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Green Alice Stopford
Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2

Unfortunately, owing to the loss of the Old Red Book of Nottingham and other records, it is only by piecing together scattered hints and fragments that we can discern anything of the early constitution of the borough. In the first charters or official dealings with the court, we hear of “the Burgesses” only, with no mention of reeve or bailiff; until after the creation of the mayor in 1284, when the formal style is changed to “the Mayor and Burgesses.” Whatever was the actual significance of the term “burgesses” we know that it already had a technical meaning, for a charter granted by Edward the First to “the Burgesses and Community of our town” in the days before the mayor had replaced the reeve,^[662] shows that even then the two words were used in a special sense; and this original distinction remains throughout the records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In general, the business of the town was done in a somewhat elaborate manner by “the mayor, burgesses, and community,” or “the mayor and his co-burgesses and the community”; but it seems that there were some affairs which were given over to the “mayor and burgesses” – an occasional treaty with another town,^[663] or the letting of tenements or property acquired by the corporation and set apart for special public purposes such as the ferm, or of lands assigned for the expenses of the bridge; while on the other hand, where the common property of the people in house or land was in question transactions were carried out in the name of the “mayor and community.”^[664] There are perhaps no more than two cases before the middle of the sixteenth century in which common lands were leased by the “mayor and burgesses,” and these happened as late as 1511 and 1514, and were probably acts of a specially corrupt administration.

By the Nottingham folk themselves, therefore, the word “burgesses” was from the thirteenth century onwards applied to a body which could be distinguished from the commonalty; and in the use of the words we seem again to catch the double meaning, first of the corporate body of citizens as opposed to the ancient “communitas”; and then of the governing council or assembly as opposed to the whole congregation of the freemen. When this secondary use of the words grew up in Nottingham we cannot say, as we know absolutely nothing of the early government of the town. It is only through one or two brief notices which have been saved from the general destruction of old records that we detect the presence in the council chamber of a recognized group of officials or councillors; and these notices belong to a late time. Meetings were held in the town hall in 1435 and 1443, in which a council of justices of the peace and “trustworthy men” did business with the consent of the commons;^[665] and in 1443 we hear of a fine to be paid by “burgesses” who neglected to come to the hall when summoned, the fine being (as we learn from other towns) the customary sum levied from absent members of a regularly appointed council.^[666] And from another entry copied from the records of three years later we know certainly that a council of twelve did exist in 1446. “Ordered that twelve and the mayor chosen to order, end, and dispose of as they think meet of all things belonging to the commonalty of the town without interruption or contradiction of any person within the town. All orders are with the consent of the commonalty.”^[667]

Whether the order of 1446 was the bringing in of a new method of administration, or an extension of the powers of an established council, or merely a declaration of the law that it should do its business “without interruption or contradiction” of any of the townsfolk, we cannot certainly tell, for the old Red Book is lost and the phrase is only preserved for us in a note made by a town clerk a hundred and fifty years later, whose comment on it, “And there shall you see the erection and election of the council,” is of little value in deciding the matter.^[668] In the absence of any direct evidence, the traces of an earlier council certainly suggest the idea that in the twelve we may have the successors of a body resembling the twelve portmen elected in royal boroughs for the general administration of the town, and that from 1399 the four justices of the peace formed part of this council. The commonalty had the right of entering the town hall during the meetings of the council, and of confirming the ordinances of the governing body by their “assent and consent”; and these powers might of course be more or less left in suspense or fully exercized as opportunity required. No doubt in a big and busy borough any frequent gathering of the townspeople was impossible, and it is very probable that (as at Sandwich), when the mayor did business in the borough court, any burghers who happened to be present^[669] were taken to represent the general assembly of the commons, and bye-laws or necessary orders passed by them were understood to have received “the consent of the community.” In the majority of instances the numbers who attended were probably few, but their presence is from time to time distinctly marked, as in the meeting of 1435; in the assembly of a hundred and thirty burgesses in 1463 to make laws; and in the calling of the commons together in their common hall in 1480.^[670]

