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Anatomy of an Oligarchy: the Oxford Town Council in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Carl I. Hammer Jr.
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Extract

The conventional wisdom of English urban history holds that town government in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was coming increasingly under the domination of a tight, resurgent oligarchy. This view was embalmed by Jacob in his volume of the Oxford History of England, and is reproduced in the newest works on medieval and early-modern towns. Clearly, the doubts voiced at length by Mrs. Green in the late nineteenth century and developed quite vigorously by Bridbury in 1962 have found no echo, and the doctrine is now, in the words of one historian, “apparently beyond dispute.”

Yet, in spite of such remarkable unanimity, any student of urban history in this period must feel some unease due to the slender empirical basis upon which this view has been predicated. Monographs on late-medieval and early-modern English towns are few, and specialized studies of town government are equally rare. Indeed, Hoskins has recently identified “the personnel of the governing class” as “one important and almost unfilled field of urban study.” Thus, an extended examination of the structures and personnel of a late-medieval and early-modern urban “oligarchy” needs little justification because of its potential substantive and methodological implications for the constitutional, political, and social history of the English town.

The following study attempts to do this for Oxford, a middling urban center at this time, which, according to Mrs. Lobel, shared in the heightened oligarchy of the age. It is neither a proper study in constitutional history nor a narrative of local politics or governmental activities. Rather, it focuses upon the changing structures and personnel of the town in order to shed some new light on the problems raised above.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. Jacob, E. F., The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485 (Oxford, 1961), p. 385Google Scholar.

2. Platt, Colin, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976), esp. pp. 119-24, 190Google Scholar. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul in the “Introduction” to their Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History (London, 1972), esp. pp. 20–22Google Scholar, and more recently in their book, English Towns in Transition, 1500-1700 (Oxford, 1976), esp. pp. 128–29Google Scholar, but see pp. 117-20. A more differentiated (or ambiguous) view is offered by Susan Reynolds in her excellent survey, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), esp. pp. 171–77 and 185–87Google Scholar. She also notes that “Few historians have considered the problems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries together so as to explain the changes and continuities between them.” (pp. 140-41). In this regard I should note here that the basis for the chronological limits of Clark and Slack's two works, 1500-1700, is still a mystery to me. W. G. Hoskins has some relevant remarks in his new work, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII, 1500-1547 (London, 1976), esp. pp. 100–04Google Scholar.

3. (Mrs. J. R.)Green, Alice Stopford, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1894), esp. II, Ch. 11, 269-87Google Scholar; Bridbury, A. R., Economic Growth: England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1962Google Scholar; reprinted with a new “Introduction,” 1975), esp. pp. 55ff. See, moreover, the qualification offered recently by Robert Tittler in his article, “The Incorporation of Boroughs, 1540-1558,” History, vol. 62 (1977), 24-42, esp. 25–26Google Scholar.

4. Evans, John T., “The Decline of Oligarchy in Seventeenth-Century Norwich,” (hereafter, “Decline”) Journal of British Studies, XIV, 1 (Nov., 1974), 46-76, esp. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. For recent examples, see: Platt, Colin, Medieval Southampton: The Port and Trading Community, A.D. 1000-1600 (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Dyer, A. D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973)Google Scholar; MacCaffrey, W. T., Exeter, 1540-1640; The Growth of an English County Town, (2nd. edn.; Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar. One should also mention the excellent VCH volumes for Leicester and York.

6. Wilkinson, B., The Medieval Council of Exeter, History of Exeter Research Group, Monograph No. 4 (Mancheter, n.d.)Google Scholar; Rogers, Alan, “Late Medieval Stamford: A Study of the Town Council, 1465-1492” in Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. Everitt, A. (London, 1973), pp. 16-38, 242-43, 252–54Google Scholar; Evans, , “Decline,” J.B.S., XIV (1974)Google Scholar.

