Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/166

154 complained of it as wrong, and desired to be heard by counsel; but my lord Wharton, then lord lieutenant, would not admit it. This past on to the year 1710, and then the present mayor was chosen, alderman Eccles, another junior alderman; and this year one alderman Barlow, a tailor, another junior. Constantine, finding the government altered, supposed he should have more favour, and petitions again of the wrong done him. The city replied, and we had two long hearings. The matter depended on an old by-law, made about the 12th of queen Elizabeth; by which the aldermen, according to their ancientry, are required to keep their mayoralty, notwithstanding any licenses or orders to the contrary. Several dispensations and instances of contrary practices were produced; but with a salvo, that the law of succession should stand good; and some aldermen, as appeared, had been disfranchised for not submitting to it, and holding in their mayoralty. On the contrary, it was urged, that this rule was made in a time when the mayoralty was looked upon as a great burden, and the senior aldermen got licenses from serving it, and by faction and interest got it put on the junior and poorer; and most of the aldermen were then papists, and being obliged, on accepting the office, to take the oath of supremacy, and come to church, they declined it: but the case was now altered, and most were ambitious of it; and a rule or by-law, that imposed it as a duty and burden, must be understood to oblige them to take it, but could not oblige the electors to put it on them; that it was often dispensed with, and, as alleged, altogether abrogated by the new rules, that took the election out of the city, where the charter places