We have previously given a sample of original methods of administering justice at Liverpool, and much might be written of its curious penal code, which embraced such offences as eavesdropping. Hence the protest embodied in the following presentment of the Grand Jury on March 31, 1651, may well express the inner thought of many preceding generations of culprits:
"Item, wee p'sent William Mee for saying and cursing in the court, pointing His finger towards Mr. Mayor and the Jurie, 'If such men as those can give anie judgment, the Divell goe with you and all the acts you have done.' Amerced in five pounds."
We need not recur to the topic of trained bands, and will only remark that in this and other respects Liverpool obtained a degree of self-sufficiency and independence surpassing anything known at the present time, and, apparently, far beyond the common standard even of mediæval towns. It might therefore have stood forth as an object not so much of envy as of imitation. In point of fact, Liverpool--owing, no doubt, to its comparatively late rise and geographical situation--was not one of those towns whose customs were widely copied. In Wales the custom of Hereford held the field, and in the south-west the custom of Winchester, which, through transmission to Newcastle, prevailed also in Northumberland and Scotland. The customs of York and the Cinque Ports attracted smaller groups, while the custom of London was not only mother of the custom of Oxford, but grandmother of the custom of Bedford, since the citizens of Oxford were called in by the last-named town to adjudicate on obscure points, and they themselves repaired to London, as the fountain-head, in the event of any internal dispute. The court of appeal, when mother and daughter towns were at variance on the subject of privileges, was the King and Council.
In England the powers of the mother-town were purely advisory, whereas on the Continent some towns appear to have exercised coercive jurisdiction over those whose laws were derived from them. Perhaps this circumstance, that the process was one of adoption rather than subjection, was the chief reason why English towns were so careful not to communicate their privileges, at any rate freely, to boroughs of _servile_ condition, i.e., those which owed service to some lord. The case of Hereford is thus stated: