188 FIRMA BURGI AND ELECTED REEVES
—the customary method then—of an existing privilege, though
no previous charter is extant.
The Colchester case adduced by Dr. Stephenson is more
difficult. Richard in a long charter (1189) gave the burgesses
the right to elect the reeves, and in my article (above, p. 171)
I used this as one argument for regarding the reeves who
accounted for thefarm from 1178 to 1189as still royal nominees.
Dr. Stephenson rightly describes the argument as inconclusive,
and the frequent change of the names of the reeves is usually
considered a sign of election. On the other hand, the Pipe
Roll of 1178-79 contains no evidence that the burgesses had
bought the farm on the retirement of the justiciar Richard
de Lucy, who had farmed the town for many years. It seems
also significant that on the accession of Richard the burgesses
having offered 60 marks for their liberties and no account
having been rendered until in 1192 they were able to pay the
larger part of their proffer and the arrears of the farm, John
and Osbert burgenses appear as accountants and continue for
two years. After an interval during which the farm was
perhaps held by a royal nominee, the burgesses in 1198-99
paid 20 marks to have their town at farm and at the first
exchequer audit oɪ John's reign “ cives de Colecestr' ” account
for the farm.1 If they had really been farming the borough,
with the possible exception named, since 1178, the argument
in favour of Ballard’s view is strengthened instead of weakened.
We have, in that case, two instances, at Northampton and
at Colchester, in which the appearance of elected reeves is
coincident with the grant of the farm to the burgesses. That
is not, of course, absolute proof that the one was the result
of the other, but, in the absence of any clear evidence of elec-
tion before farming, it establishes a prima facie probability.
Dr. Stephenson, however, overlooking the Northampton
purchase of its farm, insists that there is no proof here or
at Colchester, as there is at Lincoln, of a formal farming lease
by Henry H, which might include tacit permission to elect
their reeves, that both privileges were conferred by Richard a
1 It seems clear that so far they had only a revocable farm, not a fee
farm. The most puzzling feature is that Richard’s charter had given
them neither the one nor the other. Professor Stephenson assumes that
it did (Borovgh and Town, p. 169 and n. ɪ), but the confirmation to the
burgesses of river tolls towards the king’s farm (B.B.C. i. 225) no more
proves that the burgesses were farmers of either kind in 1189 than in the
reign of Henry I to which it traces the practice.
2 But see n. 1 as to Colchester.
FIRMA BURGI AND ELECTED REEVES 189
and that it is therefore permissible to suppose that they were
granted separately by Henry II with or without formal docu-
ments not now on record. In other words, Colchester may have
had elective reeves before 1178, Northampton before 1185.
All this is very conjectural and even if the grants of farm and
election were not, as we shall see they were, brought into the
closest relation in some charters, the duality seems too slight
a ground to bear the inference proposed. Moreover, this
inference raises a new and serious difficulty. What possible
motive can have actuated the Crown in relinquishing its
appointment of the town reeves, if they, personally or under
the sheriffs, were still to be solely responsible for the royal
revenue ?
In proof of the distinctness of the two privileges, Dr.
Stephenson not only adduces cases in which election is claimed
to have preceded farming, but at least one in which the
reverse order is said to be observable. He states, correctly,
that Henry IΓs charter to Wallingford “ does not mention
the firma burgi and clearly contemplates a royal reeve.”
“ Yet,” he adds, “ the men of Wallingford at that very time
are recorded as rendering account of the farm.” Here he
has been misled by the current misdating of the charter by
a year. Its real date, January, 1155,1 left twenty months
before the burgesses began farming at Michaelmas 1156,
and that allowed plenty of time for an arrangement by which
the burgesses took over the farm and were allowed to elect
their reeves. Dr. Stephenson is strangely reluctant to accept
the changing reeves of Wallingford as elected, though he has
no doubts about those of Colchester or Lincoln, and concludes
that, even if they were, “ there is no reason why their election
should be thought to be necessitated by the holding of the
farm.” Here again the meagreness of the record precludes
certainty, but the facts we have, which do not include any clear
case of an elective reeve before a burgesses’ farm or of a nomin-
ated one during it, justify, at least as a working theory, the
connexion which he denies.
The formal grant of election in later charters conceding
fee farms to boroughs which had had only short leases is,
we have seen, explicable as the contemporary form of con-
firmation by simple regrant and cannot be taken to imply its
non-existence during the terminable leases of Henry II.
ɪ R. W. Eyton, Itinerary of Henry II, p. 2. Both I and Professor
Stephenson followed Ballard in dating it 1156.