If the administration followed this well understood routine, it is probable that the conduct of public business underwent no great change when two new charters, in 1446 and 1448, settled the final order of government in Nottingham, and made it into a county. No mention was made in these charters of the existing council (unless indeed the term “burgesses” was commonly understood to mean the council),^[671] but by the second in 1448 it was enacted that “the burgesses” should elect from time to time from amongst themselves seven aldermen (to answer to the seven wards of the town), one of whom was always to be mayor, while all the seven were to be justices of the peace. The aldermen were to hold office for life, and in their scarlet livery with suitable furs and linings, after the fashion of the aldermen of London,^[672] were manifestly the leading members of the council; and the six burgesses who completed that body were within a few years known as “common councillors,” to distinguish them from the heads of the wards.^[673] The constitution of the Nottingham council seems in fact to have been exactly the same as that of Canterbury or of Southampton; and here no doubt, as in other places, the official governing body did at some time take to itself in a special sense the title of “the Burgesses,” leaving that of “the Community” to the freemen at large.

The new charter, whether it introduced any change in older methods or no, at least seems to have awakened no resistance. A Council of Twelve which ruled before 1448 ruled in like manner afterwards, though now seven justices of the peace sat in it instead of four. As for what may seem to us the crucial fact that henceforward aldermen were elected for life, and elected by their own fellows and not by the people, it is possible that even this change, if indeed it was a change at all, seemed less revolutionary to the men of Nottingham in those days than it does now, for there is no trace of any conflict concerning the matter either at the time or for half a century afterwards. Indeed the same method of election was used for the councillors themselves, who also were appointed for life.^[674] It appears that while the aldermen were always selected from among the six councillors, the councillors were chosen from “the clothing” – a very important body composed of sheriffs and chamberlains or treasurers who had passed out of office, but still wore their scarlet robes on great occasions.^[675]

The oligarchy thus established was however no more in absolute possession of the field than an oligarchy of the thirteenth century. The people’s right to hold a general assembly was admitted by the governing class as late as 1480, and claimed by the commonalty a century later. The jurors of the Court Leet long acted as representatives of the general body of burgesses for purposes of criticism and remonstrance. For certain kinds of business touching the community the custom of electing special juries was maintained; as in 1458 when “twenty-four upright and lawful men from the aforesaid town of Nottingham, as well as twenty-four upright and lawful men from each wapentake of the county aforesaid”^[676] were summoned to report on the state of the bridge. It seems probable that at least six burghers took part in the election of municipal officers; and in 1511 the inhabitants claimed some share in the elections by virtue of “the statute of free elections in such cases ordained.”^[677] Above all the burghers exercized their ancient rights over the common property of the people. For in those days Nottingham boasted of great possessions^[678] in land. From the low cliff of red sandstone which lifted it out of the floods that constantly swamped the lower grounds, the townsmen looked out over the common fields and closes and Lammas lands that stretched round it on every side, and formed until the Act of 1845 a broad belt of open country which cut off the borough from its surrounding dependent villages, and might in no way be used for building. These wide reaches of pasture were yearly distributed in due proportion among the burghers by common consent of the mayor and the whole community. In the division, and in questions of boundaries and fences and fields, the commonalty were all directly interested; and they never consented to hand over to the undisputed management of a council rights which touched them so nearly.^[679] They asserted their claim to attend the meetings when the lands were divided or let out on lease, to take part in all decisions, and to keep a close watch on the councillors lest these should be tempted to pass over their own names when the poor lands were divided and to distribute among themselves all the best closes.^[680] At the very end of the fifteenth century their verdict was still decisive. In 1480 the commons being called together to the Common Hall by the mayor on a question as to the common lands, “the said commons would in no wise agree” to his proposal.^[681]

