The Customs of Old England

by F. J. Snell

"In this manner they proceeded at first to the Market Cross, and there at Coggan's Well, the Cryer with his staff in the well made the following proclamation in the usual and ancient form—'Oyez! Oyez!! Oyez!!! I do hereby proclaim and give notice that by order of the Lords of this Hundred, Manor, and Borough of Tiverton, and on behalf of the inhabitants of this town and parish, the Portreeve and inhabitants now here assembled, publicly proclaim this stream of water, for the sole use and benefit of the inhabitants of the town of Tiverton and other his Majesty's liege subjects there being and sojourning, from the Market Cross in Tiverton to Norwood Common." They then proceeded in the same order through the Back Lane, in every part as it ran and through the ancient path of the water bailiffs time out of mind and made the like proclamation at the following places.... The Portreeve and free suitors and others that attended them in their way noted every diversion and nuisance that seemed to affect the Lake, and afterwards returned to Tiverton and dined at the Vine Tavern, where they gave the following charity children and other poor boys that attended them twopence a-piece....

These duties are now performed by the Mayor and Corporation, but the custom was observed in the traditional manner at least as late as 1830. We have ascertained that not only did the Portreeve take the lead on these occasions, but, like the Mayor and other members of the Corporation, he was ex officio guardian of the poor of the town and parish—a privilege which he shared with them alone. We have here, therefore, an instance of dual authority lasting well into the nineteenth century, or nearly six hundred years after London had purged itself of the feudal element in its administration. To appreciate its full significance we have to remember that there existed, side by side with corporate towns, others which were not actually corporate, but were known, nevertheless, as free boroughs or liberties, the reason being that the owners of tenements in them held of the lord by burgage tenure in the same way as the freemen of Liverpool held of the King, and that there were manorial courts, which exempted the burgesses from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Hundred Court, the Sheriff's County Court, and even the higher courts of the Crown.

The executive officers, the Portreeve and the Bailiffs exercised functions probably as old as the borough itself, and therefore, in almost every instance, to be traced to the freer times preceding the Norman Conquest. Stoford, in Somerset, a good type of such a town, retained its constitution until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the reign of Edward I. it included no fewer than seventy-four burgages; and the burgesses set such store by their privileges that they would not permit an inquisition to be taken by the jury of the county save in conjunction with a jury of their own. The borough had a guildhall, the "Zuldhous," for which a rent of 2s. was paid to the lord of the fee by certain Representatives of the "Commonalty." Commenting on this circumstance, the late Mr. John Batten, F.S.A., remarks: "It proves that the burgesses had not acquired the true element of a corporation, by which the Guildhall would have passed by law to the members for the time being; but that it was necessary to convey it to certain persons as feoffees or trustees." Stoford, however, had its official seal, bearing the ungrammatical, but intelligible, legend,

"S. COMMVNE BVRGENTES STOFORD."

This may seem rather an example of urbs in rure than of rus in urbe, for it was on such half-emancipated towns that corporate boroughs like Hereford looked down (see above, p. 177), and precisely because of their subjection to a lord. Stoford, and similar places, were deemed, and were, wholly, or almost wholly, rural, and the real question is how far the term urbs is applicable to them. As used in this connexion, it is intended to denote precisely what the term "borough" did in its widest signification—namely, a self-governing community; and the "free" but non-corporate boroughs were clearly more allied to ordinary manors than to towns and cities priding themselves on their independence.

