32б
THE COMMON COUNCIL
of course, differences of standing within them, and it is not
-obvious why that of Gloucester was not even limited to a
maximum of forty until 1627, and not fixed absolutely at
that number until 1672.1 Sometimes, as at Coventry, though
the number was fixed, it was not very strictly adhered to.2
Even where numbers were fixed, variations from the
standard type were caused by special local developments,
such as the part in municipal government won by the crafts
in northern boroughs. A somewhat complicated council
was evolved at Beverley by 1536, which consisted of three
benches of twelve, the first being the twelve governors
(formerly keepers), the original council and future aidermen,
who were elected by the crafts from the other two benches,
who together formed the twenty-four councillors or assistants.
When vacancies occurred in the twenty-four, the whole
thirty-six named two persons, of whom the community
chose one. As the whole council was thus in some sort an
emanation from the burgesses at large, there was more pro-
priety than usual in its being described as the common
council of the town.® The power of the crafts and popular
election of common councillors (in the strict sense) is seen
also at York, the mother city of Beverley. A charter of
Henry VIII created a new common council, to which the
thirteen principal crafts contributed two each, and fifteen
inferior ones one each, forty-one in all.4
4
Even in the south we have seen that the common coun-
cillors at the end of the fifteenth century were not always
1 G. S. Blakeway, The City of Gloucester (1924), pp. 55 ff.
2 The constitution of Coventry, a corporation of comparatively late
origin (1345), was in general exceptionally fluid and wanting in clearly
defined bodies. Its common council, as fixed by a charter of James I,
contained thirty-one superiors, who were apparently ex-officials, and
twenty-five inferiors. Coventry was also exceptional in the prominence
of its court Ieet in the government of the town (see the Coventry Leet Book
or Mayor's Register (1907-13), ed. Dormer Harris). A somewhat similar
part was played by the three Inquests at Hereford (Hist. MSS. Comm.,
Rept. XIII, iv. 316-17, 326), and by the two Inquests at Newcastle-under-
Lyme (Pape, Medieval Newcastle-under-Lyme, p. 136).
, Rept. Hist. MSS. Comm, on Beverley Corporation MSS., pp. 53-5.
4 Gross, Gild Merchant, i. in ; E.H.R. ix. 279. For the share in the
election of mayors given to the workers by Edward IV, see Foedera, xi.
530, quoted in York Memorandum Book (Surtees Soc.), introd., p. viii.
There is evidence of the representation of artificers in assemblies between
1380 and 1392 (ibid. i. 39,173).
THE TWO-COUNCIL SYSTEM AT WORK 327
the nominees of the mayor, as seems to have been the
custom at Coventry, or of the mayor and aidermen, or of
the common council itself, or of both councils. To these
cases in which the common council was not yet closed there
must be added that of Canterbury, where, in 1473, it was still
elected per Communitatem.1 The permission to the “ citizens
and community ” of Chester in a charter of 1506 to elect
annually twenty-four aidermen, and forty other citizens as
a common council, suggests an even more liberal constitution,2
but was perhaps open to more than one interpretation. At
any rate, the mayor incurred a rebuke in 1533 for filling
vacancies in the common council himself, and the mayor,
aidermen, and residue of the common council were directed
to appoint from wise, discreet, and substantial commons.3
This was in accordance with the general development which
was embodied in numerous royal charters during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, though the selection of
common councillors was more usually left to the mayor and
aidermen alone.
As the two councils acted together for all business in which
the common councillors participated,4 and acted for the com-
munity at large, it is not surprising that they were, from
this point of view, regarded as a single body, and that the
term common council came to be used either for the whole
or for the element which was supposed specially to represent
the commons. At London, we have seen, “ common council ”
sometimes included the aidermen and sometimes excluded
them.5 The Crown itself had no fixed usage. In the Col-
chester charter of 1462, the term is used in the wider sense,®
in that of 1506 to Chester in the narrower.’ By the middle
of the sixteenth century, it could be employed officially
where there was no special representation of the common-
alty. The charters of Warwick (1554) 8 and Barnstaple
ɪ Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. IX, pt. i., App., p. 170.
a Morris, Chester in Plantagenet and Tudor Times (1893), p. 525.
8 Ibid., pp. 218-19.
4 The common councilmen were often described as assistants of the
superior body. At Shrewsbury, for instance, " thei . . . Shallbecontinuell
assistentz and of counsell to the seid bailiffs and aldreɪnen ” (Rot. Part. v.
121).
5 The present traditional title of the whole body is : " the Lord Mayor,
Aidermen and Commons of the City of London, in Common Council
assembled.”
’ Above, p. 323 n. i. But the narrower usage prevailed locally.
’ See above.
β The Black Book of Warwick, ed. T. Kemp (1898), p. ɪɪo ; cf. p. 341 n .