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an alderman of the merchant gild was chosen, and with him four associates 1. At Beverley the ordinances of the merchant gild were "diligently inspected" by the twelve keepers of the town, who also paid a rent to the gild for the use of the gildhall2, an indication that the gild was not identical with the community and was subject to the municipal body.

ultimate

identity.

The distinction between the 'community of the gild' Their and the 'community of the town' must not, however, be pressed too far. The evidence of Leicester seems to indicate that here at least, while the difference between them was well understood, there was no duality of office nor two sets of officers, but that the same officers governed the borough and the gild 4. Moreover, the line of demarcation between the gildsmen and the burgesses tended necessarily to become shadowy and indistinct, for in practice the composition of the two bodies would more or less coincide. In process of time the merchant gild became gradually merged in the town administration. The court of the borough was as a rule far more ancient than the gild, but when trade expanded and the functions of local government grew more and more complex, the gild was apt to develop into the predominant partner. The dual system of municipal government disappeared, and the regulation of trade and the control of general municipal activities passed into the hands of one and the same body. The ultimate identity of gild and borough is seen in 1408, when the mayor of Winchester together with the recorder and one of the bailiffs appeared on behalf of themselves and the commonalty of the gild merchant" before the authorities of London to complain of the exaction of toll 5. Again, the earliest of the corporate seals used by the city of Gloucester, dating from the first half of the thirteenth century, bears the inscription in Latin : "seal of the burgesses of the gild merchant". At Bristol the amalgamation of the gild merchant and the civic body

1 Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 115.

2 Beverley Town Documents, pp. xlii. 74. 4 Records of Leicester, i. p. xliii.

3 Supra, p. 250.
5 Letter Book I, 70.

• W. H. St. John Hope, "Seals of Gloucester," in Trans. Bristol and

Glouc. Archaeol. Soc. xiii. 385.

Immunity from toll

is shown by the existence of a common purse, for the burgesses announced to Edward II. that "out of the profits of the gild of merchants and of the town they supported eight bridges" and other town charges 1. Further, however distinct the burghal polity and the merchant gild may have been in their origin, the latter must have exercised great influence upon the municipal constitution in the later stages of its development. From the first the gild formed a corporate body whose members were knit together by the identity of their commercial interests, and this example would awaken in the whole body of burgesses a feeling of unity and a consciousness of mutual bonds. Its influence would be felt more especially in dependent boroughs subject to mesne lords, which were struggling to emancipate themselves from seigniorial control and to acquire rights of liberty and self-government. Here the merchant gild became the nucleus round which the townsmen rallied in their fight for municipal freedom, and where they learnt to appreciate the possibilities of communal action and to organize themselves for purposes of aggression and defence. At Cirencester when the townsmen broke out into revolt against the supremacy of the abbey, their first step was to set up a merchant gild 2 as the symbol of their present triumph and the basis of their future activities.

The exclusive monopoly of the townsfolk in the regulation of trade was to a certain extent impaired by the claims of many of the chartered boroughs to carry their merchandise throughout England quit of toll. No mercantile privilege was valued more highly than that which released traders from all local customs in town, fair and market, outside the walls of their own borough. Already in Domesday Book the inhabitants of Dover who paid the king's dues went free of toll in every part of the realm 3, and later, grants of immunity became general. Henry's charter to London in 1131 enacted that "all the men of London shall be quit and free and all their goods, both throughout all England and throughout the seaports, of toll and passage and lastage

1 W. Barrett, History and Antiquities of Bristol (1789), p. vii.
2 Trans. Bristol and Glouc. Archæol. Soc. ix. part i. 335.

3 Domesday Book, i. 1.

and all other customs "1. Other towns, Winchester and Wilton 2, enjoyed the same privilege in this reign. Subsequent charters of Angevin rulers were framed with liberal measure. The inhabitants of Wallingford were afforded relief "wherever they go trading through the whole land of England and Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou, by water and by stronde, by wode and by londe". Similarly foreign towns enjoyed immunity in England: Rouen and St. Omer under Henry II., and Calais under Richard I.4. Sometimes the privilege was curtailed in favour of London 5, and sometimes, as at Cambridge, it was expressly restricted to members of the gild merchant. The mediate boroughs under the control of mesne lords, ecclesiastical and secular, were less favourably situated, and here it was beyond the power of their owners to confer immunities so extensive. The earl of Gloucester freed his town of Cardiff from all custom within the shire of Gloucester where he held sway; Lostwithiel received at the hands of Richard, earl of Cornwall, immunity from toll throughout Cornwall, "in fairs, markets and wherever they buy and sell"; the men of Denbigh and Llantrissaint received freedom from toll in all the lands owned by their lords throughout England and Wales; and the men of Sheffield went quit of toll in Hallamshire". An unusual clause in the charter to Salford reserved the lord's right to the toll of salt. In some cases, however, the seigniorial borough was enabled to acquire the larger franchise Beverley, which under Henry I. had been released from toll in Yorkshire, paid King John the sum of five hundred marks to be free throughout all England".

1 Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 525. 2 Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 251. 3 Ibid. ii. 245. Similarly, ibid. ii. 183, 202, 351, 373, 388. Bristol: Latimer, Bristol Charters, 5. Dublin: Gilbert, Documents of Ireland, 2. 4 Cal. Documents in France, 34 (Rouen), 480 (Calais), 491 (St. Omer). 5 Birch, Charters of Lincoln, 7 (1200).

