we have now arrived at that point of our enquiry at which it behoves us to bestow our attention upon the origin and growth of towns among the anglosaxons; and to this end we shall find it expedient to carry our researches to a still earlier period, and investigate, though in a slight degree, the condition of their british and roman predecessors in this respect. at first sight it would seem natural to suppose that where a race had long possessed the outward means and form of civilization,—a race among whom great military and civil establishments had been founded, who had clustered round provincial cities, the seats of a powerful government, and whose ports and harbours had been the scenes of active commerce,—there need be little question as to the origin of towns and cities among those who conquered and dispossessed them. it might be imagined that the later comers would have nothing more to do than seize upon the seats from which they had expelled their predecessors, and apply to their own uses the established instruments of convenience, of wealth or safety. further enquiry however proves that this induction would be erroneous, and that the saxons did not settle in

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the roman towns. the reason of this is not difficult to assign: a city is the result of a system of cultivation, and it is of no use whatever to a race whose system differs entirely from that of the race by whom it was founded. the curia and the temple, the theatre and thermae, house joined to house and surrounded by a dense quadrangular wall, crowding into a defined and narrow space the elements of civilization, are unintelligible to him whose whole desire centres in the undisturbed enjoyment of his éðel, and unlimited command of the mark. the buildings of a centralized society are as little calculated for his use as their habits and institutions: as well might it have been proposed to him to substitute the jurisdiction of the praetor urbanus for the national tribunal of the folcmót. the spirit of life is totally different: as different are all the social institutions, and all the details which arise from these and tend to confirm and perpetuate them.

nevertheless we cannot doubt that the existence of the british and roman cities did materially influence the mode and nature of the german settlements; and without some slight sketch of the growth and development of the former, we shall find it impossible to form a clear notion of the conditions under which the anglosaxon polity was formed.

if we may implicitly trust the report of caesar, a british city in his time differed widely from what we understand by that term. a spot difficult of access from the trees which filled it, surrounded with a rampart and a ditch, and which offered a

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refuge from the sudden incursions of an enemy, could be dignified by the name of an oppidum, and form the metropolis of cassivelaunus[754]. such also among the slavonians were the vici, encircled by an abbatis of timber, or at most a paling, proper to repel not only an unexpected attack, but even capable of resisting for a time the onset of practised forces: such in our own time have been found the stockades of the burmese, and the pah of the new zealander: and if our skilful engineers have experienced no contemptible resistance, and the lives of many brave and disciplined men have been sacrificed in their reduction, we may admit that even the oppida of cassivelaunus, or caratac or galgacus, might, as fortresses, have serious claims to the attention of a roman commander. but such an oppidum is no town or city in the sense in which those words are contemplated throughout this chapter: by a town i certainly intend a place enclosed in some manner, and even fortified: but much more those who dwell together in such a place, and the means by which they either rule themselves, or are ruled. i mean a metaphysical as well as a physical unit,—not exclusively what was a collection of dwellings or a fortification, but a centre of trade and manufacture and civilization.

if the romans found none such, at least they left

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them, in every part of britain. the record of their gradual and successive advance shows that, partly with a politic view of securing their conquests, partly with the necessary aim of conciliating their soldiery, they did establish numerous municipia and coloniae here, as well as military stations which in time became the nuclei of towns.

it is however scarcely possible that caesar and strabo can be strictly accurate in their reports, or that there were from the first only such towns in britain as these authors have described. it is not consonant to experience that a thickly peopled and peaceful country[755] should long be without cities. a commercial people[756] always have some settled stations for the collection and interchange of commodities, and fixed establishments for the regulation of trade. caesar himself tells us that the buildings of the britons were very numerous, and that they bore a resemblance to those of the gauls[757], whose cities were assuredly considerable. moreover a race so conversant with the management of horses as to use armed chariots for artillery, are not likely to have been without an extensive system of roads, and where there are roads, towns will not long be wanting. hence when, less than eighty years after the return of the romans to britain, and scarcely forty after the complete subjugation of the

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island by agricola, ptolemy tells us of at least fifty-six cities in existence here[758], we may reasonably conclude that they were not all due to the efforts of roman civilization.

caesar says indeed nothing of london, yet it is difficult to believe that this was an unimportant place, even in his day. it was long the principal town of the cantii, whom the roman general describes

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as the most polished of the inhabitants of britain; and as we know that there was an active commercial intercourse between the eastern coast of england and gaul, it is at least probable that a station, upon a great river at a safe yet easy distance from the sea, was not unknown to the foreign merchants who traded to our shores[759]. one hundred and sixteen years later it could be described as a city famous in a high degree for the resort of merchants and for traffic[760]: but of these years one hundred had been spent in peace and in the natural development of their resources by the britons, undisturbed by roman ambition; and we have therefore ample right to infer that from the very first

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cair lunden had been a place of great commercial importance. the romans on their return found and kept it so, although they did not establish a colonia there. the first place which received this title with all its corresponding advantages was camelodunum, probably the british cair colun, now colchester in essex[761].

as the settlement of the nations, and their reduction under a centralizing system, followed the victories of the legions, municipia and coloniae arose in every province, the seats of garrisons and the residences of military and civil governors: while as civilization extended, the britons themselves, adopting the manners and following the example of their masters, multiplied the number of towns upon all the great lines of internal communication. it is difficult now to give from roman authorities only a complete list of these towns; many names which we find in the itineraria and similar documents, being merely post-stations or points where subordinate provincial authorities were located; but the names of fifty-six towns have been already quoted from ptolemy, and even tradition may be of some service to us on this subject[762].

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nennius sums up with patriotic pride the names of thirty-four principal cities which adorned britain under his forefathers, and many of these we can yet identify: amongst them are london, bristol, canterbury, colchester, cirencester, chichester, gloucester, worcester, wroxeter, york, silchester, lincoln, leicester, doncaster, caermarthen, carnarvon, winchester, porchester, grantchester, norwich, carlisle, chester, caerleon on usk, manchester and dorchester[763]. to these from other sources we may add sandwich, dover, rochester, nottingham, exeter, bath, bedford, aylesbury and st. alban’s.

whatever the origin of these towns may have been, it is easy to show that many of them comprised a roman population: the very walls by which some of them are still surrounded, offer conclusive evidence of this; while in the neighbourhood of others, coins and inscriptions, the ruins of theatres, villas, baths, and other public or private buildings, attest either the skill and luxury of the conquerors, or the aptness to imitate of the conquered[764].

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but a much more important question arises; viz. how many of them were ruled freely, like the cities of the old country, by a municipal body constituted in the ancient form: what provision, in short, the romans made or permitted for the education of their british subjects in the manly career of citizenship and the dignity of self-government[765].

the constitution of a provincial city of the empire, in the days when the republic still possessed virtue and principle, was of this description, at all events from the period of the social, marsic or italian war, when the cities of italy wrested isopolity, or at least isotely, from rome. the state consisted of the whole body of the citizens, without distinction, having a general voice in the management of their own internal affairs. the administrative functions however resided in a privileged

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class of those citizens, commonly called curiales, decuriones, ordo decurionum (or sometimes ordo alone), and occasionally senatus. they were in fact to the whole body of the citizens what the senatus under the emperors was to the citizens of rome[766], and their rights and privileges seem in general to have varied very much as did those of the higher body. they were hereditary, but, when occasion demanded an increase of their numbers, self-elected. out of this college of decuriones the magistratus or supreme executive government proceeded. in the better days i believe these were always freely chosen for one year, by the whole community, but exclusively from among the members of the ordo: and after tiberius at rome transferred the elections from the comitia to the senate, the decuriones in the provinces may have become the sole electors, as they were the only persons capable of being elected. the magistratus had the supreme jurisdiction, and were the completion of the communal system: they bore different names in different cities, but usually those of duumviri or quatuorviri, from their number. sometimes, but very rarely, they were named consules. in fact the general outline of this constitution resembled as much as possible that of rome itself, which was only the head of a confederation embracing all the cities of italy.

