In the early fifteenth century laws, etc., were made by the mayor and his peers and all the community of the city. (Gross, ii. 258-9.) The “full assembly” of 1477 mentions the mayor and fifty-seven of his peers then present (Ibid. 262). It is a matter for inquiry whether the thirty-three citizens added to the twenty-four were specially summoned householders, and whether Winchester followed in its common council the type of Leicester or of Norwich.
Leicester had originally a council of twenty-four; and the commons had a right at first to gather at elections or at a Common Hall and watch the proceedings of the council. They had, however, no right to interfere with business, and in 1467 a fine was imposed on any who cried out or named aloud one of the mayor’s brethren to the office of the mayoralty. In the fifteenth century there were rumours and speech of ungodly rules and demeanings among the people, and in 1489 “whereas such persons as be of little substance or reason, and not contributors, or else full little, to the charges” still continued “their exclamations and headiness,” they were excluded as a body from the Common Hall, and the mayor, bailiffs, and Twenty-four, were ordered only to summon forty-eight and no more of the most wise and sad of the commoners after their discretion. In the later part of the fifteenth century orders were made by the mayor and “his brethren called the Twenty-four and the whole company of the Forty-eight, then and there assembled, for and in the name of the whole body of the corporation of the town.” (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 423; Thomson, Mun. Hist. 55-6, 80-84.)
In 1553 “the mayor and burgesses” of Gloucester claimed to have had power time out of mind to ordain, constitute, and hold a court in their Council House, and to call many and divers men to their council at the same court and to compel and swear them in of their council. This summoning of additional councillors seems to have made up the “Common Council.” In 1526 it was stated that “it has been the custom time out of mind to elect certain chief burgesses, sometimes more sometimes less in number,” to form a common council; and the number was then fixed at forty, twelve of whom were to be aldermen.