The people on their side were taxed, and heavily taxed, for the various expenses of the Church.[297] Sergeants sent by the Town Council collected under severe penalties the dues for the blessed bread and “trendilles” of wax, or “light-silver” for the lights burned beside dead bodies laid in the church; and the town treasury paid for “coals for the new fire on Easter Eve.”[298] If a church had to be repaired or rebuilt the pressure of spiritual hopes or fears, the habit of public duty, the boastfulness of local pride, all the influences that might stimulate the common effort, were raised to their highest efficiency by the watchful care of the corporation. All necessary orders were sent out by the mayor, who with the Town Council determined the share which the inhabitants were to take in the work; and in small and destitute parishes where the principle of self-help and independence was quite as fully recognized as it was in bigger and richer towns, real sacrifices were demanded. Men gave their money or their labour or the work of their horse and cart, or they offered a sheep or fowls, or perhaps rings and personal ornaments.[299] In the pride of their growing municipal life the poorest boroughs built new towers and hung new chimes worthy of the latest popular ideals. The inhabitants of Totnes were so poor that in 1449 there were only three people in the town who paid as much as twentypence for the tax of half-tenths and fifteenths for the King. But since Totnes had four new bells which had been anointed and consecrated in 1442, it decided that the old wooden belfry of the parish church should be replaced by a new stone tower. A master mason was appointed in 1448, and “supervisors” were chosen to visit the bell towers of all the country round and to make that at Totnes “according to the best model.” The proctors of the church provided shovels and pick-axes, and the parishioners were called out to dig stones from the quarry; every one who had a horse was to help in carrying the stones, “but without coercion,” while “those who have no horses of their own are to work with the horses of other persons, but at their own cost.” Last of all an ordinance was made that the mayor, vicar, and proctors of the church should go round to each parishioner and see how much he would give to the collection on Sundays for the bell tower, and those who contributed nothing were to have their names entered on a roll and sent to the Archdeacon’s Court.[300] When St. Andrews at Plymouth was enlarged the town authorities decided that the money should be collected by means of a yearly “church-ale.” Taverns were closed by order of the council on a certain day, and every ward of the town made for itself a “hale” or booth in the cemetery of the parish church. All inhabitants of the wards were commanded to come with as many friends and acquaintances as possible “for the increasing of the said ale,” and to bring with them “except bread and drink such victual as they like best”; but they must buy at the “hale” “bread and ale as it cometh thereto for their dinners and suppers the same day.” After ten years of these picnics in the churchyard the new aisle of St. Andrews was finished at a cost of £44 14s. 6d.[301]
In the midst of this busy life—a life where the citizens themselves watched over their boundaries, defended their territory, kept peace in their borders, took charge of the common property, governed the spending of the town treasure, laboured with their own hands at all public works, ordered their own amusements, the mediæval burgher had his training. The claims of the commonwealth were never allowed to slip from his remembrance. As all the affairs of the town were matters of public responsibility, so all the incidents of its life were made matters of public knowledge. The ancient “common horn” or the “common bell”[302] announced the opening of the market, or the holding of the mayor’s court, or called the townspeople together in time of danger. Criers went about the streets to proclaim the ordinances of the community, and to remind the citizens of their duties. From the church stile or in the market-place they summoned men to the King’s muster, or called them to their place in the town’s ship or barge; or if danger from an enemy threatened, warned the citizens “to have harness carried to the proper places,” or “to have cattle or hogs out of the fields.” They exhorted the people “to leave dice-playing,” “to cease ball-playing and to take to bows;” to shut the shops at service time; “to have water at men’s doors” for fear of fire. The crier “called” any proclamation of the King in the public places of the town; he declared deeds of pardon granted to any criminal, or proclaimed that some poor wretch who had taken sanctuary in the church had abjured the kingdom and was to be allowed to depart safely through the streets. Perhaps the “cry” was made that a prisoner had been thrown into the town gaol on suspicion, and accusers were called to appear if they had any charge to bring against him; or it was announced that the will of a deceased townsman was about to be proved in the court-house, if there were any who desired to raise objections; or there was proclamation that a burgher had offended against the laws of the community and was degraded from the freedom of the town, or perhaps banished for ever from its territory. At other times players and minstrels would pass through the market-place and streets “crying the banns” of their plays. The merchant, the apprentice, the journeyman, the shopkeeper, gathered in the same crowd to hear the crier who recorded every incident in the town life or brought tidings of coming change. News was open, public, without distinction of persons.
Where the claims of local life were so exacting and so overpowering we can scarcely wonder if the burgher took little thought for matters that lay beyond his “parish.” But within the narrow limits of the town dominions his experience was rich and varied. While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. Traders too, intent on the developement of their business, were deeply concerned in all the questions that affected commerce, the securing of communications, or the opening of new roads for trade, or the organization of labour. In such matters activity could never sleep; for the towns anticipated modern nations in the faith that the advantage of one community must be the detriment of another, and competition and commercial jealousy ran high.[303] Never perhaps in English history was local feeling so strong. Public virtue was summed up in an ardent municipal zeal, as lively among the “Imperial Co-citizens” of New Sarum[304] as among the “Great Clothing” of bigger boroughs. In those days indeed busy provincials but dimly conscious of national policy found in the confusion of court politics and the distraction of its intrigues, or in the feuds of a divided and bewildered administration, no true call to national service and no popular leader to quicken their sympathies. Civil wars which swept over the country at the bidding of a factious group of nobles or of a vain and unscrupulous Kingmaker left, and justly left, the towns supremely indifferent to any question save that of how to make the best terms for themselves from the winning side, or to use the disasters of warring lords so as to extend their own privileges.[305] Meanwhile in the intense effort called out by the new industrial and commercial conditions and the reorganization of social life which they demanded, it was inevitable that there should grow up in the boroughs the temper of men absorbed in a critical struggle for ends which however important were still personal, local, limited, purely material—a temper inspired by private interest and with its essential narrowness untouched by the finer conceptions through which a great patriotism is nourished. Such a temper, if it brought at first great rewards, brought its own penalties at last, when the towns, self-dependent, unused to confederation for public purposes, destitute of the generous spirit of national regard, and by their ignorance and narrow outlook left helpless in presence of the revolutions that were to usher in the modern world, saw the government of their trade and the ordering of their constitutions taken from them, and their councils degraded by the later royal despotism into the instruments and support of tyranny.
