The name is absent

боб               Constitutional History.             [chap.

Giants _υf These new charters were, however, required in many in-
incorpora- stances to give firmness and consolidation to the local organi-
sations which had been up to this time a matter of spontaneous
and irregular growth ; they gave to the local by-laws the
certainty of royal authorisation, and they served to bring up
the general status of the privileged communities to the point
at which the lawyers had fixed the true definition of incor-
poration. Before the complete charter was devised, some towns,
Shrewsbury for instance, had procured an act of parliament to
secure their local constitutions ; it was on the whole easier to
procure a royal charter. From the reign of Henry VI these
charters were multiplied, and they contained both a recognition
of the full corporate character of the town and some scheme of
increase of municipal constitution ɪ. As time advanced these schemes were
in the char- made more and more definite, and contained more precise rules
porations. for proceeding. The charter of Henry VI to Southampton
organ₁⅛.^cfc mentions only a mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses, and that of
tɪon. Edward IV to Wenlock only a bailiff and burgesses; in such
cases the corporate government already existing was merely
confirmed or recognised. A century later the number of aider-
men and councillors is often prescribed; and a century later
still, in the reign of Charles II and onwards, alterations are
made in the constitution of the several bodies, not only by
royal nomination of individual aidermen and councillors, but
by varying the numbers and functions of the several bodies
that formed the corporations.

irregularity These changes for the most part lie a long way beyond the
growth. point at which our general view of the social state of England
must now stop, but the later development of the corporation
system serves to illustrate a tendency which is already per-
ceptible in the fifteenth century. Much of the freedom of the
town system was inseparable from the idea of growth ; witlι
the definite recognition conferred by the charters of incorpo-
ration comes in a tendency towards restriction. The corporate

* The charter of Hull, 18 Hen. VI, is said to be the first charter in
which incorporation is distinctly granted to a town; Merewether and
Stephens, p. xxxiv.

governing body becomes as it were hardened and crystallised, Tendency
and exhibits a constantly increasing disposition to engross in restriction,
its own hands the powers which had been understood to belong
to the body of the burghers.   Tlie town property comes to oligarchic

be regarded as the property of the corporation ; the corpor- tɪons.
ation becomes a close oligarchy : the elective rights of the
freemen are reduced to a minimum, and in many cases the
magistracy becomes almost the hereditary right of a few
families. The same tendency exists in the trading companies
also. The highest point of grievance is reached when by royal Exclusive

.       .                      1                       ₁                      political

charter the corporation is empowered to return the members rights,
of parliament. And this power, notwithstanding the legal
doctrine that such a monopoly, although conferred by royal
charter, could not prejudice the already existent right of the
burgesses at large, was in many cases, as we have noted already,
exercised by the municipal corporations until it was abolished
by the Reform Act of 1832.

The highest development of corporate authority had in some Townsmade
few instances been reached, a century before the charter of
incorporation was invented, in the privileges bestowed on some
of the large towns when they were constituted counties, with
sheriffs and a shire jurisdiction of their own. This promotion, Shire cun-

,                         ,                            i            ∙∙ Stitution of

if it may be so called, involved a more complete emancipation Iargetouns.
than had been hitherto usual, from the intrusion of the sheriff
of the county ; the mayor of the privileged town was consti-
tuted royal escheator in his place, and his functions as receiver
and executor of writs devolved on the sheriffs of the newly
constituted shire; a local franchise, a hundred or wapentake,
was likewise attached to the new jurisdiction, in somewhat
the same way as the county of Middlesex was attached to the
corporation of London. After London, to which it belonged
by the charter of Henry I, the first town to which this honour
was granted was Bristol, which Edward HI, in 1373, made
a county with an elective sheriff. In 1396 Richard II con-
ferred the same dignity on York, constituting the mayor the
king’s escheator, instituting two sheriffs in the place of the
three primitive bailifi⅛, and placing them in direct communi-

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