[593] See the office assigned to the aldermen in 1504, Davies, 76. For their dress, ibid. 235.
[594] Davies, 237-9. An ordinance was made in 1409 by the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, and a similar one in 1486 by the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses in common assembly; and an ordinance in common assembly in 1504. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11.)
[595] Davies, 155. It is possible that at this time the chief aldermen were fashioned into a close body elected for life after the pattern of London; at any rate soon after this we find them and their wives in the orthodox scarlet robes with fur and velvet, in all points the same as those of the mayor. 235.
[596] Davies, 63, 71-2, 125.
[597] Gross, ii. 225. Davies (p. 136) says that whenever the guild became settled as the supreme authority, there entered at that period an element of restriction alien from the more ancient government of the towns; and traces to the guild the narrowing of common privileges and subjection of the community to an exclusive system of local administration. It is possible that wherever a guild merchant did lay hold on a town government, as here, at Lynn, or at Coventry, the tendency may always have been to intensify the existing tendencies to the despotic rule of the richer citizens.
[598] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 7, 60, 61. Ordinances in 1368 and 1393, 9, 8; a concord in 1397, 74; lease of customs in 1390, 72; land in 1373, 1379, 69-70. For other instances see 1403, p. 76; 1410, 77; 1413, 79; 1421, 80; 1422, 80-1; 1433, 82; 1433, 44; 1439, 84; 1462, 85; 1466, 86; 1477, 87; 1482, 90; 1491, 90; 1494, 90-1; 1496, 91; 1507, 91.
[599] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 12, 91, 113.
[600] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 91, 107; Davies, 164. In Nottingham, as in Southampton, we have an occasional indication that the burgesses or common councillors, possibly under some fit of impatience at the pretensions of the aldermen, had intermittent tendencies to side with the people. In Southampton there was possibly at this time a certain bond of sympathy, for seven years earlier, in 1452, the burgesses complained that the aldermen had assumed the right of retaining, as justices of the peace, fines which had always gone to them towards the payment of the ferm; and their contention having been maintained in Parliament, royal orders were sent to the aldermen to molest the burgesses no more. Davies, 156.
[601] Davies, 164, 165.
[602] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 104. In 1617 two burgesses tried to oppose the “private nomination,” but were called before the common council and forced to submit. (Davies, 164, 165.)