3

presided and levied his fees;1 but perhaps the most important privilege was the second one-the immunity from the personal taxation exacted by the officers of the Royal Exchequer, and collected by the sheriff. To gain their points they asked, first, the rights of choosing their own justiciar, or official who should preside in the town court and relieve them from the necessity of appearing at other courts; and then they requested the liberty of taxing themselves, and of composition for taxation-i.e., the right of paying a fixed sum or rent to the Crown, instead of the various tallages, taxes, and imposts that might be required of other places. This fixed sum,5 or composition, was called the firma burgi, and by the time of the Conquest was nearly always paid in money. Previously it had been paid both in money and kind, for we find Oxford paying to Edward the Confessor six sectaries of honey as well as £20 in coin; while to William the Norman it paid £60 as an inclusive lump sum. By the end of the Norman period all the towns had secured the firma burgi, and the right of assessing it themselves, instead of being assessed by the sheriff; they had the right also of choosing an officer of their own, instead of the king's bailiff or reeve. They had thus their own tribunals, a charter for their customs, and special rules of local administration, and, generally speaking, had gained entire judicial and commercial freedom.

§ 52. How the Towns obtained their Charters. It is interesting to see what circumstances helped forward this emancipation of the towns from the rights possessed by the nobles and the abbeys, or by the king. The chief cause of the readiness of the nobles and kings to grant

1 Jessop, Studies of a Recluse, p. 130.

3 As in the Charter to London given by

ut ante, p. 405.

2 Ib.

Henry I., quoted by Stubbs, 4 Stubbs, u. 8., p. 410.

Ellis, Introd. to Domesday, i. 190, gives many examples. 6 Ellis, Introd., i. 193.

7 Stubbs, u. s., p. 424.

8 A noble, bishop, or abbot on whose demesne a town existed of course had the judicial and other rights of a lord of the manor over such a town, and could part with them by giving a charter. Thus Beverley gained its charter, not from the crown, but from Archbishop Thurstan. Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. xi. 411. Manchester remained under its feudal lord till 1846.

charters during this period (from the Conquest to Henry III.) was their lack of ready money. Everyone knows how fiercely the nobles fought against each other in Stephen's reign, and how enthusiastically they rushed off to the Crusades under Richard I. They could not indulge their love of fighting, which in their eyes was their main duty, without money to pay for their fatal extravagances in this direction, and to get money they frequently parted with their manorial rights over the towns which had grown up on their estates. Especially was this the case when a noble or king was taken prisoner, and wanted the means of his ransom.2 In this way Portsmouth and Norwich gained their charters by paying part of Richard I.'s ransom (1194). Again, Rye and Winchelsea gained theirs by supplying the same king (in 1191) with two ships for one of his Eastern crusades. Many other instances might be quoted from the cases of nobles who also gave charters when setting out upon these extraordinary expeditions. Indeed, the Crusades had a very marked influence in this way upon the growth of English towns. Some one had to pay for the wars in which the aristocracy delighted, and it is well to remember the fact that the expenses of all our wars-and they have been both numerous and costlyhave been defrayed by the industrial portion of the community. Even the glories and cruelties of that often savage age of so-called knightly chivalry, which has been idealised and gilded by romancers and history-mongers, with its tournaments and torture-chambers, were paid for by that despised industrial population of the towns and villages which contained the real life and wealth of medieval England.

3

§ 53. The Gilds and the Towns.

Gilds.

Various kinds of

But besides the indirect effect of the Crusades, there was another powerful factor in the growth and emancipation of the towns after the Conquest. I refer to the merchant gilds, which were becoming more and more pro1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. p. 198.

2 Green, History, i. 212.

4

3 See Rymer, Foedera, I. 63, 53.

Cf. the state of things instanced by Green, History, i. 156.