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a somewhat similar arrangement was introduced into the cities of the various countries which, under the name of provinces, were brought within the influence of the roman power: only that in these the communal organization was throughout subordinated to the regulation and control of the consularis, the legatus, procurator, and other officers military and fiscal, who administered the affairs of the province. a principal point of distinction between the free communities of italy and the dependent provincial corporations lay in this: that in the latter, the magistrates were indeed elected by the ordo or curia, but upon the nomination of the roman governor: their jurisdiction in suits was consequently very limited, while political functions were for the most part confined to the civil and military officers of the empire.

as long as the condition of the imperial city itself was tolerably easy, and the provinces had not yet been flooded with the vice, corruption and misery which called for and rendered possible the victories of the barbarians, the condition of the provincial decurions was on the whole one of honour and advantage. they formed a kind of nobility, a class distinguished from their fellow-citizens by a certain rank and privileges, as they were assuredly also distinguished from them by superior wealth: they resembled in fact an aristocracy of county families at this day, with its exclusive possession of the magistrature and other local advantages. on the other hand they were responsible for the public dues, the levies, the annona or victualling

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of forces, the tributum or raising of the assessed taxes; and thus they were rendered immediately subject to the exactions of the fiscal authorities, and especially exposed to the caprice and illegal demands of the roman officials[767]—a class universally

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infamous for tyrannical extortion in the provinces: and in yet later times, when the land itself frequently became deserted, through the burthen of taxation and exaction[768], they were compelled to undertake the cultivation of the relinquished estates, that the fiscus might be no loser. gradually as the bond which held the fragments of the empire together was loosened, and as limb after limb dropped away from the mouldering colossus, the condition of a decurion became so oppressive that it was found necessary to press citizens by force into the office: some committed suicide, others expatriated themselves, in order to escape it. the state

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was obliged to forbid by law the sale of property for the purpose of avoiding it; freemen went into the ranks, or subjected themselves to voluntary servitude, as a preferable alternative; nay at length vagabonds, people of bad character, even malefactors, were literally condemned to it[769]. this tends perhaps more than any fact to prove the gradual ruin of the municipal as well as the social fabric, and the miserable condition of the provinces under the later emperors.

however, in the better days of vespasian, trajan and the antonines we are not to look for such a state of society; and in the provinces, the ordo, though exposed to many harsh and painful conditions, yet held a position of comparative dignity and influence. i have compared them to a county aristocracy, but there is perhaps a nearer parallel, for in the roman empire it is difficult to distinguish the county from the town. the position of the decurions can hardly be made clearer than by a reference to the select (that is self-elected) vestries of our great metropolitan parishes before the passing of sir john hobhouse’s acts; or to the town-councillors and aldermen of our country-towns, before the enactment of the municipal corporations’ bill. whoso remembers these bodies with their churchwardens on the one hand, their mayors, borough-reeves and aldermen on the other,—their exclusive jurisdiction as a magistracy,—their exclusive possession of corporation property, tolls,

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rents and other sources of wealth,—their private rights in the common land, held by themselves or delegated to their clients,—their custody of the public buildings, and sole management of civic or charitable funds,—their patronage as trustees of public institutions,—their franchise as electors,—their close family alliances, and the methods by which they contrived to recruit their diminished numbers, till they became a very aristocracy among a people of commoners[770],—whoso, i say, considers these phænomena of our own day, need have little difficulty not only in understanding the condition of a decurion in the better days of the roman empire: but, if he will cast his thought back into earlier ages, he may find in them no little illustration of the nature, rights and policy of the patriciate, under the republic.

other cities of a less favoured description were governed directly as præfectures, by an officer sent from rome, who centred in himself all the higher branches of administration: in these cities the functions of the ordo were greatly curtailed; little was left them but to attend to the police of the town and markets, the determination of trifling civil suits, the survey of roads or buildings; and, in conjunction with the heads of the guilds (“collegia opificum”) the vain and mischievous attempt to regulate wages and prices. on the other hand a few cities had what was called the jus italicum, or right to form a free corporation, in every respect

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identical with those of the cities of italy, that is to say identical in plan with that of rome itself. the provinces of the roman empire must have contained many of these privileged states which thus enjoyed a valuable pre-eminence over their neighbours, the reward of public services: but history has been sparing of their names, and in western europe, three only, cologne, vienne and lyons are particularly mentioned[771]. in all the cities which had not this privilege, after the close of the fourth century we find a particular officer called the defensor, who was not to be one of the curiales, who was to be elected by the whole body of the citizens and not by the curiales only, and who must therefore be looked upon in a great degree as the representative of the popular against the aristocratic element, as the support of the cives against the senatus and duumvir. in the cities of gaul, the bishops for the most part occupied this position, which necessarily led to results of the highest importance, from the peculiar relation in which it placed them to the barbarian invaders[772]. from all these details it appears that very different measures of municipal freedom were granted under different circumstances.

we have considered the general principles of roman provincial government, and we now ask, how were these applied in the case of britain? the

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answer is much more difficult to give than might be imagined. wealthy as this country was, and capable of conducing to the power and well-being of its masters, it seems never to have received a generous, or even fair treatment from them. the briton was to the last, as at the first, “penitus toto divisus orbe britannus,” and his land, always “ultima thule,” was made indeed to serve the avarice or ambition of the ruler, but derived little benefit to itself from the rule. “levies, corn, tribute, mortgages, slaves”—under these heads was britain entered in the vast ledger of the empire. the roman records do not tell us much of the details of government here, and we may justly say that we are more familiar with the state of an eastern or an iberian city than we are with that of a british one. a few technical words, perfectly significant to a people who, above all others, symbolized a long succession of facts under one legal term, are all that remain to us; and unfortunately the jurists and statesmen and historians whose works we painfully consult in hopes of rescuing the minutest detail of our early condition, are satisfied with the use of general terms which were perfectly intelligible to those for whom they wrote, but teach us little. “ostorius scapula reduced the hither britain to the form of a province[773],”—conveyed ample information to those who took the institutions of the empire for granted wherever its eagles flew

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abroad: to us they are nearly vain words, a detailed explanation of which would be valuable beyond all calculation, for it would contain the secret of the weakness and the sudden collapse of the empire. but what little we can gather from ancient sources does not induce us to believe that britain met with a just or enlightened measure of treatment at the hands of her victors. violence on the one hand, seduction on the other, were employed to destroy the spirit of resistance, but we do not learn that submission and docility were rewarded by the communication of a fair share of those advantages which spring from peace and cultivation. agricola, whose information his severe and accomplished son-in-law must be considered to reproduce, tells us that, on the whole, the britons were not difficult subjects to rule, as long as they were not insulted by a capricious display of power: “the britons themselves are not backward in raising the levies and taxes, or filling the offices[774], if they are only not exposed to insult in doing it. insult they will not submit to; for we have beaten them into obedience, but by no means yet into

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slavery.” in this peaceable disposition agricola saw the readiest means of producing a complete and radical subjection to rome; and on this basis he formed his plan of rendering resistance powerless. he entirely relinquished the forcible method of his predecessors and applied himself to break down the national spirit by the spreading of foreign arts and luxuries among the people; judging rightly that the seductive allurements of ease and cultivation would ere long prove more efficient and less costly instruments than the constant and dangerous exercise of military coercion. “those who did not deeply sound the purposes of men, called this civilization; but it was part and parcel of slavery itself[775].” temples there were, fora, porticoes, baths and luxurious feasts, roman manners and roman vices, and to support them loans, usurious mortgages and ruin. but we seek in vain for any evidence of the romanized britons having been employed in any offices of trust or dignity, or permitted to share in the really valuable results of civilization: there is no one briton recorded of whom we can confidently

