The name is absent

frequent during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,¹ but
unfortunately in other cases we have no such precise accounts
of the events which led to their institution. It was usual
to make the second council double the number of the old
twelve or twenty-four and to rename these aidermen. The
new twenty-four or forty-eight are but rarely stated to have
represented the wards as in the three boroughs we have
examined.² These additional bodies were created by local
agreement, by royal charter, or by act of parliament. The
first procedure is well illustrated by what happened at
Winchester in 1456. The ruling body there was the ancient
twenty-four, which formed a separate estate, though the
commonalty was not without influence in the communal
assembly—an offshoot of the primitive burghmote—and elected
one of the two bailiffs. In the year mentioned, it was decided
to reduce the number of the twenty-four to sixteen,³ and to
associate with them in the government of the city eighteen
citizens “ de parte Communitatis coelectis.” ⁴ If the reason
given for the change, the reduction of the burden upon the time
of the twenty-four, be the real one, it is perhaps not surprising
that nothing more is heard of the scheme. Yet a similar
arrangement at Newcastle-under-Lyme proved workable. At
some date between 1411 and 1491 a body of twelve pro com-
munitate was associated with another twelve representing the
twenty-four seniores who had hitherto constituted the town
council.® This was part of a kind of division of power, for
there were also bailiffs and serjeants for the twenty-four and
the commonalty respectively. The twelve pro Communitate
(doubled by 1547) came to be known as “ the council of the
town ” and later as the common council (consilium com-
munitatis).^β An early example of a second council created
by charter is found at Colchester. By Edward IV’s charter
of 1462 it was to consist of sixteen of the better and more
discreet burgesses chosen from the four wards by the bailiffs,

ɪ The second council of twenty-four recorded at York before 1411 seems
to have been of a less popular kind. (York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers
(Surtees Soc.), i. 30, 119 ; ii. 256).

² An exception was Colchester, where the second council, here only
sixteen in number, were drawn equally from the four wards (Cal. of Chart.
Rolls, vi. 150).

³ Of whom seven were ex-mayors.

* Black Book of Winchester, ed. W. H. B. Bird (1925), ρ. 86.

^t T. Pape, Medieval Newcastle-under-Lyme (1928), pp. 176 fi.

^β MS. Book of the Corporation of Newcastle-under-Lyme, s. 1547 and
1588. Mr. Pape kindly lent me his transcript of this book.

OTHER TWO-COUNCIL SYSTEMS

aidermen, and (old) council of sixteen, itself to be chosen
by the bailiffs and aidermen. The whole body, including the
second sixteen, was, in words which were to become common
form in royal charters, to be and to be called the common
council of the borough, and it was given full powers of legis-
lation and taxation.¹ Thus, though the town was in the same
charter incorporated as “ the bailiffs and community of the
borough of Colchester,” the powers of the community were
transferred to a small self-electing body of forty-two persons,
and the government of Colchester became as closely oligar-
chical as that of Lynn sixty years later.

The moving cause of such changes is clearly stated in
the acts of parliament which in 1489 vested popular rights
of participation in elections of officers and assessment of
taxation at Leicester and Northampton in close bodies con-
sisting of the mayor, his twenty-four brethren, and a new
element, consisting of forty-eight of the wiser inhabitants,
chosen by them and changed by them as often as seemed
necessary. Great discords, it is premised, had arisen in the
two towns and in other boroughs corporate at the election
of mayors and officers by reason of the multitude of the
inhabitants being of little substance and of no discretion,
who exceed in the assemblies the other approved, discreet,
and well-disposed persons, and by their confederacies,
exclamations, and headiness have caused great troubles in
the elections and in the assessing of lawful charges.² At
Leicester, the limited assembly which henceforth transacted
the town business in “ common halls ” was careful for a
century to describe itself as acting “ for the whole body of
the town,” ⁸ but a charter of 1589 formally incorporated
the mayor, twenty-four (now all called aidermen), and forty -
eight as the “ mayor and burgesses of the town of Leicester,”
reducing the rest of the population to the status of mere
“ inhabitants.” ⁱ

ɪ Cal. Chart. Rolls, vi. 150. The first sixteen had been evolved from an
original twenty-four by the separation of eight auditors who became aider-
men by 1443. See below, p. 335. Although the charter calls the whole
body the common council, the town records usually distinguish the common
council from the aidermen, and sometimes limit the name to the second
body or even the first (Red Paper Book, ed. W. G. Benham (1902), pp. 26,
28, 31).

² Miss Bateson’s summary of the act in Records of Leicester, ii. 319.

³ Ibid. Ill, xviii. The two councils were sometimes distinguished as
the “ masters and the commynte ” (ibid., p. 29).

ⁱ Ibid., p. 248. A further charter in 1599 gave to the forty-eight the
formal title of common council (ibid., p. 361).

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