Classes
within the
trading com-
panies.
The livery-
men of
London.
Diversity of
growth in
the different
towns.
586 Congtitutional History. [chap.
lesser companies the old struggle for privilege and equality was
renewed. And lastly, within the livery companies themselves
a distinction was made between the liverymen and the ordinary
freemen of the craft, the former being entitled to share in all
privileges, and proprietary and municipal rights, in the fullest
degree, and the latter having a claim only to the simple freedom
of the trade. Unfortunately the details of these two processes
are very obscure, and only very wide limits can be fixed as
dates between which the great companies engrossed the muni-
cipal power, and the more powerful men in each constituted
themselves into the body of liverymen, excluding the less
wealthy members of the company as mere commonalty or
ordinary freemen1.
The third point, referred to above, the growth of the govern-
ing bodies which in the fifteenth and succeeding centuries were
incorporated by charter, will be cleared up as we proceed :
there is great diversity in the results, and accordingly con-
siderable diversities must be supposed to have coloured the
history which produced them ; in some towns the new con-
stitution was simply the confirmation of a system rooted in
municipal antiquity, in others it was the recognition of the
results of a movement towards restriction or towards greater
freedom ; in all it was more or less the establishment, by royal
authority, of usages which had been before established by local
authority only, which had grown up diversely because of the
loose language in which the early charters of liberties were
worded. In the following brief sketch of municipal history it
will not be necessary to call attention to the diversities and
multiplicities of legal usages, such as the courts of law or their
customs. These vary widely in different places, and, although
in some parts of the earliest constitutional investigations they
illustrate the continuity of ancient legal practice, they lose
1 Brentano (in Smith’s Gilds, p. cli) deseɪibes the state of these bodies
in the sixteenth century : ‘ The gild members were divided into three
classes : the livery, to which the richer masters were admitted ; the house-
holders, to which the rest of the masters belonged ; and the journeymen,’
yeomanry, bachelors, or simple freemen. From the middle of that century
the management of the companies was engrossed by the courts of assistants ;
Herbert, i. ιι8.
XXi.] Municipal History. 587
their interest from the period at which they become a merely
subordinate part of the machinery of civic independence. Tlie
election of magistrates, and the municipal arrangements by
which such elections are determined, are on the other hand
matters of permanent constitutional interest, not only in them-
selves and in their social aspect, but in the light they throw on
the political action of the towns. The modes of electing mem-
bers of parliament varied directly with the municipal usages.
486. London claims the first place in any such investigation, lmportan∞
. . . of the muni-
as the greatest municipality, as the model on which, by their cipai history
charters of liberties, the other large towns of the country were
allowed or charged to adjust their usages, and as the most
active, the most political and the most ambitious. London has
also a preeminence in municipal history owing to the strength
of the conflicting elements which so much affected her con-
stitutional progress.
The governing body of London in the thirteenth century was London in
the thir-
composed of the mayor, twenty-five aldermen of the wards, and tee∏th ce∏-
two sheriffs. All these were elective officers ; the mayor was
chosen by the aidermen, or by the aidermen and magnates of
the city, and required the approval of the crown ; the aidermen
were chosen by the citizens or commons of their respective
wards1 ; and the election of the sheriffs, which was a point
much disputed, was probably transacted by the mayor and
aidermen, with a body of four or six ‘ probi homines ’ of each
ward. The sheriffs, like the mayor, were presented to the king
for his approval. The term for which both mayor and sheriffs
were chosen was a year; but the mayor was generally con-
tinued in office for several years together until 1319, after
which date a change was annually made2. TIie sheriff's, by a
by-law passed in 1229, were not allowed to hold office for more
than two years together3. In the administration of their
1 Λ.D. 1248: ‘Homines illius wardae accepta Iicentia eligendi elegerunt
. . . Alexandrum le 1?errun . . . qui postea veniens in Iiustingo . . . ad-
missus est alderɪnannus Liber de Antt. Legg. p. 15.
2 See Liber de Antt. Legg. p. 22 ; Liber Albus, p. 22.
3 1229: ‘ Omnes alderɪnanni et magnates civitatis per assensum uni-
Versorum civium Liber de Antt. Legg. p. 6.