PETERBOROUGH SOKE 



PETERBOROUGH 



no scope for a merchant-gild.' On the other hand, 

 the monastic fairs were frequent and no doubt helpful 

 to the borough. There were four fairs, each lasting 

 a week — one at the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul 

 (29 June), granted by a charter of 11 89' (this was 

 changed in 1878 to the second Tuesday and Wed- 

 nesday in July) ;' another on the second Sunday 

 in Lent, granted 1253,' and a third on St. Oswald's 

 day (5 August).' The Bridge Fair on St. Matthew's 

 day, held on the south bank, was not granted till 

 1439.* The date of this fair was changed in 1878 

 to the first Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in 

 October.' The profits of these tolls and fairs passed 

 at the dissolution to the dean and chapter, in whose 

 volumes of ' audit accounts ' they appear. The toll 

 and fairs and ' reserved rent for toll ' brought in 

 j^3 14J. od. in Elizabeth's time, while the city's pay- 

 ments for purposes not made clear in the account 

 average j^ioo a year. 



The earliest accounts of the abbot's bailiffs of the 

 liberty date from 1379, and these accounts explain 

 clearly the nature of the abbot's profits from and 

 expenses on the town. The salaries of the bailiff and 

 underbailiff were of course paid by him, and the 

 maintenance of the cuckstool and gallows (in the 

 West Field) fell to him. It was his ' constabularius 

 ville ' * who was answerable for escape from the 

 gaol.' The accounts, too, throw further light on 

 the arrangements of borough justice. Each year 

 there is entered not only the profits of the annual 

 view and leet, but also of a Friday court, held fort- 

 nightly or three-weekly, to which suit was due ; the 

 main business of this court was, no doubt, that of 

 a court for the recovery of debts, and this court was 

 the original of the dean and chapter's court for 

 that purpose. Weekly on Saturdays there was 

 a market-court for the speedy settlement of market 

 disputes. 



In the 15th century the relations of the soke and 

 the borough to the central jurisdiction were some- 

 what remodelled. Abbot Ashton's register "" shows 

 the king appointing certain justices to deliver the gaol, 

 and the abbot, in his own name, making the same 

 appointment. The later charters which granted the 

 abbot power to appoint justices to deliver the gaol 

 have been set out in detail in the history of the soke." 

 Although the right to appoint a coroner was formally 

 given to the abbot by Henry VII, his duties must 

 for long past have been performed by some officer of 

 the abbot's nomination. 



To the present day the criminal jurisdiction of 

 Peterborough, as forming part of the liberty or soke, 

 has remained under peculiar conditions. The Local 

 Government Act of 1888 made the soke a separate 

 administrative county, and it possesses its own magis- 

 trates, appointed, subject to the approval of the 

 crown, by the Lord Paramount, Lord Exeter, who is 

 Custos Rotulorum, and these magistrates act under a 

 commission of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery 

 as well as under the ordinary commission. On 

 this bench of magistrates for the liberty the 



mayor and ex-mayor of Peterborough sit ex-officio. 

 They have the power of justices of assize, but 

 they have not exercised their power to hang for 

 murder since 181 2. The high jurisdiction of the 

 borough never having been separate from that of the 

 soke, at the time of the dissolution the dean and 

 chapter entered no claim to the same, although for 

 this, as for other purposes, the borough might have 

 been treated as distinct from the soke. Accordingly 

 criminal jurisdiction over Peterborough passed with 

 that over the hundred of Nassaburgh to the bishop of 

 Peterborough, and how the hundred came to the 

 present Lord Paramount is narrated above. 



Traces of a distinction between the prisoners taken 

 in the soke and those taken in the borough remained 

 till the 19th century. There were two gaols, one 

 for soke criminals and persons arrested by Lord 

 Exeter's bailiff, which lay to the south of the bishop's 

 palace, the other for the dean and chapter's prisoners 

 arrested by their bailiff, which occupied a site in the 

 minster West Gate. A town house of correction, the 

 keeper of which was appointed by the justices of the 

 peace, was in Cumbergate, and was the property 

 of the feoffees, a body which acted as a kind of 

 town council before the incorporation, as will be 

 shown below. By an Act of 2— 3, Victoria, the jus- 

 tices were empowered to make a new gaol, and Lord 

 Exeter, in return for release from certain liabilities, 

 gave up his rights. 



Until the incorporation of the borough in 1874 the 

 dean and chapter continued to exercise an inferior 

 civil jurisdiction ; their bailiff presided over a weekly 

 court for all actions personal and mixed, but chiefly 

 used for the recovery of small debts, and of this court 

 of Common Pleas, as it was called, a long series of 

 records exists. It was held at one time in the 

 bailiff's house, afterwards in the minster West Gate. 

 The court leet and court baron for the free tenants 

 of the dean and chapter were held at the town 

 hall, and the place originally occupied by the 

 steward of the abbot was taken by the steward 

 of the dean and chapter. But the quarter and 

 petty sessions left little real jurisdictional work 

 for these courts to do, and their existence was con- 

 tinued mainly because attendance was enforced by 

 fines, a source of profit to the lords of the manor. All 

 free copyholders were bound to attend the leet, and 

 a roll of 1695 shows that the court was being used 

 for the purpose of registering conveyances of property, 

 and also for the issue of orders for the contiol of 

 street nuisances and for the stint of common. Con- 

 stables, pound-keepers, swineherds, and other officers 

 were here elected, until the incorporation of the 

 borough put an end to the last remnants of the old 

 system. 



But it is not to this manorial organization that we 

 must look for the chief substitute for a municipal 

 executive in the 17th and two following centuries, 

 during which time the unincorporate borough remained 

 an unrecognized administrative entity. Peterborough 

 is one of the most interesting examples of the part 



' Some Peterborough tenants were, in 

 the 1 5th century, seeking the advan- 

 tage of burgage tenure. A woman 

 petitioned the council for interference on 

 her behalf ; she had been disseised of 

 bequeathed land, and had failed to get a 

 remedy at common law. Rolls of Pari. 

 (Rec. Com.), iv, 385*. 



' Gunton, p. 14.6. 



' Lou Jon Gastttt, 17 May, 1878, 



• 3>07; 



* This was afterwards moved to I Aug. 



' Gunton, p. 165. 



' Man. Angl. i, 398. 



1 London Gazette, 17 May, 1878, 

 ,3107. 



8 The abbey registers have much to 

 say on the claims of Geoffrey dc Mare 

 to be hereditary * constabularius viUc.' 

 9 Add. MS. 252S8, 10!. 34. 



*** 143S-71, under his seventeenth year. 

 The register is in the Chapter Library. 



*^ Above, p. 423. 



