2Ô2
CIVIC BARONS
the ports join in the Brodhulle assemblies, which dealt especi-
ally with their contributions to the expenses of the confedera-
tion.1 If the designation baron survived here, while it vanished
altogether in London, the main reason no doubt is that the
ship-service and their membership of the ancient court of
Shepway kept it alive.2 A contributory cause may be that
in these comparatively small and non-industrial communities
the attainment of the freedom by patrimony possibly held its
own more largely than it did in London against the newer
qualifications of apprenticeship and purchase.
1 Statham, op. cit. 120 ff. 2 Ibid., pp. 60 ff.
THE ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS1
In the two preceding articles it has been seen that the ancient
royal boroughs acquired a new status during the reigns of
Richard I and John. At the death of Henry II they had en-
joyed but a humble measure of self-government. By charter
or custom they possessed a number of valuable privileges,
especially separate jurisdiction in domestic cases short of
the pleas of the Crown and freedom from toll elsewhere.
There was no sharp line, however, between their judicial
privileges and those allowed to the greater feudatories, to
religious houses 2 and to the ancient demesne of the Crown.
The ancient demesne also enjoyed general exemption from
toll and shared with the boroughs the right to admit into
their community villeins not reclaimed by their lords within
a year and a day. In fact, though the Crown was not the sole
landlord in the borough, its status approximated, mutatis
mutandis, to that of ancient demesne. The privilege of farm-
ing the royal revenue and of electing the local reeve is found
in both, but as yet it was always revocable. The one important
privilege that was peculiar to boroughs, though not universal,
was the merchant gild. Though granted only for the regulation
and advancement of their trade, it was utilized in practice to
give a kind of semi-corporateness to the borough community.
In the gild aiderman the burgesses found a head who was not
a royal official but a quasi-municipal officer of their own, whose
seal could be used to authenticate their communal actions.
Even where it existed, however, this was an obviously
illogical solution of the problem of urban government. Its
normal effect was a dual control of king’s reeve (with the
1 Reprinted, with revised introduction and incidental additions, from
E.H.R. χlιv. (1929), 177-202.
2 Cf. Henry Il’s grant to the canons regular of St. Paul’s church,
Bedford (later Newenham Priory) of " all the liberties which the burgesses
of Bedford have ” (Mon. Angl. vi. 374).
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