240
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
never admitted the borough community to be so completely
(in later language) a “ body politic and corporate ” as, for
instance, to deprive the Crown of the power to enforce pay-
ment of the debts which the borough owed to it upon individual
citizens, if their rulers defaulted.1
Nevertheless, the evidence collected above leaves no doubt
that the reigns of Henry H’s sons, whatever their personal
attitude to town liberties may have been, saw a vital change
in the status of the leading English boroughs, a change both
legal and practical, which, however limited the new status
and subject to frequent interference and even temporary
withdrawal by the Crown, can only be reasonably described
as a form of incorporation. The last decade of the twelfth
century is marked off from the preceding period by the appear-
ance of permanent farms and elective bailiffs, mayors, and
councils and common seals, all the institutions which, with
changes introduced by lapse of time, lasted down to 1835.
This sudden and remarkable development was, as we have
seen, favoured by the needs and weakness of Richard and
John, but shows unmistakable signs of the influence of the
communal movement abroad, an influence, however, which
on the whole was general rather than particular. Though
sudden, it was not unprepared for. Only the heavy hand of
Henry II had held the movement in check until the eve of the
thirteenth century.
3. The Borough Community
“ Quod ipsi (homines) . . . Communitatem inter se
decetero habeant.” These words of incorporation in the
Coventry charter of 1345, already quoted, may serve as
starting-point for a brief inquiry into the burghal meaning
or meanings of the hard-worked term communitas (and its
vernacular equivalents), which could be applied to almost any
association of men from the village up to the nation. We
shall find that it was not used so vaguely as Stubbs and others
have thought. The formal employment of the term in the
first half of the fourteenth century, first in judicial decisions
and finally in royal charters, for the corporate body of citizens
or burgesses only set the seal on a development which, as we
have seen, went back to the reign of Richard I. It was as
communitas that the burgesses of a borough held property,
1Madox, Firma Burgi (1726), pp. 154 ff.
DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY
241
received and made payments, and entered into engagements
with other corporations or persons. Except at the founda-
tion of a new borough, this Communitas burgensium 1 can
rarely, if ever, have included all householders. There were
officials and professional men who were excluded if a gild
merchant really confined to traders and master craftsmen was
the entrance gate to the freedom ; there were small tradesmen
and craftsmen who were kept out by entrance fees and pro-
perty qualifications. This non-burgess population was not,
however, unless very poor, exempt from national and muni-
cipal taxes. There is some reason to think that the borough
community which was required to send representatives to
Parliament with full power to act on its behalf was, in theory
at all events, this wider community of tax-payers. In the
early writs for the collection of parliamentary taxes, these
are said to have been granted by “ the citizens, burgesses,
et alii probi homines of the cities and boroughs, of whatsoever
tenures and liberties they were.” 2 The same conception of
the community seems to be implied in the slightly later form
in which the grant is stated to have been made by “ the
citizens, burgesses, and communities of the cities and
boroughs,” where citizens and burgesses are distinguished as
the higher element of the borough community, just as the
magnates, knights, and free-holders are distinguished in the
same writ as the outstanding classes of the shire community.3
It was only a theory, however, for, as a matter of fact, the
borough representatives seem to have been everywhere elected
by the burgess assembly,4 and continued to be elected by it
even when it had shrunk up into a narrow corporation from
which most of the freemen were excluded. The Statute of
1445, which forbade their illegal election by the sheriff, dis-
tinctly states that they “ have always been chosen by citizens
and burgesses and no other.” 5 It was not until the political
struggles of the middle years of the seventeenth century that
1 Bateson, Records of Leicester, i. 50 (1256).
2 Stubbs, Select Charters, ed. Davis, pp. 430-1, 434.
3 Ibid. p. 438. We may compare the use of commune in the accounts of
twelfth-century aids and tallages. A lump sum proffered by a borough or
vill and accepted could be described as given by the commune (P.R. ɪ Joh.,
p. 148), but if the richer few were individually assessed by royal officers and
a lump sum proffered for the rest, this sum was also " de communi ejusdem
ville " (ibid., 15 Hen. II, p. 90).
1 Or, rarely, by a committee of it, as at Lynn (Hist. MSS. Comm.,
Rept. XI, App. Ill, 146 ff.), and at Cambridge (Stubbs, Const. Hist. iii.
§ 422)∙ s Statutes of the Realm, ii. 340.