A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK charters as free boroughs with the right of farming their own revenues, of self-government through their own elected magistrates, of independent jurisdiction in their own courts in accordance with their own customs, and finally of exercising the powers of a merchant gild. The story of the manner in which the men of Ipswich, with a methodical solemnity which marked their sense of the greatness of the occasion, set about the creation of their new institutions, has often been told:^' the choice of two baihffs, four coroners, and twelve chief portmen ; the assembling of all the townsmen in the churchyard of St. Mary at Tower to swear allegiance to the new constitution ; the separate choice of an alderman and four assistants to govern the merchant gild ; the making and authorization of a common seal, and the codification of the customs of the borough in the 'Domesday of Ipswich.' What we are here concerned with — the social and economic aspects of this new development — find their chief expression in the constitution of the merchant gild as a separate organ of municipal government with officers' records and accounts of its own, of which every full burgess was to be a member, but every member of which need not be a full or resident burgess. Nothing, indeed, could be more significant of the great change which had been brought about by the recognition of the borough as a free self- governing community than the terms upon which the most powerful of these foreign burgesses were admitted to a share in its privileges. Foremost in the roll comes Lord Roger le Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of England, who was installed as a burgess in the hall of the prior of St. Peter soon after the charter was granted. He gives to the merchant gild an ox and a bull, two quarters of wheat and two quarters of malt, in order that he and his villeins may be free of toll in the town, viz., on all corn and other things produced on his own estates and on all things bought for the use of his own household and not otherwise. And he shall pay annually for ever at the feast of St. Michael iiiii/. for his quay at Ipswich towards the farm of the town, but nevertheless if his villeins are merchants they shall pay to the farm of our lord the king their right and due custom . . . and the same day Robert de Vaux knight of the said earl was made a burgess and he gives to the hanse of the gild a quarter of wheat, and in order that he and all the villeins whom he has at Wenham and elsewhere may be free of toll at Ipswich in the manner aforesaid he agrees to give every year . . . iiiij. and two bushels of wheat." And about the same time the question having arisen how far certain religious houses having lands and tenements in the town ought to be free of toll, a jury declared that the Archbishop and Prior of Canterbury, the Bishop and Prior of Norwich, the Bishop and Prior of Ely, the Abbot of Colchester, and the Abbot of Coggeshall were free to sell their produce or buy for their own use. If their villeins were merchants they must pay toll. The issue involved in this settlement was of vital importance. It was one of the main positions round which the struggle for municipal freedom was then being carried on in many continental towns, and at Bury it remained for more than two centuries one of the bitterest subjects of contention between the abbot and his town.'" Having thus made themselves masters in their own house, the burgesses of Ipswich could afford to welcome the outsider into their market, and might " Gross, GiU Merchant, i, 23-6 ; Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Engl. Law, i, 658, 66^ ; Mrs. Green, Town Life, ii, 224-5. " Hist. MSS. Cam. Rep. x, App. i, 240 ; Gross, Gild Merchant, ii, 113. " F. Keutgen, Jemter und Ziinfie, 60-3. 638
