The dispute was none the less intense because under the conditions of English life the controversy between the town and the feudal lord was limited within a very narrow field; for the burghers saw well how the lord’s claims to supremacy might permanently fetter an active community of traders, and on this point townspeople fought with a pertinacity determined by the conviction that all their hopes of prosperity depended on victory. To manufacturers and merchants the rule of an alien governor was fatal; trade died away before vexatious checks and arbitrary imposts, and enterprising burghers hastened to forsake the town where prosperity was stunted and liberty uncertain, and take up citizenship in a more thriving borough. Success and emancipation went hand in hand; for the effects of a maimed and imperfect freedom were always disastrous and far-reaching, and there is not a single instance of an English town which remained in a state of dependence and which was at the same time prosperous in trade.
One or two instances will be enough to show the extent and character of the traders’ claim for “liberties.” The burghers of Totnes, who had been fined for having a Guild by Henry the Second, had no sooner succeeded in securing its authorisation from John than they at once made it a weapon of offence, and a formidable weapon too with its roll of more than three hundred members, against their lord’s control of the town market and of the shopkeepers. The Guild claimed the right to admit non-residents to their company, so that these might freely trade without paying any tribute to the lord for one year, after that giving six pence annually; and pretended to have authority to test weights and measures without orders from the lord’s bailiff; to hold the assize of bread and ale and receive fines; and apparently to deal out justice for petty offences. These usurpations of his rights were discussed between the lord and his tenants with riots and contentions, in which the lord proved victorious in 1304, forcing the burghers to submit on every point in which the Guild tried to bring in customs which lay beyond the ancient rights of the community. They were forbidden to admit to the Guild anyone who had not a house in the town, and non-residents had to take oaths before his bailiff to pay a yearly fine to the lord. No trial of weights and measures could take place till orders had been issued to the Seneschal of the Guild by the lord’s bailiff; when the trial came on bailiff and town provost sat beside him in the Guildhall to hear the charges, and even then all false or suspected measures were to be kept by the provost till the lord’s next court. On the other hand the bailiff might hold a trial of measures whenever he judged that he could do the business better. So also the assize of bread was given to the lord’s bailiff sitting with the provost of the town; all suspected bread and weights were to be seized by him, the offenders to be fined in the lord’s court, all punishments by tumbril or pillory inflicted by his orders, and all proceeds of fines given over to him. Lastly when small thefts and riots were to be judged the bailiff sat by the town officers and as many burgesses as chose to come, and took his share in the proceedings—though occasionally in his absence the town officers might act by common consent of the community.[471]