298
ORIGIN OF TOWN COUNCILS
but this in itself implies a distinction. A long struggle be-
tween the episcopal lords of Lynn and its burgesses ended
in the recognition of a mayor instead of their reeve.1 The
mayor allowed to Drogheda in Louth (1253) had in charge
to see that the reeves and other bailiffs justly treated both
poor and rich? Nottingham obtained a mayor in 1284 to
improve the condition of its burgesses and other men by pre-
siding over the bailiffs and other officers of the town in all
matters relating to the government and advantage of its
two boroughs.3 When the mayoralty of Northampton was
sanctioned in 1299, after more than eighty years of recorded
existence, the professed object was to associate the mayor
with the bailiffs in the trial of pleas, once their exclusive
province.4 The suggestion conveyed by the excessive rarity
of these licences that the new communal spirit often took
the form of setting up a mayor without seeking permission
finds confirmation at Lynn. It had a mayor from 1212 at
least, but a final concord between the bishop of Norwich
and the burgesses in 1234 reveals that he had never had
the lord’s recognition.5 It is significant that the burgesses’
assumption of a mayor was accompanied by assertion of the
right to tallage themselves for municipal purposes. At
Lynn, as at London, the mayoralty is the creation of com-
munal self-assertion and this no doubt marks its general
character at the outset. It accounts for the almost complete
absence of formal authorization. Only by insistence on the
presentation of the mayor elect to the king or other lord,
as John’s London charter of 1215 shows, was control over
the new officer secured. The express permission which John
gave to London was extended to Dublin in 1229 and was
shortly afterwards sought by Bristol.® But its request did
not result in a grant, and after 1229 there was no other
chartered allowance of the privilege to an English royal
borough for half a century.
It might with some plausibility be argued, though Pro-
fessor Stephenson does not do so, except perhaps by impli-
cation, that there is no need to look abroad for the prototype
of the English mayor when he often succeeded a civic head
who also was not in origin a financial or judicial officer or
1Seebelow. 2 B.B.C. ii. 363. 3 Ibid., p. 364.
4 Ibtd., ρ. 364. 5 Ibid., pp. 362-3.
3 Close Rolls, 1234-37, p. 363. It is interesting to note that the bur-
gesses also asked that they might have the London pondus.
DR. STEPHENSON’S THEORY
299
invested with any burghal authority by the Crown. Were
not the mayors of the thirteenth century modelled upon the
gild aidermen who appear at Oxford and elsewhere in the
twelfth as chief officers of their boroughs ? At Leicester
and Southampton the change from aiderman to mayor seems
to have been little more than change in name. But in these
cases the conversion came comparatively late. That earlier
in the century, in 1249, the burgesses of Southampton should
have obtained from Henry III a grant that neither they nor
their heirs should ever have a mayor in their town 1 shows
that the transition had not always been so simple. Where
the gild community and the burgess community were prac-
tically identical, as would seem to have been the case at
Oxford, there would have been little or no difficulty. But
the Southampton gild, strong as it was, did not include the
whole of the burgesses.2 The mayoralty was a burgess office,
unconnected with trade ; the mayor was the head of the
whole community, gildsmen or no gildsmen. So the gild
majority at Southampton would have none of him. Although
Lynn resembled Southampton in having a powerful gild which
did not include all burgesses, it was one of the first boroughs
to set up a mayor. As its liberties were those of Oxford
(and so those of London), example may have played its part,
but the need of presenting a solid front to their episcopal
lord perhaps weighed even more with the burgesses.
It is no mere coincidence that borough seals appear
about the same time as mayors. They are both expressions
of the new communal movement in the more ambitious
boroughs.3
So far it was only the foreign commune that had an officer
comparable with the new burghal head. The borrowing of
his title shows that the Londoners of 1191 were fully alive
to any features of continental municipalities which could
be with advantage adopted in their own city.
As the mayor, despite his foreign title, is for Dr. Stephenson
a purely native development, so a fortiori is the elected and
sworn council of fixed number which assisted him (or elected
bailiffs) in the rule of the town. Here he may seem to be on
1B.B.C. ii. 363.
2 Oak Book (Southampton Rec. Soc.), i. Introd., p. xxx f. ; see also
above, p. 249.
3 Cf. the decision of St. Louis in 1235 that the citizens of Rheims " non
debebant habere sigillum cum non habeant communiam ” (Ducange s.
Commune, etc.), and the later surrender of their common seals by English
boroughs whose charters -were cancelled (above, p. 237).