enough wealth to make loans to the government or for new
commercial enterprises. Local reputation on general, depended upon
a combination of wealth, trustworthiness of character, and public
spirit; it rose and fell with business success. Some London
merchants were knighted by the King. Many bought country estates
and turned themselves into gentry.

The king granted London all common soils, improvements, wastes,
streets, and ways in London and in the adjacent waters of the
Thames River and all the profits and rents to be derived
therefrom. Later the king granted London the liberty to purchase
lands and tenements worth up to 2,667s. yearly. With this power,
London had obtained all the essential features of a corporation: a
seal, the right to make by-laws, the power to purchase lands and
hold them "to them and their successors" (not simply their heirs,
which is an individual and hereditary succession only), the power
to sue and be sued in its own name, and the perpetual succession
implied in the power of filling up vacancies by election. Since
these powers were not granted by charters, London is a corporation
by prescription. In 1446, the liverymen obtained the right with
the council to elect the mayor, the sheriff, and certain other
corporate officers.

Many boroughs sought and obtained formal incorporation with the
same essential features as London. This tied up the loose language
of their early charters of liberties. Often, a borough would have
its own resident Justice of the Peace. Each incorporation involved
a review by a Justice of the Peace to make sure the charter of
incorporation rule didn't conflict with the law of the nation. A
borough typically had a mayor accompanied by his personal sword-
bearer and serjeants-at-mace bearing the borough regalia,
bailiffs, a sheriff, and chamberlains or a steward for financial
assistance. At many boroughs, aldermen, assisted by their
constables, kept the peace in their separate wards. There might be
coroners, a recorder, and a town clerk, with a host of lesser
officials including beadles, aletasters, sealers, searchers
[inspectors], weighers and keepers of the market, ferrymen and
porters, clock-keepers and criers, paviors [maintained the roads],
scavengers and other street cleaners, gatekeepers and watchmen of
several ranks and kinds. A wealthy borough would have a chaplain
and two or three minstrels. The mayor replaced the bailiffs as the
chief magistracy.

In all town