• Cambridge Borough Charters, 5. Similarly, Records of Nottingham, i. 9, etc.

7 (i.) Cardiff: Records of Cardiff, i. 11. But the immunity did not extend to raw hides and wool-fells. (ii.) Lostwithiel: Hist. MSS. Comm. Various Collections, i. 327. (iii.) Denbigh: Survey of Denbigh, p. cxviii. (iv.) Llantrissaint: Archæol. Journal, xxix. 351. (v.) Sheffield: Hunter and Gatty, Hallamshire, 55. 8 Harland, Mamecestre, i. 201.

• Beverley Town Documents, p. xviii; Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters, i. 92.

extensively conferred.

Nature of the

immunity.

Exemption from toll was claimed not only by chartered boroughs, but by all tenants of the Ancient Demesne of the Crown and by barons of the Cinque Ports. Tenants in Ancient Demesne paid no toll for the produce of their land, "because", says Coke, "at the beginning by their tenure they applied themselves to the manurance and husbandry of the king's demesnes "1. They were protected by a special writ of privilege, which stated that "according to the custom hitherto practised and approved in our realm of England, the men of the Ancient Demesne of the Crown of England are and ought to be quit from the payment of toll throughout our whole realm "2. Under Edward II. a judicial decision was given in a court of law that all tenants of Ancient Demesne went free of toll "by the law and custom of the realm ", and the barons of the Cinque Ports "by their charters". Immunity from toll was often extended also to men of religion: Henry I. released the church of Malmesbury in England and the monastery of St. Ouen in Rouen from toll and custom through the whole kingdom, and there are numerous other instances 5. Sometimes it was even conferred on the ecclesiastical tenants of the Church: William II. conceded to the monks of Battle freedom from toll for their tenants all over England, and tenants of the sees of Canterbury and York also claimed the same right". We may conclude, therefore, that this important privilege was not the prerogative of the merchant gild alone, but was frequently shared by ecclesiastics and even by villages.

The privilege of exemption from toll has generally been interpreted in a wide sense, but our views as to the exact nature of the immunity which it conferred need to be modified. There are indications that, in a large number of cases at any rate, the privilege was not valid for purposes 1 Coke, Second Part of the Institutes, 221.

2 A. Fitzherbert, The New Natura Brevium (ed. 1730), 520-521.
3 Plac. Abbrev. 305 b, 321 a.
Charters (1902), 179.

Similarly S. P. H. Statham, Dover
• Registrum Malmesburiense, i. 333.
5 Benham, Red Paper Book of Colchester, 48 (St. Ouen). Other
examples are: Hist. MSS. Comm. Various Collections, i. 349; ibid. 10th
Rep. App. iv. 454; Swinden, Antiquities of Yarmouth, 29; Davis,
Regesta Regum, i. 54, 102.

(i.) Battle: Davis, Regesta Regum, i. 76. (ii.) Canterbury: Red Paper Book of Colchester, 17. (iii.) York: Drake, Eboracum, 549.

of trade. Tenants in Ancient Demesne, for example, were not exempt from toll when they bought and sold their goods as merchants. This opinion conflicts with that of the great lawyer, Fitzherbert, who held that they were to "be quit of toll generally, although they do merchandise with their goods "1. But in spite of Fitzherbert's authority, his doctrine must be rejected as unsound. In 1286 a jury stated that the men of Southampton, a town of Ancient Demesne, ought not to be distrained for toll on wares purchased for their own use, but ought to pay toll for merchandise which they bought and sold as merchants *. Again in 1309 other tenants of Ancient Demesne successfully claimed that they were exempt from toll on small merchandise, ordinary provisions, except when they were dealers engaged in trade. As late as 1517 and 1533, herring merchants from Suffolk complained before the Star Chamber and Court of Requests that the town of Hull had exacted toll, although they were tenants of Ancient Demesne. Hull defended its action on the ground that they ought to pay toll on "all manner of merchandise bought or sold by any of them, except it be of any such things bought by them as necessary for their own household, or for such corn or other things sold by them as groweth or else is brought up of the said ground so holden "4. In 1200 an inquisition was held at Ipswich to ascertain the validity of the claims made by certain religious persons to be free of toll in the town; the jury pronounced that they and their men were quit of custom, but only on things growing on their own lands and things bought for their own use, " but villeins who are merchants always paid custom "5. This decision was confirmed in 1274 in a regulation concerning the 'foreign burgesses' of Ipswich. A complaint in the Hundred Rolls draws a similar distinction: the burgesses of Wallingford were accustomed to take toll from merchants only, whereas now, 1 Fitzherbert, The New Natura Brevium, 521-522. 2 Plac. Abbrev. 210 a.

3 Ibid. 305 b.

4 Select Cases in the Star Chamber, ii. 120 (1517); Select Cases in the Court of Requests, 35 seq. (1533). Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 123. Bacon, Ipswich, II. In 1254 Ipswich allowed the abbey of Albemarle and its tenants to be toll-free in the town, except merchants: ibid. 9. A similar arrangement was made at Lincoln: Birch, Charters of Lincoln, 66.

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