment. Occasionally the Head of the Corporation
nominated or appointed one of the pair and the Council the
other. Sometimes the two Bailiffs were chosen by different
parts of the Corporation, perhaps by the Court of Aldermen
and the Common Council respectively ; sometimes even out of
different sections of the Freemen. It is impossible to refrain
from the suggestion that, in this duality in the method of
appointment, as in the duality in the familiar titles, there is
a trace of the right of appointment of the two Bailiffs having
been conceded at different dates, at successive stages of
autonomy ; the Town's Bailiff coming very early to represent
the tenants, whilst the King's Bailiff remained much longer
the nominee of the Lord, only passing later into the power
of the Corporation. 4
1 We may note as exceptional that at Cambridge the four Bailiffs had
formerly presided individually (like the Aldermen of London, Canterbury,
and other places) over the Wards into which the Borough was divided, in which
they had to keep the peace (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iv. p. 2188).
2 As at Northampton, Great Grimsby, Oxford, Bath, Bridgwater, Sandwich,
Winchester, etc. At Great Grimsby the two Bailiffs were judges of the "Foreign
Court of Pleas," joint Lords of the Manor along with the Mayor, joint Presidents
with the Mayor and the High Steward at the Court Leet, and a necessary part
of every Court of Mayor and Burgesses (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2252).
3 Bath (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1115) ; so perhaps also at Winchester (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 902).
4 At Dartmouth the Bailiff usually served for two years, the King's Bailiff
of one year becoming the Town's Bailiff of the next (ibid. vol. i. p. 478). At
Wenlock, ex-Bailiffs were styled Bailiffs' Peers (ibid. vol. iii. p. 2076).
THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER 321
(/) The High Steward and the Recorder
The tendency to fission, or to a duplication of offices, is
seen also in the case of the Steward. In the Manorial
Boroughs, as we have seen, it was usual for the Lord of the
Manor to continue to hold a Court, at which his Steward
presided. Such an arrangement occasionally continued, even
after a fully developed Municipal Corporation had come into
being. 1 Even when the Lord had ceased to take the profits of
the Court, he might exceptionally retain the appointment of
the Steward or Capital Seneschal, or, as he tended to be
called, the High Steward. 2 More usually, however, we find
the Corporation, by 1689, controlling all the Courts held
within the Borough, and appointing, to preside at one or
other of them, its own Steward or Chief Steward. 3 This
officer or dignitary had evidently, at the outset, been
supposed to be a lawyer, and was sometimes required by
Charter to be a " discreet man learned in the law." 4 He was
assumed to preside at the various Courts of the Borough, and
was frequently, ex officio, one of its Justices of the Peace.
His appointment might rest with the Crown, or with the
Governing Council or Close Body of the Corporation, some-
times subject to the approval of the Crown. But the office of
Steward was, in nearly all cases, destined to undergo a change.
In a few towns, the Steward became a mere subordinate officer
of the Corporation, holding the Courts on its behalf as for an
individual Lord. 5 In a few others he continued to be one of
the Chief Officers of the Corporation, acting as one of its
Justices and holding its Courts. 6 In a few more, his office
became a mere sinecure, executed by a " sufficient deputy,"
who might be styled simply Deputy-Steward or Sub-Seneschal, 7
1 As at Morpeth, Salisbury, Ripon, etc. (see pp. 339, 500).
2 As at Havering-atte-Bower (First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, vol. v. p. 2878) ; Oswestry (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2825). At Gravesend
the office of Capital Seneschal or High Steward was hereditary in the family
of the Earl of Darnley (History of Gravesend, by R. P. Cruden, 1843, p. 307).
3 As at Hereford (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. p. 255).
4 As at Oswestry (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2825).
8 As at Berwick-on-Tweed (ibid. vol. iii. pp. 1438, 1442).
As at Basingstoke (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1101) ; Congleton (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2651).
7 As at Gravesend (History of Gravesend, by R. P. Crudeii, 1843, pp. 307,
308 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. v. p. 2865).
VOL. II. PT. I Y
322 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
but whom we also find dignified by a title destined to become
itself of importance, that of Recorder. 1 In one or two cases,
at least, the Steward was considered to be himself the
Recorder these two names denoting, in fact, one and the
same functionary. 2 In the vast majority of cases, however, we
find the office split definitely into two. There is on the one
hand, the Steward, Chief Steward, Capital Seneschal, High
Steward, or Lord High Steward, 3 an officer of great dignity
and some influence, but with practically no duties or emolu-
ments ; usually a gentleman of high position, perhaps the
owner or the patron of the Borough ; required, indeed, by the
Charters of many towns to be an "eminent," an "illustrious,"
or a " distinguished " man ; 4 occasionally at least a Knight,
if not a peer of the realm. 5 This office, which we may
suspect to have become differentiated with the object of
obtaining an influential protector at Court, became exclusively
honorary, though some of the archaic remuneration a pipe
of wine every third year, 6 or eighteen sugar loaves annually 7
1 As frequently among the Boroughs of Wales. At Gravesend the High
Steward nominated two barristers to the Governing Council of the Corporation,
for one of them to be chosen as Recorder (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. v. p. 2865). At Castle Rising the Recorder was
appointed by the Lord of the Manor (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2211) ; so also at Clun
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2642) ; as frequently in Manorial Boroughs. The term
Recorder is of high antiquity ; such an officer is noticed at Bristol in the
fourteenth century (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1158), and at Southampton in the fifteenth
(Speed MSS., Southampton Corporation, p. 72 ; History of Southampton, by J. S.
Davies, 1883, p. 185), where the form of oath taken by him in 1461 is given,
showing that he was already both a judicial and an advisory officer. The rise
of the Recorder to be a Chief Officer is, in a sense, analogous to the similar
development of the Gustos Rotulorum among the County Justices (see The Parish
and the County, pp. 285-286).
2 Andover (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol.
ii. p. 1084) ; Maidenhead (ibid. vol. v. p. 2911) ; Southwold (ibid. vol. iv.
p. 2516) ; Folkestone (ibid. vol. ii. p. 982). At Chipping Wycombe, on the
other hand, the Recorder was required by the Charter to execute the office
of Steward (ibid. vol. i. p. 42). Thus at Dover, when the office was held by
so distinguished a person as the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Hardwicke, it
was still described on his death in 1764 as that of " Steward of the Corporation,
and Assistant to the Mayor and Jurats at their Courts of Sessions and Trials "
(MS. Records, Dover Corporation, 26th March 1764).
3 As at Gloucester (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 59) ; Lynn (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2397).
4 As at Newbury (ibid. vol. i. p. 90) ; Hertford (ibid. vol. v. p. 2886)';
Hereford (ibid. vol. i. p. 255) ; Maidenhead (ibid. vol. v. p. 2910) ; Wokingham
(ibid. vol. v. p. 2939) ; Windsor (ibid. vol. v. p. 2933).
6 As at Stratford-upon-Avon (ibid. vol. i. p. 119) ; Henley (ibid. vol. i. p.
72) ; Banbury (ibid. vol. i. p. 9). 6 At Bristol (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1165).
7 At Kingston-on-Thames (ibid. vol. v. p. 2896).
THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER 323
would occasionally be continued. On the other hand, we have
the Eecorder (occasionally still styled also Deputy Steward), an
" honest and discreet man, learned in the laws of England and
of the degree of the utter barristers," l whose duty it was to
preside at one or other of the Borough Courts, occasionally to
hold the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge in place of the
Steward, 2 to administer the oath of office to the Mayor, to be
present as a Justice at the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions
when important criminal cases had to be tried, to sit with the
Mayor as legal Assessor, and to advise the Corporation on any
legal or constitutional point of difficulty. He might receive a
nominal stipend, or a fee for each attendance, 8 or more rarely
a substantial salary. On the other hand, there was a tendency
as with the High Steward to make the office one of
honour and dignity only, to be filled by a nobleman or
gentleman of position, the work being performed either by
deputy, or relegated to some other officer of the Corporation. 4
In the majority of Boroughs, however, the Eecorder remained
the principal legal adviser and the leading judicial functionary
of the Corporation. In one great Borough, in the eighteenth
century, the Eecorder, we are told, " was frequently a member of
one of the great families of the district. . . . He took the
leading part in the Mayor's Court, supplying, doubtless, the legal
knowledge which the Mayor could not be expected to possess.
But he was not, like the modern Eecorder, a bird of passage,
coming only for the Sessions of his Court. He cast in his lot
with the Borough, and his legal knowledge and skill in inter-
preting charters were often useful. He sometimes goes up to
London on legal business." 5
1 As at Aldeburgh (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. iv. p. 2092).
2 As at St. Albans (ibid. vol. v. p. 2921) ; Truro (ibid. vol. i. p. 656) ;
Bury St. Edmunds (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2174).
3 At Dorchester this fee was "two moidores," computed to be 2 : 14s.
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 1275). At Bristol it was as much as a hundred guineas a
time, with a hogshead of port or sherry annually (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1165). At
Southampton there had usually been New Year's gifts of sugar, spices, wine or
olives, but in 1688 a yearly fee of five pounds was fixed (Speed MSS. p. 72;
MS. Records of Southampton Corporation ; see also History of Southampton, by J.
S. Davies, 1883, pp. 184-185).
4 As at Penzance.
6 Jlistory of Municipal Governmeiit in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906, p. 83.
324 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
(k) The Chamberlain and the Town Cleric
We may pass lightly over the officers whom the Municipal
Corporations gradually accumulated to perform the usual
administrative work. It is interesting that the oldest of
them, and in 1689 in one or two cases still the most
prominent, was not, as we might nowadays expect, the Town
Clerk, but the Chamberlain, Cofferer, 1 Receiver, 2 Chamber-
reeve, 3 or Treasurer. In the most rudimentary Municipal
Corporation, as in the simpler Manorial Boroughs, it was upon
the Head of the Corporation that all the administrative work
fell, just as it did upon the Eeeve of the Manor. When the
little community began to possess a Corporate fund, the Head
of the Corporation, whether styled Eeeve, Portreeve or
Boroughreeve, Alderman, Bailiff, Warden or Mayor, himself
often kept the cash. 4 Equally significant of the transition
from the Manor is the fact that in some Municipal Corpora-
tions the Chamberlains, or Treasurers of the Corporation, were
actually appointed by the Lord's Steward or other officer. 5
The next step, we infer, was for the Head of the Corporation
to devolve the duties upon an officer or officers appointed by
himself, a position in which half a dozen Municipal Corpora-
tions in 1689 still found themselves. 6 Finally, we have the
arrangement at which the great majority of Municipal Cor-
porations had, by 1689, arrived, by which the officers fulfilling
the duties of Treasurer were appointed by the Corporation
itself, nearly always by the Governing Council, but occasionally
by presentment of a Jury at one or other of the Borough
1 So styled at Bridport.
2 So styled at Bury St. Edmunds, Dartmouth, Newcastle-under-Lyme,
Saltash, Truro, and Warwick. 3 So styled at Haverfordwest.
4 This was the case at Altrincham, Arundel, Beccles, Berkeley, Chard,
Dunmow, Durham, Godalming, Lymington, and Yeovil, among Manorial
Boroughs. And at Bodmin, Liskeard, Penzance, Plympton Earle, Poole,
Sutton Coldfield, and Morpeth, among Municipal Corporations ; whilst it was
equally characteristic of several Welsh Boroughs, such as Denbigh, Llandovery,
and Llantrissant. At Alnwick there were four Chamberlains, who were (under
the Lord's Bailiff) jointly Heads of this Manorial Borough.
6 This was the case at Cardiff (First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, vol. i. p. 189), and Swansea (ibid. vol. i. p. 391), as well as at
Alnwick (vol. iii. pp. 1413, 1415).
6 For instance, Barnstaple (ibid. vol. i. p. 430) ; Carlisle (ibid. vol. iii. p,
1471) ; Chester (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2621) ; Lincoln (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2347) ; Maid-
stone (ibid. vol. ii. p. 757) ; Wells (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1370).
THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK 325
Courts ; l or by popular election by the suffrages of the whole
body of Freemen. 2
As its administrative work increased, we see the Municipal
Corporation, like the Manorial Borough, creating an office
unknown to the Manor, 3 that of the Common Clerk, 4 or Town
Clerk. We infer that the office, like that of the Kecorder,
had gradually become differentiated from that of the Steward.
In a few cases, even in 1689, we find it still combined with
the Stewardship, 5 or the Eecordership ; 6 whilst in others it
was combined with the post of Deputy Steward. 7 In some
1 As at Grimsby (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol.
iv. p. 2250), Laugharne (ibid. vol. i. p. 288), and Aberystwyth (ibid. vol. i. p. 171).
2 As at Berwick-on-Tweed (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1438) ; Cambridge (ibid. vol.
iv. p. 2186) ; Carmarthen (ibid. vol. i. p. 206) ; Hastings (ibid. vol. ii. p. 998) ;
Ipswich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2295) ; Pevensey (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1017) ; Plymouth
(ibid. vol. i. p. 582) ; Rornney Marsh (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1027) ; Rye (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 1032) ; Sandwich (ibid. vol. it. p. 1044) ; Southwold (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2517).
In the City of London the election was by the superior grade of Freemen (the
Liverymen). The Chamberlains of the City of London and Bristol were legally
"corporations sole," and thus enjoyed the privilege of perpetual succession.
They also exercised quasi-judicial functions in respect of apprentices, having
power to adjudicate on complaints, cancel or vary indentures, compel masters to
pay damages and even to imprison recalcitrant apprentices.
3 At the highly developed Lord's Court of Epworth (Lincolnshire) there was,
however, a Clerk of the Court.
4 So styled at Carlisle (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1469) ; Grantham (ibid. vol. iv.
p. 2242) ; Hereford (ibid. vol. i. p. 256) ; Liverpool (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2699) ;
Tenterden (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1064); Tewkesbury (ibid. vol. i. p. 125); and
Yarmouth, Isle of Wight (ibid. vol. ii. p. 916). For a good description of his
office, see Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, by A. S. Green, 1894, vol. ii. pp.
