Because disagreements and discords have arisen among the
burgesses and community of the town of Yarmouth, and have increased
due to lack of good government and maladministration of, or failure
to uphold, the ordinances and laws in earlier times made, ordained
and established by wise and sensible men (burgesses of the town);
And because
The bailiffs, burgesses and community of the town, assembled on
Tuesday before the feast of Easter in the 6th year of the reign of
our sovereign lord king Henry VII ,
by the good and sensible advice of the right worshipful James Hobart,
the king's attorney, then being present, intending to provide a remedy
in this matter, it was fully decided and agreed by their common assent
that two burgesses, John Peers and John Tanne, should nominate and
select 10 other well-disposed burgesses to join them, and those 12
should after consultation amend and reform the old ordinances and apply
their discretion to formulating other ordinances and reforms such as
to prevent the difficulties that recently caused the said disagreements
and discords.
Whereupon John Peers and John Tanne nominated to join them John Russe,
William Albon, William Aldrich senior, Robert Barett, Christopher Moy,
Nicholas Moore, Stephen Watson, John Borell, William Patenson, and
Richard Osteler, well-disposed burgesses of the town. Which 12 burgesses
thus selected took upon themselves, for the honour of God and the
increase of the common good, the task of reforming the old ordinances
and creating additional ordinances, as follows, to endure perpetually
by the grace of God.