English Local Government From the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations ACT: The Manor and the Borough; Volume 3 by Beatrice Potter Webb

Author:Beatrice Potter Webb [Webb, Beatrice Potter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780341989783
Google: tgCaDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 42465623
Publisher: Franklin Classics
Published: 2018-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER

WE end our survey of Manorial Boroughs by the most anomalous of them all, the so-called “City and Borough of Westminster.”1 We shall not inquire how it had come about, as was subsequently recited, that “the government of the Borough of Westminster and the Liberty thereof was, by several grants of princes and by immemorial usage, in the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, and was in all times executed by officers by them appointed and in the Courts to them belonging.”2 What seems to have existed, in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, was a highly developed Manorial government, of which no actual records have yet been found, but which evidently had a High Steward, a Deputy Steward, a High Bailiff who exercised within the Liberty all the authority of a Sheriff, a High Constable, a Town Clerk, a Clerk of the Market, a “ Searcher of the Sanctuary,” and the “Mayor, Society and Clerk of the Staple.”1 The so-called “City and Borough” was at that time divided into twelve Wards, and was served by at least two Juries, and a bevy of Scavengers and Constables. In the year 1585 the office of High Steward happened to be filled by the Queen’s principal minister, Lord Burleigh, and he seems to have been concerned, as well he might be, at the rapid increase of houses; “the parting and dividing of … tenements”; the aggregation, around the ancient Sanctuary, of people “without trade or mystery … given to vice and idleness, living in contempt of all manner of officers within the said City”; the wandering of unringed hogs on “the common at Tuthill,” and even in the streets; the unchecked depositing of dung and filth in all public places, and the utter lack of any provision for cleansing or lighting the noisome thoroughfares. The powers of the Manorial officers to “correct and reform” these abuses being “not sufficient in law,” Burleigh induced Parliament to reinforce them by a statutory enactment.

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