ι6o FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
Paris nor Orleans, for instance, ever attained the communal
status.
Maitland has warned us that the privilege conferred by a
lease of its farm to a town was not so wide as the terms of
some grants might suggest. The retention by the Crown of
direct relations with its tenants in the boroughs and of its
property in their unoccupied spaces shows that what the bur-
gesses were enfeoffed with was not a mesne tenancy of the-
town,ɪ His conclusion that the grant of a town in farm to
its burgesses was merely a grant of the sheriff’s bailliwick in
the town is borne out by the terms of Henry IPs charter to
Cambridge in 1185.2 The borough reeve or bailiff, though
elected by the burgesses, when they became responsible for
the farm, to represent them in the collection and payment
thereof, remained in some sense a royal officer.
The continental commune, though its status was one of
vassalage in place of previous subjection, does not itself seem
to have obtained a mesne tenancy of the soil of the town.
The rights of the lord over his tenants, though severely abridged
and regularized, were carefully guarded. Nevertheless, the
communal movement had inevitably a powerful attraction
for the more restless and ambitious elements in English
boroughs, (l) In its early and most striking phase, it was
a revolutionary movement, and where it triumphed, its
success was primarily due to a sworn confederacy of the
citizens, though it was favoured by the quarrels of feudal
lords and the self-interested sympathy of the king at Paris.
(2) Between a self-governing community of this type created
de novo and the slowly developing commιιnitas of the English
borough, comparison doubtless seemed all in favour of the
“ commune.” It had the strongest bond of union, cemented
by oath and sanctioned by charter. While the borough was
painfully adapting an organization mainly judicial to growing
administrative needs, the communal charter provided a council
for both purposes.3 Instead of a municipal head who even in
rarely favoured towns was, though elective, still practically
ɪ Hist, of English Law, i. 650 f.
2 " Sciatis me tradidisse ad firmam burgensibus nιeis de Cantebruge
viɪlam ɪneam de Cantrebruge, tenendaɪn de me in capite per eandem
firmam quam Vicecomites mihi reddere soɪebant, et ut ipsi inde ad scac-
carium meum respondeant ” (Stubbs, Select Charters, ed. Davis, p. 196).
This was a terminable lease, not a grant in fee farm.
3 For the distinction of consules or Consultores, usually twelve in number,
from or among the scabini see K. Hegel, Stadte und Gilden der germanischen
Volker, passim.
FIRMA BURGI, 1086-1154
ι6ι
an officer of the royal lord and in the rest was subordinate to
the royal sheriff, the commune chose a mayor whose obliga-
tions were to it alone.1 It is not surprising that these features
should have made a strong appeal to discontented or aspiring
burgesses in England.who did not know how seldom the full
ideal of communal independence was realized, how many
compromises had to be made and what poor security for per-
manence the strongest of the communes possessed.
I have suggested that Henry Γs concessions to Lincoln
and London may have been in part dictated by a statesman-
like policy of keeping the influence of the communal idea
within bounds, but it is no more than a suggestion. The
anarchy of Stephen’s reign was much more favourable to
the spread of the contagion, especially in London which was
fully alive to the importance of its support in the succession
strife. Dr. Round has noted the likeness of the pactio . . .
mutuo juramento between Stephen and the city in 1135 and
the bilateral oaths of the French communes and their lords.
He is inclined to see a definite adoption of French precedent
in the communie quam vocant Londoniarum which in 1141
sent to the Empress Matilda to pray for the king’s release and
into which barons of the realm had been received, a well-
known practice of foreign communes. The parallel of sworn
“ Conspiratio ” is exact enough, but as there is no mention of
municipal liberties demanded, its only object may have been
the expulsion of the empress 2 and in any case it was short-
lived. As we have seen, even the concessions of Henry I
were sacrificed to Stephen’s need of the support of Geoffrey
de Mandeville. After Geoffrey’s desertion to the empress, who
confirmed Stephen’s grant, he still kept a garrison in the
Tower. Its surrender in 1143 left it open to the king either
to revert to the commune if there had been a communal con-
stitution or to Henry Γs constitution, but unfortunately we
have no hint as to how London was governed in the last decade
of the reign.
1 In the Anglo-French communes this was not always so. The bur-
gesses of La Rochelle used to present three of the more discreet and better
burgesses to King John for him to elect one of them as mayor (Rot. Litt.
C г'■ P'.535).
to .Petit-Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional His-
II