On The Mercantile Privileges Of English Borough Charters From The Twelfth Century To The Fourteenth Century

Borough charters were the result of English medieval society. From the12thto the early14th, there wasa great increase of borough charters. This paper will describe the history of English borough charters andtry to research on the mercantile privileges of charters: its contents, the cause of granting and the impact onEnglish commerce.A number of terms were included in charters. In general, the mercantile privileges what boroughsgained contained six aspects: grant of markets and fairs, freedom from tolls, king’s peace, grant of guilds,and control over retail and commodity sales, prohibitions on forestalling and regrating.At this period, agriculture economy was the main economic form, while commodity economy beganto develop. These developments included two aspects. On the production side, firstly, the technicalinnovation of agriculture provided sufficient material and human resources; secondly, the development ofanimal husbandry economy and the specialization of urban crafts provided lots of available products forsale. In the aspect of consumer demand, a quick increase of population resulted in the growth of consumerdemand, and the manorial economy increasingly relied on the development of commodity economy. Thiscontradiction not only provided sufficient conditions for granting trade privileges but also urged Englishking and feudal lords granting borough charters and mercantile privileges to merchants. Besides this factor,special legal environment was also a major cause. On the one hand, with the development of Englishcommon law, the king’s right to license charters became more effective. On the other hand, feudal lordshad the relative independence of judicial power because their seigniorial jurisdiction gained acceptancewithin their territory. This fact made the lords have the right to claim charters which granted mercantileprivileges to the boroughs in their domains; with the increasing of the problems of markets’ legitimacy,charters increasingly became a legal basis between king and feudal lords. What’s more, English king andother feudal lords hoped to get economic interests through granting charters, which directly stimulated theincrease of grants.From the items of mercantile privileges, they undoubtedly contributed to the development ofcommerce. Firstly, chartered markets, fairs and guilds were the main forms of economic organizations atthis period. Secondly, the right of liberty to trade granted by charters was the prerequisite for merchants’commercial activities. Finally, the economic regulations granted by charters contributed to the orderly development of commerce. However, we can not exaggerate the effect of borough charters; we shouldknow that these charters just are papers which have the limitation of time and content. In order to avoidthese defects, boroughs need to spend large sum of money to gain new charters. Even if these boroughs hadachieved mercantile privileges, it could not assure all the privileges would be implemented. Therefore,municipal authorities must have excellent implementation capability and take active actions to putmercantile privileges into practice.Through detailed investigation, we can know that English municipal authorities paid money in mostcases and showed good execution abilities from the12thto the14th. It helped many boroughs gain lots ofprivileges and implement them step by step. All this greatly prompted the development of commerce andthe emergence of buds of capitalism. With the development of commerce, merchants wealth was growingcontinually, which endowed them with important roles in national politics through participating in nationalparliaments.