257-264.
6 As at Bradiug, Isle of Wight (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 680) ; Liskeard (ibid. vol. i. p. 526) ; Devizes
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 1265) ; Eye (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2229) ; Newtown, Isle of Wight
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 794) ; Lampeter (ibid. vol. i. p. 283) ; Usk (ibid. vol. i.
p. 416); Wiston (ibid. vol. i. p. 423); "Westbury (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1378);
Stockton (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1729) ; or, as at Ncath, with the post of Constable
of the Castle (ibid. vol. i. p. 334) ; or, as at Penzance, with that of Seneschal
(ibid. vol. i. p. 572).
6 As at Clun (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2642} ; Flint (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2681) ;
Garstang (ibid. vol. iii. pp. 1520, 1521) ; Kenfig (ibid. vol. i. p. 269) ;
Montgomery (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838) ; Swansea
(First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 390) ;
Wootton Bassett (ibid. vol. i. p. 147). At Southampton, as an eighteenth-
century antiquary tells us, " there is little said of the Town Clerk in the ancient
books of the Town, but in one of them, A.D. 1570, he is called Clerk of the
Records of the Town, which seems to be expressive of his office, the Recorder
being Keeper of the Records " (Speed MSS., Corporation of Southampton, p. 73 ;
see also History of Southampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883, p. 186).
7 As at Beccles (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. p. 2136) ; Sutton Coldfield (ibid. vol. iii. p. 2033) ; Newport, Shrop-
shire (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1962) ; Windsor (ibid. vol. v. p. 2933) ; Andover (ibid.
326 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
cases the Town Clerk was appointed by the Lord of the
Manor, 1 and in various others by the Steward, 2 or by the
Recorder, 8 whom he often served as Deputy Recorder. In
half a dozen cases the appointment was vested by Charter in
the Crown, usually on petition from the Governing Council of
the Corporation. 4 In the great majority of Municipal Cor-
porations, however, the Town Clerk had, by 1689, acquired
a leading place among the Chief Officers of the Corporation,
though possibly he was not yet, as the Town Clerk of
Launceston declared a century later, " to the Mayor of a
Corporation what the Lord Chancellor is to the King, the
chief adviser." 5 He was, by specific direction in the
Charters, appointed by the Corporation itself; usually by the
Governing Council, 6 but in a few cases by presentment of a
vol. ii. p. 1082) ; Blandford (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1134) ; East Retford (ibid.
vol. iii. p. 1862).
1 As at Cardiff (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. p. 189) ; Cowbridge (ibid. vol. i. p. 221) ; Llandovery (ibid. vol. i.
p. 302) ; Llantrissant (ibid. vol. i. p. 314) ; Oswestry (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2826) ;
and Welshpool (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, p. 141).
2 As at Andover (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 1134) ; Buckingham (ibid. vol. i. p. 28) ; East Retford (ibid. vol. iii.
p. 1862).
3 As at Bradninch (ibid. vol. i. p. 458) ; Derby, subject to approval by the
King (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1850) ; Helston (ibid. vol. i. p. 512) ; Launceston (ibid.
vol. i. p. 518) ; East Looe (ibid. vol. i. p. 634) ; Penryn (ibid. vol. i. p. 563) ;
Thetford (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2541) ; and Warwick (ibid. vol. iii. p. 2059).
4 As at Falmouth (ibid. vol. i. p. 502) ; Kingston-upon-Hull (ibid. vol. iii.
p. 1549) ; Leeds (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1618) ; Newport, Isle of Wight (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 776) ; Wigan (Report on Certain Boroughs, by T. J. Hogg, 1838, p. 155).
The appointment, or approval of appointment, was given by the Privy Council
and latterly by the Home Office ; and the student will find numerous instances
recorded in the MS. Register of the Privy Council, 1660-1832 ; and in the
Home Office Domestic State Papers and Entry Book, 1700-1832, in Public
Record Office ; for one such case concerning Sudbury, see Calendar of Home
Office Papers, 1770-1772 (1881), pp. 243, 344-345.
6 Town Clerk of Lauuceston to Town Clerk of Plymouth, 15th October
1804, in MS. Records, Plymouth Corporation. The Town Clerk of the fifteenth
century had been, in many Boroughs, " a Municipal Chancellor in Avhom was
embodied a continuous tradition of administration and a fixed jurisprudence "
(Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, by A. S. Green, 1894, vol. ii. pp. 260-261).
6 We give one such minute of appointment as typical. " This day J. K. of
the Town and County of Southampton was, by the majority of votes, whereof
Mr. Mayor and the Recorder were two, elected Town Clerk for the said Town
of Southampton, he proposing to execute the office gratis, enjoying the usual
perquisites ; to gather the Town rents, dues and fines without any certain
reward, which is to be left to the discretion of the Corporation when he shall
account with them ; to make up the Town accounts and account with them as
often as they shall be pleased to require ; and to go abroad upon the Corpora-
tion's business without any reward, the Corporation allowing him reasonable
THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK 327
Jury ; l in a few other cases by the Head of the Corporation, 2
and sometimes by popular election of the whole body of Free-
men. 3 We see the Town Clerk becoming the principal officer of
the Corporation, and combining in his person many different
offices. In one Borough or another we find him acting as
Clerk of the Peace, Prothonotary, Clerk of Indictments, Clerk
to the Magistrates, Eegistrar and Clerk of all the Borough
Courts ; he would sometimes be Coroner, Under Sheriff,
Deputy Kecorder, Corporation Solicitor, Keeper of the Kecords,
Steward of the Corporation Manors, and Billetmaster. He
might preside at the Court Leet, Court Baron, Borough Court
or Court of Pleas, or sit as assessor in the Mayor's Court.
Almost invariably he acted as solicitor and legal agent to the
Corporation, and, in conjunction with the Eecorder, as its
legal adviser. He was often one of the Corporate Justices of
the Peace ; but, unlike the Eecorder and the Chamberlain, not
usually a member of the Governing Council, to which he acted
as Clerk. 4
charges and expenses " (MS. Records, Southampton Corporation, 30th September
1708).
1 As at Aberystwyth (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 171) ; Bossiney (ibid. vol. i. p. 453) ; Laugharne (ibid. vol. i.
p. 288) ; St. Clears (ibid. vol. i. p. 377) ; and Havering-atte-Bower (ibid. vol. v.
p. 2878).
2 As at Appleby (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1426) ; Huntingdon (ibid. vol. iv. p.
2287) ; Ilchester (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1290) ; Kilgerran (ibid. vol. i. p. 279) ; and
Seaford (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1059).
3 As at Bedford (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2107) ; Berwick- on -Tweed (ibid. vol. iii.
p. 1438) ; Bridgnorth (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1781) ; Cambridge (ibid. vol. iv. p.
2187) ; Carmarthen (ibid. vol. i. p. 206) ; Hastings (ibid. vol. ii. p. 998) ;
Ipswich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2295) ; Macclesfield (Report on Certain Boroughs, by
T. J. Hogg, 1838, p. 58) ; Pevensey (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 1017) ; Plymouth (ibid. vol. i. p. 581) ; Romney
Marsh (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1027) ; Sandwich (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1045) ; and Wenlock
(ibid. vol. iii. p. 2077) ; also, subject to the approval of the Crown, at Grimsby
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2250) ; and Poole (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1322).
4 He was, however, a member of the Council at Canterbury (ibid. vol. ii. p.
691) ; Chichester (ibid. vol. ii. p. 720) ; Faversham (ibid. vol. ii. p. 964). At
Dover he might or might not be chosen a member of the Common Council fey
the Mayor and Jurats (MS. Records, Dover Corporation, 19th January 1688 ;
First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 943). At
Southampton, on a new appointment being made in 1774, it was resolved "that
he shall not have any deliberative voice in the Common Council, nor enter into
any public debate, unless his opinion be asked, or he shall find the Body going
into error in point of law or in prejudice of their own privileges " (MS. Records,
Corporation of Southampton, 5th March 1774).
328 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
(I) The County Officers of the Municipal Corporation
It was, as we have said, an object of the Municipal
Corporation to free itself from external control, and particu-
larly to exclude the officers of the County and their underlings.
To obtain this privilege, Corporation after Corporation not
only made large payments to the King, but also undertook
to perform, within the boundaries of its Borough, all the
various duties of the County officers, notably those of the
Coroner, the Sheriff, and the Justices of the Peace, and, in
a single quite exceptional case, 1 also the Lieutenancy. In
the majority of cases these duties, with the corresponding
powers and authorities, devolved upon the existing Corporate
officers. The Head of the Corporation, whether Portreeve,
Warden, Alderman, Bailiff or Mayor, was always, ex
officio, a Justice of the Peace for the Borough, and often
also Coroner; if the Corporation enjoyed the privilege of
sending members to Parliament, it was its Head, not the
County Sheriff, who acted as Returning Officer ; 2 in the smaller
Boroughs he often himself fulfilled such of the duties of
Sheriff and High Constable s as the Corporation had become
responsible for. But this work naturally usually devolved
upon other Corporate officers. The Bailiffs usually saw to the
return of writs, the impanelling of Juries, and sometimes also
the custody of the gaol ; in some Municipal Corporations,
indeed, claiming to be fully equivalent to the Sheriffs of
1 The City of London. Haverfordwest, Berwick -on-Tweed, and the Liberty of
the Cinque Ports had separate Lieutenants appointed by the Crown.
2 In the nineteen Cities or Boroughs which were Counties in themselves,
the Sheriff or Sheriffs of the Municipal Corporations were the Returning Officers ;
at Berwick-on-Tweed, which was, between 1689 and 1835, in virtually the same
position, it was the Mayor and Bailiffs jointly (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iii. p. 1440) ; this was the case also at
Newcastle-under-Lyme (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1952) ; Bedford (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2106) ;
Preston (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1689). In other Boroughs it was the Head of the
Corporation, who was accordingly declared incapable of being himself elected
as a Member of Parliament, or of returning himself as a member for the Borough
(House of Commons Journals, 2nd June 1685).
3 The exact position in the County organisation of those Boroughs which
were not Counties in themselves seems to have varied from County to County,
and from function to function. For most purposes, in most Counties, the
Borough seems to have been treated as a separate Hundred ; and in these
cases the Municipal Corporation, by its Head or some other of its Chief Officers,
performed the duties of High Constable.
COUNTY OFFICERS OF MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 329
Counties. 1 Occasionally we find the Bailiff's discharging also
the duties of the Coroner. 2 In some other Boroughs the
duties of Coroner devolved upon the Town Clerk, 3 or upon
one or more of the Aldermen. 4
The majority of Municipal Corporations, however, ap-
pointed a separate Officer as Coroner, usually under the
specific authority of a Charter; the appointment being
frequently conferred habitually for a year upon the person
who had served as Head of the Corporation during the pre-
ceding year, 5 or else made, either annually or for life, by the
Governing Council ; in a few cases by the Head of the Corpora-
tion, 6 or by election by the whole body of Freemen, 7 or (in one
case) by the Freeholders of the city. 8 In a few Corporations
the same officer was appointed to discharge within the
Borough both the duties of Coroner and, to some extent,
those of Sheriff. 9
1 Notably at Bath (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. ii. p. 1115); Grimsby (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2252); Liverpool (ibid.
vol. iv. p. 2698) ; Northampton (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1967) ; Oxford (ibid. vol. i.
p. 101). There was, even in the eighteenth century, great difficulty in restrain-
ing the officers of the County Sheriff (who were eager for fees) from making
executions and arrests in the Boroughs that were exempt from his jurisdiction.
The Corporation of Northampton had, for instance, to complain in 1722, and
again in 1728, of such action ; and on 10th May 1722 formally ordered that
any case should be promptly made the occasion for an action in defence of the
franchise of the Borough (Records of the Borough of Northampton, vol. ii., by
J. C. Cox, 1898, pp. 54-55).
2 As at Liverpool (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. p. 2698).
3 As at Banbury (ibid. vol. i. p. 10) ; Canterbury (ibid. vol. ii. p. 691) ;
Derby (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1850) ; Harwich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2264) ; Lichfield
(ibid. vol. iii. p. 1927) ; Maldon (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2438) ; Newark (ibid. vol. iii.
p. 1937) ; Plympton Earle (ibid. vol. i. p. 600).
4 As at Barnstaple (ibid. vol. i. p. 429) ; Denbigh (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2662) ;
Kendal (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1591). At Romney Marsh the duties of Coroner were
performed by the four elected Justices (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1027).
5 As at Bridgnorth (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1781) ; Bury St. Edmunds (ibid. vol.
iv. p. 2173); Daventry (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1843); Eye (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2229);
Godmanchester (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2235) ; Grantham (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2242) ;
Grimsby (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2250) ; Guildford (ibid. vol. v. p. 2872) ; Hedon
(ibid. vol. iii. p. 1538) ; Kingston-on-Hull (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1549) ; Oswestry
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2826) ; Scarborough (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1714) ; Thetford (ibid.
vol. iv. p. 2542).
6 As at Appleby (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1426).
7 As at Berwick-oii-Tweed (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1438) ; Cardigan (ibid. vol. i.
]). 198) ; Ipswich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2295) ; Monmouth (ibid. vol. i. p. 323) ;
Poole (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1322) ; Rochester (ibid. vol. ii. p. 847) ; Sotithwold
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2516).
8 York (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1741).
9 As at Ludlow (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2789) ; Lynn (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2398).
