The executive officers, the Portreeve and the Bailiffs exercised functions probably as old as the borough itself, and therefore, in almost every instance, to be traced to the freer times preceding the Norman Conquest. Stoford, in Somerset, a good type of such a town, retained its constitution until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the reign of Edward I. it included no fewer than seventy-four burgages; and the burgesses set such store by their privileges that they would not permit an inquisition to be taken by the jury of the county save in conjunction with a jury of their own. The borough had a guildhall, the "Zuldhous," for which a rent of 2_s._ was paid to the lord of the fee by certain Representatives of the "Commonalty." Commenting on this circumstance, the late Mr. John Batten, F.S.A., remarks: "It proves that the burgesses had not acquired the true element of a corporation, by which the Guildhall would have passed by law to the members for the time being; but that it was necessary to convey it to certain persons as feoffees or trustees." Stoford, however, had its official seal, bearing the ungrammatical, but intelligible, legend,
This may seem rather an example of _urbs in rure_ than of _rus in urbe_, for it was on such half-emancipated towns that corporate boroughs like Hereford looked down (see above, p. 177), and precisely because of their subjection to a lord. Stoford, and similar places, were deemed, and were, wholly, or almost wholly, rural, and the real question is how far the term urbs is applicable to them. As used in this connexion, it is intended to denote precisely what the term "borough" did in its widest signification--namely, a self-governing community; and the "free" but non-corporate boroughs were clearly more allied to ordinary manors than to towns and cities priding themselves on their independence.
The terms "portreeve" and "bailiff" are extremely familiar, and the offices they denote are by no means extinct; but, in addition to these functionaries, there has been perpetuated a whole family of minor ministers even more closely associated with the agricultural aspects of town life. Mr. G. L. Gomme, F.S.A., so well known for his labours in various fields of antiquarian interest, has devoted particular attention to this matter, and for what follows we are indebted entirely to his industrious research. He points out that "the old village community was organized and self-acting," and "possessed a body of officers and servants which made it independent of outside help." These officers and servants were, in fairly numerous instances, retained long after the village had outgrown its primitive limits. In quite a variety of places we meet with pound-keepers, pound-drivers, and pinders; and the hayward also has been found in as many as fifteen different towns. In the same list are included the brookwarden of Arundel, the field-grieve of Berwick-on-Tweed, the grass-men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the warreners of Scarborough, the keeper of the greenyard in London, the hedge-lookers of Lancaster and Clitheroe, the molecatcher of Arundel, Leicestershire, and Richmond, the field-driver of Bedford, the herd, the nolts-herds, the town swine-herds of Alnwick, Newcastle, Shrewsbury, and Doncaster, the pasture-masters of Beverley and York, the moss-grieves of Alnwick, the moormen and mossmen of Lancaster, the moor-wardens of Axbridge, the fen-reeves of Beccles and Southwold, and the woodwards of Havering and Nottingham.