604 Constitutional History. [chap.
No general
law of
growth to
be traced
in detail.
The town
councils of
twenty-four.
Division
into wards.
Office of
aiderman.
General
type.
reached the stage at which they were recognised by charters
of incorporation, rather by growth than by any act of creation.
Where the constitution of the guild had been insufficient for
the administration of the borough, or where there had been no
guild, some plan of electing a permanent or annual committee
of councillors to assist the mayor or the bailiffs had sprung up.
In the same way, where the ancient machinery of court-leet
and court-baron had worn itself out, the want of magisterial
experience or authority had been supplied by an elected council.
Such in their origin were the ‘ twenty-four ’ in corporations
like Cambridge and Lynn, where they acted as a common
council; the ‘twenty-four’ at York, who were the aidermen
that had passed the chair, the name bearing no reference to
the existing number ; such were too the mayor’s brethren at
Leicester. The constant recurrence of the number of twenty-
four in this connexion may possibly imply an early connexion
with the jury system, and the ‘jurati’ of the early communes,
which again must have been connected with the system of the
hundred court as exhibited in the East Anglian counties. The
division of the larger towns into wards can scarcely be ac-
counted for upon any one principle applicable to all cases ;
for it took place at- very different times in different towns ;
the simplest way of accounting for it is to suppose that it was
intended to supply a more efficient police system. The con-
nexion of the aldermanship with the ward varies in different
towns; in some it is a result, as in London, of the coalition cf
several jurisdictions; in others, as in Winchester, of the sub-
division for the purposes of police; in others, as in Reading, it is
of late origin, and simply a measure of local reform. Finally,
in all the cases cited, there is a common tendency towards the
general type of an elective chief magistrate, with a permanent
staff of assistant magistrates, and a wider body of representative
councillors—in other words, to the system of mayor, aidermen,
and common council, which with many variations in detail was
the common type to which the charter of incorporation gave
the full legal status.
The several marks of a legal corporation, which were im-
XXI.]
The Corporations.
605
]>ressed, conferred, or perpetuated by the charter of ιncorpo- Legaiidea
. , of corpora-
ratιon, are five 111 number : the right 01 perpetual succession, tions.
to sue and be sued by name, to purchase lands, to have a
common seal, and to make by-laws1. The first involved, in
the case of towns and collective organisations generally, the
right of perpetuating its existence by filling up vacancies as
they occur ; and this right was exercised by all the organised
communities, whether by guild or leet, or by mere admission
to civic privileges, from the earliest times. It is true that the
early charters were granted to the burghers and their heirs,
but, although the form implied simple inheritance, the power
of admitting new members, a power of very primitive anti-
quity, involved the idea of succession, and secured it. In the Prescriptive
same way a town could be sued or sue, could be fined or other- τ⅛σughs.thθ
wise punished by royal authority as a whole, long before char-
ters of incorporation were granted. Again, the ancient guilds
could hold property; the towns themselves, whether as organ-
ised guilds or as ancient communities of landowners like the
village communities, could hold land in common ; and, although Bight of
in the latter case the basis of the common Otvnership was in- Sa.™8
heritance, the grants of land to the burghers and their successors
were Sufiiciently early to prove that there was no recognised
bar to the possession of corporate property even in the four-
teenth century. It was in the reign of Richard II that the
acquisition of land by guilds was first made subject to a licence
of amortization, a fact which proves that the power of acquiring
without such licence had not as yet been limited by law. The Common
common seal and the right to make by-laws had been enjoyed by-laws,
by the boroughs from time immemorial, the latter by the
original borough charter, if not earlier, the former from the
date at which public seals came into common use. Thus
viewed, all the ancient boroughs of England, or nearly all,
must have possessed all the rights of corporations and have
been corporations by prescription long before the reign of
Henry VI ; and the acquisition of a formal charter of incor-
poration could only recognise, not bestow, these rights.
1 Blackstone, Comm. i. 475,