URBAN ADMINISTRATION
handed over to merchants from Bristol for a whole
generation. Only in 1192 was the city granted its first
charter of urban liberties as an independent entity. At
this stage the essence of municipal administration was
the hundred court (named after a subdivision of
Anglo-Saxon shires), which met weekly and enjoyed
a wide range of administrative competence. An impor-
tant feature of its procedures was trial by fellow
burgesses. A further liberty with wide-ranging admin-
istrative implications was granted in 1215—the right
to assess and to collect the fee farm or city rent of two
hundred marks (a mark was two-thirds of one pound
sterling) payable to the exchequer in two annual
installments. The municipal authorities now had a
direct financial relationship with all householders in
the city, though no detailed records have survived. An
even more decisive advance toward autonomy in
administrative matters was made in 1229, when King
Henry III granted the citizens permission to elect a
mayor (Latin maior). After 1229, the city administra-
tion was headed by the mayor and two provosts, called
“bailiffs,” from 1292. A council of twenty-four mem-
bers also gained official recognition, and the common-
alty’s status as a corporate body (though not yet
legally incorporated) was confirmed by a common
seal for authenticating documents.
Other towns in Ireland obtained privileges that
would form the basis of self-government at different
times and with varying results. The earliest example
of a purely Anglo-Norman-chartered town is Drogheda-
in-Meath, whose burgesses were accorded a version
of the laws of Breteuil by Walter de Lacy in 1194. A
slightly later seigneurial creation is Kilkenny, whose
first documented privileges date from around 1200
and whose Liber Primusbegins about thirty years later
with the election of a town council of twelve mem-
bers, together with a town administrator called the
sovereign. As at Dublin, Kilkenny’s hundred court met
every week. To judge by the size of its fee farm, one
hundred marks, Waterford was the second most
important town in medieval Ireland; its burgesses were
allowed to collect this money themselves from 1232
and to elect their own mayor from about 1254. In yet
other towns, the chief administrative officer might be
called the portreeve or the seneschal. All of these
officers acted both as figureheads and as intermediar-
ies with the overlord, whether king or nobleman. This
relationship was mediated through oaths of loyalty. A
major responsibility of urban administrators was the
construction and maintenance of military defenses, in
the shape of walls, mural towers, gates, and ditches.
To that end, English kings granted special murage
charters to royal and non-royal townspeople to enable
them to raise funds. These operations would have
placed an enormous financial and logistical burden
on administrators and on those who were adminis-
tered by them. The most dramatic expression of this
is the Anglo-French poem describing the excavation
of the town ditch at New Ross in 1265. A weekly
rota was drawn up, in order that different socioeco-
nomic groups would perform their share of the labor;
even the town’s priests and womenfolk were
recruited. This is a fine illustration of that collective
sense of responsibility that lay at the heart of medi-
eval self-government.Late Medieval Developments
and Difficulties
Formal charters granting urban privileges were expressed
as a rule in terms of general principles; it was left to
their recipients to work out the details of urban admin-
istrative procedures. Broadly speaking, we have more
evidence about these matters from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries than from the great age of town
growth itself, the records of Dublin being the most
informative. One positive development there was the
initiation of a new municipal book, known as the Chain
Book because it was secured by a chain for public
consultation in the tholsel, or city hall. The main item
is a long list of by-laws (“laws and usages”) drawn up
in French, still the official language of legal enact-
ments, both central and local, and a widely known
vernacular. By the early fourteenth century the mayor
and two bailiffs headed a complex structure of twenty-
fourjures(making up the regular city council), forty-
eight demi-jures, and a body called the ninety-six
(together forming the common council). The latter met
four times a year, and from 1447 onward its minutes
or assembly rolls have survived. The principal func-
tions of the mayor were to preside over the hundred
court, to execute decisions reached by the city council
and the common council, and to represent the citizens
vis-à-vis the outside world. The bailiffs assisted the
mayor, enrolling contracts, supervising the seizure of
goods, confiscating stray animals, and performing
other tasks with quasi-legal connotations. The chief
officers in turn were assisted by a host of functionaries
ranging from the recorder, treasurer, and auditors at
the top, to sergeants, jailers, the keeper of the dockside
crane, and the water bailiff at the bottom. The annual
appointment of these men ensured a degree of control
over their activities. There are signs that the adminis-
trative burden was onerous: men elected as mayor or
bailiff were fined for refusal to serve their term in
office. Depopulation caused by the Black Death may
have made the pool of eligible men too small: the
surviving franchise roll for the years 1468–1512
implies that the majority of new admissions came from