Although not a town of the first rank in terms of size, population and
wealth, it was the chief town of Suffolk and the seat of the shire court;
a county gaol was built there in 1220. It also had a role (if not so
important as that of Yarmouth) in
providing ships and sailors for royal service and for defense of the
east coast, on one occasion describing itself, as Yarmouth did, as a
"frontier town". At the time of
Domesday, the borough was being
farmed by the sheriff of Suffolk, Roger
Bigod, and Ipswich was later used as a base for Hugh Bigod when he
supported the sons of Henry II in their rebellion. By 1194 the townsmen
had taken responsibility for the farm and a couple of years later were
negotiating with Richard I for a charter of self-government; but this
was not to be obtained until the beginning of the reign of his successor.
Unlike Lynn or
Maldon, Ipswich had no powerful overlords
with whom the townsmen had to struggle to win freedoms, except for the king,
who was usually persuadable when it was to his financial advantage.
Nor, unlike Yarmouth or
Norwich, did it have commercial rivals
who seriously jeopardized its local control of trade. The Priory of
neighbouring Woodbridge held a weekly market there, but the townsmen
opposed this in 1233, and legal action led to a compromise whereby the
town was allowed half of the trading tolls collected at the market, and
burgesses were allowed to trade in the Woodbridge market without paying
tolls themselves; by the fifteenth century Ipswich had
farmed its half of the tolls to the
Prior.
More intractable was the threat to Ipswich's commerce from Harwich,
situated at the very mouth of the Orwell. In the 1270s Harwich was
receiving assistance from the earl of Norfolk (its lord), who had blocked
the river with a weir, in order to divert to Harwich ships bound for
Ipswich. In 1340 an inquisition concluded that the port of Orwell and
the estuary leading to Ipswich were within the (admiralty) jurisdiction
of Ipswich, and that it was the Ipswich authorities not those of
Harwich who could collect tolls at Orwell port. In 1378-79,
Ipswich and Harwich were again in contest, over a location in Orwell
Haven called Polles Head, which an inquisition decided should be
considered part of the port of Ipswich. There were other
clashes with rival jurisdictions notably
in regard to the hamlets within the half-hundred, whose right to leet
jurisdiction in particular was challenged by Ipswich but they were
relatively few and minor.
Ipswich is best known for the detailed account
which has survived of the setting up of local self-government in 1200. In
this we see the delegation of power from the
community, through a meeting
which appears like the ancient folkmoot,
to its elected representatives; the location where the community gathered
was at St. Mary Tower, an important church
and possibly a traditional meeting-place of the folkmoot.
The king was the sole lord of Ipswich and self-government was premised
on his charter dated May 25, 1200, which gave the townsmen control over
collection and payment to the Exchequer of Ipswich's
fee farm of £40, along with the
broad grant of all liberties and customs that the king's "free boroughs"
in England had (excepting only those particular to London). A number
of specific rights were spelled out, including:
the right of a town court to hear most cases to which townsmen were
party, including pleas of related to debts, mortgages and real estate;
quittance from having to pay tolls on merchandise taken anywhere in
the realm (with the heavy fine of £10 on anyone exacting tolls from
Ipswich men);
the right to "elect, by decision of the community of the town, two of
those townsmen who are law-abiding and of sound judgement" as bailiffs;
those elected were to be presented to the Chief Justice at Westminster,
for royal approval, and could not be removed from office if they
performed their duties well, except by a common decision of the burgesses;
the right to elect four coroners to deal with crown pleas outside
the jurisdiction of the borough court, as well as to ensure that the
bailiffs dealt impartial justice to poor and rich alike.
Just over a month later, on June 29, an
assembly of the whole community was held in the churchyard of St. Mary
Tower to elect the bailiffs and
coroners, according the terms of the
charter; elected by unanimous agreement of the community (or so it was
claimed), the new officers took oaths of office which included the
reference to equal justice to all. At the same meeting, it was decided
also to elect a town council, justifying
this (by implicit reference to the charter terms) on the grounds that
such was the case in other free boroughs. So
on July 2 the community reconvened and
by a method of indirect election the bailiffs and coroners, with
community agreement, choosing 4 reputable men from each parish to make
the election a council of 12 "Capital Portmen" (a title which is
again heard of in 1255 ), meaning head townsmen, was chosen from the
more capable townsmen. The portmen were sworn to guard and govern the
borough well, protect its liberties, and render judgements in court
with equal justice to rich and poor. The community then took oath to
obey and support the town's officers, and to respect and maintain the
town liberties. The royal charter was then delivered to the custody of
two of the portmen.
