A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



played by the law of trusts in the history of English 

 institutions. The ' trust concept ' had to serve the 

 burgesses of Peterborough in lieu of the ' corporation 

 concept,' ' and served them more or less in good stead. 



At Peterborough the minute-books of certain 

 'feoffees' are the only MSS. which can be pro- 

 duced answering to that ' book of common halls,' of 

 minutes of town council meetings, which every 

 borough should be able to produce. Happily this 

 body of trustees can be traced back to their origin.' 

 They were originally trustees for the administration of 

 certain gild properties, and gradually extended the 

 sphere of their operations till much strictly municipal 

 business was in their hands. 



The dissolution of the monasteries was followed in 

 1546-7 by the dissolution of the religious gilds. 

 There had been several religious gilds in Peterborough 

 at least as early as the 15th century; for instance, in 

 1492 Richard Skirmet bequeathed lands in Combers- 

 gate (now Cumbergate) to the wardens or aldermen 

 of the gilds of the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Bap- 

 tist, St. James and St. George, in the parish church of 

 Peterborough. ' Should the gilds decay, the lands 

 were to pass to the churchwardens. The deed 

 making this grant has passed into the possession of the 

 Peterborough feoffees, a significant fact as will appear. 

 There were bequests also in 1480 and 1525 to the 

 Corpus Christi gild, and in 1544 a grant was made 

 for the repair of the bridge and to the churchwardens 

 for parochial purposes.' Other 15th-century con- 

 veyances in which the name of no gild is mentioned, 

 but in which a conveyance is made to a group of 

 trustees — conveyances still in the hands of the Peter- 

 borough feoffees — are in all likelihood conveyances to 

 religious gilds.' There were cogent reasons for 

 omitting to specify the purpose of such grants.* 

 These lands, or some of them, at least as early as 1572, 

 became the property of a group of trustees charged to 

 administer them for charitable and public purposes. 

 Thomas Robinson alias Baker, who had received cer- 

 tain lands, late the property of the gilds in the town 

 and church of Peterborough, by the gift of Queen 

 Elizabeth, dated 26 June, 1572, gave them to fourteen 

 persons whom he names and to their heirs for 

 charitable uses. Reserving £^z^ for himself and his 

 heirs, the donor gave the res; to help ten of the poor- 

 est inhabitants to pay any tax that might be imposed 

 on the town, and the balance was to go to the parish 

 church and the mending of the common ways on the 

 north side of the river. 



In the same year there is mention of the existence 

 of a gildhall in the market-place, possibly the hall of 

 one of the religious gilds ; it was destined to pass 

 through the hands of the trustees to the use of Peter- 

 borough burgesses. When next the feoffees are heard 

 of they have become transformed into what may fairly 

 be called the governing body of the municipality ; 

 they are the administrators of the ' common good,' 

 of the town property. A gap had been left for them 

 to fill, for the dean and chapter were interested in 

 the town in so &r as from it they derived large re- 



ceipts, but not in any branch of municipal adminis- 

 tration which would lead them to incur expenditure. 

 The feoffees, as controllers of certain properties left to 

 be administered for the public welfare, gradually 

 magnified their sphere of influence till the whole of 

 the expenditure for municipal purposes came under 

 their control and their work became that of a town 

 council. 



Although it does not appear that there was 

 any compulsion upon them to do so, the feof- 

 fees might and often did ' co-opt the dean or 

 one of the canons to fill a vacancy. The feof- 

 fees were in no sense agents of the dean and 

 chapter as a borough authority, neither were they 

 hostile to this rival borough authority. All this 

 appears from the rolls of their accounts extant from 

 1 614 onward in the form of parchment rolls and 

 paper-books,' which contain less full and formal par- 

 ticulars than the rolls. These accounts were rendered 

 yearly by two 'town-bailiffs' before the feoffees, who 

 appointed these bailiffs until 1874. The bailiffs re- 

 ceived the rents of the feoffees' lands and expended 

 them as directed by the feoffees. There was also a 

 beadle, a servant of the feoffees, whose duties were to 

 see to the administration of the poor law. In 1660 

 the beadle wore the town cognizance.' 



The feoffees' receipts amounted in the early 1 7th 

 century to about £\'2-0, and were mainly derived 

 from the rents of certain ' town-lands ' or houses 

 which had presumably been bequeathed to the town 

 or to the gilds for charitable or public uses. A small 

 income was derived from the rents of stalls at the 

 market cross, over which the dean and chapter seem 

 no longer to be exercising careful control such as the 

 abbot exercised in mediaeval times. 



There are receipts of money paid ' for the use of our 

 parish church,' towards its repair, and payments for the 

 wood sold from the steeple (16 14). The feoffees 

 were electing the churchwardens," and treated the 

 parish church of the borough as if it were a part of 

 the ' common good ' for which they were trustees. 

 They received and controlled the moneys levied under 

 the poor law statutes, borrowing from the stock of the 

 poor, with a note that the sum was to be repaid. In 

 16 16 some ' inhabitants ' were added to the meeting 

 of the feoffees, probably to act more or less inform- 

 ally as representatives of the ' community ' for which 

 the feoffees were acting. In 161 5 the 'inhabitants' 

 are named who agreed that the collectors for the poor 

 and the churchwardens should gather the poor people 

 in the church to receive their weekly collection from 

 the parishioners there. 



The expenses incurred by the feoffees during the 

 early 1 7th century covered such public matters as the 

 provision of stalls in the market, of weights and 

 measures, the repair of the gildhall, the protection 

 of the town from fire, and from plague, the paving of 

 streets, the repair of the bridge, the provision for 

 maimed soldiers, for poor persons, and for the 

 apprenticeship of orphans, and also for the main- 

 tenance of the parish church. 



1 Cf. Maitland, Political Theoriei of the 

 MiiiJlt .^gesy p. xxix. 



' The documents belonging to the 

 feotTces have been calendared by Mr, 

 Noble. 



^ The deed is in the possession of the 

 feoffees. The same list of gilds in the 

 parish church is made in a grant of 



II Hen. VIII, Chanc. Inq. p.m. 34- 

 109. 



■• These are noted in Sweeting's 

 Parish Churchit in and around Peter- 

 borough. 



* One of 19 Edw. IV is to the vicar 

 (John Forman) and Richard Skirmet (see 

 above) and others named. 



428 



* To evade the mortmain acts, 15 

 Ric. II, c. ^, and 23 Hen. VIII, c. 10. 



' e.g. 1633. 



8 They are called minute-books. They 

 are in the custody of Mr. J. W. Buckle, 

 clerk to the feoffees, 



3 Sweeting, Parish Churches^ p, 26. 

 10 Cf. the roll of 1651. 



