These facts seem to indicate that citizenship was a less frequent thing among the inhabitants of Norwich at the end of the thirteenth century than in the first half of the fourteenth century—and was at that time possibly confined in practice to those who gained it by birth or service, and that purchase was rare.
For the very different law made by the Bishop of Norwich in 1307 for Lynn see p. 408. He may have desired to secure for Lynn the small traders who found themselves hard pressed by the Norwich decree of 1306.
CHAPTER XV
THE COMMON COUNCIL OF LYNN
It was not in Norwich alone that the people, refusing submission to a governing plutocracy, made the experiment of creating a lower house of commons to represent the burghers at large. The peculiar difficulties that beset popular government in that city were absent in other towns, but in no case was the experiment a simple matter. Everywhere unforeseen dangers were presently disclosed, dangers new and various, and capable of overwhelming the new movement in ultimate ruin and confusion. Even at the moment when Norwich was forming its second chamber, the town of Lynn, but a very few miles away, was developing a common council wholly different in its origin and its constitution, and threatened by occasions of failure and betrayal of which Norwich had no experience.
The case of Lynn is one of singular interest. Nowhere else in England was there a corporation more wealthy, or more formidable from its compact organization and great authority. On the other hand nowhere else perhaps was there a community of “mean people,” burgesses and non-burgesses, so prosperous, active, and united; sustained as they were in every emergency by the effectual protection of their lord the Bishop, who, in his jealousy of the governing class, was forced to become the ally of the subject people, and to make their cause his own. Under these circumstances the conflict between the commons and the plutocrats who ruled over them had some original characteristics, and the problem of church and state in Lynn emerges in a new and subtle form.
The ruling class of the town was from the first the governing body of the Merchant Guild.[804] For here, as in other leading ports, it is evident that the rich traders quickly became dominant in civic affairs, even though their association in a Guild Merchant of itself gave them no right to govern. In Lynn a powerful merchant class must have been formed at a very early time. Through the town lay the one way by which Norfolk could be entered from the west; and its port was the only outlet for the trade of seven counties. Lynn was therefore the centre for the largest cattle market in the east of England, whence the export trade drew supplies of wool and fells and hides;[805] its middlemen and merchants held in their hands the commerce with Gascony, the Rhineland, Zealand, “the parts of North Berne,” with Prussia, and Dacia, and the Hanse towns; and as early as 1271 the German merchants had some sort of local organization there under their alderman Symon, a citizen of Lynn, of whom we hear that he gave a pledge on behalf of some Lübeck merchants to the amount of £200.[806] No interest in the borough could compete with the great commercial company[807] by whom the whole volume of trade that was borne over the waters of the Wash “rowing and flowing,” was ultimately controlled. Under the name of the Holy Trinity it had obtained a charter from John, and by the time of Edward the Second had nearly nine hundred names on its bede-roll. The sons of its old members were allowed to enter the guild on payment of 6s. 8d.; while others, men and women, were willing to give 60s. or 100s. to be counted among its brethren, the men looking to share in the political as well as commercial benefits it offered, while women were perhaps consoled with its spiritual gains; and men and women alike paid the same entrance fee to be enrolled after death in consideration of the eternal advantages of such membership.[808] In 1392 the guild employed thirteen chaplains yearly to say masses in the churches of S. Margaret, S. Nicholas, and S. James, used much wax for lights in churches and chapels, and from the profits of the common staith gave alms and fulfilled works of charity.[809]
The spiritual blessings of the guild, however, pale before the financial and political boons it had to offer. As a great trading company it heaped up wealth and increased power. The aldermen and his brethren made laws to regulate the commerce even of those burgesses who did not belong to their select company, but carried on business by virtue of the charter of free trade granted to the whole borough.[810] The guild owned along with other property the common staith and all its appurtenances, the quay where by its decree “no bad persons, nor any spiritual persons should work,”[811] and the right of passage for a boat beyond the port.[812] The monopoly of various profitable trades was secured to its members, as for instance the sale of mill-stones,[813] paving-stones, and grave-stones which were sold at from 20s. to 30s. apiece. The brethren of the guild were the bankers and capitalists of the town.[814] They lent money out on usury, and not only did the corporation come to borrow from their treasury, but in 1408 more than fifty townsmen were in their debt for sums varying from £1 to £119. The trading activity of the company may be measured by the fact that in 1392 the guild had in ready money £60 13s., and in divers merchandise £200;[815] and in 1408 the loans came to £1,214. In 1422 its wealth was £1,403, of which the debts due to it made up £1,210. Its expenditure was generous and magnificent. Large sums were spent on the new guild hall, beginning in 1422 with £132 4s. The silver plate in its treasury weighed in the first half of the century 440 ounces. A silver wand was borne before its dean; and its members were carried to their graves under a covering of cloth of gold.[816]