The first meeting of the new town government took place
on July 13, when bailiffs, coroners
and portmen made a series of decisions on the fundamentals of
administration:
that the customary dues which went towards paying the fee farm
should be collected, and accounted for at the Exchequer, by the bailiffs
and 4 assistants;
that two beadles be appointed to carry out commands of the bailiffs,
and to make attachments and
distraints, with one of them also serving as gaoler;
that a seal be made for application to official documents drawn up
in community business and given to the safekeeping of 3 or 4 trustworthy
burgesses;
that the community should elect a suitable person as alderman of
the Merchant Gild, who would have 4 other burgesses as his assistants;
that the grant of freedom from tolls (i.e. membership in the
privileged community) would apply only to those residents who were
at "lot and scot"; and
that the royal charter would be sent to the
shire courts of Norfolk
and Suffolk, to be read in public.
These ordinances were read out before the community at a further
churchyard meeting in September and
received community assent. At the same meeting new
ballival elections were held (September
being a common month for towns to hold elections) and the incumbents
were re-elected; beadles and the collectors of tolls were also elected.
At the next community assembly in October,
the bailiffs displayed the newly-made common seal; 3 men were elected
as custodians of the seal and the king's charter, and sworn to ensure
the seal was used only for the benefit of the community. Officials
of the Merchant Gild were also chosen and sworn to be responsible for
the gild and its possessions, and to treat all gild brothers fairly;
they in turn instructed all burgesses to become members of the gild
{which involved a membership fee). A discussion followed on how the
operations of the gild were to be
financed, and it was decided that the alderman would have a monopoly
on the sale of certain types of stone and marble, with bailiffs and
coroners auditing the annual accounts of such sales, and that no
townsman should buy the specified stone from any other source. Similar
provision was made for compensating the portmen for their labour on
behalf of the town: they were given exclusive rights of grazing their
horses in Oldenholm meadow; at some later
point in the century, provision was made for tolls on certain produce to be
put towards financial compensation for the
bailiffs. Finally, it was decided at the meeting that all of the local
customs by which legal matters were ruled should be set down in a roll to be
called "le Domesday" (hearking back to an Anglo-Saxon term dooms
meaning "judgements"); the bailiffs were to have custody of this roll, as a
reference tool, just as the gild alderman would have keeping of a record
of the ordinances governing the gild.
Later that month, an inquisition was held to determine what status,
within the free borough, should be held by certain religious dignitaries
who had lands and tenants in the town. It was decided that the tenants
should be subject to tolls on goods, except for those grown on their
own lands or bought for their own use. Beginning in November the status
of foreign burgess was granted to
various lords who wished to acquire exemption from toll, for themselves
and their villeins, on products grown on their estates and on goods
bought for personal use. Appropriately, the earl of Norfolk, Roger
Bigod, was the first. In return the lords made an in-kind contribution
to the Merchant Gild, guaranteed a yearly payment towards the fee farm,
and promised to respect and uphold the liberties of the town. In later
years we find cases of lords desiring only exemption from toll on their
grain, and paying a few pence and one or two bushels of corn; this was
more of a licensing situation, and it was specifically stated in 1256
that such men were not to be at scot and lot with the burgesses. In the
same year the Priors of Holy Trinity and of St. Peter's, Ipswich,
acquired the wider exemption privileges by larger money contributions
towards the farm, in-kind contributions to the Gild, and a promise to be
at scot and lot "as if an intrinsic burgess" (we find later Priors still
doing the same in 1446).
These variations in status seem to have caused confusion and descendants
of some foreign burgesses claimed to continue the exemption without
obligation towards the fee farm. Consequently, the borough authorities
ordained in 1274 that foreign burgess status could only be held for life
and for a donation towards the fee farm; the two different levels were
reiterated: exemption from all tolls, which required the party to be
at scot and lot, or exemption only on produce grown on the party's lands
and on goods bought for personal use. The borough continued this system
throughout the medieval period: Sir Roger Chamberleyn, a holder of local
manors, acquired exemption on the latter terms in 1454; although he took
an oath to be at scot and lot and maintain all franchises of the town,
this appears to be prompted by the fact that rents were due the borough
from some of his properties (presumably within the liberties).
