The name is absent

Until the fifteenth century the Crown had regarded the
conciliar arrangements of the boroughs as a matter of purely
local concern. The new policy of fixing councils by charter
or act of parliament, reflects the increasing difficulties ex-
perienced by the ruling class in dealing with democratic
agitation and its desire to secure a decision which would leave
everything in its hands and could not be challenged. Welcome
light is thrown upon the matters in dispute, election of officers,-
etc., by two compositions between the bailiffs and common-
alty of Shrewsbury, which were approved by parliament in
1433 and 1444. They illustrate the variety as well as the
general likeness of the expedients adopted to end such dis-
sensions. The earlier agreement created (or reorganized)
a body of twelve assistants to the two bailiffs, to sit for life,
with the usual reservations. They were to be appointed in
the first place by the bailiff's and commonalty, who were to
fill vacancies as they arose.¹ Much less favourable to the
commonalty was the composition of 1444. The twelve
were renamed aidermen and (with the bailiffs) were to fill
their own vacancies. A second council of twenty-four
“ sufficient and discreet ” commoners was added, who were
also appointed for life, in the first instance by the bailiffs
and commons, but afterwards by co-oρtion.² Thus the
Shrewsbury corporation was slightly less close than those
of Colchester, Leicester, and Northampton, where the first
council filled the vacancies in the second. Nor were meet-
ings of the whole commonalty entirely given up, though
provision was made against disorder by requiring them to
express their views through a speaker taken from the twenty-
four.³ The common speaker (praelocutor) is found also at
Norwich ⁴ and Lynn.⁵ It is a feature which was perhaps
originally derived from parliamentary procedure. The
Shrewsbury commons elected the chamberlain and auditors,
but the more important officers, bailiffs, coroners, etc., were
chosen by one of those nominated committees of which we
have noticed examples at Lynn and elsewhere.

The well-known Worcester ordinances of 1467 ⁶ furnish

ɪ Rot. Part. iv. 476 fi.            ² Ibid. v. 121 ff.           ³ Ibid. v. 122.

⁴ Where he was chosen by the common council of sixty (Hudson,
Records of Norwich, i. 104 ; cf. pp. 95 f.).

^s Here the speaker was a feature of the short-lived constitution which
was suppressed in 1416 (above, p. 319). He was elected by all burgesses,
excluding the jurats, there being as yet no common council at Lynn (Hist.
MSS. Comm., Rept. XI, App., pt. iii., p. 200).

• English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. 370 δ.

OTHER TWO-COUNCIL SYSTEMS

another detailed description of the working of a two-council
system, but, so erratic is the preservation of municipal docu-
ments, no account of its institution has come down to us.
The chief differences from the Shrewsbury arrangements
were that both councils contained double the Shrewsbury
number of members, and that those of the first council were
not called aidermen, but the twenty-four of the great clothing
(i.e. livery), a term used also at Nottingham, but differently.
They were forbidden to grant the common good without the
advice of the forty-eight. The commoners elected one of
the chamberlains, as at Shrewsbury, and were equally repre-
sented on assessment committees and among the “judges"
who sat with the auditors. Later, at all events, they might
in certain cases be elected bailiffs. Here again the officers
were elected by committees. The enactment of these
ordinances by the citizens in their gild merchant reveals a
feature of the city constitution which must have been very
rare, if not unique, by this date.

Exceptions have already been noted, at London and else-
where, to this normal type of two-council borough, in which
the number of the common councillors was just double that
of the aidermen or men of the great clothing, or otherwise
described members of the first council. In these exceptions
the numbers were at least fixed, but cases occur in which the
number of either one or the other council was left or became
undefined. In the first councils of twenty-four, the growth
of a sort of inner council of ex-mayors, the mayor’s brethren,
and of a class of ex-bailiffs, occasionally tended to strain
both the unity and the fixed number of the body. This
was what happened at Northampton, at any rate, where the
original twenty-four began to split into two on these lines
in the fifteenth century, and by the end of the next was
represented by a body of ex-mayors (the bench), tending to
be about twelve on the average, and a body of ex-bailiffs,
tending to number about twenty-four.¹ There was nothing,
however, so far as we know, in the composition of common
councils to lead to a similar vagueness, though there were,

¹ Markham and Cox, Records of N Orthampton, ɪɪ. 17 fi., where, however,
it is misleading to say that the old twenty-tour " disappeared in favour of
the forty-eight common council men.” They survived as the undefined
body of ex-bailiffs with certain powers, and if they lost control of town
policy, it was to the aidermen, not to the forty-eight. The same process
may account for the large and not quite fixed mayor's council at Oxford.
See Appendix II, p. 337.

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