Habemus Maiorem
The NBC is of the view that the ‘earliest records show that there has been a mayor in Newcastle since 1318’. Although records from the 1300s are sparse, there is documentary evidence that Newcastle-under-Lyme had a functioning civic government structure with a mayor-like figure or chief burgess during the medieval period. In 1590 Elizabeth I granted the first governing Charter to Newcastle-under-Lyme ‘with the power of hanging and gibbeting and independence of the county court; along with the right of the burgesses to elect a Mayor’. We are also told that this privilege ‘was …usurped by the members of the Corporation and confined to their own body … finding their attempts to recover their privileges ineffectual that determined to cast an odium upon the ceremony of election, yet in some measure retain the semblance of their rights by electing a ‘Mock Mayor. At this ceremony every act was a burlesque on the Corporate election’. Joseph Mayer...