Only very tentative conclusions can be drawn from the
imperfect evidence which has survived. In the communal
age an elected chief magistrate, whether new mayor or old
bailiff, seems sooner or later to have been associated with
an elected body of twelve or twenty-four. Both represented
the community, and the earliest conception of their relation
seems to have been rather one of co-operation than of sub-
ordination. Perhaps, even less consciously, they may have
been regarded as checks upon each other. At Ipswich the
influence of the potentiores would appear actually to have
subordinated the chief magistrates to the portmen. This
was, no doubt, possible with bailiffs who had long ruled as
royal nominees and had still a divided duty to king and town.
It could not have happened with a mayor, a new officer created
by the town itself ¹ to express its new unity and independence
and free from all financial entanglement with the Crown.
Typifying the new municipal régime before the world and made
the mouthpiece of royal commands, the mayor naturally and
inevitably acquired a dominance over the twelve or the
twenty-four which was perhaps not originally intended. The
strong class consciousness of his colleagues and the weak
organization of the community fostered the growth of an
oligarchical system of government in which the council’s
representation of the community was lost sight of and the
narrower conception of a close body “ aiding and counselling
the mayor ” came into existence. At Winchester as early
as 1275 the twenty-four had become an estate in the civic
constitution, sharing with the community the election of the
mayor, dividing with it the nomination of certain minor
officers and (with the mayor) naming the four from whom the
community chose the two bailiffs. At Southampton, where
the chief officer in the thirteenth century was the aiderman
of the gild merchant, the twelve elected the bailiffs, the clerk,
and the serjeants.^a They were themselves, however, elected
by the community, whereas it is unlikely that the Winchester
council was still elected by the borough moot.

¹ This is an inference from the absence of any charter by John, except
his ex post facto one to London (1215), and the fact that the bishop
^j of Norwich’s burgesses at Lynn were afterwards accused of having set up
a mayor without his consent (B.B.C. ɪi. 362-3). It is perhaps doubtful
whether royal burgesses went so far without some permission less formal
than a charter. By 1205 at any rate the existing mayors were officials
recognized by the Crown. (Above, p. 254 ; Rot. Litt. Claus, i. 2a.)

² Oak Book, i. 44.

NATURE OF THE EARLY COUNCILS

The development, indeed, proceeded at varying rates in
the very diverse borough communities of these times. There
is direct evidence from the Red Register of Lynn,¹ in the
first quarter of the next century, of a council elected by the
community “ to consult with the mayor (‘ ad Consulendum cum
maiore ’) when necessary,” having been chosen pro communi-
tate, and of the mayor refusing to give an important decision
in the absence of his “ consules.” ² At Norwich, too, a mayor-
less city at that date, we have a record of the election in 1345 of
twenty-four from the city “ pro Communitate et [? ad] negotia
eiusdem ordinand’ et Custodiend' per idem tempus,” without
the concurrence of the whole of whom, it is said, the bailiffs,
down to 1380, could not transact any important business.³

It is evident that, even in the fourteenth century, the mayor
or bailiffs were not always at liberty to take just as much or
as little advice from the council as they pleased. At Lynn
and Norwich, however, the development of the original town
council into a close body may have been slower than was
generally the case, for the end of the second quarter of the
fourteenth century saw the beginning of the movement which
in so many boroughs added a second council to represent the
community at large.⁴

Of the theories or suggestions that have been advanced
to explain the origin of the first councils, that which regards
them as for the most part a purely native growth is the only
one that has been argued at any length. Its appearance in
the History of English Law has given it wide publicity and up
to the present time it may be said to hold the field. A critical
examination of the problem as a whole may therefore properly
begin by inquiring whether this view is tenable.

3

The suggestion that London had a municipal council of
twelve members more than a century before the first-known
creation of such a body may, I think, be dismissed as in-
sufficiently supported and otherwise improbable, though it

ɪ Ed. H. Ingleby, i. 64, 73 ; cf. ii. 169.

² They are said to have been “ iurati ad villam hoc anno Custodiendam."
The date was February, 1324. The council of twelve at Beverley were
known as custodes.

³ W. Hudson, Records of Norwich, i. 64, 79, 262.

¹ See below, ch. xi. The germ of such a common council appeared, of
course, much earlier in London.

U

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