CHAPTER V
THE TOWNSPEOPLE
No dispute has raged more fiercely in this century, not only in England but throughout Europe, than the dispute as to what qualifications should make a man fit to take part in the government of his state. The possession of property in land, a fixed yearly income, birth into a certain rank, a standard of age, some degree of education—these and other tests of merit have been applied in the hope of securing that every active citizen shall be distinguished by a fitting capacity, whether proved by his own attainments or guaranteed by the virtues or the prosperity of his ancestors. But the anxieties and cares of great states in this matter are only the repetition on a grand scale of the perplexities that beset the humble communities who first tried to solve the problem of how a society of freemen could best rule themselves. In the early “communitas” of the village or town out of which the later chartered borough was to grow—a community which possessed common fields or customary rights of common over surrounding meadows, and which had doubtless found some regular system for the management of its own affairs[306]—the obvious course was to count as the responsible men of the township the land-holders who had a share in the common property; and when the community had received the charter which made it into a free borough the same system was naturally continued. Those who owned a house and a certain amount of land, measured according to the custom of the borough, formed the society of burghers,[307] and to the townspeople, as to Swift centuries later, the definition of law was “the will of the majority of those who have the property in land.” Equality of possessions brought with it equality of civil rights, and each community formed a homogeneous body whose members were all subject to the same conditions and shared in the same interests. When the burgher’s life was over, the son who inherited his property appeared before the bailiffs within forty days, to deliver up to them his father’s sword and take the freeman’s oath;[308] and the common life went on undisturbed by the intrusion of any foreign element, vagrant, restless, encroaching.
But such simple conditions of life, only possible in a stationary agricultural society,[309] disappeared when industry and commerce brought their revelation of new standards of prosperity. In the course of a very few generations there was scarcely a trace left of that primitive relation of equality out of which the early equality of rights had sprung. As the country folk migrated in increasing numbers from manor and village to the town[310] old rigid distinctions were swept away, and the simplicity and uniformity of the burgage tenure was completely broken up. In Liverpool, for example, the burgages originally established by John were already in the fourteenth century divided into small fractions one-eighth or even one-forty-eighth part of their original size;[311] and the amount of land held by owners of property in Nottingham in the fifteenth century varied so much that the taxes levied on them were in some cases as high as £3 14s. 7½d., in other cases as low as a farthing.[312] The owners of capital began to thrust out the owners of land; the shopkeeper replaced the agriculturist, the tradesman and the artizan exercised a new power, as the boroughs quickly adapted themselves to the changing conditions of the time and opened one door after another for the bringing in of new members whose wealth or whose skill might benefit the community. The ownership of land still carried with it its ancient rights.[313] But the son of a freeman who himself owned no land might be made a burgher in his father’s lifetime. Aliens might buy the franchise. Craftsmen were admitted into the circle of the citizens.[314] Recruits from every class and from every nation pressed into the ranks of burgesses. There were foreigners from Bordeaux or from Flanders or from Lisbon,[315] and Irishmen in abundance, in spite of occasional outbursts of hostility in which Irish burghers were deprived of their freedom, “till they bought it again with the blood of their purses, and with weeping eyes, kneeling on their knees, besought the mayor and his brethren of their grace.”[316] No limit was set, whether of race, or occupation, or descent, or wealth, if they “are born in the city and be of good report, and if their presence may be profitable to the city as well as for his wisdom, as also for any other validity or worth known to the citizens.”[317] The new society took in alike traders, agriculturists, bondmen looking for freedom,[318] parish priests,[319] merchants who owned eight or ten ships and employed over a hundred workmen; small masters with but a single journeyman or perhaps two; artizans just released from apprenticeship and enrolled as members of some craft gild; rich folk who held several burgages, and men who rented a tiny shop. Everywhere the town communities were fast outgrowing the old simple traditions of common acquaintance and friendship, and throughout the fifteenth century the seals of the frequent new comers were so unfamiliar to their fellow citizens that deeds of sale had constantly to be brought to the Mayor for the addition of his seal of office to overcome hesitation and distrust.[320]
The hospitality of the corporations differed from place to place. Sometimes a borough threw its gates wide open and welcomed any new comer who would but choose one of the half-dozen avenues to citizenship that lay before him,—who would buy land, or marry a free woman, or pay the fixed price for his freedom, or serve his apprenticeship to a trade, or accept the franchise as a gift from the community; while a neighbouring town, looking on aliens with jealousy and hesitation, would close its doors and cling to some narrower system of enfranchisement which kept its ranks pure from foreign blood, and its burghers free from anxieties of competition.[321] Each community in fact had full liberty to order its own political experiment. In the matter of choosing their fellow burgesses, of framing their own society and fixing the limits of its growth, the citizens knew no law and recognized no authority beyond their own,[322] and enjoyed herein a measure of independence unknown in continental countries where a powerful feudal system still barred every road to freedom.
When a new comer who desired to be “franchised for a free man, ... and fellow in your rolls”[323] was accepted by the commonalty he was summoned before them in a public court, “having with them the common charter of the city; and then the steward shall take the book, and bid them lay their right hands thereon, commanding all those that are standing by, in the behalf of our Lord the King, to keep silence,” and the oath of obedience to the King and fidelity to the customs of the town was administered,[324]—perhaps, as at Winchester, the “oath to swear men to be free, kneeling on their knees.”[325] The candidate had further to find two or more good men as pledges that he would “observe all the laws;”[326] and to pay the customary fees, which varied with the caution or the poverty of the borough from three shillings to five pounds; while a poor corporation like Wells was content to receive its payments in wine or gloves or wax when money was scarce.[327]
The new burgess was then required to give security to the town for payment of taxes or any other municipal claims by proving that he had either a good yearly revenue or a tenement, or by at once building himself a house.[328] A wooden framework was put together either on some building ground or perhaps in a vacant space in the open street,[329] and was then carried to the new site. The interstices were quickly filled up with plaster, and the little tenement was complete. A couple of rough benches and one or two pots and a few tools served as furniture, and the new burgess entered into possession and began life as a citizen householder. Henceforth he was bound to live within the walls of the borough, for his franchise was forfeited if he forsook the town for a year and a day.[330] Over the house, which was the town’s security for rent and taxes, the municipality kept a watchful eye: if it became ruinous and dangerous to the passer-by it was thrown down at the owner’s cost, or if needful at the cost of the commonalty; if through neglect or poverty it fell into decay the next heir and the commonalty together could compel him to put it in order or give it up.[331] Once or twice a year the burgher had to appear at the Portmote or Borough Court to prove his presence in the town, and to take his necessary part in the duties of the court.[332] An unwavering loyalty and public spirit was demanded of him, and the loss of “frelidge,” as they said in Carlisle, avenged any breach of public duty, such as a refusal to help the Mayor in keeping the peace, clamour and undue disturbance at the election of town officers, revealing the counsels of the Common Assembly, resistance in word or deed to the municipal officers, contempt of the Mayor’s authority, or any offence for which the punishment of the pillory or the tumbrill was adjudged.[333] For such things the burgher was “blotted out of the book of the bailiff”; and the forfeiture of his freedom was declared by open proclamation of the common crier, or by sound of the town bell, or by having his name written up on a Disfranchised Table in the Guild Hall,[334] so that all the town should know his shame. In Preston those who betrayed the municipal confidence or exposed the poverty of the town were not only deprived of the franchise, but their toll was taken every day as of forsworn and unworthy persons who could not be trusted beyond the passing hour.[335]