The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris

      THE OLD STATE CHAIR

      The bailiffs, with their work of court-holding, ferm-paying, and fine-collecting;[176] the chamberlains, who overlooked the common pastures, and put the murage money to its proper use;[177] the wardens, who supervised town property and made payment of sundry expenses, delivering up their accounts for the annual audit, were all deeply immersed in business. And the keeping of these accounts was no easy matter, so great a variety of items was included therein, and so frequent were the demands upon the public purse. Now the wardens would be called upon to entertain and reward the bearward of a neighbouring nobleman, or the groups of strolling players who set up their booth in the inn-yard or market-place; or, again, to contribute to the maintenance of the knights of the shire,[178] or lay down the ten pounds, which the mayor took as the "fee of the cloak";[179] now to defray the cost of a civic banquet, or that of the mayor's new fur cap, keeping in the latter case, the "olde stuffe" for the use of the town.[180] Surely much of the activity of the House of Commons under Edward III. and the House of Lancaster is in the main due to the training many of its members received at home in the local guild-hall or council-house.

      A great part of the municipal business in the Middle Ages was carried on by bodies consisting of twenty-four men, a double jury, a number occurring in London as early as 1205–6,[181] in Leicester in 1225,[182] and rather later in Norwich.[183] In Coventry in the fifteenth century twenty-four late officials, frequently including the justices of the peace, brought together by some indirect process of which we have lost the secret, elected the officers for the ensuing year. The same number, and to all intents and purposes the same men, were the jurats of the leet. A council of twenty-four, chosen by the mayor and perhaps identical with the jury of the leet, examined petitions four days before the two great assemblies of this court, in order, it seems, to discuss and decide on their rejection or acceptance by the jury of the leet. Moreover, twenty-four nominees of the mayor reinforced the electoral jury of twenty-four to form the mayor's council of forty-eight.[184] In practice, however, there was no rigid adherence to these numbers; small executive or deliberative bodies frequently met, and on occasions when it was deemed necessary large "halls" or assemblies of indeterminate numbers were summoned by the mayor to testify to the popular will. This calling together of the community, a relic maybe of immemorial custom,[185] affording in its traces of ward[186] organisation evidence of a form of government older and more popular than the system employed by the town rulers in the fifteenth century, reveals a lack of any well-thought-out scheme to ensure the election of representatives. Hence it seems to have been of little avail for purposes of popular control. The members were summoned at the requisition of the mayor, and were frequently to a great extent members of the official class. Hence in the cases of which we have record they did nothing but set the seal of approval to the official policy. Thus in 1384[187] the mayor summoned four or six out of every ward to learn what the common wish was concerning the Podycroft and other common lands, which the Trinity guild kept in severalty in return for the annual ferm of £10 paid to the prior on behalf of the corporation, the assembly was in favour of the continuance of the old arrangement, though it was avowedly a most unpopular one. And no orders of leet availed to check the open discontent of the common folk, who certainly did not feel themselves in any way bound by this assembly. The guild constantly found that their fences were broken down, and their fields overrun by the people at Lammas; and in 1414[188] it was thought necessary to decree that people trespassing (delinquentes) in the enclosures should be arrested, and imprisoned until they had made sufficient amends "by view of the guild master and six of the guild brethren."