CAMBRIDGE He was of knightly rank, alderman of the Merchant Guild and the At Cambridge it was exceptionally important, for the nascent munici­ earliest of the town's elected mayors. 56 He may have been outstanding, pality had to face two major challenges - the first and greatest being the but he was not exceptional: his close neighbours, the B1ancgernons, appearance of the university of scholars in its midst and the other the were other representatives of this class of landed burgess. They were creation of what was eventually to prove a dangerous competitor in patrons of the church of All Saints by the Castle and owners of much the borough of King's Lynn. The University rapidly became an organ­ Cambridge property; at least one member of the family had an official ized body after a migration of scholars from Oxford in 12°9, just at the position under the sheriff. Or there were the Absaloms, also rich in time that the burgesses were themselves developing their own self­ town houses and field acres and patrons of three town churches. 57 governing institutions. The Crown's attitude to the developments was The founding of churches was, indeed, a common practice among the undoubtedly influenced by its experience in dealing with Oxford, as wealthy Cambridge burgesses, though it was not on the same scale well as by political exigencies. 61 Other towns, where there were im­ as at Norwich. Out of fourteen parish churches and three chapels, portant cathedrals or abbeys or both, had the problem of living with thirteen seem to have had townsmen as their first patrons, and religious communities, often with large numbers of lay dependents, among the town's early customs was one that said that a person who were outside their jurisdiction, but in these two English towns might freely leave his church to a relative. But besides the landed only was the size of the community of clerks so large and so undisci­ burgesses there were other wealth~- men whose riches seem to plined, and in these two only - the 'nurseries' of learning and of learned have depended entirely on trade - on tanning, weaving, and so on. 58 men to fill the manifold offices of church and state - was the clerical The piety and riches of men such as these made it certain that when community ofsuch paramount importance to the Crown. 62 the diocese of Ely was formed early in the century the archdeacon would From 123 I there were recurring and bitter conflicts at Cambridge: take his title not from Ely but from Cambridge. These were the men from the burgesses' point of view the main issues were, first, the control who belonged, one must suppose, to the Anglo-Saxon thegns' guild of the market - the right to charge an economic rent for lodgings and or the later merchant guild, contributed to the taxes which put Cam­ to sell goods which were in short supply at as high a price as they could bridge high on the list of twelfth-century tax-paying boroughs and get; secondly, the preservation of their judicial privileges - their right who produced much of the money to buy various royal privileges to enforce law and order so that their life as tradesmen and merchants and charters. 59 In I 185 they obtained a temporary farm of their Borough was not disrupted; their right to recover debts by the processes of - an important advance as it freed them from the sheriff's financial their customary law and so on; and above all the right of all burgesses control - and then in 1207 the perpetual farm and the right to appoint to be tried in their own courts for civil offences. On its side the Univer­ their own reeves. The latter privileges meant the control of the Borough sity was bound to protect its members from high or exorbitant prices, court and this, it may be noted here, involved the whole field area of from the medieval traders' propensity for cheating by adulteration of Cambridge and its dependent vilis. The grant was soon followed in food, by selling stale, bad or underweight food, and the general use of accordance with the prevailing fashion by the election of a new Borough false weights and measures, and from being subject to burghal courts, officer, the mayor. 