330 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Only those Municipal Corporations which had been
specifically granted by Royal Charter the privileges of their
Boroughs or Cities being " Counties of themselves," could
appoint Sheriffs of their own, though in three or four other
towns, as we have mentioned, the Corporations enjoyed
virtually equivalent immunities. The nineteen " Counties
Corporate," l as they were called the " citees, viles ou burghs
queux sonnt countees encorporates de eux memes " of the
Parliamentary scribe of 143 9 2 were completely exempted
from all jurisdictions of the County and its officers, with
the exception of the Lieutenancy. The Municipal Corpora-
tion was therefore responsible to the Crown for the fulfilment,
within the City or Borough, of all the obligations of a County
at large, except only those relating to the militia, for which
it was responsible to the Lord- Lieutenant. Thus, the Sheriffs
of these Corporations had practically the same powers and
duties as those of ordinary Counties. They were, however,
never appointed by the Crown, but by the Municipal Corpora-
tion itself, usually by its Governing Council; but in a few
cases, under more or less restriction of choice, by the whole
body of Freemen. 3 It should, however, be noted that it was
the Municipal Corporation itself, not its Sheriff or Sheriffs,
which had undertaken the responsibilities of a County, and
it was to the Head of the Corporation, not to the Sheriff or
Sheriffs, that the Crown looked for their fulfilment. The
Corporation Sheriffs, though irremovable by the Crown, were
accordingly not equal in status or dignity to those of the
Counties : they were, in fact, only subordinates to the Mayor
to use the quaint words of the old chronicler Stow, " the
Mayor's eyes, seeing and supporting part of the care, which
the person of the Mayor alone is not sufficient to bear." *
1 They were Bristol, Carmarthen, Chester, Coventry, Gloucester, Lincoln,
London, Norwich, Nottingham, and York, having each two Sheriffs ; and
Canterbury, Exeter, Haverfordwest, Kingston-on-Hull, Lichfield, Newcastle-on-
Tyne, Poole, Southampton, and Worcester, having each one Sheriff. The origin
and significance of this divergence of practice is quite unknown to us.
2 Rot. Parl. v. 28a (18 Henry VI.).
3 As at Carmarthen (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. p. 205) ; Haverfordwest (ibid. vol. i. p. 235) ; Kingston-on-Hull (ibid.
vol. iii. p. 1549); Norwich -(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2460). In the City of London
the election was by the superior grade of Freemen (the Livery).
4 Survey of London, by John Stow, book v. chap. v. p. 89 of Strype's
edition of 1720.
COUNTY OFFICERS OF MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 331
By 1689 they had come to have very varied functions in
the different towns, but they were rapidly becoming merely
ceremonial officers. In many Corporations they had to
accompany the Mayor on all pageants and ceremonies, in-
cluding his formal attendances at church a duty occasionally
refused by Nonconformists. 1 In the greatest of all the
Corporations, as we shall subsequently describe, 2 the two
Sheriffs moved in great pomp and had extensive and almost
incessant duties, but these were chiefly formal and ceremonial.
In other Boroughs the Sheriffs were supposed to preside,
sometimes at the ancient Borough Court, sometimes at a
Sheriffs' Monthly Court, at which minor litigation was dealt
with. They had the superintendence of the gaol and the
Bridewell, together with the appointment to various lucrative
offices, such as those of Under Sheriff, Gaoler, Bridewell
Keeper, Sheriff's Yeomen, Sheriff's Beadles, etc. In one or
two Corporations they were furnished, for their attendance
on the Mayor and the Assize Judges, with gorgeous State
carriages. They provided sumptuous banquets at the Assizes,
and they had occasionally to present the Corporation, or the
Mayor for the time being, with a costly piece of plate. 3 In
other Boroughs that were Counties Corporate the office of
Sheriff served principally as an opportunity for the Corporation
to confer temporary dignity, and often some perquisites, on one
of its number.
The newer dignity of the Gustos Eotulorum and Lord-
Lieutenant was, as we have already mentioned, only exception-
ally found connected with a town. Why the small Welsh
Borough of Haverfordwest should, for several centuries, have
enjoyed a Lord-Lieutenant to itself appointed, however, by
the Crown we are unable to explain. 4 The exceptional posi-
tion of Berwick, where the Governor was Lieutenant, and of the
1 In 1660 information was given to the Privy Council "that George Steward,
Esq. , lately chosen Sheriff for the City of Norwich, since his oath taken, refused
to accompany . . . the Mayor of the said City, according to custom, to the
Cathedral Church " ; whereupon he was summoned to appear, and made to
promise due attendance in future (MS. Acts of Privy Council, 10th and 26th
October 1660).
2 See post, " The City of London," Chapter X.
3 Notably in the City of London and Bristol.
4 This unique status of Haverfordwest may possibly be connected in some
way with the existence of a County Palatine of Pembrokeshire down to the
sixteenth century ; see The Pariah and the County, p. 313.
332 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
City of London, is more easily understood. There is no
evidence that the premier Municipality had ever formed
part of the County organisation of Middlesex ; and it may
well have been considered too important an aggregation of
population and wealth to be entrusted to any individual
subject. The custom grew up of entrusting the duties of
the Lieutenancy to a Commission appointed by the. King, of
whom the leading member was the Lord Mayor for the time
being. In the Liberty of the Cinque Ports, comprising
fifteen Municipal Corporations, all the duties of a Custos
Kotulorum and Lord-Lieutenant were, as we shall subsequently
describe, performed by the Lord Warden.
By 1689, however, as we have elsewhere described, the
real Eulers of the County were not the Sheriff and Coroner,
nor even the Custos Rotulorum and Lord-Lieutenant, but the
Justices of the Peace in their General Sessions assembled. It
was, as we have said, the distinctive mark of a Municipal
Corporation that it created its own Justices of the Peace, who
exercised within the boundaries of the Borough all the
powers elsewhere conferred by the King's Commission. These
Magisterial powers were nearly always combined with some
high Municipal office. The Head of the Corporation, whether
Portreeve, Bailiff, Alderman, Warden or Mayor, was invari-
ably a Justice of the Peace ex officio. So, too, was the
Kecorder, wherever such an officer was appointed ; less
frequently also the Coroner, the Bailiffs, the Deputy Eecorder
and the Town Clerk. The Head of the Corporation for the
preceding year was sometimes a magistrate for twelve months
after quitting office, and was often specifically termed " the
Justice." Occasionally the Bishop, or sometimes the Dean
and a Prebendary or two, would be included among the
Corporate Justices. Sometimes the Sheriffs were ex officio
Justices : in the larger Boroughs one or more of the Aldermen
or Jurats, sometimes those who had " passed the Chair," x
and sometimes all of them. 2 Only rarely do we find the
1 As at Chester (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. iv. pp. 2620, 2622); Berwick - on - Tweed (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1436);
Canterbury (ibid. vol. ii. p. 695) ; Lincoln (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2346) ; King's
Lynn (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2391) ; Norwich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2464) ; Liverpool (ibid.
vol. iv. p. 2700) ; Boston (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2153).
2 As at Bristol (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1165) ; Dover (ibid. vol. ii. p. 946); Faversham
MAYOR'S BRETHREN AND MAYORS COUNSELLORS 333
Corporation appointing persons specifically to be Justices of the
Peace ; though in some Boroughs two, three, or four would be
selected from among the Aldermen, or from such of them as
had served as Head of the Corporation. In one Borough the
whole body of Freemen elected annually four of the Jurats
to serve as Justices. 1
(ra) The Mayor's Brethren and the Mayor's Counsellors
Closely associated with the Mayor, as Head of the Corpora-
tion and. chief of its executive, were the Aldermen, the
"Mayor's Peers" or "Mayor's Brethren," whom we find
nearly everywhere serving him both as executive assistants,
undertaking individually particular functions or supervising
particular districts of the Borough, and also as a sort of
consultative council. 2 In the Cinque Ports, at any rate,
there are signs that their appointment had been, in earlier
times, actually made by the Head of the Corporation. 3 Some-
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 966) ; Folkestone (ibid. vol. ii. p. 981) ; Gloucester, where the
Bishop, the Dean, and two Prebendaries were also Justices (ibid. vol. i. p. 63) ;
Hythe (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1008) ; Kingston-on-Hull (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1552) ; Rye
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 1034) ; Sandwich (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1048) ; Seaford (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 1059) ; Stamford (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2530) ; Winchelsea (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1074) ;
Leeds (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1621) ; Beverley (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1458) ; Grantham
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2242) ; Hastings (ibid. vol. ii. p. 998) ; Lydd (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 1013) ; and the City of London after the Charter of 1741, infra, Chap. X.
1 Romney Marsh (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 1027).
a In many Corporations, principally but not exclusively in the South-western
counties such as Abingdon, Aldeburgh, Bewdley, Bodmin, Blandford, Brecon,
Bridgwater, Buckingham, Devizes, Dunwich, Eye, Glastonbury, Grantham,
Haverfordwest, Lancaster, Leominster, Liskeard, East and West Looe, Lost-
withiel, Marlborough, Marazion, Monmouth, Newcastle- under -Lyme, New
Radnor, Okehampton, Penryn, Plympton Earle, St. Ives, Shaftesbury, Sutton
Coldfield, Thetford, Tiverton, Tregony, Truro, Wareham, Westbury the place
of Aldermen is taken by "Capital Burgesses," or "Principal Burgesses," or
"Capital Councillors," or "Common Burgesses." At Andover we have the
"Approved Men"; at Bradninch, Dartmouth, Totnes and Wells, the
'Masters"; and at Ipswich and Orwell, the "Portmen." In nearly all the
Kent and Sussex Boroughs, especially those which formed part of the Liberty
of the Cinque Ports Deal, Dover, Faversham, Folkestone, Fordwich, Hastings,
Hythe, Lydd, Pevensey, Rye, Sandwich, Seaford, Tenterden, and Winchelsea,
and also Gravesend and Romney Marsh the title is "Jurat" ; probably derived
from the Norman towns. The title of Alderman is most usually found with
that of Mayor ; but in various Corporations, such as Bridgnorth, East Retford,
and Kidderminster, Aldermen were presided over by a Bailiff : in that of Sutton
Coldfield, by a Warden ; and in that of Neath, by a Portreeve. Capital Burgesses
and Jurats are found indifferently with Mayors or Bailiffs as Heads.
3 They were, in fact, his lieutenants or assistants (see, for instance, Sandwich,
Cinque Ports, by M. Burrows, 1888, p. 201).
334 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
times each Alderman, or each pair of Aldermen, was placed in
charge of, or at the head of, a particular Ward of the Borough,
for which he undertook a special responsibility. In one
ancient Municipality, for instance, the Alderman was charged
individually to inquire " whether there be any nuisance or
purprestures in the City, as by setting of pales, walls, stalls,
bulks, porches, windows, and such like, whereby any incroach-
ing is used ; or any timber, stones, dunghills, or heaps of
dirt, or any other thing be cast and laid in the streets to the
letting or hindering of any way, or to the annoyance of any
person. Also whether any do keep slaughtering within the
City, or do keep and feed any hogs, ducks, or any other filthy
beast. Also whether the streets be kept clean and swept
twice in the week at least. Also whether any house be
ruinous and stand dangerously, and whether any chimney,
oven or furnace, or backs or hearths for fire, do stand danger-
ously and in peril of fire, and the same not presented by
the scavenger. Also whether there be crooks, ladders, and
buckets in readiness to serve, if need should be, in peril of
fire ; and whether every man have in readiness a vessel of
water at his door when any house is adventured with fire,
and not advertised by the scavengers." 1 Gradually, however,
the Ward duties, and indeed most of the executive functions
of individual Aldermen, sank into the background, in com-
parison with their collective responsibility as a Court or
Council. In some Boroughs they remained indefinite in
number, existing merely by custom, being frequently those
who had served as Mayor, 2 and partaking of the Mayor's
dignity. In one Borough, for instance, we read, " their
number varied widely, but there seems to have been a theory
1 MS. Records, Exeter Corporation ; The Antique Description and Account
of . . . Exeter, by John Vowell, 1765, p. 172 (first printed 1584). At Bristol,
we find the Mayor and Aldermen allotting the several Wards among themselves.
and ordering ' ' that the several Wards written after the names of the Mayor
and Aldermen be under the care and inspection of each Justice of the Peace
respectively " (MS. Minutes, Bristol Corporation, 30th September 1706).
2 So in the Municipal Corporations of Bedford, Chichester, Guildford,
Liverpool, Northampton, Poole, Southampton, Welshpool, and Weymouth.
as well as in such Manorial Boroughs as Altrincham, Keiifig, Newport in
Pembrokeshire, Stockport, and Stockton. In some other Corporations, such as
Chester, Coventry, Derby, Hedon, and Hereford, the Aldermen were a definite
number, serving for life, vacancies being filled from among those who had served
as Head of the Corporation. This was the case also in such Manorial Boroughs
as Dursley, Llantrissant, Loughor, Wick war, and Wotton-under-Edge.
MA YORS BRETHREN AND MA YORS COUNSELLORS 33$
that they ought to number twelve. . . . They consisted of all
Mayors who had passed the chair, though, possibly, other
leading citizens were also admitted among them. They thus
held their position for life. . . . The front seats in the chapel
were reserved for them. The Town Waits played before their
doors. They sat on the Bench with the Mayor in his Court,
where all the multifarious judicial business was transacted.
They are repeatedly mentioned as sharing with the Mayor
responsibility for his acts ; and not rare is the announcement
of a new edict on some important point, ' Ordered by the
Mayor and his Brethren with the consent of the Assembly/ " 1
Only in two exceptional Corporations, to be subsequently
described 2 the only ones in winch the Aldermen were
elected by their Wards do we find their positions as Captains
of the Watch and Heads of their Wards at all comparable in
dignity and importance with those enjoyed by them as
Members of the Court of Aldermen. By 1689 they had
come usually to be specified in the Charter as a permanent
select body, definite in number and in the method of their
appointment ; in all cases forming part of the Court of
Common Council where any such Council existed ; only in
two or three cases sitting also separately as a Court of
Aldermen, except for the special purpose of filling vacancies
in their own body, or among the Common Councilmen, and
for the execution of their duties as Justices of the Peace. For,
as we shall presently describe, it was upon some or all of the
Aldermen, in conjunction- with the Head of the Corporation,
that were cast the duties of the Borough Magistracy. Even
if only some of them were, by Charter, Justices of the Peace,
we see all of them, nearly everywhere, performing collectively
some of the functions elsewhere exercised only by Justices,
1 History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906,
p. 82 ; see also the same author's History of Liverpool, 1907.
