The executive officers, the Portreeve and the Bailiffs exercised
functions probably as old as the borough itself, and therefore, in
almost every instance, to be traced to the freer times preceding the
Norman Conquest. Stoford, in Somerset, a good type of such a town,
retained its constitution until the middle of the eighteenth century. In
the reign of Edward I. it included no fewer than seventy-four burgages;
and the burgesses set such store by their privileges that they would not
permit an inquisition to be taken by the jury of the county save in
conjunction with a jury of their own. The borough had a guildhall, the
"Zuldhous," for which a rent of 2_s._ was paid to the lord of the fee
by certain Representatives of the "Commonalty." Commenting on this
circumstance, the late Mr. John Batten, F.S.A., remarks: "It proves that
the burgesses had not acquired the true element of a corporation, by
which the Guildhall would have passed by law to the members for the time
being; but that it was necessary to convey it to certain persons as
feoffees or trustees." Stoford, however, had its official seal, bearing
the ungrammatical, but intelligible, legend,
"S. COMMVNE BVRGENTES STOFORD."
This may seem rather an example of _urbs in rure_ than of _rus in urbe_,
for it was on such half-emancipated towns that corporate boroughs like
Hereford looked down (see above, p. 177), and precisely because of their
subjection to a lord.
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