Urban customs appear of more interest and importance than rural usages by reason of the greater complexity of relations implied by the interdependence of members of a populous community. In the country the organization of society is more simple, and the life of the fields, if more tranquil, must always be less vivid, and, if the term may be allowed, less conscious than that of the town. Nothing, however, is more certain than that the formation of towns came after and was in most instances the progeny of rural conditions. It is an amazing circumstance that not until the middle of the last century did the great city of Manchester emancipate itself from the last traces of feudal subjection by the purchase of manorial and market rights. Just as the word pecunia is derived from pecus, just as the merchant's mark is in all likelihood descended from that of the yeoman, even so in many municipal appointments there is strong evidence of the once all-prevalent agricultural element.

If we turn to London, we shall discover that its administration was conducted, to a large extent, on country and manorial lines. The necessary result was chaos. As Mr. J. H. Round observes, "The genius of the Anglo-Saxon system was ill adapted, or rather wholly unsuitable, to urban life ... while of unconquerable persistence and strength in small manageable rural communities, it was bound to, and did, break down when applied to large and growing towns, whose life lay not in agriculture, but in trade. In a parish, in a hundred, the Englishman was at home, but in a town, and still more in such a town as London, he found himself at his wits' end." But the practical spirit, the common sense of our race, successfully asserted itself—e.g., in the case of the Sheriffs, who in London are elected by the citizens. In general, sheriffs are appointed by the Crown, and, as the name implies, they are strictly county officers. In the case of the special franchise of the Fitzwalters we have seen how eagerly the Corporation embraced the opportunity afforded by the sale of Baynard Castle to secure greater freedom and homogeneity in the government of the City.

Subordinate to the sheriff in the administration of a county are various classes of bailiffs; and the bailiff bore to the lord of a fee much the same relation as the sheriff did to the King. For one or other of these reasons the mayors of provincial towns were, in the early days of local autonomy, termed bailiffs. By a charter granted in 1200 King John permitted the citizens of Lincoln to elect two of their number "well and faithfully to maintain the provostship (pr?posituram) of the city." Twenty-two years afterwards the persons holding this office were called upon to represent the city in a dispute with the burgesses of Beverley—"Ballivi civitatis Lincolnie summoniti fuerunt ad respondendum burgensibus de Beverlaco." The record continues: "Et Major Lincolnie et Robertus filius Eudonis ballivi Lincolnie veniunt et defendunt," etc. Maitland, in his edition of Bracton's "Note-Book," in which these particulars occur, suggests that the name of one of the bailiffs has been omitted, but Mr. Round is doubtless right in holding that the senior bailiff was the "Mayor of Lincoln." Stevenson's "Report on the Gloucester Corporation Records" (9th Appendix to the 12th Report on Hist. MSS.) renders it certain that the titles were interchangeable. "A noteworthy circumstance," he says, "is that although the office of Mayor of Gloucester was not created until 1483, one Richard the Burgess is frequently described in the witness clauses as 'tunc Majore de Glouc.' The dates of these deeds range between circa 1220 and circa 1240. Sometimes this appears to be the title of the senior Bailiff, as Richard Burgess and Thomas Ouenat are described as Bailiffs in a deed circa 1230, but in another deed of the same date Burgess is called 'Major' and Ouenat 'Bailiff.'"

In some boroughs the old royal officer, the Portreeve—the title is a hybrid compounded of the Anglo-Saxon gerefa and the Latin porta (not portus), alluding to the gate, where the markets were held—bore sway. At Tiverton, which was incorporated in 1614, the offices of Mayor and Portreeve existed side by side, and down to the year 1790 the latter exercised the power of summoning certain people to attend the septennial perambulation of the Town Lake—a stream of water the property of the inhabitants. On such occasions the Portreeve completely effaced the Mayor, who is not mentioned by name in connexion with the proceedings. The following extracts from a record in the Court Leet books of the proceedings on September 1, 1774, will demonstrate that the celebration, which took place entirely within the confines of the borough, was a survival of a state of things anterior to the grant of a charter.

"A procession and survey of the ancient rivulet, watercourse, or town lake, running from a spring rising near an ash pollard in and at the head of a certain common called Norwood Common, within the said Hundred, Manor, and Borough to Coggan's Well near the Market Cross in the town of Tiverton aforesaid, belonging to the inhabitants of, and others his Majesty's liege subjects, living, sojourning, and residing in the town of Tiverton aforesaid, for their sole use and benefit, was made and taken by Mr. Martin Dunsford (Portreeve), Henry Atkins, Esq. (Steward), Thomas Warren and Philip Davey (water bailiffs) and the Rev. Mr. William Wood ... and divers other persons, free suitors, tenants and inhabitants of the said town, parish, and hundred of Tiverton, by the order of the honourable Sir Thomas Carew, baronet, Dame Elizabeth Carew and Edward Colman, Esq., Lords of the Hundred, Manor and Borough aforesaid, the first day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-four.