2 London and, to a lesser degree, Norwich. At Bristol, though vacancies
among the Aldermen were filled by co-option without reference to the Wards of
the City, they were all assigned to particular Wards, of which they individually
took charge, especially as regards the supervision of the public-houses, the
collection of the Watch Rate, and the issuing and hearing of summonses for
non-payment of the Poor Rate. The Alderman presided, too, over meetings
of the Ward as, for instance, those for the election of members of the
Corporation of the Poor but held no Wardmote or other Court in the Ward.
See on this point Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, by A. S. Green, 1894,
vol. ii. p. 279.
336 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
such as licensing ale-honses, making rates, passing accounts,
and appointing Constables ; and they were evidently often
considered to be members of the judicial bench. " Magistrates'
posts," sometimes richly carved and ornamented, used, in the
larger cities, to be set up outside their doors to indicate their
residences, a picturesque usage which was in 1689 not yet
wholly abandoned. 1 Sometimes we find them all entitled,
whether magistrates or not, to sit as Judges in the Borough
Court, and to take part in the trial of civil actions. 2
To this variegated array of independent dignitaries, each with
his own authority and his own sphere of operations, we might
add the " Mayor's Counsellors," whom we find, in the majority
of Municipal Corporations, specialised out of the Burgesses or
Freemen, and forming, in more or less intimate association
with the Aldermen and the Chief Officers, a standing
Assembly or Court of Common Council. These Counsellors,
usually twelve, four-and-twenty, or eight-and-forty in number,
had no individual functions or status, and we accordingly
leave them to be dealt with in our section on the Administra-
tive Courts of the Corporation. 3
1 See reference to this custom in The Widow, by Beaumont and Fletcher,
the paper by J. A. Repton, in Archceologia, vol. .xix., 1821, pp. 383-385 ; the
Book of Days, by R. Chambers, 1869, vol. i. pp. 161-162 ; Remnants of
Antiquity in Norwich, 1843 ; Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries, 1897,
pp. 195-196. A relic of the custom maybe seen in Scotland to this day, in
the decoration with the town arms of the lamp-post nearest to the house
of the Provost (e.g. at Linlithgow).
2 Here Aldermen are to be understood as the senior grade of members of the
Governing Council of the Corporation. It should, however, be remembered that
"Alderman" is used in various other senses. In the Municipal Corporations
of Bury St. Edmunds and Grantham, as in the Manorial Borough of Wokingham,
the Head was styled Alderman. In those of Barnstaple, Brecon, Bridgwater,
Denbigh, Macclesfield, New Radnor, Ruthin, and Wootton Bassett, the Alder-
men were one or two persons elected to be Justices. At Bridgnorth the ex-
Chamberlain was so designated. At Aberavon the two Aldermen were petty
officers. The title was formerly used in Sussex Manors for a mere Beadle. At
Alnwick, Morpeth, and elsewhere the Aldermen were the heads of the Gilds or
Trade Companies. At Salisbury, Southampton, and Wilton there were so-called
"Aldermen of the Wards," distinct from the Mayor's Brethren.
3 It must be remembered that service in all the ancient Corporation Offices,
from the Headship down to the Beadleship (but not including the Town Clerk-
ship), was compulsory. Refusal to serve was habitually punished by fine.
Thus, at Southampton, " the House met, Mr. Recorder present, and fined T. B.
forty pounds for refusing the office of Bailiff" (MS. Records, Southampton Cor-
poration, 2nd November 1693). Another Burgess pays three guineas as fine
for being excused from service as Beadle (ibid. 5th October 1703) ; another, five
pounds for escaping the office of Constable (ibid. 2nd October 1702) ; another, ten
pounds to avoid being Water Bailiff, and another, thirty pounds to "be excused
THE COURTS OF THE CORPORATION 337
(n) The Courts of the Coloration
The immigrant from a rural Manor or a Manorial Borough
would take for granted the existence of Courts, at which his
obligations as a " resiant " or a Burgess, as a neighbour or a
"foreigner," would be enforced. In some of the smaller and
more archaic Municipal Corporations he would find Courts
bearing exactly the same names, and wielding exactly the
same powers as those of rural Manors. In a few instances he
would even find one or other of the Courts in the Borough
still continuing to be held by the Lord's Steward, in the name
and for the profit of an individual Lord of the Manor. But if
our rural immigrant entered the jurisdiction of one of the
more powerful of the Municipal Corporations, he would be
surprised at the number and variety of the Courts held by the
Mayor or one or other of the Chief Officers, at their strange
titles, at their multifarious officials, and, above all, at the extent
of the authority that they exercised over his conduct and his
property.
What is interesting to the historical student is that, if we
arrange the couple of hundred Municipal Corporations in a
series, according to the nature of their Courts", we find the same
tendency to fission and specialisation that we noticed in the
case of the Chief Officers of the Corporation. Just as we
have found in the rural Manor an Undifferentiated Court
which was not divided into the Court Leet, Court Baron, and
Customary Court of the contemporary lawyers, so we discover
in some of the Municipal Corporations an Undifferentiated
Portmote, Curia Burgi, or Borough Court, which combined
the several offices of Two Bailiffs and Sheriff" (ibid. 6th October 1696). At
Exeter, S. M. is fined forty pounds "for refusing the office of a Steward or
Bailiff of this City being thereunto duly elected " (MS. Records, Exeter Corpora-
tion, 23rd January 1688). The earlier form of penalty in the Cinque Ports had
been the peculiar communal house demolition, which these Boroughs had in
common with those of the North of France (Feudal Englmvl, by J. H. Round,
1895, pp. 562-571). Moreover, there was often a custom of service in successive
years of all the Corporate officers in a graded order. A Freeman often served
successively as Common Councilman, Alderman, Bailiff or Sheriff, and Head.
It was proposed at Exeter in 1691 " that no person or persons whatsoever which
have not served the offices of Low Bailiff, High Bailiff, High Constable, and
Chamberlain of that City, or the major part of those offices," should be eligible
for nomination as Mayor (MS. Records, Proposal Book, Exeter Corporation,
23rd February 1691).
VOL. II. PT. I Z
338 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
judicial with administrative functions, and dealt with both
criminal offences and civil suits between parties. This,
indeed, almost follows from what we have already described.
A town which became the seat of a Municipal Corporation did
not thereby cease to be a Manor, or to be included in a
Manor ; nor did the Manorial Courts thereby cease to be held
in and for such a town. In many cases the ownership of the
Manor passed to the Municipal Corporation, which naturally
continued to hold the accustomed Courts. These made the
usual presentments, heard suits between parties, and amerced
offenders exercised, in fact, all the civil and criminal juris-
diction of the little community and also made the primitive
sanitary and other regulations for the Borough, administered
its valuable commons, and appointed nearly all its officers,
whether Haywards, Scavengers, Beadles, Watchmen, Bellmen,
Constables, Inspectors of the Commons, Tithingmen, Ale-tasters,
or Clerks of the Market. 1 Even when the Corporation did
1 Thus, in the simple case of Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, which had been
incorporated by Charter in 1607, the Municipal Corporation bought the Manor
in 1667, and continued down to 1846 to hold what was evidently an Undifferen-
tiated Court, doing everything but decide civil suits, for which a separate Court
of Record had been established by the Charter (MS. Records, Corporation
of Chipping Norton ; Notes on the History of Chipping Norton, by A. Ballard,
1893, pp. 10, 23, 24-28 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission,
1835, vol. i. p. 35). As the Jury orders are of great interest, such orders being
extremely rare in printed form, and as they significantly recall the decisions of
the Court of Great Tew (see pp. 80-87), we append copious extracts.
" That the Great Common shall be hained from horses, cows, and all other
great cattle on the 6th of November next, and shall not be broken with horses,
cows, or other great cattle until the season will permit, viz. between the 1st and
1 2th days of May next, and then not before eight o'clock in the morning, and
to be left to the discretion of the Inspectors, who will give public notice of the
same. . . . That any persons putting any . . . beasts to dispasture upon . . .
the said Commons, shall, before they are put on, take them to the Driver's to
be branded. . . . That every person putting any cow ... on the said
Commons without previously having sufficient knobs on their horns shall for
every offence incur a penalty of 2s. 6d. to the Lords. . . . That mares with
sucking colts shall be put on Southcomb Common only . . . that the Inspectors
shall let both the Commons to be stocked with sheep ... to depasture thereon
day and night, and one-third of the monies arising from the same to be ex-
pended in the improvement of the Common . . . that the Drivers shall
drive the Commons from the time of breaking to the time of haining at
least four times, and if they do their duty to the satisfaction of the Inspectors
they shall receive ten shillings of them next Leet . . . that parishioners
only be allowed to cut, take and carry away furse or gorse from off South-
combe or the Poor's Allotment, and that they shall not stock it up with a
hoe or any other tool,, but shall cut it with a bill or hatchet, and shall carry it
home on their backs . . . that every person making a dunghill in the public
streets or lanes within this Borough, and suffering it to remain after three days'
COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION 339
not acquire the ownership of the Manor, we see it holding,
under one title or another, one or more Borough Courts, each
combining heterogeneous functions. Such a Borough Court
might frequently unite a minor criminal jurisdiction with the
appointment of officers, the admission of Freemen, the enrol-
ment of apprentices, the regulation of the town by By-laws,
and the management of the Corporate property. It might, on
the other hand, combine the hearing of civil suits between
parties and the recovery of petty debts with similar adminis-
trative duties. But we may notice a tendency to a more
logical differentiation, until, in the large majority of our couple
of hundred Municipal Corporations, what we have in 1689 is
a set of separate Courts for civil and criminal jurisdiction
respectively, with distinct organs for the administration of the
Corporate property and the transaction of the other business.
(0) Courts of Civil Jurisdiction
A tribunal for the trial of civil actions was nearly always
a feature of the Municipal Corporation of 1689. In a very
few instances, indeed, the right to hold such a Court
analogous to the Court Baron had never been acquired by
the Corporation itself, and the Court continued to be held by
the Lord for his own profit. 1 But in the vast majority of
notice from the Scavenger, the dunghill to become forfeited to him, and that R. B.
be appointed Scavenger for the next year, who shall have the dirt to his own
use, and five shillings besides for his trouble . . . that if any person shall call
out the Jury for the inspection or decision of any matter or dispute or otherwise,
he shall give notice to the Foreman in writing . . . and that a shilling shall be
paid to each juryman by the person so calling them out, or by the Constable
when called out on public business . . . that no house divided into two or
more tenements since the passing of the Act of Inclosure ... is entitled to
more than one Common (the then original one), and that no house erected or
built since that time ... is entitled to common right . . . that R. B. shall
be Watchman, Beadle, and Bellman . . . and that T. G. be appointed Nightly
Watch . . . that J. A fury hereby appoint (to be Hayward) " (Laws
and Orders made by the Jury at a Court Leet and Court Baron and View of
Frankpledge, holden by the Bailiffs and Burgesses of the Borough of Chipping
Norton, 1S21).
1 In the exceptional case of the old ecclesiastical City of Salisbury (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 1343-1344) this
Court had never been ceded to the Municipal Corporation (except for a brief period
during the Commonwealth, see The Commonwealth Cliartcr of the City of Salis-
bury, by Hubert Hall, 1907) ; and continued to be held by the Bishop's
Steward, and for his profit. At Ripon the Steward of the Archbishop of York
held the Court (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
340 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Municipal Corporations this civil jurisdiction had been
handed over by the Lord, or expressly granted by the King to
the incorporated body. It is, we think, illustrative of the rise
of such Boroughs from the Manor that we find this Court, so
closely resembling the Court Baron, in the hands of Municipal
Corporations which had not attained to other franchises, and
where the Lord of the Manor still retained in his own hands
the View of Frankpledge and some or all of the jurisdiction
of the Court Leet. But apart from these exceptions, the
Municipal Corporations however their Civil Courts may
originally have been obtained had, in one or other of their
Charters, secured from the King an express grant of the right
to exercise civil jurisdiction, in a Court that bore different
names in the various Boroughs. The most frequent name for
this chartered tribunal was the Court of Record, which we find
used in a hundred and twenty Boroughs ; or " Three Weeks'
Court" occasionally "Three Weeken Court" which we
trace only in half a dozen towns ; l more frequently the
" Court of Pleas," a term used in a score of places. In ten or
a dozen cases it was called the Mayor's Court ; 2 in two or
three, the "Bailiff's Court" 3 or the "Provost's Court"; or
(in the Counties Corporate) the "Sheriff's Court" or "County
Court." 4 We find it designated the "Town Court" or the
" Borough Court," 5 or the " Gildhall Court," 6 or occasionally
vol. iii. p. 1710). At Oswestry, where a Court of Record was held weekly
before the Mayor, the Lord of the Manor was entitled to receive one-half of the
fines arising in Court, and the attorneys who practised in it were appointed by
the Mayor and Steward jointly. At Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and Wilton, the
Lord still retained in his own hands the View of Frankpledge and all the
jurisdiction of the Leet, whilst permitting the Municipal Corporation to hold a
Civil Court of the nature of a Court Baron. In a few other Corporations, such
as Wigan, Basingstoke, Havering-atte-Bower, and Ruthin, the Manorial origin
of this Court is plainly visible in the retention of the title of Court Baron,
Lordship Court, or "Court of Ancient Demesne"; in the participation, as
" Suitors" or judges, of the freeholders, or other " tenants" ; or in the limita-
tion of the jurisdiction to sums under forty shillings.
