92 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1919 
What were the essential privileges that all aspiring English 
towns recognised as most desirable ? 
1. The first was a right to deal in financial matters directly 
with the Exchequer ; not to be treated as a mere fragment 
of the shire through the Sheriff. 
2. Next, to have a “ Guild-merchant,” with privileges 
for trade-regulation, and freedom from toll to its traders, 
throughout the Kingdom. 
3. Next, to be permitted to administer justice within its 
boundaries according to ancient custom, to elect its own officers 
and to rule the citizens, who should not be removable except by 
their own consent and council. 
4. All townsmen should be sworn to defend their acquired 
liberties. 
5. Permission to have and to use a Common Seal. 
Hence, an ancient or mediaeval town simply craved for 
the governance of itself after the manner of a small republic, 
not after the ordinances of feudal masters. We must recollect 
that the life of such towns was very stationary compared to the 
life in later times. The State as an entity was almost as tenuous 
or foggy to them as a ghost, while their own little business 
and town-crafts and guilds were everything. It was the only 
systematic life they understood. Each man and boy was 
a member of a narrow little commonwealth. If danger to it 
was recognised, all were summoned by the town-bell to the 
Market-place, where their duties were assigned to them, and their 
arms dealt out by the common bailiff. Of course, if the King 
summoned them to his aid the same thing occurred, and the 
bailiff selected a contingent and appointed captains and made 
provision for them. In the case of civil wars or family-battles, 
the citizens were fairly indifferent, except to the winner, from 
whom might perhaps be expected extensions of privilege. 
Even if Cirencester had attained to the coveted and stable 
possession of a “ Guild-merchant,” we can be certain it would 
have had no easy or comfortably clear line before it. It would 
have had to keep up constant friction with the Abbot of St. 
Mary (its future Lord Paramount) while it perfected slowly its 
municipal organisation. There would have occurred causes 
of serious differences between the two, involving new and 