7. In his “Preface” to Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

8. For a general discussion of Oxford in this period, see my 1973 University of Toronto thesis: “Some Social and Institutional Aspects of Town-Gown Relations in Late-Medieval and Tudor Oxford” (hereafter, “Some Aspects of Oxford”), esp. Part B (“The Urban Community”), pp. 93-299; Lobel, M. D., “Notes on the History of Mediaeval Oxford,” Oxoniensia, III, (1938), 83–99Google Scholar, esp. 93.

9. Gross, Charles, The Gild Merchant: A Contribution to British Municipal History, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1890), esp. Ch. VI, I, 77–86Google Scholar.

10. University College Archives (hereafter, UCA), Hustengs Rolls, Bundle 4; Turner, W. H. (ed.), Selections from the Records of the City of Oxford … [1509-1583] (hereafter, Selections) (Oxford and London, 1880), p. 348Google Scholar. A brief account of the freemen by Salter, H. E. is printed in the “Preface” to his Oxford Council Acts, 1583-1626 (hereafter, OCA), Oxford Historical Society Publications (hereafter, OHS), vol. 87 (Oxford 1928), vi–xiGoogle Scholar.

11. I am uncertain as to when — if ever — the members of Oxford's other two ancient royal guilds, those of the cordwainers and corvesers and of the weavers, were also required to join the guild of the merchants. For a possible relict of this opposition see below p. 16.

12. Turner, , Selections, pp. 204–09Google Scholar. The immediate intention was restrictive, but numbers of admissions soon increased again.

13. Lists of admissions survive with some breaks from 1519-20 onwards (Turner, , Selections, pp. 23ff)Google Scholar. Using the lists printed there from 1529-30 after they become continuous and from OCA to the end of the Tudor period, 1603-04 — a period of 75 years — we may calculate an average annual admission-rate of just over 19. If, as we shall argue later, a new freeman could expect to live 25 to 30 years after admission (see below, pp. 24-25), this would indicate a total body of well over 500. This is compatible with Salter's estimates from other evidence (OCA, p. xi). In the mid-sixteenth century we might reasonably estimate the male population over 21 (exclusive of the university) in the 1,000 to 1,500 range. (See Hammer, , “Some Aspects of Oxford,” Ch. III, pp. 93–115)Google Scholar.

14. Women, for example, were excluded from the merchants' guild but not always from the craft guilds. Widows of cordwainers could join that guild to carry on their husbands' businesses, as did Agnes Camden when she became a “sister” of the craft on 22 Oct. 1524. Bodleian Library, Oxford (hereafter, Bodl.), MS Morrell 20, 34r.

15. See Salter's, H. E. chapter, “The Government of Medieval Oxford,” in his Medieval Oxford, OHS, vol. 100 (Oxford, 1936), esp. 40–55Google Scholar. This should be read, however, in conjunction with Mrs. M. D. Lobel's important review article (“Notes”), with a reply by Salter appended (pp. 99-102). A sketch of municipal government (not always accurate in detail) in the later Tudor and early Stuart period is in OCA, pp. v-xxvii. Salter evidently used this as the basis for his chapter in Medieval Oxford.

16. Lobel, M. D., “Some Aspects of the Crown's Influence on the Development of the Borough of Oxford up to 1307,” Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Stadtgeschichte: Festschrift für Hektor Ammann (Wiesbaden, 1965), pp. 65-83, esp. 73–74Google Scholar.

17. Salter, H. E. (ed.), Mediaeval Archives of the University of Oxford (hereafter, MAUO), I, OHS, vol. 70 (Oxford, 1920), 18–21Google Scholar.

18. The aldermen for 1454-55, for example, are designated by ward (UCA, Hustengs Rolls, Bundle 2). This practice had died out by the sixteenth century, but an examination of the 1543 and 1544 subsidies will show that the aldermen were assigned to the wards on an annual, rota basis while the mayor was assigned to the extra-mural suburbs. Salter, H. E. (ed.), Surveys and Tokens, OHS, vol. 75 (Oxford, 1923), 139–62Google Scholar.