It is therefore probable that the charter of 1448 did not mark for Nottingham the moment of a serious constitutional revolution. Such little evidence as we have seems to show that the state of affairs was singularly like that which we have already seen in Southampton at the same date; that things went on pretty much as they had done for years past, and that the burgesses neither suffered, nor thought they suffered, any usurpation of their rights, or any grave loss of customary liberties. The system established in 1448 had been in full working for over half a century before any struggle, so far as we know, took place between the governing class and the people; and even then it was not suggested that the disturbance was caused by any change in the legal form of government.^[682] For in 1500 Nottingham was in as sorry a plight as Norwich had been in 1300. It was practically handed over to the rule of publicans and licensed victuallers, who, with or without the law, held their own bravely against all opposition. When brewers and bakers and vintners rose to power they took care that the assize of bread and beer and wine should not be brought to mind; when butchers and cattle-dealers became aldermen and chamberlains they encouraged a confusion which was most profitable to themselves as to the limits of the common pastures, letting gates and bridges fall into ruin, and “although they have been often required by the whole community of the whole town of Nottingham to make common boundary marks, as their predecessors had done, have hitherto refused to do so;”^[683] even as common trespassers they put their cattle and sheep in the meadow in the night time unto the great harm of their neighbours.^[684] The officers appointed by the council dutifully served the interests of their masters: “We often complain of his demeanour, and have no remedy”^[685] is the comment of the Mickletorn jury about the common serjeant. Year after year the protests of the commonalty were heard at the local courts. Jurors of the quarter sessions laid their grievances before the justices of the peace, themselves the main offenders; while the jury of the Mickletorn or Leet asserted their right to address the town council (when they could be persuaded to take their places at the court) and “in the name of the burgesses and commonalty of this town,” to declare the wrongs of the people.^[686]

It was in 1511 that the struggle between rulers and burghers culminated. In the August of that year the council seems to have violated the ancient custom, and leased common pastures by the authority of “the mayor and burgesses,” the witnesses being six aldermen and six of the common council^[687]– a style which had not been used before in dealing with these lands. This meddling with the rights of the community apparently heralded an outbreak of revolt. At the next Court Leet, in October, 1511, the Mickletorn jury presented the mayor who had been in power when the lease was granted, and charged him with encroaching on the common lands, and making his servants “riotously break off our common pasture hedges; it is thought contrary to right and to the common weal.” Six months later, in April, 1512, the jury extended their attack, and the actual “Master Mayor” was presented for being the first beginner of a muck-hill, for misusing the time of the common serjeant, and for selling unfit herrings in the market and excluding other men who would have brought as good stuff and sold eight for a penny where he sold five, though as clerk of the market he should have increased and bettered it instead of impairing it, “and upon this runneth a great slander in the country and a great complaint.” He was charged, along with “all his brethren,” with failing to account for money in his charge “to the great hurt of the town and commons.” Further the mayor and chamberlains together were presented for not repairing the two gates of the town; and the chamberlains for not looking after a public well; and the mayor’s clerk, “the which takes our wages not as a beneficial servant unto us in no matter that any burgess of this town hath to do, but he repugnes and maligns against the burgesses and commons that they be not content with his demeanour.”^[688]