"The Portreeve and Free Suitors, having adjourned the Court Baron, which was this day held, proceeded from the Court or Church House in the following order:—The Bailiff of the Hundred with his staff and a basket of cakes; the children of the Charity School and other boys two and two; the two water bailiffs with white staves; music; Freeholders and Free Suitors two and two; the Steward; the Portreeve with his staff; other gentlemen of the town, &c., who attended the Portreeve on this occasion; the Common Cryer of the Hundred, Manor, and Borough aforesaid, as assistant to the Bailiff of the Hundred with his staff.

"In this manner they proceeded at first to the Market Cross, and there at Coggan's Well, the Cryer with his staff in the well made the following proclamation in the usual and ancient form—'Oyez! Oyez!! Oyez!!! I do hereby proclaim and give notice that by order of the Lords of this Hundred, Manor, and Borough of Tiverton, and on behalf of the inhabitants of this town and parish, the Portreeve and inhabitants now here assembled, publicly proclaim this stream of water, for the sole use and benefit of the inhabitants of the town of Tiverton and other his Majesty's liege subjects there being and sojourning, from the Market Cross in Tiverton to Norwood Common." They then proceeded in the same order through the Back Lane, in every part as it ran and through the ancient path of the water bailiffs time out of mind and made the like proclamation at the following places.... The Portreeve and free suitors and others that attended them in their way noted every diversion and nuisance that seemed to affect the Lake, and afterwards returned to Tiverton and dined at the Vine Tavern, where they gave the following charity children and other poor boys that attended them twopence a-piece....

These duties are now performed by the Mayor and Corporation, but the custom was observed in the traditional manner at least as late as 1830. We have ascertained that not only did the Portreeve take the lead on these occasions, but, like the Mayor and other members of the Corporation, he was ex officio guardian of the poor of the town and parish—a privilege which he shared with them alone. We have here, therefore, an instance of dual authority lasting well into the nineteenth century, or nearly six hundred years after London had purged itself of the feudal element in its administration. To appreciate its full significance we have to remember that there existed, side by side with corporate towns, others which were not actually corporate, but were known, nevertheless, as free boroughs or liberties, the reason being that the owners of tenements in them held of the lord by burgage tenure in the same way as the freemen of Liverpool held of the King, and that there were manorial courts, which exempted the burgesses from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Hundred Court, the Sheriff's County Court, and even the higher courts of the Crown.

The executive officers, the Portreeve and the Bailiffs exercised functions probably as old as the borough itself, and therefore, in almost every instance, to be traced to the freer times preceding the Norman Conquest. Stoford, in Somerset, a good type of such a town, retained its constitution until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the reign of Edward I. it included no fewer than seventy-four burgages; and the burgesses set such store by their privileges that they would not permit an inquisition to be taken by the jury of the county save in conjunction with a jury of their own. The borough had a guildhall, the "Zuldhous," for which a rent of 2s. was paid to the lord of the fee by certain Representatives of the "Commonalty." Commenting on this circumstance, the late Mr. John Batten, F.S.A., remarks: "It proves that the burgesses had not acquired the true element of a corporation, by which the Guildhall would have passed by law to the members for the time being; but that it was necessary to convey it to certain persons as feoffees or trustees." Stoford, however, had its official seal, bearing the ungrammatical, but intelligible, legend,
"S. COMMVNE BVRGENTES STOFORD."

This may seem rather an example of urbs in rure than of rus in urbe, for it was on such half-emancipated towns that corporate boroughs like Hereford looked down (see above, p. 177), and precisely because of their subjection to a lord. Stoford, and similar places, were deemed, and were, wholly, or almost wholly, rural, and the real question is how far the term urbs is applicable to them. As used in this connexion, it is intended to denote precisely what the term "borough" did in its widest signification—namely, a self-governing community; and the "free" but non-corporate boroughs were clearly more allied to ordinary manors than to towns and cities priding themselves on their independence.

The terms "portreeve" and "bailiff" are extremely familiar, and the offices they denote are by no means extinct; but, in addition to these functionaries, there has been perpetuated a whole family of minor ministers even more closely associated with the agricul............