19. MAUO I, 19–21Google Scholar.

20. Salter, H. E. (ed.), Munimenta Civitatis Oxonie (hereafter, MCO), OHS, vol. 71 (Devizes, 1920), 210–12Google Scholar. See note 21. They must be listed by ballival seniority at the time.

21. Turner, , Selections, pp. 219Google Scholar (mis-dated as “9“ rather than 19 Sept.), 274. This was clearly an attempt by Marian partisans to by-pass a group of unsympathetic aldermen (see Hammer, , “Some Aspects of Oxford,” pp. 45–47Google Scholar), and although the reform survived Mary's reign, it almost disappeared in the religious re-shiftings in the years 1576 to 1581 (ibid., p. 453). The assistants first received their formal position in the local structure of precedence and status in 1567 (Turner, , Selections, pp. 256, 264, 274, 319Google Scholar), and are given separate status in the Council lists from 1568-69 onwards. Oxford City Archives (hereafter, CA), A.5.5., 114r-15r; see ibid., 111v-12r, for 1567-68.

22. See Brian Twyne's extracts from the Chamberlains' accounts from 1306 onwards. MCO, 255-90.

23. Probably these powers were devolved from those granted to the aldermen in 1255 (see above, note 19). The University controlled the night watch at this time.

24. Based upon surviving Council lists. See below, note 37, for a description.

25. The succession is neatly described in a 1608 letter from Oxford to Bedford (OCA, 544-45, 347). Edward Lyttle al. Broke (probably a privileged person of the University) was admitted a freeman on 25 Jan. 1557 and compounded for both the “Chamberleyns romethe” and the bailiff's at £3 apiece (Turner, , Selections, p. 263Google Scholar). This was unusual, however, and in 1562-63 he actually served as bailiff.

26. OCA, 349.

27. See the (not always accurate) lists printed in Wood's, AnthonySurvey of Antiquities of the City of Oxford, ed. Clark, A., vol. III, OHS, vol. 37 (Oxford, 1899), 3ff.Google Scholar See also Bodl., MS Top. Oxon., c. 353, for Sailer's lists of Town officers.

28. E.g., Edmund Bennett in 1570-71 and 1571-72 or the “team” of William Hough and Stephen Ewen in 1575-76 and 1591-92.

29. Turner, , Selections, p. 382Google Scholar (see also previous note 28).

30. ibid., pp. 219, 292-93, 307-08, 328; see OCA, 128 for 1599.

31. The Common Councillors were reckoned as ordinary freemen in elections. See John Haynes' petition regarding a disputed Aldermanic election in 1511 (Turner, , Selections, pp. 2–5Google Scholar) and the 1608 letter from Oxford to Bedford (OCA, 345). The Recorder was elected by Council alone but the Townclerk by all the freemen.

32. Turner, , Selections, p. 24Google Scholar. The entry is erased.

33. ibid., pp. 290-92, 305. Salter thought that this system was still in effect in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (OCA, xxxiii).

34. The charter is printed in Ogle, O. (ed.), Royal Letters Addressed to Oxford (Oxford, 1892), pp. 228–48Google Scholar. The grant to Cambridge is printed, translated and discussed in Maitland, F. W. and Bateson, Mary (eds.), The Charters of the Borough of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1901), pp. xxxii-xxxiii, 116–37Google Scholar. The subject of municipal incorporation is also discussed in Weinbaum, Martin, The Incorporation of Boroughs (Manchester, 1937)Google Scholar; sea also most recently: Bond, S. and Evans, N., “The Process of Granting Charters to English Boroughs, 1547-1649”, EHR, vol. 91 (1976), 102–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tittler, “Incorporation.”

35. Regarding the same grant to Cambridge in 1632, see Maitland, and Bateson, , Charters, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv, 137–69Google Scholar.

36. This is not to argue, of course, that town government did not change, only that the basic constitutional framework remained the same. Compare, for example, the Council and officers' list of 1605-06 (OCA, 169-71) with that for 1800-01 (Hobson, M. G. [ed.], Oxford Council Acts, 1732-1801, OHS, vol. n.s. 15 [Oxford, 1958], 278–80Google Scholar).