minent all through this period, though the height of their power was not reached till the fourteenth century. These merchant gilds were one of four other kinds of gilds, all of which seem to have been similar in origin. The earliest gilds are found in Saxon times,1 and were very much what we understand by clubs at the present day. At first they were associations for more or less religious and charitable purposes,2 and formed a sort of artificial family, whose members were bound by the bond not of kinship but of an oath, while the gild-feast, held once a month in the common hall, replaced the family gatherings of kinsfolk. These gilds were found both in towns and villages, but chiefly in the former, where men were brought more closely together. Besides (1) the religious gilds, we find in Saxon times (2) the frith gilds,3 formed for mutual assistance in case of violence, wrong, or false accusation, or in any legal affairs. But this class of gilds died out after the Conquest. The most important were (3) the merchant gilds mentioned above, which existed certainly in Edward the Confessor's time, being called in Saxon ceapemunne gilds, and they were recognised at the time of the Conquest, for they are recorded in Domesday here and there as possessing lands.* The merchant members of these gilds had various privileges, such as a virtual monopoly of the local trade of a town, which even outsiders were not allowed to infringe, and freedom from certain imposts.5 They had, at any rate at first, a higher rank than the members of the (4) craft gilds." These last were associations of handicraftsmen, or artisans, and were separate from the merchant gilds, though also of great importance. If a town were large enough, each craft or manufacture had a gild of its own, though perhaps in smaller towns members of various crafts would form only one gild. Such gilds were found, too, not only in towns but in country villages, as is known, e.g., in the case of

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist, I. xi. p. 411, who gives an excellent summary. Cf. also Brentano, History and Development of Gilds, and Gross, Gild Merchant, for further information. 2 Stubbs, ut ante, p. 412.

3 They were possibly earlier than the religious associations. Cf. Stubbs, ut ante, p. 414. 4 Ib., p. 416.

5

Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 44.

6

Stubbs, ut ante, p. 417.

some Norfolk villages, where remains of their halls have been found.1 Their gild feasts are probably represented to this day in the parish feasts, survivals of ancient custom.

§ 54. How the Merchant Gilds helped the Growth of

Towns.

Now it was only natural that the existence of these powerful associations in the growing boroughs should secure an increasing development of cohesion and unity among the townsmen. Moreover, the merchant gilds had a very important privilege, which would make many outsiders anxious to join their ranks—namely, that membership in a gild for a year and a day made a villein a free man. Thus the gilds included all the free tenants in a town, and very often the body of free citizens, who, of course, as free men, formed the only really influential class in a town, found themselves, by thus uniting together in a gild, "craft," or

mistery," in a position to gain even greater influence than before. In fact, only those who were members of some gild or "mistery were allowed to take part in the municipal government of their town.3 As time went on, and their influence grew, it became the special endeavour of the gildmen to obtain from the Crown or from their lord of the manor wider commercial privileges, such as grants of coinage, the right of holding fairs, and of exemption from tolls. Then they asked for freedom of justice, and for the right of self-government; and it is supposed also that it was possibly the gilds also, as representing practically the town itself, who bought up the firma burgi,5 and thus became their own assessors of taxes. Finally, no doubt, they helped largely in buying a charter, as we have seen, from a king or noble in need of ready money. And so, gradually, and by other steps which cannot now be clearly traced, the emancipation of the towns was won by the gilds; the boroughs became free from their lords' restrictions and dues; till by the end of the twelfth century chartered towns, which were

very few at the time of the Conquest, became the general rule. In later times, again, the power of the gilds passed to the town corporations.1 Yet at no time can we say that the governing body of the town was identical in idea with the merchant gild. It is true that in time membership of some gild became indispensable to the status of a burgher, but still the gild was theoretically distinct from the municipal body, though practically it was generally one and the same. The chief result of the gilds and of gildlife was to produce greater unity and cohesion among the townsmen, and thus to awake in them the idea of the corporate unity of municipal life.

§ 55. How the Craft Gilds helped Industry.

So far we have specially noted the work of the merchant gilds, which, as it were, built up the constitution and freedom of the towns. But the craft gilds did similar work also. Originally, it is true, the merchant gilds reckoned themselves above the craft gilds; but in later times the two classes came, so to speak, to stand more side by side5; and each class of gild occupied the same relation to the municipal government, though very often the members of each might vary greatly in wealth or position "—from the poor cobbler, who was yet a member of the shoemakers' gild, to the rich merchant of drapery, who might have held the highest municipal honours.

We must now look for a moment at the work of the artisans' gilds, or craft gilds, which afterwards became very important. These are found not only in London but in provincial towns. The London weavers are mentioned as a craft gild in the time of Henry I. (1100 A.D.), and most of these gilds seemed to have existed already for a long period. The Goldsmiths' Gild claimed to have possessed land before the Norman Conquest, and it was fairly powerful in the days of Henry II. (1180 A.D.), for he found it

7 They were, perhaps, more often known as "crafts," "misteries," or

8

"companies."

Cunningham, English Industry (1882), 132.