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assert that he held any position of dignity and power under the imperial rule: the historians, the geographers, nay even the novelists (who so often supply incidental notices of the utmost interest), are here consulted in vain; nor in the many inscriptions which we possess relating to britain, can we point out one single british name. the caution of augustus and tiberius had from the first detected the difficulties which would attend the maintenance of the roman authority in britain: the feeling at home was, that it would be much more profitable to raise a small revenue in gaul upon the british exports and imports, than to attempt to draw tribute from the island, which would require a considerable military force for its collection[776]. during their administration therefore the island was left undisturbed; and even after claudius had relinquished this wise moderation, and engaged the roman arms in a career of unceasing struggles, nero felt anxious to abandon a conquest which promised little to the state and could only be maintained by the most exhausting efforts. that this

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reasonable object was defeated in part by the vanity of the romans themselves is probable[777]: but a more cogent reason is to be found in the interests of the noble usurers, of which we have seen so striking an example in the philosophical seneca. against such motives even the moderation and justice of an agricola could avail but little: and after his recall and disgrace by domitian, it is easy to imagine that the roman officials here would not be too anxious by their good government to attain a dangerous popularity. selfish and thoroughly unprincipled as the roman government was in all its dependencies, it is little to be thought that it would manifest any unusual tenderness in this distant, unprofitable and little known possession: and i think we cannot entertain the least doubt that the condition of the british aborigines was from the first one of oppression, and was to the very last a mere downward progress from misery to misery. but such a system as this—ruinous to the conquered, and beneficial even to the conquerors only as long as they could maintain the law of force—had no inherent vitality. it rested upon a crime,—a sin which in no time or region has the providence of the almighty blessed,—the degradation of one class on pretext of benefiting another. and as the sin, so was also the retribution. the empire itself might have endured here, had the romans

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taught the britons to be men, and reconstituted a vigorous state upon that basis, in the hour of ruin, when province after province was torn away from the city, and the curse of an irresponsible will in feeble hands was felt through every quarter of the convulsed and distracted body. but the britons had been taught the arts and luxuries of cultivation that they might be enervated. disarmed, except when a jealous policy called for levies to be drafted into distant armies,—congregated into cities on the roman plan, that they might forget the dangerous freedom of their forests,—attracted to share and emulate the feasts of the victors, that they might learn to abhor the hard but noble fare of a squalid liberty,—supported and encouraged in internal war, that union might not bring strength, and that the roman slave-dealer might not lack the objects of his detestable traffic,—how should they develop the manly qualities on which the greatness of a nation rests? how should they be capable of independent being, who had only been trained as instruments for the ambition, or victims to the avarice, of others? to crown all, their beautiful daughters might serve to amuse the softer hours of their lordly masters; but there was to be no connubium, and thus a half-caste race inevitably arose among them, growing up with all the vices of the victors, all the disqualifications of the vanquished. nor under such circumstances can population follow a healthy course of development, and a hardy race be produced to recruit the power and increase the resources of the state. no price

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is indeed too great to pay for civilization,—the root of all individual and national power; but mere cultivation may easily be purchased far too dearly. it is not worth its cost if it is obtained only by the sacrifice of all that makes life itself of value.

such, upon the severest and most impartial examination of the facts which we possess, seems to me to have been the condition of the british population under the romans. no otherwise can we even plausibly account for the instantaneous collapse of the imperial authority: it fell, with one vast and sudden ruin, the moment the artificial supports upon which it relied, were removed. had britain not been utterly exhausted by mal-administration, had there remained men to form a reserve, and resources to victual an army, the last commander who received the mandate of recall, would probably have thrown off his allegiance, and proclaimed himself a competitor for empire. many tried the perilous game; all lost it, because the country was incapable of furnishing the means to maintain a contest: and in the meanwhile, the saxons proceeded to settle the question in their own way. as such a state of society supplied no materials for the support of the roman power, so it furnished no elements of self-subsistence when that power was removed; when that hour at length arrived, the possibility of which the overweening confidence in the fortune of the city had never condescended to contemplate. before the eyes of all the nations, and amidst the ruins of a world falling to

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pieces in confusion, was this awful lesson written in gigantic characters by the hand of god—that authority which rules ill, which rules for its own selfish ends alone, is smitten with weakness, and shall not endure. it was then that a long-delayed, but not the less awful retribution burst at last upon the enfeebled empire. goth and vandal, frank and sueve and saxon lacerated its defenceless frontiers; the terrible attila—the scourge of god—ravaged with impunity its fairest provinces; the eternal city itself twice owed its safety to the superstition or the contemptuous mercy of the barbarians whose forefathers had trembled at its name even in the depths of their forest fastnesses; the legions, unable to maintain themselves, and called—but called in vain—to defend a state perishing by its own corruptions, left britain exposed to the attack of fierce and barbarous enemies that thronged on every side. without arms and discipline, and what is far more valuable than these, the spirit of self-reliance and faith in the national existence, the britons perished as they stood: bowing to the inevitable fate, they passed only from one class of task-masters to another, and slowly mingled with the masses of the new conquerors, or fell in ill-conducted and hopeless resistance to their progress.

the keltic laws and monuments themselves supply conclusive evidence of the justice of these general observations. throughout all the ages during which these populations were in immediate contact with rome, not a single ray of keltic nationality

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is able to penetrate. it is only among the mountains of the cymri, a savage race, as little subjugated by the romans, as even to this moment by ourselves, that a trace of that nationality is to be found. there indeed, guarded by fortresses which nature itself made impregnable, the heartblood of keltic society was allowed to beat; and the barbarians whom policy affected or luxury could afford to despise, grew up in an independence, features of which we can still recognize in their legal and poetical remains. the pride of the invaders might be soothed by the erection of a few castra, or praesidia or castella in the welsh marches; the itinerary of an emperor might finish in a commercial city on the atlantic; but in wales the romans had hardly a foot of ground which they did not overshadow with the lines of their fortresses; and to the least instructed eye, the chain of fortified posts which guard every foot of ground to the east of the severn tells of a contemplated retreat and defence upon the base of that strong line of entrenchments.

and yet how insufficient are the laws and triads of the cymri in point of mere antiquity! let us do all honour to the praiseworthy burst of keltic patriotism which has revived in our day: let us even concede that some few of the triads may carry us back to the sixth century: yet the earliest cymric laws of which the slightest trace can be discovered, are those of hywel in the tenth. and even, if with a courteous desire to do justice to the subject, we admit the historical existence of the

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fabulous dynwall and fabulous marcia[778], who has even insinuated that a single sentence of their codes survive; or that, if even if such existed, they had currency a single foot to the eastward of the severn? who can imagine that such laws ever had authority beyond the boundaries of a solitary sept, more fortunate than the rest, inasmuch as its record has not, like those of others, perished?

more directly to the purpose is the information we derive from gildas, whose patriotism is beyond suspicion, and whose antiquity gives his assertions some claim to our respect[779]. he tells us that on the final departure of the romans, including the armatus miles, militaires copiae, and rectores immanes (by which last words he may possibly intend the civil officers called rectores provinciarum), britain was omnis belli usu penitus ignara, utterly ignorant of the practice of war[780]: the island was consequently soon overrun by predatory bands of picts and scots whose ravages reduced the inhabitants to the extremest degree of misery: and these incursions were followed at no great interval of time by so violent a pestilence that the living were hardly numerous enough to bury the dead[781]. then having

