Our Legal Heritage : 600-1776 King Aethelbert - King George IIIReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage : 600-1776 King Aethelbert - King George III
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Many boroughs sought and obtained formal incorporation with the
same essential features as London. This tied up the loose language
of their early charters of liberties. Often, a borough would have
its own resident Justice of the Peace. Each incorporation involved
a review by a Justice of the Peace to make sure the charter of
incorporation rule didn't conflict with the law of the nation. A
borough typically had a mayor accompanied by his personal sword-
bearer and serjeants-at-mace bearing the borough regalia,
bailiffs, a sheriff, and chamberlains or a steward for financial
assistance. At many boroughs, aldermen, assisted by their
constables, kept the peace in their separate wards. There might be
coroners, a recorder, and a town clerk, with a host of lesser
officials including beadles, aletasters, sealers, searchers
[inspectors], weighers and keepers of the market, ferrymen and
porters, clock-keepers and criers, paviors [maintained the roads],
scavengers and other street cleaners, gatekeepers and watchmen of
several ranks and kinds. A wealthy borough would have a chaplain
and two or three minstrels. The mayor replaced the bailiffs as the
chief magistracy.
In all towns, the wealthiest and most influential guilds were the
merchant traders of mercers, drapers, grocers, and goldsmiths.
From their ranks came most of the mayors, and many began to
intermarry with the country knights and gentry. Next came the
shopholders of skinners, tailors, ironmongers, and corvisors
[shoemakers]. Thirdly came the humbler artisans, the sellers of
victuals, small shopkeepers, apprentices, and journeymen on the
rise. Lastly came unskilled laborers, who lived in crowded
tenements and hired themselves out. The first three groups were
the free men who voted, paid scot and bore lot, and belonged to
guilds. Scot was a rateable proportion in the payments levied from
the town for local or national purposes. Merchant guilds in some
towns merged their existence into the town corporation, and their
guild halls became the common halls of the town, and their
property became town property.
In London, the Cutlers' Company was chartered in 1415, the
Haberdashers' Company in 1417, the Grocers' Company in 1428, the
Drapers' and Cordwainers' companies in 1429, the Vintners' and
Brewers' companies in 1437, the Leathersellers' Company in 1444,
the Girdlers' Company in 1448, the Armourers' and Brassiers'
companies in 1453, the Barbers' Company in 1461, the Tallow
Chandlers' Company in 1462, the Ironmongers' Company in 1464, the
Dyers' Company in 1471, the Musicians' Company in 1472, the
Carpenters' Company in 1477, the Cooks' Company in 1481, and the
Waxchandlers' Company in 1483. The Fishmongers, which had been
chartered in 1399, were incorporated in 1433, the Cordwainers in
1439, and the Pewterers in 1468.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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