182
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
Dr. Round has here misled Sir James Ramsay.1 Mr. Page,
on the other hand, dates the reduction of the farm and its
grant to the citizens correctly at Michaelmas 1190 (though
without calling attention to Dr. Round’s error), and points out
that the privilege would naturally carry with it the right of
electing the sheriffs.2
Longchamp1S successor, Walter of Coutances, was more
cautious as regarded the farm until the king’s wishes could
be known. He did not venture to restore the old high rate,
but for the next three years the sheriffs accounted personally,
not ‘pro civibus,’ for the £300. Richard on his return in the
spring of 1194 was offered a large donum by the citizens ‘ pro
beneuolentia regis et pro Iibertatibus suis conservandis.’ 3
This no doubt was primarily for the confirmation of his
father’s charter which he granted in April of this year, but
his benevolence went beyond this, for at Michaelmas the
citizens began again to account for the farm.4
In the struggle between Longchamp and Count John in
1191, Henry of Cornhill took the side of the chancellor and
Richard fitz Reiner that of John.5 Mr. Page represents them
as leaders of rival civic parties, Cornhill heading the aristo-
cratic party and fitz Reiner the opposition. There is not
much evidence of this, and it is difficult to know what to make
of the statement that Cornhill and his friends were opposed
to the farming of the city by the citizens.6 If this opposition
preceded their acquisition of the farm at Michaelmas 1190,
it had no relation to the strife between John and Longchamp,
for John was not yet in England. Longchamp, moreover,
must have overruled any such objections of his partisans. If
it is placed in U91, it is perhaps only an inference from the
temporary loss of the farm which cannot have been due to
them. If there was any party in the city opposed to further
demands, it was reduced to silence by the chancellor’s flight to
London before John, and the whole community joined in his
supersession in favour of Walter de Coutances and received
the oaths of John and the barons to the coveted “ commune ”
of London.
l Angevin Empire, p. 317. 2 London, pp. 106-7.
* P.R. 6 Ric. I, p. 182.
4 Ibid. 7 Ric. I, p. 113. Page (London, p. ιι6) has created confusion
by post-dating this event by a year. But further study of the Pipe rolls
has convinced me that the suggestion in my article as first printed, that the
citizens were the real farmers between 1191 and 1194, cannot be sustained.
6 Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera (Rolls Series), iv. 404.
β Op. cit. p. 108.
TABLE OF BOROUGH FARMS . 183
Into the disputed nature and duration of the commune
as revealed by the documents preserved in “ A London
municipal collection of the reign of John ” 1 I do not here
propose to enter. We have reached a point where a halt may
legitimately be called. The event of 8th October, I191, is
the high-water mark of the pioneer period of English muni-
cipal progress. If the Pipe Rolls have disclosed nothing
positive as to the aims of English communalism, they have
at least established the negative conclusion that farming by
the burgesses, even the fee farm, though doubtless a necessary
preliminary or concomitant, formed no part of the conception
of the “ commune.” Two of the three boroughs which are
known to have openly aimed at a commune, London and
Gloucester, had already possessed the farm. That distinction
is what might be expected. The right of farming the royal
revenue from the borough merely eliminated the sheriff
middleman. The idea of the “ commune ” embodied the
aspiration of the more advanced towns to full self-government.
The aspiration was a natural and inevitable one and, freed
from the more questionable features of its foreign model, was
realized in the modified form most appropriate to the needs
of a compact and strongly governed kingdom.
APPENDIX I
Table of Borough Farms, etc.
The following list of boroughs includes only towns (except
Bridgenorth, Grimsby, and Newbury) which were in the hands
of Edward the Confessor or of Queen Edith in 1066, and some
of these arc omitted because their renders are not fully given
or are involved in those of rural manors or firme noctis groups.
Those which are definitely stated in Domesday Book to have
been farmed in 1066 or 1086 are marked with a dagger, but
Domesday “ values ” are only distinguished from farms or
“ renders ” (which may often be farms) when they are
contrasted in the survey. The figures include both the king’s
and the earl’s share. Smaller payments in kind or money
to which certain boroughs were liable at this date are omitted,
but such boroughs are marked with an asterisk. Revenue
1 E.H.R. xvii, 480 f., 707 f. See below, pp. 251 fi., 266 fi.