Relations Church and in into its own. The abbot's marshal was killed in a fray, and the burgesses were compelled to surrender their charter and yield up their millstones. Another bid for independence was made in 1381, and after its failure the town relapsed into complete dependence upon the abbey. In this condition they remained until 1553, when they at length secured a charter of incorporation from the Crown. Even Bury St. Edmunds 1, a prosperous centre of the cloth trade, whose stubborn resistance was protracted for three centuries, sought in 1477 the sanction of the sacristan, "lord of the town", to make ordinances for the craft of weavers. Nor did even the Reformation always bring freedom to English monastic towns. At Peterborough the dean and chapter succeeded to the jurisdiction of the monastery, and down to the nineteenth century exercised the right to appoint the city magistrates 2. Hitherto we have been concerned with the relations between the between the Church and those towns which were in subjection to ecclesiastical lords; we have now to see how the dependent munici- Church came into collision with municipalities over which palities. it exercised no suzerainty. The mediaeval Church regarded itself as an imperium in imperio, and asserted its immunity from all secular control and jurisdiction. This claim brought it into conflict not only with the king, but with the towns which had acquired the rights of autonomy, for the attempt to exclude from their authority all ecclesiastical territory inside the municipal area set up a rival power within the walls of the borough. In the main, controversy centred round two points: jurisdiction and taxation. The citizens demanded that tenants of the Church should be "obedient to our chief bailiffs "3, attend their courts and pay contributions to the town assessments, while the Church restrained its dependents from compliance. A difficult situation was created, for not only was a part of the town inhabitants relieved of their communal obligations, but the authority of the mayor could be set at defiance by any ill-disposed 1 Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. viii. 133. Wolsey mediated in 1528 between Lynn and the bishop of Norwich: ibid. 11th Rep. App. iii. 246. 2 Brown, Arts in Early England, i. 96. 3 Journal of the British Archæol. Assoc. xxvii. 467. citizen. The financial grievances of the burgesses were as old as Domesday, where complaint was raised that ecclesiastical lords retained the Danegeld paid by their tenants, to the loss of the other citizens who were made responsible for the whole sum levied upon their community1. A settlement took place at Leicester in 1281, where the tenants of the bishop of Lincoln agreed that any one who became a member of the merchant gild should contribute to its charges in return for a share in its privileges 2. But it was more difficult to arrange a compromise in matters affecting jurisdiction, for concession here involved the abdication of ecclesiastical authority. At Gloucester the servants and tenants of the monastery were expressly exempted by royal charter from civic control 3. At Hereford 4 fraudulent bakers were able to take refuge on ecclesiastical territory in order to exercise their trade outside the jurisdiction of the bailiffs; while at Winchester 5 weavers withdrew into the episcopal suburbs to escape the charges due to the city. The quarrels between Canterbury and the convent of Christ Church were spread over three hundred years, and serve to illustrate the various occasions for dispute that from time to time were advanced. In 1227 the bailiffs required the monastery to furnish a number of men-at-arms to the quota demanded of the city by the king, and a century later (1327) they put forward the claim that ecclesiastical property should contribute to the taxes. The friction culminated in 1329 when the prior refused to pay a share of the subsidy imposed on the town; the citizens held a meeting in the Blackfriars Churchyard, and resolved that they would sell neither food nor drink to the monks and would seize provisions that came to the monastery from their manors; no pilgrims were to enter the church without swearing not to make offerings, and ecclesiastical tenants were to be driven from their houses. The disputes were revived in the fifteenth century 1 Domesday Studies, i. 126. 2 Records of Leicester, i. 191. Similarly, Colchester Oath Book, ed. W. G. Benham (1907), 188. Gloucester Corporation Records, ed. W. H. Stevenson (1893), 14. Journal of the British Archæol. Assoc. xxvii. 484. E. Smirke, "Winchester in the Thirteenth Century", in Archeol. Journal, vii. 377. Other disputes. when the prior alleged that the bailiffs had sacrilegiously invaded the right of sanctuary in Christ Church (1425), and the citizens accused the convent of forestalling supplies of fish (1428). In 1492 a settlement was reached in which the city renounced all claim to jurisdiction within the monastic precincts; yet shortly afterwards the complaints on both sides were renewed, and the prior carried his suit to a court of law1. The history of Canterbury does not stand alone, and in many other towns the existence of a divided authority provided a fruitful field for dissensions and conflicts. At Norwich the prior sought "to draw away men of the franchise from the commons of the city, in order that they might be under his own jurisdiction and severed from the commons". The ill-feeling culminated in a terrible riot between the monks and citizens in 1272, when the cathedral church "founded there from of old" was burnt down with the houses of the convent built within its cloisters 2. The king intervened, but dissensions revived until in 1306 the two parties, "prudently considering the inconvenience of these disputes", came to terms3. Occasionally the efforts of the burgesses to establish their authority over all franchises within the town walls brought them into collision with secular lords. At Bristol Maurice de Berkeley was lord of Radcliffe Street, which he claimed as part of his manor of Bedminster, while the mayor claimed it as part of the city, and the result was a conflict of jurisdictions 4. The relations between the Church and the municipalities were further complicated by disputes over the ownership of common land and rights of way. At York a quarrel broke out when the monastery enclosed a common pasture which 1 Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. 