APPENDIX I

Merchant Gild, Fee Farm, Commune

In his recent book,¹ to which we have so often had to refer,
Dr. Stephenson claims that the light thrown in the preceding
article upon the part played by the Norman merchant gild
in municipal development during the twelfth century confirms
his contention that the new commerce of that age was the
vital force which converted the “ military and agrarian ”
Anglo-Saxon “borough” into the self-governing “town” of
the later Middle Ages. In a subsequent chapter he does,
however, admit that the process of conversion had begun
before Iθ66 and even had there been no Conquest would have
led to the same result, though more slowly.²

So far as this process worked through merchant gilds,
it was of course only partial, since even important towns, in-
cluding the greatest of all, had not this institution. Perhaps
Dr. Stephenson is a little too ready to presume that a group
of well-to-do traders in the borough court of such a town
would have much the same influence as the “ caucus in the
Gild Hall.” ³ In London the aidermen owed their weight
to their official position as judges of the Husting and heads
of the wards rather than to their being traders, while in less
prosperous boroughs the absence of an elected head and of
the gild’s power of raising money for communal purposes,
must have severely restricted the burgesses’ activities, though
they were not precluded from voluntary assessments for the
purchase of charters. It was only the gild town which before
1191 had, in some imperfect measure, that permanent officer
of their own choice and that unio Communitatis which were
later the tests of a self-governing town.⁴

The gild itself was not, however, a final solution of the
problem of town government. Created for purely commercial
ends, it was external to the deeply-rooted borough organiza-
tion, the royal provostry and the borough court. In strict
legality the gild aiderman had no authority to act, as he often
did, on behalf of the community in non-commercial matters
nor is there any evidence that he ever used any seal but his
own in such business. It was not until towns received the

¹ Borough and Town, pp. 151, 171.

³ Ibid. p. 172.

farm, usually in fee, of the provostry that the burgesses would
normally provide themselves with a common seal, but whether
the mere grant of the farm entitled them to do this is a point
which will come up for discussion presently. However, this
may be, in royal reeves chosen now by themselves from their
own number and, in the case of the more ambitious towns,
a new officer, the mayor, who was as much their own as the
gild aiderman, they had heads who represented the whole
community and not primarily and in strict law its trading
element.

It is not surprising that the gild phase should have left
its traces in the continued domination of the gild in a
few towns and in the wording of certain charters, especially
those to Winchester and Gloucester.¹ Burgesses and gildsmen
were probably already identical or nearly so in those cities,
but they were not so at Southampton or it would not have
been thought necessary to obtain a royal grant in 1249 that
they should never have a mayor.² The gildsmen, who were
the most influential section of the freemen, had no mind to
exchange their aiderman for an officer who would represent
the whole community.

When, from the thirteenth century, other qualifications
for the freedom of the town were substituted for burgage-
holding in the larger boroughs, the single avenue was some-
times, at Winchester for instance, membership of the gild.
The distinction between burgess and gildsman, if it had
existed, was effaced but, at Winchester at least, the gild
meetings became little more than social functions.³ At
Exeter the gild organization disappeared early and left no
trace save that its four stewards became municipal officials.⁴
While fully recognizing the vital part that trade had played
in the growth of the boroughs, especially from the reign of
Henry I, it is still necessary to reiterate Gross’s warning
that the constitution of the corporate borough of the later
Middle Ages was not borrowed from that of the gild, but
was a re-organization and expansion of the structure of the

¹ Above, p. 229.

² B.B.C. ii. 363. For the “ borgeis de la vile ” who were not gildsmen
see The Oak Book of Southampton, ed. Studer (Southampton Record Soc.),
I, xxx.             ^s Furley, City Government of Winchester, pp. 71-6, 106.

⁴ Above, p. 227. Admission to the freedom followed the London
practice (B. Wilkinson, The Mediceval Council of Exeter, p. 26 n. ; cf.
Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 1364-81,
ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. xxvii fi.).

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