ABSTRACT
All the enactments by which successive Parliaments sought to place the administration of the rural parish more effectively under the control of the County Justices accrued to the benefit also of the Mayor and Aldermen of the Municipal Corporation. Moreover, the necessary development, in a crowded urban community, of a paid official staff of Municipal officers, in itself greatly enlarged the practical authority of the Corporate Justices. Along with the growth in activity and authority of the Corporate Magistracy we watch, during the eighteenth century, in the great majority of Municipal Corporations, a steady decline in the work and prestige of the Common Council. The importance in the Municipal Corporation of the general body of Burgesses or Freemen had, with the decay of the Gilds and the discontinuance of the “General Assembly” or Common Hall during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the great majority of Boroughs steadily declined.
