1. Headborough - Mr Evan Millner, BA Cantab NZ, MA London, of 19b Petticoat Tower, E1 7EF
Email: headborough@coventgardenprecinct.info
Tel: 07957 485-365
2. Precinct Clerk- Victoria Ward BA Hons (Physics) Oxon of 404 Petticoat Square
3. Precinct Beadle - Mr Phillip Chancellor RVM, former Verger of The Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, of 10b Petticoat Tower, E1 7EE
http://coventgardenprecinct.info
This ancient committee is composed of the Headborough and four assistants. It serves as an advisory committee to the Headborough, and as Trustees of the Precinct Meeting.
ALDERMAN
Prem Goyal J.P.
DEPUTY ALDERMAN
Henry Jones
WARD COUNCILMEN
John Fletcher Common Councilman
Munsur Ali Common Councilman
Jason Pritchard Common Councilman
WARD CLERK
John Barradell
WARD BEADLE
Stan Brown
Our Precinct Court Mace is modelled after an original dating from the seventeenth century.
The Precinct Meetings continued to gather in the City of London into the early twentieth century, electing chairmen and precinct clerks. They debated local matters, and passed resolutions which were forwarded to the Ward Clerk, and then on to the Court of Common Council; until the 1920s, the Precinct Mote used to nominate Common Councilmen for election at the Wardmote.
The closest modern equivalent to a Precinct Mote elsewhere in England is a "Parish Meeting".
The Precinct Mote is nominally under the jurisdiction of the Court of Aldermen; it is an Anglo-Saxon institution, an organic, grass-roots meeting, summoned by the inhabitants of the Precinct themselves, who elect from among themselves a leader to speak for them.
The Formal Notice of Meeting and Draft Agenda is put up outside the Church of St Botolphs without Aldgate, as required by the common law. This church is the Ward Church for Portsoken.
The Soke of the Knighten Gild appears to have been created by King Edgar; it first appears in verified Royal Charter in the Charter of King William Rufus, confirmed by Henry I. The Soke was given to Holy Trinity, Minories by further Royal Charter, and finally, to the City of London.
In the ancient Saxon constitution of England, the residents formed themselves into units of ten families, called a Tything Court, derived from the old number Tynth. This is our Court of Precinct Mote. Ten Tything Courts constituted a Hundred Court. This is the Court of Wardmote. The Wardmotes taken together constituted a County – and this is the City of London, with its Court of Common Council and Court of Aldermen.
Our Covent Garden Precinct Meeting is a lonely remnant of this ancient democratic institution of local government. The Precinct Meeting is under the jurisdiction of the Court of Aldermen.
The salient points are:
1. Alderman Baddeley, Lord Mayor7, writing in 1921, stated that the Precinct Motes were never abolished.
The City of London Police Act did not abolish the Precincts or the Precinct Motes, on the contrary, it explicitly legislates for their continuance in paragraph 94.
2. The Precinct Motes were discussed extensively at Court of Common Council, March 4th 1908, where a report by the Special Committee upon the City of London (Union of Parishes) Act was discussed.
3. Precinct Motes are documented as being held in neighbouring Bishopsgate Ward as recently as 1920.
4. In 1911 a Special Committee of Common Council was discharged to deal with the request of the Ward of Farringdon Without for disbursement of an annual sum to pay for Precinct Mote expenses. The Court of Common Council stated it had no objection to the Ward holding the Precinct Meetings, but would not give an additional disbursement of funds over and above that allotted for Wardmote expenses for the ward in general.
5. The precept of an alderman or common councilman or City official or any City authority is not required to summon a Precinct Meeting.
6. The Precinct Mote is, however, as part of the City's common law constitution, (although not part of its current definition when referred to in Statue when acting in its capacity as a Local Authority) and is clearly under the jurisdiction of the Court of Aldermen, as the Court of Aldermen has in the past made rulings governing Precinct Motes.
7. There are apparently no Acts of Common Council directly regulating the conduct of Precinct Meetings, only regulations that refer to anciwent customs and usages, and some ancient legislation and charters; they are customary, and of common law origin, governed by legal precedent; there are, however, rulings of the Court of Aldermen regulating aspects (such as the right to fine people), and there are several Acts of Common Council that refer to them, and there is at least one case law reference (Chitty, Criminal Law, Vol3)
8. As a type of court leet (but sui generis) , a precinct has a common law power to appoint its own officers. The Precinct Meeting is the tything court of the hundred (Wardmote), and its Chairman is the Borsholder (or headborough or tythingman).
Post of Headborough:
Headboroughs were elected by some City precincts, e.g. .Dukes Place Precinct, Holy Trinity Minories Precinct (Part of Tower Hill Precinct of Portsoken Ward)
They were explicitly not abolished in the City of London by 5 and 6 Victoria c 109
A headborough takes office on election, and does not need to be sworn, see King v Corfe Mullen 1 Barn. & Adol. 211, where it was held that a man gained a settlement as a tithing-man (i.e. headborough, borsholder, etc), although he was not sworn in. Our current headborough swore his declaration of office before the Court of Precinct Mote, which is a court leet.
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