3ι8 THE COMMON COUNCIL
(1415)1 and embodied in a new charter (1417).2 The omitted
words were restored, but the assent of the commonalty was
to be given by a common council of sixty chosen by the four
wards, as the Ieets were now renamed. The opportunity
was taken to revise the whole constitution on the London
model. The twenty-four were henceforth to be called aider-
men, and, though elected by the wards, were to hold office for
life or until removal for reasonable cause. The procedure
arranged for the election of mayor and sheriffs alsβ closely
follows their model, except that, in addition to the aidermen
and the common council, all resident citizens were allowed
to be present, not merely those summoned by the mayor
from the wards as in London—down to 1475. Acute civic
troubles in the period of the Wars of the Roses were not pri-
marily due to defects in this constitution, and although changes
were proposed and even temporarily adopted, the only per-
manent alteration of vital moment was the exclusion after
1447 of the general body of freemen from the elections of
mayor and sheriffs,3 which therefore became less popular than
those of London. With this exception and a more fatal change
in the eighteenth century, which restricted the freemen’s
election of the sixty common councillors to twelve, who co-
opted the remainder,4 the city’s constitution, as settled in
1415-17, survived down to 1835.
Superficially, the constitutions of London and Norwich,
as they stood at the close of the middle ages with their popu-
larly elected common councils, might seem to differ little
from that of modern boroughs. There was this vital dif-
ference, however, that the aidermen, though elected, were
chosen for life and formed a separate estate of the governing
body, with magisterial powers in which the common council
had no share.
It is a striking illustration of the influence of London on
other municipalities that, somewhere about the time of the
Norwich compromise of 1415, constitutional changes on the
London model were effected at the bishop of Norwich’s borough
of Lynn in Norfolk, then one of the most prosperous English
seaports. The chief organ for legislation and administration
at Lynn was a common assembly Ifongregacio Communitatis),5
1 W. Hudson, Records of Norwich, pp. 93 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 36.
3 Ibid., p. cv. 1 Ibid., p. cxv.
s At Lynn the community seems to have included the semi-privileged
class of episcopal tenants, who in the accounts of civic strife are called
inferiores.
LYNN
319
which for very important business might number from seventy
to a hundred and ten persons or more, though the mention of
individual summons and of a fine of 2s. for default suggests
that the same difficulty of securing a quorum at ordinary
meetings was experienced as at London and Norwich.1 Tumul-
tuous interference with elections was obviated here, not as
at London by forbidding all but those specially summoned
to take part in them, but by the more effective device, which
is found also at Exeter and Cambridge, of an electoral com-
mittee. The election of the mayor and other officers and
—down to 1395 at least—of the twenty-four counsellors of
the mayor was entrusted to twelve persons, the first four of
whom were named by the aiderman of the gild merchant and
then co-opted eight others.2 About the beginning of the
fifteenth century, annual election of the twenty-four was
abandoned in favour of co-option for life or until resignation
or removal, and it was perhaps now that they came to be
commonly called jurats.3 The mayor and other officers
continued to be elected by the twelve eligors. It was very
likely this closing of the council by the potentiores and its
results which provoked an agitation for a more liberal con-
stitution among the mass of the burgesses (médiocres). In
1411-13 they had joined with the inferiores, as they had done
a hundred years before,4 in resisting the financial burdens
laid upon them by the ruling class on unfair assessment or
as in this case, without their assent. The king was appealed
to and the potentiores were obliged to make concessions. These
financial disputes were closed by a solemn agreement, which
inter alia bound the mayor not to deal with the rents, etc., of
the community without the co-operation of a committee in-
cluding both médiocres and inferiores.3 But fresh contests
arose over the election of officers and councillors. The
committee of twelve eligors was abolished and the election of
the mayor and four chamberlains was conformed, so far as
possible, to the London practice. The burgesses named two
1 A fairly continuous record of its more important meetings during the
second half of the fourteenth century is contained in the Red Register of
King’s Lynn, ed. H. Ingleby, vol. ii.
2Ibid. ii. passim; Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. XI, App., pt. iii., pp.
195-6. Burgesses for parliament and coroners were appointed by com-
mittees of twelve who were similarly selected (ibid., pp. 146 fi.).
3 Ibid., pp. 105-6. They were still elected yearly in 1395 (Red Register,
ii. 15).
4 Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. XI, u.s., pp. 187, 240.
s Ibid., pp. 191-4.