INTRODUCTORY. 5 



find in the collection of social and political notes, as late as 

 1483. There is no reason to doubt that these liabilities were 

 redeemed by those who were liable to them, or were commuted 

 by the acknowledgment of quit-rents, or, perhaps in some 

 instances, became obsolete or were excused. So cheap were 

 the means of life during the fifteenth century, and so good, 

 relatively speaking, was the rate of wages, that even the farm 

 hind would have found little difficulty in emancipating himself 

 from the ancient charges which were levied on his condition, if 

 he were absent from the manor, or on his holding, if he remained 

 a resident within it. 



The condition of the townsfolk was even more satisfactory. 

 The larger towns became counties by themselves, seventeen 

 such districts having been formed at different periods, and with 

 privileges, sometimes as extensive as that of London, which 

 has by prescription a jurisdiction over Middlesex, sometimes 

 limited to the area of the city or town walls. Several of these 

 corporations possessed considerable property. Thus the corpo- 

 ration of Norwich has held from the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century at least, and probably for a far longer period, tenements 

 within the city, as well as the rents of the stalls in the many 

 markets which that city anciently reckoned. Hence the cor- 

 poration had the means for exhibiting considerable state, was 

 able to make handsome presents to eminent nobles, to under- 

 take important public services, and to give occasional assistance 

 to the king in his necessities. 



But beside the property which was held by the corporation 

 in its municipal capacity, the trading towns of the Middle Ages, 

 especially in the fifteenth century, comprised a number of guilds, 

 each of which was possessed of more or less property, the profits 

 of which were managed and distributed by the officers of the 

 guild. In the vast majority of cases those estates had a uniform 

 origin. Members of the guild had provided, in the event of 

 their decease, that a portion of their estate should pass into the 

 hands of the trading corporation to which they had belonged in 

 life, charged with the obligation of an annual or more frequent 