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briefly noticed the savage invasion of the saxons, and a defeat which he says they sustained at bath, and which is supposed to have been given them by arthur in the year 520, he thus continues: “but not even now, as before, are the cities of my country inhabited; deserted and destroyed, they lie neglected even unto this day: for civil wars continue, though foreign wars have ceased[782].” we can easily imagine that a nation in anything like the state which gildas describes, might suffer severely from the brigandage of banditti in the interior; and on the frontier, from raids and forays of the picts and scots. attacks which even the disciplined soldiery of rome found it necessary to bridle by means of such structures as the walls of hadrian, antonine and severus, must have had terror enough for a disarmed and disheartened population; nor is it in the least degree improbable that the universal disorder, the withdrawal of the legions and some new immigration of teutonic adventurers set in motion populations, which in various parts of the country had hitherto rested quietly under the nominal control of the roman arms. but still it is not without surprise that we notice the absence of all evidence that the britons even attempted to maintain the cities the romans had left them, or to make a vigorous defence behind their solid fortifications, inexpugnable one would think by rude undisciplined assailants. it is true, we are told that

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in half a century england had gone entirely out of cultivation, and that the land had again become covered with forests which alone supplied food for the inhabitants[783]: but if this were really the case—and it is not entirely improbable—it can only have had the effect of driving the population into the cities. that these were to a great extent still standing in the fifth century is certain, since gildas, in the sixth, represents them as deserted and decaying; that the saxons found them yet entire is obvious; in the tenth and twelfth centuries their ancient grandeur attracted the attention of observant historians[784]; and even yet their remains

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testify to the astonishing skill and foresight of their builders. i cannot therefore but believe that britain really was, as described, disarmed and disheartened, and most probably so depopulated as to be incapable of any serious defence: a condition which throws a hideous light upon the nature of the roman rule and the practices of roman civilized life.

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 fallen

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under 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, we

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shall 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 condition sine 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 offered

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any 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 was

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slavery 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 recorded

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instance 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 its fortifications.

the fact has been already noticed that the saxons

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did 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,

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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.

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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,

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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 which

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must 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 read

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teaches 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 to

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receive 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]. i

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hold 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 the

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chapmen, 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 the bona fides of 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 a

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more 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 materials

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can 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 rude

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and 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 of witena gemóts, of christmas festivals

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and easters when the king solemnly wore his crown; while the ceorls or mangeras of 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 a

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greatly 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, called gylds. these must not be confounded either on the one side with the hanses (in anglosaxon hósa), 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 the burhwaru, and perhaps sometimes more especially the ingang burhware, or “burgher’s club[799].” it is also certain

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from 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 more familiarly term rates levied 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, communae or communiae[800], which in the

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times 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 a geréfa of their own, duly elected from among the members of their own body, who thenceforth took the name of portgeréfa or burhgeréfa, 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 inhabitants

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of 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 these

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true 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 the ius gladii, the right

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to 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 bell

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calls 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 whether justice were 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’s geréfa. and where the number of the unfree was greatly preponderant, and the power of the lord proportionally increased, we cannot but

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believe 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’s burggeréfa, the bishop’s or abbot’s advocatus, and forced himself as their geréfa upon 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 or geréfa,—but what remedy had they, when once the defence of the mutual guarantee was removed? theoretically of course they were cyre-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,

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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 having ban or 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 strong

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enough, 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 their hanse, and have become themselves an aristocracy as compared with the democracy of the crafts. or the corporation of freemen may have elected a noble advocatus, vogt or 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 therefore

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records 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 royal burhgeréfa and 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 his sócnegeréfa, 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,

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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 of

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the 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,

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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 the hereban to 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 of

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commerce, 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 the burhgeréfa or castellan, and that thus the burh by degrees became a palatium or pfalz in the german sense of the word. in truth burh does 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,

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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 by

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a 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 the

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former 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].

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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 lordship

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were 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 the burh at 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,’

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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 the witan in 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, as landfeoh[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. the

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royalties 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 the burhgeréfa, 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 the biscopes geréfa, as the royal right was by the cyninges or ealdormannes 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 of húscarlas and hereban, under the principal military chiefs

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of 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 every

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privilege 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 anglice ðæs túnes cýping adpellatur”), together with every civic census, 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 own geréfa, to whom the grant itself must be construed to have conveyed plenary jurisdiction, that is the blut-ban or ius 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 ‘judicia

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civitatis’ 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-annexed

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to 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 by burhgeréfan of 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 under portgeréfan or 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 the portgeréfa was always

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freely 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].

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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,

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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 or veredictum in the premises

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would 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 “geǽðedan men,” 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 the geréfa or 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 round

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which 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 the portgeréfa, burhgeréfa or wícgeréfa,—names which all appear to denote one officer, the “praepositus civitatis,”—we are told of a túngeréfa, 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 the

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battle 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 the geréfa and 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 regretted

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that 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.

754. bell. gall. v. 21. caesar stormed it, and had therefore good means of knowing what it was. his further information was probably derived from his british ally comius. strabo gives a very similar account: πόλεις δ’ αὐτων εἰσιν οἱ δρυμοι’· περιφράξαντες γὰρ δένδρεσι καταβεβλημένοις εὐρυχωρῆ κύκλον καλυβοποιοῦνται, καὶ τὰ βοσκήματα κατκσταθμέυουσιν, οὐ πρὸς πολὺν χρόνον. lib. iv.

755. “hominum est infinita multitudo.” bell. gall. v. 12. εἶναι δὲ καὶ πολυάνθρωπον τὴν νῆσον ... βασιλεῖς τε καὶ δυνάστας πολλοὺς ἔχειν, καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον εἰρηνικῶς διακεῖσθαι. diodor. sicul. v. 21.

756. οὐενέτοι ... χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ. strabo, lib. iv.

757. “creberrima aedificia, fere gallicis consimilia.” bell. gall. v. 12.

758. ptolemy at the commencement of the second century (i. e. about a.d. 120) mentions the following πόλεις, which surely are towns:—

district.

towns.

district.

towns.

novantae

loucopibia.

parisi

petuaria.

rhetigonium.

ordovices

mediolanium.

selgovae

carbantorigum.

brannogenium.

uxelum.

cornabii

deuana.

corda.

viroconium.

trimontium.

coritavi

lindum.

damnii

colania.

rhage.

vanduara.

catyeuchlani

salenae.

coria.

urolanium.

alauna.

simeni

venta.

lindum.

trinoantes

camudolanum.

victoria.

demetae

luentinium.

otadeni

curia.

maridunum.

bremenium.

silures

bullaeum.

vacomagi

banatia.

dobuni

corinium.

tameia.

atrebatii

nalkua.

the winged camp.

cantii

londinium.

tuesis.

darvenum.

venicontes

orrhea.

rhutupiae.

texali

devana.

rhegni

naeomagus.

brigantes

epeiacum.

belgae

ischalis.

vinnovium.

the hot springs.

caturhactonium.

venta.

calatum.

durotriges

dunium.

isurium.

dumnonii

voliba.

rhigodunum.

uxela.

olicana.

tamare.

eboracum.

isca.

camunlodunum.

759. it is clear that caesar was not greatly harassed in his march towards the ford of the thames near chertsey; and if, as is probable, his advance disarmed the cantii generally, or compelled the more warlike of their body to retire upon the force of cassivelaunus, concentrated on the left bank of the river, we can understand what would otherwise seem a very dangerous movement,—a march into surrey, leaving london unoccupied on the right flank. thus it seems to me that the fact of caesar’s not noticing the city may be more readily explained by its not lying within the scope of his manœuvres, than by its not existing in his time. and indeed it is probable that just here some portion of his memoirs has been lost: for in the nineteenth chapter of the fifth book, he distinctly says: “cassivelaunus, ut supra demonstravimus, omni deposita spe contentionis,” etc.; but nothing now remains in what we possess, to which these words can possibly be referred. caesar’s commentaries were the private literary occupation of the great soldier in peaceful times, and we cannot attribute this contradiction in his finished work to carelessness.

