central authority, and as such usually nominated by the King.1 He was judicial president of the scir-gemot, or shiremoot, executor of the law, and steward of the royal demesne. At first the sheriff seems to have exercised co-ordinate authority with the ealdorman, but gradually the civil administration became almost entirely concentrated in the former, leaving to the latter, as his principal function, the command of the military force of the shire. Unlike the office of ealdorman, the sheriffdom, as a rule, never became hereditary. This circumstance was productive of important Constitutional effects after the Norman Conquest, as the kings found ready to hand a machinery which enabled them to effectually assert the central authority in every shire, and thus to check the growth of local feudal jurisdictions. The burh, or town, was in its origin "simply a more strictly The Burgh. organised form of the township. It was probably in a more defensible position; had a ditch or mound instead of the quickset hedge or 'tun' from which the township took its name; and as the tun' was originally the fenced homestead of the cultivator, the 'burh' was the fortified house and court-yard of the mighty man—the king, the magistrate, or the noble." Other burhs were gradually developed out of the village town- Its organisaship, or were founded on the Folkland. In these the municipal tion. authority was similar to that of the free township. The chief magistrate was the gerefa, in mercantile places the port-gerefa, in others the wic- or tun-gerefa, who presided in the burh-gemot, or meeting of all the freeholders of the burh. In the larger towns, which were made up of a cluster of townships or lordships, the organisation more nearly resembled that of the hundred than that of the simple township. Side by side with the town constitution, and to a certain extent The Guilds. influencing its development, was the organisation of the municipal guilds. The ancient municipal guilds (so called from gildan, to pay or contribute) were voluntary associations for ecclesiastical or secular purposes, analogous to our modern clubs. By some the guilds have been regarded as an inheritance from the Roman 1 "It is probable, on early analogy, that the gerefa was chosen in the folkmoot; but there is no proof that within historical times this was the case, although the constitutionalists of the thirteenth century attempted to assert it as a right, and it was for a few years conceded by the Crown."Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 126. 2 The sheriff was often styled Præpositus, præfectus, judex-these being merely Latinised forms of the word gerêfa. "The opinion formerly current in England that the Shirgerêfa was originally an elected popular officer has no other foundation than the passage (Leges Edwardi Conf. de Heretochiis, c. 32 a), “sicut et vicecomites provinciarum et comitatum eligi debent.” Anglo-Saxon accounts taken from statutes, documents, and historians all indicate a free appointment and deposition of the Shirgerêfa at tl. will of the King."-Gneist, Const. Hist., p. 54, note 3.—ED.] 3 Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 99. The "frith gild." 'The merchant-guild. The City of municipal constitution; but an uninterrupted Roman descer can nowhere, in England, be traced. The similarity to be foun: in the oldest municipal denominations id institutions on bot sides of the German Ocean points rath a common origin ithe ancient heathen sacrificial guilds, in which the commo banquet," the cradle of many a political institution," formed. leading feature.1 The suppression of these devil's guilds (deojolgild), as they were termed in the Christian laws, proving extremely difficult, they were for the most part continued with the substitution of Christian for heathen rites. Some guilds had for their principal object the mutual defence of their members and the preservation of peace; and by the laws of Ina and Alfred, in case of homicide of or by one of the members, the guild-brethren were to share in the receipt or payment of the wergild.2 But the form of guild which exercised the most permanent and extensive influence on the town constitution was the merchantguild, ceapmanne gild, or hansa, to which all the traders of the town were, as a rule, obliged to belong (see infra, p. 192 note). At first independent of the governing body of the town, the merchant-guild gradually coalesced with it, monopolising the rights which had originally belonged to all the free inhabitants. But the process was a very slow one, and though it began prior to the Norman Conquest, its principal development proceeded during the two centuries following that event. "In the reign of Henry II.," says Bishop Stubbs, "there can be little doubt that the possession of a merchant-guild had become the sign and token of municipal independence; that it was in fact, if not in theory, the governing body of the town' in which it was allowed to exist. It is recognised by Glanvill as identical with the communa of the privileged towns, the municipal corporation of the later age."3 The City of London has always occupied an exceptional position, and though it has never stood to the rest of England. in the same peculiar relation as Paris to the rest of France, it 1 Lappenberg, England under the Anglo-Saxons, by Thorpe, ii. 350. [For the rise and mediæval importance of guilds, cf. Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen (Leipzig, 1825), vol. v. pp. 377-380.-ED.] 2 In the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniae, drawn up under King Athelstan (cir 930) by the bishops and reeves belonging to London, and confirmed by the pledges of the " frith-gegildas," is preserved a complete code of a "frithgild" of the city of London, with minute directions for the pursuit and conviction of thieves, the exacting of compensation, and the carrying out of the dooms which Athelstan and the Witan had enacted at Greatley, Exeter, and Thundersfield.-Thorpe, Anc. Laws and Inst.; Select Chart., 65. 3 Const. Hist. i. 453. [Cf. “The Gild-Merchant," by Charles Cross (Oxf., 1890); Gneist, Hist. Engl. Const., p. 124, note, and p. 436, and authorities there cited.-ED.] J 』 has just claims to be regarded, even in very early times, as member of the 7771 Service of sought by freemen as rewards 1-in system."1 gous to that on of ordinary towns resembled that of Its constitutution of London was analogous to that tion analoof the shire. From time immemorial the City has been divided of the shire. into wards, answering to the hundreds in the shire, each having its own wardmot, answering to the hundred court, and its elected ealdorman. The chief municipal court-the general assembly of the citizens--was called the Hus-thing, whence the modern name Husting, a term derived probably from the Danes, and signifying a court or assembly in a house as distinguished from one held in the open air. Side by side with the jurisdiction of the several wardmotes, landowners, both secular and ecclesiastical, possessed their exclusive sokens or jurisdictions within the city and its outlying liberties. These private sokens gradually gave way before the increasing power of the citizens; but while they existed, the inclusion of an aristocratic element within the municipality doubtless added much to its power and influence, until the citizens were strong enough to hold their own as a purely commercial community. Towards the close of the pre-Norman period the two chief officers of the City of London, the representatives of the civic unity of the various wards, townships, parishes and lordships of which it was composed, were the Port-reeve and the Bishop. It is to these two that the charter of William the Conqueror Charter of confirming to London the laws which it had enjoyed under King queror to Edward is addressed: "William the King greets William the London. Bishop and Gosfrith the port-reeve, and all the burghers within London, French and English, friendly and I do you to wit 1 Hallam, Midd. Ages, iii. 24 (11th edit.). According to Roger Hoveden, the citizens of London, on the death of Ethelred II., joined with a portion of the nobility in raising Edmund Ironside to the throne. They concurred, say the Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmsbury, in the election of Harold I.; and in later times they took an active part in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. They sided with the barons in their contests with the Crown, and assisted in deposing Longchamp, the chancellor and justiciar of Richard I. The mayor of London was one of the twenty-five barons empowered to maintain the provisions of the Great Charter. 2 "The word port in port-reeve is the Latin 'porta' (not portus), where the markets were held, and although used for the city generally, seems to refer to it specially in its character of a mart or city of merchants. The port-gerefa at Canterbury had a close connection with the ' Ceapmanne gild'; and the same was probably the case in London, where there was a cnihten-gild, the estates of which were formed into the ward of Portsoken. From the position assigned to the port-reeve in this writ, which answers to that given to the sheriff in ordinary writs, it may be inferred that he was a royal officer who stood to the merchants of the city in the relation in which the bishop stood to the clergy; and if he were also the head of the guild, his office illustrates very well the combination of voluntary organisation with administrative machinery which marks the English municipal system from its earliest days."-Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 439 n. B the Con Ecclesiastical divisions. Ranks of the people. Slaves. Freemen, The Eorl. Nobility by birth gives way to nobility by service. The Comitatus. Gesith. that I will that ye twain be worthy of all the law that ye were worthy of in King Edward's day. And I will that every child be his father's heir after his father's day; a institutions endur that any man offer any wrong to you. Goo a common origin i^' The original bishoprics were conterminous with the mits 81 the various kingdoms at the time of the conversion to Christianity; but under Archbishop Theodore the dioceses were subdivided on the lines of the still earlier tribal divisions. As churches were gradually erected throughout the country, the township, or, in thinly populated districts, a cluster of small townships, naturally