[315] As, for example, John de Ypres at Romney (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 542. Ibid. iv. i. 427). Foreigners no longer lived separately, as in towns of the Conqueror’s time, but tended to become completely united with the English in customs and law. See Nott. Rec. i. 109; Norwich documents, printed 1884, in the case of Stanley v. Mayor, p. 1.
[316] Ricart, The Mayor of Bristol’s Kalendar, Camden Society, 41. In 1439 two severe ordinances were passed by the Bristol Council that no Irishman born might be admitted to the Council by the Mayor under penalty of £20 each from the Mayor and from the Irishman. In Canterbury also the Irish were busy and unpopular traders (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 173). When Irishmen were ordered out of England in 1422, burgesses and inhabitants of boroughs of good reputation were excepted. (Statutes 1st Henry VI. cap. 3.)
[317] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 468. There was constant communication between various towns about the character of new settlers who offered themselves, and the testimonials preserved to us show how careful the towns were in such matters. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 488. Piers Ploughman, edited by Skeat, Part iii. passus iv. 108-116.) No one of illegitimate birth might be a burgess. Nott. Rec. ii. 66.
[318] A bondman born could in many if not in most towns win the freedom of the city, as in Norwich where serfs were admitted to the franchise; but it is clear that here certainly mere residence without admission to citizenship was no protection against the claims of a feudal lord. (Norf. Arch. vol. xii.; Hudson’s Notes on Norwich, Sec. xi.) It is most probable that the common phrases of “dwelling in the town a year and a day, and holding land in it and being in lot and scot,” or of being “in the Merchant Guild,” or of “remaining in the town without challenge,” were in fact equivalent to having been received as burghers; and in such cases emancipation was won not by a year’s residence but by a year’s citizenship. In Norwich a serf had to produce his lord’s license. (Hudson’s Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selden Soc. lxxxv.-vi.) For a similar instance of feudal claims urged by a lord over his serf dwelling in a city, see Owen’s Shrewsbury, i. 133. Compare the references given by Gross, i. 30. There were exceptions, as in London, where men who held land in villeinage of the Bishop of London were not allowed in 1305 to be freemen of the City (Riley’s Mem. 58-9). And after the Peasant Revolt some towns withdrew the privilege (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 109).
[319] A chaplain and four parsons of churches in Norwich were presented before the Leet Court of Norwich for various offences in 1292, in 1374, and in 1390. One of them had occupied himself with a large brewing business, another traded as a wool merchant, and two were charged with not being citizens. There were in all towns plenty of “clerici” who were citizens. (Hudson’s Norwich Leet Jurisdiction, Selden Soc. pp. 45, 63, 65, 76.) For burgages owned by parsons and clerics in Southampton, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 65, 70, 71, 75, 81. In Romney, where “the freedom” seems to have meant more than the right to trade, it was given to the vicar and others. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540, 542, 546-7.) Monks and heads of religious houses were, according to Dr. Gross, excluded from citizenship (i. 66) though given rights of trade; but from the Charter Rolls, John, 1215, it appears that in Bridgewater the brethren of the Hospital of S. John were to be capable of taking up burgages in the town and to have the same liberties within and without the town as burgesses. This instance, has been kindly given to me by Miss Greenwood from her study of the muniments of the town; she adds that in the documents at Bridgewater there are many instances of houses and market-stalls being held by clergy. In all the bills of sale stalls in High Street are named burgages, and a lawsuit shows that a wool-stall there was sold to the abbot of Michelney. For Ipswich, Gross, ii. 123; and Andover, ibid. 321. Local customs doubtless differed. The Guild Merchant at Lynn allowed no “spiritual person” to work on their quay—that is, to trade there (ibid. ii. 166)—a circumstance which reflects the greater credit on the hermit who about 1349 lived in the Bishop’s marsh by Lynn and set up at his own great cost a certain remarkable cross of the height of 110 feet, of great service for all shipping coming that way (Blomefield viii. 514). When the burgesses of Totnes admitted the abbot and convent of Buckfastleigh into the Merchants’ Guild, so as to make all their purchases like the burgesses, all sales that they might attempt to make “by way of trading” were excepted. Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 343.
[320] In Bristol; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 327. In Rye, “by the Common Seal of the Barons of the Ville of Rye;” ibid. v. 513, 499. For the old custom of sealing through rush rings see ibid. ix. 234-5.
[321] For the various ways of winning municipal freedom see First Rep. of the Commissioners on Mun. Corporations, 1835, 19, and especially the table given on page 93. Even towns as closely connected as the Cinque Ports differed much in their willingness to admit new burgesses. The freedom of Sandwich might be acquired in six ways—by birth, by marriage with a free woman, by buying a free tenement, by seven years’ apprenticeship, by purchase, by gift of the Corporation. In New Romney freedom could only be acquired by birthright in the male line, and grant of the Corporation; while in Hythe all children born after the father’s admission to freedom were entitled to the freedom, and daughters could convey it upon their marriage (Boys’ Sandwich, 787, 796, 799, 812, 821). The same differences existed in other towns. See Davies’ Southampton, 140; Boase’s Oxford, 48; English Guilds, 390; Freeman’s Exeter, 142; Hereford, Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 471, 468.
[322] Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selden Soc. xxxvii. I have met with but one instance in which the King interfered—when Edward the Second by Royal Letters Patent granted the right of burgesses at Southampton to John de London of Bordeaux, and in 1312 extended them to his wife and children. (Davies, 190.) Henry the Fourth granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury the right to trade in Ipswich; but this right carried with it no political privileges in the town. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 246.) For the granting of franchises by French kings, see Luchaire, Les Communes Françaises, 56-7.
[323] Piers Ploughman, passus iv. III, 114.
[324] Hereford; Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 468.