Now, whatever the grant of “Commune” implied, it certainly implied something, and something of importance. “Upon this point there is,” as Mr. Coote justly observed, “a cloud of contemporary evidence, clear, exact and positive.” He put together the versions of the chroniclers,[474] contemporary and well-informed, and their harmony is complete. The fact, moreover, that the Commune was extorted at a great crisis, proved that only when the government was weak could so great a concession be wrung from it. Lastly, the phrase of Richard of Devizes: “Concessa est ipsa die et instituta Communia Londinensium,” and that of Giraldus: “Communa seu Communia eis concessa,” correspond exactly with the formal phrases in the French charters of “Commune.” In the case of Senlis (1173) it was “Communiam fieri concessimus”; in that of Compiègne (1153): “Burgensibus villæ concessimus Communiam”; in that of Abbeville (1185) “concessi eis Communiam habendam”; in that which Queen Eleanor granted to Poitiers (1199): “Sciatis nos concessisse ... universis hominibus de Pictavi et eorum heredibus communiam juratam apud Pictavim.” But if any doubt were yet possible, it would be finally removed by the words of Richard of Devizes:
Nunc primum, indulta sibi conjuratione, regno regem deesse cognovit Londonia, quam nec rex ipse Ricardus nec prædecessor et pater ejus Henricus pro mille millibus marcis argenti fieri permississet.
There is no escaping from these words, and Mr. Loftie’s theory is, consequently, out of court.[475]
But what of Mr. Coote’s? With great confidence he wrote that the “Commune,” in the case of London, which had acquired all other things, expressed for its citizens the mayoralty only; “nothing else was asked or desired by them, for it was the sole privilege which was wanting to their burghal independence” (p. 287). We find, however, that on the Continent the word ‘Commune’ did not of necessity imply a Mayor, for Beauvais and Compiègne, though constituted ‘Communes,’ appear to have had no Mayor during most of the 12th century. The chroniclers, therefore, had they only meant to speak of the privilege of electing a Mayor, would not have all employed a word which did not connote it, but would have said what they meant. Moreover, his theory rests on the assumption, common till now to all historians, that the citizens had continuously possessed, from the beginning of the 12th century, the privileges granted in the charter of Henry I. But I have shown, in my ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville,’ that these privileges were not renewed by Henry II. or Richard I., and that this fact strikingly confirms the explicit words of Richard of Devizes, when he states that neither the one nor the other would have allowed the Londoners to form a ‘Commune’ even for a million of marcs.
In ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville’ (pp. 357–9) I insisted on the necessity of keeping steadily in view the annual firma of London and Middlesex, and showed that it was due in respect of the two jointly, and not, as has been alleged of Middlesex, apart from London. The further publication of the Pipe Rolls has enabled me to develop this position. While the citizens, as I showed, strenuously claimed to hold the city and county at ferm for £300, as in the charter of Henry I., the Crown no less persistently strove to exact a firma of more than £500. The exact amount of the high firma is first recorded at the change of shrievalty in 1169. The four outgoing sheriffs at Easter of that year account for £250 “blank” and £11 “numero,” as the half-year’s firma. This represents a total for the year of £500 “blank” and £22 “numero,” which is also precisely the sum accounted for in 1173–4.[476] The whole sum would thus amount to £547 “numero,” by the Exchequer system. But at Midsummer, 1174, there was a great and a sudden change. Brichtmer de Haverhelle and Peter Fitz Walter came into office not as sheriffs, but “ut custodes,” in the Exchequer phrase,[477] and at Michaelmas they accounted not “de firma,” but “de exitu firme.”[478]
The sheriff farmed his county and answered for a fixed firma, as a tenant is responsible for his rent; the ‘custos,’ acting for the Crown, like a bailiff for a landowner, was responsible only for the actual proceeds (exitus). This distinction meets us even on the earliest Pipe Roll (1130).[479] It is obvious that, on the firma system, the sheriff might make a profit or a loss, according as the sources of the ferm provided more or less than the rent for which he had to account. But the point on which I am anxious to insist is that the sources of his ferm were by no means so elastic as is alleged.[480] As Professor Maitland observes:
The king’s rights are pecuniary rights; he is entitled to collect numerous small sums. Instead of these he may be willing to take a fixed sum every year, or, in other words, to let his rights to farm.
He further describes these rights, in the case of a borough, as “the profits of the market and of the borough court,” together with “the king’s burgage rents.” Each of these sources, again, could be sub-farmed.[481] This being so, I cannot agree with Dr. Stubbs in holding that
the sheriff was answerable to the Crown for a certain sum, and ... nothing was easier than to exact the whole of the legal sum from the rich burghers, and take for himself the profits of the shire; or to demand such sums as he pleased of either, without rendering any account.[482]
For the sources of the ferm were well defined: they were limited to certain “rights.” The burgage rents were fixed; so, we believe, were the tolls; and the fines arising from the courts cannot have varied much. Outside these sources the sheriff had no right to “exact” anything from the burghers.