The commons went further than this, however, and raised the question of their ancient rights of assembling in the common hall and taking part in the election of officers.^[689] At this point the authorities became genuinely alarmed. A month later, May 21, the Recorder or legal adviser of the corporation wrote a formal letter of advice to the governing body on these crucial matters of election and assembly. “I am informed,” he says, “that divers of the commons of your town confederate themselves together and make sinister labour to do others to take their part and say as they do, and intend thereby to make aldermen and other officers at their pleasure; and if that should be suffered it should be contrary to all good politic order and rule, and in conclusion to the destruction of the town. Wherefore now at the beginning wisely withstand the same and call your brethren and the council together, and if ye by your wisdom think that by calling of these confederates every of them severally before you ye cannot order them without further help, then my advice is that ye send some wise person to Mr. Treasurer^[690] that it would please him to see reformation, if he be in England, and else that he would write to my Lord Privy Seal, or to my Lord Steward, now in his absence to see this matter redressed, ascertaining you have spoke with my Lord Steward in this matter, and he gave me advice thus to write to you; for if ye shall suffer the commons to rule and follow their appetite and desire, farewell all good order. For if they be suffered now they will wait to do in like case hereafter.” In a postscript he adds, “In any wise beware of calling of any common hall at the request of any one of them that make this confederacy. I doubt not but divers of you remember the saying of Mr. Treasurer of the inconveniences that had ensued upon the calling of the commons together in the city of London and in other cities and boroughs.”^[691] The sympathies of Mr. Treasurer were duly enlisted, according to the Recorder’s advice, and on the very day when a new mayor took the place of the last, he wrote urging him to stand firm against those commons who would “combine themselves to subvert the good rule of the town and would make aldermen and put them out at their pleasure, contrary to the good order of your charter and privilege of your town.” He begs them, if there be any of such “wilful disposition to subvert the good rule of the same your said town, that with all diligence certify me of their names, and I trust to see such remedy for them as shall not be to their contentment, but I shall see them shewn condign punishment as they have or shall deserve.”^[692]

The shibboleth of “good order” had its accustomed effect, and the governing body carried their point, though in leases of the common lands they presently returned to the old style.^[693] The new mayor, John Rose, known to the people as the butcher chamberlain who in 1500 had let their landmarks be removed, and who since then had grown into innkeeper and victualler, ruled for eighteen months.^[694] His successor, appointed in January, 1515,^[695] was Master Thomas Mellers, an alderman who had a very bad reputation in the presentments of the Court Leet; after he had reigned two years, a mercer of Nottingham tried to kill him with a dagger while he was joyfully dining with an alderman; but he survived to rule again in 1522.^[696] Again the jury returned to the charge. In 1524 the outgoing mayor was presented at the July sessions for not keeping the assize of bread,^[697] and in October the matter was pressed on the attention of the newly-appointed mayor. Two years later, however, Nottingham was for the third time put under John Rose, who in the interests of firm government determined to suppress once for all the importunate presentments of the jury. During the whole time of his mayoralty, “in the default of the said Master Rose there was no verdict given of the jurors sworn for the body of this present town … to inquire of things inquirable afore you justices of record,” nor was the assize of victual ever put in execution; and by this the town had not only been greatly disordered but had been put in danger of forfeiting its liberties and franchises.^[698] The next year (1527) the jury were again roused by the fact that three aldermen, one of them being Rose, the last year’s mayor, had by their united efforts filled all vacancies with victuallers; and a formal petition was addressed to the mayor and his brethren in the name of the whole town. They called to remembrance the law that “No victualler should be chosen to no such rooms as judge of victual,” and told again the long tale of their grievances. They declare that these elections were illegal, “the burgesses and commonalty of the said town not being made privy, nor thereunto consenting, contrary to the corporation of the said town, and also contrary to the statute of free elections in such case ordained,” and that therefore the whole town might be made to suffer the loss of their liberties and franchises for non-using or misusing the same. In the lately elected aldermen “the want of discretion and debility of reason” was well known to the whole town, so that the common voice and fame of it ran through the shire; and the jurors thought “that the most wisest and discreetest men ought to have been chosen to such rooms by you and the burgesses and commonalty.”

Further the jury, “in their most humble manner,” observed that the king had been deceived in the matter of the last subsidy; for in addition to their other crimes the three aldermen, when their substance was assessed for a subsidy at £50 or £55, had “embezzled” the record, and changed the figures to a nought.

Finally they pray “by the whole minds and agreements” that the present counsel of the town might use and continue in his place “like as he unto the same was elect and sworn, and that according to right and good conscience he may have his fees that is behind to him contented and paid.”^[699] All this the jury spoke in the name of the people, “whereunto we, the aforesaid jurors, in the name of the burgesses and commonalty of this town and borough are fully content and agreed.”

