i;8 FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
taking what he could get, Richard accepted from the fariner
of Southampton about a third of his arrears in full payment and
placed the town in the hands of keepers. In this case, however,
the farmer does not seem to have been the elected representa-
tive of the burgesses and in neither perhaps was the failure
without excuse. Too high a price had been exacted for the
privilege from Cambridge, and the resumption of farming at
Southampton a year later at little more than half the former
rate may have been a confession that, for the time being
at any rate, it was excessive.1
It was not, of course, any sympathy with municipal liber-
ties 2 which led Richard in the first weeks of his reign to grant
the firma burgi during pleasure to yet another borough, to
confirm it to one which had long possessed it on those terms,
and to extend the privilege permanently to five others, only
one of which had enjoyed the temporary right. Nottingham
received the lesser privilege just before the town was granted
to John, and disappeared for a while from the Pipe Rolls.3
Shrewsbury for 40 marks, the amount of one year’s farm,
was confirmed in her revocable tenure of it.4 The richer
Northampton by a fine of £100 obtained a regrant of its
farm in perpetuity with other liberties.5 Four towns, hitherto
farmed as part of their counties or (in one case) by special
farmers, Bedford,® Hereford,7 Worcester,8 and Colchester,”
were granted the privilege of self-farming in the same form
as Northampton, in fee farm. All but Worcester received
grants of other liberties as well. In view of this, of the con-
cession in hereditary succession and the absence of any
increments on the farms previously paid to the sheriffs
or other farmers, the fines taken compared very favourably
1 P.R. 3 Ric. I, p. 92.
’Richard’s need of new sources of revenue was made acute by his
alienation of six counties and the honours of Lancaster and Wallingford,
etc., to his brother John, a loss on the former alone of over /4000 a year
(Norgate, John Lackland, pp. 26-8). By these grants, many royal boroughs
were mediatized for five years.
• B.B.C. i. 244, 247.
4 Ibid. p. 233 ; P.R. 2 Ric. I, p. 124. 5 B.B.C. i. 222.
β P.R. 2 Ric. I, p. 138 ; 3 Ric. I, p. 109. For the amount of the farm
in this and the following cases, see the appendix, p. 184.
7 Ibid. 2 Ric. I, p. 46 ; B.B.C. p. 222. It was a condition of the grant
that the citizens should help in fortifying the city.
β P.R. 2 Ric. I, pp. 22, 24 ; B.B.C. p. 222.
, P.R. 2 Ric. I, p. in ; 4 Ric.I, p. 174 ; B.B.C. p. 244. The charter
does not contain a definite grant of fee farm, but the absence of any later
grant and the formal recognition of elective reeves seem decisive.
FEE FARMS AND LONDON COMMUNE
179
with those exacted by Henry II for lesser liberties.1 How
far this moderation was due to a realization that excessive
demands ultimately defeated their own end, how far to an
immediate policy of making the concession as attractive as
possible in the hope of raising the money quickly, it is difficult
to decide. The latter suggestion seems to find support in the
sudden introduction of the perpetual grant of the firma
burgi, for up till now the only grant of the kind which can be
proved to have been made was that of Henry I to London which
had been revoked very shortly afterwards. But, however
temporary the motive of this innovation may have been, it
was one which, once made, could not be undone. Grants
during pleasure continued to be issued, but even in the reigns
of Richard and John they were far outnumbered by those in
fee farm. Apart from those of 1189, eighteen such grants
by charter before 1216 are known and nearly a dozen more
were made by the end of the thirteenth century. It would
be easy of course to overstress the accidental initial aspect
of a change which must have played no inconsiderable part
in the decline of the power of the sheriff and in the evolu-
tion of that nice balance of attraction and repulsion between
county and borough which resulted in the House of Commons.
Henry I had laid the train, and Henry IΓs restrictive policy
could not have been permanently maintained.
So far as the new policy was an immediate financial ex-
pedient, it was hardly a success. Worcester and Northampton
alone paid their fines promptly. The others did not even
pay their farms at Michaelmas 1190, and it was two years
after that before Colchester paid up three years’ farm and
part of its fine. Nevertheless, William de Longchamp,
Richard’s chancellor and viceroy, apparently continued the
policy, for the citizens of York began to farm the city at
Easter 1190 at the rate of £100 blanch per annum.2 It may
be, however, that this was a deferred enjoyment of one of
the liberties for which they had promised a fine of 200 marks.3
They paid nothing of either and the privilege was withdrawn
after six months. A year later they paid the farm for that
period with an increment of £10 by tale, of which there had
been no mention in the roll of 1190.
That Longchamp’s policy was opportunist is shown by the
fact that the grant of their farm to the citizens of York was
ɪ Hereford 40 marks, Worcester and Colchester 60 each, Bedford 80.
1 P.R. 2 Ric. ɪ, p. 39. a Ibid., p. 68.