Maidstone corporation

The self-selecting corporation of the county town: a mayor chosen yearly from aldermen who hold for life, and an elected common council. It controls the town, its markets and tolls, bridges, paving, watch, quay and river navigation, two charities and the grammar school, and its market by-laws affect every parish in Kent.

The borough corporation of Maidstone, which owns the market where Kent's hops, fruit and wool are priced, so its by-laws are read in every parish. It pays well for hired work and is where clients, courts and paperwork are.

Named with it

• Mayor Robert Aylesford · mayor, second term
• Town Clerk Miles Boxley · town clerk
• Alderman Ralph Loose · alderman

Ties

• precedence quarrel with the Pikes of Wye
• entangled in the river navigation company's quarrel with the mills
• precedence quarrel with the Pikes of Wye since the county meeting of 4187
• disputes with mill owners over the river navigation
• sits alongside the quarter sessions, the assize and the militia
• runs the Maidstone grammar school

At the table

Pays around eighteen pounds where a silted-port corporation offers eleven. Has not conceded precedence to the Pikes in two hundred years and hears within the week of a band that misbehaves. Inherits the navigation's unending quarrel with the mill owners; its books record a payment most decades for three centuries for clearing a certain river reach, without saying of what. Cannot put mounted men on the road the way Wye can. Has the best building and least reach of the four authorities in Maidstone; its watch has two elderly unarmed constables per ward. Keeps four hundred years of open records, including freemen's admissions whose unexplained refusals cluster. Maintains three locked, closed burial grounds and books the cost as repairs, never applying to the chapter to have them attended. Its lost minutes for the Market Fall are the source of Kent's habit of posting everything.