37. The four earliest lists are in UCA, Hustengs Rolls, Bundles 2 (1454-55) and 4 (1465-66, 1468-69, 1469-70). That for 1469-70 is printed from another source along with the list for 1474-75 in MCO, 229-32. Turner has printed the lists for 1518-19, 1519-20 and 1522-23 in extenso and that for 1521-22 in part (Selections, pp. 20-32). A complete list for 1521-22 as well as those for 1524/25-1527/28 are in CA A.5.3., 364r-70r. Those for 1528-29 to 1582-83 are in CA A.5.5., 51v-251v (passim); those from 1583-84 onwards are in OCA, 1ff.

38. For William Frere and Thomas Wentworth who are added to the “Thirteen,” see OCA, 157.

39. See Tait, James, The Medieval English Borough: Studies on its Origins and Constitutional History (Manchester, 1936), esp. p. 337Google Scholar, where he notes the varying size of the Oxford Council but does not explain it. See below pp. 8-9.

40. Ogle, , Royal Letters, p. 232Google Scholar. However, the 1608 Oxford letter to Bedford and the surviving vote-tallies all show conclusively that a larger group than 39 took part in business (OCA, 344-45; other references in ibid., xv). Hence, the Charter only specifies a kind of quorum.

41. See above, note 21.

42. Turner, , Selections, p. 302Google Scholar (Chamber). Examples of meetings in 1596 and 1597 are in OCA, 104-06, 110. See also ibid., xiv.

43. MCO, 210-12. See above, pp. 3-4.

44. On 1 Dec 1519 “xxxviii”, the more parte of the counsaile” “enactid and stablished for evermore” a new order for elections of town officers (Turner, , Selections, p. 24Google Scholar; see above, p. 5. Thirty-eight is greater than either the Mayor's Council for 1519-20 (35 plus the Mayor) or the Common Council (24) but is a clear majority (“the more parte”) of their combined total. Obviously this diminished their impact as a separate group.

45. Mrs. J. R. Green first drew attention to the emergence of Common Councils in the fifteenth century as a “democratic” antidote to older urban oligarchy (Town Life, esp. vol. II). For more recent assessment of the Common Council and concilar government in general, particularly Double Councils, see Tait, , Medieval Borough, pp. 302–38Google Scholar.

46. Depending upon the period, between one-half and two-thirds of the chamberlains later served as bailiff. Between 1519-20 and 1531-32 five persons held the offices in successive years. No such examples occur later in the century.

47. See below, p. 10, for the possible significance of this.

48. It is clear from the foregoing discussion that the “intake” of the first three “ponds” could not be discharged fully through the fourth. In practice, death was the most common mechanism by which they were drained. See below, pp. 21ff.

49. For Council's voting practices, see OCA, 544-45. See also 348-49.

50. For enactments by “the hole body of the towne” and similar groups, e.g. “hole commons,” from 1529 into the early 1540s, see Turner, , Selections, pp. 63-64, 107, 116, 122, 139, 150-51, 155, 161, 168, 173Google Scholar. These are probably equivalent to the “Generall Counsell(s)” mentioned in 1535 and 1542 (ibid., pp. 132, 165). See also ibid., p. 161 for the phrase “Bourgesys and Comynaltie”, i.e. Council and ordinary freemen, in 1541 (see ibid., pp. 173, 194, 196). In April 1537 John London wrote to Thomas Wriothesley complaining that for the past seven years (i.e. since about 1530) “all commyners [ = freemen]” now “hathe interest” with the “sage burgesses” “so as sadde men can nott rule” (B.L., London, Tit. B.1., 100; L & P IV (2), 2735, which is misdated to 1526).

51. See Hammer, , “Some Aspects of Oxford,” Ch. II, pp. 51–92Google Scholar, for a “Cromwellian” account of university reform.

52. The famous complaint by Walter de Milton in 1253 about oppressions by the “burgenses magnates” against the “burgenses de minori communia” is printed and discussed by Salter, H. E. in Snappe's Formulary and Other Records, OHS, vol. 80 (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar.

