2δθ
ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS
of the city.1 The mention of judicial functions only is a
difficulty in the way of taking this body as an early council
and identifying it with the twelve aidermen, who, owing to
the loss of most of the city’s medieval archives, are not on
record until 1511. The object of this provision, however, as of
that relating to the mayor, which immediately precedes it,
was not apparently to define the duties of the office, but to
settle a question of financial privilege. The mayor was
allowed exemption from all public taxes and dues during his
year of office, but the twelve were denied this privilege. It
is not then perhaps necessary to assume that they were purely
judicial officers, though their title would imply a greater
prominence of that aspect than in the case of the other early
councils we have been considering.
2.
Making allowance for varied and mostly meagre sources,
a certain diversity is observable in these early councils, which
agrees well enough with their generally local origin. As to
numbers, six of the thirteen (I exclude the doubtful early phase
at London) 2 had twelve or (in one case) six members and the
rest twenty-four. This bare majority was increased, appar-
ently before the end of the century, by the doubling of the
Northampton council ; on the other hand, some or all of the
other cases of a body of twenty-four, except that of London,
due to the accident of the number of wards, may represent
unrecorded doublings. And while the Berwick town council
numbered twenty-four, its merchant gild had twelve feeringmen,
a name of ancient sound. Excluding exceptional London,
our earliest cases are the Ipswich and Northampton twelves,
and the influence of the London precedent on some communities
which adopted the larger number must not be left altogether
out of account. At the same time it has to be allowed that
both numbers were used for temporary local purposes before
the era of town councils and that, in the greatest towns especi-
ally, there were some practical advantages in the larger one,
which may help to account for such doubling as took place
ɪ The original Latin text of these " Provisions ” has disappeared from
the archives since 1870, but an eighteenth-century translation is printed
in Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, xx. 25 fi. My attention was called to
it by Mr. F. W. Brooks.
a Also the unique early fifteen at Oxford.
NATURE OF THE EARLY COUNCILS
281
at Northampton and later Shrewsbury. For one thing, the
problem of non-attendance, which the penalties for absence
show to have been serious, must have been much eased.
Other towns which appear after 13OO and before lʒθθ with
councils of twelve are : Axbridge (lʒ), Beverley, Canterbury,
Carlisle, Exeter,1 Gloucester, Godmanchester (town on ancient
demesne), Nottingham, Pevensey, Plymouth, Portsmouth,
Preston, Shrewsbury, Wycombe (?), and York, to which there
must be added the Cinque Ports with their twelve jurats
in each town. Other boroughs on record with councils of
twenty-four are Barnstaple, Bridgenorth, Chester, Colchester,
Lynn [Regis], Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
Norwich, Salisbury, Wells, and Worcester. As boroughs
were mostly small, the greater prevalence of the council of
twelve is not surprising.2 Its persistence in some larger towns
such as Lincoln and York (generally under the later name of
aidermen) may be in part accounted for by the addition from
the latter part of the fourteenth century onwards of larger
common councils, double or even four times its number,
nominally representing the community at large,3 which the
original twelves and twenty-fours had ceased to do, but
belonging to the same class and readily coalescing with them
in close corporations.
That the early municipal councils were elected by the
communities of their towns, and were therefore supposed to
represent them, is stated or implied in most of the cases we
have discussed and is probable in the rest. It does not follow
that election was always annual. Nothing definite is reported
of the method of election, except at Ipswich where the direct
participation of the citizens at large was confined to a public
assent to the nomination of electors from each parish by the
bailiffs and coroners, who were, however, themselves directly
elected.4 But Ipswich was exceptional in other respects,
1 From 1345.
2 Instances of the doubling of the twelve in some growing towns have
been given above.
3 At Newcastle-under-Lyme this object was attained in the fifteenth
century without increasing the total number by adding twelve for the
community to twelve representing the older twenty-four (T. Pape, Medieval
Newcastle-under-Lyme (r928), pp. 135, 176).
1 In 1309 the electors are said to have been appointed by the com-
munity (Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. IX, part ι, App., p. 242a), but the officials
may still have suggested names. This record shows that the power which
the jurats had, according to the custumal of 1291 (Black Book of Admiralty
(Rolls Ser.) ii. 167), to fill vacancies in their body caused by death or mis-
conduct, does not justify my rash inference in 1929 that by that date they