As indicated, the basic qualification for an intrinsic burgess, or
freeman, was to be at scot and lot. In 1328 it was added that entrants
to the franchise should, within a
year and a day of being made a burgess, have a house within the town or
else be disfranchised. The reason for this further specification (which
may simply have been taken for granted earlier) was so that the freeman
was clearly a resident and had a location at which he could be summoned,
or by which he could be distrained,
to answer to justice.
As was often the case with royal charters, some of what was granted was
merely an official recognition of the status quo. This was the
case with the Ipswich community having responsibility for its own fee
farm and may have been the case with it having elected
officers to deal with the duties involved
in collecting the various dues that went towards paying the farm. Nor
is it implausible that the council of portmen was foreshadowed by a less
formal association of leading townsmen (perhaps a Merchant Gild), who
were behind the movement to acquire self-government certainly there
were representatives of the town negotiating with the king prior to 1200
for the acquisition of liberties. The men chosen to office in 1200 were
undoubtedly from the upper ranks of town society none more so than the
first bailiffs, two brothers. Nonetheless,
the charter made it desirable to have some standardized method of
dealing with governmental matters.
We see in the narrative of the events of 1200 not only the logical stages
for creating the mechanisms of urban self-government, but also some of
the political theory underlying the same:
the emphasis on unity within the
community and loyalty to the borough,
the need to define just who had a share in the rights and privileges
granted by the king, delegation of power to representatives, and the
reciprocal obligations between rulers and ruled, guaranteed through
the swearing of oaths. At the same time we
see the reality of borough government,
which is the dominance of decision-making by the most prominent
townsmen.
Although historians are inclined to skepticism about the degree of
public unanimity claimed by the chronicle, the euphoria surrounding the
first steps towards self-determination give this a certain plausibility.
That matters may not have been to everyone's liking, however, is
suggested by the case of Elias de Gippewyc, who had served as a reeve
of the town at some time before 1200 and yet is absent from that group
who took the reins of the new administration. In 1212 Elias complained
to the king that the borough authorities had relocated the fish-market
from its traditional site (the quayside?), resulting in a loss of revenue
from it; this forced the authorities to justify their action. In 1206
another complaint (source unknown) had prompted the king to investigate
the authorities' building of a dam. A conspiracy was hatched among some
of the townsmen in 1213 to murder Elias; after his death the bailiffs
claimed the right to deal with the case in the town court, but Elias'
widow did not find there the justice she wanted and had to complain to
the king. There is some evidence that the first bailiffs were young
blood. Perhaps there were conservative and progressive elements active
in town politics.
Although the chronicle of 1200 suggests that a popular assembly was the
key vehicle for local government, this reflects the ancient institution
of the folkmoot; although St. Mary's churchyard may have been the usual
meeting-place of the community at that time, references to a part of the
town called Thingstead ("place of the
folk") may indicate an even older location of the folkmoot, possibly even
before Ipswich ranked as a town. After 1200, however, it was instead the
borough court that was the focal point of
community administration. The Portmanmoot, as it was known, held major
sessions (Great Courts) every second
Thursday to hear pleas of the crown, pleas initiated by royal writ, and
pleas relating to burgage tenements.
Other pleas personal actions were heard twice a week by sessions
known (eventually) as Petty Courts; during the course of the thirteenth
century, the volume of court cases increased to the point where the two
types of courts had separate records kept for them. By mid-fourteenth
century, another specialized court emerged to hear, and record,
public acknowledgements of property
transfers, known as recognizances, including those made through
testaments. From the 1430s we hear of the General Court, a facet of
the portmanmoot that dealt with business we today would consider
administrative rather than judicial.
The authenticity of the unique account of 1200 is not beyond question,
since it is known only from a copy drawn up in circumstances from which
it could be hypothesised that the narrative was reshaped to justify
the constitutional situation of that later time rather than ninety years
earlier. In 1272 the town clerk, avoiding imminent charges for
dereliction of duty, made off with the original Domesday and other
borough records. In 1285 the king punished the town for some (unknown)
communal crime by suspending its chartered liberties and subjecting it
to the government of a warden; this lasted until June 1291. Following
restitution of self-government, it was decided necessary to reconstitute
a definitive i.e. written version of the borough customs. At the
same period we see a clique of leading townsmen starting to try to
monopolize government for self-gain.
Despite these factors, which could have influenced the wording of the
custumal and the account of the proceedings in 1200, the broad terms of
the account seem plausible and the names of the officers elected were
certainly genuine leading townsmen of the early thirteenth century.
