Chap. III

State of Lynn previously and subsequently to its becoming a corporate-town, or free borough, with general remarks on that event, and on the progressive state of society in the towns and cities of this country, as well as at Lynn, in those times.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact state of this town, or the nature of its police, and the social condition of its inhabitants, not only before and at the Conquest, but also for a good while after, any further than that its population appears to have then consisted chiefly, if not entirely, of the bishop’s slaves or vassals, governed by such agents or officers as he thought proper to appoint, whose administration as may be reasonably presumed, would not always be of the mildest, or most equitable and unexceptionable description. Had there been now in existence regular and authentic records of the affairs of the town, in those days, we should probably discover that its police, at least the spirit of it, bore but too much resemblance to our present West Indian jurisprudence. Slaves, in those ages, seem to have constituted the bulk of our population; and were, in all probability, the offspring of the lower orders of the original inhabitants, whose lives had been spared, when the Anglo-Saxons over-run and conquered the country, on condition of submitting to perpetual servitude. Such seems to have been the origin of those slaves of different descriptions which formerly abounded in this country for many ages. These, in country places, were the cultivators of the soil, or tillers of the ground; and in the towns, they were the tradesmen, mechanics, artificers, and labourers. In short, both in the towns and in country places all useful employments were occupied by them. As to their masters, the nobility, gentry, and every description of military men, who constituted the great or main body of reputed freemen, they were all above engaging in any such employments. War and the chace were the only occupations that were deemed worthy of them; and there lay the whole stock or sum of their knowledge and acquirements. Literature of every kind they usually set at nought; scorning to learn so much as to write their own names, as an attainment that would be too degrading for an English gentleman. Under such beings, how unenviable, miserable, and deplorable must have been the condition of the enslaved or unfree part of the community.

Of the original, low, and servile state of the inhabitants of our English, and other European towns, and their progress from thraldom to freedom, no one has perhaps given a juster account than Dr. Adam Smith, in the second volume of his celebrated Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He there observes that the inhabitants of cities and towns, after the fall of the Roman Empire, were not more favoured than those of the country.

“They consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republicks of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence. After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who seemed in those days to have been servile, or very nearly of servile condition. The privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in Europe, sufficiently shew what they were before these grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death, their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether, or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country. They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlers of the present times. In all the different countries of Europe then, in the same manner as in several of the Tartar governments of Asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and goods of travellers, when they passed through certain manors, when they went over certain bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in. These different taxes were known in England by the names of passage, pontage, lastage, and stallage. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, would grant to particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of servile condition, were upon this account called Free-traders. They in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll tax. In those days protection was seldom granted without a valuable consideration, and this tax might, perhaps, be considered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. At first, both those poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals, during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very imperfect accounts which have been published from Domesday-book, of several of the towns of England, mention is frequently made, sometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to some other great lord, for this sort of protection; and sometimes of the general amount only of all these taxes.”

“That part of the king’s revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any particular town, used commonly to be lett in farm, during a term of years for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to other persons. The burghers themselves frequently got credit enough, to be admitted to farm the revenues of this sort which arose from their own town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent.”

In return, being allowed to collect it in their own way, and to pay it into the king’s exchequer by the hands of their own bailiff, they would be altogether freed from the insolence of the
king’s officers; a circumstance in those days of no small importance.

“At first, the farm of the town was lett to the burghers, in the same manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process of time, however, seems to have become the general practice to grant it to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain, never afterwards to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions, in return for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be considered as belonging to individuals as individuals, but as burgesses of a particular burgh, which, upon this account, was called a Free-burgh, for the same reason that they had been called Free-burghers or Free-traders. Along with this grant, the important privileges above mentioned, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should succeed them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given. The principal attributes of villanage find slavery being thus taken away from them, they now, at least, became really free in our present sense of the word Freedom.—Nor was this all. They were generally at the same time erected into a commonality, or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town-council of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, by obliging them to watch and ward; that is, as antiently understood, to guard and defend those walls against all attacks and surprises, by night as well as by day. In England they were generally exempted from suit to the hundred and country courts; and all such pleas as should arise among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left to the decision of their own magistrates.”