53. The first Subsidy schedule dated 30 Nov. 1523 has been printed in Rogers, J. E. T. (ed.), Oxford City Documents, Financial and Judicial, 1268-1665 (hereafter, OCD), OHS, vol. 18 (Oxford, 1891), 63–75Google Scholar, along with the assessment of privileged persons of the university dated 5 Feb. 1524, (55-59). The two other schedules of the Subsidy are still in manuscript at the Public Record Office, London [PRO], E. 179/161/174 (6 April 1524) and E. 179/161/182 (3 Feb. 1525). The printed schedule has also been compared with the manuscript: PRO E. 179/161/198. In the following analysis the first two schedules (which are identical except that “174” provides the amount of assessment as well as the tax) have been treated together as “A” and “182” as “B”. Depositions from the University Chancellor's Court are in the Oxford University Archives (hereafter, UA) in the following volumes (1556-1619): Hyp. A.6, 15, 26; Hyp. B.1-4. Depositions from various Oxford ecclesiastical courts (1543-1620) are in Bodl., MSS Oxf. Dioc. Papers, c. 21-25, 118; d. 14-16.

54. The list for 1524-25 (none survives for 1523-24) is CA A.5.3, 365y-66r. For a description of all the surviving Council lists see above, note 37. The only persons not accounted for are Thomas Frere, “electyde” alderman in April 1525 (Turner, , Selections, pp. 53–54Google Scholar), who came from High Wycombe (Wycombe Magna) where he had been assessed at a modest £18 (Subsidy Roll for the County of Buckingham, Anno 1524, eds. Chibnall, A. C. and Woodman, A. V., Buckingham Record Society, vol. 8 [1950], 28Google Scholar), and John Pye of the Mayor's Council who was probably assessed elsewhere for lands. See note 55.

55. Probably 100 marks (£66.67) is conventional, but it may also be tied to trade, since the fourth 100 mark assessee, Richard Hampden, Esq., who was not on the Council in 1524-25, was a brewer at the time (UA, W.P.B., B.34b) as were Aldermen Shelton and Hethe. The number of residents like Hampden who never bore civic responsibility was very small in our period (see Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order, pp. 21–22Google Scholar).

56. In 1596 it was decided that no one assessed for the Subsidy at less than £3 could sit on the Common Council (OCA, 105). Obviously, this amount does not correspond to that of 1523-25: on the one hand it has been diminished by inflation; on the other hand it represents a smaller share of the real wealth.

57. There are 114 assessments of £5 or more in A and 105 in B.

58. See Hammer, , “Some Aspects of Oxford,” Ch. V., pp. 139–69Google Scholar.

59. UA, W.P.S., B.34b.

60. Both also had strong University connections. See my “Town and Gown in Tudor Oxford: A Note and Two Documents,” Oxoniensia, vol. 39 (1975), 77–84Google Scholar.

61. Although statutory provisions for brew- and bakehouses such as those for Queen's College (1340) are rare, see Cobban, A. B., The King's Hall Within the University of Cambridge in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 237–38Google Scholar. On the halls, see Pantin, W. A., Oxford Life in Oxford Archives (Oxford, 1972), p. 10Google Scholar.

62. Thomas Withig (possibly a tailor as well), Thomas and William Dagvile, and Robert Attewode.

63. Salter, H. E. (ed.), Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, 1434-1469 (hereafter, RC), vol. I, OHS, vol. 93 (Oxford, 1932), 9-10, 149Google Scholar. Perhaps one should add Robert Attewode, who became an Alderman between 1448 and 1450.

64. Hammer, , “Some Aspects of Oxford,” pp. 179–80Google Scholar.

65. See the membership lists for both the tailors' guild, 1571-1600 (Bodl., MS Morrell 6) and for the mercers' and drapers' company, 1572-76 (CA G.5.4., 11r-14v).

66. This is further confirmation of the observations by Hoskins, W. G., in Local History in England (2nd ed., London, 1972), pp. 110–11Google Scholar.

