"mayor"
The earliest reference to a mayor at Lincoln is in 1206, and the creation of the office likely followed soon after the king's charter of 1200, granting some measure of self-government, notably through two elected bailiffs and four coroners, whose role (as at Ipswich) was to deal with legal jurisdiction in cases where rights or revenues of the Crown were implicated, and to ensure the bailiffs administered justice with an even hand. Prior to the mayor, the officer closest to being a communal representative, with no special accountability to the king (such as the bailiffs had), was the alderman of the merchant gild; the incumbent at the time the charter was obtained is, probably significantly, seen as the first holder of the mayoralty: Adam fitz Reginald. This transfer of leadership, not from one group to another but from an old to a new office, is also suggested by the fact that we no longer hear of the alderman after 1217. The two offices were, however, quite separate, not two faces of the same coin. The excitement and newfound confidence of the citizens, along with the probability that Adam was instrumental in negotiating for the city's new privileges, led to him retaining the mayoralty for at least a decade (a similar situation can be seen at London), and most of his successors throughout the century held the office for multi-year periods. That there may have been no custom of annual election for at least part of the century is also suggested by the action of the citizens in 1210, paying a fee to obtain royal approval for the mayoralty and the right to have Adam as their mayor for as long as he was acceptable to the king. Adam only lost office when he incurred the wrath of the king for supporting the rebellious barons. Following the promulgation of the Provisions, however, it was uncommon for a man to serve more than one consecutive annual term as mayor.

"assessed to the public taxes"
I.e. the mayor had to be a citizen (one who shared the common burden of contributing to city taxation).

"hansels"
Lyon is reported by Hill as explaining this term as "a customary present made to the mayor out of a commodity brought by strangers into the city for sale." However, what it seems to be is a fee for the right to trade in the city without paying local tolls, along the same lines as the hanse referred to at Ipswich in 1200. Just as at Ipswich this came to be, as the century progressed, primarily a payment made by outsiders or immigrants, so at Lincoln it was like a licence fee due from those who did not otherwise gain trading rights by being freemen of the city. Those of the county who "ought not to be anselled" were probably those who came to buy only for household needs, and/or burgesses of other towns with the royally-granted right of freedom from toll; or possibly the men of Torksey which, as a settlement very close to Lincoln, contributed to royal taxes imposed on the city. While not clear, the Lincoln reference may indicate that the mayor not only collected these payments but applied them to his own use – that is, they were either a perk of the job or, more likely, a revenue used to cover the mayoral salary. If the latter is true, it is easy to see how mayors might be tempted to bolster the revenue source by demanding townsmen pay the hanse; although such an action may have been a move towards closer definition of which residents were and were not entitled to citizenship status.

"scot and lot"
As early as the mid-12th century we see membership in the Lincoln trading community (as organized in a merchant gild) being defined by contribution towards royal taxation, and the phrase scot and lot is in essence the same concept. The cases of Ipswich and Leicester suggest that such gilds made also have had a one-time and probably modest entry fee. As a generalization, it was at a later period that freeman's status in towns was acquired, if not by patrimony, through payment of a fee sufficiently large to be restrictive.

"twelve men"
Other evidence from the thirteenth century suggests the existence at Lincoln of a city council of twenty-four townsmen, although it is not certain how formal a part of the constitution this was. Such a body is also seen in the fourteenth century. The reference to twelve "judges" here is puzzling. Since the original text is lost, we cannot know whether the Latin referred to a successor of the group (of the same number) of judices or lawmen who had some judicial authority in eleventh-century Lincoln. Or whether it was a group within the 24, later to be identified with the aldermen, as Hill suspected. In the context of the constitutional settlement, it would not be extraordinary to find the 24 split, with one half drawn from the ruling elite and the other half chosen by the community; although this is speculative, in the absence of information about how the council was chosen, it does seem to have been the case by 1392. Lists of membership of the 24 in the early fourteenth century (when the number of members actually varied between 18 and 30) suggest that men who had held the mayoralty found a permanent place in the council thereafter. The number twelve (and, by extension, its multiples) is found in many contexts in the Middle Ages (as a search on the term's occurrence in this Web site will show), and had deep and ancient symbolical significance embedded in Christianity and its Scriptures and deriving partly from numerous and varied applications in the Bible as well as other religious and cosmological beliefs. In recommending that, when new city-states were founded, their territory should be divided into twelve sectors, Plato was motivated by considerations both mathematical (notably, divisibility) and religious (the number of major deities in the Greek pantheon). By the medieval period, twelve was considered to represent order, harmony, and completion and through its application one might not only reflect but even come to understand something of Divine Wisdom; one such application being the notion that it symbolized a perfect form for governing bodies to take.

"of their own election"
The 1200 charter specified that the bailiffs hold office during good conduct, with provision for the citizens to replace them through communal decision; judging from those of the names we know of the bailiffs at this period, it looks as though the citizens interpreted the charter from the beginning as permitting annual election. The explicit reference to annual election in the above document may be nothing more than a pro forma reiteration, or it may suggest some undermining of the communal election process.

"chattels of the said bailiffs"
This kind of personal liability for matters sometimes beyond the control of the officials was the kind of thing serving as a disincentive for office-holding by any but the wealthier townsmen; by the late fourteenth century it was contributing to reluctance even on the part of such qualified men to take up the burden.

"two clerks and four sergeants"
These offices existed from at least 1202. In fact, the city government was sufficiently elaborate at that time that it is not hard to imagine Lincoln having gone through much the same process recorded at Ipswich for setting up local government, with the mayor a slightly later addition to the structure.

"Holy Evangels"
That is, the Gospels. We occasionally hear of borough authorities keeping on hand a book specifically for the purpose of oath-taking; although its character is rarely mentioned, it was common throughout society for oaths to be administered using a book containing the Gospels (see for example)

"four men"
Later called the chamberlains.

"postponements"
This possibly referred to the effect of essoins in delaying the resolution of pleas.

"earl of Richmond"
This complaint was put forward again in 1275. The queen's uncle, the earl of Richmond, had been involved in a dispute with Lincoln in 1265, complaining of tolls paid by men of Boston, which was under his lordship, when they brought wares to the city. As lord of Boston, he could control access of Lincoln cargoes to the North Sea via the River Witham and Lincoln merchant's participation in the important Boston fair; he was thus in a position to extort the £10 as his cut of the tronage. Those who made this concession defended themselves against the community complaint that it was that or lose access to the fair.

"burdens of office-holding"
The jurors stated that the bailiffs were impoverished by the problems involved in raising the fee farm of £180; during the suspension of liberties in the 1290s, when the bailiffs accounted not for a set sum but for whatever moneys were actually received, revenues did not meet the amount set as the fee farm.

"mayor's action"
However, possibly he had not followed due process. A clause of the provisions not given above specified that "no foreigner shall have the freedom of the city unless he shall receive it in the presence of the mayor and commonalty."