WHEN a borough had won from its lord full rights of self-government, its battles were not yet over. The next effort of the town authorities was to secure complete power over all the inhabitants within their walls, so that they might compel all alike to submit to the town courts, and to bear their share of burdensome duties, such as the payment of taxes, the keeping watch and ward, the defence of the town, the maintenance of its trade, or the enlargement of its liberties—in fact to take their part as good citizens in all that concerned the common weal.
For all towns alike, whatever were their chartered rights, had to reckon not only with their own lord of the manor, but with the great people, whether king or noble or bishop or abbot, or perhaps all of them together, who might own a part of the land within their walls, and might all assert their various and conflicting rights, and multiply officials of every kind with courts and prisons and gallows, to vindicate the lord’s authority. Thus in Warwick in the eleventh century, when the population was scarcely over a thousand, the King held a hundred and thirteen houses, and various lords and prelates owned a hundred and twelve, while there were nineteen independent burgesses who had the right of sac and soc. So also in the time of Edward the First there were five gallows in Worcester and the district immediately round the city. One belonged to the town, another to the bishop, and a third to the Earl of Gloucester, while two more were set up by the abbots of Pershore and Westminster who held property in the borough; all of which lords and prelates had the right of hanging thieves and rioters in this little community of about two thousand inhabitants.[576]
A new municipality, face to face with these traditional claims, and powerless before the customary rights of property, could only fall back on friendly treaties by which both sides might win advantage from peaceable compromise. As soon as the burghers had won chartered privileges of trade and freedom from toll throughout the kingdom, they had something to offer to their neighbours, and the bargaining began. They could propose to grant protection and a share in their privileges, and would demand in return that the tenants of alien lords should contribute to their taxes and take part in public duties, and perhaps acknowledge, in some respects at all events, the authority of their courts. But the progress of the negociations and their final result underwent considerable modifications, according as the townspeople had to deal with the constable of the King’s castle; with some lord who held property in the borough; or with an ecclesiastical settlement, whether cathedral or monastery, planted within the liberties.