[423] Gross, i. 23; ii. 115.
[424] The seals of English towns of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were of finer workmanship than any in Europe. They generally represented a fortress or walled town, a ship, a patron saint, or heraldic arms, but it is interesting that in no case is the figure of the Mayor used to typify the borough save in the London seal, where he stands among the corporation and citizens. Sometimes a bridge is given, as at Barnstaple; in two or three cases the Guild Hall.
[425] A few towns, in the case of some members of the Cinque Ports, depended on another borough.
[426] For the position of tenants on ancient demesne, see Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, ch. iii. Mr. Maitland (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, ii. 99, &c.) gives an account of King’s Ripton, a manor on ancient demesne, whose tenants when transferred to the Abbey of Ramsey were always fighting with their new lords as to the services due from their holdings. “The privileged nature of the tenure had engendered a privileged race, very tenacious of its land and of its customs” (p. 105). The study of the way in which the customs of ancient demesne affected the later constitution of the boroughs lies outside my subject, and is therefore merely indicated.
[427] Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, 89. Compare the claim of Bristol to be “founded and grounded upon franchises, liberties, and free ancient customs, and not upon common law.” (Ricart’s Kalendar, 2.) For its liberties, see p. 24-5.
[428] As a matter of fact the various towns of this kind which applied to Hereford for any information as to its customs on any point had to pay one hundred shillings for the answer vouchsafed to them. (Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 470.)
[429] There was constant watchfulness on both sides as to their rights. In 1400 the bailiffs of Ipswich granted land for the building of a mill for the benefit of the corporation; the King’s officers declared the grant to have been made without the royal licence, and the mill was seized for the King. On the other hand, when the sheriff of the county arrested a felon in the liberties of Ipswich and put him in the King’s jail, the bailiffs required that he should be given up to them. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 231, 246.)
[430] That is on the plea of lack of justice in the borough court. In 1401, when the citizens of Canterbury were summoned by the Crown to appear at Westminster about a breach of the statutes for the regulation of the victualling trades, they pleaded that by their charter they could not be called to answer civil suits out of their own city. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 167.)
[431] In 1299 the amercements ordered by the Leet Court of Norwich amounted to £72 18s. 10d.; the amount accounted for by the collectors was £17 0s. 2d. (Hudson’s Leet Jurisd. of Norwich, Selden Soc. xl.) Where there was profit to be made the King was, however, always on the alert. In Piers Ploughman, Passus v., 169, he complains bitterly of the lawyers; “through your law I believe I lose my escheats!”; and it was often late before he made the mayor escheator. In 1492 two Scotch priests were arrested in Ipswich for treasonable talk, and the King granted their chattels to one of his own serjeants. The bailiffs sent the Town Clerk to Henry to represent that the forfeited goods of felons rightly belonged to the town; to which the King answered that he would not for a thousand pounds infringe in the least degree their charters, but that the community had really no right to these particular chattels, since the priests, being Scotch and not the King’s subjects, could not fairly be accused of treason, and had a perfect right to talk as they chose. On this plea he kept the goods. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 247.)
[432] This was strictly enforced, and the town charter forfeited if the rent fell into arrears. (Madox, 139, 161-2.) The towns therefore made careful provision for the discharge of the debt, sometimes setting apart a mill or some valuable property for its payment (Madox, Firma Burgi, 251-2; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 198-9; Nott. Rec. i. 313), or assigning certain tolls or customs; (Shillingford’s Letters, 92); or collecting it as rent from house to house. (Custumal in Hist. Preston Guild, 75.)