67. Bodl., MS Morrell 20, 5vff.

68. Wood's belief that the late fifteenth-century Mayor, John Seman (I), was a cordwainer is incorrect (City, III, 25). Rather, he was a mercer (e.g. RC, I, 395, for 1458). Thomas Elmes was made an Assistant in 1556 and 1562 (Turner, , Selections, pp. 257, 295Google Scholar), but he was never an alderman nor was he either a master or a warden of the guild after 1548.

69. OCA, 155, 163.

70. For example, in 1560 the cordwainers petitioned directly to the Justices of the Assize for approval of their guild ordinances ( = incorporation) rather than through the Town Council as was usual (Bodl., MS Morrell 2, no. 1; 23, 3r-14r). But I know of no formal barrier by either the town or the guild.

71. In September 1538 the Town Council passed an ordinance barring multiple occupations by victuallers which also forbade a baker from being elected mayor unless he did first “leve the occupacion, crafte or mystery of bakers” for his term of office (Turner, , Selections, pp. 150–51Google Scholar). Such restrictions on victuallers were common, and it is not certain that it was ever observed in Oxford.

72. For the ward assignments of the aldermen and mayor in the subsidies of 1543-44, see above, note 18.

73. See Hammer, “Town and Gown in Tudor Oxford,” and Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, A.D. 1501 to 1540 (hereafter, BRUO), (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar, sub “Flemyng” and “Heath.” Perhaps John Austin should be added to the graduates in 1524-25.

74. See UA, Hyp. A.12, sub 2 Nov. 1582; CA A.5.3., 16v; Wood, City, III, 223. See below, note 95, for marriage connections.

75. Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, [hereafter, BRUO (-1500)], 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–1959)Google Scholar, sub “Egecombe” and “Hegecombe.” His first appearance in local government was in 1484-85 as mayor, directly after his father-in-law's death. Ellis, W. P. and Salter, H. E. (eds.), Liber Albus Civitatis Oxoniensis; Abstract of the Wills, Deeds and Enrolments Contained in the White Book of the City of Oxford (hereafter LA), (Oxford, 1909), pp. 84–85Google Scholar.

76. LA, pp. 92-93. He is not in BRUO (-1500) or in Emden's, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar.

77. CA A.5.5., 6r. Reproduced as the Frontispiece to Turner, Selections, and printed there (pp. 63-64).

78. See Adamson, J. W., “The Extent of Literacy in England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Notes and Conjectures,” The Library, 4th ser., vol. 10 (1929–1930), 163–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thrupp, Sylvia, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300-1500 (Ann Arbor, 1948), pp. 155–63Google Scholar; Stone, L., “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640,” Past and Present, no. 28 (July 1964), 41-80, esp. 42–44Google Scholar; Schofield, R. S., “The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Goody, J. (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 311–25Google Scholar; Cressy, D., “Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” Societas, vol. 4 (1974), 229–40Google Scholar.

79. Stone, “Educational Revolution,” Past and Present, 45-44, but see Schofield, “Measurement,” Literacy, pp. 316-17, 319, 324.

80. The document is not easy to decipher, but the results seem to be: 12 signatures, 8 initials, 26 marks, 3 uncertain. Of the three uncertain names Richard Flaxney and William Frere were probably literate; Frere certainly, since we have a letter to Thomas Cromwell in his hand (PRO, S.P. 1/98, 170r-171v). The initials are especially hard to classify, and I have omitted them unless there is corroborating evidence (see note 82).

81. See the Council list for 1528-29 in CA, A.5.5., 51v-52r.

82. CA, A.5.5., 73r. The graduate, William Flemming, did not sign but initialled the document as a modern executive might.