For the origin of corporate towns, in this country, we are generally referred to the times of which we are now treating, that is, the ages subsequent to the Conquest; and yet it seems to be very evident from the old book called The Mirrour, that there existed here some towns of that description even as early as the days of Alfred: but they were probably few, and disregarded afterward, if not entirely disannulled; till a good while after the accession and establishment of the Norman dynasty: nor can we learn scarcely any thing of the cause and object of their formation, or the nature and principles of their constitutions. The case is otherwise as to those corporations formed since the Conquest; which seems to apply to all those that now exist in this country: it is not so difficult to find, or make out, how and why they were formed; and it is with them only that we have here any concern. Before they sprung up the feudal system was in its full and utmost vigour; and the power of the country was divided between the sovereign and the barons, or great lords; and the latter were sometimes an over match for the former. As a counter-balance or check to the formidable and enormous power of the barons, the incorporation of the great towns and cities seems chiefly to have been resorted to, or adopted. At least this appears to have been the case as far as any good policy, and not mere caprice, had any share in the business: for justice and humanity, or a desire to enlarge the liberty, and promote the welfare of the people were totally out of the question. These were motives too sublime and godlike to enter into the contemplation of the English kings and courtiers of those days.

But the said measure, whatever might be its cause and object, or the motive for its adoption, appears to have produced very salutary effects: for by forming cities and towns into corporations, and conferring on them the privileges of municipal jurisdiction, the first check was given to the overwhelming evils of the feudal system: and under their influence freedom and independence began to peep forth, from the rigours of slavery, and the miseries of oppression. To be free of any corporation, however, was not then, as at present, merely to enjoy some privilege in trade, or to exercise the right of voting on particular occasions, but it was to be exempt from the intolerable hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property, and encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies to animate society. But in those dark ages force was necessary to defend the claims of industry; and such a force the municipal societies possessed; for their towns were not only defended by walls and gates, vigilantly guarded by the citizens, but oftimes at the head of their fellow freemen in arms, the mayor, aldermen and other officers, marched forth in firm array, to assert their rights, defend their property, and teach the proudest and most powerful baron, that the humblest freeman was not to be injured with impunity. It was thus the commons learned and proved they were not objects of contempt; nay, that they were beings of the same species as the greatest lords.

In this country the king is said to be the fountain of honour; and such he was to the incorporated towns and cities. From him they derived their chartered and municipal privileges, and to him they owed their emancipation from their former bondage, or manumission from feudal servitude. Though these royal acts appear to have proceeded from no generous or noble motives, such as the love of justice, or a regard for liberty, but rather from a selfish and sordid policy; yet, as they proved of vast benefit to the inhabitants of those towns and cities, they strongly attached them to the throne, and greatly added to the power and resources of the sovereign. The aversion and contempt manifested by the nobles towards this new body of freemen, tended to promote still further their attachment and subserviency to the court. The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as of a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves.

“The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them on every occasion without mercy or remorse. The burghers naturally hated and feared the lords. The king hated and feared them too; but, though perhaps he might despise, he had no reason either to hate or fear the burghers. Mutual interest, therefore, disposed them to support the king, and the king to support them against the lords. They were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent of those enemies as he could. By granting them magistrates of their own, the privilege of making bye-laws for their own government, that of building walls for their own defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, he gave them all the means of security and independency of the barons, which it was in his power to bestow. Without the establishment of some regular government of this kind, without some authority to compel their inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system, no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them, any permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any permanent support. By granting the farm of their town in fee, he took away from those whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion, that he was ever afterwards to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town, or by granting it to some other farmer.”

The armed force, with which the towns now furnished themselves, must have produced a very material change in the state of the kingdom. This new order of warriors, or trained bands of the towns, seem not to have been inferior to those of the country; and as they could be more readily assembled on any emergency, they are said to have frequently had the advantage in their disputes with the neighbouring lords. In some parts of the continent they became so powerful and successful as to subdue the nobles in their vicinity, and enable the cities to which they belonged to form themselves into independent republicks. But in England, the cities and burghs had no opportunity to become entirely independent. They became, however, so considerable, as Dr. Smith observes, that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, beside the stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. They were, therefore, called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the states of the kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons in granting, upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king. Being generally, too, more favourable to his power, their deputies seem, some times, to have been employed by him as a counterbalance, in those assemblies, to the authority of the great lords. Hence, as it seems, the origin of the representation of burghs in our parliaments.

However useless or objectionable our modern burghs or corporate towns may be, it must be allowed that they were originally productive of no inconsiderable national advantages. In them, as has been observed by the writer last mentioned, order and good government together with the liberty and security of individuals, were established at a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every kind of violence. That industry also, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence was found in them before it was commonly practised, or did exit among the country farmers.

“If in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed with the servitude of villanage, some little stock should accumulate, he would naturally conceal it, with great care, from his master, to whom it would otherwise have belonged, and take the first opportunity of running away to a town. The law was, at that time, so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, and so desirous of diminishing the authority of the lords, over those of the country, that if he could conceal himself there, from the pursuit of the lord, for a year, he was free for ever. Whatever stock therefore accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it.”

Thus it appears the cities and towns were then replenished with inhabitants from the industrious and most valuable part of the population of the country, and not, as is too often the case in our time, from the most idle, profligate, and worthless.

