A variety of influences, national and local, played a part in moulding
the course of Norwich's development. The beginnings of the city lay
in an aggregate of several village communities, loosely bound together
by the geographical and commercial advantages of their location. The
Danish immigration was a catalyst in uniting these, and the subsequent
reintegration of East Anglia into the English kingdom was a further stimulus.
The new settlers filled in the gaps between the Anglo-Scandinavian vills,
the trade links across the North Sea with continental Scandinavian
colonies enhanced local prosperity, and this in turn prompted the king
to endow the community with the
official attributes of a burh/portus. Royal interest in the
borough also served to limit
the authority of other lords who might have proven a greater hindrance
to borough self-determination.
Commercial pursuits, furthered again by the effects of the Conquest,
gave rise to a distinctive burghal character. As the
burgesses became increasingly
conscious of this, they sought recognition of special status
and accommodation of the needs of their lifestyle. Aware of the
financial advantages to itself and of the political value of patronage
of towns, the crown conceded what the burgesses desired, in such a way
as to integrate the borough into its own developing system of national
administration. While a traditional view is that medieval towns were
the bastions of English freedom, it is unlikely that such sentimental
ideals had any great part in the thinking of practical, business-minded
burgesses. They were motivated rather by a pragmatic assessment of the
harassment potential of unsympathetic and self-interested royal officials,
and the advantages of direct relations with the king. Far from seeking to
set themselves up as independent communes (as was happening with some
cities on the continent), they were prepared to take on heavier
responsibilities within the national administrative system in return for
greater control over local affairs.
Local conditions dictated the rate and extent of the development of
self-government in different boroughs. The imposition of a French
settlement in post-Conquest Norwich may have delayed the impetus towards
self-government, by temporarily inhibiting the united effort necessary
for successful pursuance of common goals. On the other hand, the
emergence of the Mancroft market as the new focus of the town suggests
that the newcomers contributed a new vitality to Norwich. However, we
should not ignore the fact that Norwich's development continued to be
shaped by Anglo-Saxon precedents - in legal procedure and in the use of
the old settlement divisions as the basis of the
leet system. For a long time the
leets served as the foundation of local administration. When
political reorganization became necessary in the fifteenth century, the
leet division still proved useful.
By the close of the Middle Ages, Norwich had become one of the largest,
wealthiest and most influential cities in England. But this prosperity
also undermined its democratic roots. At its medieval peak in the first
half of the fourteenth century, with trade booming and the city's
physical and jurisdictional limits largely defined to its satisfaction,
the rot was already setting in. The old communal assembly and the leet
courts were no longer effective mechanisms for handling administrative
and judicial affairs, in the face of the increasingly complex
governmental responsibilities and the pressure from above to ensure the
maintenance of law and order in a society where men appear to have been
more inclined to resort to violence to redress perceived wrongs or to
achieve their ambitions. Furthermore, the lack of recognition
of the community as an entity in the eyes of the law left it vulnerable
in ways inconsistent with the advantages accorded it by royal grant
(e.g. in the inability to profit fully from the lands now within its
jurisdiction). But perhaps above all, the growth in prosperity was
concentrated in the hands of a small section of the population.
The solution to the problem of outdated institutions was the development
of a political system which favoured, instead of the potentially unruly
character of communal assemblies or to the influence of interest groups
outside of the constitution (i.e. the craft gilds), administrative
mechanisms characterized by delegation and representation, and the
acquisition of greater police powers to control dissent. The political
representatives were almost inevitably drawn from the wealthier townsmen,
a group which, as time went on, became increasingly differentiated along
class lines from the rest of the townsmen. This separation and sense of
social and economic superiority was likely furthered by the effects of
the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt, and the ruling class came to
desire a corresponding political superiority which ran counter to the
original concept of the burgesses as a community of
equals.
While alterations in the political theory underlying borough
government might not have greatly bothered the majority of the
burgesses, they were concerned about the conduct of their
rulers; whether the charges of abuses of power, made periodically
through the fourteenth century, had foundation is less important than
the fact that such abuses were believed to take place. Popular
discontent found a means of organized resistance through the
craft gilds. But a period of struggle
over the constitution ended only in a compromise; which itself was
undermined by incorporation,
increasing the powers of the city rulers and limiting democratic
expression to representative institutions (which themselves became not
much more than an extension of the ruling class), and by the impact of
"bastard feudalism", infecting the community with internal faction and
interference from outside interests. The resolution to these problems
pushed the city further away from its essentially democratic roots and
towards the oligarchic form of government that characterized the
post-medieval city.
History of
medieval Norwich