760. “at suetonius mira constantia medios inter hostes londinium perrexit, cognomento quidem coloniae non insigne, sed copia negotiatorum et commeatuum maxime celebre.” tacit. ann. xiv. 33. “not a colonia,” seems to me equivalent to saying, a british city.—twenty years after the return of the romans to britain, seventy thousand citizens and allies perished during boadicea’s rebellion in london, verulam and colchester. (ibid.)

761. this was long supposed to be maldon, but it seems difficult to resist mannert’s reasoning in favour of colchester. see geograph. der griech. u. röm. p. 157.

762. in the third century marcianus reckons, unfortunately without naming them, fifty-nine celebrated cities in britain: ἔχει δὲ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔθνη λγ, πόλεις ἐπισήμους νθ, ποτάμους ἐπισήμους μ, ἀκρωτήρια ἐπίσημα ιδ, χερσόνησον ἐπίσημον ἕνα, κόλπους ἐπισήμους ε, λίμενας ἐπισήμους γ. marcian. heracleot. lib. i. nor will this surprise us when we bear in mind that about this period the britons enjoyed such a reputation for building as to find employment in gaul. “civitas aeduorum ... plurimos, quibus illae provinciae redundabant, accepit artifices,” etc. eumen. const. paneg. c. 21.

763. henry of huntingdon copies nennius and aids in the identification. asser adds to the list nottingham, in british tinguobauc, and cair wisc now exeter. the saxon chronicle records anderida, bath, bedford, leighton, aylesbury, bensington and eynesham. among the places unquestionably roman may be named londinium, verulamium, colonia, glevum (gloucester), venta belgarum (winchester), venta icenorum (norwich), venta silurum (cair gwint), durocornovium or corinium (cirencester), calleva atrebatum (silchester), eboracum (york), uxella (exeter), aquæ solis (bath), durnovaria (dorchester), regnum (chichester), durocovernum (canterbury), uriconium (wroxeter) and lindum (lincoln).

764. the walls of chichester still offer an admirable example in very perfect condition. the remains at lincoln and old verulam enable us to trace the ancient sites with precision, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the latter town the foundations of a large theatre are yet preserved. the plough still brings to light the remains of roman villas and the details of roman cultivation throughout the valley of the severn. it is impossible here to enumerate all the places where the discovery of coins, inscriptions, works of art and utility or ruins of buildings attest a continued occupation of the site and a peaceful settlement. many archæological works, the result of modern industry, may be beneficially consulted; and among these i would call particular attention to the map of roman yorkshire, published by mr. newton, with the approbation of the archæological institute of great britain and ireland.

765. the following lines contain a very slight sketch of the municipal institutions of a roman city. it is not necessary to burthen the reader’s attention with the deeper details of this special subject. a general reference may be given to savigny’s geschichte des römischen rechts, the leading authority on all such points.

766. if we adopt an old legal phrase, the decuriones were cives optimo iure, or full burghers; the rest of the citizens were non optimo iure, not full burghers, not having a share in the advantages possessed by the members of the corporation.

767. tacitus gives us an insight into some of the gratuitous insults and vexations inflicted upon the british provincials, while he describes the reforms introduced by agricola into these branches of the public service. “ceterum animorum provinciae prudens, simulque doctus per aliena experimenta, parum profici armis, si iniuriae sequerentur, causas bellorum statuit excidere.... frumenti et tributorum exactionem aequalitate munerum mollire, circumcisis, quae in quaestum reperta, ipso tributo gravius tolerabantur: namque per ludibrium adsidere clausis horreis, et emere ultro frumenta, ac vendere pretio cogebantur: devortia itinerum et longinquitas regionum indicebatur, ut civitates a proximis hybernis in remota et avia deferrent, donec, quod omnibus in promtu erat, paucis lucrosum fieret.” tac. agric. xix. the same grave historian attributes the fierce insurrection under boadicea to the tyrannous conduct of the legati and procuratores of the province, and the insolent conduct of their subordinates. “britanni agitare inter se mala servitutis, conferre iniurias et interpretando accendere: ‘nihil profici patientia, nisi ut graviora, tanquam ex facili tolerantibus, imperentur: singulos sibi olim reges fuisse, nunc binos imponi: e quibus legatus in sanguinem, procurator in bona saeviret. aeque discordiam praepositorum, aeque concordiam subiectis exitiosam, alterius manus, centuriones alterius, vim et contumelias miscere. nihil iam cupiditati, nihil libidini exceptum.” tac. agric. xv. it is obviously with reference to the same facts that he describes the britons as peaceable and well disposed to discharge the duties laid upon them, if they are only spared insult. tac. agric. xiii. xiphilinus, who though a late writer is valuable inasmuch as he represents dio cassius, describes some of the intolerable atrocities which drove the iceni into rebellion, destroyed camelodunum and verulamium, and led in those cities and in london to the slaughter of nearly seventy thousand citizens and allies. deep as was the wrong done to the family of prasutagus, he is no doubt right in attributing the general exasperation mainly to the confiscation of the lands which claudius caesar had granted to the chiefs, and which the procurator catus decianus attempted to call in. πρόφασις δὲ τοῦ πολέμου ἑγένετο ἡ δήμευσις τῶν χρημάτων (publicatio bonorum), ἅ κλαύδιος τοῖς πρώτοις αὐτῶν ἐδεδώκει· καὶ ἔδει καὶ ἐκεῖνα, ὥς γε δεκιανὸς κάτος ὁ τῆς νήσου ἐπιτροπεύων ἔλεγεν, ἀναπόμπιμα γενέσθαι. boadicea is made to declare that they were charged with a poll-tax, so severely exacted that an account was required even of the dead: οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ τελευτῆσαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἀζήμιόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἴστε ὅσον καὶ ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν τελεοῦμεν· παρὰ μὲν γὰρ τοῖς ἄλλοις ανθρώποις καὶ τοὺς δουλεύοντας τισιν ὁ θάνατος ἐλευθεροῖ, Ῥωμαίοις δὲ δὴ μόνοις καὶ οἱ νεκροὶ ζῶσι πρὸς τὰ λήμματα. these accusations put into the mouths of the personages themselves, must not be taken to be exaggerated statements without foundation: they are the confessions of the historians, which sometimes perhaps they lacked courage to make in another form. the sudden and violent calling in of large sums which seneca had forced upon the british chiefs in expectation of enormous interest, was another cause of the war: διά τε οὖν τοῦτο, καὶ ὅτι ὁ σενέκας χιλίας σφίσι μυριάδας ἄκουσιν ἐπὶ χρησταῖς ἐλπίσι τόκων δανείσας, ἔπειτ’ ἀθρόας τε ἅμα αὐτὰς καὶ βιαίως εἰσέπρασσεν. the roman mortgages in britain were enormous, yet easily explained. the procurator made an extravagant demand: the native state could not pay it; but the procurator had a roman friend who would advance it upon good security, etc. similar things have taken place in zemindaries of later date than the british. for the references above see joan. xiphil. epitome dionis, nero vi.

768. this not only appears from the digests, but from numerous merely incidental notices in the authors of the time. the population were crowded into cities, and the country was deserted. this was not the result of a healthy manufacturing or commercial movement, but of a state of universal distraction and insecurity. had the cultivation of the land ceased through a prudent calculation of political economy, we should not have heard of compulsory tillage.

769. savigny, röm. recht. i. 23 seq.

