I. Singular advantages, indeed, fell to the lot of towns thus happily situated on the national estate. The King was a Lord of the Manor too remote to have opportunity for overmuch meddling, and too greatly occupied with affairs of state to concern himself with the details of government in his numerous boroughs.[429] County magnates might cling passionately to the right of holding local courts as sources of power, and yet more important sources of wealth; but such rights were of small consequence to a powerful sovereign, who as supreme head of the law could call up criminals to his own judgement seat from every court in the country.[430] Confidence of supremacy made him careless to put it to the test by abrupt assertions of authority, as private owners, apprehensive and uncertain, might be tempted to do; and in his indifference to small uses of power and devices for paltry gain, he held loosely to rights that brought much trouble and little profit.[431] So long as his yearly ferm was punctually paid,[432] he was ready to grant to the townsfolk leave to gather into their own treasury the petty sums collected at the borough or manor courts,[433] or to make their mayor the king’s escheator; and while he thus won their gratitude and friendship he lost nothing by his generosity. In surrendering local claims for a fixed payment, he not only relieved himself of the charge of salaries to a multitude of minor officials, but he had no longer to suffer from the loss of fines and dues and forfeitures which were nominally levied for the King, but which had a constant tendency to find their way into the pockets of the town officers or the tax-collectors rather than into his exchequer. In many cases, moreover, he may have gained considerably by the price which he demanded for his favours; and the royal accounts possibly give a very inadequate record of the number of special gifts of money and yearly annuities paid by boroughs to the King in return for liberties granted to them.[434]
II. As lord of the manor, therefore, the King was a liberal master, always ready to arrange a compromise with his tenants as to vexatious feudal claims. But he was equally ready to listen to their prayers for freedom from the control of officers of the Shire and the Hundred. So long as it was to the benefit of the central authority to break up and weaken provincial governments, to curtail the powers of the sheriff, to confound ambitious designs of local magnates, and shatter pretensions on the part of the nobles which might tend to strengthen hereditary enemies of the crown, so long the townspeople might count on the sovereign’s support in the struggle for independence. In questions therefore that arose as to rival jurisdictions, in claims put forward by a borough against neighbouring lords for rights of navigation or pasturage or fishing, in all disputes which were carried in the last resort to the arbitration of the king, his sympathy, especially if a fitting “courtesy” was offered by the burghers, was with his borough.[435] Powers won from local governments or from feudal lords were divided between the King and the municipality; and under shelter of the royal authority large rights of local self-government were rapidly gathered into the burghers’ hands. Functions once exercised by the bailiff of the hundred and the sheriff of the county were handed over to the mayor; he collected the fee-ferm, held the view of frankpledge, levied taxes,[436] mustered the men-at-arms, and presided over civil and criminal courts.