These were some of the special problems with which Southampton had to deal—perils of war, its consequences of military rule and divided authority within the town, a complicated and difficult finance, a trade at once wealthy and precarious, heavy expenses to be met in good times and in bad, a very poor class living side by side with a very rich one. The form of trouble might vary from year to year, but trouble was always with them. Bargainings, abject petitionings and arbitrary favours, concessions now on this side now on that, stern exactions and lavish gifts, left the town open to endless changes and chances of fortune.[573]
The general conditions, in fact, must have made the growth of popular government practically impossible; and from the beginning the town was probably ruled by a narrow oligarchy. Its first constitution was, perhaps, framed under the influence of a powerful Merchant Guild, such as would naturally be formed in a wealthy commercial centre—a fraternity not unlike the contemporary guild at Lynn or the latter one at Coventry.[574] It seems that in the twelfth century two king’s bailiffs had the care of all the royal property, the collection of the ferm, the gathering in of the king’s debts, and so forth.[575] Meanwhile the Merchant Guild elected its own aldermen, scavins, usher, and other officers, to protect the liberties and customs granted to it by Henry the First and confirmed by Henry the Second and his sons.[576] In 1199 John granted to “the burgesses” to have their town at ferm,[577] and it is probable that the alderman of the guild was charged with the collection and payment of the money, for in the course of the next generation he appears as mayor of the town.[578] Both offices, mayor and alderman, were carried on side by side in his person. He shared the government with the bailiffs, as chief of the town and the guild, bound to maintain the statutes of both, and having the first voice in all elections concerning both. If the bailiffs failed to do justice, he summoned the jurors and judged in their place. He had charge of the common coffer and the keys of the town gates, and kept the assize of bread and of ale.[579] By virtue of his old title and office the mayor was still called alderman in the fourteenth century,[580] and in 1368 he apparently acted at the head of the guild organization with its four scavins.[581]