Boston and Grimsby in the middle ages: an administrative contrast

Study of the Lincolnshire towns of Boston and Grimsby throws light on the question of borough status in the middle ages. Both towns shared the basic liberties which made urban life possible in the middle ages: personal and tenurial freedom, freedom from tolls and other economic privileges such as the right to hold fairs and markets. Although contemporaries had no clear definition of ‘the borough’ and boroughs were not a distinct legal category, historians have profitably employed this concept to draw attention to these fundamental tenurial and economic liberties. However, the privileges held by individual boroughs varied enermously. Royal boroughs, such as Grimsby, tended to be marked by an administrative independence where the community of burgesses were free to elect their own mayors and bailiffs, and paid salaried officials from a common purse. In many seignorial boroughs, including Boston, the burgesses enjoyed less self government. Here the town's overlords maintained a more active interest in administration through their control of the town courts and their appointment of officers. Nevertheless there is little evidence for conflict between lords and burgesses at Boston (as there was in many monastic boroughs) and the town flourished. Urban liberties were the essential pre-condition of town life but there was no necessary correlation between urban growth and town franchises. Boston was a wealthier and more populous town than Grimsby and yet enjoyed less administrative independence. The extent of urban liberties reflected lordship rather than economic importance.