A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



charters as free boroughs with the right of farming their own revenues, of 

 self-government through their own elected magistrates, of independent 

 jurisdiction in their own courts in accordance with their own customs, 

 and finally of exercising the powers of a merchant gild. The story of the 

 manner in which the men of Ipswich, with a methodical solemnity which 

 marked their sense of the greatness of the occasion, set about the creation of 

 their new institutions, has often been told:^' the choice of two baihffs, four 

 coroners, and twelve chief portmen ; the assembling of all the townsmen in 

 the churchyard of St. Mary at Tower to swear allegiance to the new 

 constitution ; the separate choice of an alderman and four assistants to govern 

 the merchant gild ; the making and authorization of a common seal, and the 

 codification of the customs of the borough in the 'Domesday of Ipswich.' 

 What we are here concerned with — the social and economic aspects of this 

 new development — find their chief expression in the constitution of the 

 merchant gild as a separate organ of municipal government with officers' 

 records and accounts of its own, of which every full burgess was to be a 

 member, but every member of which need not be a full or resident burgess. 



Nothing, indeed, could be more significant of the great change which 

 had been brought about by the recognition of the borough as a free self- 

 governing community than the terms upon which the most powerful of these 

 foreign burgesses were admitted to a share in its privileges. Foremost in 

 the roll comes Lord Roger le Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of 

 England, who was installed as a burgess in the hall of the prior of St. Peter 

 soon after the charter was granted. 



He gives to the merchant gild an ox and a bull, two quarters of wheat and two 

 quarters of malt, in order that he and his villeins may be free of toll in the town, viz., on 

 all corn and other things produced on his own estates and on all things bought for the use of 

 his own household and not otherwise. And he shall pay annually for ever at the feast of 

 St. Michael iiiii/. for his quay at Ipswich towards the farm of the town, but nevertheless if 

 his villeins are merchants they shall pay to the farm of our lord the king their right and due 

 custom . . . and the same day Robert de Vaux knight of the said earl was made a burgess 

 and he gives to the hanse of the gild a quarter of wheat, and in order that he and all the 

 villeins whom he has at Wenham and elsewhere may be free of toll at Ipswich in the 

 manner aforesaid he agrees to give every year . . . iiiij. and two bushels of wheat." 



And about the same time the question having arisen how far certain 

 religious houses having lands and tenements in the town ought to be free of 

 toll, a jury declared that the Archbishop and Prior of Canterbury, the Bishop 

 and Prior of Norwich, the Bishop and Prior of Ely, the Abbot of Colchester, 

 and the Abbot of Coggeshall were free to sell their produce or buy for their 

 own use. If their villeins were merchants they must pay toll. The issue 

 involved in this settlement was of vital importance. It was one of the main 

 positions round which the struggle for municipal freedom was then being 

 carried on in many continental towns, and at Bury it remained for more than 

 two centuries one of the bitterest subjects of contention between the abbot 

 and his town.'" 



Having thus made themselves masters in their own house, the burgesses 

 of Ipswich could afford to welcome the outsider into their market, and might 



" Gross, GiU Merchant, i, 23-6 ; Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Engl. Law, i, 658, 66^ ; Mrs. Green, 

 Town Life, ii, 224-5. 



" Hist. MSS. Cam. Rep. \x, App. i, 240 ; Gross, Gild Merchant, ii, 113. 

 " F. Keutgen, Jemter und Ziinfie, 60-3. 



638 