In these troubles, it does not seem that the revolt of the people was excited by any definite constitutional change, nor was the charter of 1448 called in question or brought forward as the origin of later evils, nor was any protest made against the election of councillors for life. Complaints multiply against corrupt administration of the law, or the holding of office by unfit and illegal men. But the claim of the people to a share in elections is vague and indefinite, and neither in 1511 nor in 1527 do the commons appeal to precedent. Opinions as to their rights are tossed to and fro, balanced by contending winds of doctrine. In defence of the system of close election the council call to witness the charter and privileges of the town; while on the other hand the commons declare that elections are illegal if the commonalty as well as the burgesses are not “made privy nor thereunto consenting.” Possibly the explanation lies in a common tendency of practice to drift away from the theory with which it had first kept company, and finally to disown its old accomplice. No doubt the commons inherited theoretically an inalienable right to take part in elections; but it had apparently become the practice that the people should only exercise that right in a certain definite way through the half-dozen representatives who attended the elections, and not through a common gathering; and thus the situation was one in which either side might indefinitely urge law and custom without ever bringing conviction to their opponents.

It is indeed conceivable that the true peril to popular liberty was of a far more subtle character than the words of any charter would suggest, and rather grew out of developements in the unwritten constitution of the borough, than in the written law. Not only in elections, but in the meeting of the general assembly, insidious changes may have been brought about by the mere growth of common custom. In the institution of “the Clothing” there were latent possibilities which time alone could bring to light. For over half a century sheriffs and chamberlains were quietly bowed out of office, and transferred with all their fur and finery to the brilliant company of the liveried ex-officials to await a happy re-election. But in due course, as its numbers multiplied, the Clothing was made manifest to all men in its stately ranks or “clene scarlet” as the very body-guard and sworn defenders of the central group of high officials, the traditional depositories of power. Surrounded and shielded by a band of forty or fifty friends who had already held office and might hold it again, men dedicated to their interests and disciplined to their methods, the mayor and his brethren were no longer left face to face with the whole community. Under the established custom by which any burgesses who were present at an assembly were taken to represent the whole body, it was evidently easy even while outwardly observing constitutional form, to summon to the meeting only members of the Clothing; and the decrees of the council having been submitted to this loyal gathering were assumed to have obtained the assent of the commonalty. Popular control might thus be absolutely extinguished, and that without revolution or going beyond the letter of the law, when a council chamber crowded with the official class^[700] replaced the assembly of the commons, and exercized its powers simply by preserving its name.

The plan of forming a select committee of the General Assembly nominated by the mayor seems to have been a very favourite custom. In Coventry, for example, the mayor summoned certain citizens who were added to the twenty-four to form a common council. Their number was perhaps at first uncertain, for in 1444 we hear of a meeting of fifty-three, twenty-four of the council and twenty-nine other burgesses; but apparently from 1477 twenty-four citizens always assembled with the twenty-four jurats to form the common council of forty-eight. Generally, as in Leicester or Gloucester, a fixed number of representative citizens was summoned. A lower chamber of this pattern evidently assured the triumph of the oligarchy; and the idea of popular control was perhaps more completely banished by this narrow and formal interpretation of the common right of meeting than by mere idle neglect of the assembly. In Nottingham, so far as we can judge from the few council minutes preserved during the sixteenth century, the mayor and his brethren acted with perfect independence of the burgesses at large, and no longer mentioned the name of the community even in ordinances which touched the common lands.^[701]