became in its ecclesiastical aspect the parish of a single priest. Later on the hundred became the deanery, the shire the archdeaconry, while the whole consolidated Kingdom formed the province of the Metropolitan.2 Turning from the divisions of the land to those of the people, we find at the bottom of the social scale the mere slaves (theowas, esnas), of whom, under the name of servi, 25,000 are numbered in Domesday Book, or nearly one-eleventh of the registered population. These were of two kinds-(1) hereditary, consisting partly of the descendants of the conquered Britons, partly of persons of the common German stock either descended from the slaves of the first colonists or from freemen who had lost their liberty; (2) penal slaves (wite-theowas), freemen who had been reduced to slavery on account of crime, or through failure to pay a wergild, or by voluntary sale,-the father having power to sell his child of seven, and a child of thirteen having power to sell himself. As among the Germans of Tacitus we find the distinction between the noble and common freeman, so among the English the freemen were broadly divided into eorls and ceorls, the modern meaning of which may be rendered by gentle and simple, or esquire and yeoman. The rank of the corl rested upon noble birth, and thus formed a perpetual barrier between him and the ceorl. But in England, as in other Germanic countries, a new kind of nobility speedily grew up nobility by military service which in the end superseded the nobility by birth. This arose out of the development of the comitatus, described by Tacitus, the band of personal followers of the king or other leader. These followers were the gesithas (= companions); their leader was the hlaford (= loafgiver), in its modern form, Lord, whose title was derived from his character of giver of gifts in acknowledgment of the services received. [The hlâfæta "loaf-eater," or comes," became the gesith.] The relation existing between the lord and his 79. = 1 Munim. Gildhallae Lond., Lib. Custum. [pp. 25, 247]; Select Charters, 2 Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 244-7. те followers appears to have gradually assumed a somewhat lower ldtype; the gesith, or companion, became the thegn (= servant 1); Thegn. and the service of the king, or other great lord, was eagerly sought by freemen as well for the social dignity as for the material rewards which it ensured. We read of the king's dish-thegn. (disc-thegn), bower-thegn (bur-thegn), and horse-thegn or stallere,2 as personages of high rank and great influence; a feature in our early institutions which has survived to the present day in such offices as those of Lord Chamberlain (bower-thegn) and Master of the Horse. Service to the king, or some great lord, gradually became the only avenue to distinguished rank. The word thegn itself came to be regarded as synonymous with noble or gentle. Among this nobility by service the highest rank comprised the king's thegns, whilst in a lower class were the thegns of the ealdorman or bishop.3 connection and owner ship of land. The dignity of thegn was closely (though not inseparably) Intimate connected with the possession of landed property; so much between so that the possession of a certain quantity of land came to be social status regarded as a foundation of nobility. The simple freeman who acquired five hides of land entered into the ranks of the thegnhood. For the position of ealdorman the possession of at least forty hides was necessary. This intimate connection between social status and the ownership of large landed estates, which has continued with but slight modification down to our own times, may be traced even in the original institutions of our Teutonic ancestors : Agri. quos inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur.5 The development of the comitatus, or thegnhood, had very Effects of important effects. In the original Teutonic community, the growth of the thegnmonarchic and aristocratic elements were subordinate to the hood. democratic element. The growth of the Thegnhood, working in close alliance with the kingly power, which from motives of self-interest it was bound to support as the source of its own dignity, reversed this original relation. Thus the aristocratic and monarchic elements obtained a decided pre-eminence. Purely voluntary in its origin, service rapidly grew to be univer 1 [“ As the king grew in importance and power, the companion or 'gesith' soon changed his original title for a new one, that more clearly expressed his somewhat changed relation. He became the thegn or servant instead of the companion of his lord."-Hannis Taylor, Origin of Engl. Const., p. 131.-ED.] = 2 [The Staller (comes stabuli) the Marshal (from O. H. G. marah, horse, and scalh, servant). Thorpe, n. to Lappenberg, A.-S. ii. 312.] 3 See Kemble, Saxons in England, i. ch. vii., "the Noble by Service." [Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. i. 60.-ED.] 4 [Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 152-153; Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungs Geschichte, ii. 262; Creasy, The English Const., p. 42; Gneist, Hist. Engl. Const., pp. 108, 109 and note.-ED.] 5 Tacit. Germ., c. xxvi. |