770. cives optimo iure, optimates, senatus, patricii, rachinburgi, boni homines,—these are all more or less equivalent terms.

771. savigny, röm. recht. i. 53.

772. the bishops were the most valuable allies of clovis in his aggressive wars. without their co-operation that savage merwing would perhaps never have established the frankish pre-eminence in the gauls.

773. “consularium primus aulus plautius praepositus, ac subinde ostorius scapula, uterque bello egregius: redactaque paulatim in formam provinciae proxima pars britanniae.” tac. agric. xiv.

774. agric. xiii. offices under the empire were honores or munera: the former, places of dignity and some power, duumvirates and the like: the latter, places of much labour and great responsibility, coupled with but little distinction. the condition of a decurion already described will give some notion of a munus; and it is a painful thing to find tacitus implying that the munera were troublesome and repulsive offices at so early a period; for this is clearly his meaning: he evidently intends to compliment the keltic population on a disposition to behave well, if their roman task-masters will only be content not to add insult to injury. the case would be nearly parallel if we made heki a petty constable, and then held him responsible when a new-zealand outlaw stole a sheep or burnt out a missionary.

775. “sequens hyems saluberrimis consiliis absumpta: namque, ut homines dispersi ac rudes, eoque in bella faciles, quieti et otio per voluptates adsuescerent, hortari privatim, adiuvare publice, ut templa, fora, domus exstruerent, laudando promtos et castigando segnes: ita honoris aemulatio pro necessitate erat. iam vero principum filios liberalibus artibus erudire, et ingenia britannorum studiis gallorum anteferre, ut qui modo linguam romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent. inde etiam habitus nostri honor et frequens toga: paullatimque discessum ad delinimenta vitiorum, porticus et balnea et conviviorum elegantiam: idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.” tac. agric. xxi. “quaedam civitates cogidumno regi donatae ... vetere ac iam pridem recepta populi romani consuetudine, ut haberet instrumenta servitutis et reges.” agric. xiv.

776. strabo calculated it at not less than one legion, the cost of which establishment could hardly fail to swallow up all the profit. νυνὶ μέντοι τῶν δυναστῶν τινες τῶν αὐτόθι, πρεσβεύσεσι καὶ θεραπείαις κατασκευασάμενοι τὴν πρὸς καίσαρα τὸν σεβαστὸν φιλίαν, ἀναθήματα τε ἀνέθηκαν ἐν τῷ καπετωλίῷ, καὶ οἰκείαν σχεδόν τι παρεσκεύασαν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ὅλην τὴν νῆσον· τέλη τε οὔπως ὑπομένουσι βαρέα τῶν τε εἰσαγομένων εἰς τὴν κελτικὴν ἐκεῖθεν καὶ τῶν ἐξαγομένων ἐνθένδε (ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν ἐλεφάντινα ψάλια, καὶ περιαυχένια, καὶ λυγγούρια, καὶ ὑαλᾶ σκεύη, καὶ ἄλλος ῥῶπος τοιοῦτος) ὥστε μηδὲν δεῖν φροιρᾶς τῆς νήσου· τοὐλάχιστον μὲν γὰρ ἑνὸς τάγματος χρήζοι ἂν καὶ ἱππικοῦ τινος, ὥστε καὶ φόρους ἀπάγεσθαι παρ’ αὐτῶν· εἰς ἴσον δὲ καθίστατο πᾶν τὸ ἀνάλωμα τῆ στρατιᾷ τοῖς προσφερομένοις χρήμασιν· ἀνάγκη γὰρ μειοῦσθαι τὰ τέλη φόρων ἐπιβαλλομένων, ἅμα δὲ καὶ κινδύνους ἀπαντᾶν τινας, βιὰς ἐπαγομένης. geogr. lib. iv. cap. 5, § 3.

777. “augendi propagandique imperii neque voluntate ulla neque spe motus unquam, etiam ex britannia deducere exercitum cogitavit: nec nisi verecundia, ne obtrectare parentis gloriae videretur, destitit.” sueton. vi. 18.

778. we may leave those, if any such there be, who still think geoffrey of monmouth an authority, to cite his proofs that dynwall moelmwd flourished four centuries before christ; and that the mercian laws of offa, quoted by ælfred, were those of the british, princess marcia.

779. gildas probably wrote within two centuries of the time when the romans left britain. two hundred years it is true offer a large margin for imagination, especially when it is keltic, and employed about national history: but gildas’s report, credible in itself, is confirmed by other evidence.

780. gild. hist. xiv.

781. ibid. xxii.

782. gild. hist. xxvi. foreign wars, those of the britons and saxons;—civil wars, those of the britons among themselves; perhaps those of the saxon kings.

783. “nam laniant seipsos mutuo, nec pro exigui victus brevi sustentaculo miserrimorum civium latrocinando temperabant: et augebantur extraneae clades domesticis motibus, quo et huiusmodi crebris direptionibus vacuaretur omnis regio totius cibi baculo, excepto venatoriae artis solatio.” gild. xix. half a century in an unexhausted soil is ample time to convert the most nourishing district into thick brushwood and impervious bush. beech and fir, which, though said by strabo to be not indigenous, must have been plentiful in the fifth century, do not require fifty years to become large trees: the elm, alder and even oak are well-sized growths at that age. even thorn, maple and bramble with such a course before them are very capable of making an imposing wilderness of underwood.

784. æðelweard says of the romans: “urbes etiam atque castella, necnon pontes plateasque mirabili ingenio condiderunt, quae usque in hodiernam diem videntur.” chron. lib. i. and william of malmesbury argues how greatly the romans valued britain from the vast remains of their buildings extant when he wrote. “romani britanniam ... magna dignatione coluere; ut et in annalibus legere, et in veterum aedificiorum vestigiis est videre.” gest. reg. lib. i. cp. 1. the following is his account of the state in which the island was left: “ita cum tyranni nullum in agris praeter semibarbaros, nullum in urbibus praeter ventri deditos reliquissent, britannia omni patrocinio iuvenilis vigoris viduata, omni exercitio artium exinanita, conterminarum gentium inhiationi diu obnoxia fuit. siquidem, e vestigio, scottorum et pictorum incursione multi mortales caesi, villae succensae, urbes sub-rutae, prorsus omnia ferro incendioque vastata; turbati insulani, qui omnia tutiora putarent quam praelio decernere, partim pedibus salutem quaerentes fuga in montana contendunt, partim sepultis thesauris, quorum plerique in hac aetate defodiuntur, romam ad petendas suppetias intendunt.” gest. reg. lib. i. cap. 2, 3. but rome had then enough to do to defend herself, for those were the days of alaric and attila. the emptying the island of all the fighting men by maximus is a very ancient fiction. archbishop usher makes him carry over to the continent thirty thousand soldiers, and one hundred thousand plebeii, which have settled in armorica. antiq. eccles. brittan. pp. 107, 108. we may admit the number of the soldiery; the roman force, with the levies, probably amounted to as many. but who were the plebeii? beda gives a similar account of the condition of britain: “exin brittania, in parte brittonum, omni armato milite, militaribus copiis universis, tota floridae iuventutis alacritate, spoliata, quae tyrannorum temeritate abducta nusquam ultra domum rediit, praedae tantum patuit, utpote omnis bellici usus prorsus ignara.” hist. eccl. i. 12. cf. gild. xiv.

785. according to him, the britons suffered the picts to pull them off the wall with long-hooks. “statuitur ad haec in edito arcis acies, segnis ad pugnam, inhabilis ad fugam, trementibus praecordiis inepta, quae diebus ac noctibus stupido sedili marcebat. interea non cessant uncinata nudorum tela, quibus miserrimi cives de muris tracti solo allidebantur.” gild. xix. beda copies this statement almost verbatim. hist. eccl. i. 12.

