The number of the boroughs.
We may reasonably wish, however, since mental pictures must be painted, to know at the outset whereabouts the line will be drawn, and whether when we are speaking of the Conqueror’s reign and earlier times we shall have a large or a small number of boroughs on our hands. Will it be a hundred and fifty, or a hundred, or will it be only fifty? At once we will say that some fifty boroughs stand out prominently and will demand our best attention, though a second and far less important class was already being formed.
The aid-paying boroughs of cent. xii.
In the middle of the twelfth century the Exchequer was treating certain places in an exceptional fashion. It was subjecting them to a special tax in the form of an auxilium or donum. This fact we may take as the starting point for our researches. Now if we read the unique Pipe Roll of Henry I.’s reign and the earliest Pipe Rolls of Henry II.’s we observe that an ‘aid’ or a ‘gift’ is from time to time collected from the ‘cities and boroughs,’ and if we put down the names of the towns which are charged with this impost, we obtain a remarkable result[701]. Speaking broadly we may say that the only towns which pay are ‘county towns.’ For a large part of England this is strictly true. We will follow the order of Domesday Book, beginning however with its second zone. If London is in Middlesex[702], it is Middlesex’s one borough. In Hertfordshire is Hertford. In Buckinghamshire is Buckingham, but no aid can be expected from it. In Oxfordshire is Oxford. In Gloucestershire is Gloucester, but Winchcombe also asserts its burghal rank. In Worcestershire is Worcester, while Droitwich appears occasionally with a small gift. Hereford is the one borough of Herefordshire. Turning to the third zone, we pass rapidly through Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire; each has its borough. This will be true of Leicestershire also; but Leicester is by this time so completely in the hands of its earl that the king gets nothing from it. Nor, it would seem, does he get anything from Warwick. Half in Warwickshire, half in Staffordshire lies Tamworth; Stafford also pays. At times Bridgenorth appears beside Shrewsbury. Nothing is received from Chester, for it is the head of a palatinate. Derby, Nottingham and York are the only representatives of their shires. Lincolnshire has Stamford on its border as well as Lincoln in its centre. Norfolk has Thetford as well as Norwich; but Suffolk has only Ipswich and Essex only Colchester.
Aid-paying boroughs in the south.
In the southern zone matters are not so simple. Kent contains Canterbury and Rochester; Surrey contains Guildford and Southwark; Sussex only Chichester. Hampshire has Winchester; Southampton is receiving special treatment. Wallingford represents Berkshire. When we get to Wiltshire and Dorset we are in the classical land of small boroughs. There are various little towns whose fate is in the balance; Marlborough and Calne seem for the moment to be the most prominent. In Somersetshire, whatever may have been true in the past, Ilchester is standing out as the one borough that pays an aid. Exeter has now no second in Devonshire. If there is a borough in Cornwall, it makes no gift to the king.
List of aids.
We may obtain some notion of the relative rank of these towns if we set forth the amounts with which they are charged in 1130 and in 1156, though the materials for this comparison are unfortunately incomplete.
| Pipe Roll 31 Hen.I | Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II | Pipe Roll 31 Hen.I | Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II | ||
| £ | £ | £ | £ | ||
| London | 120 | 120 | Wiltshire boroughs | 17 | |
| Winchester | 80 | Calne | 1 | ||
| Lincoln | 60 | 60 | Dorset boroughs | 15 | |
| York | 40 | 40 | Huntingdon | 8 | 8 |
| Norwich | 30 | 331⁄3 | Ipswich | 7 | 31⁄3 |
| Exeter | 20 | Guildford | 5 | 5 | |
| Canterbury | 20 | 131⁄3 | Southwark | 5 | 5 |
| Colchester | 20 | 122⁄3[703] | Hertford | 5 | |
| Oxford | 20 | 20 | Stamford | 5 | |
| Gloucester | 15 | 15 | Bedford | 5 | 62⁄3 |
| Wallingford | 15 | Shrewsbury | 5 | ||
| Worcester | 15 | Droitwich | 5 | ||
| Cambridge | 12 | 12 | Stafford | 31⁄3 | 31⁄3 |
| Hereford | 10 | Winchcombe | 3 | 5 | |
| Thetford | 10 | Tamworth | 2¾ | 1¼[704] | |
| Northampton | 10 | Ilchester | 21⁄2 | ||
| Rochester | 10 | Chichester[705] | |||
| Nottingham Derby | 15 | 15 |
Value of the list.