From what has been already said of the motive or policy that seems to have given birth to our burgh-system, it might naturally be expected that those princes, who lived upon the worst terms with their barons, would be the most ready and active promoters of it, and the most liberal in their grants of municipal immunities. This, at least, appears to have been the case: and we find our king John, for example, and we may add, his son, and successor, Henry III. were most munificent benefactors to those towns; of which Lynn, may be mentioned as one notable instance. This town owes, to those two sovereigns, its political redemption, or elevation to the rank of a corporate town, or free borough. The era of its arriving at this high, and proud distinction, was the 13th century; whereas it was, before that period, the miserable abode of a horde of slaves, the vassals of the lord bishops of the see in which it is situated.

But though Lynn acquired then the rank and denomination of a free burgh, it does not appear, that it also became possessed of equal freedom from baronial domination, and feudal vassalage, with all the rest of our corporate towns; or, that it actually arrived at that state or degree of liberty, for a very long while after, even till the reign of Henry VIII. about 300 years after it had been first declared a free burgh by king John and his successor. The time when it acquired the name of King’s Lynn, seems, therefore, to be the true era of its actual, and entire liberation from its former feudal encumbrances. Lynn then is a place where the memory of the last Henry ought to be held dear, and where he should be commemorated as one of its best benefactors. These, however, are circumstances, not generally adverted to; but they seem to be real matters of fact, and may deserve here some elucidation.

King John, granting to Lynn its charter of incorporation at the instance of bishop Grey, who had so much interest with him, and to whom he had very great obligations, was not likely to attempt to deprive him of his baronial rights, or supreme power and jurisdiction, in this town: nor do we know that the bishop was at all disposed to relinquish the same. We accordingly find an express clause in the royal charter, saving to the said bishop and his successors, the liberties, &c. which had previously belonged to the bishops of Norwich. That this was understood as securing to the bishops their former rights and authority in this town, may be inferred from the general conduct of the succeeding prelates for many generations, who seem to have been uniformly striving to retain and perpetuate the said rights and authority, and keep the inhabitants in their original state of subjection to them. Nor did the mayor and corporation appear, at all, disposed to the point with their lordships, except in very few instances; as in the time of bishops Spencer, Wakeryng, and Nix, already noticed. There seems, also to have been some stir, of the same sort, made in the time of bishop Hart, or Lyhart, in the year 1446, and the corporation, probably, complained, or appealed to the king, (Henry VI.) who then visited this town, and seems to have favoured the cause of the corporation; for he is said to have ordered the sword to be carried before the mayor. But the bishop would not long submit to this royal order, for the very next year he had the sword carried before himself, as formerly, the mayor following, as one of his retinue or municipal officers.

On the whole, therefore, it seems pretty evident that though Lynn became a corporate town, and was declared a free burgh as early as the beginning of the 13th century, yet it was not entirely freed from the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop, and the hard yoke of feudal domination, and so did not attain to equal liberty and independence with the generality of our English boroughs till a good part of the 16th century had elapsed. We accordingly find that the mayor and corporation, in the mean time, or during most part of it, seemed perfectly ready to approve as well as profess themselves the lordly prelate’s humble tenants and devout bedesmen; giving him the most explicit and solemn assurance, “that he should find in them as lowly tenants as any that longed to him within his lordships,” and that their bodies as well as goods were entirely at his service, &c. agreeably to the tenour of the above memorable letter to bishop Wakeryng. —We may therefore venture to affirm that this town was, at most, but partially liberated from feudal vassalage, till the period above specified; that is, within these 300 years; before which the mayors of Lynn appeared, or might justly be considered, as the bishops’ head-men, chief bailiffs, or slave drivers; and the aldermen as so many underlings, or petty officers, implicitly executing his lordship’s paramount orders or commands.—Though the Charters might sometimes be thought to entitle his worship and his brethren to greater independence and a higher character, yet till then it does not seem that they were enabled to assume their proper dignity and consequence. The bishops being so powerful here, took care always to manage so as to thwart and baffle all their attempts. Nor did there seem to be any prospect of their succeeding in obtaining their proper station while the bishop continued to retain a paramount sway and uncontrolled power in the town. This the king, probably saw: and it might be one, if not the chief reason of his requiring the bishops, Nix and Rugg, to relinquish their oppressive jurisdiction here. However that might be, it is certain that his majesty deserved well of this corporation: and whatever their ideas or feelings may have been, or may now be, on this point, it must be said, that they ought to consider Henry among the very chief of their royal benefactors; with whom such princes as Charles and James the second, can, surely, bear no comparison; to whom, nevertheless, statues have been here erected!!