It is highly improbable that any large number of the Roman towns perished during the harassing period within which the Pictish invasions fall, at all events by violent means. The marauding forays of such barbarians are not accompanied with battering trains or supported by the skilful combinations of an experienced commissariat: wandering banditti have neither the means to destroy such masonry as the Romans erected, the time to execute, nor in general the motive to form such plans of subversion. One or two cities may possibly have fallenunder the furious storm of the Saxons, and Anderida is recorded to have done so: more than this seems to me unlikely: Keltic populations have generally been found capable of making a very good defence behind walls, in spite of the ridiculous accounts which Gildas gives of their ineffectual resistance to the Picts[785]. The Roman cities perished, it is true, but by a far slower and surer process than that of violent disruption; they crumbled away under the hand of time, the ruinous consequences of neglect, and the operation of natural causes, which science finds no difficulty in assigning. We may believe that the gradual impoverishment of the land had driven the population to crowd into cities, even before the retreat of the legions; and that the troublous era of the tyrants[786]completely emptied the country into the towns. But even if we suppose that citizens remained and, what is rather an extravagant supposition, that they remained undisturbed in their old seats, weshall find that there are obvious reasons why they could not maintain themselves therein. There are conditions necessary to the very existence of towns, and without which it is impossible that they should continue to endure. They must have town-lands, and they must have manufactures and trade: in other words they must either grow bread or buy it: but to this end they must have the means of safe and ready communication with country districts, or with other towns which have this. It matters not whether that communication be by the sea, as in the case of Tyre and Carthage[787]; over the desert, as at Bagdad and Aleppo; down the river or canal, along the turnpike road, or yet more compendious railway: easy and safe communication is the conditionsine qua non, of urban existence.
Let us apply these principles to the case before us. Even supposing that Gildas and other authors have greatly exaggerated the state of rudeness into which the country had fallen, yet we may be certain that one of the very first results of a general panic would be the obstruction of the ancient roads and established modes of communication. It is certain that this would be followed at first by a considerable desertion of the towns; since every one would anxiously strive to secure that by which he could feed himself and his family; in preference to continuing in a place which no longer offeredany advantages beyond those of temporary defence and shelter. The retirement of the Romans, emigration of wealthy aborigines, general discomfort and disorganization of the social condition, and ever imminent terror of invasion, must soon have put a stop to those commercial and manufacturing pursuits which are the foundation of towns and livelihood of townspeople. Internal wars and merciless factions which ever haunt the closing evening of states, increased the misery of their condition; and a frightful pestilence, by Gildas attributed to the superfluity of luxuries, but which may far more probably be accounted for by the want of food, completed the universal ruin.
Still even those who fled for refuge to the land, could find little opportunity of improving their situation: there was no room for them in an island which was thenceforward to be organized upon the Teutonic principles of association. The Saxons were an agricultural and pastoral people: they required land for their alods,—forests, marshes and commons for their cattle: they were not only dangerous rivals for the possession of those estates which, lying near the cities, were probably in the highest state of cultivation, but they had cut off all communication by extending themselves over the tracts which lay between city and city. But they required serfs also, and these might now be obtained in the greatest abundance and with the greatest security, cooped up within walls, and caught as it were in traps, where the only alternative wasslavery or starvation[788]. Nor can we reasonably imagine that such spoils as could yet be wrested from the degenerate inhabitants were despised by conquerors whose principle it was that wealth was to be won at the spear’s point[789].
No doubt the final triumph of the Saxons was not obtained entirely without a struggle: here and there attempts at resistance were made, but never with such success as to place any considerable obstacle in the way of the invaders. Spirit-broken, and reduced both in number and condition, the islanders gradually yielded to the tempest; and with some allowance for the rhetorical exaggeration of the historian, Britain did present a picture such as Beda and Gildas have left. Stronghold after stronghold fell, less no doubt by storm (which the Saxons were in general not prepared to effect) than by blockade, or in consequence of victories in the open field. The sack of Anderida by Aelli, and the extermination of its inhabitants, is the only recordedinstance of a fortified city falling by violent breach, and in this case so complete was the destruction that the ingenuity of modern enquirers has been severely taxed to assign the ancient site. But when we are told[790]that Cúðwulf, by defeating the Britons in 571 at Bedford, gained possession of Leighton Buzzard, Aylesbury, Bensington and Ensham, I understand it only of a wide tract of land in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, which had previously been dependent upon towns in those several districts[791], and which perished in consequence. Again when we are told[792]that six years later Cúðwine took Bath, and Cirencester and Gloucester, the statement seems to me only to imply that he cleared the land from the confines of Oxfordshire to the Severn and southward to the Avon, and so rendered it safely habitable by his Teutonic comrades and allies. Thirty years later we find Northumbria stretching westward till the fall of Cair Legion became necessary: accordingly Æðelfrið took possession of Chester. Its present condition is evidence enough that he did not level it with the ground, or in any great degree injure itsfortificationsfortifications.
The fact has been already noticed that the Saxonsdid not themselves adopt the Roman cities, and the reason for the course they pursued has been given. They did not want them, and would have been greatly at a loss to know what to do with them. The inhabitants they enslaved, or expelled as a mere necessary precaution and preliminary to their own peaceable occupation of the land: but they neither took possession of the towns, nor did they give themselves the trouble to destroy them[793]. They had not the motive, the means or perhaps the patience to unbuild what we know to have been so solidly constructed. Where it suited their purpose to save the old Roman work, they used it for their own advantage: where it did not suit their views of convenience or policy to establish themselves on or near the old sites, they quietly left them to decay. There is not even a probability that they in general took the trouble to dismantle walls or houses to assist in the construction of their own rude dwellings[794]. Boards and rafters, much more easily accessible,and to them much more serviceable, much more easy of transport than stones and bond-tiles, they very likely removed: the storms, the dews, the sunshine, the unperceived and gentle action of the elements did the rest,—for desolation marches with giant strides, and neglect is a more potent leveller than military engines. Clogged watercourses undermined the strong foundations; decomposed stucco or the detritus of stone and brick mingled in the deserted chambers with drifted silt, and dust and leaves; accumulations of soil formed in and around the crumbling abodes of wealth and power; winged seeds, borne on the autumnal winds, sunk gently on a new and vigorous bed; vegetation yearly thickening, yearly dying, prepared the genial deposit; roots yearly matting deepened the crust; the very sites of cities vanished from the memory as they had vanished from the eye; till at length the plough went and the corn waved, as it now waves, over the remains of palaces and temples in which the once proud masters of the world had revelled and had worshipped. Who shall say in how many unsuspected quarters yet, the peasant whistles careless and unchidden above the pomp and luxury of imperial Rome!