1 Such as Buckingham, Macclesfield, Yeovil.
2 Such as the City of London, Bristol, Coventry, Exeter, Great Grimsby,
Hereford, Marlborough, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Plymouth.
3 Such as Ipswich and Chichester.
4 As at the City of London, Bristol, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Worcester, etc.
6 As at Winchester, Monmouth, and Great Yarmouth. By the ancient
customs of the Manor, a "Burgh Court" had to be held weekly at Great Yar-
mouth and adjourned at the will of the Bailiff (Treatise on Copyholds, by C.
Watkins, fourth edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 557).
6 As at Norwich and King's Lynn.
CO UR TS OF CI VI L JURISDICTION 34 \
even the King's Court. There were even such uncouth titles
as " Foreign Court " l or " Court of Burgess and Foreign," 2
" Court of Passage " 3 or " Passage Court," " Pentice Court," 4
" Tolzey Court," 5 the " Court of our Lord the King called the
" Portmouth," 6 or, more simply, " Court of Portmote " 7 or
" Portman's Mote." 8 But whatever might be the local appel-
lation of this Municipal Court of civil jurisdiction, it had
always certain invariable features in common with the Court
Baron of the rural Manor. There was, at least in theory, a
body of persons who acted as judges, all equally entitled to be
present and to pronounce the decisions, even if, in practice,
the actual holding of the Court was deputed to one or two
Corporation officers, and even if a Jury summoned by the
Mayor, Bailiff, or Serjeant at Mace could be impanelled to
pronounce the verdict. These judges comprised usually the
Mayor or Bailiff or other head of the Corporation, and the
other principal personages named in the Charter ; the Recorder
and sometimes the Town Clerk ; sometimes the whole of the
Aldermen, Jurats, or Capital Burgesses ; sometimes all the
members of the Close Body. Another point of resemblance to
the Court Baron was its habit of holding frequent sessions at
regular short intervals, most frequently from three weeks to
three weeks, but occasionally monthly, fortnightly, or even
weekly.
The jurisdiction of this Municipal tribunal was always
limited to suits in which the cause of action arose within
the Borough, and occasionally to suits against Freemen of the
Borough. In many towns the jurisdiction was limited to
personal actions, but in many others it included actions
relative to lands within the Borough, and in many others,
1 Great Grimsby. 2 Pontefract. 3 Chester and Liverpool.
4 Chester. 5 Bristol.
6 New Woodstock. 7 Rochester, Chester, and Faversham.
8 Ipswich. In some Municipal Corporations we see remnants or traces of
ancient Hundred Courts, held on behalf of the Corporations, in respect either of
their own territories, or of estates outside. Thus, in the City of Gloucester,
between 1657 and 1796 at any rate, there was a "Hundred Court" held
formally every week before the Mayor and the two Sheriffs. The minute-book
contains, after 1680, practically nothing but the perpetual repetition of the
names of the "suitors" of the Court, who included the Earls of Hereford and
Gloucester, Lord Stafford, the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral, and other
large landowners. As late as 1791 it swore in not only Constables, but also the
Master and Wardens of the Company of Butchers (supra, p. 51 ; MS. Hundred
Court Minutc-Book, 1657-1796 ; in Records of Corporation of Gloucester).
342 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
again, all sorts of actions could be tried. In some towns there
was a limit to the amount of the debt or damages for which
an action might be brought. In one or two cases this limit
is a minimum of forty shillings, possibly with the object of
protecting from Municipal competition a Lord's Court having
jurisdiction within the Borough. More frequently there was no
minimum but a maximum, sometimes of about 10 or 20, but
ranging from 5 to as much as 200; presumably to protect
the interests of the King's Courts at Westminster. Occasion-
ally the grant would be to have cognisance of pleas in all
personal actions to an unlimited amount, or all pleas, real
or personal, arising within the Borough, unless either the
Crown or the Corporation was a party. The Mayor, Bailiff,
or other head of the Corporation issued the process of the
Court, which, whether arrest or seizure and sale of goods,
was executed by the Serjeants at Mace or other officers of
the Corporation, who could only act within the narrow limits
of the particular Borough.
The tendency to fission and specialisation in the Courts
of civil jurisdiction is seen in the larger or more privileged
Municipalities, where the Corporation held several Courts,
dealing with different classes of actions. Thus, some Municipal
Corporations had, besides a Petty Debt Court, a " Court of
Equity " for cases involving real estate ; l a " Bailiff's Court "
or other tribunal at which minors could execute valid con-
veyances ; and even a separate Court, sometimes called
Portmanmote or " Court of Hustings," at which fines and
recoveries could be levied, wills proved, and conveyances of
real estate executed by married women. In other cases we
find Courts for actions against Freemen distinct from the
Courts for actions against non - Freemen ; 2 or Courts for the
recovery of petty debts distinct from those in which more
important actions could be tried. 3 In some towns, indeed, the
Corporation held several distinct Courts of civil jurisdiction,
under different officers, without, apparently, any differences in
scope or function, and acting merely as rivals for the litigation
of the Burgesses. 4 But whatever may have been the origin
1 As at Norwich.
2 As at Newcastle-on-Tyne and Great Grimsby.
3 As at Rye and Bury St. Edmunds.
4 Thus, the Municipal Corporation of Ipswich had three distinct civil Courts :
COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION 343
or function of these Municipal Courts of civil jurisdiction ;
whatever, in particular Boroughs, were their numbers, titles,
and scope, we see them nearly everywhere losing their business
in the course of the eighteenth century, the decay often
becoming rapidly marked in the last quarter of that century.
The causes of this decay seem to have been partly the some-
what uncertain quality of the presiding judges, and occasionally,
it was said, the suspicion caused by their belonging all to the
same political party; but much more the defects in the
organisation of the Court itself. It could not summon
witnesses who were outside the limits of the Borough, and
could only enforce its judgment by arrest or execution within
the same narrow limits. Its scale of charges was always
sufficiently heavy to discourage suitors, whilst the fees which
it allowed to attorneys were far below those which they
obtained in the superior Courts, so that in town after town
we find them ceasing to attend at the Courts. Sometimes the
procedure was antiquated and pedantic, involving great delays,
as in one case, where the Court was held only once a month, and
three " Court Days " had to intervene between every stage of
the pleadings. 1 For all these reasons the King's Courts at
Westminster were always very ready to grant writs of prohi-
bition or allow cases to be removed by writ of certiorari or
otherwise, so that the jurisdiction of the local tribunal lost
its certainty and whatever celerity and cheapness it may have
possessed. 2 Finally, the establishment, under Local Acts, of
Courts of Request or Courts of Conscience provided in most
places alternative tribunals for the recovery of petty debts,
which offered superior advantages in the way of prompt
hearing, simple procedure, and low fees.
its Court of Pleas, having jurisdiction in all pleas, real and personal, where
the cause of action arose within the Borough ; its Court of Requests under Local
Act ; and its Petty Court of the Bailiffs, at which minors over fourteen could
execute valid conveyances of real estate. At Chester, too, the Corporation held
three civil Courts : the Portmote Court, before the Mayor and Recorder ; the
Pentice Court, before the Sheriff ; and the Passage Court, which was in the nature
of an adjourned sessions of the Pentice Court. The Corporation of Bristol had
its ancient "Mayor's Court," as well as the better-known " Tolzey Court" held
by the Sheriffs, the two tribunals having at one time maintained an active rivalry,
in which the Mayor's Court succumbed, and became entirely disused (infra,
Chap. VIII.). Wakall.
2 "The Courts of Westminster," as Counsel advised the Corporation of Deal
in 1730. "keeping inferior jurisdictions very strict, especially if of new
344 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
(p) The Court Leet
In the great majority of Municipal Corporations of
1689, the tribunal most in use (otherwise than for civil
actions) was the ancient Court Leet. In about a dozen
Boroughs the right to hold this Court had never been acquired
by the Corporation, and the Court was either held by the
Lord's Steward or by a Municipal officer on behalf and for
the profit of the Lord of the Manor. In nearly all the
Municipalities, however, the Corporation had acquired the
right to hold its own Court Leet, in a few cases by specific
grant from the King, embodied in a Charter. 1 But it is
interesting to notice how much more rarely this grant of
a Court of petty police appears in the Charters obtained by
the Municipal Corporations, in spite of the fact that it was
nominally the Court of the King, to be holden only by his
authority, than the Court of Civil Jurisdiction which (as
Court Baron) the lawyers regarded only as a private tribunal,
incident to every Manor. In the vast majority of Municipal
Corporations the jurisdiction of the Leet had not been
differentiated into a distinct tribunal separately granted
or assigned, and had remained a mere incident to the owner-
ship of the Manor. When the Corporation acquired the
Manor, or took it on lease from the Lord, 2 the Court Leet and
View of Frankpledge continued to be held by the Steward, for
the new Lord of the Manor as for the old one. 8 We need not
creation" (MS. Records (Book of Counsel's Opinions, 1716-1776), Deal
Corporation).
1 At Beaumaris in Anglesey, for instance, we find the Charter giving
"within the said Borough and the Liberties and precincts of the same, View of
Frankpledge of all Burgesses, inhabitants and resiants twice by the year . . .
and all that ever appertaineth to a View of Frankpledge together with summons,
attachments, arrestments, issues, amerciaments, fines, ransoms, profits, com-
modities and other things whatsoever that might and ought to appertain to us,
our heirs and successors in any wise." So in the Charters of Bewdley, Bodmin,
Boston, Carlisle, Evesham, King's Lynn, Kendal, Liskeard, "West Looe, Rich-
mond (Yorks), St. Albans, Sutton Coldfield, Tainworth, Tenterden, Torrington,
Truro, Worcester, etc.
2 At Hertford, where the Corporation had been granted by Charter the right
to hold certain Courts, the Earl of Salisbury received a subsequent grant of the
Manor. He thereupon leased to the Corporation for twenty-one years, periodi-
cally renewed, the Court of the View of Frankpledge, with certain bridge tolls
(History of Hertfordshire, by N. Salmon, 1728, p. 38).
3 One of the best instances of such a Municipal Court of the Manor was that
of the Corporation of Nottingham, held by its Town Clerk as Steward. This
THE COURT LEET 345
repeat the description that we have already given of the Lord's
Court. What is interesting is that, under the Municipal
Corporations this Manorial tribunal often continued in the
archaic form which we have termed the Undifferentiated Court,
combining the exercise, in the name of the King, of minor
criminal jurisdiction, with the making of Bylaws, the manage-
ment of commons and wastes, the appointment of officers, and
the admission of new tenants, freeholders or Burgesses.
What distinguished the Undifferentiated Court of a Municipal
Corporation from that of a rural Manor was the almost
invariable abstraction of the petty debt business, for which,
as we have mentioned, a separate Court had been set up by
Charter.
But although the Court Leet was, in 1689, a feature of
almost every Municipal Corporation, and although this Court
when held by and for the Corporation did not appreciably
differ in constitution or procedure from that which we find
in the rural Manor or the Manorial Borough, we notice at
once an all-round shrinkage in its functions, reducing it, in
nearly all Boroughs, to a minor part of the machinery of the
Corporation. In the rural Manor we ' see the Court Leet
appointing, or the Jury presenting for appointment, all the
officers of the Manor. At Birmingham and Manchester
we see the Jury even choosing the head or heads of the town,
in the High and Low Bailiffs or the Boroughreeve and
six-monthly "Court Leet and Court Baron of the Mayor and Burgesses . . .
with respect to the Manor of Nottingham," under the name of the " Mickletorn
Jury," perambulated the Borough, regulated the common lands, decided which
rights of way should be abandoned and which obstacles should be removed,
suppressed all sorts of nuisances, prevented encroachments, and imposed fines
right and left on erring citizens, from the Mayor down to the humblest servant
"not demeaning himself properly." The MS. presentments of this "Magnus
Turnus," "Mickle Turn" or "Great Court Leet," extending intermittently
from 1512 to 1857, are of great interest, and might well be published by the
Corporation in full ; meanwhile the Calendar of the Archives of the Borough of
NottingJiam, by Stuart A. Moore, 1876-1877, gives a good description of them.
The Court Leet Records of Southampton are now being published under the
editorship of Professor Hearnshaw. The Corporation of Oxford held two such
Courts "the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge of the Four Aldermen, held for
the four Wards of the said City," and " the Court Leet or View of Frankpledge
and Court Baron " of the Corporation as Lord of the Hundred of Northgate.
Both were tribunals of the usual Manorial type, appointing officers, presenting
nuisances, amercing offenders, and lining absentee jurymen (MS. Records, Cor-
poration of Oxford, Court Leet of the Four Aldermen, 1746-1839, and Court
Leet of Northgate Hundred, 1746-1839).
346 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Constables. In one or two archaic Municipal Corporations
we see the whole constitution still revolving round the
Court Leet, the Jury presenting the Mayor as well as all
the petty officers, and admitting the new Burgesses. 1 By
1689 this function of the Court Leet had, we suspect, in the
majority of the Municipal Corporations, passed away, either
entirely or except as regards the host of petty functionaries
under titles such as Borsholders, Tithingmen, Thirdboroughs,
Constables, Hay wards, Common-drivers or Ale -tasters. In
most cases, the annual choice of Mayor or Bailiffs, and the
appointment of all the important officers, had been transferred
to the Burgesses or to the Close Body acting in their name.
In other cases, this transfer took place in the course of the
eighteenth century, whilst the appointment of the Constables
was increasingly taken over by the Borough Quarter Sessions.
But traces of the old function of the Court Leet survived in the
formal presentment by the Jury of the persons otherwise
chosen to fill the various offices ; or, still more frequently,
in the ceremony of the Mayor, Bailiffs, Constables and other
officers being formally sworn in at the " Law Day " in
the Autumn. 2
1 In the Corporation of Brading, Isle of Wight, for instance, all the officers,
from the Senior and Junior Bailiffs who were the Heads of the Corporation down
to the Hayward, were chosen at the Court Leet, by actual presentment of the
Jury ; though we are told that, in 1833, the choice was really that of the
retiring officers at a private meeting (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 679-680).. So at Bossiney in Cornwall, where,
except the Recorder, all the officers from the Mayor down to the Ale-taster were
presented -by the " Grand Jury " at the annual Court Leet (ibid. vol. i. p. 453).
