Despite its small size, Colchester was a privileged town in the fourteenth century. It had no overlord but the king, whose predecessors had long since granted it a measure of self-government under the law. The burgesses elected annually two bailiffs to preside over the judicial and police work of the borough, to supervise the collection of borough revenues, to assess and collect royal taxes and to represent the burgesses in cases of conflict with the Crown, local landlords or other towns. Officers of the borough had some authority over four dependent hamlets which with the town itself made up the liberty of Colchester; this division of Essex was in fact the Hundred of Colchester, since Colchester was one of numerous English boroughs which constituted hundreds in themselves and whose courts of law developed as hundred courts. Because of its privileges, Colchester was more independent of seigneurial authority than many small boroughs of comparable size and wealth, and this autonomy was conducive to a certain civic dignity. If the borough was nevertheless not particularly attractive to newcomers, an explanation is not hard to find. Ordinary tradesmen benefited little from royal favours which left them, in most respects, no better off than the inhabitants of market towns elsewhere. The financial charges upon them were no lighter for having been imposed by wealthy townsmen rather than royal officers. They were subject to tallages for the necessary expenses of the community; they were amerced for infringing petty rules of trade; they paid more tax than would have been required of them in a less privileged environment.