83. For example, Richard Whittington's will of 1578 gives his mark (Bodl., MS Wills Oxon. 185, 544r v ). Alderman John Hartley made rough initials on depositions in 26 Feb. 1580 and 3 June 1589 (UA, Hyp. B. 2 and 3 sub datis). On 22 June 1580 Thomas Smith J.P. [sic] made a mark (UA, Hyp. B.2. sub dato), as did Alderman John Barkesdale on 17 April 1588 (UA, Hyp. B.3 sub dato). Three were certainly from the North: Whittington and Smith (Lanes.) and Hartley (Yorks.).

84. Thrupp, , Merchant Class, pp. 191–206Google Scholar; Rörig, Fritz, The Medieval Town, (trans.; London, 1967), esp. pp. 114–15Google Scholar.

85. His father, Richard Flaxney, held the position for barely over one year from 1535 (LA, p. 105). The father-son team, Thomas and William Frere, does not fit this pattern, since the son, William, was established in Oxford before his father, Thomas, came from High Wycombe (see above, note 54).

86. See Salter's, H. E.Survey of Oxford, eds. Pantin, W. A. and Mitchell, W. T., 2 vols., OHS, vol. n.s. 14/20 (Oxford, 1960–1969)Google Scholar, for genealogical material to supplement the lists of Aldermen, in Wood, , City, IIIGoogle Scholar and LA.

87. UA, Hyp. A.2., 28r, 105r.

88. See Platt, Salter, Survey, IIGoogle Scholar, “Index” sub nomine and Colin, , Medieval Town, esp. pp. 102–07Google Scholar.

89. An apparent example of downward social mobility is Thomas, son of the early fifteenth-century Alderman, William Herberfield, who worked in Oxford as a butcher but never played any significant role in local government (Salter, , Survey, II, 217Google Scholar).

90. See William Frere's (I) will of 1547, (PRO, Prob. 11/31); Wood, , City, III, pp. 153–55Google Scholar; Turner, , Selections, pp. 189, 218Google Scholar; CA, A.5.5., 184r-85r.

91. Turner, , Selections, pp. 202, 281, 313Google Scholar.

92. I have not searched systematically for evidence of outward migration amongst aldermanic families, but one has the impression that movement into the gentry (Frere), professions (Atkinson), and to larger mercantile centers like London, rather than infertility and misfortune, accounts for the short “life-span” (see Thrupp, , Merchant Class, pp. 213–14Google Scholar).

93. This distribution is remarkably compatible with that drawn from the entire group of early apprenticeship indentures to 1557. See my “The Mobility of Skilled Labour in Late Medieval England: Some Oxford Evidence,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 63 (1976), 194–210Google Scholar.

94. This was also the case with the apprentices as a group (see previous note 93).

95. Cogan's case points to another form of continuity and solidarity, intermarriage, which has been noted as a characteristic of urban oligarchy (in addition to Platt, Medieval Town, see Evans, , “Decline,” J.B.S., XIV, 56–57Google Scholar). Cogan's mother, Margaret, was the daughter of the late fifteenth-century Alderman, Edward Woodward, and married first, William Cogan of a prominent Bristol family and then Alderman Edmund Irish (1540/41-1555/56); she also apparently had strong connections with the Flaxneys, especially Alderman Ralph Flaxney (see Wood, , City, III, 171Google Scholar, and her will of 1556 in Bodl., MS Wills Oxon. 181, 61v-62v). In addition, Cogan's fellow Assistant in 1584-85, James Almont, was married to Ursula, daughter of former Alderman, Roger Taylor. However, although such intermarriage was probably common enough in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, evidence such as the above or that for John Edgecombe, p. 17, is very spotty in the fifteenth and well-documented sixteenth centuries (see also note 96).

96. Levins was apprenticed to Todde in 1545 (CA, A.5.3., 45v). Amongst the 29 sixteenth-century aldermen studied closely, this is the only explicit example of one having been an apprentice to another, a connection which seems to have been common in other urban centers (Evans, , “Decline,” J.B.S. XIV, 56Google Scholar). Moreover, Levins was connected by marriage to another Alderman, Richard Whittington (1556/57-1577/78), through the latter's daughter, Ursula (Wood, , City, III, 152Google Scholar). Also in 1584-85 both Alderman William Noble and Assistant Thomas Rowe were former apprentices of the Assistant, Thomas Cogan. Thus, apprenticeship bonds like intermarriage (note 95) existed but do not seem to have been particularly strong at the highest levels of government.

