A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



and to all his ministers of Northampton.'*' These 

 formulae are lacking from the charters of Simon III. 

 They indicate, as Dr. Tait has shown,*"* that for 

 part of the nth and 12th centuries Northampton 

 was a mesne borough, dependent, like Leicester, upon 

 its earl, and not directly upon the King. Granted by 

 Rufus to Simon I with the earldom, the town was 

 retained b} Henry I on his death, and was being farmed 

 by the Crown in 11 30.*' Stephen restored it to 

 Simon II with the earldom, but Henry II resumed it 

 in 1154,^'' and it was farmed by a royal official — 

 from 1 170 onwards, by the sherifE^^'' — up to 1185. 

 The death of Simon III may have made the King 

 the readier to grant the burgesses' request in tliat 

 year to farm the borough themselves, though the 

 concession was terminable. This farm had risen from 

 the ^30 los. od. of Domesday to ;^loo in 11 30, and 

 from 1 185 onwards it was £120 down to the 15th 

 century.*'- The right to pay the farm directly at the 

 Exchequer logically involved the right to elect reeves 

 or prepositos, and this right is expressly granted in the 

 first charter extant, that of 18 November 11 89, which 

 is preserved in the town archives at Northampton.*^ 

 From 1 185 to 1197 the names of the two town reeves 

 are to be found on the Pipe Roll ;** after that year the 

 formula runs ' the burgesses of Northampton,' giving 

 no names. 



Besides the grant of the Jirma burgi in fee-farm, 

 which made the concession of Henry II a permanency, 

 and the licence to choose their own reeve freely every 

 year, the privileges granted to the burgesses of 

 Northampton in 1 189 included the ratification of 

 established customs, the tenurial privileges of 

 warranty of lands, freedom from scotale and such 

 exactions, freedom from billeting ; the jurisdictional 

 privileges of freedom from external pleas, freedom 

 from the duel, and preservation of established- judicial 

 customs, a weekly court of husting to be held in the 

 town, and exemption from miskenning ; also freedom 

 from the murder fine and from arbitrary amercements ; 

 the commercial privileges of freedom from toll 

 throughout England, and the right of retaliation on 

 any borough which infringed this custom. The 

 privileges granted to Northampton were explicitly 

 modelled on those of London. It falls into that 

 group of boroughs, others of which were Norwich, 

 Lincoln and Oxford, which looked to London for 

 forms and precedents,*^ and on several occasions it 

 definitely and consciously copied London customs,** 

 if in some other respects, as will be shown, it 

 had affinities with its neighbour, the mesne 

 borough of Leicester. The clause confirming 

 ancient custom, grants to the burgesses ' all other 

 liberties and free customs which our citizens of London 



have had or have . . . according to the liberties of the 

 city of London and the laws of the borough of North- 

 ampton.' *' This last phrase is almost certainly to be 

 associated with the oldest town custumal, wliich, as 

 Miss Bateson has shown,** belongs to much the same 

 date as the charter of Richard I. The town custumals 

 throw so much hght on the constitutional history 

 of the borough th.it it will be well to describe them 

 here. The Liber Custumarum preserved at Northamp- 

 ton, and printed in the ' Records of the Borough,' 

 is the last of four versions of the town customs. 

 The two oldest are in Latin and are preserved in a 

 14th century manuscript in the Bodleian Library .*• 

 The first, containing 24. clauses, is headed by a hst 

 of the forty burgesses who authorised the custumal 

 and swore to preserve it.'" Nine of these appear 

 on the Pipe Rolls as accounting for the farm of the 

 borough between 1 184 and 1196, and it seems certain 

 that the custumal was drawn up in connection with the 

 grant of the firma burgi, between 1 185 and II90. 

 The second custumal, containing 42 clauses, is headed 

 by a list of 24 burgesses, most of whom can be 

 identified as having flourished 1228-1264. Two of 

 the clauses of this custumal are dated and belong 

 to 1 25 1 and 1260 ; it may thus be assigned to round 

 about 1260. The next version is French, and is in a 

 manuscript now at the British IVIuseum,'^ but be- 

 longing to the town of Northampton as late as 1769, 

 and uniform in binding with the Liber Custumarum, 

 still in the possession of the corporation. It contains 

 58 articles, the first 56 adapted from those of the 

 two earlier custumals, the two last new. The latest 

 is dated 7 October 1 341. From this French version 

 was made an English translation, seemingly about 

 1461,'^ supplemented by further regulations and 

 ordinances, enrolled from time to time, as they were 

 carried in the town assembly or council, the whole 

 forming the Liber Custumarum, now preserved at 

 Northampton, the latest entry in which is dated 

 II October 1549.'* 



The first custumal (c. 1 190) refers to bailiffs 

 who take distresses on behalf of the King,''* to reeves 

 or preposiii who intervene with an apparently higher 

 authority and can give a man entry, together with the 

 bailiff,'* and to the probi homines de placitis — the 

 suitors of a court at which transfers of land take place 

 for which the witness of these suitors is sufficient 

 warrant.'* There is no reference to a mayor; the 

 reeves seem to be the highest officials. Nor is there 

 any reference to a mayor in John's charter. Of this 

 charter, granted to the town in .April 1200, there are 

 two versions differing from each other at the precise 

 point where both differ from Richard's charter. 

 This is witli regard to the election of officials. The 



" Cott. MS. \'c»p. E xvi! ; fo. 6 pre- 

 Jecto suo de Nortbampl. ; omnibus prtpositit 

 suit et burgemibui Northampt. ; Ricardo 

 Grimbaud el G. de liloueuite el omnibus 

 suit miniitris de Norlhampt. The charters 

 of the Scottlih King! in this MS. never 

 deicribe them ai Earli of Northampi. 



"• En^L II, St. Rev. \\\\, 33;. 



*' Pipe R. 31 Hen. I. 



"» The exact moment when the change 

 occurs ii recorded in the Pipe Roll Ac- 

 count at Michaelmai, ■■;;. Red Ilk. of 

 /A«£Ari-A»y. (RolliSer,), ii, 6^5. I owe thi> 

 reference to the lindneii of Dr. Tait. 



•"' /?b;;. Hisl. Rev. xlii, 352. 



" Pipe R. 31 Ilcn. II. 



" See Records oj the Boro. of Norlhtimpi., 

 ed. Markham and Cox (cilcd henceforth 

 ai Roio Rec), frontispiece, for facsimile 

 of charter. 



" Ibid, i, 21-23. 



" Gross, Gild Merchant, i, 254. North- 

 ampton itself served as a model to 

 Grimsby and Lancaster. 



"* E.g. Dowbell in 1391 (lioio Rec. i, 

 252), orphans' custody in 1599 (ibid, i, 

 124); common council in 1649 (ibid, ii, 

 21). 



" Secundum Ubcriatcs Londoniarum et 

 leges burgi .Worhanitonte. 



"* Bateson, Borough Customs, I, xli. 



«• Douce MS. (Bodl. Lib.), 98. fo. 158, 

 el se(]. 



'" hit sunt suhscripti qui providerunt 

 leges Norbampton' et iuriiveruni eas obser- 

 vnndits. 



" Add. MS. 34308. 



'! Boro. Rec. i, 208-236. 



" Ibid, i, 341. 



" CI. 19. 



" CL .3. 



"CI. 1,4, 16. 