NOTE A.
There are many instances of the responsibility of individual citizens for costs of various kinds which were the charge of the whole borough. In 1212 the townsmen of Southampton got hold of the King’s money that came from Ireland, and two bailiffs and six principal men were charged with its payment to the King. (Madox Firma Burgi, 158.) A bailiff of Chichester was fined in 1395 for not attending at a session of the peace, and as he had no lands and chattels to seize for the debt, two citizens were charged with the payment of the fine. (Ibid. 187.) In 1256, when Warwick had to pay a fine of forty marks to the King for a trespass, the sheriff was ordered to raise the fine both from the townsmen and from all men of the suburb, both within and without the liberty, who did merchandise in the city of Warwick. (Ibid. 183.) In 1431 the bailiffs of Andover were held responsible for various escapes from prison. They were declared insolvent and the charge thrown back upon the town. The townsmen, however, pleaded that two of the officers charged had quite enough goods and chattels either in the town or in the country to pay themselves, and as for the third they had never chosen him. (Madox, 210. Other instances, ibid. 182, 184, &c.; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 173.) In 1456 the Mayor and Common Council of Leicester agreed that all actions brought against them in the King’s Court by the bailiff should be paid for by the whole town. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 422.)
This method of raising money was never a popular proceeding, and in almost every case where there is an account of goods seized from a community or guild for the payment of ferm or fine, the sheriffs seem to make the return that these goods remain on their hands for want of buyers. (Madox, 188, 212, 214, 217, 218.) It is evident that the responsibility of the private citizens was almost extinguished in later times (see Madox, 217), at least in some cases—a fact which may be referred to “the mayor and burgesses” replacing for official purposes “the community,” and being licensed to hold corporate property.
It is necessary to distinguish between the responsibility for the borough expenses and the responsibility for the trading debts of the burghers. In the latter case the “community” was also responsible, but the guarantee was strictly confined to burghers and not shared by inhabitants. For the inconvenience to which burghers were subject by being seized for debts whereof they were neither debtors nor pledges, see Derby. (Rep. on Markets, 58.) Mr. Maitland points out that the doctrine that traders form a society in which each member is answerable for the faults of the others, which is shown in early charters, was gradually wearing out, and in 1275 a law was passed that no Englishman could be distrained for any debt unless he was himself the debtor or the pledge, though possibly this law still left members of a community in the position of pledges. But long before this law was passed all the bigger towns had already obtained charters to the same effect. See the charter of Norwich in 1255. “We have granted, and by this our Charter confirmed, to our beloved citizens of Norwich, that they and their heirs for ever shall have this liberty through all our land and power, viz. that they or their goods found in whatever places in our power shall not be arrested for any debt of which they shall not be sureties or principal debtors.” (Stanley v. Mayor, Norwich Doc. 1884, 7.) In 1256 goods belonging to the Norwich freemen were arrested for the debts of others that were not free at Boston fair. Norwich however produced its charter of the year before, making their goods free from arrest for any debt unless they were the principal debtors, or the debtors were of their society. (Blomefield, iii. 50, 51.)
Mr. Maitland (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Society, ii. 134-5) in discussing this question of the trading guarantee points out the difference between the responsibility of the “communitas” and of the “cives” or “burgesses” of a town, showing that the “communitas” did not form a juristic person, while “the citizens” of a town could sue and be sued collectively by a common name. He thinks that the “communitas” may mean the merchant guild “though not perhaps in all cases a duly chartered guild.” Of this there is no proof, and many serious difficulties lie in the way of accepting the hypothesis. In the case of Leicester, where there was a merchant guild, it is never mentioned, the responsibility lies on the “members of the community of Leicester,” (p. 145-7) and Thomas pleads, not that he was not in the merchant guild, but that he was from Coventry. So also “the whole community of Norwich” is spoken of in exactly the same way, but in Norwich there was no guild merchant, (p. 149, 152. See also on this point Hudson’s Mun. Org. 36. Notes on Norwich in the Norfolk Archæology, xii. “The city and feudalism.”) In Nottingham, John Beeston (p. 153-4) brings a counter-charge against the community of Stamford, (p. 159); he was probably one of the very numerous licensed traders of Nottingham and not a burgher. (Nott. Rec. ii. 102-4, 240-4; iii. 349-52.) It is important to notice the words of the charter by which in 1255 the Nottingham burghers had obtained freedom from arrest, “except in case the debtors are of their commune and power, having whereof their debts may be wholly or partly satisfied, and the said burgesses shall have failed in doing justice to the creditors of the same debtors.” (Nott. Rec. i. 41.) For Wiggenhall, (Select Pleas, pp. 157-8.) The mutual responsibility must be considered in connection with the inter-municipal treaties (see Vol. ii. ch. iii.) which were always drawn up in the name of “the community” at this early time, and never at any time in the name of the guild merchant. I have suggested in vol. ii. (see Norwich, Lynn, Nottingham, Southampton) another meaning of “communitas,” which seems to me to apply also to the instances here mentioned by Mr. Maitland.