It is likely that the original account was written as an introduction
or appendix to the custumal in the Domesday
and also to the list of gild ordinances (probably untouched by the town
clerk's theft). Six medieval editions and one Tudor copy of the custumal
have survived and they incorporate not only the reconstruction from
memory of the original list of borough customs, but also later
information, copied from various borough records, of concern to the
integrity and protection of the borough liberties. This included lists
of tolls leviable on different types of
merchandise, definition of the boundaries of the leets into which
Ipswich was divided, lists of outsiders given burgess status, and later
additions to the local by-laws (of which
the customs were the foundation).
A little over a century after the weeks, full of enthusiastic vigour
and common purpose, during which mechanisms of self-government were
first set in motion at Ipswich, we are given our next detailed look
into the halls of government and the scene is a less happy one. Most
of the families who had led Ipswich into that degree of independence
it might acquire in a country where power was relatively centralized
had been eclipsed by newcomers with a different agenda. An attempt for
some years successful by a group of prominent townsmen to
monopolize key offices and, possibly, to
use those offices for personal gain, resulted
in popular revolt whose leaders managed to gain enough control in the
town to issue, on 12 December 1320, a set of reforming ordinances which
reflect the complaints against the ruling clique. Although the 1200
proceedings have received far more attention, the 1320 reforms by
showing how the initial provisions for local government had run into
problems are almost equally important.
The document began by emphasizing one of the terms of the royal charter
acquired in 1317, prohibiting the all too common offence of
forestalling or any trading outside
of the public marketplace; the same charter had, perhaps ominously,
eliminated the obligation to seek royal approval of newly-elected bailiffs
and had reduced the number of coroners to two. The document went on to
observe that it was a common right, by reason of the
franchise, that every burgess
paying scot and lot and contributing
to aids of the town had equal
entitlement to a share in any
merchandise being sold in the town (a principle that forestalling
undermined). However, certain burgesses had contravened this,
particularly by becoming hosts of outsider merchants and selling their
goods for them in private places, sometimes even without consent of the
visiting merchants, and claiming a quarter of the merchandise as their
hostage fee which happened to
be a custom of the town (unless an
introduction into the custumal by the ruling clique, whose leading
members had three decades earlier been involved in the
reconstruction of the custumal).
Consequently, the following ordinances (which went far beyond correction
of the problem identified in the preamble) were enacted:
Goods brought by outsider merchants were to be sold only in
official marketplaces, without any interference from hosts or
forestallers. Taking a quarter of the merchandise as hostage was
prohibited. Every lot-and-scot burgess present, in person or by
servant, at a sale could claim a share therein, on condition he had
the means to pay (or find sureties
for payment). Anyone subverting this principle was to be
disfranchised.
In order to protect outsider merchants, contracts of sales were to
be confirmed by buyer and seller in
front of the bailiffs, if the seller so desired, with the terms of the
contract, due date of payment, and names of the buyer's sureties being
registered in town records. If a buyer failed to pay, the bailiffs were
to seize some of his, or his sureties', possessions and from those
promptly satisfy the merchant for the sale price. Anyone delaying this
process (the finger here perhaps pointing at the bailiffs) was to be
disfranchised.
Anyone convicted of forestalling was to lose the merchandise he had
forestalled and be disfranchised.
Hosts were forbidden from trying to exert pressure on visiting
merchants (by, for example, acting as their sureties), just before
their departure, so that the merchants would feel obliged to buy
provisions or hire carts for the next stage of their journey from the
hosts or their associates.
There was no fixed date for the annual election of bailiffs, with
the result that on several occasions certain burgesses had by "lordly
usurpation and private coven" elected bailiffs at will, without community
consent, and that the "usurping" bailiffs had then caused grief to the
community through taxations and
amercements, retaining these
levies to their personal use, to the impoverishment of the community.
To prevent such usurpation, or the maintenance of usurpers in power by
others, and to impose controls over the powers and perks of ballival
office, it was ordained that bailiffs could be elected only by common
assent and that elections would take place each September 8th, so that
everyone would know when to be present. The exception being if the
community chose to remove bailiffs from office prior to that date.
Bailiffs were to have an annual salary of £5 each, a fee of 6d. for
each application of the common seal, and the proceeds from local tolls
collected on herring, other fish, onions, oil and broom. They were not
to assess any court fine except in the presence of the chamberlains
and two other townsmen sworn to that task, nor to impose any financial
charges on anyone without view of the chamberlains.
Two chamberlains were to be
elected, by common assent, each September 8th (this apparently being the
first introduction of these officers into Ipswich's government). Their
duties were to receive all town revenues, and to manage these monies so
that the fee farm, salaries of town officers, perquisites of the bailiffs
(due from estreats), and other borough expenses could be paid, without
resorting to tallage or extortion.