Many circumstances combined to make a distinction between the cities of Britain and those of the Gallic continent. The latter had always been in nearer relation than our own to Rome: they had been at all periods permitted to enjoy a much greater measure of municipal freedom, and were enriched by a more extensive commercial intercourse.England had no city to boast of so free as Lugdunum, none so wealthy as Massilia. Even in the time of the Gallic independence they had been far more advanced in cultivation than the cities of the Britons, and in later days their organization was maintained by the residence of Roman bishops and a wealthy body of clergy. Nor on the other hand do the Franks appear to have been very numerous in proportion to the land, a sufficient amount of which they could appropriate without very seriously confining the urban populations: many of these still retained their communications with the sea: and, lastly, before the conquerors, slowly advancing from Belgium through Flanders, had spread themselves throughout the populous and wealthy parts of Gaul, their chiefs had shown a readiness to listen to the exhortation of Christian teachers, to enter into the communion of the Church, and recognize its rights and laudable customs. So that in general, whether among the Lombards in Italy, the Goths in Aquitaine, or the Franks in Neustria, there was but little reason for a violent subversion, or even gradual ruin, of the ancient cities. In these the old subsisting elements of civilization were still tolerated, and continued to prevail by the force of uninterrupted usage. More happy than the demoralized and dispossessed inhabitants of Britain, the Roman provincials under the Frankish and Langobardic rule were still numerous and important enough to retain their own laws, and the most of their own customs. Skilful in the character of counsellors or administrators,wealthy and enterprising as merchant-adventurers, dignified and influential as forming almost exclusively the class of the clergy, they still retained their old seats, under the protection of the conquerors: and thus, for the most part their cities survived the conquest, and continued under their ancient character, till they slowly gave way at length in the numerous civil or baronial wars of the middle ages, and the frequent insurrections of the urban populations in their struggle for communal liberties.
It is natural to imagine that when once the Saxons broke up from their peaceful settlements and commenced a career of aggression, they would direct their marches by the great lines of roads which the Roman or British authorities had maintained in every part of the island. They would thus unavoidably be brought into the neighbourhood of earlier towns, and be compelled to decide the question whether they would attack and occupy them, or whether they would turn them and proceed on their march. If the views already expressed in this chapter be correct, it is plain that no very efficient resistance was to be feared by the invaders: they could afford to neglect what in the hands of a population not degraded by the grossest misgovernment would have offered an insuperable obstacle. But the locality of a town is rarely the result of accident alone: there are generally some conveniences of position, some circumstances affecting the security, the comfort or the interests of a people, that determine the sites of their seats: and these whichmust have been nearly the same for each successive race, may have determined the Saxons to remain where they had determined the Britons or Romans first to settle. Yet even in this case, and admitting Saxon towns to have gradually grown up in the neighbourhood of ancient sites, there is no reason to suppose that either the kings or bishops made their ordinary residences in them; and thus in England, a very active element was wanting to the growth and importance of the towns, which we find in full force in other Roman provinces. In truth both king and bishop adopted for the most part the old Teutonic habit of wandering from vill to vill, from manor to manor, and in this country the positions of cathedrals were as little confined to principal cities as were the positions of palaces. This is not entirely without strangeness, especially in the case of the earliest bishops, seeing that we might reasonably expect Roman missionaries to choose by preference buildings ready for their purpose, and of a nature to which they had been accustomed in Italy. Gregory had himself recommended that the heathen temples should if possible be hallowed to Christian uses; and even if Christian temples were entirely wanting, which we can scarcely imagine to have been the case[795], there were yet basilicas in Britain, even as there had been in Rome, which might be made to serve the purposes of churches. Nevertheless, whatever we do readteaches us that in general, on the conversion of a people, structures of the rudest character were erected even upon the sites of ancient civilization: thus in York, Eádwine caused a church of wood to be built in haste, “citato opere,” for the ceremony of his own baptism: thus too in London, upon the establishment of the see, a new church was built—surely a proof that Saxon London and Roman London could not be the same place. It is indeed probable that the missionaries, yet somewhat uncertain of success, and not secure of the popular good-will, desired to fix their residences near those of the kings, for the sake both of protection and of influence; and thus, as the kings did not make their settled residence in cities whether of Saxon or Roman construction, the sees also were not established therein[796].
The town of the Saxons had however a totally independent origin, and one susceptible of an easy explanation. The fortress required by a simple agricultural people is not a massive pile with towers and curtains, devised to resist the attacks of reckless soldiers, the assault of battering-trains, the sap of skilful engineers, or the slow reduction of famine. A gentle hill crowned with a slight earthwork, or even a stout hedge, and capacious enough toreceive all who require protection, suffices to repress the sudden incursions of marauding enemies, unfurnished with materials for a siege or provisions to carry on a blockade[797]. Here and there such may have been found within the villages or on the border of the Mark, tenanted perhaps by an earl or noble with his comites, and thus uniting the characters of the mansion and the fortress: around such a dwelling were congregated the numerous poor and unfree settlers, who obtained a scanty and precarious living on the chieftain’s land; as well as the idlers whom his luxury, his ambition or his ostentation attracted to his vicinity. Here too may have been found the rude manufacturers whose craft supplied the wants of the castellan and his comrades; who may gradually and by slow experience have discovered that the outlying owners also could sometimes offer a market for their productions; and who, as matter of favour, could obtain permission from the lord to exercise their skill on behalf of his neighbours. Similarly round the church or the cathedral must bodies of men have gathered, glad to claim its protection, share its charities and aid in ministering to its wants[798]. Ihold it undeniable that these people could not feed themselves, and equally so that food would find its way to them; that the neighbouring farmer,—instead of confining his cultivation to the mere amount necessary for the support of his household or the discharge of the royal dues,—would on their account produce and accumulate a capital, through which he could obtain from them articles of convenience and enjoyment which he had neither the leisure nor the skill to make. In this way we may trace the growth of barter, and that most important habit of resorting to fixed spots for commercial and social purposes. In this process the lord had himself a direct and paramount interest. If he took upon himself to maintain freedom of buying and selling, to guarantee peace and security to thechapmen, going and coming, he could claim in return a slight recognition of his services in the shape of toll or custom. If the intervention of