Life in a mediæval city

by Edwin Benson

The Mayor was the real governor of the city. He was a powerful official and literally ruler of the city. In practice he was most often a wealthy and important merchant; and, like the Aldermen, belonged to the group of men who governed the trade guilds as well as the municipality. Various symbols were attached to his office. The chief objects among the corporation regalia at the present time are the sword, mace, and cap of maintenance.

There were three city councils, "the twelve," "the twenty-four," and "the forty-eight," as they were called. There were the Aldermen and Councillors—the "lords" and "commons" of the municipal parliament. The ordinary council-chamber was at Ouse Bridge: the other was the Common Hall, the present Guildhall. Sometimes the whole community of citizens met, when for the moment the government of the city became essentially and practically democratic. This was only done on important occasions to decide broad questions of policy, or when numbers were needed to enforce a decision. The commons really possessed no administrative power. The form of civic government was supposed to be representative, but as a matter of fact it was not only not founded on popular election (a procedure enforced in 1835 by the Municipal Reform Act), but was kept exclusively in the hands of the wealthy merchant and trading class, the middle class. Men of this class became Aldermen. When a vacancy occurred in the upper house of civic government, they chose a man like themselves. The Mayor was elected by the Aldermen, who naturally chose one of themselves. In fact the government of the city was in the hold of a "close self-elected Corporation."

The civic spirit developed a good deal during the fifteenth century, no doubt in connection with the simultaneous increase in the wealth and social pretension of the rising merchant middle class. It appeared in the greater respect bestowed on the office of Mayor and the pomp and reverence attached to his position. The "right worshipful" the Mayor and the Aldermen wore rich state robes edged with fur. In addition, contemporary city records reflect the new spirit in such expressions as "the worshupful cite," "the said full honourabill cite," "this full nobill city." This spirit, however, developed more fully in the sixteenth century.

The Mayor held his court in the Common Hall, where he heard pleas about apprentices and mysteries (i.e. the rules of the crafts); offences against the customs of the city; breaches of the King's peace. It was his duty to administer the statute merchant. The Recorder was the official civic lawyer.

The governors of the city were intimately connected with the control of trade, and the rule of the pageants. These phases of city life overlapped considerably and were interdependent. Weaving was the principal trade. The Mayor and Aldermen were the masters of the mysteries of the weavers. Power to enforce the ordinances of the other mysteries was granted by the Mayor and Corporation.

There were times when the King took the government into his own hands. This was done during the rebellion of the Percies, a northern family skilled and experienced in rebelling. Henry IV. withdrew the right of government from the city in 1405, but he restored it in 1406 after the execution of Archbishop Scrope, who had been so popular with the people of York.

Of mediæval punishments the most obvious were the stocks, a contemporary picture of which is to be seen in one of the stained-glass windows of All Saints', North Street. Examples of stocks survive in the churchyards of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, and St. Lawrence's. They were near the entrance to the churchyard and commanded full public attention. The petty offender, condemned to spend so many hours in the public gaze and subject to whatever treatment the public chose to inflict on him, sat on the ground or on a low seat, while his feet were secured at the ankles by two vertical boards. The upper was raised for the insertion of the ankles in the specially cut-out half-round holes in each board, so that when the boards were touching and in the same vertical plane, the ankles were completely surrounded by wood.

To its political importance York owed the ghastly exhibition of heads and odd quarters of traitors and others who had gained punishment of national importance, which usually consisted of "hanging, drawing and quartering," when the quarters and the head were sent to London and the principal towns of the kingdom to be exhibited on gateways, towers, and bridges. This practice served to provide the public with convincing proof that a traitor was actually dead, and was very necessary in an age when Rumour, "stuffing the ears of men with false reports" held sway over "the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant wavering multitude." Micklegate Bar was so used. In Shakespeare's Henry VI. Queen Margaret makes, with reference to the Duke of York, this bitter play of words:—

"Off with his head and set it on York gates;
So York may overlook the town of York."

One very interesting practice in connection with the mediæval system of law and policing was the use of the right of sanctuary. The monasteries, the Minster, and all churches had this right of giving a sacrosanct safety to criminals and others flying from their pursuers, whether officers of the law or the general mob, whose right, be it noted, it was to join in the chase after offenders (the "hue and cry") and help to arrest them. Provided the pursued reached the prescribed area, which, in some cases, as at the nationally famous sanctuary of St. John of Beverley, prevailed for some distance from the church itself, he was safe from his pursuers. Hexham Abbey and Beverley Minster still exhibit their sanctuary chairs or frith-stools. In the north door of Durham Cathedral there is an ancient, massive knocker, the rapper, of the form of a ring, being held in the mouth of a grotesque head. The frith-stool, to which the seeker went at once, stood near the high altar at which he made his declarations on oath. His case was carefully investigated and often sanctuary-seekers were allowed to exile themselves from the kingdom. The coroner was the public officer of inquiry. The Church took every care that the crime of breaking the sanctuary so granted was regarded not at all lightly. The right of sanctuary, after being changed to apply to certain towns only—among them York—continued till it was ended by law in the reign of James I.