Besides transforming the social composition of Colchester's ruling group, economic development simultaneously multiplied the tasks to be performed by elected officers; the income of the community increased, more pleas were brought to the borough courts and policing the town became more time-consuming. The casual ways of the early fourteenth century were no longer appropriate to the duties involved. And then, also, as Colchester's fame and fortune grew, civic pride took a share in recommending some types of reform and repudiating certain survivals from the past. So within a generation of the Black Death much had changed in the normal government of Colchester, and the constitutional history of the borough supplements the economic evidence to the effect that this was a period of innovation in response to new and higher expectations.

In 1372 the greater part of the burgesses of Colchester swore to observe a new set of ordinances, known as the New Constitutions, whose object was to reform the government of the borough and its electoral system. The stated reasons for the reform, which are rehearsed in the preamble to the New Constitutions, were financial. For a long time, it was said, the town's income both from rents and from fines had been spent entirely at the will of the bailiffs, to the community's loss. The object of the New Constitutions was accordingly to keep a check on this expenditure. It was observed that the total of rents and fines amounted to a great sum each year.