Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Alice Stopford Green

CHAPTER XII

CONFEDERATION

The fact that the English burghers took so impatiently the one hindrance that lay in their path to independence and supremacy is itself a proof of the habit of prosperity and success which they were accustomed to accept as part of their natural heritage in the pleasant place where their lot had fallen. How little they had at any time to reckon with opposition is obvious from the striking fact that they never found themselves compelled to form any kind of union or alliance for common purposes. Here the story of English boroughs is in vivid contrast to that of the continental towns. The powerful confederations formed in European countries by towns battling against tremendous odds to protect their commerce, liberty, and law, had no parallel among the comparatively peaceful and regular conditions of English life, where self-government was so easily attained, and where trade was so generally secure, that the necessity never arose for the creation of any such associations. Towns on the royal demesne stood in no need of any combined effort to defend their freedom; and the towns on ecclesiastical lands or feudal estates that had grievances to complain of were few, scattered, and subject to so many different lords that combination among them would have been wholly impossible. Organized common action was therefore practically unknown among the English boroughs; for the loose tie of affiliation which bound together communities of which one had adopted the charter and copied the customs of another was a bond so slight as to be scarcely recognized,[722] and implied no mutual obligations whatever. In moments of excited strife or rapid constitutional growth a borough might undoubtedly become fired by the example of a near neighbour, or catch the contagion which spread from some community more advanced in its experiments and daring in its pretensions; but these movements of sympathy, of voluntary affiliation, of emulation, never resulted in any kind of federation or alliance. For the developement of its liberties each borough was ultimately left to depend only on its own resources; while such societies as were constituted in later days in England for trading purposes took the form of federations of men not of towns.[723]

There was but one exception to this general rule, and in the Confederation of the Cinque Ports we have the single illustration in England of an association of towns created and maintained for common interests. From Seaford in Sussex to Brightlingsea in Essex ports and villages were bound together into one society. To the original group of the Five Ports—Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe, whose alliance probably reaches back to the time when the English learned war and commerce from Danish masters—the two Ancient Towns, Winchelsea and Rye, had been added immediately after the Norman Conquest; and what with the desire of these seven to divide their burdens of taxation and war charges with the neighbouring villages, and the readiness of the villages on their side to seek admission to the Port privileges,[724] an association had in course of time been evolved consisting of seven head Ports with eight corporate and twenty-four non-corporate members,[725] all gathered under the rule of the Lord Warden. To the last they bore traces of foreign influences in the name of Jurats by which they called their “portmen,” and of Barons which they gave to their “freemen.” But amid the curious vicissitudes of their history, and the odd incidents of their ownership in times when it seemed natural and simple to grant away the very frontier defences of England to Norman counts and Breton dukes and abbots of Fécamp and monks of Canterbury,[726] and in later days after English kings had realised the advantages of themselves owning the main gates by which their country opened on the European world,[727] these communities remained firmly united under their federal government.[728] The King’s writ did not run in the Ports unless it bore the seal of the Lord Warden. Exempt by charter from serving on juries, assizes, or recognizances outside their own territory,[729] the freemen could be impleaded only in their own courts.[730] No prisoner from the Ports could be summoned by the Judges to Westminster, and in the case of an express order from the King “some demur should be made to the first mandate till it be known with certainty it is his pleasure,”[731] while on the other hand any stranger who committed a crime within their liberties might be claimed by the mayor and jurats from any lordship in the realm, even from the King himself.[732] They had even, after a fight which lasted for generations, successfully resisted all attempts to bring their local jurisdiction within the general judicial system of the kingdom, and the Justices Itinerant were shut out from crossing their boundaries or sitting at their Court of Shepway.[733] Ancient privileges were jealously guarded. “New Acts of Parliament,” they said, “ought not to alter the free customs.”[734] No deodand was given to the Crown “because it never was the custom here.”[735] If an ecclesiastical officer came from Canterbury to make an inventory of the goods of a Sandwich man who had died without a will, he was not allowed to act because it was contrary to the ancient customs and liberties of the town.[736] Their corporate dignity was officially recognized on great occasions of State, such as the coronation of a King or the consecration of an Archbishop, when the envoys of the Cinque Ports were treated with special honour and sat at the right hand table in the hall; and each of the Ports in turn sent representatives to carry the canopy over the newly-crowned King, and after the ceremony to bear it back with its silk hangings, its spears, and its silver bells, as the town’s spoils.[737]

As to the idea or principle which held this society of towns together and the purpose which it was meant to serve, the definition given by a minister of the Crown would probably have been very different from that given by a baron of the Ports. To a statesman the confederation of the Cinque Ports was organized in the interests of the whole country, and maintained as the bulwark of national safety; and the policy of West Saxon rulers, of Danish conquerors, of Norman kings, of Angevin statesmen, had all alike aimed at the increasing of its public utility. Holding their posts in the first line of defence against invasion, the Cinque Port towns were bound to keep a sufficient number of men within their walls for defence against the enemy, and watch that inhabitants were not driven away by the imposition of undue local taxes; they had to bear heavy costs for ordnance, ammunition, fortifications; to set a nightly watch in every borough and at every dangerous creek or harbour; to have armed forces ready to meet the first brunt of attack, while their citizens might expect in time of war to see their houses sacked and burned again and again. They had to provide every year fifty-seven ships and 1,197 men with provisions for the defence of the kingdom,[738] and if these were not enough in number or in size greater ones and more were required of them. If they hesitated to comply with such demands, or if they were shown not to have held firm against the invader, they were roughly reminded of the bargain on the terms of which alone all their privileges were held, and saw their charters and franchises seized into the King’s hand.[739]

