344 EARLY MUNICIPAL HISTORY IN ENGLAND
demesne are found in enjoyment of such special features of
borough tenure as the right of sale and bequest of their
tenements, and larger urban communities thereon, e.g. Basing-
stoke and Kingston-on-Thames, though not formally called
boroughs, attained a status which was practically indis-
tinguishable from that of recognized boroughs. This burghal
aspect of ancient demesne 1 becomes troublesome when we
attempt to define a borough, just as it created difficulties when
the demesne was taxed at the borough rate by parliament.
There was some uncertainty at first as to who should give
the consent of the men on ancient demesne, and, in default
of a more logical solution, it was finally settled in favour of
the knights of the shire,2 whose normal constituents paid
at a lower rate and to whose expenses the demesne men
successfully refused to contribute.3
A familiar feature of royal charter-giving to towns is the
grant of the liberties of highly privileged communities, like
London, Winchester, or Hereford, to other boroughs, new
or old. Although these liberties were usually set out in full,
the standardization of formula must have greatly lightened
the labour of the clerks of the royal chancery. So mechani-
cally, in fact, were the models followed that many towns
which received the liberties of London had in their charters
references to that peculiarly London institution the Port-
soken, as if it were a local area.
Privileges of such imposing lineage were highly valuable
to a growing community, but could not arrest the decline of
a weak one. Not all the liberties of Winchester availed to
save Henry Ill’s new borough of Warenmouth (1247), in
Northumberland, from early extinction, and by 1585 the
site of the Nova Villa, founded by Edward I in Dorset, with
the liberties of London, was marked only, as it still is, by a
single farm called Newton, near the port of Ower Passage
in the Isle of Purbeck.4
1 See Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Eng. Law, i. 384, and Hemmeon,
Burgage Tenure in England, passim.
2 Rot. Parl. i. 457 (16 Edw. II, 1322).
3 Ibid. iii. 44, 64 ; Benham, Red Paper Book of Colchester, p. 58.
4Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset (ι86ι), i. 462, cf. 652 ; Calendar of Patent
Rolls, 1281-92, p. 217, gives the appointment on 7th January, 1286, of
commissioners to lay out a new town at Gotowre super Mare in the parish
of Studland. Merchants and others taking plots and beginning to build
were to enjoy the liberties of Lyme and Melcombe (which were those of
London), and a charter to that effect was promised. The well-known
charter to IIoiia Villa, granted on loth May following (Cal. Chart. Rolls.
ii. 337), fulfilled this promise.
EARLY MUNICIPAL HISTORY IN ENGLAND 345
As the word “ liberties ” implies, these chartered privileges
were usually, and especially at first, of a negative rather than
a positive kind. The simpler sort exempted the recipients
from some onerous service or payment. The most valuable
privilege of the latter kind was a general exemption from
local tolls, which was sometimes extended to the foreign
dominions of the Crown. An exception was often made
for the tolls of London. A good example of release from
burdensome services was the exemption from finding lodging
for the king’s retinue, whether demanded by force or by the
billet of the marshal, which spread from London through
Bristol to the larger Irish boroughs. Canterbury and
Rochester, being on the Dover Road, had to be content with
the requirement of an order from the marshal.
Even such a liberty as that of electing a justice to try
Crown pleas, i.e. homicide and other serious offences arising in
the borough, which looks positive enough, was really negative,
for it was chiefly prized as excluding the sheriff or other royal
officer from entering the town to try such cases. This rare
privilege, so far as I know, was only granted twice, to London
by Henry I and to Colchester by Richard I. The Colchester
case was belated, for Henry IΓs institution of regular circuits
of the royal justices, who superseded the sheriffs for this
purpose, proved fatal to the extension of the privilege.
From this time, however, many towns were empowered to
elect a coroner or coroners to take the preliminary steps for
the trial of Crown pleas, which had been one of the duties
of the town justice, and the sheriff was thus excluded even
from this humbler interference in the town. A few boroughs
which were not shire-towns were favoured by special visits
of the royal justices to try Crown pleas, but only in one
exceptional case was there any reversion to the old expedient
of municipal justices. It is significant of the abnormal posi-
tion of Chester that in it alone of all the towns within the
four seas Edward I allowed Crown pleas to be tried by the
mayor and bailiffs.1
It was the position of the sheriff as the local financial
agent of the Crown which made the towns eager to take
perpetual leases of the royal revenue derived from them,
even at rents so oppressive that their chief citizens were
frequently mulcted for arrears or, as a last resort, the liberties
of the town were temporarily taken into the hands of the
1 Charter of 1300 (R. H. Morris, Chester in Plantagenet and Tudor
Reigns, p. 492 ; B.B.C. ɪi. 146).