190 FIRMA BURGI AND ELECTED REEVES
There is one case, however, in Richard’s reign which may
seem to support Dr. Stephenson’s view. In 1194 the men of
Ipswich paid 6θ marks to have their town in hand and for
a confirmation of their liberties. They at once appear on the
Pipe Roll as responsible for the farm 1 but did not get the
charter, whereas Norwich simultaneously for 200 marks got
both and their charter included fee farm and election of
reeves. It was not until John’s first year that Ipswich, on
payment of a further 6θ marks, obtained a similar charter
and, according to the unique record in their Little Domes-
day Book, proceeded to measures of re-organization which
included the election of two reeves.2 This, says Dr.
Stephenson, was obviously their first choice of their own
magistrates. But, if this were so, how is it to be reconciled
with the case of Northampton which was farming through
elected reeves for four years before it obtained in 1189 a charter
on the same lines as those of Norwich and Ipswich. As to
these Professor Stephenson is really arguing, with unconscious
inconsistency, that election came with the acquisition of fee
farm and not earlier. The attainment of perpetual farms,
with the consequent security from the ordinary intervention
of the sheriff, was indeed a marked advance in municipal
progress. We are asked to believe that it had no political
importance, but it was no accident that it coincided with the
appearance in many boroughs of a new officer, the Mayor, from
the first elected by the burgesses and of elective and sworn
Councils. It is not surprising that on securing permanent
emancipation from the sheriff’s financial control, the burgesses
should, as at Ipswich, have had to carry out some re-organiza-
tion and in particular to provide a standing method of
choosing the reeves, now established as officers of the
community. But this is quite consistent at Ipswich with
their having used some less formal method of appointment
during the years when they were already accounting for the
farm, but had not yet received security in a charter for its
permanence.
Nor are we entirely without positive evidence that election
of reeves was a necessary corollary of farming of either kind
by the burgesses. The Dublin charter of 1215, as we have
seen, treats the reeveship as granted with the farm. This
ɪ P.R. 6 Ric. I, p. 47. They did not, however, render an account until
n97 (ibid. 9 Ric. I. p. 224).
2 See below, p. 271.
FIRMA BURGI AND ELECTED REEVES
191
was a fee farm, but Richard’s grant to Nottingham in 1189 of
a revocable farm, of the type universal under Henry II, gives
the burgesses annual choice from their own number of a
reeve “ to answer for the king’s farm and to pay it directly
into the exchequer.” 1 What is even more significant is
that the charter contains no separate grant of the farm which
therefore only comes in by a side-wind, as it were, as the
essential business of the elective reeve. If we are told that
we must not assume the same close connexion where charters
grant fee farm without an election clause, we may point
out that Oxford was choosing its own bailiffs, c. 1257,2 though
it had no charter authority therefor, unless the grant of a
fee farm in 1199 authorized it.
It is true that mesne towns, which were rarely farmed by the
burgesses, sometimes received by charter the right of electing
their reeves. But they were in a different position than the
royal towns. Their lords were usually close at hand and there
was no middleman sheriff between them and their burgesses.
Election of the reeve probably made easier the collection of
the lord’s rents and dues. Yet at Leicester, probably the
largest of mesne towns, there is only a single case of elective
reeves before the belated grant of a (revocable) farm by charter
in 1375> aɪʌð ⅛e election of 1276-77 was most likely the result
of a temporary unchartered farm.3 Edmund of Lancaster, who
was then lord of the borough, is known to have farmed it out
to individuals,4 and he may have tried the experiment of
burgess farming.
Dr. Stephenson’s prima facie conclusion from the absence
of the election clause from some 50 per cent, of the charters
in which Richard and John granted borough farms, that there
was no necessary connexion between the two privileges, not
only contradicts the evidence of the Dublin and Nottingham
charters and of Oxford usage, but asks us to believe that where
the clause does not appear, it is because the borough either
had the right already or continued under reeves nominated
by the king. The first assumption is, we think, rash unless
the burgesses had already been farming, the second is con-
fronted with known facts in some cases and with general
1 B.B.C. i. 244, 247. Cf. Rot. Litt. Claus, i. 359α.
a Cal. Inq. Mise. i. no. 238. The “ lesser commune ” complained that
the fifteen Jurats alone chose the bailiffs.
s M. Bateson, Records of Leicester, i. xliv. 174; ii. xxvii. n. The
text does not justify the statement that the Mayor nominated the electors.
4 Ibid. ii. 89.