2p0
ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS
Maitland was too cautious a scholar to maintain that his
theory of uninterrupted development covered every case.
In the light of what happened at Ipswich and of certain
German analogies—no reference is made to the parallel
evidence from the communes of France and Flanders—he
could not, he said, exclude the type of council “ newly and
deliberately instituted,” 1 but he evidently regarded it as
quite exceptional. The thirteenth-century evidence, how-
ever, so far as it goes, points to special creation as the normal
origin of a borough council, and the slow development at
London seems exceptional.
It is surprising that in dealing with this problem Maitland,
unlike Stubbs, should seem to have entirely ignored the influ-
ence of the foreign commune in England, though he elsewhere
notes its effects in London 2 and suspects “ the influence
of the sworn communa of the French town ” in the Ipswich
burgess’s oath to maintain the freedom and conceal the secrets
of the town.3
No suspicion that the sworn council might show the
same influence appears to have crossed his mind, nor did he
draw any inference from the rapid diffusion of the office of
mayor after its adoption in London. Of course Round had
not yet discovered the London communal oath and that of
the twenty-four there, while the close association of mayor
and council in the thirteenth century was not yet fully re-
vealed. Nevertheless, there was sufficient evidence for a
repetition of Stubbs’s suggestion of the continental iurati
as one of the sources of our town councils. There may be
a danger of pressing the suggestion too far and of under-
estimating the power of like circumstances to produce like
institutions. Still it seems prima facie significant that foreign
influence was admittedly at its zenith just when such councils
make their first appearance in English records. It remains
to inquire how far this influence shaped English municipal
institutions.
4
The repercussions of the communal movement on the
other side of the Channel had been felt in England from at
least the middle of the twelfth century. Sworn communes
had been formed or attempted at London, Gloucester, and
1 Hist, of Eng. Law, i. 659.
2 Ibid., p. 657. 3 Ibid., p. 671.
CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE
291
York, but Henry II speedily stamped the latter two out and
nothing is known of their organization.1 The concession of a
commune by count John to London in 1191 2 was, however,
accompanied or soon followed by the introduction of the
foreign office of mayor,3 and within the next quarter of a
century at least a dozen towns copied London and provided
themselves with mayors.4
By the side of the mayor (or officers with native names
but like powers) appears for the first time, so far as evidence
or indeed probability goes, a sworn administrative council
of twelve or twenty-four burgesses. It is all part of a move-
ment for a larger measure of urban self-government which
had found its opportunity in the financial needs of Richard
and John.
As sworn councils of just these numbers had long been
a prominent feature of those city communes of France and
Flanders which had clearly inspired municipal ambition on
this side the Channel,5 there can be practically no doubt that
the general conception of such councils came from abroad,
and the English bodies might therefore seem as foreign as
the mayor. But here we must distinguish. The mayor
filled a position which had not existed until then in English
towns, while the new councils were merely the old potentiores
more closely organized and with wider functions. In other
words, there was the germ of a council already in existence,
but none of a municipal magistrate who was not a royal
1 Above, pp. 161, 176. The first may not have been municipal.
3Above, pp. 181, 182. See further j. H. Round, Commune of London,
PP∙ 224-45-
3The mayor of London is first actually mentioned in April, n93
(Hoveden, iii. 212), but must go back at least to the previous autumn and
perhaps to the institution of the commune a year earlier. Round, however,
regarded a final concord of 30th Nov., 1191, in which Henry Fitz Ailwin
appears after Henry de Cornhill and his brothers and without the title of
Mayor, as at least strongly opposed to the view that he was mayor then,
three weeks after the grant of the commune. Archaeological Journal, 1. 263.
4 Winchester by 1200 (Rot. Chartarum, p. 6ob) ; Exeter by 1205 (Rot.
Litt. Claus, i., p. 39b) ; Lincoln by 1206 (Earliest Lincolnshire Assize Rolls,
ɛd. Stenton, no. 1448) ; Barnstaple and Oxford (probably) by 1210 (Round,
Cal. of Documents in France, p. 462 ; Cart. Oseney, I, viii) ; Lynn by 1212,
(Rot. Litt. Claus, i. 123a) ; York by 1213 (ibid., p. r50a) ; Northampton
by 1215 (ibid., p. 188a) ; Beverley (E.H.R. xvi. 563), Bristol (Rot. Litt.
Claus, i. 281b), Grimsby and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (ibid. i. 362b, 247a),
by 1216. The view that " mayor ” comes from maior ballivus is of course
untenable, though the title of mayor may have been occasionally given to
the senior bailiff in the thirteenth century (Archaeological Journal, 1. 254-5).
t Hegel, Stadte und Gilden, and Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions
Françaises, passim.