his officers supplied an easy mode of attesting thebona fidesof a transaction, the parties to it would have been unreasonable had they resisted the jurisdiction which thus gradually grew up. So that on all accounts we may be assured that the lord encouraged as much as possible the resort of strangers to his domain. In the growing prosperity of his dependents, his own condition was immediately and extensively concerned. Even their number was of importance to his revenue, for a capitation-tax, however light, was the inevitable condition of their reception. Their industry as manufacturers or merchants attracted traffic to his channels. Lastly in a military, political and social view, the wealth, the density and the cultivation of his burgher-population were the most active elements of his own power, consideration and influence. What but these rendered the Counts of Flanders so powerful as they were throughout the middle ages? Let it now be only considered with what rapidity all these several circumstances must tend to combine and to develop themselves, as the class of free landowners diminishes in extent and influence and that of the lords increases. Concurrent with such a change must necessarily be the extension of mutual dependence, which is only another name for traffic, and, as far as this alone is concerned, a great advance in the material well-being of society. It is difficult to conceive amore hopeless state than one in which every household should exactly suffice to its own wants, and have no wants but such as itself could supply. Fortunately for human progress, it is one which all experience proves to be impossible. There is no principle of social ethics more certain than this, that in proportion as you secure to a man the command of the necessaries of life, you awaken in him the desire for those things which adorn and refine it. And all experience also teaches that the attempt of any individual to provide both classes of things for himself and within the limits of his own household, will totally fail; that time is wanting to produce any one thing in perfection; that skill can only be attained by exclusive attention to one object; and that a division of labour is indispensable if society is to be enabled to secure, at the least possible sacrifice, the greatest possible amount of comforts and conveniences. The farmer therefore raises, stores and sells the abundance of the grain which he well knows how to gain from his fields; and, relinquishing the vain attempt to make clothes or hardware, ornamental furniture and articles of household utility or elegance, nay even ploughs and harrows,—the instruments of his industry,—purchases them with his superfluity. And so in turn with his superfluity does the mechanic provide himself with bread which he lacks the land, the tools and the skill to raise. But the cultivator and the herdsman require land and space: the mechanic is most advantageously situated where numbers concentrate, where his various materialscan be brought together cheaply and speedily; where there is intercourse to sharpen the mind; where there is population to assist in processes which transcend the skill or strength of the individual man. The wealth of the cultivator, that is, his superabundant bread, awakens the mechanic into existence; and the existence of the mechanic, speedily leading to the enterprise of the manufacturer, and the venture of the distributor, broker, merchant, or shopman, ultimately completes the growth of the town. It is unavoidable that the first mechanics—beyond the heroical weapon-smith on the one hand, and on the other the poor professors of such rude arts as the homestead cannot do without,—the wife that spins, the husbandman that hammers his own share and coulter—should be those who have no land; that is, in the state of society which we are now considering,—the unfree. It is a mere accident that they should gather round this lord or that, on his extensive possessions, or that they should seek shelter, food and protection in the neighbourhood of the castle or the cathedral: but where they do settle, in process of time the town must come.
The conditions under which this shall constitute itself are many and various. For a long while they will greatly depend upon the original circumstances which accompanied and regulated the settlement. When a great manufacturing and commercial system has been founded, embracing states and not petty localities only, it is clear that petty local interests will cease to be the guiding principles: but this state of things transcends the limits of a rudeand early society. The liberties of the first cities must often have been mere favours on the part of the lords who owned the soil, and protected the dwellers upon it. Later these liberties were the result of bargains between separate powers, grown capable of measuring one another. Lastly, they are necessities imposed by an advanced condition of human associations, in which the wishes, objects and desires of the individual man are hurried resistlessly away by a great movement of civilization, in which the vast attraction of the mass neutralizes and defeats all minor forces. It would indeed be but slight philosophy to suppose that any one set of circumstances could account for the infinite variety which the history of towns presents: though there are features of resemblance common to them all, yet each has its peculiar story, its peculiar conditions of progress and decay; even as the children of one family, which bear a near likeness to each other, yet each has its own tale of joy and sorrow, of smiles and tears, of triumph and failure. Yet there is probably no single element of urban prosperity more potent than situation, or which more pervasively modifies all other and concurrent conditions of success. Let the most careless observer only compare London, Liverpool and Bristol, I will not say with Munich or Madrid, but even with Warwick, Stafford or Winchester. If royal favour and court gaieties could have made cities great, the latter should have flourished; for they were the residences of the rulers of Mercia and Wessex, the scenes ofwitena gemóts, of Christmas festivalsand Easters when the king solemnly wore his crown; while theceorlsormangerasof Brigstow and Lundenwíc were only cheapening hides with the Esterlings, warehousing the foreign wines which were to supply the royal table, or bargaining with the adventurer from the East for the incense which was to accompany the high mass in the Cathedral. But Commerce, the child of opportunity, brought wealth; wealth, power; and power led independence in its train.
Against the manifold relations which arose during the gradual development of urban populations, the original position of the lord could not be maintained intact. It is indeed improbable that in any very great number of cases, the inhabitants of an English town long continued in the condition of personal serfage. The lords were too weak, the people too strong, for a system like that of the French nobles and their towns ever to have become settled here; nor had our city populations, like the Gallic provincials, the habit and use of slavery. The first settlers on a noble’s land may have been unfree; serfs and oppressed labourers from other estates may have been glad to take refuge among them from taskmasters more than ordinarily severe; but in this unmixed state they did not long remain. There is no doubt that freemen gradually united with them under the lord’s protection or in his alliance; that strangers sojourned among them in hope of profits from traffic; and hence that a race gradually grew up, in whom the original feelings of the several classes survived in agreatly modified form. To this, though generally so difficult to trace step by step in history, we owe the difference of the urban government in different cities,—distinctions in detail more frequent than is commonly supposed, and which can be unhesitatingly referred to the earliest period of urban existence, if not in fact, at least in principle,—institutions representing in a shadowy manner the distant conditions under which they arose, and for the most part separated in the sharpest contrast from the ordinary forms prevalent upon the land.