This view of the organization of the Cinque Ports for the public service was visibly represented in the rule of the King’s officer, the Lord Warden of the Ports and Constable of Dover Castle. His authority the men of the Cinque Ports were never for a moment allowed to forget; and the Lieutenant of Dover or his messengers, continually riding round the Ports with message or proclamation or to “make inquisition,”[740] were everywhere helped on their way by dinners, breakfasts, pipes of wine, or a play at the public expense. From Dover came proclamations “warning us of the Danes”; ordering “that no man should quarrel with other for none old sores”; commanding “to arrest the men who came from beyond sea without leave and without billets”; or to seize ships for crossing over to Flanders; calling out vessels “to watch the sea”; or to serve the King in siege or battle during the French war; summoning men “to keep the Castle of Dover”; or decreeing the amount of benevolences to be paid to the King.[741] The subjection of the whole confederation to his rule was publicly recognized every year in the Court of Shepway, when at his summons there came from every port the mayor and a little group of jurats carrying with them the required gifts and dues, wine and swans and fish and spices to furnish breakfast for officials and suitors at the court; or costly offerings to soften the hearts of wardens and judges, and induce them on their first entering into office to look favourably on their subjects. Before them as they sat on either side of the Warden on the open plain near Lympne[742] proclamation was made as to the taxes to be raised by the confederation, the special military services required of the freemen, or the new decrees issued by the Government; and special offences against the Crown were judged. A whole community might be charged with a breach of the King’s peace,[743] or an aggrieved corporation made application that officers of the Ports should be sent to help in the arrest and punishment of some stranger who had committed a crime in their town; and prisoners from the various towns accused of coining false money, treason, or counterfeiting the King’s seal,[744] were tried, and if found guilty were forthwith tied on a sledge, drawn round the circuit of Shepway, and hanged on the spot.[745]

Nor did the authority of the Warden end at Shepway. As Constable of the Castle he had his court-martial in Dover.[746] As Admiral he could order a “quest of the Admiralty” to be held on the sea-shore, or perhaps at some one of the Ports which had offended against the laws of the confederation—a calamity which the town at once sought to avert by negociations and bribes “that he should not hold the court.” As Chancellor he issued precepts and summonses as to the services to be performed by the Ports in return for their privileges, and exercised in his court of chancery the complicated jurisdiction that gradually arose out of these records. There were moments when the King was stirred to a recollection of his sovereignty—moments when the towns had pushed independence too far, or when the treasure in the royal coffers had fallen low; then from Westminster a writ of enquiry would come as to the privileges of the Ports, delegates were summoned from the various towns to appear before the Warden, and might find themselves kept many days and nights at Dover[747] while “inquisition was made for the King.” Sometimes they were ordered to assemble on the sea-shore. Sometimes the Warden came down the steep path of the castle hill to the tiny church of S. James, set in the first little reach of level ground below the walls of the fortification, and there the jurats came up to meet him from their lodgings in the town below, and after days of discussion probably returned home with heavy news of fines to be levied for buying a new charter, or for getting the confirmation of some doubtful privilege.

In the authority of the Warden we see the view held at Westminster about the uses of the Cinque Ports and the main object of their existence. To the people on the other hand the association had another and wholly different character. So completely was all the business of the Warden’s court at Shepway looked on by the portsmen as the King’s affair, and so slight was their sense of participation in it, that they presently gave up attending it altogether, leaving the Warden at last to preside in solitary state. In course of time even the ancient site was abandoned, and instead of the annual assembly at Shepway the president only summoned an occasional court of appeal to be held at Dover,[748] and there, surrounded by a group of lawyers to advise him, sat on the chalk cliff fronting the castle to hear certain cases immediately touching the King’s interest.[749] Meanwhile the barons of the Ports had their own tradition of independence and self-government; and the popular belief as to the object and meaning of the confederation was embodied in another court which sat on the Broad Hill, near Romney—a court where the Lord Warden had no seat.[750] It was there that the whole interest of the people centred, as turning their backs on the King’s courts and leaving him to conduct through the Lord Warden the matters which were his peculiar business, they occupied themselves with the management of their own special affairs. For to the fisherman of the coast the confederation of the villages was in its origin and working simply a great trading company of the Ports for the protection of their staple business, the herring fishery, and for the preservation of their ancient customs of harbourage and sale on the strand at the mouth of the Yare—a matter which became of absorbing importance when their monopoly was threatened by the fishermen of Yarmouth, so that from the time of John onwards they could only preserve their interests by ceaseless vigilance and by costly appeals to King and Parliament, and Council.[751] In the eyes of the barons therefore the great assembly of the confederation was that which yearly met to discuss the business of the Yarmouth fair. And this was in the strictest sense a court of the people themselves, summoned only by common consent,[752] presided over by the chief magistrate of each Port in turn, and in which every town was represented by its mayor or bailiff, three elected jurats, and three commons. The sheltered harbour of Romney formed a sort of natural centre of the Ports, and the delegates met for business on the Broad Hill or Bromhille of Dymchurch close by, whence they possibly took the name of Brodhull, a name which in later days when the first site was forsaken and forgotten and the delegates met in Romney itself, became changed into “Brothyrhill” or Brotherhood.[753]

On the first day of meeting the business, as befitted an association for trading purposes which dated back to the time when the herring fishery was the staple trade of the Ports, was invariably the Yarmouth fair, and the court heard the report of the bailiffs of the last fair who stood bare-headed before them, and elected their successors who were to govern the coming fair.[754] But other interests had grown up round the assembly hill. The seafaring population, masters and mariners of trading barges, saw in the union of Ports the power which regulated the relations of seamen on either side of the Channel. To the taxpayers it was a voluntary association for the equitable adjustment of their burdens. And all the inhabitants alike recognized its importance for maintaining against lords of other franchises the privileges which had been granted them in return for their services.[755]