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FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
by the roll differs in no essential respect from that which lies
behind the early Pipe Rolls of Henry II,
Eight boroughs were at this date farmed separately from
their counties and, with the exception of London and Lincoln,1
six of these 2 are the only towns the amount of whose farms in
1130 is known. Malmesbury and Dover certainly and pro-
bably Canterbury and Wallingford had had this status in
1086. Colchester and Northampton were escheats. Dover
and Canterbury were farmed by the sheriff of Kent,
Malmesbury by the (royal) reeve of the town and the others
by local barons, Brian fitz Count, the king’s Breton protégé
at Wallingford,3 Robert Revell at Northampton and Hamon
de St. Clare at Colchester. Since the sheriffs of Essex and
Northamptonshire received no allowance for the loss of these
borough farms, as they would have done in Henry IPs time,
we may perhaps infer that their county farms had been ad-
justed to meet the loss and that the amounts of farms in
general were not yet so fixed as they afterwards became. Of
the six borough farms with which we are dealing, only two, so
far as we know, those of Colchester (£40 blanch) and
Northampton (£100 by tale) remained exactly the same
under Henry II. The Colchester farm of 1130 was just
about half its render in 1086 but that of Northampton, on
the other hand, showed a remarkable increase, being more
than three times what the burgesses had paid to the sheriff
in 1086. Was this the result of Simon de Senlis’s régime ?
The other farms show similar variations in both directions.
That of Canterbury had been reduced by almost exactly 50
per cent., from £54 to £27 85. 10d., Wallingford’s from the
oppressive £80 of 1086 to £9 less than the £60 which had been
given as its true value at that date. On the other hand,
Malmesbury’s farm had risen from £14 to £20, Dover’s from
£54 to £90 95. gd., and London’s (with Middlesex) from £300
to£52505. Iθ⅜^.4 Inthelastcaseonlyweretherereallyserious
ɪ Red Book of Exchequer, ii. 657 ; Ballard, British Borough Charters,
i. 221 (the date must be 1154 or 1155, for the farm was raised from /140
blanch to £180 tale at Michaelmas 1155 ; unless we suppose that the latter
was '' the farm customary in the time of King Henry my grandfather ”
and had been reduced by Stephen.)
г Owing to mutilation of the roll, the farms of Winchester and
Southampton are not known.
3 His court influence is seen in the cancelling of three years’ arrears of
borough aid (£45) " on account of the poverty of the burgesses ” (,P.R- 31
Hen, I, p. 139)/
1 In this comparison, I have not taken into account any differences in
the mode of computation. That is hardly possible at this period, except
for blanch and tale payments, and in any case would not disturb the
general impression.
FIRMA BURGI, 1086-1154
157
arrears when the account was closed at Michaelmas 1130.
The four sheriffs were left owing more than £310. It is not
surprising that they were ready to pay a considerable sum
to be relieved of their onerous office,1 but they do not seem
to have succeeded. Their enormous debt may very well have
been one of the reasons which induced Henry not long after
to issue his famous charter granting the farm to the citizens
in perpetuity at the earlier and more equitable figure. This
involved the concession of the right to elect the sheriffs who
were the actual farmers and who had hitherto been appointed
by the king. Already in 1130 the Londoners had proffered
100 marks for this right and had paid nearly half of that sum,
but the smallness of the fine suggests that they were only
paying for a temporary possession of the farm.2
The acquisition by the citizens of the right to pay their
own farm into the exchequer with the other privileges con-
ferred by Henry’s charter, although it was in a few years lost
again for half a century, forms the first great landmark in
the development of self-government in the English boroughs.
They were not, however, the first in the field, for the roll of
1130 records that the men of Lincoln proffered 200 marks of
silver and four of gold “ that they might hold the city of the
king in chief ” {in eapite)p They had the additional stimulus
that the sheriff farmers were not citizens as at London but
external officials. It is not certain that they secured a grant
of the farm in fee {feodifirma) or, in looser modern phrase,
perpetual lease, but comparison of the sum they offered with
the London one makes it not impossible. If they did, Lincoln
can claim to have been the first borough to obtain such a
grant. However this may be, she was certainly more for-
tunate than London in retaining her privilege, whether it
was granted to them and their heirs or only to themselves.
Stephcn and Mathilda in their rival bids for the support of
Geoffrey de Mandeville ignored Henry’s charter to London
and regranted its sheriffdom to him as it had been held by
his father and grandfather. The only consolation of the
Londoners was that the traditional farm of £300 was thereby
confirmed. Lincoln, on the other hand, would seem to have
continued to farm her own revenues, for at Michaelmas, 1155,
Aubrey its reeve accounted for a whole year’s farm, £140,
1∏cluding the last weeks of Stephen’s reign, the amount being
credited to the sheriff in the county farm.4
1 P.R. 31 Hen. I, p. 149. s Ibid. p. 148.
3 Ibid. p. 114. « Red Book of Excheq. ii. 657.
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