The general outline of an urban constitution, in the earlier days of the Saxons, may have been somewhat of the following character. The freemen, either with or without the co-operation of the lord, but usually with it, formed themselves into associations or clubs, calledgylds. These must not be confounded either on the one side with the Hanses (in AnglosaxonHósa), i. e. trading guilds, or on the other with the guilds of crafts (“collegia opificum”) of later ages. Looking to the analogy of the country-gylds or Tithings, described in detail in the ninth chapter of the First Book, we may believe that the whole free town population was distributed into such associations; but that in each town, taken altogether, they formed a compact and substantive body called in general theBurhwaru, and perhaps sometimes more especially theIngang burhware, or “burgher’s club[799].” It is also certainfrom various expressions in the boundaries of charters, as “Burhware mǽd,” “burhware mearc,” and the like, that they were in possession of real property as a corporate body, whether they had any provision for the management of corporation revenues, we cannot tell; but we may unhesitatingly affirm that the gylds had each its common purse, maintained at least in part by private contributions, or what we may morefamiliarlyfamiliarlytermrateslevied under their bye-laws. These gylds, whether in their original nature religious, political, or merely social unions, rested upon another and solemn principle: they were sworn brotherhoods between man and man, established and fortified upon “áð and wed,” oath and pledge; and in them we consequently recognize the germ of those sworn communes,communaeorcommuniae[800], which in thetimes of the densest seigneurial darkness offered a noble resistance to episcopal and baronial tyranny, and formed the nursing-cradles of popular liberty. They were alliances offensive and defensive among the free citizens, and in the strict theory possessed all the royalties, privileges and rights of independent government and internal jurisdiction. How far they could make these valid, depended entirely upon the relative strength of the neighbouring lord, whether he were ealdorman, king or bishop. Where they had full power, they probably placed themselves under ageréfaof their own, duly elected from among the members of their own body, who thenceforth took the name ofPortgeréfaorBurhgeréfa, and not only administered justice in the burhwaremót or husting, on behalf of the whole state, but if necessary led the city trainbands to the field. Such a civic political constitution seems the germ of those later liberties which we understand by the expression that a city is a county of itself,—words once more weighty than they now are, when privilege has become less valuable before the face of an equal law. Nevertheless there was once a time when it was no slight advantage for a population to be under a portreeve or sheriff of their own, and not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of a noble or bishop who might claim to exercise the comitial authority within their precincts. Such a free organization was capable of placing a city upon terms of equality with other constituted powers; and hence we can easily understand the position so frequently assumed by the inhabitantsof London. As late as the tenth century, and under Æðelstán, a prince who had carried the influence of the crown to an extent unexampled in any of his predecessors, we find the burghers treating as power to power with the king, under their portreeves and bishop: engaging indeed to follow his advice, if he have any to give which shall be for their advantage; but nevertheless constituting their own sworn gyldships or commune, by their own authority, on a basis of mutual alliance and guarantee, as to themselves seemed good[801].
The rights of such a corporation were in truth royal. They had their own alliances and feuds; their own jurisdiction, courts of justice and power of execution; their own markets and tolls; their own power of internal taxation; their personal freedom with all its dignity and privileges. And to secure these great blessings they had their own towers and walls and fortified houses, bell and banner, watch and ward, and their own armed militia.
Such too were the rights which, in more than one European country, the brave and now forgotten burghers of the twelfth century strove to wring from the territorial aristocracy that hemmed them in; when ancient tradition had not lost its vigour, though liberty had been trampled under the armed hoof of power. If we admire and glory in thesetrue fathers of popular freedom, firm in success, unbroken by defeat,—steadfast in council, steadfast in the field, steadfast even under the seigneurial gibbet and in the seigneurial dungeon,—let us yet give our meed of thanks to those still older assertors of the dignity of man, duly honouring the gyldsmen of the tenth century, who handed down their noble inheritance to the less fortunate burgesses of the twelfth. Few pictures from the past may the eye rest upon with greater pleasure than that of a Saxon portreeve looking down from his strong gyld-hall upon the well-watched walls and gates that guard the populous market of his city[802]. The fortified castle of a warlike lord may frown upon the adjacent hill; the machicolated and crenelated walls of the cathedral close, with buttress and drawbridge, may tell of the temporal power and turbulence of the episcopate; but in the centre of the square stands the symbolic statue which marks the freedom of jurisdiction and of commerce[803]; balance in hand, to show the right of unimpeded traffic; sword in hand, to intimate theius gladii, the rightto judge and punish, the right to guard with the weapons of men all that men hold dearest.
Again, no brighter picture than the present; when, drawing a veil over the miserable convulsions of a nearly millennial struggle, we can contemplate the mayor of the same town wandering with a satisfied eye over the space where those old walls once stood, but which now is covered with the workshop, the manufactory or the house, the reward of patient, peaceful industry. Looking to the hill, crowned with its picturesque ruin, he sees the mansion of a noble citizen united with himself in zealous obedience to an equal law,—the peer who in the higher, or the burgess who in the lower house of parliament, consults for the weal of the community, and derives his own value and importance most from the trust reposed in him by his fellow-townsmen. We can now contemplate this peaceful magistrate (elected because his neighbours honour his worth and the character won in a successful civic career,—not because he is a stout man-at-arms, or tried in perilous adventure,) when turning again to the ruined defences of the old cathedral, he sees streets instinct with life, where the ditch yawned of yore, walls picturesque with the ivy of uncounted ages, now carved out into quaint, prebendal houses; and while he admires the beauty of their architecture, wonders why the gates of cathedral closes should have been so strongly built, or bear so unnecessary a resemblance to fortresses. Still in the market-place stands the belfry, once dreaded by the neighbouring tyrant: but its bellcalls no longer to the defence of a city, which now fears no enemy. The tenant of its dungeon is no more a turbulent man-at-arms, or well-born hostage: the dignity of the prisoner rises no higher than that of a petty market-pilferer, and the name of the belfry itself is forgotten in that of the “cage.” Over the flesh- or fish-stalls perhaps yet stands the mysterious statue, inherited from earlier times, but without the meaning of the inheritance. The sword and balance are still there, but it is no longer Marsyas or Silenus or Orlando: flowing robes and bandaged eyes have transformed it into a harmless allegory; and where the warlike citizen, whose privileges were maintained with sweat and blood, erewhile looked upon it as the symbol—if not the talisman—of freedom, his modern successor, as his humour leads him, wonders whetherJusticewere ever wanting in that place, or smiles to think that her eyes are closed to the petty tricks of temporary stall-keepers.
Beyond all price indeed is this privilege of quiet inherited from our earnest forefathers, and great the debt of gratitude we owe to those whose wisdom laid, whose courage and patience maintained, its deep foundations.
