Henry de Lacy’s Charter 
and the Development of Congleton

 ex CONGLETON CIVIC SOCIETY
NEWSLETTER, JUNE 2004

The terms of the charter are straight forward enough. First, it granted a free borough and a guild merchant, the right to regulate trade. Haybote, housebote, turbary, and pannage, rights to hay, wood for household use, peat, and pasture for pigs, are then conceded (although it is difficult to believe that they were not already enjoyed by the inhabitants of the town being the normal rights of manorial tenants). Henry de Lacy went on to decree that the burgesses of Congleton were to be free of tolls and assizes outside the town (rights that were easy to grant since not in his gift) and were to have the right to elect a mayor, catchpole, and ale-taster. Finally, they were thereafter to enjoy burgage tenure, that is to hold land in the town for a money rent instead of agricultural services.

These rights all sound very impressive, but the liberty they conferred was less real than apparent. The townspeople got their own leader, free tenure, and the control of brewing: there are numerous medieval charters in the Town Hall that attest these rights. But what else did they get? A pig in a poke. They had to see to the upkeep of the two chapels of Congleton and maintain the bridge in good repair, both a constant drain on the communal purse into sixteenth century. What was of any real value in Congleton remained to the lord. His were the regulation and profits of the market, and his the monopoly on corn milling. Most importantly of all, he retained view of frankpledge, the control of policing, and in consequence the mayor and burgesses had to pay suit to the lord’s court, that is, they remained subject to his jurisdiction. The burgesses’ liberty was effectively confined to the minor manorial privilege of assize of ale. What we have, in effect, is a borough in the pocket of the lord of the manor.

And we might expect little more. The previous decade had seen political uncertainty and civil war that had left local communities at the mercy of over-mighty lords. It was not a time of heroic liberation from feudal tyranny. Congleton was a seigneurial borough. Like many another such foundation, the fact is written in the topography of the town. Physically, the settlement is bisected by the narrow valley of the Byflete, the ‘town stream’, known today as the Howty. The watercourse is now culverted, but the bridge that formerly crossed it presumably gave its name to the present-day Bridge Street. To the west is a triangular space defined by Duke Street, Little Street and Swan Bank. Situated at the junction of Bridge Street, Wagg Street, West Street, and Mill Street, it looks very much like an infilled market place, the names of its three sides, although continuations of the approach routes, being those of ‘rows’. To the east is a further nucleus at the junction of High Street, Canal Street, and Coleshill. This elongated space was close to the lord’s park, marked by Lower Park Street and Park Lane, and the manor house was situated somewhere in its vicinity (its site has not been positively identified, but was hereabouts). It may well have been a village green. I would suggest that we have the new borough on the one hand and the manor on the other.

It would be neat to say that the distribution of burgage tenure reflects the polarity. From an early period there was a significant concentration in the Mill Street and West Street areas. But by 1500 burgages are found throughout the town. And, of course, the present Town Hall is situated in what we would identify as the manor. These peculiarities, I would suggest, are a function of later developments in the governance of the town. In the late thirteenth century the lord remained very much in the driving seat and he continued to be so into the fifteenth, his bailiffs holding regular courts in the town in his name. But imperceptibly, the burgess community encroached upon his rights. Fixed rents and the renders from the market and mill diminished in value with inflation and the lord (latterly the king) increasingly farmed them out for a fixed sum to the mayor. He in turn sub-leased them at advantageous terms to townsmen. Burgage tenure became the norm within the manor by default. The mayor also took over policing through extraordinary peace commissions and the like. By the early sixteenth century effective power had passed to him, although it was not until the charter of Elizabeth of 1584 and more fully by that of James I of 1625 that full liberties were formally vested in him. Only then did Congleton become a truly free borough.

David Roffe, 2004