Chapter VII: The Towns (2)

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 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 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].

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Footnote 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.

Footnote 789:

“Mit géru scal man geba infahan,” with the spear shall men win gifts.
Hiltibrants Lied.

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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 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.

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Footnote 790:

Chron. Sax.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 792:

Chron. Sax. an. 577.

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The fact has been already noticed that the Saxons 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, 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!

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Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

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Many circumstances combined to make a distinction between the cities of Britain and those of the Gallic continent. The latter had always been in nearer relation than our own to Rome: they had been at all periods permitted to enjoy a much greater measure of municipal freedom, and were enriched by a more extensive commercial intercourse. England had no city to boast of so free as Lugdunum, none so wealthy as Massilia. Even in the time of the Gallic independence they had been far more advanced in cultivation than the cities of the Britons, and in later days their organization was maintained by the residence of Roman bishops and a wealthy body of clergy. Nor on the other hand do the Franks appear to have been very numerous in proportion to the land, a sufficient amount of which they could appropriate without very seriously confining the urban populations: many of these still retained their communications with the sea: and, lastly, before the conquerors, slowly advancing from Belgium through Flanders, had spread themselves throughout the populous and wealthy parts of Gaul, their chiefs had shown a readiness to listen to the exhortation of Christian teachers, to enter into the communion of the Church, and recognize its rights and laudable customs. So that in general, whether among the Lombards in Italy, the Goths in Aquitaine, or the Franks in Neustria, there was but little reason for a violent subversion, or even gradual ruin, of the ancient cities. In these the old subsisting elements of civilization were still tolerated, and continued to prevail by the force of uninterrupted usage. More happy than the demoralized and dispossessed inhabitants of Britain, the Roman provincials under the Frankish and Langobardic rule were still numerous and important enough to retain their own laws, and the most of their own customs. Skilful in the character of counsellors or administrators, wealthy and enterprising as merchant-adventurers, dignified and influential as forming almost exclusively the class of the clergy, they still retained their old seats, under the protection of the conquerors: and thus, for the most part their cities survived the conquest, and continued under their ancient character, till they slowly gave way at length in the numerous civil or baronial wars of the middle ages, and the frequent insurrections of the urban populations in their struggle for communal liberties.

It is natural to imagine that when once the Saxons broke up from their peaceful settlements and commenced a career of aggression, they would direct their marches by the great lines of roads which the Roman or British authorities had maintained in every part of the island. They would thus unavoidably be brought into the neighbourhood of earlier towns, and be compelled to decide the question whether they would attack and occupy them, or whether they would turn them and proceed on their march. If the views already expressed in this chapter be correct, it is plain that no very efficient resistance was to be feared by the invaders: they could afford to neglect what in the hands of a population not degraded by the grossest misgovernment would have offered an insuperable obstacle. But the locality of a town is rarely the result of accident alone: there are generally some conveniences of position, some circumstances affecting the security, the comfort or the interests of a people, that determine the sites of their seats: and these which 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 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].

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Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

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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 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 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 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 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 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.

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Footnote 797:

Ida built Bebbanburh, Bamborough, which was at first enclosed by a
hedge, and afterwards by a wall. Chron. Sax. an. 547.

Footnote 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.

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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 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 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 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 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 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 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].

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Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

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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 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 to judge and punish, the right to guard with the weapons of men all that men hold dearest.

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Footnote 802:

“Ealdredesgate et Cripelesgate, _i. e._ portas illas, observabant
custodes.” Inst. London. § 1. Thorpe, i. 300.

Footnote 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.”

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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 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 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, 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.

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Footnote 804:

“Die Luft macht eigen.”

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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 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].

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Footnote 805:

_Banlieu_, banni leuca, or according to some etymologists, banni
locus.

Footnote 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._

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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 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, 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 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.

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Footnote 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.”

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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.”

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Footnote 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.

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The evidences of Eádweard’s activity are yet more numerous. The following burhs or towns are recorded to have been built by him. In 913, the northern burh at Hertford, between the rivers Mimera, Benefica and Lea: a burh at Witham, and soon after another on the southern bank of the Lea. In 918, he constructed burhs, or fortresses, on both sides of the river at Buckingham. In 919 he raised the burh on the southern bank of the Ouse at Bedford. In 921 he fortified Towchester with a stone wall; and in the same year he rebuilt the burhs at Huntingdon and Colchester, and built the burh at Cledemouth. The following year he built the burh on the southern bank of the river at Stamford, and repaired the castle of Nottingham. In 923 he built a fortress at Thelwall, and repaired one at Manchester. In 924 he built another castle at Nottingham, on the south bank of the Trent, over against that which stood on the northern bank, and threw a bridge between them. Lastly he went to Bakewell in Derbyshire, where he built and garrisoned a burh.

A large number of these were no doubt merely castles or fortresses, and some of them, we are told, received stipendiary garrisons, that is literally, king’s troops, contradistinguished on the one hand from the free landowners who might be called upon under 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 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.