140
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
see what light they can be made to throw upon the farming
system of the twelfth century. Their most striking revelation
is that this London crisis was not a single one, as has hitherto
been generally assumed,1 but fell into two parts, the farm
being obtained in 1190 and the commune a year later. This
is only a negative contribution to the history of the London
commune, but earlier Pipe Rolls, we shall see, record similar
but abortive attempts at Gloucester and York.
The earliest known case of a borough being farmed by
its burgesses directly from the Crown occurs in x 130, when
the men of Lincoln secured this privilege, and in all prob-
ability this was the first grant of the kind. Nearly fifty years
before, as we learn from Domesday Book, the burgesses of
Northampton were farming their town, but they were farming
it from the sheriff of the county, who alone was responsible
to the Crown. How far was this a typical case in 1086, and to
what extent had the Normans taken over the old English
system ? The details given in the invaluable descriptions of
boroughs in the great survey supply a fuller answer to the first
than to the second of these questions, but the pre-Norman
data, though somewhat scanty, are occasionally illuminating.
They are well known, but studied from this particular angle
they suggest conclusions which do not wholly accord with
current views of the sheriff’s official relations to the towns
before the Conquest.
I. The Firma Burgi in 1066
At the date of the Norman Conquest, the contrast between
England and the much more highly feudalized region from
which the invaders came was nowhere more marked than in
the status of the towns. With the partial exception of Durham,
there was nothing corresponding to the great cities held by
feudatories of the French and imperial Crowns. The Con-
fessor had indeed granted all his profits from Exeter,2 Bath,3
Ipswich,4 and Torksey s to his wife, Queen Edith, but this
was part of her dower and would lapse to the Crown at her
death. Apart from Durham, and Dunwich in Suffolk, the
permanently mediatized borough occurred only in Kent and
was comparatively unimportant. Sandwich,6 Hythe,7 and
1 Mr. Page is an exception, but he hardly realizes the importance of his
correction. See below, pp. 181-2.
2 D.B. i. 100. 3 Ibid. iv. 106.
4 Ibid. ɪi. 290. 6 Ibid. i. 337.
, Ibid. i. 4. , Ibid. i. 4b ; Mon. Angl. i. 96-7.
FIRMA BURGI IN юбб
141
Seasalter1 belonged to the see of Canterbury and Edward
had recently granted all his rights in Fordwich to the abbey of
St. Augustine.2
An overwhelming proportion of English boroughs were
therefore still directly subject to the authority of the national
monarch and a source of profit to him. Their reeves were
royal officers appointed by the king. In most of them, he
was the largest landowner. Despite extensive immunities and
a deduction of one-third (terlius denarius') for the earl, the
total sum flowing into the royal treasury from their judicial
amercements, tolls, mints, customary payments, rents, and
escheats formed no inconsiderable part of the modest state
revenue of a somewhat unprogressive age.
The earl’s third penny of borough revenue deserves some
attention because, rightly understood, it seems to give a
clue to the old English methods of dealing with this revenue.
A brief summary of the Anglo-Norman system will make
the exposition clearer. One result of the Conquest and the
resultant forfeiture of most of the English earls was the re-
sumption of their borough third penny by the Crown. In
new creations, it was seldom granted with the third penny
of the pleas of the shire. When the Pipe Rolls begin in 1130,
the whole revenue from royal towns, save a few which were
separately farmed, is included in the farm of the sheriff of
the county in which they lie. An exceptional' grant of the
third penny of a borough to a new earl (or other magnate)
would only mean a payment by the sheriff for which he re-
ceived allowance in his annual account at the exchequer,3
just as he did for the third penny of the county pleas in the
case of a number of earls. The third penny was merely a mark
of dignity, the earl as such having no official position in town
or county, but in the days before the Conquest when he was
the highest of local officials and an overmighty one, when, too,
1 D.B. i. 4. 2 See below, p. 143.
3 But the allowance might be concealed on the earliest Pipe Rolls by
some adjustment of the county farm and at any date if made on the farm
of some manor to which the third penny was attached (see below, p. 142).
Even the third penny of the county does not always appear on the Pipe
Rolls when granted to an earl. See Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, App. H.
The third penny of Ipswich granted to Count Conan of Brittany before
n56 was allowed to the sheriff of Suffolk in that year (P.R. 2 Hen. II, p. 8),
but, perhaps owing to the union of the farms of Norfolk and Suffolk in ɪ ɪ 57,
does not appear again until Count Conan's fief escheated in 1171 (ibid.
18 Hen. II, p. 5). The third penny of Norwich granted to Hugh Bigot
with the earldom of Norfolk (1155) does not appear on the rolls with the
third penny of the county.
L