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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

-----

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 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 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
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?

-----

Footnote 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.

-----

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 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 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 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.

-----

Footnote 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.

Footnote 780:

  Gild. Hist. xiv.

Footnote 781:

  Ibid. xxii.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

-----

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 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 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.

-----

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

-----

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].

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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!

-----

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.

-----

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].

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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].

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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.”

-----

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.

-----

Footnote 804:

  “Die Luft macht eigen.”

-----

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].

-----

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._

-----

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.

-----

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.”

-----

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.”

-----

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.

-----

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.

It is certain that the free institutions which have been described in an
earlier part of this chapter, could not be found in towns, the right to
which must be considered to have been based on conquest, or which arose
around a settlement purely military. In such places we can expect to
find no mint, except as matter of grant or favour: if there was watch
and ward, it was for the fortress, not the townsmen: toll there might
be—but for the lord to receive: jurisdiction,—but for the lord to
exercise: market,—but for the lord to profit by: armed militia,—but for
the lord to command. Yet while the lord was the king, and the town was,
through its connexion with him, brought into close union with the
general state, its own condition was probably easy, and its civic
relations not otherwise than beneficial to the republic. In such
circumstances a town is only one part of a system; nor is a royal
landlord compelled to rack the tenants of a single estate for a fitting
subsistence: the shortcoming of one is balanced by the superfluity of
other sources of wealth. The owner of the small flock is ever the
closest shearer. But even on this account, when once the towns became
seigneurial, their own state was not so happy, nor was their relation to
the country at large beneficial to the full extent. But all general
observations of this character do not explain or account for the
separate cases. It is clear that everything which we have to say upon
this subject will depend entirely upon what we may learn to have been
the character of any particular person or class of persons at any given
time. The lord or Seigneur may have ruled well; that is, he may have
seen that his own best interests were inseparably bound up with the
prosperity, the peace and the rational freedom of his dependents; and
that both he and they would flourish most, when the mutual well-being
was guarded by a harmonious common action, founded upon the least
practicable sacrifice of individual interests. Thus he may have
contented himself with the legal capitation-tax, or even relinquished it
altogether: he may have exacted only moderate and reasonable tolls,
trusting wisely to a consequent increase of traffic, and rewarded by 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].

-----

Footnote 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.”

-----

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 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]. 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.

-----

Footnote 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.

-----

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
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].

-----

Footnote 811:

  Cod. Dipl. No. 1075.

-----

“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,’ 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!”

-----

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

-----

A valuable instrument is this, and one which supplies matter for
reflection in various ways. The 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 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.

-----

Footnote 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.

-----

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 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.

-----

Footnote 815:

  Cod. Dipl. No. 1084. Anno 904.

Footnote 816:

  Lands held immediately of the king, and administered by his own
  officers. People resident about the royal vills.

-----

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 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 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 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].

-----

Footnote 817:

  Leg. Hloð. § 16. Thorpe, i. 34.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 820:

  Chron. Sax. an. 912.

Footnote 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._

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 824:

  Cod. Dipl. No. 293.

-----

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].

-----

Footnote 825:

  Leg. Æðelst. i. § 14. Thorpe, i. 206.

-----

It is right to observe that all these places are in Æðelstán’s peculiar
kingdom, south of the Thames, and that his legislation takes no notice
of the Mercian, Eastanglian or Northumbrian territories. But half a
century later, it was ordered that no man should have a mint save the
king, and that any person who wrought money without the precincts of a
burh, should be liable to the penalties of forgery. The inconvenience of
this was however too great, and by the ‘Instituta Londoniae,’ each
principal city (“summus portus”) was permitted to have three, and every
other burh one moneyer[826].

-----

Footnote 826:

  Leg. Æðelr. iii. § 8, 16; iv. § 5, 9. Thorpe, i. 296, 298, 301, 303.

-----

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 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].”

-----

Footnote 827:

  Leg. Eádw. § 1. Æðelst. i. § 12, 13; iii. § 2; v. § 10. Thorpe, i.
  158, 206, 218, 240.

Footnote 828:

  Leg. Eádgár. Supp. § 3, 4, 5. Thorpe, i. 274.

-----

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 which the rights and privileges of the municipality
clustered.

-----

Footnote 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_.

-----

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].

-----

Footnote 830:

  Inst. Lond. § 3. Thorpe, i. 301.

Footnote 831:

  Ibid.

-----

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 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 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.

-----

Footnote 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.

-----

                             CHAPTER VIII.
                              THE BISHOP.

Whatever variety of form the heathendom of the Anglosaxons may have
assumed in different districts, we are justified in asserting that a
sacerdotal class existed, and that there were different grades of rank
within it. We hear of priests, and of chief priests; and it is not
unnatural to conclude that to the latter some pre-eminence in dignity,
if not in power, was conceded over their less-distinguished colleagues.
Similarly, the necessities of internal government and regulation, and
the analogy of secular administration, had gradually supplied the
Christian communities with a well-organized system of hierarchy, which
commencing with the lower ministerial functions, passed upward through
the presbyterate, the episcopal and metropolitan ordinations, and found
its culminating point and completion in the patriarchates of the eastern
and western churches. The paganism of the Old World, which admitted the
participation of different classes in the public rites of religion, if
it did not cause, could at least easily reconcile itself to, this
systematic division. Our own heathen state is not well known enough to
enable us to affirm as much of our forefathers; but the immediate
foundation of an episcopal church in all the newly-converted Teutonic
countries, seems to show that no difficulty existed or was apprehended
as to its ready reception. In England, as elsewhere, the introduction of
Christianity was immediately followed by the establishment of bishops.
But it is necessary to draw a distinction between the effects of this
establishment in England and in various parts of the continent. As we
pursue the inquiries which necessarily meet us in investigating the
history of conversion in the West, we are led to a remarkable fact, viz.
that the power of the Roman see was, generally speaking, most
substantially founded by the efforts and energy of Teutonic prelates;
while a much more steady opposition to its triumph was offered by the
provincials who usually filled the episcopal office in the cities of
Gaul.

