Let me briefly summarize the arguments on which I base my hypothesis:
- (1) There is no parallel to the Cinque Ports confederation in England,[15] but there is in Picardy.
- (2) The very name 'Cinque Ports' betrays a foreign origin,[16] as does the fact that the oath taken by the King's Warden to the Corporation was termed, not an oath, but a 'serement' (as in France).
- (3) The English Merchant-Guild[17] and the English 'Alderman'[18] were unknown to the Cinque Ports constitutions; but they all possessed the typical constitution of the communes of Northern France, namely a Mayor, with a Council of twelve, these twelve councillors having the French name of Jurats.[19]
- (4) In the Cinque Ports, as in the French Communes, we find side by side with this elective administration, a royal officer, with us a Warden, with them the Sénéchal (or Prévôt or Bailli) du Roi.
- (5) The very same penalty of house demolition for refusal to accept office as Mayor or Jurat was exacted in the Cinque Ports (and nowhere else in England) as at Amiens.
I do not contend that the French 'commune' was adopted intact by the Cinque Ports, for, of course, it was not so. In the matter of names alone, they are not styled a 'commune', nor are the members of their community termed 'jurés' (jurati), but 'barons' (barones). The study, however, of the 'commune' in France itself reveals the adaptation to environment it underwent on transplantation. And, the salient feature of the Cinque Ports organization, the fact that they formed a single community, possessing a single assembly, and receiving a joint charter, is paralleled most remarkably in the joint 'communes' of Picardy, containing from four to eight separate 'Vills'.[20]
It would be very satisfactory if the French 'communes' could throw light on the obscure title of 'barons' appertaining to the men of the Cinque Ports, and to them, I maintain (against Professor Burrows), alone among English burgesses. I have elsewhere shown that there is evidence of the use of this term at an earlier period than is supposed, viz., in the early years of Stephen;[21] but on its origin the 'commune' throws no light. One can only quote the parallel afforded by the 'commune' of Niort, and this is taken from a late document (1579). Its officers are said to hold of the King 'à droit de baronie, à foi et homage-lige, au devoir d'un gant ou cinq sols tournois, pour tous devoirs, payables à chaque mutation de seigneur'.[22] This 'devoir' is parallel, it will be seen, to the 'canopy-service' (or 'Honours at Court') of the Cinque Ports, rendered as it was, in practice, 'à chaque mutation de seigneur'. It is noteworthy that a French royal charter of 1196 contains the clause: 'prefati quatuor ville exercitum et equitationem novis debent sicut alie communie nostre';[23] but one can scarcely connect this with the naval service of the Cinque Ports. Yet it was part, undoubtedly, of the communal principle that the 'commune' should hold directly of the King, and not of any mediate lord, and this principle would explain the style 'barones regis' applied to the men of the Cinque Ports.
To sum up, there are features about the Cinque Ports organization which can only be accounted for, it seems to me, by the hypothesis here advanced. If this novel solution be accepted,[24] a question at once arises as to the date at which this communal confederacy was established. From what we know of the origin of the 'commune', we can scarcely believe in its adoption here till a generation, at least, after the Conquest. 'Only the least informed and most sceptical,' writes Professor Burrows, 'have placed the act of incorporation later than the date of the Conqueror',[25] but a wider knowledge of municipal institutions would lead to the opposite conclusion. It is possible that the reign of Henry I may have witnessed the superimposing of a communal confederacy on the existing institutions of the several ports; it is impossible, at any rate, to trace it in Domesday, and difficult, indeed, to reconcile with its existence the evidence afforded by the Great Survey. It is conceivable that the position already attained, in the Conqueror's days, by Dover, may have served as a model for the other Ports, when they learnt the power of the principle that lay at the root of the commune—'L'union fait la force'.[26]
[1] Boys' Sandwich, p. 431.
[2] Monographie de la Constitution communale d'Amiens (Essai sur l'Histoire ... du Tiers-Etat, pp. 347-8). The charter of Abbeville prescribed this penalty ('domus ejus et omnia ad ejus mancionem pertinentia prosternantur') for homicide, which lies outside the class of 'political offences'. Giry, in his Etablissements de Rouen (1883), speaks of the 'abattis de maison' as 'caractéristique du droit municipal du Nord' (i. 431), but I do not find that he anywhere mentions it as the penalty appointed for refusing office.
[3] Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France, xi., p. 228.
[4] So also p. 263, where he calls attention to 'l'établissement de la constitution communale de Rouen et de Falaise dans quatre des provinces annexées au XIIe siècle à la domination anglo-normande'; and to 'cette adoption de la commune jurée selon le type donné par les grandes villes de la Normandie, événement auquel contribua sans doute la politique des rois d'Angleterre'.