[3] The mariners of the Cinque Ports drew up treaties with “French shipmen,” as to ransom for mariners, sailors, or fishing boats that might be captured on either side; the people of the coast were to be set free without charge, while “gentlemen” and merchants were to pay whatever the captors chose to ask. The shipowners and merchants of each port signed the compact; and all the towns of the coast from Southampton to Thanet joined the league. The document which was drawn up was handed over to the keeping of the Lord Warden in Dover, and in case of dispute messengers from the Ports rode there to see its provisions, or to make a copy for their own guidance. Hist. MSS. Com. v. 537-8; iv. i. 434.
[4] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 146; xi. 3, pp. 12-13, 171, 113. For 1340 see Ashley’s Arteveldes, 126-7.
[5] Stubbs Const. Hist. iii. 484-488. Hallam Const. Hist. iii. 36. Gneist, who gives different figures, considers that one of the greatest dangers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the irrational and meaningless increase of town representation. (Constitution Communale, tr. by Hippert, i. 333, 338; ii. 9.)
[6] Rep. of Com. on Mun. Corp., 1835, 20, 21; 29-34; Papers relating to Parl. Representation, 93, 94. Vol. ix. No. 92. ii.; 31 x.
[7] See Paston Letters, i. 160-1, 337, 339-40; ii. 78, 28, 31, 35-36; iii. 52-3. Richard the Redeless, passus iv. The great people occasionally exercised influence in towns; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 497; ix. 138. For various modes of voting in towns see Lynn, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 146-151; Chichester, Gross. Gild Merchant, ii. 48; Reading, Coates, 459; Sandwich, Boys, 402; Exeter, Freeman, 152; Worcester, Eng. Guilds, 373, 393; Bristol, Hunt, 86; Cinque Ports, Boy’s Sandwich, 774, 796.
[8] The first mention of burgesses in the Empire is in 1066 at Huy, in the bishopric of Liege. Pirenne, Dinant, 18.
[9] Dr. Gross gives a list of 150 towns which had gained the right of having a merchant gild—most of them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
[10] Edward the First in the thirty years of his rule created fifty-four new boroughs. In the first eighty years of the fifteenth century the kings only issued nine charters of this kind.
[11] London was not apparently before other cities in the winning of liberties. (Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 372.) There were reasons enough for especial caution of Henry the Second in the matter of London.