[505] Piers Ploughman. Passus ix. 174.
“But while Hunger was their master would none chide,
Ne strive against the Statute, he looked so stern.”
Ibid. Passus ix. 342, 343.
[507] Occasionally we find odd instances of growing independence. In Worcester “at some seasons of wilfulness” the people had shewn their revolutionary temper by choosing for serjeants and constables “persons of worship, to the dishonour of them and of the said city;” and an ordinance was made in 1467 that none of the twenty-four or the forty-eight might be appointed to these offices. (English Guilds, 409.) In like manner the great court of Bridgenorth decreed in 1503 that no burgess should be made serjeant. (Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, 426.) In 1350 a guild was formed in Lincoln of “common and middling folks” who strongly objected to any one joining them “of the rank of mayor or bailiffs,” or claiming dignity for his personal rank, and made a rule that if any such persons insisted on entering their society they should not meddle with its business and should never be appointed officers. (English Guilds, 178-9.)
[508] Piers Ploughman. Pass. xviii. 88.
[509] The differences of early charters should all be studied. See, for example, the charters of Nottingham and Northampton given in the same year (Stubbs’s Charters, 300-302).
[510] The complexity and apparently inexhaustible confusion of their methods is well illustrated by the lists drawn up in 1833 by the commissioners appointed to inquire into municipal corporations. See appendix to the Rep. on Mun. Corpor. 94, 95; and especially the tables on pp. 102-132. Evidently the burghers have scarcely deserved the reproach of those who consider direct election by the people as the natural rude expedient of unlearned men grouped in political societies and ignorant of the wiser system of nomination which commends itself to trained legislators.
[511] Kitchin’s Winchester, 164.
[512] P. 306.