As regards the election to the City offices, there was a great deal of uncertainty with many changes. In 1265 only one Sheriff was allowed. In 1267 the City was ordered to elect, and to present to the King, six persons, from whom the King would choose two for Sheriffs.
The Folk Mote was used throughout this period as a weapon against the aristocratic party. The popular leaders, William Longbeard, Thomas FitzThomas, Walter Hervey, all made use of the Folk Mote. The King made use of it, notably after the Green Roll business, when he sent Maunsell to persuade the people as he pleased. It was at a Folk Mote in 1241, and at another in 1259, that the King took formal leave of the City before going to Gascony. It was charged against Thomas FitzThomas that he pampered the people, calling them the “Commons of the City,” calling them together at Folk Mote asking them what was their will without consulting the Aldermen at all. So that the people leagued themselves together, broke into the houses of usurers, removed encroachments, threw open rights of way; and in many other ways showed a rude, but resolute, desire to obtain justice. Again, in 1271, on the disputed election of Walter Hervey, the people raised the cry, “We are the Commons of the City. To us belongs the election of the Mayor.”
With all this apparent tyranny, it is quite certain that the King always recognised the importance of London. He stood by the City in their determination not to allow the Thames fisheries to be ruined; he granted their very reasonable request that Jews, “held in warranty by Writ of Exchequer,” should plead before citizens as to tenements in London, and that Jewish “cheirographs,” i.e. keepers of “starrs,” or deeds and covenants of Jews, should be tallaged like any other people. His brother Richard, although continually at variance with the City, wrote a most friendly and interesting letter on his reception in Germany. When the King introduced his new gold coinage, he took the advice of the City on the measure, and because they were opposed to it, he made it optional whether the people took the gold coinage or not. He granted the prayer of the City that pleas of the citizens relating to debt should be heard in the City only and before the Sheriffs. In 1268, when the King granted to his son Edward customs on everything that came into England or went out, and Edward had leased the grant to certain Italians, the City petitioned the Prince against a continuance of this burden. The Prince resigned the privilege, and so eased the City.
A great deal more might be extracted from this short chronicle. Enough, however, has been taken to show the uncertainty of the City during the first century of the new order: the people always ready to assert their rights, fancied or real, as the Commons; the Aldermen standing, as a rule, for the old rights; the King taking offence, often, one acknowledges, deservedly, and revenging himself by taking the City into his own hands, by fines, by depositions, by refusals to receive Mayor or Sheriffs; nothing settled as to the rights and methods of procedure in elections, or in continuance of office, or in the power and authority of the Mayor, while of the new Council of twenty-four, as I have said, not one single word.
In the next chapter we shall have to consider the City under its new form of government, after the powers of the various offices have been defined and the manner of election has been settled.
CHAPTER VII
AFTER THE COMMUNE
In the year of our Lord 1419, John Carpenter completed his great work on the temporal government of the City of London, the Liber Albus. It is in this work that we find the only complete description of the administration of the City as it was at the beginning of the fifteenth century, with all the officers, their duties, and their responsibilities, and the laws which governed the citizens.
The author was Town Clerk from the year 1417 to 1438. He was twice Member of Parliament for the City; he was executor to Whittington; and he was buried in the Church of St. Peter, Cornhill.
The book itself, and a copy made in 1582, are preserved in the Crypt of the Guildhall. Riley, who looked through the copy, says that it abounds in errors which have never been corrected. His own translation was made from the original, which has long since lost the purity of aspect from which it derives its title. Some one has written on the cover the following Latin lines:—