23б
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
Of the York seal we have fortunately a perfect impression
attached to a deed now in the British Museum, a report by the
citizens to Archbishop Geoffrey (li9i-1206) on the ownership
of a city church, perhaps at the beginning of Geoffrey’s time,
as they had in Ii90 taken the city at farm, though they almost
immediately lost the privilege.1 The seal is a remarkable one
because on the obverse, round a triple-towered castle, the
legend : Sigillvm civivm eborac. is followed by the words
fidèles régis, and still more because the seal of the cathedral
church is used as a counterseal.2 It is noteworthy, too, that
the citizens call themselves neither Universitas nor commune.
The use of such seals is very fully expressed by the burgesses
of Ipswich who had one made in 1200 :
“ ad serviendum in grossis negociis tangentibus Communitatem
dicti burgi et eciam ad Iitteras inde Consignandas de veritate
testificandas pro omnibus et singulis burgensibus eiusdem
burgi et ad omnia alia facienda que fieri debent ad communem
honorem et Utilitatem ville predicte.” 3
The seal of the community of Barnstaple is affixed to an ori-
ginal deed not later than 1210, which is preserved in the
Archives Nationales at Paris.4 Barnstaple had already a
mayor : so too had Exeter, when its seal is first mentioned as
attached to a city grant which was apparently made in 1208.5
The Gloucester seal, to which reference occurs above,® pro-
bably belongs to the first years of this century. It may seem
surprising that the common seal of London is not mentioned
until 1219,7 but evidence is scanty for this period and we need
not doubt that it had possessed one since the end of the twelfth
century.
When, at a much later date, grants of formal legal incor-
poration became customary, the use of a common seal was one
of the marks of such incorporation and was often specified
in the grant. Even before the earliest and least elaborate
of such grants, the citizens of New Salisbury, when renouncing
their mayoralty and other civic liberties in 1304, to avoid
1 Above, p. 179.
2 Drake, Eboracum, p. 313, App. ci. ; Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters,
i. 230-1 ; Brit. Mus. Catalogue of Seals, ii. 218, where the legends are assigned
to the wrong sides. Cf. church on reverse of Ipswich seal (Wodderspoon,
ρ. 75). s Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 119.
* Round, Calendar of Documents in France, p. 462.
s Exeter Mise. Book 55, fo. 38d. I owe this reference to the kindness
of Miss R. C. Easterling. * Above, p. 230.
7 As appended to letters of the mayor and Universitas to the mayor and
Universitas of Bordeaux and of La Rochelle [Pat. R. 1216-25, p. 211).
NASCENT INCORPORATION
237
tallage, were required to surrender their common seal,1 and
the enforced resignation by the burgesses of St. Albans in
1332 of the liberties they had extorted from the abbot and
convent involved the surrender and destruction of their
common seal as well as of their charter.2
Gross claimed for the English borough “ a natural cor-
porate existence ” long before the juridical conception of an
artificial civic body came into existence, and instances the
possession of a common seal among the evidences of such
incorporation.3 He knew, however, of no earlier borough
seal than that of Ipswich and did not inquire into the circum-
stances in which such seals were adopted. The evidence
adduced above, especially from Oxford, points to the reign of
Richard I as the time of the first introduction of municipal
seals. Until then, though there was a borough community
which “ held property in succession ” and could enfeoff an
individual or a religious body with it, though it could hold
funds and grant them away in perpetuity, this community
was unable to give effect to acts of this kind without the aid
of the deed or seal of its aiderman or other chief gild officer.
Legally it was no corporation, and even “ naturally ” it was
only emerging from the “ co-ownership ” of the rural com-
munity. Suddenly, from 1191, its legal status is raised, not
universally but gradually in individual cases ; the community
or commune executes acts of various kinds under its own
common seal.4 How is this far-reaching change to be ex-
plained ? It might seem obvious to suggest that it was the
result of the new policy of Richard and John in granting
towns to their burgesses in fee farm, and at Ipswich, where
alone a full account of what happened has survived, it was
certainly made possible by a royal grant of fee farm and
elective officers. But this cannot be the whole explanation.
Oxford, as we have seen, had its communal seal eight years or
so before it secured the fee farm. Winchester and Exeter for
long had only grants of the farm during pleasure, and in this
respect were no better off than certain boroughs in the re-
pressive days of Henry II. Some other cause must have
been at work, and this, it would seem, was the influence of the
1 Rot. Part. i. 176. They renounced their renunciation in 1306.
2 Gesta Abbatum, ii. 260 ; Trenholme, The English Monastic Boroughs,
P- 37∙ 3 Op. cιt. i. 95.
1 Cf. the somewhat qualified remarks of Maitland who hardly realized
the force of the communal movement inspired from abroad (Hist, of English
Law, i. 683 f.).
R