So at Plymptou Earle in Devonshire, and Welshpool in Shropshire, the Head of
the Municipal Corporation and a whole array of officers were appointed by the
Court Leet. In the Corporation of Dorchester, down to 1756 at any rate, it was
the Michaelmas "Court Leet and View of Frankpledge " that chose the Mayor
as well as the Constables, Serjeants at Mace, Beadle, Assizers of Bread and Beer,
Viewers of Flesh and Hides, Hayward and other officers (MS. Records, Corpora-
tion of Dorchester, 1727-1756). By 1833 this choice of the Mayor had passed
to a meeting of the Close Body, significantly held on the same date as that on
which the Court Leet had met for this purpose (First Report of Municipal Cor-
poration Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 1274). In the Corporation of Great
Grimsby in Lincolnshire, where the Court Leet was held annually, the Jury
continued, right down to 1835, to appoint six Auditors of the Chamberlains'
accounts, two of them being Aldermen, two Common Councilmeu, and two
simple Freemen ; but all of them, in practice, being members of the Leet Jury
(ibid. vol. iv. p. 2251).
2 Thus, in the ancient Corporation of Plympton Earle in Devonshire, the
Mayor, immediately after his election, annually held the " Fulfill -Court " or
"Customary Court," with a Jury of "suitors," or Freemen of the Borough.
THE COURT LEET 347
Another change that had usually taken place by 1689
in the Court Leet of the Municipal Corporation, was the
dwindling away of its functions of managing the common
affairs of the inhabitants and of making By-laws for the good
government of the Borough. This function had, in the course
of the seventeenth century, been undertaken by the Adminis-
trative Courts or Councils which we shall presently describe.
In the records of one Municipal Corporation we see a period
of alternative or concurrent action by the Court Leet and
Common Council, leading to the final supersession of the
former by the latter authority. "The practice," reports an
investigator of these records in 1833, "from the year 1661,
the date of the earliest book that I saw, down to 1728,
seems not to have been uniform. In the earlier part of this
period almost the whole affairs of the Corporation seem to
have been transacted at the Court Leet. This Court is held
before the Mayor. At a Court Leet, held the 21st October
1661, Freemen were created; orders were made respecting
dredging and fishing ; a Deputy Mayor and a Justice of the
Peace were elected ; and victuallers were licensed. . . . These
instances do not recur, but the election of Chamberlain by this
Court took place many years later. Admissions to the Freedom,
and regulations relating to the oyster and other fisheries, at
the Court Leet . . . repeatedly occur down to the year 1728.
During this period, however, the Mayor, Jurats, and Bailiffs
were concurrently exercising the same functions. In some
cases the order is stated to be made by the Court Leet on the
presentment of the facts by the Jury." During these years,
in fact, the management of the affairs of this Corporation was
sometimes in the hands of the Court Leet, sometimes in those
of the Mayor, Jurats, and Bailiffs, and sometimes, as in 1716
This Jury formally presented the Mayor to be " Head and Chief Governor of the
Borough," certain other Freemen to be Ale-tasters, Pig-drivers, and Scavengers.
The Court, by its president the Mayor, appointed four Constables. Those free-
holders who owed "suit and service" to the Court prosaically confined in
practice to those whose chief-rents were in arrear were summoned to attend,
the absentees being presented by the Jury, and amerced threepence each (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 600). So, too,
Lincoln held annually its " View of Frankpledge with the great Court Leet and
Court Baron of the Mayor, Sheriffs, Citizens, and Commonalty of the City of Lincoln,
together with the Sheriff's Turn of the same City," at which the Mayor and
Coroners were sworn, and Chief Constables, Searchers and Sealers of Leather, and
other officers were appointed (MS. Records, Corporation of Lincoln, 1689, etc.).
348 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
and 1717, in those of "the Court of Burghmote," at which all
the Burgesses may have had the right to be present. Eventu-
ally, the Close Body of the Mayor, Jurats, and Bailiffs got the
whole business ; the Court of Burghmote was not summoned ;
and though the Court Leet continued to be held, its proceed-
ings gradually became only formal. 1 In a flourishing Midland
city the Court Leet of the Corporation had been particularly
active throughout the sixteenth and for the first half of the
seventeenth century in making By-laws, passing resolutions for
the guidance of the Corporate Magistrates, making regulations
as- to carrying on trade and orders to be obeyed by the various
Companies, and performing other acts of a legislative character,
as well as participating in the administration of the market and
the commons. We see all this activity beginning, under the
Commonwealth, to dwindle, and rapidly sinking during the
next half -century to merely sporadic interventions. After
the Revolution the general orders and all other action of
legislative character practically disappear, a few items at
long intervals alone reminding us of the once incessant activity.
After 1733 the orders altogether cease. 2 Sooner or later the
same fate seems to have overtaken the Courts Leet of nearly
all the other Municipal Corporations. Losing both the
power of appointing officers and the power of making
By-laws the two functions which gave an authoritative posi-
tion to the Courts of Bamburgh, Alnwick, Manchester, and
Ashton-under-Lyne the Court Leet of the Municipal Corpora-
tion sank, for the most part, in the course of the eighteenth
century, either into a mere half-yearly formality, or into a
1 The case is that of Queenborough (Kent) ; see First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 829, 835. So in the Municipal Cor-
poration of Huntingdon, where the enjoyment of the common pastures by the
Burgesses constituted a privilege of some value, the ' ' regulations respecting the
time of stocking the commons, and the number of cattle, etc. , to be put upon them,
were made by the Leet Jury, and presented to the Mayor for his approval."
After 1825, however, the Corporation ceased to hold the Court Leet, owing to
the occurrence of disputes ; and the Common Council, a Close Body, appointed
a committee of its members and a "Foreman of the Commons " for the entire
management of the property (ibid. vol. iv. pp. 2288, 2289).
2 Infra, Chap. VIII. ; MS. Records, Court Leet, Coventry, 1588-1733. The
nuisances at the Court Leet, once punished by amercement at the same Court,
were presently made the subjects of formal prosecution before the Borough
Justices. Thus, at Southampton in 1704, it was "this day ordered that the
Town Clerk do prosecute all nuisances presented by the Court Leet Jury "
(MS. Records, Southampton Corporation, 8th October 1704).
THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS 349
tribunal of petty police for the suppression of the minor urban
nuisances.
(q) The Borough Court of Quarter Sessions
When the statute of Edward the Sixth directed all
indictments found at the Turn or Leet to be transferred for
trial to the General Sessions of the Peace, it became an object
with the Municipal Corporations to secure or maintain their
immunity from the jurisdiction of the Justices of the Peace
of the County ; and we find as a " usual clause in Queen
Elizabeth's Charters . . . that which makes the Mayor and
some of the Aldermen Justices of the Peace, and gives the
Borough the power of holding Sessions of the Peace." 1
Wherever the Municipal Corporation had obtained the
privilege of holding this " Court of Quarter Sessions," we
see the new tribunal gradually absorbing, in addition to the
ordinary criminal jurisdiction over thefts and assaults, much
of the peculiar business of the Court Leet, such as the
appointment of Constables, the ordering of the Watch, the
prohibition of taking " inmates " or lodgers, the suppression of
unlicensed ale-houses and of " bawdy houses," and even the
punishment of nuisance-mongers. It was largely in con-
sequence of this rivalry that the Courts Leet held by the
Municipal Corporations gradually lost, as we have seen, the
last remnant of their criminal jurisdiction, or became re-
stricted to petty police offences. 2 This supersession of the
Manorial Courts of the Borough by the Borough Justices of
the Peace resembled, in its gradual but constant progress, the
corresponding supersession of the Manorial Courts of West-
1 A Sketch of the History of Boroughs aiid of the Corporate Right of Election,
etc., by H. A. Merewether, 1822, p. 22. We know of no study of Borough Courts
of Quarter Sessions, for which the materials exist in the considerable but mis-
cellaneous collections of Sessions Rolls or Papers and Books of Orders or Minutes
among the MS. archives of the various Corporations. We have found those of
Bristol, Coventry, Southampton, and Winchester the most useful. The printed
Records of the County Borough of Cardiff, by J. H. Matthews, 1898, etc.,
include (vol. ii.) material of this kind.
2 The Corporation of Saltash in Cornwall held a "Water Court" which
recalls to us the "Water Leet" held in the Manorial Borough of Beccles for
the cognisance of offences committed on the water within the Liberties of the
Borough. Some time before 1833 it had become disused, its functions being
discharged by the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 607)-
350 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORA TION
minster, the Tower Hamlets, and Southwark, by the County
Justices of Middlesex and Surrey in the seventeenth century,
and did not differ from that taking place towards the close of
the eighteenth century throughout the rural districts. 1 What,
however, is peculiar to the process in the Boroughs is the
curious intermingling of the structures of the two Courts
almost stimulating an evolutionary process that we see
taking place. We are, in fact, inclined to think that if the
proceedings of Courts Leet and General Sessions of the Peace
in the various Municipal Corporations during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries could be explored in detail, it
would be discovered that there was no fixed line of demarca-
tion, either in function or in structure, between the " View of
Frankpledge and Court Leet" of the Borough, held by the
Mayor or other Corporate officer on behalf of the Corporation
as owner of the Manor, and the " General Sessions of the
Peace" held under Charter by the Corporate Magistrates. 2
The Head of the Corporation, whether Mayor or Bailiff, or a
pair of Bailiffs, who frequently presided at all the Courts of
the Borough, whatever they were called, and who was often
accompanied on the Bench by his " brethren," the Aldermen,
Jurats, or Capital Burgesses, 8 sometimes regarded himself as
holding the Court of the Manor, sometimes the ancient
Portmanmote or Court of the Borough, and yet did not
resist the gradual description of his colleagues and himself as
" their Worships," as if they were sitting as Magistrates, and
was never indisposed to supplement his Manorial or Borough
Court powers by those which he could exercise as a Justice
1 See the preceding volume on the Parish and the County ; also Chap. IV.
of the present volume, " The City and Borough of Westminster."
2 At Cardiff, as already mentioned (p. 256), the actual identity of the two Courts
was asserted in 1824 by the Town Clerk. "The Quarter Sessions," he said,
"considering the matters presented by the Jury, will, I have no doubt, upon
proper inquiry and accurate search, be found to be also the Court Leet ; and
the ancient title of the Court will, I imagine, be found to have been 'Sessio
Pacis et Curia Domini Regis ' " ; to which the modern archivist appends the
note, "This surmise is undoubtedly correct" (Records of the County Borvugh
of Cardiff, by J. H. Matthews, vol. ii., 1900, p. 130).
3 At the Court of Quarter Sessions held by the little Corporation of Bideford
in Devonshire, all the members of the Close Body, comprising eighteen Alder-
men and Capital Burgesses, were summoned to attend, and usually sat on the
Magistrates' Bench, though only the Mayor, Recorder, and one Alderman were
Justices of the Peace (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. i. pp. 437, 438).
THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS 351
of the Peace. In one important Municipal Corporation, for
instance, the ancient " Portmoot Court " of the Borough and
the "Mayor's Court," which corresponded to that formerly
held by the private Lord of the Manor, seem actually to have
both become merged in the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions,
which long preserved some remnant of the names of these
two Courts as part of its own title. " The Quarter Sessions,"
said the Town Clerk in 1833, "are still sometimes called the
Portmoot." Within his memory the Jury of this Borough
Court of Quarter Sessions had appointed some of the lesser
officers of the Borough, though this power had latterly been
taken over by the Town Council. The " Borough Court/'
" Mayor's Court," or " Court of Passage " gradually confined
itself, under the last name, to civil suits. But in 1797, at
any rate, it was, under the title of the " Mayor's Court," as
we learn from a contemporary writer, enforcing local ordinances
by criminal process, permitting "no infringements of the
By-laws to pass with impunity ; neither wealth, distinction,
nor power is any barrier to those amercements to which their
irregularities may make them liable ; obstructions in the
streets, wharves, and other improprieties by the most eminent
man in the town, are on representation immediately punished
by fine in common with the most ordinary porter or car-
man." l This jurisdiction is presently found exercised by the
Borough Justices in Petty and Quarter Sessions. It seems
that the sessions of this old Municipal Court, whatever was
its title, were held for civil suits, by the Mayor, Eecorder, and
Bailiff immediately after those of the Mayor, Eecorder, and
Aldermen as Justices of the Peace, trying only criminal cases.
For both sessions the Bailiffs summoned the Juries of Freemen
only, as in the old Portmoot. It is impossible to avoid the
inference that, in this particular Corporation at least, the
various jurisdictions had, in the course of the eighteenth
century, been, half unconsciously, merged and redistributed.
" I conclude," says the latest historian, " that Sessions and
Court of Passage taken together are to be regarded as the
continuation of the old Portmoot about which we have heard
so much." 2 In several of the ancient Municipal Corporations
1 General Description of the History, etc., of Liverpool, 1797, pp. 275-276.
2 History of Municipal Government in Liverpool to 1835, by Ramsay Muir,
352 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
forming part of the Liberty of the Cinque Ports, we see a
similar transition from the early Hundred Court, held by
the Head of the Corporation with " sectatores " or suitors, in
the presence of all the Freemen, into the Borough Court of
Quarter Sessions held by the Mayor and the Jurats, as
magistrates, but with summons to all the Freemen to attend.