The terms "portreeve" and "bailiff" are extremely familiar, and the offices they denote are by no means extinct; but, in addition to these functionaries, there has been perpetuated a whole family of minor ministers even more closely associated with the agricultural aspects of town life. Mr. G. L. Gomme, F.S.A., so well known for his labours in various fields of antiquarian interest, has devoted particular attention to this matter, and for what follows we are indebted entirely to his industrious research. He points out that "the old village community was organized and self-acting," and "possessed a body of officers and servants which made it independent of outside help." These officers and servants were, in fairly numerous instances, retained long after the village had outgrown its primitive limits. In quite a variety of places we meet with pound-keepers, pound-drivers, and pinders; and the hayward also has been found in as many as fifteen different towns. In the same list are included the brookwarden of Arundel, the field-grieve of Berwick-on-Tweed, the grass-men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the warreners of Scarborough, the keeper of the greenyard in London, the hedge-lookers of Lancaster and Clitheroe, the molecatcher of Arundel, Leicestershire, and Richmond, the field-driver of Bedford, the herd, the nolts-herds, the town swine-herds of Alnwick, Newcastle, Shrewsbury, and Doncaster, the pasture-masters of Beverley and York, the moss-grieves of Alnwick, the moormen and mossmen of Lancaster, the moor-wardens of Axbridge, the fen-reeves of Beccles and Southwold, and the woodwards of Havering and Nottingham.

It will occur to most people that, if these offices were maintained, the reason must have been something more than the mere force of conservatism, great as that has been in the steady evolution of English life; and such was undoubtedly the case in most of, if not all, the cases cited. In other words, the townsmen, individually, as a body, or in the persons of a limited number of elect, continued to enjoy certain rights, and to hold a financial stake, in the soil surrounding that on which their town was planted. The officers were often paid not in cash, but in kind, either a quantity of grain being allotted to them or a piece of land. The latter form of remuneration, which was the more common, is exemplified at Doncaster, where there is a field called the Pinder's Balk, which the pinder cultivated for his own profit. At Malmesbury, it appears, he occupied the position of honour held in other towns by the Mayor, and his salary is represented by a piece of land called the Alderman's Kitchen.

Let us now turn to the communities themselves. At Nottingham resident burgesses have a right, falling to them in order of seniority, to the "burgess part"—i.e., a piece of land, either field or meadow, for which each pays a small ground rent to the Corporation.[14] These "parts" number 254, and they are of varying value, so that, as Mr. Gomme puts it, they constitute "a sort of lottery." At Manchester there are 280 allotments, each about an acre in extent, in which all the commoners have an interest. To forty-eight landholders is assigned an acre each, and twenty-four assistant (?) burgesses have each of them an additional acre. At Berwick-on-Tweed there are two portions of land, of which one is demised, under the name of "treasurer's farms," by the mayor, bailiff, and burgesses to tenants. The other part includes sundry parcels called meadows ranging from 1¼ to 2½ acres; and every year at a meeting of the burgesses—the "meadowguild," as it is termed—the lands vacated by the death or departure of those last in occupation go to the oldest burgesses or burgesses' widows eligible by residence, the right of choice depending on seniority.

The land belonging to the Corporation of Langharne is similarly allocated. When an occupier dies, the profits accruing from his share are kept by his representatives, and at the ensuing Michaelmas Court the burgess next in age to the deceased is presented by the jury, and obtains the share previously held by him. Mr. Gomme points out that the reverence for age discoverable in so many of these customs is characteristic of the Teutonic races and of primitive communities in general. An interesting feature of this case is that corn is sown in 330 acres for three years in succession and during the next three years they are grassed out.

The heading of the chapter is "Rus in Urbe," and, still following Mr. Gomme's guidance, we have now to trace a transition that occurred in the use of these public lands as the urban element became more and more preponderant. It seems that while there are boroughs with common pasture only, there has been found no instance of a borough having arable and meadow allotments, and no common pasture. The inference is that, as the community grew more addicted to mercantile pursuits, they were less able to devote themselves to the cares of husbandry, and, accordingly, the lands ceased to be cultivated. But they were still of considerable value for grazing purposes. The merchants' cattle and horses might be placed in them—the latter, perhaps, being subsequently entered in the service of trade. Existing arrangements in boroughs which have abandoned agriculture afford clear indications that at one time allotments were carried out and rules enforced with regard to cultivation and the annual crops.