60 Thus, the town was now well on the way to secur­ where the die would be heavily weighted against them. How far the ing sufficient administrative independence to live its life as merchants town's growth was checked by the arrival of the scholars has yet to be and craftsmen under rules ofits own making, and free of the obligations worked out in detail. That the presence of the University created an ofmanorialism. enlarged demand for goods cannot be denied, but the essence of urban life was the interchange of goods and the clerks were consumers only; its presence also created exceptional problems relating to the preserva­ THE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY TOWN AND THE UNIVERSITY tion of law and order, as in 126 I when the townsmen became involved For English towns in general, the thirteenth century was one of prime in a conflict between North and South-country scholars and sixteen importance. Not only was it a period of expansion in numbers, trade, of them were subsequently executed. It has been said that spiritually and wealth, but it saw the firm establishment of municipal independence. the University'S presence 'meant an example of organization and a stimulating battle for right',63 and yet the conflict of interest between the two communities was a distraction to both and involved an ever­ 56 Rot. Hund. ii, 36o; the form of the name certainly indicates a pre-Conquest origin. increasing expenditure of energy and money. It led to the annual public For 12th- and 13th-century deeds about the family see J. 11. Gray, School oj humiliation of the town's corporate body, to the constant feeling that Pythagoras, 41 sqq. 'Dunning's quay' (possibly on the Cambridge water-course) 'simple men' must inevitably be outwitted by the learned and so to a was rented to the King for the Castle building operations in 1286: Palmer, CAS xxvi, 83. For the house (Merton Hall) see map 4. consequent restriction ofthe energy and initiative ofthe townsmen. 57 Gray, op. cit. p. 44, nos 20, 23. For the family and its decline in the mid-13th century Constitutional development had been rapid under the Angevin kings see E. Miller, The Eagle liii (1943), no. 234, p. 73; ~Iaitland, 163, 168, 176. For and the burgesses obtained further privileges under Henry III, Edward I the Absaloms see ibid. 174-7. Ivo fitz Absalom was among the richest contribu­ and his son. The charter of 125 6 notabl~- advanced the town's status and tors to a tallage in 1214: Pipe R. 1214 (PRS N.S. xxxv), 75-8. For lists of the wealthiest burgesses in 1211 and 1219 see Maitland, 167-71. responsibilities as well as increasing its revenues, but their freedom of 58 For churches, chapels and patrons see Cam, 123-32; ClIria Regis R. V,39. All action was soon to be severely restricted by the community of clerks Saints by the Hospital once apparently belonged to St Albans, but Sturmi, a in their midst. Already in 123 I on the King's orders the Mayor had had burgess, later gave it to St Radegund's: Jesus ColI. Bursary, charter D II. 59 CBC 6; C. Stephenson, Borough and Town, 202. Cambridge came 13th in a list of 29 towns placed according to the amount of Danegeld paid under Henry I and 12th out of 3 5 towns placed according to the average aid paid under Henry II: ibid. 225. In 1185 the town's farm was £62, more than double what it had been when 61 Cj. Oxford's constitutional development: H. E. Salter, Medie1!aIOxjord(1936), 40 the Earl's third was fixed at £ 10: Cam, 4,35. sqq.; and "-1. D. Lobel, 'Some Aspects of the Cro\\'n's Influence on the Develop­ eo Pipe R. 1185 (PRS xxxiv), 6o; CBC 6-8. Before the town acquired its chartered ment of the Borough of Oxford up to 1307' in Pestscbnftfiir I Iektor Ammann rights the King's reeve and on occasions the Earl's reeve, as at Leicester, controlled (1965, W'iesbaden), ed. H. Aubin et al. the borough courts. In Stephen's reign, for instance, the town was in the hands of 62 Eg. Hereford, Reading, Bury St Edmunds: Hi.rtorlc TOJl'l1s, i, (Lobel, C. F. Slade, the Earl of Huntingdon and the fee-farm was paid to him. The various courts of passim); 1':. ~I. Trenholme, EI1Rlish Afonastic BoroIlRbs(Columbia, 1927); M. D. the chartered borough are listed in an exempliflcation of Ed\\'. VI - a weekly Lobel, Bury Sf Edmllnd's (1935). Tuesday court, a court of Guild ~Ierchant, a Pie Powder court for strange mer­ 63 For most able studies of the problems connected with the origin of the University chants, a five-time-a-year court for pleas of lands and tenements and a leet court: and its relations with the town sec J. P. C. Roach, 150 sqq. and Cam, 76 sqq; C i, CBC82-4· 48 ; Maitland, 43. 7 CAMBRIDGE to agree with the University to appoint 'taxors' who would jointly Similar economIc growth was experienced by other towns in this fix the rents ofall hostels used by scholars; in 1268 the Mayor and bailiffs century and owed its impetus primarily to the agricultural boom and were obliged to arrange with the University for the joint supervision general trade expansion.