Nottingham was unfretted too by trouble from without. Set on the outskirts of Sherwood Forest, but exempted since the time of John from the Forest laws and the jurisdiction of the Forest officers,[641] its very position tended to free it from the neighbourhood of any powerful lord who could threaten its citizens, diminish its rights, or tax its people with petty wars or law-suits, as Liverpool and Bristol and Lynn were taxed and harassed. In its only trouble—an occasional dispute as to the control of the waters of the Trent—it was invariably supported by the Crown. Sometimes weirs and fishing nets obstructed the river; sometimes when the water was low boats coming from Hull had to be dragged along from the banks, and the river-side owners demanded fines for use of the towing path, so that the price of goods in Nottingham was increased to “a great dearness.” Then the Nottingham men would hasten to move the king by “a clamorous relation”; and forthwith royal commissioners were sent down to inquire into the obstructions; royal proclamations were issued to forbid the exacting of river-side tolls; and royal orders forbade the neighbouring lord of Colwick to divert the waters of the Trent to his own uses to the injury of Nottingham.[642]
Nor were its burghers troubled by claims of any ecclesiastical power within the town walls, such as those which vexed Norwich and Exeter and Canterbury. Ecclesiastical interests indeed play no great part in Nottingham. Two churches already existed under Cnut, and before the fourteenth century one more was added.[643] But no abbey had been founded within its liberties, and the yearly journey of the mayor and his brethren to carry Whitsuntide offerings to the mother church at Southwell was but a picturesque ceremonial that recalled the time when Paulinus first founded there a centre of mission work among the pagans.[644]
As for Court factions and dynastic intrigues, distant traders with much work of their own on hands were generally prompted by a prudent self-interest to side with the dominant power in the State. The burghers easily transferred their sympathies from the Lady Anne of Bohemia to Henry the Fourth;[645] they stood by Henry the Sixth so long as the triumph of the rebels was doubtful, but no sooner were the fortunes of Edward the Fourth in the ascendant than by gifts out of their treasure and little detachments of their militia they testified to a new loyalty, and thus obtained the renewal of their charter and a reduction of their ferm for twenty years, “to have a reward to the town of Nottingham” “for the great cost and burdens, and loss of their goods that they have sustained by reason of those services.”[646] In 1464 they ordered off a little troop in red jackets with white letters sewn on them[647] to join the king at York, and once more at Edward’s restoration in 1471,[648] the town spent about £60 for “loans for soldiers” and liveries, besides many other costs. In October of 1482, the jury “presented” an offender charged with wearing the livery of the intriguing Richard of Gloucester;[649] but before the battle of Bosworth the town hospitably entertained Richard himself, and in its castle he received the Great Seal;[650] while no sooner was the day lost for York than a deputation was sent in hot haste to make peace with Henry the Seventh and obtain a safeguard and proclamation.[651] Stall-holders and burghers, in fact, intent on their own business, only asked that Court quarrels might be settled with the least possible trouble to themselves; and throughout the Wars of the Roses the Nottingham men did just what the men of every other town in England did—reluctantly sent their soldiers when they were ordered out to the aid of the reigning king, and whatever might be the side on which they fought, as soon as victory was declared hurried off their messengers with gifts and protestations of loyalty to the conqueror. Meanwhile they went steadily on with the main business of trade and watched the rents of their booths and the profits of their shops going up and their wealth constantly accumulating.[652]
Like all boroughs that held under the Crown, Nottingham won very early the rights of a free borough. Henry the Second from 1155 to 1165 granted its burgesses freedom from toll, a market, the monopoly of working dyed cloth within the borough, and free passage along the Trent; and further gave them power to tax inhabitants of all fees whatever for common expenses.[653] Originally governed by a reeve who collected its yearly ferm and managed its affairs on behalf of the king, Nottingham obtained by charter from John in 1189 a Merchant Guild, and leave to elect a reeve of the borough who should answer for the ferm to the Exchequer.[654] In 1230 the burgesses were allowed to appoint coroners, and (the ferm being fixed at £52) to levy a tax for weighing at the common scale all goods brought to the town.[655] A charter of 1255 granted them the freedom from arrest for debt which was being so commonly given at this time; the return of writs; and an order that no sheriff or bailiff should interfere in the exercise of justice in Nottingham unless “the burgesses” had not done their duty. And ten years later they were freed from the aid of 100s. formerly paid to the sheriff for his good will and that he should not enter their liberties.[656]
