Pledge

The Pledge is the basic unit of civil government within the towns of the Moran Duchy . Depending on the town it's size varies but is typically ten to fifteen households making a distinct geographic block within one of the town's Wards.

Structure

The pledge is made up of the heads of its households. Collectively they have the primary responsibility of maintining order in their small part of town and may be liable for the misdeeds of their fellow pledgemen (and their households). Each year one of their number is chosen to represent the pledge in its routine dealings with the Alderman with different pledges managing this differently but with the common feature that no individual may hold this role for more than one in every three years.

History

The Pledge is the oldest form of the government in the settlements of the Mor having been a feature of their organisation before the migration phase. As settlements grew beyond twenty pledges so additional layers of government were added.
Individual pledges are not fixed in stone - households move between them and may, on occasion, eject a household for untrustworthy behaviour. Such "unpledged houses" are viewed with great distrust and they wil often pay a significant premium or put up goods for security to gain membership of a pledge. Thus few pledges could be considered to have a long history as discrete groupings.

Leadership

in routin dealings with the Alderman or other civic powers the Pledge is normally represented by the "Pledgeman" - one of the heads of household selected by the pledged households. This is "approximately" democratic - with some skewing for household size, status in society or trade etc.
Note as in many of the terms used in the Duchy "man" refers to "person".