The urban elites of provincial 15th and 16th-century English towns and cities have been widely researched by scholars. The mayors, aldermen, common councillors and other elite civic office-holders of such towns, it has been argued, held near omnipotent political power. Indeed, it is often acknowledged that the period from the late 15th through to the mid-16th centuries witnessed growing oligarchic government in many more towns and cities, in the process handing greater political control to smaller numbers of civic elites. In emphasising the political power of these elites, however, there is the danger that our perceptions of 16th-century urban governments and urban politics have become rather uncritical. In this article, James Lee recovers the political activity of a variety of lesser civic officials in Tudor Bristol, first considering the constitutional frameworks in which such officials operated, before examining what kind of political authority such individuals were capable of exercising.
Tag: ritual
‘Yells, howls, hisses and groans’: rough music and skimmerton in Victorian Weston
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Weston Super Mare had grown into the most flourishing and fashionable seaside resort in Somerset, its close proximity to Bristol making it readily accessible to thousands of visitors by road and rail. Early Victorian resort economies were dependent to a large extent upon a perception of social tranquillity and calm. Despite rapid expansion, in the mid 1850s Weston still only had six constables to keep its fragile peace. Steve Poole tells the story of the series of disturbances in 1861 which shattered the towns calm façade.