In the reverses of the Welsh war, when Edward the First summoned two great provincial councils of knights and burgesses to bestow a grant for completing the conquest of Wales, Nottingham used his necessities to secure its own profit; for three years the town had been in disgrace, with all its franchises forfeited, but in 1284 it not only regained them, but won permission to elect a mayor “by unanimous consent and will” of “both boroughs of the same town”—that is the French and the English boroughs which from the time of the Conquest had been established side by side, each governed by its own bailiff[657] according to the different laws and customs of the two peoples. During the Scotch war in 1314 their position as masters of the northern road possibly disposed Edward the Second to grant readily any favours they might demand; and immediately after Bannockburn they received power to hold all pleas before the mayor, and alien sheriffs or bailiffs were forbidden to enter the borough.[658] Yet later one of the first acts of Henry of Lancaster, after the deposition of Richard in 1399, was to make interest with the keepers of the stronghold of middle England. He gave lavishly all he had to give: the assize of tenure formerly held before the judges; all fines, forfeitures, and ransoms which had not yet been handed over; the election of four justices of the peace; the placing of the mayor upon all commissions of array of men-at-arms, so that neither sheriff of the county, nor officer of the court could henceforth tax the town for military aid without his assistance and consent.[659] In 1448 Henry the Sixth completed the emancipation of Nottingham by granting it a charter of incorporation under the title of “the mayor and burgesses of the town of Nottingham.” By this charter the town, with the exception of the king’s castle and gaol, was entirely separated from the county and made into a shire; its bailiffs became sheriffs, and were henceforth not to go out of the town to take their oath, but were to be sworn before the mayor; and the mayor himself was made the king’s escheator.[660] If the king in these difficult times, with Normandy almost lost, and England on the eve of rebellion, offered bribes for loyalty, he required a due return; and in 1450 the Nottingham men had to pay their part of the bargain, by hiring men to go to the help of the sovereign at Blackheath against Jack Cade, which they accomplished by leasing some of their common lands for a sum of £20 to be paid in advance.[661]
Unfortunately, owing to the loss of the Old Red Book of Nottingham and other records, it is only by piecing together scattered hints and fragments that we can discern anything of the early constitution of the borough. In the first charters or official dealings with the court, we hear of “the Burgesses” only, with no mention of reeve or bailiff; until after the creation of the mayor in 1284, when the formal style is changed to “the Mayor and Burgesses.” Whatever was the actual significance of the term “burgesses” we know that it already had a technical meaning, for a charter granted by Edward the First to “the Burgesses and Community of our town” in the days before the mayor had replaced the reeve,[662] shows that even then the two words were used in a special sense; and this original distinction remains throughout the records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In general, the business of the town was done in a somewhat elaborate manner by “the mayor, burgesses, and community,” or “the mayor and his co-burgesses and the community”; but it seems that there were some affairs which were given over to the “mayor and burgesses”—an occasional treaty with another town,[663] or the letting of tenements or property acquired by the corporation and set apart for special public purposes such as the ferm, or of lands assigned for the expenses of the bridge; while on the other hand, where the common property of the people in house or land was in question transactions were carried out in the name of the “mayor and community.”[664] There are perhaps no more than two cases before the middle of the sixteenth century in which common lands were leased by the “mayor and burgesses,” and these happened as late as 1511 and 1514, and were probably acts of a specially corrupt administration.
