WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



Probably the cause of these disputes was the control 

 exercised by the new Town Council over officials, 

 who, before its establishment, had been accustomed 

 to uncontrolled authority. During this period the 

 Town Council seems to have remained on good 

 terms with the body of burgesses ; ''^' partly because 

 its meetings were open ; partly because it appears to 

 have been the practice for the bailiffs, elected on the 

 annual election day, to become thereafter members of 

 the council for life.^" This gave to the burgesss-body 

 some control over the membership of the council, and 

 probably left few places to be filled up by the council 

 itself. 



But the most striking sign of the growing inde- 

 pendence of the borough is to be seen in the use 

 made of its privilege of electing to Parliament. Lord 

 Derby still occasionally nominated one member, but 

 the Chancellor of the Duchy lost his right ; always 

 one, and sometimes both, of the members were now 

 genuinely elected by the borough, wages were paid to 

 them, and care was taken that they earned them. In the 

 elections all freemen took part, and, probably because 

 the Town Council was so recently established and 

 because national politics were beginning to be in- 

 teresting, this power was never usurped from the 

 freemen by the council. An illustration of the mode 

 of treatment of their members by the burgesses may 

 be quoted. In 1 6 1 1 Mr. Brook '" sent in a bill for 

 j^zS I OS. for the wages of his attendance during the 

 previous session. Of this he had already ' received in 

 allowance and payments £l^ 5/. yJ., and so rested 

 due to him £1^ 4/. ^J., which 4/. ^d. was deducted 

 in regard of his stay in Chester about his own business 

 four days, and so he was allowed £l/\. absolutely, pro- 

 vided he delivered first the New Charter.' 



Mr. Brook did not produce a charter, and we are 

 left to infer that his wages were not paid. This is 

 one of a series of applications for a charter which 

 occur at frequent intervals in the later years of the 

 1 6th century and the first quarter of the 17th, 

 inspired by the sense of insecurity in their privileges 

 to which the controversies of the previous fifty years 

 had given rise. There survives a memorandum,"' 

 dating from about 1580, in which the Recorder gives 

 it as his opinion that the borough had never in any 

 of its charters been incorporated in express words, and 

 that all its privileges must remain insecure until this 

 was rectified. Applications in 1603,"° 161 1,'" and 

 161 7"' were unsuccessful ; but at length in 1626"* 

 a new charter was purchased from Charles I, then 

 embarrassed by the war with Spain and by the quarrel 

 with Parliament. 1 



The charter of Charles I is the most important 

 of the series, after that of Henry III. It definitely 

 incorporated the borough ; confirmed it in all the 

 powers it exercised, whether enjoyed by grant or by 

 usurpation ; vested in the burgess body full powers of 

 legislation not only for themselves but for all in- 

 habitants of the borough ; and granted, probably for 



LIVERPOOL 



the first time,'" the right to hold a court under the 

 Statute of Merchants. The charter did not even 

 name the town council, which was thus left at the 

 mercy of the burgess body ; but in the next year the 

 existing council was re-elected, and as there is no 

 trace of any discussion of the question until the 

 second half of the century, it would seem that no 

 attack on the powers of the council was intended. 

 The existence of the bench of aldermen is only in- 

 cidentally recognized by the appointment of the 

 senior alderman for the time being as a justice of 

 the peace. The charter thus gave ground for a good 

 deal of dispute, though none seems to have arisen. But 

 it was an invaluable grant, for it secured the burgesses 

 in the possession of all the vague rights which they 

 had usurped since 1 394, but which had been threatened 

 since the Molyneuxes obtained possession of the lease 

 of the farm ; particularly the ownership of the waste 

 and the sovereignty of the borough officers over the 

 whole population of the borough. It left unsettled, 

 however, several questions at issue between the borough 

 and the lessees of the farm which had remained 

 dormant since 1555. 



It was fortunate that the charter had been obtained 

 before 1628, for in that year Charles I sold Liver- 

 pool,'" with some three hundred other manors, to 

 trustees on behalf of the citizens of London, in 

 acquittance of a number of loans. So long as the 

 Molyneux lease lasted the Londoners' ownership of 

 the lordship meant nothing beyond the right of 

 receiving the ^£14 61. Sd. of farm rent, which 

 had to be at once paid over to the Crown, the sale 

 having been made subject to an annual rent-charge of 

 this amount. The lordship was therefore worthless 

 to the Londoners ; it was valuable only to Sir Richard 

 Molyneux, who by buying it from them for ^£400 in 

 1636"° obtained in perpetuity and in freehold the 

 rights he had previously enjoyed by lease, as well as 

 any other rights that might be construed as coming 

 under the lordship. This placed the burgesses more 

 fully than ever at his mercy. In 1638 he commenced 

 an action in the Court of Wards "' to prohibit the 

 burgesses from working an illicit ferry and mill which 

 had somehow got into their possession. The bur- 

 gesses, resisting, petitioned the Crown for a grant of 

 the lease of the farm to themselves ; '*' but this, although 

 the king ' made a most gracious answer,' was obviously 

 out of his power since the sale, and they found it 

 necessary to come to an agreement,'" whereby they 

 were to pay Molyneux ^^20 per annum without 

 prejudice to their rights. Before the question could 

 be raised again, and before Molyneux could attempt 

 to press home other claims, the Civil War had broken 

 out, and the later stages of the dispute were postponed 

 until after the Restoration. 



The side which Liverpool was likely to take in the 

 great struggle would not have been easy to predict 

 from its action during the preceding years. On the 

 whole the temper of the burgesses, in religious matters. 



8S6 It is impossible to tell whether the 

 assembly had in this period been wholly 

 superseded, the word 'Assembly' being 

 used for both types of meetings. There is 

 some evidence that council meetings were 

 open to freemen ; Liv. Mmic Rcc, i, 127. 



"S? Hht, Munic. Govt, in Liv. 88 and 

 note. 



888 picton, Li-u. Mmic. Rec. i, 157. 



889 Hist. Munic. Govt, in Liv., 90. 



^« Norris Papers (Chet. Soc. ix), 8. 



8^1 Picton, Munic. Rec. i, 157. 



8^»Ibid. 156. 



8*' Orig. in Liv. Mun. Archives ; Hist. 

 Munic. Govt. 165-89. An analysis of 

 the charter is given in the same work, 

 91-4. 



"■* The docquet of the charter speaks 

 of it as ' a confirmation ... of ancient 

 liberties luith an addition of a clause for 



19 



the acknowledgment of statute merchant ;' 

 ibid. 166. 



S"!* The deed of sale is printed in Hist. 

 Munic. Go-vt. in Liv. 362-81. 



8« Deed of sale at Croxteth (Liv. box 

 10, bdle. R, No. 6), Hist. Munic. Govt, in 

 Liv. 381. 



'*^ Picton, Liv. Munic. Rec. i, 132. 



848 Ibid. 



»« Ibid. 133. 



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