Yet not in all cases can we draw so favourable a picture of the condition of an Anglosaxon town: in many of them, the unfree dwelt by the side of the freemen in their gylds, under the presidency of their lord’sgeréfa. And where the number of the unfree was greatly preponderant, and the power of the lord proportionally increased, we cannot butbelieve that the freemen themselves were too often deprived of their most cherished privileges. Without going quite so far as the custom in some mediæval towns, where the air itself was emphatically said to be loaded with serfage,—where slavery was epidemic[804],—it is but too evident that in many places, the free settlers, while they retained their wergyld and perhaps other personal rights, must yet have been subject like their neighbours to servile dues and works, and compelled to attend the lord’s court. Let us only imagine a case which was probably not uncommon; where the lord, with his own numerous unfree dependents, occupied the post of the king’sburggeréfa, the bishop’s or abbot’sadvocatus, and forced himself as theirgeréfaupon the free. What refuge could there be for these, if he determined to assimilate his various jurisdictions, and subject all alike to the convenient machinery of a centralized authority? They might in vain declare, as did the Northumbrians of old, that “free by birth and educated as freemen, they scorned to submit to the tyranny of any duke,” or count orgeréfa,—but what remedy had they, when once the defence of the mutual guarantee was removed? Theoretically of course they werecyre-lif, that is, they could go away and choose a lord elsewhere: but we may fairly doubt whether they could practically do this. New connexions are not easily formed in a state which enjoys but little means of intercommunication: what would be sacrificed now without regret,assumes a very disproportionate importance at a period when accumulation is slow, and acquisition difficult: nor could the expatriated chapman securely remove his valuables from one place to another; or even legally withdraw from the district where he felt himself aggrieved, without the consent of the very officer from whose unjust exactions he desired to escape. Under such circumstances of difficulty, it is to be supposed that, like the prædial freemen on the country estates, they were reduced to make the best bargain that they could; in other words, that they ultimately submitted to the customs of the place.
Moreover there may have been then, as there frequently were in the twelfth century, a plurality of lords each havingbanor jurisdiction in particular localities[805], each having different customs to enforce, separate and conflicting interests to further, and a separate armament to dispose of. Often, as we pursue the history of mediæval cities, do we find king, count, and bishop, with perhaps one or more barons or castellans, claiming portions of the town as subject in totality or shares to their several jurisdictions, imposing heavy capitation-taxes on their own dependents, establishing hostile tolls or tariffs to the injury of internal traffic, warring with one another, from motives of pride or hate, ambition or avarice, and dragging their reluctant quotas of the city into internecine hostilities, ruinous to the interests of all. And then, if strongenough, among them all subsists a corporation of burgesses, perhaps a turbulent mob of handicrafts, distributed in gylds or mysteries, with their deacons, common-chests, banners, and barricades:—freer than the old serfs were, but unfree still as regards the corporation: for the full burgesses have made alliances with the nobles, have enrolled the nobles as burgesses in theirHanse, and have become themselves an aristocracy as compared with the democracy of the crafts. Or the corporation of freemen may have elected a nobleadvocatus,Vogtor Patron, to be the constable of their castle, and to lead their militia against his brethren by birth and rivals in estate. Or they may have coalesced with the crafts in a bond of union for general liberation:—unhappily too rare a case, for even those old burgesses sometimes forgot their own origin, and blundered into the belief that liberty meant privilege[806].
The misery and mischief of this state of things were not so prominent among the Anglosaxons, because the subdivision of powers was much less than where the principles of feudality prevailed, and the lords and castellans were not numerous. Nor were the guarantees which the tithings and gyldships offered, and which were secured by the popular election of officers, at any time entirely devoid of their original force. History thereforerecords no instances of such painful struggles as marked the progress of the continental cities, or even of our own subsequent to the Norman conquest. But we are nevertheless not without examples of towns in which the powers of government were unequally divided: where the king, the bishop and the burgesses, or the king and bishop alone, shared in the civil and criminal jurisdiction. In these the burh, properly so called, or fortification, often formed part of the city walls, or commanded the approaches to the market. In it sat the royalburhgeréfaand administered justice to the freemen; while the unfree also appeared in his court, and became gradually confounded with the free in his sócn or jurisdiction. On the other hand the bishop, through hissócnegeréfa, judged and taxed and governed his own particular dependents: unless the power of the king had been such as to unite all the inhabitants in one body under the authority of the royal thane who exercised the palatine functions. Even in the burgmót of the freemen did the royal and episcopal reeves appear as assessors, to watch over the interests of their respective employers, and add a specious, but little suspected, show of authority to the acts of the corporation.
We are still fortunately able to give some account of the growth of various English towns, which seem to have arisen after the close of the Danish wars, and the successive victories of Ælfred’s children, Eádweard king of Wessex, and Æðelflǽd, duchess of Mercia.
By the treaty of peace between Ælfred and Guðorm,a very considerable tract of country in the north and east of England was surrendered to the latter and his Scandinavian allies. It is clear that from very early periods this district had contained important cities and fortresses, but many of these had probably perished during the wars which expelled the Northumbrian and Mercian kings, and finally reduced their territories under the arms of the Danish invaders. The efforts of Ælfred had indeed succeeded in saving his ancestral kingdoms of Wessex and Kent, and by the articles of Wedmor he had become possessed of a valuable part of Mercia, between the Severn, the Ouse, the Thames and the Watling-street. To the east and north of these lines however, the Scandinavians had settled, dividing the lands, for the most part denuded of their Saxon population, or occupied by Saxons who had submitted to the invader and made common cause with him, against a king of Wessex to whom they owed no allegiance. The Eastanglians and a portion of the Northumbrians had adopted the kingly form of government; but there were still independent populations in those districts following their national Jarls, and in the North was a powerful confederation of five Burghs or cities, which sometimes included seven, comprising in one political unity, York, Lincoln, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Chester[807]. The power ofthe Scandinavians however was frittered away in internal quarrels, and those two children of Wessex, Eádweard and his lion-hearted sister, determined upon carrying into the country of the Pagans the sufferings which they had so often inflicted upon others. A career of conquest was commenced from the west and the south; place after place was cleared of the intruding strangers, by men themselves intruders, but gifted with better fortune; the Scandinavians were either thrown back over the Humber, or compelled to submit to Saxon arms; and the country wrested from them was secured and bridled by a chain of fortresses erected and garrisoned by the victors.
In the course of this victorious career we learn that Æðelflǽd erected the following fortresses[808]:—In 910, the burh at Bremesbyrig: in 912, those at Scargate and Bridgnorth: in 913, those at Tamworth and Stafford: in 914, those at Eddisbury and Warwick: in 915, the fortresses of Cherbury, Warborough and Runcorn. In 917 she took the fortified town of Derby; and in 918, Leicester: and thus, upon the submission of York, in the same year, broke up the independent organization of the “Seven Burhs.”
The evidences of Eádweard’s activity are yet more numerous. The following burhs or towns are recorded to have been built by him. In 913,the northern burh at Hertford, between the rivers Mimera, Benefica and Lea: a burh at Witham, and soon after another on the southern bank of the Lea. In 918, he constructed burhs, or fortresses, on both sides of the river at Buckingham. In 919 he raised the burh on the southern bank of the Ouse at Bedford. In 921 he fortified Towchester with a stone wall; and in the same year he rebuilt the burhs at Huntingdon and Colchester, and built the burh at Cledemouth. The following year he built the burh on the southern bank of the river at Stamford, and repaired the castle of Nottingham. In 923 he built a fortress at Thelwall, and repaired one at Manchester. In 924 he built another castle at Nottingham, on the south bank of the Trent, over against that which stood on the northern bank, and threw a bridge between them. Lastly he went to Bakewell in Derbyshire, where he built and garrisoned a burh.
