For the next seventy years the citizens were occupied by strife with the prior, which dated back to the day when the Norwich burghers were given the city into their hands.[801] The bickerings of three centuries ended in a compact drawn up in 1524, when questions of jurisdiction, tolls, pasturage, water, and rights of way were settled; and it was admitted that the mayor, sheriffs, citizens, and commonalty might go to the cathedral church on feast days and occasions of solemn processions, the mayor with sword and maces borne before him, on condition that he claimed no jurisdiction, while the prior and monks “of their amiable favour shall forbear as far as they lawfully can or may” to arrest any of the corporation or the citizens during these great processions.[802]
Such stories of local wranglings might well be left forgotten and obscure if there lay in them nothing more than vulgar quarrels. But the political experiment of Norwich was one of such serious purpose and such singular quality, that even in its failure it kindles our sympathy with men who for two hundred and fifty years had been laboriously working out the problem of administration. With an admirable political sagacity they had used in turn every form of local organization to perfect their experiment in self-government. They had taken the principle of an elected jury and adapted it for use in their courts, their council chamber, and their legislative assembly. They had turned to the problem of the general assembly, altogether useless in its primitive and unwieldy form, and developed out of it (taking a pattern from London) a representative council which should guide its deliberations and express its will. The craft-guilds were organized, and it is possible that in the struggle their discipline gave order and strength to the commonalty. When the battle grew hot the machinery of the religious guild was brought into play on either side, and S. George measured his force with the Virgin of the Fields. No doubt these various methods have no claim to originality, being frankly copied from customs known elsewhere; nor is it in the discovery of a new path that the merit of the Norwich burghers lies, but in the sound political instinct by which they steadily directed their way into the broad track whose ultimate goal is civil freedom, rather than the narrow road of privilege. As we watch the growth of the house of representatives which was established among them, an independent deliberative assembly elected by the commons; and compare it with the chamber of magnates at Nottingham that by a fine mockery was supposed to typify a gathering of the whole community; we have a just measure given us of the value of this more liberal experiment in municipal politics—an experiment so early in time, so serious in conception, so strong and orderly in execution, that it might have justified an enduring success.