2 66
ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS
This body has been described by Liebermann as “ a permanent
city college of twelve,” 1 but the absence of the definite article
in Latin leaves it quite uncertain whether it was a fixed
council or a selection of the more prominent citizens made
ad hoc, like the twelve de melioribus ciυitatis who watched over
the king’s safety when he lay at Shrewsbury, before the Con-
quest.2 It may be added that Miss Bateson did not attempt
to reconcile the existence of such a body with the position
she claimed for the aidermen, who, if they existed before
1087,3 must almost certainly have been more than twelve in
number 4 and for long were not fixed in number at all.
(6) The oath of the commune of London in 1193 bound its
members “ to be obedient to the mayor of the city of London
and to the skivins (skiυini) of the said commune . . . and
to follow and maintain the decisions of the mayor and skivins
and other good men (j>robi homines) who shall be (associated)
with them.” 6 Here we undoubtedly have to do with a govern-
ing body, whether, with Round, we see in the skivins-an imi-
tation of the twelve scabini (échevins) of the communal consti-
tution of Rouen and in the “ other good men ” the twelve
Consultores associated with them, or, with Miss Bateson,
regard skivins as merely a foreign name for the native aidermen
and the good men as additional councillors whom the mayor
might choose to summon to represent the opinion of the
community, predecessors of the later common councillors.
It must be said that the indefiniteness of the reference to
these good men is a point in Miss Bateson’s favour,® but both
she and Round have so confused the issue by identifying the
twenty-four who took an oath of office in 1206 with the council
of 1193 (or the aidermen only, in Miss Bateson’s case) that
1 Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ii. 573, 662. The date is misprinted 1187-88.
A Brihtmer senator of London before the Conquest is mentioned in a docu-
ment of 1098-1108 (Cotton MS. Faustina B. vi, fo. 100 ; cf. Mon. Angl. i.
97), but this is too indefinite to serve as earlier evidence of such a college.
It would be less rash to suggest that it points to the pre-Conquest existence
of aidermen.
2 Domesday Book, i. 252.
’The first mention of a ward aiderman is in ɪɪɪɪ (Page, London,
p. r8o), and Mr. Page places their creation after ɪɪoo, but with so little
evidence the argument ex silentio is dangerous. Cf. note ɪ above.
4 There at least were twenty c. 1128 [op. cit., p. 176 ; Essays presented
to T. F. Tout, p. 47).
6 “ Obedientes erunt maiori civitatis Londfonie] et skivin[is] eiusdem
commune . . . et quod Sequentur et tenebunt Considerationem maioris
et Skivinorum et aɪiorum proborum hoɪninum qui cum illis erunt ” (Round,
Commune of London, p. 235).
•See also above, pp. 251-2.
LONDON 2б7
it will be well to defer further discussion until the events of
the former year are reached.
(r) In the Chronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum,
ascribed with great probability to a leading citizen, Arnold
fitz Thedmar (1201-74?), there is the following entry under
1200 [-1201] : “ Hoc anno fuerunt xxv electi de discretioribus
Civitatis, et iurati pro consulendo Civitatem una cum Maiore.” ɪ
Miss Bateson in 1902 questioned this “ story,” partly because
the early meagre section of the chronicle has more than one
serious inaccuracy and partly because evidence that the sworn
four-and-twenty of 1206 were elected was (it was thought)
wanting.2 We now know that it existed and had been in
print for seventy years. The case against the “ story ',
thereby loses weight, and the close parallelism of its wording
with the description of the duties of the aiderman’s council
at Leicester in 1225,3 including the somewhat rare transitive
use of consulere, is positive evidence in favour of its authen-
ticity. Nor does the history of the manuscript lend support
to any suggestion that the entry is a late concoction in the
interests of popular government. If accepted as genuine,
it is important as first emphasizing the function which gave
the name of council to all such bodies, and as disclosing,
taken in connexion with the episode of 1206 to which we shall
come next, a state of things in the city which appears irre-
concilable with Miss Bateson’s hypothesis of unbroken govern-
ment by twenty-four aidermen with the occasional assistance
of other councillors.4 The history of London in these vital
years is provokingly obscure, but there does seem evidence
of at least an occasional election by the citizens at large of
a governing body of twenty-five or twenty-four who were
not (necessarily) aidermen. William FitzOsberfs agitation a
few years before (ι 195-96) reveals the existence of strong
popular feeling against the city rulers, whom he accused of
defrauding the king on the one hand and of shifting the burden
of taxation to the shoulders of their poorer fellow citizens on
the other,® and as these grievances can be recognized among
the charges on which King John in 1206 ordered a new body of
twenty-four to be elected, it is not improbable that they pro-
voked the election of a somewhat similar body five years
earlier.
1 Liber de Antiquis Legibus1 p. 2. 2 E.H.R. xvii. 508.
8 Below, p. 274. 1 E.H.R. xvii. 508, 511.
tWilliam of Newburgh (Rolls Series), p. 468.