A large number of these were no doubt merely castles or fortresses, and some of them, we are told, received stipendiary garrisons, that is literally, king’s troops, contradistinguished on the one hand from the free landowners who might be called upon under theherebanto take a turn of duty therein, and on the other from the unfree tenants, part of whose rent may have been paid in service behind the walls. But it is also certain that the shelter and protection of the castle often produced the town, and that in many cases the mere sutler’s camp, formed to supply the needs of the permanent garrison, expanded into a flourishing centre ofcommerce, guarded by the fortress, and nourished by the military road or the beneficent river. It is also probable enough that on many of their sites towns, or at least royal vills, had previously existed, and that the population whom war and its concomitant misery had dispossessed, returned to their ancient seats, when quiet seemed likely to be permanently restored.
It cannot be doubted that those who were already congregated, or for the sake of security or gain did afterwards collect in such places, were subject to the authority of theburhgeréfaor castellan, and that thus the burh by degrees became a Palatium or Pfalz in the German sense of the word. In truthburhdoes originally denote a castle, not a town; and the latter only comes to be designated by the word, because a town could hardly be conceived without a castle,—a circumstance which favours the account here given of their origin in general.
It is certain that the free institutions which have been described in an earlier part of this chapter, could not be found in towns, the right to which must be considered to have been based on conquest, or which arose around a settlement purely military. In such places we can expect to find no mint, except as matter of grant or favour: if there was watch and ward, it was for the fortress, not the townsmen: toll there might be—but for the lord to receive: jurisdiction,—but for the lord to exercise: market,—but for the lord to profit by: armed militia,—but for the lord to command. Yet while the lord was the king, and the town was,through its connexion with him, brought into close union with the general state, its own condition was probably easy, and its civic relations not otherwise than beneficial to the republic. In such circumstances a town is only one part of a system; nor is a royal landlord compelled to rack the tenants of a single estate for a fitting subsistence: the shortcoming of one is balanced by the superfluity of other sources of wealth. The owner of the small flock is ever the closest shearer. But even on this account, when once the towns became seigneurial, their own state was not so happy, nor was their relation to the country at large beneficial to the full extent. But all general observations of this character do not explain or account for the separate cases. It is clear that everything which we have to say upon this subject will depend entirely upon what we may learn to have been the character of any particular person or class of persons at any given time. The lord or Seigneur may have ruled well; that is, he may have seen that his own best interests were inseparably bound up with the prosperity, the peace and the rational freedom of his dependents; and that both he and they would flourish most, when the mutual well-being was guarded by a harmonious common action, founded upon the least practicable sacrifice of individual interests. Thus he may have contented himself with the legal capitation-tax, or even relinquished it altogether: he may have exacted only moderate and reasonable tolls, trusting wisely to a consequent increase of traffic, and rewarded bya rapid advance in wealth and power: he may have given a just and generous protection in return for submission and alliance; have supported his townsmen in their public buildings, roads, wharves, canals, and other laudable undertakings. Nay, when the re-awakened spirit of self-government grew strong, and the whole mighty mass of mediæval society heaved and tossed with the working of this all-pervading leaven, we have even seen Seigneurs aiding their serf-townsmen to swear and maintain a “Communa,”—that institution so detested and savagely persecuted by popes, barons and bishops,—so hypocritically blamed, but so lukewarmly pursued by kings, who found it their gain to have the people on their side against the nobles[809].
But unhappily there is another side to the picture: the lord may have ruled ill, and often did so rule, for class-prejudices and short-sighted selfish views of personal interest drove him to courses fatal to himself and his people. When this was the case, there was but one miserable alternative, revolt, and ruin either for the lord, the city, or both,—in theformer case possibly, in the latter always and certainly a grievous loss to the republic. But before this final settlement of the question, how much irreparable mischief, how much of credit and confidence shaken, of raw material wasted and destroyed, of property plundered, of security unsettled, of internecine hostility engendered, class set against class, family against family, man against man! Verily, when we contemplate the misery which such contests caused from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, we could almost join in the cry of the Jacquerie, and wish, with the prædial and urban serfs of old, that the race of Seigneurs had been swept from the face of the earth; did we not know that gold must be tried in the fire, that liberty could grow to a giant’s stature only by passing through a giant’s struggles.
But from this painful school of manhood it pleased the providence of the Almighty to save our forefathers; nor does Anglosaxon history record more than one single instance of those oppressions or of that resistance, which make up so large and wretched a portion of the history of other lands[810].Suffering enough they had to bear, but it was at the hands of invading strangers, not of those who were born beneath the same skies and spake with the same tongue. The power of the national institutions was too general, too deeply rooted, to be shaken by the efforts of a class; nor does it appear that that class itself attempted at any time an undue exercise of authority. One ill-advised duke did indeed raise a fierce rebellion by his misgovernment; but even here national feeling was probably at work, and the Northumbrians rose less against the bad ruler, than the intrusive Westsaxon: the interests of Morcar’s family were more urgent than the crimes of Tostig. Yet these may have been grave, for he was repudiated even by those of his own class, and the strong measure of his deprivation and outlawry was concurred in by his brother Harald.
In addition to the natural mode by which the authority of a lord became established in a town built on his demesne, the privileges of lordshipwere occasionally transferred from one person to another. Like other royalties, the rights of the crown over taxation, tolls or other revenues, might be made matter of grant. The following document illustrates the manner in which a portion of the seigneurial rights was thus alienated in favour of the bishop of Worcester. It is a grant made by Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd to their friend Werfrið, about the end of the ninth century[811].
