The rebellion lasted for two years. In 1316 six citizens representing the community of Bristol were summoned before the king’s council to answer for these offences. They denied the charges, and refused to submit unless life and limb, rents and land, were secured to them. The king, looking on the case as one of evil example, ordered Bristol to be besieged by sea and land, and after attempting to hold out for some days in the hope that the troops might be called away to the Scotch war, the town surrendered half in ruins. The leaders were put in prison and the multitude terrified by a series of heavy punishments. The banished party returned in triumph to power, and appeared, twelve of them, before the king’s council, with the allotted fine of four thousand marks to have pardon for all the city’s offences, and to have back the franchise of the town. The rebel mayor and his immediate friends, excluded from mercy, went in their turn into exile. (See the account extracted from Rolls of Parliament 9 Edward II. by Seyer. Memoirs of Bristol, ii. 89 to 105.)
After this matters seem to have gone on as before, a few influential families still taking the leading place. One, Turtle, was mayor ten times, and another, Tilly, held office for four years. But in 1344, the popular party insisted on the appointment of Forty-eight “of the chiefest and discreetest” burgesses, to be the mayor’s councillors and assistants. When Bristol was made into a county in 1373 the new charter recognized the system established in 1344, and provided that the mayor and sheriff with the assent of the commonalty should choose a Council of Forty, whose consent was required for all ordinances, and who took part in municipal elections; while the five aldermen of the wards were chosen by the people from among the ex-mayors or members of the common council. By a later charter of 1499 it was settled that six aldermen were to be elected for life by the mayor and common council, and were to have the authority of London aldermen (Charter Henry VII., 1499. Seyer’s Charters and Letters Patent of Bristol, 123), while the common council itself was to be elected by the mayor and two aldermen chosen by him, with the assent of the commonalty.