258
CIVIC BARONS
Thomas remarks, seem to imply any distinction. This con-
clusion is strongly supported by the clear evidence given
below that the barons of the Cinque Ports were the whole
body of burgesses, not a governing council within it. If
the analogy is complete, the barons of London were those who
held land in the city and contributed to all the city’s expenses,
who were, in contemporary language, in scot and lot.
The connexion with “ burhthegns,” if it existed, may not
be the sole source of their title. Their constant ,adminis-
trative association with the barons of Middlesex, their close
relations with and service to the king—London was “ the
King’s Chamber ” 1—and that inherent importance of the city
which according to Henry of Blois made the Londoners to
be regarded as optimales and proceres,i were sufficient in
themselves to earn the distinctive appellation. It has been
pointed out, in the case of the barons of the exchequer, that
even lowborn men who enjoyed the king’s confidence could
be so entitled. “ They were barons because it pleased the
king to treat them as such.” 3 It is not surprising that in
course of time the barons of London should have claimed
(1250) the privileges of their “ peers,” the earls and barons of
the realm.4
When this proud claim was made, the process was already
at work which in little more than half a century was to restrict
the application of the title to the aidermen and ultimately
leave it an archaic survival on the city seal.5 The chief factor
in this revolution was a change, which had begun early in the
century, in the method of admission to the freedom of the
city. Until then the qualification for citizenship, as in
boroughs generally, was the possession of land and houses.
When, towards the end of Henry IΓs reign, the maternal
grandparents of Arnold Fitz Thedmar, aiderman and chroni-
cler, came from Cologne to visit the shrine of St. Thomas at
Canterbury and, on hearing of the death of the wife’s mother,
decided to settle in England, they bought a domicilium in
London and became (Jacti sunt) citizens.® In such cases
descendants of the newly enfranchised inherited the freedom
by patrimony. But by 1230 there were two other avenues to
1 For the king’s chamberlain in London, who was also his butler and
coroner, see Liber Albus, Mun. Gildh. Land. i. 15.
* Will, of Malmesbury, Hist. Novella (R.S.), ii. 576-7.
a Stenton, English Feudalism 1066-1166 (1932), p. 85.
i Liber de Antiquis Legibus, Camden Soc., p. 17.
s See below, pp. 259. “ Lib. de Ant. Legg., p. 238.
CINQUE PORTS
259
citizenship, apprenticeship and purchase (redemption), pur-
chase not of land, but of the freedom. Less than a century
later, in the reign of Edward II, of nearly ιι∞ citizens en-
rolled in twenty-one months, only seventy-five were free by
patrimony.1 It is true that the number of admissions was
abnormal and that the large proportion of redemptioners,
656, in particular, shows that the (temporary) victory of
the commonalty over the aidermen in 1319 was not unprepared
by the creation of votes. Nevertheless the decline of franchise
by patrimony was of long-standing and permanent. The
growth of the gild system, the democratic uprising during
the Barons’ War and the development of the conception of
the civic Communitas had shifted landmarks, and the day of
the old landed barons of the city was over. “ Mayor and
barons " had yielded place to “ Mayor, aidermen and com-
munity.” To that extent its common seal became an
anachronism.
Even in the second half of the thirteenth century, royal
mandates were no longer addressed to the hereditary barons,
but to the smaller official aristocracy of elective aidermen,
whose position remained essentially unaffected by changes
in the constitution of the citizen body. The commonalty
asserted in 1312 that London, with its wards corresponding
to rμral hundreds, had a shire constitution as well as a sheriff
and that the aidermen were its barons.2 Their motive was
a practical one, to confine responsibility for a riot to the ward
in which it arose, but their statement shows how completely
the wider meaning of barones had passed out of use. The
aidermen themselves, whether on the strength of the paral-
lelism in question or as survivors of the wider body, are
said to have regarded themselves as barons and even after
1350 to have been buried with baronial honours, until fre-
quent changes in their body and recurrent pestilences caused
the rite to be discontinued. So, John Carpenter, town clerk,
writing in 1419, informs us,3 and for a custom so recently
in use he is good authority. But his inference that barons
was the original name for the aidermen and for them only
cannot be accepted.
In the case of the barons of the Cinque Ports, there is the
initial difficulty that until 1206 there is no evidence that any
of the ports but Hastings had them. Henry II gave a charter
1 A. H. Thomas, op. cit., p. xxix. , Ibid. 1323-64, p. xxiv.
a Liber Albus in Mun. Gildh. Lond. i. 33.