“To Almighty God, true Unity and holy Trinity in heaven, be praise and glory and rendering of thanks, for all his benefits bestowed upon us! Firstly for whose love, and for St. Peter’s and the church at Worcester, and at the request of Werfrið the bishop, their friend, Æðelrǽd the ealdorman and Æðelflǽd commanded theburhat Worcester to be built, and eke God’s praise to be there upraised. And now they make known by this charter that of all the rights which appertain to their lordship, both in market and in street, within the byrig and without, they grant half to God and St. Peter and the lord of the church; that those who are in the place may be the better provided, that they may thereby in some sort easier aid the brotherhood, and that their remembrance may be the firmer kept in mind, in the place, as long as God’s service is done within the minster. And Werfrið the bishop and his flock have appointed this service, before the daily one, both during their lives and after, to sing at matins, vespers and ‘undernsong,’the psalm De Profundis, during their lives; and after their death, Laudate Dominum; and every Saturday, in St. Peter’s church, thirty psalms, and a mass for them whether alive or dead. Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd proclaim, that they have thus granted with good-will to God and St. Peter, under witness of Ælfred the king and all thewitanin Mercia; excepting that the wain-shilling and load-penny[812]are to go to the king’s hand, as they always did, from Saltwíc: but as for everything else, aslandfeoh[813],fihtwite,stalu,wohceápung, and all the customs from which any fine may arise, let the lord of the church have half of it, for God’s sake and St. Peter’s, as it was arranged about the market and the streets; and without the marketplace, let the bishop enjoy his rights, as of old our predecessors decreed and privileged. And Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd did this by witness of Ælfred the king, and by witness of those witan of the Mercians whose names stand written hereafter; and in the name of God Almighty they abjure all their successors never to diminish these alms which they have granted to the church for God’s love and St. Peter’s!”
A valuable instrument is this, and one which supplies matter for reflection in various ways. Theroyalties conveyed are however alone what must occupy our attention here. These are, a land-tax, paid no doubt from every hide which belonged to the jurisdiction of theburhgeréfa, and which was thus probably levied beyond the city walls, in small outlying hamlets and villages, which were not included in any territorial hundred, but did suit and service to the burhmót. And next we find the lord in possession of what we should now call the police, inflicting fines for breaches of the peace, theft, and contravention of the regulations laid down for the conduct of the market. And this market in Worcester was not the people’s, but the king’s, seeing that not only are the bishop’s rights, beyond its limits, carefully distinguished, but that Æðelred grants half the customs within it, that is, half the tolls and taxes, to the bishop. In this way was an authority established concurrent with the king’s or duke’s, and exercised no doubt by thebiscopes geréfa, as the royal right was by thecyningesorealdormannes burhgeréfa. Nor were its results unfavourable to the prosperity of the city: there is evidence on the contrary that in process of time, the people and their bishop came to a very good understanding, and that the Metropolis of the West grew to be a wealthy, powerful and flourishing place: so much so that, when in the year 1041 Hardacnut attempted to levy some illegal or unpopular tax, the citizens resisted, put the royal commissioners to death, and assumed so determined an attitude of rebellion, that a large force ofHúscarlasandHereban, under the principal military chiefsof England, was found necessary to reduce them. Florence of Worcester, who relates the occurrence in detail[814], says that the city was burnt and plundered. From his narrative it seems not improbable that the whole outbreak was connected with the removal of a popular bishop from his see in the preceding year.
There is another important document of nearly the same period as the grant to Werfrið, by which Eádweard the son of Ælfred gave all the royal rights of jurisdiction in Taunton to the see of Winchester[815]. He freed the land from every burthen, except the universal three, whether they were royal, fiscal, comitial or other secular taxations: he granted that all the bishop’s men, noble or ignoble, resiant upon the aforesaid land, should have everyprivilege and right which was enjoyed by the king’s men, resiant in his royal fiscs[816], and that all secular jurisdiction should be administered for the bishop’s benefit, as fully as it was elsewhere executed for the king’s. Moreover he attached for ever to Winchester the market-tolls (“villae mercimonium, quod angliceðæs túnes cýpingadpellatur”), together with every civiccensus, tax or payment. Whatsoever had heretofore been the king’s was henceforth to belong to the bishop of Winchester. And that these were valuable rights, producing a considerable income, must be concluded from the large estates which bishop Denewulf and his chapter thought it advisable to give the king in exchange, and which comprised no less than sixty hides of land in several parcels. The bishops, it is to be presumed, henceforth governed Taunton by their owngeréfa, to whom the grant itself must be construed to have conveyed plenary jurisdiction, that is theblut-banorius gladii, the supreme criminal as well as civil justice.
These examples will suffice to show in what manner seigneurial rights grew up in certain towns, and how they were exercised. From the account thus given we may also see the difference which existed between such a city and one founded originally upon a system of free gylds. These associations placed the men of London in a position to maintain their own rights both against king and bishop, and indeed it is evident from the ‘JudiciaCivitatis’ itself, that the bishops united with the citizens in the establishment of their free communa under Æðelstán. We are not very clearly informed what was the earliest mode of government in London; but, from a law of Hloðhære, it is probable that it was presided over by a royal reeve, in the seventh century. The sixteenth chapter of that prince’s law provides that, when a man of Kent makes any purchase in Lundenwíc, he is to have the testimony of two or three credible men, or of the king’s wícgeréfa[817]. In the ninth century, when Kent and its confederation had passed into the hands of the royal family of the Gewissas, London may possibly have vindicated some portion of independence. It had previously lain within the nominal limits at least of the Mercian authority[818]: but the victories of Ecgberht and the subsequent invasions of the Northmen destroyed the Mercian power, and in all likelihood left the city to provide for itself and its own freedom. We know that it suffered severely in those invasions, but we have slight record of any attempt to relieve it from their assaults, which might imply an interest in its welfare, on the part of any particular power. In the year 886 however, we learn, Ælfred, victorious on every point, turned his attention to London, whose fortifications he rebuilt, and which he re-annexedto Mercia, now constituted as a duchy under Æðelred[819]. On the death of this prince, Eádweard seized Oxford and London into his own hands, and it is reasonable to suppose that he governed these cities byburhgeréfanof his own[820]. But very shortly after we find the important document, which I have already mentioned, the so-called ‘Judicia Civitatis,’ or Dooms of London, which proves clearly enough the elasticity of a great trading community, the readiness with which a city like London could recover its strength, and the vigour with which its mixed population could carry out their plans of self-government and independent existence. Henceforward we find the citizens for the most part underportgeréfanor portreeves of their own[821], to whom the royal writs are directed, as in counties they are to the sheriffs. We must not however suppose that at this early period constitutional rights were so perfectly settled as to be beyond the possibility of infringement. Circumstances, whose record now escapes us, may sometimes have occurred which abridged the franchise of particular cities: we cannot conclude that thePortgeréfawas alwaysfreely elected by the citizens; for in some places we hear of “royal” portreeves[822], from which it may be argued either that the king had made the appointment by his own authority, or, what is far from improbable, that he had concurred with the citizens in the election. Moreover the direction of writs to noblemen of high rank, even in London, seems to imply that, on some occasions, either the king had succeeded in seizing the liberties of the city into his own hand, or that the elected officers were sometimes taken from the class of powerful ministerials, having high rank and station in the royal household[823]. Where there existed clubs or gylds of the free citizens, we may also believe that similar associations were established by the lords and their dependents, either as a means of balancing the popular power, or at least of sharing in the benefits of an association which secured the rights and position of the free men; and thus, the same document which reveals to us the existence of the “Ingang burhware” or “burghers’ club” of Canterbury, tells us also of the “Cnihta gyld,” or “Sodality of young nobles” in the same city[824].