786. britain was at last, even as at first, fertilis tyrannorum: and in the agony which preceded her dissolution more so than ever. aurelius ambrosius, if a briton at all, is said to have been born of parents purpura induti: and this is possible at a period when it was unknown to contemporary writers whether a partizan were imperator or only latrunculus. but i suspect that there were not many britons of rank, or importance in any way, in the fifth century, in those parts of the island where the romans held sway.

787. athens, though shut up within her walls, felt little inconvenience from the loss of her corn-fields and vegetable gardens, while her fleet still swept the ægean. she fell only when she lost the dominion of the sea, and with it the means of feeding her population.

788. “sic enim et hic agente impio victore, immo disponente iusto iudice, proximas quasque civitates agrosque depopulans, ab orientali mari usque ad occidentale, nullo prohibente, suum continuavit incendium, totamque prope insulae pereuntis superficiem obtexit. ruebant aedificia publica simul et privata, passim sacerdotes inter altaria trucidabantur, praesules cum populis, sine ullo respectu honoris, ferro pariter et flammis absumebantur; nec erat qui crudeliter interemptos sepulturae traderet. itaque nonnulli de miserandis reliquiis, in montibus comprehensi acervatim iugulabantur; alii fame confecti procedentes manus hostibus dabant, pro accipiendis alimentorum subsidiis aeternum subituri servitium, si tamen non continuo trucidarentur: ali transmarinas regiones dolentes petebant; alii perstantes in patria pauperem vitam in montibus, silvis vel rupibus arduis, suspecta semper mente, agebant.” beda, hist. eccl. i. 15. see also gildas, xxiv. xxv.

789. “mit géru scal man geba infahan,” with the spear shall men win gifts. hiltibrants lied.

790. chron. sax.

791. it seems difficult to take these statements au pied de la lettre. how could cúðwulf possibly have manœuvred such a force as he commanded, so as to fight at bedford, if, as we must suppose, he marched from hampshire or surrey? how in fact could he ever reach bedford, leaving aylesbury in his rear, bensington and ensham on his left flank, if those places were capable of offering any kind of resistance? if they were so, we must admit that the britons richly merited their overthrow.

792. chron. sax. an. 577.

793. müller, in his treatise on the law of the salic franks, expresses the opinion that the german conquerors always destroyed the cities which they found. but the arguments which he adduces appear to me insufficient in themselves, and to be refuted by the obvious facts of the case. see his der lex salica alter und heimath, p. 160. the passages in tacitus (germ. xvi.) and ammianus (xvi. 2) only prove that the germans did not themselves like living in cities, which no one disputes.

794. this was left for later and more civilized times; witness st. alban’s massive abbey, one of the largest buildings in england, constructed almost entirely of bond-tiles from ancient verulam. caen stone would probably have been easier got and cheaper: but labour-rents must never be suffered to fall in arrear. it is the only rent which cannot be fetched up. old verulam was first dismantled because ealdred, a saxon abbot, in the tenth century found its cellars and ruined houses offered an asylum to bad characters of either sex: so runs the story.

795. we know that it was not the case in canterbury. queen beorhte’s bishop and chaplain, liuthart, had restored a ruined church, and officiated there before the arrival of augustine.

796. york supplies a striking example of the facts stated in this chapter. in the ninth century a danish army pressed by the saxons took refuge within its entrenchments. the saxons determined to attack them, seeing the weakness of the wall: as asser says, “murum frangere instituunt, quod et fecerunt; non enim tunc adhuc illa civitas firmos et stabilitos muros illis temporibus habebat.” an. 867. it seems quite impossible that this should refer to the roman city of york.

797. ida built bebbanburh, bamborough, which was at first enclosed by a hedge, and afterwards by a wall. chron. sax. an. 547.

798. the growth of a city round a monastery is well instanced in the case of bury st. edmund’s. the following passage is cited from domesday (371, b) in the notes to mr. rokewode’s edition of jocelyn de brakelonde. “in the town where the glorious king and martyr st. edmund lies buried, in the time of king edward, baldwin the abbot held for the sustenance of the monks one hundred and eighteen men; and they can sell and give their land; and under them fifty-two bordarii, from whom the abbot can have help; fifty-four freemen poor enough; forty-three living upon alms; each of them has one bordarius. there are now two mills and two store-ponds or fish-ponds. this town was then worth ten pounds, now twenty. it has in length one leuga and a half, and in breadth as much. and it pays to the geld, when payable in the hundred, one pound. and then the issues therefrom are sixty pence towards the sustenance of the monks; but this is to be understood of the town as it was in the time of king edward, if it so remains; for now it contains a greater circuit of land, the which was then ploughed and sown; where, one with another, there are thirty priests, deacons and clerks, twenty-eight nuns and poor brethren who pray daily for the king and all christian people; eighty less five bakers, brewers, seamsters, fullers, shoemakers, tailors, cooks, porters, serving-men; and these all daily minister to the saint, and abbot and brethren. besides whom there are thirteen upon the land of the reeve, who have their dwellings in the same town, and under them five bordarii. now there are thirty-four persons owing military service, taking french and english together, and under them twenty-two bordarii. now in the whole there are three hundred and forty-two dwellings in the demesne of the land of st. edmund, which was arable in the time of king edward.” chron. joc. de brakelonde, pp. 148, 149 (camden society). similarly durham and other towns grew up around cathedrals.

799. the “ingang burhware” may possibly be only a selected portion of the population; as, for example, the richer inhabitants, a special burgher’s club. the argument in the text is no way affected by the pre-eminence of some particular association among the rest, and an “ingang burhware,” even if a distinct thing, only proves the existence of a “burhwaru” besides. however it is probable that there was a general disposition to admit as many members as possible into associations whose security and influence would greatly depend upon their numbers.

800. the word communa occurs at almost every page of the ‘liber de antiquis legibus,’ to express the whole commonalty of the city of london. glanville himself uses communa and gyldae as equivalent terms. “item si quis nativus quiete per unum annum et unum diem in aliquâ villâ privilegiatâ manserit, ita quod in eorum communiam, scilicet gyldam, tanquam civis receptus fuerit, eo ipso a villenagio liberabitur.” lib. v. cap. 5. the reader may consult with advantage thierry’s history of the communes in france, in his ‘lettres sur l’histoire de france,’ a work which has not received in this country an attention at all commensurate to its merits, or comparable to that bestowed upon his far less sound production the ‘conquête de l’angleterre par les normands.’ at the same time it would be an error to apply the example of the french communes to our own or those of flanders, which had frequently a very different origin. see warnkönig, hist. de flandre, par gheldolf: bruxelles, 1835, particularly vol. ii. with its valuable appendixes.

801. this truly interesting and important document will be found in an appendix to this book. in fact the principle of all society during the saxon period is that of free association upon terms of mutual benefit,—a noble and a grand principle, to the recognition of which our own enlightened period is as yet but slowly returning.

802. “ealdredesgate et cripelesgate, i. e. portas illas, observabant custodes.” inst. london. § 1. thorpe, i. 300.

803. in the cities of the roman empire with jus italicum a statute of marsyas or silenus was erected in the forum. servius ad æneid. iv. 58. “patrique lyæo.—urbibus libertatis est deus, unde etiam marsyas, minister eius, per civitates in foro positus, libertatis indicium est; qui erecta manu testatur nihil urbi deesse.” so also æneid, iii. 20. the reader of horace will remember the marsyas in the forum as symbolizing the magistrate’s jurisdiction. whether the germanic populations derived their pillar, figure or statue from the roman custom seems uncertain: certain however it is that the rolandseule, the pillar or figure of orlando, (and, as is sometimes said, of charlemagne) denotes equally “nihil urbi deesse.”

