Note 502 — Chapter VIII

Leicester shows the comparatively slow growth of freedom in one of the most favoured towns dependent on a great lord. Its great charter given by Edmund Crouchback in 1277, and translated into English under Henry the Sixth, was mainly concerned with the ordering of legal procedure for the burghers; and it was not till 1376 that the town bought from its earl the right to appoint its own bailiff, and to receive the annual profits of its courts, and various other dues and fines. The town property was simply a tenement, a chamber, and a small place yielding a few pence yearly till 1393, when it was allowed to hold a little property for the repair of the bridges; and not till 1435 were the mayor and the corporation given the right to acquire lands and rents for the sustenation of the town and mayoralty. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 404, 412, 413, 414. Thompson, Mun. Hist., 74. A pamphlet on the Origin of the Leicester Corporation by J. D. Paul gives a translation of Crouchback’s charter.) Doncaster belonged to the family of De Mauley till the middle of the fifteenth century, when it passed for a few years to the Duke of Northumberland, and in 1461 was taken into the possession of the Crown. Edward the Fourth made it a free borough and gave it a common seal. Henry the Seventh in 1505 granted to the corporation all the property which the Crown had acquired at Doncaster on the attainder of Percy in 1461, and for a yearly rent of £74 13s. 11½d. secured to it the rights which had belonged to the ancient feudal lords. (Hunter’s History of the Deanery of Doncaster, i. 13-15.)