By the Nottingham folk themselves, therefore, the word “burgesses” was from the thirteenth century onwards applied to a body which could be distinguished from the commonalty; and in the use of the words we seem again to catch the double meaning, first of the corporate body of citizens as opposed to the ancient “communitas”; and then of the governing council or assembly as opposed to the whole congregation of the freemen. When this secondary use of the words grew up in Nottingham we cannot say, as we know absolutely nothing of the early government of the town. It is only through one or two brief notices which have been saved from the general destruction of old records that we detect the presence in the council chamber of a recognized group of officials or councillors; and these notices belong to a late time. Meetings were held in the town hall in 1435 and 1443, in which a council of justices of the peace and “trustworthy men” did business with the consent of the commons;[665] and in 1443 we hear of a fine to be paid by “burgesses” who neglected to come to the hall when summoned, the fine being (as we learn from other towns) the customary sum levied from absent members of a regularly appointed council.[666] And from another entry copied from the records of three years later we know certainly that a council of twelve did exist in 1446. “Ordered that twelve and the mayor chosen to order, end, and dispose of as they think meet of all things belonging to the commonalty of the town without interruption or contradiction of any person within the town. All orders are with the consent of the commonalty.”[667]
Whether the order of 1446 was the bringing in of a new method of administration, or an extension of the powers of an established council, or merely a declaration of the law that it should do its business “without interruption or contradiction” of any of the townsfolk, we cannot certainly tell, for the old Red Book is lost and the phrase is only preserved for us in a note made by a town clerk a hundred and fifty years later, whose comment on it, “And there shall you see the erection and election of the council,” is of little value in deciding the matter.[668] In the absence of any direct evidence, the traces of an earlier council certainly suggest the idea that in the twelve we may have the successors of a body resembling the twelve portmen elected in royal boroughs for the general administration of the town, and that from 1399 the four justices of the peace formed part of this council. The commonalty had the right of entering the town hall during the meetings of the council, and of confirming the ordinances of the governing body by their “assent and consent”; and these powers might of course be more or less left in suspense or fully exercized as opportunity required. No doubt in a big and busy borough any frequent gathering of the townspeople was impossible, and it is very probable that (as at Sandwich), when the mayor did business in the borough court, any burghers who happened to be present[669] were taken to represent the general assembly of the commons, and bye-laws or necessary orders passed by them were understood to have received “the consent of the community.” In the majority of instances the numbers who attended were probably few, but their presence is from time to time distinctly marked, as in the meeting of 1435; in the assembly of a hundred and thirty burgesses in 1463 to make laws; and in the calling of the commons together in their common hall in 1480.[670]
If the administration followed this well understood routine, it is probable that the conduct of public business underwent no great change when two new charters, in 1446 and 1448, settled the final order of government in Nottingham, and made it into a county. No mention was made in these charters of the existing council (unless indeed the term “burgesses” was commonly understood to mean the council),[671] but by the second in 1448 it was enacted that “the burgesses” should elect from time to time from amongst themselves seven aldermen (to answer to the seven wards of the town), one of whom was always to be mayor, while all the seven were to be justices of the peace. The aldermen were to hold office for life, and in their scarlet livery with suitable furs and linings, after the fashion of the aldermen of London,[672] were manifestly the leading members of the council; and the six burgesses who completed that body were within a few years known as “common councillors,” to distinguish them from the heads of the wards.[673] The constitution of the Nottingham council seems in fact to have been exactly the same as that of Canterbury or of Southampton; and here no doubt, as in other places, the official governing body did at some time take to itself in a special sense the title of “the Burgesses,” leaving that of “the Community” to the freemen at large.
The new charter, whether it introduced any change in older methods or no, at least seems to have awakened no resistance. A Council of Twelve which ruled before 1448 ruled in like manner afterwards, though now seven justices of the peace sat in it instead of four. As for what may seem to us the crucial fact that henceforward aldermen were elected for life, and elected by their own fellows and not by the people, it is possible that even this change, if indeed it was a change at all, seemed less revolutionary to the men of Nottingham in those days than it does now, for there is no trace of any conflict concerning the matter either at the time or for half a century afterwards. Indeed the same method of election was used for the councillors themselves, who also were appointed for life.[674] It appears that while the aldermen were always selected from among the six councillors, the councillors were chosen from “the clothing”—a very important body composed of sheriffs and chamberlains or treasurers who had passed out of office, but still wore their scarlet robes on great occasions.[675]