804. “die luft macht eigen.”

805. banlieu, banni leuca, or according to some etymologists, banni locus.

806. slight as this sketch is, it may serve to throw some light upon the fortunes of the flemish and italian cities. dönniges gives a most interesting and instructive account of regensburg in very early times, with its three fortified quarters,—the count’s (palatium, pfalz or imperial banlieu), the bishop’s, and the burghers’ or merchants’ quarter. deut. staatsr. p. 250, seq.

807. the “five burghs” were lincoln, nottingham, derby, leicester and stamford. chester and york could only be joined in a more distant alliance, but still when there was a common action among them, they were called the “seven burghs.”

808. these statements are taken from the saxon chronicle, florence of worcester, simeon, and other authorities, under the years quoted. for the sake of illustration i have added in the appendix a list of anglosaxon towns, whose origin we have some means of tracing.

809. history furnishes notable instances of what has been put here merely hypothetically. the earls of flanders were honourably distinguished among all the european potentates by the liberal manner in which they treated their subjects. the appendix to this chapter contains some of the earliest charters which they granted to their towns, and these fully explain the wealth, power and happiness of flanders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. and notwithstanding what i have said in the text, and which is justified by the conduct of the bishops in some parts of europe, it must be admitted that the clergy were generally just and merciful lords, as far as the material well-being of their dependents was concerned. the german proverb says: “’tis good to live under the crozier.”

810. even under the norman kings, the condition of this country seems to have been comparatively easy. its darkest moments were during the wars of stephen and henry plantagenet. the position then assumed by the seigneurs or castellans and its results are thus well described by an old chronicler:—“sane inter partes diu certatum est, alternante fortuna; sed tunc quodammodo remissiores motus esse coeperunt: quod tamen angliae non cessit in bonum, eo quod tot erant reges quot domini castellorum, habentes singuli numisma proprium et more regis subditos iudicantes. et quia magnates terrae sic invicem excellere satagebant, eo quod nullus in alterum habebat imperium, mox inter se disceptantes rapinis et incendiis clarissimas regiones corruperunt, in tantum quod omne robur panis fere deperiit.” walt. hemingburh, vulgo gisseburne, i. 74. “castella quippe studio partium per singulas provincias surrexerant crebra; erantque in anglia tot quodammodo reges, vel potius tyranni, quot castellorum domini, habentes singuli percussuram proprii numismatis, et potestatem dicendi subditis regio more iura.” annal. trivet. 1147, p. 25. the contemporary saxon chronicler gives the most frightful account of the tyrannous exactions of the castellans, and the tortures they inflicted on the defenceless cultivators. and this miserable condition of the country is only too obvious in the words with which the contemporary author of the life of stephen commences his work. gest. stephani, p. 1 seq. nor can this surprise us, when we learn that at this period not less than eleven hundred and fifteen castles had been built in england. rog. wendov. an. 1153, coxe’s edit. ii. 256.

811. cod. dipl. no. 1075.

812. there can be no doubt that wǽnscilling, written erroneously in the ms. þægnsilling, is what is meant by statio et inoneratio plaustrorum in another charter. cod. dipl. no. 1066. it is custom or toll upon the standing and loading of the salt-waggons. see p. 71 of this volume.

813. landfeoh, land-fee, probably a recognitory rent for land held under the burh or city. fihtwíte, fine for brawling in the city. stalu, fine or mulct for theft. wohceápung, fine for buying or selling contrary to the rules of the market.

814. 1041. “hoc anno rex anglorum hardecanutus suos huscarlas misit per omnes regni sui provincias ad exigendum quod indixerat tributum. ex quibus duos, feader scilicet et turstan, wigornenses provinciales cum civibus, seditione exorta, in cuiusdam turris wigornensis monasterii solario, quo celandi causa confugerant, quarto nonas maii, feria secunda peremerunt. unde rex ira commotus, ob ultionem necis illorum, thurum mediterraneorum, leofricum merciorum, godwinum westsaxonum, siwardum northimbrorum, ronum magesetensium, et caeteros totius angliae comites, omnesque ferme suos huscarlas, cum magno exercitu ... illo misit; mandans ut omnes viros, si possint, occiderent, civitatem depraedatam incenderent, totamque provinciam devastarent. qui, die veniente secundo iduum novembrium, et civitatem et provinciam devastare coeperunt, idque per quatuor dies agere non cessaverunt: sed paucos vel e civibus vel provincialibus ceperunt aut occiderunt, quia praecognito adventu eorum, provinciales quoque locorum fugerant. civium vero multitudo in quandam modicam insulam, in medio sabrinae fluminis sitam, quae beverege nuncupatur, confugerant; et munitione facta, tam diu se viriliter adversus suos inimicos defenderunt, quoad pace recuperata, libere domum licuerit eis redire. quinta igitur die, civitate cremata, unusquisque magna cum praeda rediit in sua; et regis statim quievit ira.” flor. wig. 1041.

815. cod. dipl. no. 1084. anno 904.

816. lands held immediately of the king, and administered by his own officers. people resident about the royal vills.

817. leg. hloð. § 16. thorpe, i. 34.

818. asser considers london to belong locally to essex: he states that the danes plundered it in 851. vit. ælfr. in anno. berhtwulf of mercia made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve it; so that it must be considered to have been a mercian town at that period. later it seems to have been left to itself, till ælfred restored it in 886.

819. “gesette ælfred cyning lundenburg ... and he ða befæste ða burg æðerede aldormen tó healdanne.” chron. sax. an. 880. “eodem anno ælfred, angulsaxonum rex, post incendia urbium, stragesque populorum, londoniam civitatem honorifice restauravit, et habitabilem fecit: quam generi suo æðeredo, merciorum comiti, commendavit servandam.” asser, vit. ælf. an. 886. in 880 the danes wintered at fulham, and may then have ruined london, if they had not done so before.

820. chron. sax. an. 912.

821. swétman, portgeréfa. cod. dipl. no. 857. ælfsige, ibid. nos. 858, 861. ulf. ibid. no. 872. the first mayor of london was elected probably in 1187. see lib. de ant. legib. p. 1 seq.

822. “cyninges geréfa binnan port,” the king’s reeve within the city. leg. æðelst. iii. § 7; iv. § 3. canterbury appears to have had both a cyninges geréfa and a portgeréfa. the signatures of both these officers are appended to the same instrument. cod. dipl. no. 789.

823. the document de institutis londoniae, which is considered to date from the time of æðelræd, that is the commencement of the eleventh century, gives the fine for burhbryce to the king; and inflicts a further bót of thirty shillings, for the benefit of the city, if the king will grant it, “si rex hoc concedat nobis.” inst. lond. § 4. thorpe, i. 301.

824. cod. dipl. no. 293.

825. leg. æðelst. i. § 14. thorpe, i. 206.

826. leg. æðelr. iii. § 8, 16; iv. § 5, 9. thorpe, i. 296, 298, 301, 303.

827. leg. eádw. § 1. æðelst. i. § 12, 13; iii. § 2; v. § 10. thorpe, i. 158, 206, 218, 240.

828. leg. eádgár. supp. § 3, 4, 5. thorpe, i. 274.

829. “hoc anno [a.d. 1200] fuerunt xxv electi de discretioribus civitatis, et iurati pro consulendo civitatem una cum maiore.” lib. de antiq. legib. in anno.

830. inst. lond. § 3. thorpe, i. 301.

831. ibid.

832. the not unfrequent occurrence of such names as kinggate, queengate and bishopgate street, imply something of this kind: for we cannot suppose such names to have been assigned capriciously or without sufficient cause. it is likely that the streets so called led to the dwellings and were literally the property of the several parties: that is, that offences committed upon them belonged to the several jurisdictions.