In one after another of the Cinque Ports we may watch this
silent transition leaving its mark on the records, the proceedings
of what continued uninterruptedly one and the same tribunal
gradually beginning to add to the title of Hundred Court the
words " sive sessio pacis " ; then calling it " Hundred Sessions " ;
and, finally, dropping altogether the earlier designation in
favour of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace. 1 "We have
traces of exactly the same transition from a Hundred Court
into a Court of Quarter Sessions in other Boroughs. 2 In other
Municipal Corporations we see a similar confusion, leading to
an extraordinary intermingling of powers between the Borough
Court Leet and the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions. In
one Midland City, for instance, whilst the Court Leet at its
spring and autumn meetings was passing orders mandatory
on the City magistrates with regard to matters of petty
police, the Grand Jury of the Borough Court of Quarter
Sessions was " presenting " to these same dignitaries sitting as
Justices of the Peace, not merely highways out of repair and
nuisances annoying to the neighbours, but also such typically
Manorial defaults as the damaging of the commons by cutting
turf and removing gravel, and the failure of particular tenants
of the Manor to scour their ditches or keep their causeways in
repair. 8 In other Boroughs it is quite impossible to dis-
1906, p. 143 ; Report of the Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry into the existing
State of the Corporation of Liverpool, 1833, p. 57 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2713. The history of the Liverpool
Courts is obscure. The forthcoming volume of documents relating to The Court of
Passage, which Professor Ramsay Muir is to edit, will probably clear up the matter.
1 MS. Records, Pevensey Corporation, especially " Pevensey Hundred Court
Book," 1699-1778, when the transition is well marked, both in the character
of the business and in the terminology ; "Report on New Romney Records," by
E. Salisbury, in Archceologia Cantiana, vol. xvii., 1887, pp. 27, 30 ; Collections
for a History of Sandwich, by W. Boys, 1792, p. 784 ; History of Kent, by
E. Hasted, vol. x., 1800, p. 163 ; History of Dover, by Rev. J. Lyon, vol. i.
1813, pp. 227-228, 245 ; History of Eye, by W. Holloway, 1847, pp. 185, 187.
2 Sec, for instance, the "Law Hundred Courts" of Colchester (History of
Essex, by P. Morant, 1768, vol. i. p. 3, ?(.).
3 See the MS. Presentments by Grand Jury ' ' at the General Sessions of the
THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS 353
tiuguish, either in form or in substance, the presentments of
nuisances which the Grand Jury made to the Justices in
Quarter Sessions from those which the Jury often called
the Grand Jury of the Borough Court Leet were simul-
taneously addressing to " their Worships," the Mayor and
other Magistrates who held that ancient Manorial Court. 1
Occasionally we see the transition from the Court Leet to
Quarter Sessions arrested by the embodiment of an inter-
mediate form in the written constitution a Corporation being
specifically granted by Charter the right to hold a criminal
Court under the name of " the View of Frankpledge and
General Sessions of the Peace." 2 In such cases the Corpora-
Peace," 1629-1742, and MS. Records of Court Leet 1588-1733, both among
the records of the Corporation of Coventry. So in the Corporation of Newbury
in Berkshire we see the Court Leet, in the latter part of the seventeenth
century, passing orders to the Tithingmen to search their tithings for "strangers,"
and enacting prohibitions of the reception of ' ' stranger inmates without security
to the Chui'chwardens and Overseers," under penalty of five shillings for each
offence. In 1677 four persons were fined five shillings each for this new crime.
In the very same year the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions enacts a similar
ordinance, but with the penalty increased to 20s. The same concurrent exercise,
both of legislative and judicial functions, by the Court Leet and the Court of
Quarter Sessions occurred with regard to paving (MS. Records, Corporation of
Newbury, 1660-1700; also History of Newbury, by W. Money, 1887, pp. 292-
295).
1 See, for instance, the MS. Sessions Rolls and Papers, 1592-1833, in
records of Corporation of Southampton. The following are typical presentments
of the Grand Jury at the Quarter Sessions : ' ' We present the Cowherd for not
performing his duty in riding the Common twice a day and not keeping a dog
to drive out the cattle of foreigners. We present the Brickburner for not
keeping his fences in repair. . . . We present [that] the pavement and the
nastiuess which is at New Corner are a great and common nuisance to the whole
town and neighbourhood" (MS. Sessions Rolls, Southampton, July 1704).
2 Charter to New Woodstock in 1665 ; see MS. Records, Corporation of
Woodstock, 1665-1746. We owe this reference, and much other information,
to Mr. Adolphus Ballard, Town Clerk of Woodstock. It is not easy to classify
the Woodstock Court precisely. It was known locally, not as Quarter Sessions,
but as the Court Leet ; it appointed the Constables and the Tithingmen, the
Ale-tasters and the Clerk of the Market ; and the Jury made elaborate present-
ments of the Court Leet type, naming not only the offence committed, but also
the penalty incurred, and sometimes making this dependent on the nuisance
not being abated within a specified date. To take only one year, those for
October 1673 included the following : "We present ... for not cleansing his
brook ... to cleanse the same under pain of five shillings. We present . . .
for his muckhill before his door, etc. . . . We present Widow ... for enter-
taining her daughter for the space of one month contrary to the statute. . . .
We present ... for not coming to church the last Sunday one shilling. . . .
We present ... for a disturber of the peace one shilling. . . . We present
. . . for keeping an unlawful meeting in his house under pretence of religious
worship " (MS. Records, Corporation of Woodstock). On the other hand, it was
held not by the Steward of the Manor, nor by any officer on behalf of the
VOL. II. PT. I. 2 A
354 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
tion often continued to hold a criminal Court of a mixed
nature, partly Court Leet, partly Sessions of the Peace, down
to about the middle of the eighteenth century, after which the
Court Leet features gradually drop out. Tn other Boroughs
the transformation and merging of the Borough Court or
Court Leet into the Court of Quarter Sessions seems to have
taken place by the transitional form of adjournments, the
October or November Sessions of the Peace being that at
which the ancient business of the Court Leet was performed,
and being therefore long distinguished from the adjourned
Sessions on other dates by the title of " Law Day." 1 Finally,
owner of the Manor, but by the Mayor, Deputy Recorder, and two Aldermen,
sitting as Justices of the Peace ; it was held at frequent intervals during the
year, and it tried offenders upon indictments, though only for misdemeanours.
Thus, in 1729, men were "indicted " before it for following the trade of a tailor
in the Borough without being free ; and fined in small sums. In 1737 a man
was indicted for assault. In graver cases, it directed an indictment to be
prepared, and committed prisoners to the County Gaol for trial at the County
Quarter Sessions or the Assizes. But it could itself sentence not only to a
money penalty, but also to imprisonment, the stocks, whipping, or a ducking ;
and much of its work took the form of mandatory general orders by the Court
without any presentment by the Jury. Yet with the legal title and some of
the attributes of a Court of Quarter Sessions, its jurisdiction was limited to
misdemeanours, and in practice to little more than an enforcement of the
Borough By-laws and Leet presentments, all grave crime being dealt with by
the County Justices. We may cite here also the Corporation of Stratford-on-
Avon, where the Borough Justices had a so-called "Court of Quarter Sessions,"
which, in 1833 at any rate, was held only once a year, and then only for Court
Leet purposes. A Jury was sworn to make presentments upon which judicial
action was taken, and though the officers of the Borough were appointed by the
Close Body, they were sworn in at this annual Court (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 120). So, too, at Chipping Norton
in Oxfordshire, where the criminal jurisdiction of the Borough Justices ts a
Court of Quarter Sessions was in 1833 not exercised, the Court which we have
already mentioned came latterly to be held formally four times a year three
times without business, but in October conjointly with the active and all-
embracing "Court Leet and Court Baron and View of Frankpledge," held by
the Corporation, as Lord of the Manor, that we have already described.
Throughout the eighteenth century the two Courts were apparently thus
virtually merged, and right down to 1846 the jurymen were always "charged"
as being, simultaneously, (i.) the "Grand Jury" for "the General Quarter
Sessions of the Peace for this Borough, which is lodged in the Bailiffs as Justices
of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer by special grant by Charter" ; (ii.) the Jury of
the Court Leet ; and (iii.) the Homage at the Court Baron (see the charge in
Notes on the History of Chipping Norton, by A. Ballard, 1893, Appendix B).
1 Thus, at Winchester, the ancient "Boroughmote Court" or "Lawday"
had its jurisdiction enlarged by an Elizabethan Charter, and passed insensibly into
the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions. We see the Mayor, Aldermen, and
Recorder assuming exclusive jurisdiction over all criminal oftenc.es (except
murder and treason) committed within the City ; sitting with the usual para-
phernalia of Grand Jury and Traverse Juries ; and sentencing prisoners to be
THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS 355
we may note a trace of the same evolution in the character
and titles of the Juries that were summoned to the Court.
The Jury of the Court Leet not infrequently appeared as two
Juries, which were actually called in some cases the Grand
Jury or Grand Inquest, which made presentments, and the
" Party Jury " or " Petty Jury," which tried actions ; and
these seem insensibly to have passed into the Grand and
Petty Juries of the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions. 1
whipped, imprisoned, and transported. Yet, during the earlier years, we see
this same tribunal then still usually termed the Boroughmote Court or
"Lawday" (e.g. 22nd May 1691, in MS. Proposal Books) at its September
and December sessions in each year doing a considerable amount of non-criminal
business which had evidently continued on from the earlier Court, such as
receiving the report of the Mayor and his brethren upon the Municipal accounts ;
ordering the levy of a Scavenger's Rate and appointing two persons to collect it ;
making all the usual presentments of a Court Leet ; declaring the ancient
customs of the City ; and accepting fines in lieu of service as Constable (MS.
Proposal Book and Minutes of Quarter Sessions, in records of Corporation of
Winchester). We may trace the similar merging of the Court Leet in the little
Corporation of Totnes. When, in 1596, the Mayor, Recorder, and ex-Mayor
were made Justices of the Pjeace, they exercised in their quarterly sessions the
usual jurisdiction of Quarter Sessions, with Juries summoned by the Town
Clerk and Serjeants at Mace, though, in 1833, remitting grave cases to the
Assizes. But these same Justices held also two "adjourned sessions" in
November of each year. At the first of these, which was also called a Court
Leet, similar Juries, also summoned by the Town Clerk and Serjeants at Mace,
made a formal presentment of the Mayor, who had really been chosen by the
Close Body of "the Masters and Counsellors" of the Borough ; and they also
presented persons for appointment by the Mayor and other magistrates, as
Constables, Serjeants at Mace, Clerk of the Market, and Wardens of certain
wells, conduits, etc. At the second "adjourned sessions" of the Justices, also
called a Court Leet, all these officers were formally sworn in (First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 642).
1 In the transitional stage we see the same persons made use of as the Juries
of both Courts. At Andover in Hampshire, where the Court Leet, being held
separately for the " In-Hundred " and "Out-Hundred" respectively, retained
some little differentiation from the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions, " the Grand
Jury of the In-Hundred is detained to act as the Grand Jury of the Court of
Quarter Sessions" (First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835,
vol. ii. p. 1086). The MS. Records of the Corporation of Dorchester, in
like manner, give the names of the men, chosen from the three parishes of the
Borough, who served as " the Court Leet Jury, held Monday, 30th September
1776," with the following note : " The above to be the Grand Jury for the same
Leet, and the General or Quarter Sessions to be held at the Assize or Shire
Hall," on the subsequent Monday (MS. Bundle, 30th September 1776, records
of Corporation of Dorchester). At Portsmouth, Southwold, and Newport (Isle
of Wight) the case was reversed, the Petty Jury of the Quarter Sessions being
utilised as the Jury of the Court Leet (First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 781, 782, 812 ; vol. iv. p. 2518). At Faversham,
when the Court Leet was held simultaneously with the Court of Quarter Sessions,
one Jury served both as Grand Jury of the Sessions and Jury of the Leet ; in the
latter capacity making presentments of nuisances, upon which the Justices took
action ; and losing even this last Manorial function on the establishment of a
3$6 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
Other combinations of Leet structure with that of Quarter
Sessions are to be traced in other Municipal Corporations.
There may be found a Jury selected by the Town Clerk from
those inhabitants who did not use weights and measures for
purposes of trade, annually sworn and charged, not at a Court
Leet, but by the Borough Justices of the Peace at a sessions
specially held for the purpose. Such a Jury would perambulate
the Borough, testing all weights and measures, and seizing
those found defective. The offenders would then formally be
" presented " by this Jury to the Borough Justices, who then
and there convicted them of the misdemeanour, and sentenced
them to money fines. 1
The Borough Quarter Sessions, however it. may have
come into existence, differed in various respects from the
corresponding General Sessions of the Peace of the Justices
of the County, which we have elsewhere so fully described.
We note at once the contrast in the membership of the
Court. In the County, as we have seen, the Justices of the
Peace, all of whom were summoned to, and were at least
potential attenders at, Quarter Sessions, numbered from several
scores up to several hundreds of country gentlemen and
beneficed clergymen scattered all over the County. In the
Municipal Corporation there were, as a rule, only half a dozen
Justices of the Peace, all of whom held specific offices in the
Borough the Mayor, the Eecorder or High Steward, the
ex-Mayor or "Justice," occasionally the Common Clerk or
Town Clerk, or the Coroner, and sometimes one or more of
the Aldermen, Jurats, or Capital Burgesses. The Bench at
the Borough Court of Quarter Sessions came thus to be
usually occupied by the same three or four persons, and the
fact that among them was, in the more important Boroughs,
the salaried Recorder nearly always a trained professional
lawyer necessarily made this tribunal much more like a
modern Court of Justice than the amateur, shifting Bench at
the Quarter Sessions of the County. The invariable participa-
tion of the Eecorder, or his Deputy, when felonies were tried,
statutory body of Street Commissioners in 1789 (ibid. vol. ii. pp. 970-971). At
Bodmin " the Courts of Sessions of the Peace are held ... at the same time
as the Court Leet. . . . The Grand Jury of the Court Leet act also as Grand
Jury of the Sessions" (ibid. vol. i. p. 445).
