250 MERCHANT GILD, FEE FARM, COMMUNE
pre-Conquest borough. Its basis lay in the community not
in any section of it, however wide. Of the new institutions,
the office of chamberlain, the chief financial official may have
owed something to gild precedent and the mayor sometimes
succeeded the gild aiderman as first officer of the town, but
both offices were essentially communal in origin and for that
reason the mayoralty was liable to come into conflict with
the aldermanry, as happened at Southampton. After all,
too, the mayor was not an indispensable member of every
urban corporation as were the ancient reeves or bailiffs, once
their elective status was established. The new councils, like
all these officers, were in theory elected by the whole com-
munity in its time-honoured court. The gild had no council,
as distinguished from a small group of officers, except when,
as at Leicester1 and Andover, it had occupied the whole
field of communal administration and the Leicester council
coalesced with the communal jurats within half a century,
though the fOrewardmanni2 of smaller Andover did not become
a normal body of probi homines until the gild, as a gild, prac-
tically ceased to exist in the sixteenth century.
What act or acts created an urban corporation, a comma
or Communitas in a new fuller sense ? The setting up of such
a communitas, with elected officers and council and communal
seal, at Ipswich in 1200 on receipt of a royal charter which,
apart from the usual urban liberties and merchant gild,
granted only the fee farm of the town and election of reeves
and coroners,3 may seem to supply the answer to this question.
Yet in Richard’s reign at least similar grants did not produce
the same result. Northampton had a grant of fee farm and
election of its reeves as early as 1189, confirmed by John,
who added election of coroners, a few weeks before the Ipswich
charter, but in sending this confirmation to Lancaster, which
had just obtained the liberties of Northampton, the reeves
did not use a communal seal, merely authenticating their
1 See above, p. 233.
a The history of this unique body, originally twelve in number, later
twenty-four, can be studied with some clearness in the very full extracts
from the Andover records printed by Gross (Gild Merchant, ii. 3-8, 289-
348). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries their main duty seems
to have been to decide questions arising out of succession to or trans-
fer of gild membership. Their Old English name, meaning " covenant-
men ” and their number suggest a possible connexion with Edgar’s twelve
witnesses of bargains in the hundred court (Liebermann, Ges. i. 210).
Andover had a hundred court, but it met separately from the gild court
in which the forewardmen appear. 3 Below, pp. 270 f.
FEE FARM, COMMUNE
251
letter with the seal of the provostry.1 London again obtained,
or rather regained, the fee farm in 1190, yet a year later
demanded and received recognition of a “ commune ” of the
city.2 That this was no mere confirmation by Count John
and the barons of the concession made twelve months before
by his opponent, the chancellor Longchamp, is clear from the
horror which Richard of Devizes expressed at the later step.3
Moreover, some boroughs had farmed themselves and elected
their reeves even under Henry II who certainly recognized
no commune. His grants were indeed only made “ during
pleasure,” he allowed no fee farms, but there is no doubt
that a perpetual farm was not an essential condition of early
municipal incorporation of the type with which we are dealing.4
Exeter had no fee farm until i259,s Winchester none before
1327.β It is doubtful whether the citizens of Exeter had a
continuous series of temporary grants. Yet these were
among the earliest towns to have the specially communal
office of mayor. Still more significantly, we have in Oxford
a borough which begins to use a communal seal at a time when,
as the Pipe Rolls clearly show, the burgesses had not yet even
a temporary tenure of the farm.7
It has to be remembered, too, that the men of purely rural
manors sometimes farmed them, though perhaps not in
fee farm,8 and that election of their reeves was common enough.
For the creation of the new type of urban commune,
then, it seems necessary to postulate something beyond the
farm, not put into charters, where charters were granted,
but subject of unwritten concessions or acquiescence. It
will be found, we believe, in the allowance of sworn associa-
tion. The absence of any clear record of reorganization
consequent on the recognition of a communa at London in
1191, save the institution of a mayor, has caused surprise,
but may not the explanation be that the essential and perhaps
the only other change is contained in the oath of the citizens
to adhere to the commune and be obedient to the officers
of the city, while similarly binding themselves to continued
loyalty to the king? β It is possible that Miss Bateson was
1 Above, p. 239. aAbove, p. ι8ι.
3 Stubbs, Select Charters, ed. Davis, p. 245.
4 It was not of course incorporation in the full legal sense of the later
Middle Ages. See above, p. 239. 5 B.B.C.ii. 316.
β Furley, op. cit. p. 32. , Above, p. 235.
β Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Eng. Law, i. 628, 650.
’ Round, Commune of London, pp. 235-6.