294
ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS
or “ jurate,” as it is often spelt, in the former must be regarded
as an English word derived from iuratus, and for this there is
sufficient evidence. Whenever the councillors are referred
to in documents written in French it is translated “ juré ” ; 1
it was used in towns remote from the Ports 2 and occasionally
alternated with “juror.”3 In 1379, in the assessment for
the poll-tax, it was employed as a class name for all municipal
councillors.4 The oath of office was universal, they were
all iurati, but local usage determined whether they should
be colloquially described by the French form (jurés, joures)
or the English (jurat(e)s) or by some designation not referring
to their oath such as good men (prudes hommes) or portmen
or, most commonly, by their number, the twelve or the twenty-
four. Instead, therefore, of disclosing a specially French ap-
plication, the Cinque Ports usage actually shows an unusual
local consistency in the use of an anglicized Latin word.
Any other conclusion would be difficult to reconcile with
the comparatively late and incomplete introduction of mayors
into the constitutions of the Ports. There is no evidence of a
mayor in any of them before 1290, and in the early part of
the fourteenth century Romney, Hythe, and Hastings had
still bailiffs as their chief magistrates.6
So far all attempts to establish a direct connexion between
the constitution of any English town and that of a particular
foreign commune or group of communes must be regarded
as having failed. Municipal growth in England owed a great
debt to the communal movement abroad, but its borrowing,
except in the case of the mayoralty, was general, not specific.
It derived thence the full conception of a self-governing urban
community, presided over by a chief magistrate and council
of its own choice, and with all its component parts cemented
together by binding oaths which inculcated a high ideal of
civic loyalty and service.6 The general idea of a council
emanating from the community and sworn to serve and uphold
its interests seems to have been derived from foreign example,
but it is not necessary to look abroad for the details of its
1Cf. Borough Customs (Selden Soc.), i. 41, 85, 121-2 ; ii. 17, 22, 152,
154∙
2 E.g., at Bridport (ibid. ii. 39), at Southampton (Black Book, ii. 60),
and at Portsmouth (R. East, Portsmouth Records, p. ι). Its use in the
Channel Islands seems to be due to English influence.
3 Borough Customs, i. 2r2.
4 Rot. Parl. iii. 58a ; cf. v. 515b ; vi. 338a.
5 Foedera (Rec. ed.) I, ii. 730, 945. Yet Round assumed that all had
mayors (Feudal England, p. 552). ’Above, section ι.
CONCLUSIONS
295
organization, its number, or the various names under which it
went. There were features of English local life which had
prepared the way for and were readily adaptable to the new
conception. The spirit of the commune pervaded the pro-
ceedings at Ipswich in 1200, but the new constitution bears
a thoroughly English impress. It lacks even a mayor, and
Ipswich was one of many self-governing boroughs which were
content with the right to elect their royal bailiffs.
It was only in this general way, indeed, that even the
broader features of the communal system, itself far from uni-
form in detail, could be adopted in England, so different were
the conditions of a fairly compact national kingdom from those
of the throughly feudalized lands beyond the Channel. Urban
government in England was a good deal less closely aristo-
cratic than in the communes of France and the Low Countries,
in which its organs developed out of the old local colleges of
judges, usually twelve in number and known as scabini, who
were appointed for life, originally by the Carolingians and
afterwards by the feudal lords among whom their empire broke
up. Annual election seems only to have been introduced, in
Flanders at any rate, towards the end of the twelfth century,
to prevent their making themselves hereditary, and it was
always some form of self-election or at the most election by
a select body of citizens, such as the hundred peers at Rouen
and its daughter cities, who were themselves apparently
hereditary.1 Election by the whole body of citizens as pre-
scribed by king John for the appointment of the bailiffs
of Ipswich was a thing unknown in the foreign commune, an
insular peculiarity explained by the necessity of making
every citizen responsible for the due payment of the fee farm
by those officers. Even in the election of a council, where they
were left a free hand, the ruling class at Ipswich, while (through
the bailiffs and coroners) appointing a limited body of electors,
thought well to obtain the assent of the community at large
to this procedure.2 As late as 1300 the council of Southampton,
we have seen, was elected by the whole community.3 Little
is known of the election of English mayors in the first century
of their existence, but it points to an original selection, in
form at least, by the general body of the burgesses, and at
1 Giry, Histoire de Saint-Omer, p. 169 ; Établissements de Rouen, p. 14 ;
Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions Françaises, p. 418. Thus the foreign
communes conform better to Maitland’s theory of the origin of town councils
than the English boroughs for which it was devised.
2 Above, p. 271. 3 Oak Book, i. 44.