Still, however, the jury fought with indefatigable zeal for some control over administration.^[702] They never let slip a chance of reprimanding their governors. Again and again the mayor was presented for refusing to enforce judgment on bakers, butchers, and brewers,^[703] and with his brethren was charged with innumerable frauds on the people. Sometimes we find the jury busied about securing a capable schoolmaster;^[704] sometimes they were demanding to have the accounts laid before them – the accounts of the bridge and the free school and the sums raised for the burgesses of Parliament, “and how the residue of the money is bestowed, for our money is therein as well as yours was, and therefore it is convenient that we know.”^[705] As Englishmen had once looked back to the times of the good King Edward, so the men of Nottingham turned wistfully to the golden past when the Red Book had been the charter of their liberties, and vainly prayed that the necessary parts of the book (doubtless the ancient town ordinances) should as of old be read yearly in the hearing of the burgesses.^[706] Clinging to the ideal of a primitive liberty, these inveterate conservatives robbed reform of all the terrors that attached to what was new. What had been might safely be again. Nor was there any tendency to riot or disorder. All must be done in a constitutional way, and within the limits of tradition. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, therefore, there was a good deal of tinkering at the municipal constitution. On March 29 (1577) the number of councillors was increased from six to twelve, all as before to be chosen by the Clothing.^[707] The democracy had probably very little to say to this change, for the order was made by forty-five burgesses “being then all of the degree of chamberlains” who seem here clearly to be acting as though their assent to an ordinance were equivalent to the consent of the whole community.^[708] Six months later, however, it occurred to the people to make some use of the ancient custom of summoning a jury of forty-eight from town and suburbs for public business; and they proposed to have the common council elected by such a jury – to which suggestion the ruling class agreed. They further demanded that the councillors should attend at the Leet when the Mickletorn jury presented offences and gave their verdicts. All this was, as they claimed, a return to the authentic custom of former days, “according to the Red Book as we do think.”^[709] But in November the Leet jury were still praying that this agreement should be carried out, and there is no evidence that they ever succeeded. In any case, two years later, when the people once more urged their old claim to have the accounts made public and “to hear the end and reckoning of any subsidy when any is,”^[710] they advanced a new demand for reform yet more radical; and suggested that all the common councillors should be utterly abolished, leaving only the aldermen and two coroners to form an upper chamber, “and that the forty-eight may be joined to you to confer in any matters for the town, as there is in other places where their corporations are better governed than this is,”^[711] and that the same forty-eight as representing the commons should be given a definite share in the management of the bridge and school.^[712]

But all these efforts proved vain, and the Council and Clothing continued their victorious career. As late as 1598 the commons endeavoured to revive the old constitution of the town and to call a general assembly through summons by the constables of the wards; and even collected money to institute a suit that they might inquire into a corrupt lease of common property by a member of the council. In the curious account preserved of the examination and depositions of the ringleaders in calling the assembly together the passionate determination of the people still finds voice, and there was at least one among them to maintain stoutly that he did not care if he died in a good cause.^[713] The beginning of the next century found the contest slowly dragging along, the Mickletorn jury still protesting against the negligence of the councillors^[714] and the people still discussing new constitutions with increasing nicety of detail, and debating the merits of two chambers of twenty-four and forty-eight,^[715] or of twenty-eight each.^[716] Meanwhile the twelve of the council are mentioned as existing unchanged in 1604.^[717]

By this time the men of Nottingham had adopted in turn all the constitutional means of securing popular freedom that lay in their reach. They had consistently appealed to the old ordinances which in theory at least endowed them with sovereign power. The Mickletorn jury had been incessantly called on to right their wrongs by force of law. The cumbrous machinery of the general assembly had been dragged out in its noisy inefficiency. The custom of summoning forty-eight jurors for public purposes had been seized on as an institution out of which a chamber of the commons might be created and representative government established. But the mediæval history of Nottingham closes with the utter failure of schemes so industriously cherished. Doubtless reform had tarried too long in coming. Whether the general commercial prosperity had drawn all activity into trading enterprise and diverted it from politics, whether a common well-being had tended to an acquiescent conservatism, whether the variety of trades carried on in the town had, as in modern Birmingham, resulted in the absence of effective trade organization or of any strong and commanding craft guild to serve as a centre of union, or whether in this wealthy community buried in the Midlands there was some lack of ready interchange of thought and discussion with the outer world, the fact remains that resistance to the dominion of an oligarchy was of late and ineffectual growth, and when it did appear it seems to have mostly lost its energies in talk. In 1600 the men of Nottingham were still discussing the formation of a House of Commons to represent the will of the people – an experiment which Norwich had tried two hundred years before, and for which in municipal life it was now two hundred years too late.