The chamberlains were to present their annual accounts at the end of
their term of office, before the community in full session of tolhouse
(another name for the moothall).
The chamberlains were also to keep a duplicate record, or
counter-roll (from which the modern term "control"), of all pleas
relating to burgage tenements,
acknowledgements of debt, and probate of
testaments (the reference probably being to the recognizance rolls).
The chamberlains were to receive 20s. annual salary. The incumbents
of the office were to be changed, by election, each year.
Because the common seal had previously been improperly guarded, and
used without community consent, four clavigers were to be elected
annually to have keeping of the four keys of the common chest, in which
the seal and the town treasury were stored. On election day, these
keys were to be surrendered to the community, who would deliver them
back to the same men or to others chosen to the office, according to
the pleasure of the community. No document was to have the common seal
affixed to it without common assent, and any sealings were to take
place in open session of the tolhouse.
On election day one man was to be chosen by common assent to be the
town clerk and was to have an annual salary of 40s. (to be paid by the
chamberlains) as well as customary fees (for individual clerical services
to burgesses).
Two men were to be elected as sub-bailiffs, with each receiving
annually a robe (i.e. livery) and 6s.8d for shoes.
One of the sub-bailiffs was to be selected by the community as gaoler,
with an annual salary of 13s.4d plus customary fees; the gaoler was to
find manucaptors against mishaps relating to his responsibilities. (The
similarity of this clause to that in the
account of 1200 is notable, but is
probably no more than a reaffirmation of the provision made at that time).
The chamberlains were to have custody of all goods found in the
possession of thieves when arrested, until their guilt or innocence was
determined. If they were holding such goods at the end of their year
of office, they were to turn them over to their replacements.
Because bailiffs had previously allowed whomsoever they wished to
become burgesses, without common
assent, and had divided the entrance fees among themselves and others,
instead of putting it towards town revenues, the making of burgesses
was henceforth restricted to Great Court sessions next following
Michaelmas, Christmas, Easter and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist,
and even then was subject to community approval. Entrance fees were to
be put towards the common profit and accounted for by the chamberlains.
Application of the common seal, which ought to be the right of every
burgess, rich or poor, had been denied in the past to those not willing
to pay dearly for it. It was henceforth to be available to all, without
the payment of any "gift".
In the short term the reform initiative led to further
power struggles and the deposition of
the bailiffs of that year; the repercussions of political hostilities
lasted for years and culminated in another seizure of the borough
liberties back into the king's hand in 1344. The reforms themselves
had relatively little long-term effect, however. The office of
chamberlain, upon which so much rested, does not seem to have survived
for more than a few years (a counter-roll exists from 1324/25), although
it had been revived by the 1380s as
evidenced by the contra-rotulation function specified in the ordinances
of 1320. It was perhaps enough to have displaced one apparently corrupt
set of politicians, even at the risk of introducing
a new set hardly any better. There is
little sign of further political conflict in Ipswich during the remainder
of the Middle Ages, except for minor
matters, although a further set of ordinances in 1361 again had to
forbid that new burgesses be made without the consent of the greater
part of the community and to prohibit the bailiffs from taking the
entrance fees, the preference being to apply the money to repairs to
the "hall of pleas" called the Tolhouse.
The financial difficulties particularly the burdensome fee farm in
which the borough found itself in the fifteenth century
(apparent in 1446/47) were used as the
rationale to secure from Henry VI additional powers for the borough in
1446. This charter granted
incorporation, with the right to
a seal (which, as we have seen, had been used since 1200) and to
acquire lands and rents (similarly well evidenced before 1446).
The bailiffs and four capital burgesses (i.e. portmen) were to
have powers of Justices of the Peace and hear cases that would earlier
have been dealt with by external Justices; the fines levied in such
cases were to be put towards the fee farm. This was followed up with
a local ordinance in 1447 stating that members of the community could
use force to intervene in any violent assault and that anyone breaking
the peace with such violence was to be disfranchised. The charter also
granted one bailiff the powers of king's escheator, with any fines or
revenues from escheated goods going towards the farm. It was around this
time that Ipswich's government was expanded by the creation of a
Common Council. Edward IV confirmed the
1446 charter in 1463, again referring to the borough's "impoverishment",
and redefined the borough's incorporation in more definite terms. By this
point local government had the basic shape which was to characterize it
for the next few centuries.