IV. Resolution in the defence of their territory was no doubt quickened by the sense which every burgess shared of common property in the borough. The value of woodland and field and meadow which made up the “common lands” was well understood by the freeman who sent out his sheep or cows to their allotted pasture, or who opened the door of his yard in the early morning when the common herd went round the streets to collect the swine and drive them out on the moor till evening.[244] The men of Romney did not count grudgingly their constant labour and cost in measuring and levelling and draining the swamps belonging to their town and protecting them from the encroachments of “the men of the marsh” beyond, for the sake of winning grazing lands for their sheep, and of securing a “cow-pull” of swans or cygnets for their lord the archbishop[245] when it was desirable “to have his friendship.” In poor struggling boroughs like Preston, in large and wealthy communities like Nottingham, in manufacturing towns like Worcester with its busy population of weavers, in rich capitals like York, in trading ports like Southampton where the burghers had almost forgotten the free traditions of popular government, the inhabitants never relaxed their vigilance as to the protection of their common property.[246] They assembled year after year to make sure that there had been no diminishing of their rights or alienation of their land, or that in the periodical allotments the best fields and closes had not fallen to the share of aldermen and councillors; and by elaborate constitutional checks, or if these failed, by “riotous assembly and insurrection,” they denounced every attempt at encroachment on marsh or pasture.
V. So also in the case of other property which corporations held for the good of the community—fisheries, warrens, salt-pits, pastures reclaimed from the sea, plots of ground saved in the dry bed of a river, building sites and all waste places within the town walls, warehouses and shops and tenements, inns and mills, the grassy slopes of the city ditch which were let for grazing, the towers of the city walls leased for dwelling-houses or store rooms, any property bequeathed to the community for maintaining the poor or repairing the walls or paying tolls and taxes all this corporate wealth which lightened the burdens of the taxpayer was a matter of concern to every citizen. The people were themselves joint guardians of the town treasure. Representatives chosen by the burghers kept one or two of the keys of the common chest, which could only be opened therefore with their consent.[247] Year after year mayor or treasurers were by the town ordinances required to present their accounts before the assembly of all the people “in our whole community, by the tolling of the common bell calling them together for that intent”[248]—an assembly that perhaps gathered in the parish church in which seats were set up for the occasion at the public expense.[249] There the people heard the list of fines levied in the courts; of tolls in the market, or taxes taken at the gates or in the harbour; of the “maltodes,” or sums paid on commodities for sale; of the “scot” levied on the property of individuals; of the “lyvelode” or livelihood, an income tax on rates or profits earned. They learned what means the corporation had taken of increasing the common revenue; whether it had ordered a “church-ale,” or an exhibition of dancing girls, or a play of Robin Hood;[250] what poor relief had been given in the past year;[251] what public loans with judicious usury of over ten per cent., it had allowed, as when in Lydd “the jurats one year lent Thomas Dygon five marks from the common purse when going to the North Sea, and he repaid the same well and trustily and paid an increase thereon seven shillings;” or they were told whether the Town Council proposed to do a little trading for the good of the community; and how a “common barge” had been built with timber bought at one town, cables and anchors at another, pitch and canvas at a third; and how, when the ship was finished, the corporation paid for a modest supply of “bread and ale the day the mast was set in the barge,” before it was sent out to fish for herrings or to speculate in a cargo of salt or wine, for the profit of the public treasury.[252]