The larger towns had secured the privilege of self-government, the administration of justice, and the control of their own trade.

The reigns of Richard and John mark the date in our municipal history at which towns began to acquire the right of electing their own chief magistrate, the Portreeve or Mayor, who had till then been a nominee of the crown.

But with the close of this outer struggle opened an inner struggle between the various classes of the townsmen themselves.

The growth of wealth and industry was bringing with it a vast increase of population.

The mass of the new settlers, composed as they were of escaped serfs, of traders without landed holdings, of families who had lost their original lot in the borough, and generally of the artizans and the poor, had no part in the actual life of the town.