328
THE COMMON COUNCIL
(1556),1 for instance, set up in each a single council of prin-
cipal or capital burgesses, filling up its own vacancies, to be
“ the common council of the borough.”
The Warwick charter is particularly interesting, because
it gave the bailiff and twelve principal burgesses discretion
to make, constitute, and admit from time to time “ tantos
alios burgenses de inhabitantibus probioribus burgi illius in
burgenses eiusdem burgi.” This rather ambiguous clause 2
was interpreted by the council as giving it the right to
appoint a certain number of assistants, not to be members
of the common council, but “ as it were the mouth of all the
commons.”3 As the twenty-four so appointed contested
this reading, they were first suspended and then (1576) re-
duced to twelve, “ to do those things that the comon multy-
tude should ells doo,” i.e. choose the bailiff out of two named
by the principal burgesses, which the charter directed to be
done by the inhabitants at large, and to assist in the election
of burgesses to parliament in order to satisfy the conditions
prescribed by a statute of Henry VI.4 In 1663, however,
the constitution was assimilated to what had then become
the normal type by the conversion of the principal burgesses
into aidermen and the assistants into a common council,
in the original restricted sense.5
As the addition of a common council (in this sense) in many
boroughs had more or less vested the powers of the com-
munity in the joint council, the frequent application of the
title assembly to its meetings may perhaps be considered as
a survival, though assembly could be used for the meetings
of even smaller bodies, e.g. those of the mayor and aidermen
of London in the fourteenth century.® Northampton affords
a clear case of this survival, for after the forty-eight had
displaced the mass of the burgesses in 1489, the meetings of
the enlarged council were called common assemblies and its
ordinances were described as made by “ the mayor and his
brethren the twenty-four Comburgesses and all the hole
Comynaltye (or hole body) of the towne.” 7
1 Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple (1830), pp. 379 f.
2 A closely similar one in some charters merely empowered the council
to admit new burgesses in the ordinary sense : e.g. see Mayo and Gould,
Municipal Documents of Dorchester, p. 62 (Charter of 1629).
3 Black Book, p. 16.
4 Ibid., pp. 106, 393 ; Statutes of the Realm, ii. 340. The assistants
were sometimes called " commoners ” (Black Book, p. 379).
5 Ibτd., p. 434 ; Carlisle, Topogr. Diet. (1808), s.v.
β Thomas, Cad. of Plea and Mem. Rolls, 1364-81, p. 215 et passim.
, Markham and Cox, Records of Northampton, ɪ. 340 ; cf. 329, etc.
THE TWO-COUNCIL SYSTEM AT WORK
329
The usual meeting-place of borough councils was a
chamber in the gildhall, town hall, or otherwise named civic
hall ; and at Exeter, York, and elsewhere the council came
later to be known as the council of the chamber, or simply
as the chamber, but with the increase of their numbers and
of civic business in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
separate council houses were provided in some towns.
Other names for their meetings besides common assemblies
or assemblies were common halls and councils simply. With
few exceptions, councils which comprised two or three sections
or companies, as they came to be called, seem to have sat in
the same room and to have had equal votes, though the
aidermen or other superior company occupied a bench at the
upper end of the chamber, sometimes raised above the general
level. At Plymouth, in 1683, it was said to be a rule that
constitutions could only be altered by a majority of the
whole body, which ought to consist of thirty-seven persons.1
It is only at Lincoln that we distinctly hear before the
seventeenth century of a twelve and a twenty-four forming
an inner and an outer house and voting separately.2 Laws
were made in the inner house, and the outer, it was com-
plained, was not always allowed sufficient time for their con-
sideration. Something of the kind, however, seems to have
obtained at York from the sixteenth century onwards, for
the common council is said to have proceeded largely by
petition to the mayor and his brethren.3 At Norwich the
sixty common councillors, though they sat with the mayor
and aidermen, could ask leave—like the commons in parlia-
ment—to go apart in a house by themselves.4
Much administrative business was, however, everywhere
disposed of by the mayor (or bailiffs) and their brethren, the
aidermen or other primary council, who could no doubt in
most cases practically decide what should come before the
whole body. At Canterbury, we are definitely informed, the
share of the common council, even in legislation, depended
1 Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. IX, pt. i., App., p. 277.
2 Ibid., Rept. XIV, App., pt. viii., pp. 78, 90. The twenty-four were
added to the twelve aidermen (mayor’s brethren) in r511, "to keep and
order all acts to be made in the common council ” (ibid., p. 24). The mayor
and aidermen sometimes sat as a " secret council.”
3 E.H.R. ix. 279 ; Raine, York (Historic Towns), p. 195. In the seven-
teenth century there was an upper and a lower house (ibid.). At Coventry
by 1617 the mayor and aidermen had possession of the council-house,
though the common council could be summoned to it for certain business
(Leet Book, pp. 335-7). * Hudson, Records of Norwich, i. 100.