Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/40

30 MUNICIPALITY hereditary judges, and the same kind of organization, but with a less degree of independence, appeared at Chester and Ipswich. The size and the wealth or power of places like Canterbury, Taunton, and Sandwich entitled them to be treated as separate "hundreds," and the constitution of London must have been based on that of a shire ; but, speak ing generally, it may be said that the ordinary boroughs were without any powers of self-government. Each borough was administered as if it were a township or cluster of town ships, intersected in most cases by a number of separate jurisdictions and subject to the obligations of tenure which bound many of the burgesses to lordships outside the walls. The borough -courts were held by the reeve or bailiff, who may have been in many cases elected, but was always answerable to an external authority. If the place was of mercantile importance it was called a port (from "porta," the city-gate), and the court and its president, as in London, Canterbury, and Bath, were styled the " port-mote " and " port-reeve." In the smaller boroughs the reeve s func tions must have resembled those of the steward in the ordinary manorial courts. When municipal rights were granted by the Plantagenet kings this officer was replaced by the "mayor," whose appearance is always the sign of the establishment of an independent commune. The first steps toward self-government were taken when the burgesses became the owners, as at Oxford and Colchester, of pro perty which they managed in common. But a more important source of municipal privilege is to be found in the institution of the guilds, which in time acquired the control and monopoly of the local commerce, so that in the reign of Henry II. the possession of a merchant-guild, or "hanse" as it was called in the north, became "the token of municipal independence," the guild being in fact (if not in theory) the governing body of the town. The courts in later times have accordingly held, as in the case of Totnes, that the grant of yilda mercatoria implies the incorporation of the borough. The guilds appear first in a religious form, and date in all probability from the times when the neighbours met to drink at the pagan festivals or the feasts in honour of the dead. Other voluntary associations of the same kind were formed as clubs and friendly societies for mutual insurance and defence. The " frith-gild " of London, as it existed in the reign of Athelstane, and the later " knighten-guild," the "thanes guild " at Cambridge, and the guilds of Canterbury and Exeter were all fraternities of this kind. The "chapman- guild " ("hanse"- or merchant-guild) was an association on the same model but on a larger scale, comprising all the traders in the town, and assuming the power to make by laws to regulate all the local business which did not fall within the jurisdiction of the regular courts. The London knighten-guild, until it was suppressed by Henry I., had a legal jurisdiction in the district of Portsoken Ward. The ancient descriptions of Winchester mention two knighten-guilds where the " probi homines " were wont to drink their guild (" potabant gildam suam "). The " gild- halla " of the men of Dover is mentioned in Domesday Book. When the boroughs were enfranchised as communes upon the French model care was taken to confirm and establish these trading fraternities as forming the most important members of the new corporations. Thus in 1200 King John granted to the burgesses of Nottingham " a merchant-guild with all the liberties and free customs which ought to pertain thereto," and the grant to Ipswich in the same reign, besides preserving and extending the jurisdiction of the twelve " portmen " or capital burgesses, provides that the common council shall elect a fit man to be alderman of the merchant-guild. The same king granted to Dublin the right of having guilds "as in Bristol." York and Beverley had the right to have a " hans-hus " some time before, in the latter case by the grant of Arch bishop Thurstan in the reign of Henry I. Another valuable franchise was obtained when the boroughs procured a separate assessment of their dues to the crown. Except in the case of the most important cities, the boroughs were regarded as parts of the counties in which they were situate and as answerable accordingly to the sheriff. It was of the highest importance to the burgesses that their share of the county-dues should be ascertained, and even before the Norman Conquest it be came the practice for the borough to answer for its own dues under the name of Jirma burgi. The Domesday survey shows that Dover, Sandwich, Bath, Huntingdon, and many other boroughs had obtained a privilege of this kind. A borough paying its fixed assessment to the king or other lord, through the reeve or alderman of the mer chant-guild, was regarded as a single tenant holding the borough for years or at will or in perpetuity, according to the nature of the contract. When its dues and services were assessed in perpetuity the borough was said to be "affirmed" or held in fee-farm, and the burgesses were thenceforth treated as freeholders by a burgage tenure. The only rights remaining to complete their municipal independence were attained when the sheriff s jurisdiction was ousted and the burgesses were allowed to elect their own magistrates to administer justice in the local courts. In the reign of Henry III. the great lords began to enfranchise their boroughs in imitation of the royal example. The statute of Quo Warranto in 1290 led to the confirmation of these charters by the crown, and the doctrine was soon established that none but the king had authority to erect a commune. The Scottish boroughs obtained complete self-government at an earlier date, King David I. (1124- 1153) having been anxious to attract commerce, and the walled towns having soon been filled with "a crowd of willing settlers from southern Britain and Flanders." Edinburgh, Stirling, Roxburgh, and Berwick formed an important commercial league, "to which the other burghs conformed as they came into existence " (Robertson, Early Kings, i. 298). Both in England and Scotland the boroughs, whether founded by the crown or by private lords, were important elements in the state, and in England both classes were summoned to parliament indifferently ; in 1298 a writ was issued for Northallerton, which belonged to the bishop of Durham, though by a curious anomaly his city of Durham only acquired the franchise by an Act passed in 1673. The introduction of the metaphysical idea of a corporation may be ascribed to the influence of Bracton, who wrote under Henry III. (De Legibus, 57 ; Fleta, vi. 13). We find Edward I. in 1284 granting franchises to the burgesses and community of Nottingham and their " successors," the old form being "to the burgesses and their heirs." The practice varied according as the feudal or the ecclesiastical way of regarding such grants prevailed, until in 1440 the town of Kingston-upon-Hull was incor porated as a body politic according to the modern form. The government of the boroughs soon fell to close govern ing bodies, constituted by restraining ordinances, and the Stuarts made incessant attempts to obtain the nomination even of these smaller bodies. After the fall of the corpora tion of London in 1681 the provincial boroughs lost or surrendered their privileges; and, though the charters were revived at the Revolution, the narrow and corrupt system remained. The commissioners of 1835 reported a general and just dissatisfaction with the state of the municipal institutions, great distrust of the self-elected councils, and discontent under the burden of local taxation for purposes which were regarded with suspicion. The reform in England followed swiftly on the famous report, and by Acts passed soon afterwards the Scotch and Irish boroughs,