97. Lists of aldermen are printed in Wood, , City, III, 21–27Google Scholar and LA, 131-32. The most poorly documented period is that around 1500.

98. For example, there is a gap in the lists between 1437-38 and 1443-44. Three new aldermen occur in the latter year which is counted as the end of the interval, but obviously the change could have occurred earlier. Hence, these intervals are maxima.

99. Perhaps only just so. I have noted above (note 21) that the resurrection of the Thirteen in the 1550s had religious overtones. Nevertheless, the large pool of exbailiffs must have contributed to the pressure to enlarge the group eligible to be mayor.

100. See note 53, above.

101. For example, the mercer, Maurice Vaughan, knew himself to be 67 years of age on 14 May 1579 and 68 on 20 April 1580 (UA, Hyp. B.2., sub datis).

102. The fact that 21 years is the lowest age obtained for admission as a freeman is encouraging (see below, note 104). It should also be noted that errors of a few years, say five or less, are not as crucial for this mature group as they would be for a young group such as adolescent apprentices.

103. A good example of a time-server is the senior ex-Bailiff, William Tovey, who was first admitted to the Common Council in 1533-34 (CA, A.5.5., 56v-57r) and apparently died “in the saddle” in 1585-86 (OCA, 20, 31).

104. The new admission ordinance of 1551 stated that for admission by father's copy, the son of a freeman had to be “of thage of xxi yeres or above” (Turner, , Selections, p. 208Google Scholar), and it is unlikely that other admissions would normally be younger. William Hutchins, a clothier who became a freeman in 1581, would have been about 53 years at the time, but he had only been living in Oxford since 1580 at the earliest (CA, A.5.3., 13r; UA, Hyp. B.3., sub 14 July 1585).

105. See Thrupp, , Merchant Class, p. 193Google Scholar.

106. A sample apprenticeship indenture is printed as an Appendix to Hammer; “Mobility of Skilled Labour.” (Cited in note 93).

107. Russell, J. C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1948), pp. 185–86Google Scholar.

108. The monumental inscription in old All Saints' Church stated that he died on 12 April 1616 “aetatis 100” (Wood, , City, III, 151Google Scholar). This is no doubt a bit exaggerated although he was probably a mature apprentice 71 years earlier in 1545 because he became a freeman already in 1552 (CA, A.5.3., 45v, 231r). Note especially the heavy mortality in 1579 which brought in all but one of the aldermen of 1584-85.

109. For example, “the possession and exercise of power by a few individuals … directly, as a consequence of holding the important political offices …” (Evans, , “Decline,” J.B.S., XIV, 47Google Scholar.) Cf. Aristotle's first two varieties of oligarchy described in Book IV of the Politics, (trans. Barker, E.; Oxford, 1946), pp. 169–70Google Scholar.

110. See Platt, , Medieval Town, pp. 119, 124Google Scholar.

111. Terms used by W. G. Hoskins in his “Preface” to Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

112. Evans, , “Decline,” J.B.S., XIV, esp. 48-59Google Scholar.

113. Bridbury, , Economic Growth, p. 58Google Scholar.

114. MAUO I, 352–70Google Scholar. A recent, general survey of this problem is: Dobson, R. B., “Urban Decline in late Medieval England,” T.R.H.S., 5th Ser., vol. 27 (1977), 1–22Google Scholar.

115. I, 5:21-22 (NEB translation). This warning also applies to the study of early American urban history. The recent book by Teaford, John C., The Municipal Revolution in America: Origint of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825 (Chicago, 1975)Google Scholar, for example, uses the “oligarchic model” of English town-government as a point of departure (esp. p. 6). If my argument for fifteenth and sixteenth-century Oxford and Evans's for seventeenth-century Norwich (“Decline”) has any validity, it may have some implications for American historians.