CONCLUSION
Notes
1 Although this is too simplistic an explanation in itself for the timing of reform/revolutionary movements. 2 Quoted in a review of B. Hanawalt's Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348, in Journal of Economic History, XL (1980), 383. 3 Although this advantage may well have been appreciated long before the initiation of the early Chancery proceedings provides detailed documentation of it. 4 Dobson, "Urban decline in late medieval England," 13. 5 An unusually clear statement of this philosophy was issued in Coventry in 1494; for which see Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 137. 6 H. Riley, ed., Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis: Liber Custumarum, (London, 1860), 518-21. 7 As did Hammer, op.cit., 25, regarding Oxford. 8 Thus Aquinas: "si unus homo habuisset super alium supereminentiam scientiae, et justitiae, inconveniens fuisset nisi hoc exequeretur in utilitatem aliorum" (from extracts in Carlyle's History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, V, 12). Dante offered the term optimacy as an alternative to aristocracy. 9 From extracts in J. Mundy and P. Riesenberg, The Medieval Town, (Princeton, 1958), 123. This notion is found in the Justinianic code. 10 See her comments in English Medieval Towns, 136. 11 Coroners, councils, and financial officers all played a part in this. 12 Carlyle, op.cit., VI, 523. 13 We need not look to the spurious lex regia or the Aristotelian revival for the foundations of medieval democracy, despite some possible influence on the Italian communal movement. Similarly, whilst trained lawyer John Tilney may have been familiar with the populist theory of Bartolus of Sassoferrato, it is futile and unnecessary to speculate on how this may have influenced the reform movement in early fifteenth century Lynn. 14 E.g. Lynn's Great Jury for pleas of land, and Maldon's leet presenters. 15 Deposition of individual members remained theoretically possible, although this now lay largely with the executive; but removal of councillors en masse could not have been achieved peacefully. 16 Reynolds, English Medieval Towns, 160-61; R. Gottfried, "Bury St. Edmunds and the population of late medieval English towns, 1270-1530," Journal of British Studies, XX (1980), 2-3. 17 On this see particularly Phythian-Adams, "Ceremony and the citizen," passim, and Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 180-81. 18 Tait, op.cit., 284; Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 183. 19 From a poem by Henry VI, the full text of which is printed in J. Harvey, The Plantagenets, (London, 1959), 228.
