major endowed landowner in the town. Growth of boroughs' corruption continued unchecked (but sometimes a little side-stepped see below) until the era of the Reform Bill. Several boroughs had by that time become insolvent, and some had recourse to their member of parliament to eke out their revenues. In Buckingham the mayor received the whole town revenue without rendering account; sometimes, however, heavy criminal charges fell upon the officers. Before the Reform era dissatisfaction came to occasional fruition in Local Acts (of Parliament) which placed under the authority of special commissioners a variety of administrative details, which if the corporation had not been suspected would certainly not have been assigned to its care. The trust offered another convenient means of escape from difficulty, and in some towns out of the trust was developed a system of municipal administration where there was no recognised corporation. Thus at Peterborough the feoffees who had succeeded to the control of certain ancient charities constituted a form of town council with very restricted powers. In the 17th century Sheffield was brought under the act "to redress the misemployment of lands given to charitable uses", and the municipal administration of what had been a borough passed into the hands of the trustees of the Burgery or Town Trust. The many special authorities created under act of parliament led to much confusion, conflict and overlapping, and increased the need for a general reform. The reform of the boroughs was treated as part of the question of parliamentary reform. In 1832 the exclusive privileges of the corporations in parliamentary elections having been abolished and male occupiers enfranchised, the question of the municipal franchise was next dealt with. In effect this made the borough parliamentary franchise the same as the county franchise. In 1833 a commission inquired into the administration of the municipal corporations, the commissioners found far more corporations than parliamentary Boroughs, many of which had fallen into desuetude or were purely nominal if not moribund. Those that were active were essentially oligarchies of a closed number of families, there were a few exceptions whereby the councils were elected by all the local residents or those born there. The majority were not representative of the inhabitants. The result of the inquiry was the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which gave the municipal franchise to the ratepayers, but also allowed the freemen to remain on the Roll. In all the