34б EARLY MUNICIPAL HISTORY IN ENGLAND
Crown and the elective officers superseded by royal nominees.
For the right of dealing directly with the exchequer they were
willing to pay large sums down and to incur burdens which
many of them found almost too heavy to be borne. It is
striking evidence of their dislike of the sheriff. The nearer
tyrant was the more to be feared.
The rapacious John was the great distributor of such
leases, fee farm grants they were called, and so, more than
any other king, made himself responsible for the develop-
ment of the greater boroughs as areas locally within but
administratively outside the counties. The process was not
even approximately complete, however, so long as the sheriff
had the right of entry to serve writs of the exchequer for
non-payment of the farm, or general judicial writs in cases
arising in the town courts or those of the justices on circuit.
It was not until Henry III had involved himself in a morass
of debt and exhausted the patience of his barons that this
further step was conceded, in order to raise the wind. In
1255-57 nearly a score of towns bought the privilege of
return of writs, the right, that is, of receiving writs of the
Crown and reporting their execution. The Crown still sent
the writs to the sheriff, and so far the administrative unity
of the shire was preserved, a point of some importance when
parliamentary writs came later into question, but his officers
were not allowed to do more than deliver the writs into the
hands of the town bailiffs. The Crown, of course, retained
the right of authorizing the sheriff to enter the town by
special mandate, if its wishes could not be otherwise enforced.
This expedient was resorted to when the citizens of Oxford
and Cambridge showed themselves impotent to deal with
the many doubtful characters who resorted to the Univer-
sities, we are told, “ for mischief and not for study.” 1
Emancipation from the sheriff, though it had gone far,
was not absolutely complete until a borough was constituted
a county of itself with its own sheriffs receiving all writs direct
from the Crown and its mayor acting as royal escheator.
The only towns in this position before 1373, when Bristol
got it, were Chester (in part) and London.
The virtual emancipation of the greater royal boroughs
from the shires in which they lay was accompanied by the
growth of a special town spirit and organization which seems
to have been greatly stimulated by the communal movement
1 B.B.C. ii. 161-3 ; Rot. Part. v. 425.
EARLY MUNICIPAL HISTORY IN ENGLAND 347
on the Continent. Here again king John is in the front of
the stage. It was he who in his factious days during Richard’s
absence authorized the setting up of a sworn commune in
London, and as king he issued the first charter, also to
London, which arranged for the annual election of a civic
head with the new French title of mayor, whose first appear-
ance had closely followed, if it was not coincident with the
swearing of the commune. Scholars have differed as to the
length of life of the London commune. Dr. Round, in 1899,
held that the oath of the twenty-four in 1206 to do justice
and take no bribe, which he found in a manuscript collection
of London documents of this period,1 implied a body derived
from the “ vingt-quatre ” of Rouen, and probably the parent
of the later Common Council, as well as the practical existence
of the commune so late as the middle of John’s reign.
These conclusions were vigorously disputed by Miss
Bateson 2 and M. Petit-Dutaillis,3 who convinced themselves
that the twenty-four in question were none other than the
aidermen. If disproof of this identification would suffice
to prove Dr. Round’s view, it might seem to be established,
for my friend Professor Unwin has called attention to the
existence, in the printed Close Roll of the year in question,
of a royal order, unknown to all the disputants, which is
clearly a mandate to the barons of London to elect this very
body of twenty-four.4
Some doubt may, however, be felt whether this body,
which was to be elected to remedy the misgovernment
of the existing civic administration, was intended to be
permanent, and it is not easy to meet Miss Bateson’s point
that their oath says nothing of consultative functions, while
the oath of the later common councillor says nothing of any-
thing else, for he had no judicial function. On the other
hand, the order for the election of the twenty-four does men-
tion financial as well as judicial duties.8 Moreover, this was
1 Commune of London, T.’i'j. Cf. above, p. 256.
2 Eng. Hist. Reυ. xvii. 507-8.
8 Studies Supplementary to Stubbs, i. 99.
, Finance and Trade under Edward III, ρ. 13. Professor Unwin was
mistaken in supposing that they were merely to report on the maladminis-
tration of the city.
5 Round, in ignorance of the writ for their election, identified them with
the shiυini of the citizens’ oath to the commune in 1193, in whom Miss
Bateson saw only the aidermen under a foreign name (see above, p. 266).
The aidermen in any case succeeded in maintaining their position as city
executive. Nevertheless the commune in the sense of a sworn associa-
tion of the citizens was a permanent result of the crisis (cf. above, p. 252).