1
The right of pit and gallows was never formally revoked. The last case was under Charles I. (Rogers’s Agriculture and Prices, i. 132). The gallows at Southampton stood on the common; in Colchester at the end of East Street.
2
The Inquisition de quo Warranto, Ed. I., proves that S. Martin’s and other villages were under the jurisdiction of Canterbury; inquests at these places were held by the city coroner. York had a territory of 2,700 acres. (Agric. and Prices, iv. 579.) The burgesses of Dorchester claimed the right to weigh all goods within twelve miles of the town. A special statute was passed in 1430 “that they shall not be disturbed of their right,” in consequence of the Act of 1429 ordering weights and measures in every town. (9th Henry VI. cap. vi.) Other instances, such as Norwich, Nottingham, &c., are too numerous to give.
3
The mariners of the Cinque Ports drew up treaties with “French shipmen,” as to ransom for mariners, sailors, or fishing boats that might be captured on either side; the people of the coast were to be set free without charge, while “gentlemen” and merchants were to pay whatever the captors chose to ask. The shipowners and merchants of each port signed the compact; and all the towns of the coast from Southampton to Thanet joined the league. The document which was drawn up was handed over to the keeping of the Lord Warden in Dover, and in case of dispute messengers from the Ports rode there to see its provisions, or to make a copy for their own guidance. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 537-8; iv. i. 434.
4
Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 146; xi. 3, pp. 12-13, 171, 113. For 1340 see Ashley’s Arteveldes, 126-7.
5
Stubbs Const. Hist. iii. 484-488. Hallam Const. Hist. iii. 36. Gneist, who gives different figures, considers that one of the greatest dangers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the irrational and meaningless increase of town representation. (Constitution Communale, tr. by Hippert, i. 333, 338; ii. 9.)
6
Rep. of Com. on Mun. Corp., 1835, 20, 21; 29-34; Papers relating to Parl. Representation, 93, 94. Vol. ix. No. 92. ii.; 31 x.
7
See Paston Letters, i. 160-1, 337, 339-40; ii. 78, 28, 31, 35-36; iii. 52-3. Richard the Redeless, passus iv. The great people occasionally exercised influence in towns; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 497; ix. 138. For various modes of voting in towns see Lynn, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 146-151; Chichester, Gross. Gild Merchant, ii. 48; Reading, Coates, 459; Sandwich, Boys, 402; Exeter, Freeman, 152; Worcester, Eng. Guilds, 373, 393; Bristol, Hunt, 86; Cinque Ports, Boy’s Sandwich, 774, 796.
8
The first mention of burgesses in the Empire is in 1066 at Huy, in the bishopric of Liege. Pirenne, Dinant, 18.
9
Dr. Gross gives a list of 150 towns which had gained the right of having a merchant gild – most of them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
10
Edward the First in the thirty years of his rule created fifty-four new boroughs. In the first eighty years of the fifteenth century the kings only issued nine charters of this kind.
11
London was not apparently before other cities in the winning of liberties. (Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 372.) There were reasons enough for especial caution of Henry the Second in the matter of London.
12
Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 73, note; Archæologia, vii. p. 337-347; Stubbs, ii. 486.
13
Burgage rents in the earliest times were accounted for by the officers not in a lump sum but “as the pennies come in.” Rep. on Markets, 13.
14
Cutt’s Colchester, 111-117, 126-7.
15
Two other innkeepers had much the same stock-in-trade.
16
Hist. MSS. Com. vi. part i. 491-2, 478, 489. In Reading at the muster roll of 1311 there appeared eight men armed with sword, bow, arrows, and knife; thirty-three with bows, arrows, and knives; and over two hundred and thirty-five (besides some names lost at the foot of the roll) with hatchets and knives. In 1371 the town was able to raise a body of archers for service abroad; and under Edward the Sixth it sent fifty soldiers armed with bills, swords, daggers, bows, and arrows, and paid each soldier forty pence “for the King’s affairs into Boulogne.” Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 7, 171, 182.
18
Act of Parliament for paving Gloucester, 1455; Fosbrooke’s Gloucestershire, i. 157. For Exeter in 1466; Freeman’s Exeter, 91. For Canterbury in 1474, because the “evil report” carried away by pilgrims “would be stopped if the roads were properly
