Supremacy
of the livery.
Position of
freemen of
the city.
Stages of
municipal
history.
Charter of
Edward IV.
5y6 Constitutional History. [chap.
mayor or presiding officer in summoning electors was thus taken
away, and the election lodged altogether in the hands of the
liverymen. The liverymen were those on whom, under the
saving clause of the act of Henry IV1 already mentioned, the
several guilds were allowed to bestow their livery, which was
done, and still is done, according to the rules of the several
companies. The election of members to parliament was in all
these proceedings treated in the same way as that of the mayor.
The result may be briefly stated : the mayor, sheriff, other
corporate officers, and members of parliament, were elected by
the livery and common council. The aidermen were elected by
the citizens of the wards for life ; the common council annually
by the wards, four from each. The position of freemen, the
right to which might be based on birth or inheritance, which
might be given as a compliment, or acquired by purchase, was
generally obtained by apprenticeship under one of the com-
panies: it simply gave the right to trade; the freeman who
became a resident householder, and took the livery of his
company, entered into the full enjoyment of civic privilege.
Such then was the medieval constitution of London in the
point which most nearly touches national politics ; and such
the tendency of all the changes through which it passed, from
the unorganised aggregation of hereditary franchises, of which
it seems in the eleventh century to have been composed ;
through the communal stage in which magnates and commons
conducted a long and fruitless strife, to a state of things in
which the mercantile element secured its own supremacy. It
was on this condition of things that the charter of Edward IV,
which allowed the city to acquire lands by purchase and in
mortmain, conferred the complete character of a corporation2.
Most of the essential features of such a body London already
possessed ; the city had long had a seal, and had made by-laws :
the other three marks which the lawyers have described as
constituting a corporation aggregate are the power to purchase
lands and hold them, ‘ to them and their successors ’ (not simply
1 Statutes, ii. J 56 ; above, p. 553.
2 Norton, Commentaries, pp. 75, 379.
XXI.]
History of York.
597
their heirs, which is an individual and hereditary succession Prescriptive
only) ; the power of suing and being sued, and the perpetual the corpora-
succession implied in the power of filling up vacancies by elec-
tion. Into the possession of most of these London had grown long
before the idea was completed or formulated : and it would be
difficult to point to any one of its many charters by which the
full character was conferred. It is accordingly regarded as a
corporation by prescription1 ; and in this respect, as in some
others, takes its place rather as a standard by which the growth
of other similar communities may be tested than as a model for
their imitation in details.
488. The growth of municipal institutions in the other Country
towns follows, at long distances and in very unequal stages, the corporatlons∙
growth of London. Even those cities whose charters entitle
them to the privileges of the Londoners, and which may be
supposed to have framed such new usages as they adopted upon
the model of the capital, very soon lose all but the most super-
ficial likeness : they had early constitutions of their own, the
customs of which affected their later development quite as much
as any formal pattern or exemplar could; arid they were much
more earnest in acquiring immunities of trade and commerce,
which they were to share with London, than in reforming their
own domestic institutions.
York was the second capital of the kingdom ; it retained in Municipal
the twelfth century vestiges of the constitutional government York?” °t
by its lawmen which had existed before the Conquest ; it had
also its merchant guild and its weaver’s guild ; its citizens
attempted to set up a communa, and were fined under Henry
II ; but it had achieved the corporate character and possessed
a mayor’ and aiderman under John2. Under Henry III the Disputes
citizens of York were more than once in trouble on account of crown,
the non-payment of their ferm ; Edward I kept the liberties of
the city for twelve years in his own hands, and settled an
appeal, which came before him on account of the renewal of an
ancient guild, in favour of the guildsmen3 ;—a fact which per-
ɪ Coke, 2 Inst. p. 330 ; Blackstone, Comm. i. 472.
2 See vol. i. pp. 447, 454∙ 3 Rot. Parl. i. 202.