“At first, the farm of the town was lett to the burghers, in the same manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process of time, however, seems to have become the general practice to grant it to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain, never afterwards to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions, in return for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be considered as belonging to individuals as individuals, but as burgesses of a particular burgh, which, upon this account, was called a Free-burgh, for the same reason that they had been called Free-burghers or Free-traders. Along with this grant, the important privileges above mentioned, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should succeed them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given. The principal attributes of villanage find slavery being thus taken away from them, they now, at least, became really free in our present sense of the word Freedom.—Nor was this all. They were generally at the same time erected into a commonality, or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town-council of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, by obliging them to watch and ward; that is, as antiently understood, to guard and defend those walls against all attacks and surprises, by night as well as by day. In England they were generally exempted from suit to the hundred and country courts; and all such pleas as should arise among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left to the decision of their own magistrates.” [379]
For the origin of corporate towns, in this country, we are generally referred to the times of which we are now treating, that is, the ages subsequent to the Conquest; and yet it seems to be very evident from the old book called The Mirrour, that there existed here some towns of that description even as early as the days of Alfred: [380] but they were probably few, and disregarded afterward, if not entirely disannulled; till a good while after the accession and establishment of the Norman dynasty: nor can we learn scarcely any thing of the cause and object of their formation, or the nature and principles of their constitutions. The case is otherwise as to those corporations formed since the Conquest; which seems to apply to all those that now exist in this country: it is not so difficult to find, or make out, how and why they were formed; and it is with them only that we have here any concern. Before they sprung up the feudal system was in its full and utmost vigour; and the power of the country was divided between the sovereign and the barons, or great lords; and the latter were sometimes an over match for the former. As a counter-balance or check to the formidable and enormous power of the barons, the incorporation of the great towns and cities seems chiefly to have been resorted to, or adopted. At least this appears to have been the case as far as any good policy, and not mere caprice, had any share in the business: for justice and humanity, or a desire to enlarge the liberty, and promote the welfare of the people were totally out of the question. These were motives too sublime and godlike to enter into the contemplation of the English kings and courtiers of those days.
But the said measure, whatever might be its cause and object, or the motive for its adoption, appears to have produced very salutary effects: for by forming cities and towns into corporations, and conferring on them the privileges of municipal jurisdiction, the first check was given to the overwhelming evils of the feudal system: and under their influence freedom and independence began to peep forth, from the rigours of slavery, and the miseries of oppression. To be free of any corporation, however, was not then, as at present, merely to enjoy some privilege in trade, or to exercise the right of voting on particular occasions, but it was to be exempt from the intolerable hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property, and encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies to animate society. But in those dark ages force was necessary to defend the claims of industry; and such a force the municipal societies possessed; for their towns were not only defended by walls and gates, vigilantly guarded by the citizens, but oftimes at the head of their fellow freemen in arms, the mayor, aldermen and other officers, marched forth in firm array, to assert their rights, defend their property, and teach the proudest and most powerful baron, that the humblest freeman was not to be injured with impunity. It was thus the commons learned and proved they were not objects of contempt; nay, that they were beings of the same species as the greatest lords. [381]
In this country the king is said to be the fountain of honour; and such he was to the incorporated towns and cities. From him they derived their chartered and municipal privileges, and to him they owed their emancipation from their former bondage, or manumission from feudal servitude. Though these royal acts appear to have proceeded from no generous or noble motives, such as the love of justice, or a regard for liberty, but rather from a selfish and sordid policy; yet, as they proved of vast benefit to the inhabitants of those towns and cities, they strongly attached them to the throne, and greatly added to the power and resources of the sovereign. The aversion and contempt manifested by the nobles towards this new body of freemen, tended to promote still further their attachment and subserviency to the court. The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as of a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves.
“The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them on every occasion without mercy or remorse. The burghers naturally hated and feared the lords. The king hated and feared them too; but, though perhaps he might despise, he had no reason either to hate or fear the burghers. Mutual interest, therefore, disposed them to support the king, and the king to support them against the lords. They were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent of those enemies as he could. By granting them magistrates of their own, the privilege of making bye-laws for their own government, that of building walls for their own defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, he gave them all the means of security and independency of the barons, which it was in his power to bestow. Without the establishment of some regular government of this kind, without some authority to compel their inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system, no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them, any permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any permanent support. By granting the farm of their town in fee, he took away from those whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion, that he was ever afterwards to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town, or by granting it to some other farmer.” [383]
The armed force, with which the towns now furnished themselves, must have produced a very material change in the state of the kingdom. This new order of warriors, or trained bands of the towns, seem not to have been inferior to those of the country; and as they could be more readily assembled on any emergency, they are said to have frequently had the advantage in their disputes with the neighbouring lords. In some parts of the continent they became so powerful and successful as to subdue the nobles in their vicinity, and enable the cities to which they belonged to form themselves into independent republicks. But in England, the cities and burghs had no opportunity to become entirely independent. They became, however, so considerable, as Dr. Smith observes, that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, beside the stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. They were, therefore, called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the states of the kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons in granting, upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king. Being generally, too, more favourable to his power, their deputies seem, some times, to have been employed by him as a counterbalance, in those assemblies, to the authority of the great lords. [384] Hence, as it seems, the origin of the representation of burghs in our parliaments.
However useless or objectionable our modern burghs or corporate towns may be, it must be allowed that they were originally productive of no inconsiderable national advantages. In them, as has been observed by the writer last mentioned, order and good government together with the liberty and security of individuals, were established at a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every kind of violence. That industry also, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence was found in them before it was commonly practised, or did exit among the country farmers.
“If in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed with the servitude of villanage, some little stock should accumulate, he would naturally conceal it, with great care, from his master, to whom it would otherwise have belonged, and take the first opportunity of running away to a town. The law was, at that time, so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, and so desirous of diminishing the authority of the lords, over those of the country, that if he could conceal himself there, from the pursuit of the lord, for a year, he was free for ever. Whatever stock therefore accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it.” [385]
Thus it appears the cities and towns were then replenished with inhabitants from the industrious and most valuable part of the population of the country, and not, as is too often the case in our time, from the most idle, profligate, and worthless.
From what has been already said of the motive or policy that seems to have given birth to our burgh-system, it might naturally be expected that those princes, who lived upon the worst terms with their barons, would be the most ready and active promoters of it, and the most liberal in their grants of municipal immunities. This, at least, appears to have been the case: and we find our king John, for example, and we may add, his son, and successor, Henry III. were most munificent benefactors to those towns; of which Lynn, may be mentioned as one notable instance. This town owes, to those two sovereigns, its political redemption, or elevation to the rank of a corporate town, or free borough. The era of its arriving at this high, and proud distinction, was the 13th century; whereas it was, before that period, the miserable abode of a horde of slaves, the vassals of the lord bishops of the see in which it is situated.