1 Hereford (ibid. vol. i. p. 260).
THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS 357
and the fact that he virtually laid down the law and prescribed
the limits of the sentence, made the attainments and character
of the Justices of comparatively little importance, so far as
the graver criminal business was concerned.
But the Borough Justices did not confine their General
Sessions of the Peace to the well-known quarterly meetings.
We find them, in town after town, sitting monthly, or even
weekly, in adjourned " sessions," which had, in strict law, all
the immense powers of Quarter Sessions. We have described
how the County Justices in 1689 drew no sharp line of
demarcation between the cases dealt with by the " Double
Justice " in Petty Sessions, and those which they would hear
at the Quarterly General Sessions of the Peace, at which any
two magistrates made a quorum. In various Municipal
Corporations we see a similar confusion between Quarter and
Petty Sessions, carried to a greater height and continuing
for a longer period. At the " adjourned Sessions " held every
month, every fortnight, or every week sometimes in the
Mayor's Parlour, sometimes at the " Tolzey " or Borough Court
House we find the Constables, occasionally " the Constables'
Jury," l whatever this was, or even what was called a
" Grand Jury " or a " Grand Inquest," 2 making " presentments "
of nuisances of every kind, such as insanitary practices, selling
ale without a licence, " harbouring inmates," permitting
mastiff dogs to go unmuzzled, allowing chimneys to be in a
dangerous state, being a popish recusant, carrying on trade
without being free of the city, having cows feeding on the
common not being " neached " ; and every species of neglect
of duty by Beadles, Constables, Surveyors, and even the
Bailiffs, Sheriffs, and the Mayor himself. We have been quite
unable to distinguish which of these presentments, all made
to the General Sessions of the Peace, were of what we may
term the Court Leet character, the Quarter Sessions character,
and the Petty Sessions character respectively. In many
cases the offences presented were, as we have already pointed
out, of distinctly Manorial type, and we think we see traces
of the Jury itself naming the customary fine. 3 In other cases,
1 At Coveiitry ; see our preceding volume, Tlie Parish and the County, pp.
464-465. 2 At Bristol and Winchester.
3 See, for instance, MS. Session Rolls, Corporation of Southampton, 1682
(presentment of persons failing to repair pavements).
358 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
the offences thus laid before the Court were evidently
summarily disposed of by the infliction of a small money
penalty, or a whipping. In others, again, especially some of
those declared to be made by the Grand Jury, it may well
be that indictments had to be framed, an opportunity for
traverse given, true bills found, and Traverse Juries
summoned. At the same meetings we find these Justices
doing what was distinctly the work of the Single or Double
Justice, such a's ordering payments in relief of the poor,
swearing-in Constables, hearing cases of recalcitrant apprentices
and sentencing them to be whipped. We do not feel sure
that at these intermediate Sessions which the Eecorder did
not attend there were "true bills" found or felonies tried.
But the Justices would hear Poor Rate appeals, order (in
Boroughs which were Counties Corporate) payments out of
the " county stock " for the conveyance of vagrants ; pass orders
relating to the administration of the prisons; approve the
rules of friendly societies ; grant debtors their discharge under
the Insolvent Debtors Acts ; direct payments for the convey-
ance of " His Majesty's baggage," and perform various other
functions of the Court of Quarter Sessions on its civil side.
These Borough Justices, in fact, seem to have made even more
orders of a legislative character than those of the County.
In every respect they combined the functions of the Court of
Quarter Sessions, not only, as we have seen, with many of
those of the Court Leet or Borough Court, but also with those
elsewhere exercised by the Single or the Double Justice
technically " out of Sessions."
(r) Courts of Specialised Jurisdiction
Besides the Courts of Civil Jurisdiction and the Court
Leet or Borough Court of Quarter Sessions, many Municipal
Corporations had other Courts having particular reference to
one or other of the special jurisdictions that we have described :
a Court of Pie Powder or a Court of the Clerk of the
Market, for dealing summarily with all cases among the
frequenters of the Market or Fair ; a Court of Orphans, for
administering the estates of minors; 1 a Court of Conservancy,
1 The principal Court of Orphans was that of the City of London. But the
Southampton Corporation had also, by Charter of 1610, the right "to hold a
COURTS OF SPECIALISED JURISDICTION 359
for enforcing customs and obligations relating to the river ; a
Court of Admiralty, for adjusting all matters connected with
the harbour, the shipping, the fishing, and the adjoining shores
of the sea. 1 It is significant that all these archaic Courts,
held by the Head of the Corporation or on his behalf, were
or had been of mixed character, dealing indifferently with
civil actions brought by one person against another ; criminal
offences against the law or the local By-laws, 2 presented by
officers or Juries ; the enactment of new By-laws, or the issue
of orders to officers ; the perambulation of boundaries, and the
maintenance of such things as sea-marks, sluices, embankments,
Court of Orphans . . . with authority over their persons and goods," which
was not disused until the middle of the eighteenth century {History of South-
ampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883, p. 239 ; 'see Bwough Customs, by M. Bateson,
1904-6).
1 There were Courts of Admiralty at Boston (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2155) ; Bristol (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 1177) ; Carmarthen (ibid. vol. i. p. 212) ; the Liberty of the Cinque Ports
(ibid. vol. ii. p. 927) ; Dunwich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2223) ; Haverfordwest (ibid.
vol. i. p. 239) ; Harwich (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2267) ; Ipswich (ibid. vol. iv.
p. 2317) ; Kingston-on-Hull (ibid. vol. iii. p. 1549) ; Lynn (ibid. vol. iv.
p. 2403) ; Maldon (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2447) ; Newport, Isle of Wight (ibid. vol. ii.
p. 783); Poole (ibid. vol. ii. p. 1323); Rochester (ibid. vol. ii. p. 857);
Southampton (ibid. vol. ii. p. 884) ; Southwold (ibid. vol. iv. p. 2518). The
Court was held by the Mayor as " Admiral of the Port," sometimes assisted by
other officers, such as the Ex-Mayor, the Recorder, and the Town Clerk, and
occasionally (as at Rochester) also by Freemen nominated by the Mayor to sit
with him as Judges of the Court. That for the Liberty of the Cinque Ports
was held in the name of the Lord Warden by a Judge appointed by him. There
was either one Jury for all purposes ; or (as at Boston) two for the two several
divisions of the port ; or (as at Ipswicli) a series of Juries for the various sessions
of the Court, whether for perambulations, the trial of causes, or the presentment of
offenders ; usually chosen from among those Freemen of the Borough who were con-
nected with the sea : at Maldon, always fishermen ; at Rochester, oyster dredgers ;
at Poole, old shipmasters and pilots. The jurisdiction often extended far beyond
the limits of the Borough : at Boston, for instance, it comprised not only the
Borough and its port, but also the parts of the Wash known as "the Deeps,"
and all the streams and watercourses of " the washes" in and near the " Parts
of Holland," or that portion of Lincolnshire named in the Charter. It was the
claim of the Court of Admiralty of the Corporation of Dunwich to exercise
jurisdiction over the Port of Southwold that led to the incorporation of the
latter Borough, and the grant to it of its own Court of Admiralty. See on the
whole subject of Admiralty jurisdiction, Select Picas in the Court of Admiralty,
by R. G. Marsden (Selden Society, 2 vols., 1894-1897), and BurreWs Reports of
Cases determined by the Court of Admiralty, by the same, 1885.
2 The powers of the Court of Admiralty of the Corporation of Bristol
extended to all "thefts, frays, piracies, etc., upon the sea, or else river, creek,
or haven within the compass and circuit of the jurisdiction . . . and of obstruc-
tions on the river ... of fraud of the King's custom, . . . false weights and
measures, wreck, royal fish, etc. ; and also of the number of ships within the
haven and jurisdiction, and the owners of them " (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 1177-1178)
360 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
etc. ; and even, in ancient times, the management of property.
But the administrative and legislative functions of these
Courts had, by 1689, already passed almost entirely to the
Governing Council or other organ of the Corporation, or were
during the eighteenth century transferred to some statutory
body for the management of the river, harbour, or market ;
leaving to the ancient Courts usually little more than a petty
police jurisdiction. As parts of the Constitution of the
Municipal Corporation they had, by 1835, become almost
nominal. 1
(s) The Administrative Courts of the Municipal Corporation
So far we have dealt with a series of Courts that were, in
the main, judicial tribunals, largely if not entirely occupied
with the settlement of disputes between individuals, the
determination of the obligations of the various inhabitants
towards the King, the Lord of the Manor, and the rest of the
community, and, above all, with the keeping of the King's
Peace within their jurisdictions. We pass now to the Courts
that are in the present day usually termed Councils or
Assemblies, which had been evolved for the specific purpose of
administering the common affairs of the community. These
Administrative Courts, like so much else of the constitutional
structure of the Municipal Corporations, were not peculiar to
1 At Ipswich the two Bailiffs, as jointly "Admirals of the Port," appointed
a Steward of the Court in 1811, for the express purpose of formulating the
presentments to be made by the Jury. At Harwich, right down to 1791, the
Court received a report from the Water Bailiff, and made the " Assize of Fish."
At Rochester, where the oyster fishing belonged to the Corporation, and was a
profitable enterprise of some magnitude, its regulation and management was
entirely in the hands of the local Court of Admiralty. The Jury of "free
dredgers," annually selected by the Mayor, formally presented the rules for the
government of the dredgers, which were confirmed and promulgated by the
Mayor in the name of the Court. The Jury presented also every year a person
to act as Chamberlain or Treasurer of the fishery. This Court of Admiralty
acted also as a Court of Conservancy for the River Medway, the Mayor presid-
ing at Courts held when required, at which Juries selected from those "free
dredgers," who were Freemen of the Borough, made regulations and presented
offenders in all matters relating to the "floating fish within the liberties."
Sometimes, where no Court had been held for many years, the Mayor continued
to act as arbitrator. In the little Corporation of Newport, Isle of Wight,
"parties complain to the Mayor respecting matters. belonging to this part of
his jurisdiction ; he determines them orally, and the parties submit " (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. ii. p. 783).
ADMINISTRATIVE COURTS 361
them. It is true that iii the Manor and the Hundred all the
administrative decisions were made at the same Un differentiated
Court, which did the civil and criminal business, by the same
Juries and officers, under the more or less authoritative control
of the Lord's Steward. But already in some of these Lord's
Courts we catch glimpses of occasional meetings of another
body sometimes, as we have mentioned, of " the Freeholders " 1 ;
sometimes of " twelve discreet and able persons " 2 acting
between the six-monthly sessions of the Court; helping the
Steward and the Bailiff to frame the regulations, or carrying
out the presentments of the Jury as to the management of
the commonfields, the stinting of the pasture, and the
assessment of rates for the repair of the well or the mending
of the roads. In the lower members of our series of Manorial
Boroughs, some of them scarcely to be distinguished from the
Lord's Court, we see the occasional meetings of the Free-
holders replaced by a standing body a " Fellowship," a
"Society," a "Company," 3 a "Twelve," a "Thirteen," a
" Sixteen," or most commonly a " Four-and-Twenty," closely
connected with the Jury of the Lord's Court. We need not
speculate as to the origin of such a body. In one case, at
least, we may see it actually arising from a presentment of
the Jury of the Court : " that it was necessary that a Council
of Twelve, being Aldermen and sufficient Burgesses of the
said Town, should be added to the Mayor for the time being,
to advise him for the good of the Corporation," 4 In one
archaic Municipal Corporation, as we have already mentioned,
we have a meeting of all the Freeholders or Burgesses resolving
that twenty-four of their number should henceforth "be
instead of the whole commonalty, and no other of the
commonalty to intermeddle under pain of five pounds," 5
exactly as in the analogous instance of the Select Vestry of
1 As at Bamburgh (supra, p. 94).
2 At East Stonehouse, which never developed beyond being a mere Manor,
we hear of the regulations of the Lord being made ' ' with the consent and frank
agreement of twelve discreet and able persons of and within the said town and
liberties" (see Deed of 1594, quoted in History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth,
1895, p. 228).
3 As at Braintree (supra, p. 172); Lewes (supra, pp. 171-172); Brighton
(supra, p. 173 .).
4 Presentment of the Jury at the Court Leet of Cardigan, 1653 ; in First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. p. 197.
6 MS. Records, Corporation of Roinncy Marsh, 1604.
362 THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
the Parish we have cases in which the Close Body was
created by resolution of the inhabitants in Vestry assembled. 1
On the other hand, we have traces of the Council having
originated from above, not from below. The Head of the
Corporation may have a group of persons to assist him in his
work, and these " Mayor's Peers " or " Mayor's Brethren "
form his first standing Council In Corporation after
Corporation we see this little group calling to their aid
selected Members of the Commonalty, as the " Mayor's
Counsellors," the Common Councilinen becoming thus an
adjunct to the Aldermen. 2 As we proceed along the ascending
series we see this standing body, whether formed from above
or from below, gradually shaking itself free from the Lord's
Court, 3 acquiring funds of its own, possibly even the right
to hold a separate Court, and presently becoming, instead of
the creature of the Lord's Court, the master of that tribunal
and of the officers there appointed. We suggest that the
popular idea that the Municipal Corporation arose out of the
Gild may be so far justified that in many cases it was the
Gild, with its common stock, and even its Corporate trading
ventures, that was the origin, if not of the Common Council
itself, of some of the characteristic features of the Common
Council as we see it in 1689; such as the abandonment of
judicial forms and processes, the exclusion of the public, the
1 The Parish and the County, pp. 184-188.
-' At Folkestone, where the administration had been shared between the
Mayor and Jurats and the General Assembly of Freemen, we see the former, in
1582, electing and choosing, "by the consent of the whole Commons, twenty-
five Commoners, in the name of the whole Commonalty, to be a Town Council,
to make and agree unto all such necessary laws as shall be thought good by the
Mayor and Jurats" (Account of Folkestone, by S. J. Mackie, 1883, pp. 314-315).
The same thing happened at Rye in 1574 (History 
