But if boroughs in the ownership of a private lord might secure advantages through his poverty, his misfortune, or his weakness, their position was one of essential inferiority as compared with towns on the public demesne.[502] In the story of Liverpool we have a curious illustration of the fortunes of a borough whose lot it was to fall at one time into the charge of the state, and at another to be thrown into the hands of a noble—and whose vicissitudes at last left it in a sort of indeterminate condition where it owed a deferential obedience to patrons or masters on every side.
Liverpool, which had been granted by Henry the Second to the constable of Lancaster Castle, was resumed in 1207 by John, who granted it a charter of trading privileges. A new charter of Henry the Third, in 1229, gave it a guild merchant and hanse, with freedom from toll, and the rights of a free borough; and on the very next day after this grant Henry gave the lease of the fee-farm to the burgesses for four years at £10 a year.[503] The true foundations of municipal independence were thus laid. The town had its common seal; one of its two bailiffs was apparently elected by the people, and charged with the collecting of tolls for the ferm; and the busy trade with Ireland at that time, and the later advantage of a secure place of embarkation for troops, which became very important as the harbour of Chester silted up, promised prosperity. In the same year, however, the town was granted away by the King to the Earl of Chester, then passed in 1232 to the Earl of Derby; and in 1266 was given to Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, and under the Lords of Lancaster Liverpool remained till a century later, when in 1361 it passed by marriage to John of Gaunt.
All hope of freedom for Liverpool died away under its new lords. The grant of the ferm was not renewed for over a hundred years; and at an enquiry of “Quo Warranto” in 1292 under Edward the First “certain men of the Borough of Liverpool came for the commonalty, and say that they have not at present a bailiff of themselves, but have been accustomed to have, until Edmund the King’s brother impeded them, and permits them not to have a free borough.” Wherefore they claim only “that they may be quit of common fines and amercements of the county, &c., and of toll, stallage, &c., through the whole kingdom,” for “as to the other liberties” which they used to have “the aforesaid Edmund now has them.” They quote charters, to show that their ancient liberties had been held direct from the crown, and the court decided that “Edmund hath usurped and occupied the aforesaid liberties,” and ordered him to appear before it; but no action seems to have been taken against him, and for forty years he and his successors went on themselves collecting the tolls.[504] At last in 1356 the lord Henry allowed the townsmen to elect a mayor every year, and the next year the first Duke of Lancaster (father-in-law of John of Gaunt) leased the ferm to the mayor and others to hold for the burgesses for ten years,[505] and Liverpool was thus restored to the same position in which the King had put it a hundred and thirty years earlier. But even now its limited privileges rested simply on the will and caprice of the lord; he might give the lease of the ferm with the right of collecting tolls for the rent to the mayor, or an ex-mayor, or whomever he would; he might grant it for a year, or for ten years, or he might take it all back into his own hands. As a matter of fact questions of convenience and profit seem to have made it advisable to leave the collections of taxes mainly with the town officers. When John of Gaunt granted his lease, at the request of the “honest and discreet men of the burgesses” the articles were embodied in a patent “to ourselves, to the mayor, and to the bailiffs,”[506] and in his time the lease was commonly granted for ten years.[507]