Two points necessarily arrest our attention in considering the case of every city; the first of these is the internal organization, on which the freedom of the inhabitants itself depends: the second is the relation the city stands in to the public law, that is to say, its particular position toward the state. The Anglosaxon laws do contain a few provisions destined to regulate the intercourse between the townspeople and the country: for example we may refer to the laws which regulate the number of mints allowed to each city. In the tenth century it was settled that each burh might have one,—and from this very fact it is clear that “burh” was then a legal term having a fixed and definite meaning,—while a few cities were favoured with a larger number. The names of the places so distinguished are preserved, and from the regulations affecting them in this respect we may form a conclusion as to their comparative importance. Under Æðelstân we find the following arrangement:—At Canterbury were to be seven moneyers; four for the king, two for the bishop, one for the abbot. At Rochester three; two for the king, one for the bishop. At London eight. At Winchester six. At Lewes, Hampton, Wareham, Exeter and Shaftsbury, two moneyers to each town. At Hastings, Chichester, and at the other burhs, one to each town[825].
It is right to observe that all these places are in Æðelstán’s peculiar kingdom, south of the Thames,and that his legislation takes no notice of the Mercian, Eastanglian or Northumbrian territories. But half a century later, it was ordered that no man should have a mint save the king, and that any person who wrought money without the precincts of a burh, should be liable to the penalties of forgery. The inconvenience of this was however too great, and by the ‘Instituta Londoniae,’ each principal city (“summus portus”) was permitted to have three, and every other burh one moneyer[826].
Again, the difficulty of guarding against theft, especially in respect to cattle, the universal vice of a semi-civilized people,—led to more than one attempt to prohibit all buying and selling except in towns; and this of itself seems to imply that they were numerously distributed over the face of the country. But this provision, however beneficial to the lords of such towns, was too contrary to the general convenience, and seems to have been soon relinquished as impracticable. The enactments on the subject appear to have been abrogated almost as soon as made[827]: but the machinery by which it was proposed to carry their provisions into effect are of considerable interest. In each burh, according to its size, a certain number of the townspeople were to be elected, who might act as witnesses in every case of bargain and sale,—whom both parties on occasion would be bound to call to warranty, and whose decision orveredictumin the premiseswould be final. It was intended that in every larger burh (“summus portus”) there should be thirty-three such elective officers, and in every hundred twelve or more, by whose witness every bargain was to be sanctioned, whether in a burh or a wapentake. They were to be bound by oath to the faithful discharge of their duty. The law of Eádgár says: “Let every one of them, on his first election as a witness, take an oath that, neither for profit, nor fear, nor favour, will he ever deny that which he did witness, nor affirm aught but what he did see and hear. And let there be two or three such sworn men as witnesses to every bargain[828].”
The words of this law seem to imply that the appointment was to be a permanent one; and it is only natural to suppose that these “geǽðedanmen,”jurati, or jurors, would become by degrees a settled urban magistracy. We see in them the germ of a municipal institution, a sworn corporation, assessors in some degree of thegeréfaor the later mayor[829]. They were evidently the “boni et legales homines,” the “testes credibiles,” “ða gódan men,” “dohtigan men,” and so forth, of various documents, the “Scabini,” “Schoppen” or “Echevins,” so familiar to us in the history of mediæval towns, which had any pretensions to freedom. They necessarily constituted a magistracy, and gradually became the centre roundwhich the rights and privileges of the municipality clustered.
It is to be regretted that we have so little record of the internal organization of these municipal bodies, which must nevertheless have existed during the flourishing period of the Anglosaxon rule. Of Ealdormen in the towns, and in our modern sense, there naturally is, and could be, no trace: that dignity was very different from anything like the geréfscipe of a city, however wealthy and influential this might be: but the ‘Instituta Londoniae’ mention one or two subordinate officers: in these, beside thePortgeréfa,BurhgeréfaorWícgeréfa,—names which all appear to denote one officer, the “praepositus civitatis,”—we are told of aTúngeréfa, who had a right to enquire into the payment of the customs[830]; and also of a Caccepol, catch-poll or beadle, who appears to have been the collector[831].
The archæologist, not less than the historian, has reason to lament that no remains from the past survive to teach us the local distribution of an Anglosaxon town. Yet some few hints are nevertheless supplied which enable us to form a faint image of what it may have been. It is probable that the different trades occupied different portions of the area, which portions were named from the occupations of their inhabitants. In the middle ages these several parts of the city were often fortified and served as strongholds, behind whose defences, or sallying forth from which, the crafts fought thebattle of democracy against the burgesses or the neighbouring lords. We have evidence that streets, which afterwards did, and do yet, bear the names of particular trades or occupations, were equally so designated before the Norman conquest, in several of our English towns. It is thus only that we can account for such names as Fellmonger, Horsemonger and Fleshmonger, Shoewright and Shieldwright, Tanner and Salter Streets, and the like, which have long ceased to be exclusively tenanted by the industrious pursuers of those several avocations. Let us place a cathedral and a guildhall with its belfry in the midst of these, surround them with a circuit of walls and gates, and add to them the common names of North, South, East and West, or Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate Streets,—here and there let us fix the market and its cross, the dwellings of the bishop and his clergy, the houses of the queen and perhaps the courtiers, of the principal administrative officers and of the leading burghers[832],—above all, let us build a stately fortress, to overawe or to defend the place, to be the residence of thegeréfaand his garrison, and the site of the courts of justice,—and we shall have at least a plausible representation of a principal Anglosaxon city. Much as it is to be regrettedthat we now possess no ancient maps or plans which would have thrown a valuable light upon this subject, yet the guidance here and there supplied by the names of the streets themselves, and the foundations of ancient buildings yet to be traced in them, coupled with fragmentary notices in the chroniclers, do sometimes enable us to catch glimpses as it were of this history of the past. The giant march of commercial prosperity has crumbled into dust almost every trace of what our brave and good forefathers looked upon with pardonable pride: but the principles which animated them, still in a great degree regulate the lives of us their descendants; and if we exult in the conviction that our free municipal institutions are the safeguard of some of our most cherished liberties, let us remember those to whom we owe them, and study to transmit unimpaired to our posterity an inheritance which we have derived from so remote an ancestry.