433-434; ibid. 9th Rep. part i. App. 96, 98, 112, 118. For the struggle between Exeter and the Church, see ibid. Various Collections, iv. 68 (1249); Letters and Papers of John Shillingford, 1447– 1450, ed. S. A. Moore (1871). Similarly Shrewsbury, Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 180. * De Antiquis Legibus Liber, 145-148. W. Rye, "The Riot between the Monks and Citizens of Norwich in 1272", in Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany, ii. 17-89. 3 Records of Norwich, ii. 271. Patent Rolls, 1301-1307, PP. 347, 352, 356; Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 196 seq. the town regarded as its property1, and at Ipswich the citizens demolished a hedge and ditch made by the prior of Ely to enclose land owned by the city "time out of mind "2. Sometimes the controversies ended peacefully and a settlement was reached between the two parties over the points at variance. Another subject of contention emerged in the exaction of market tolls, from which the ecclesiastics set up a claim to immunity. At Bury St. Edmunds the burgesses refused to allow the abbot's servants to be quit of toll whenever they bought or sold as traders, but when they sold the abbey's produce or bought provisions for its use they were not required to pay toll. The distinction was well established, but here, as elsewhere, it added fuel to the bitterness between the monastery and the town 3. Apart from the claims of their feudal lords, lay and Control of the sheriff. ecclesiastical, other difficulties confronted the townsmen in their endeavour to achieve independence and self-government. The sheriff, as the political representative of the Crown and the local head of the county administration, was all-paramount in the shire, and enjoyed opportunities for meddling with the concerns of the borough communities, which were utilized to the full. As judge he dealt with pleas that lay outside the competence of the municipal courts and assessed the fines for breaches of the law; as military leader he raised armed levies among the townsmen and led them to the field; as revenue-officer he imposed taxes and gathered in the royal dues. In these various capacities he had unnumbered occasions for oppression, and used his position to serve his own ends and to fill his own purse. At Canterbury 5 the sheriff compelled the people to pay excessive toll for the use of his ferry-boat, and it was among the articles of the Hundred Rolls to inquire respecting sheriffs who took money to conceal felonies". The pleas of the Crown for the county of Gloucester afford eloquent 1 York Memorandum Book, i. 179-180. 2 Bacon, Annals of Ipswich, 108 (1451). 3 Chronica Jocelini, 74. 4 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 299, 443, 444. 5 Green, Town Life, i. 207. • Compare the Staffordshire Hundred Rolls (which contain rolls not printed in the Rot. Hund.) in Wm. Salt Archæol. Soc. Collections, v. part i. 119. Franchises conferred by borough charters. testimony to the misdeeds of the sheriffs, who were charged with miscarriage of justice, exactions of money and many other acts of oppression 1. The sheriff in the Middle Ages was in fact the best hated man in the shire, and his unpopularity is reflected alike in history and legend. Accordingly the overmastering desire to avoid his exactions, and exclude him from their walls, became the great incentive that first stimulated in the townsmen a longing for freedom. Community of suffering brought home to them their common interests, and the growing feeling of corporate identity became the mainspring of their municipal development. The first step was taken by the purchase of a charter from the Crown bestowing upon them the right to assess and collect all their own taxes. The second step was to crystallize corporate action into a permanent organization, whereby to maintain and extend the privileges thus gained. The history of English towns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, apart from the growth of their industry and trade, is thus largely the story of their emancipation from feudal and political control. Immunity from external authority, whether of lord or sheriff, and the concentration of power within their own hands, constituted the goal which the townsfolk kept steadily before their eyes. Their progress was not, however, uniform, and it cannot be too often insisted that every town has its own history, and that the conditions of its development varied with the exigencies of local circumstances. Leicester, though one of the famous Five Boroughs, did not acquire the firma burgi, the most ordinary privilege of an emancipated borough, until the middle of the fourteenth century, and then only for a period of ten years 2. None the less, we may at this point conveniently group the various franchises conferred by borough charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under certain welldefined heads. John's reign in particular constitutes the 'golden age of municipalities, and his necessities made him pre-eminently the great charter - monger". The 1 Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester, ed. F. W. Maitland (1884), pp. 23, 31, 41, 58, 96. 2 Records of Leicester, ii. 149. See also Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 6 (n. 1). |