The apparent strangeness of this however soon vanishes, when we consider
the many grounds upon which the Gallic churches contested the immediate
supremacy of Rome. The archbishop of Vienne long claimed the patriarchal
authority in Gaul, upon the same grounds as the bishops of Rome and
Constantinople claimed it in those cities[833]. Many of the provincial
churches boasted an antiquity hardly inferior to the Roman, and a
foundation not less illustrious; many had shown in persecution and
suffering a spirit of Christian perseverance and a steadfastness of
faith, which the City itself had not exceeded in her own hour of trial.
Above all, there continued to exist a vigorous nationality in Gaul,
however oppressed and bridled by the energy of the Frankish conquerors,
especially in Neustria or the northern portion of modern France. To this
spirit of nationality, based upon ancient descent and long familiarity
with the civilization of the Roman empire, and fed in turn by a great
amount of material prosperity, we must refer the complete dissolution of
the Carolingian empire itself, and the establishment of the counts of
Paris as kings in the western districts of that unwieldy body.

-----

Footnote 833:

  Hüllmann, ‘Origine de l’organisation de l’Eglise au Moyen Age,’ p. 30.

-----

It is true that the Western Church did not lay definite claim to any
such total independence as Cyprian vindicated for his African
communities: the good offices and arbitration of St. Peter’s successor
were sought in disputed and doubtful cases, even if we cannot admit of
positive appeals to the Roman curia: the bishops of Burgundy, Provence
and Spain, early found that union with the oldest and most respected
church of the West offered an important defence of orthodoxy threatened
by the Arian and semi-Arian dogma of the barbarians who had wrested
those fine provinces from the empire: and the popes were not unwilling
to encourage a tendency which helped to realize the idea of a
pre-eminence in their church over all the Christian communities.[834]
The institution of Missi, or special commissioners, was familiar: they
adopted it, and at a very early period we find papal vicars exercising
some sort of authority in Gaul, and perhaps even in Britain.

-----

Footnote 834:

  This was strongly asserted by Romanus against Cyprian, and never lost
  sight of by the Roman controversialists, whatever opposition it
  encountered in other churches. But while Rome really was the first
  city of the world, it was consonant to the analogy of the other
  episcopal relations that her prelate should claim the primacy. The
  founding it either on St. Peter’s peculiar principality, or on
  pretended decrees of the Roman emperors, was quite a different thing,
  and an afterthought.

-----

The conversion of Clovis to the orthodox faith, instead of that which he
might have learned from his Arian neighbours, was not only a source of
power and importance to the Catholic bishops of Gaul, but ultimately of
the greatest moment to the bishop of Rome. We must admit that under the
Merwingian kings, the popes enjoyed some authority and great
consideration in Gaul, though not enough to endanger the independence
and freedom of the Gallican church: but under the family of Pipin they
necessarily occupied a very different position. For during the earlier
years of the imperial constitution, Rome was a city, and its bishop to a
certain extent an officer, of the empire, and the power and influence of
the popes was advanced by the Frankish emperor as best might suit his
own purposes. It is assuredly not true that under Charlemagne those
bishops ventured upon any of the usurpations which they succeeded in
substantiating under later emperors.

During the reign of Hluduuig indeed, a pious but weak prince, they
obtained various concessions which in process of time bore fruit of
power[835]. It was reserved for later days to witness the triumph of
Roman independence through the combination of communal with priestly
tendencies. This combination first darkly arose when the nationality of
Rome itself burst forth, encouraged by the vigour with which the bishop
made head against the invading Saracens in Italy, supported the orthodox
prelates of the southern kingdoms, Arles, Burgundy and Spain against
Arian dukes and governors, and regulated the internal affairs of the
city, neglected by its Frankish patricians and missi. At this time too
Rome had no competitor: Africa had fallen, Constantinople had abdicated
her imperial position, the cities and the sees of the East had vanished
together; Rome—at least one of the oldest—was now unquestionably the
most powerful of the Christian churches. She had all the prestige of the
old empire, and all the support of the new one which she had helped to
found upon the ruins of the old.

-----

Footnote 835:

  But, as yet, no independence. Pope Paschal in 823, being accused by
  the Romans of participation in various homicides, Hluduuig sent his
  Missi,—Adalung a presbyter and abbot, and Hunfrid duke of Rhætia (or
  Coire) to investigate the affair. Paschal appeared before them, and
  cleared himself by oath. “Qui supradictus Pontifex cum iuramento
  purificavit se in Lateranensi patriarchio coram supradictis legatis et
  populo Romano, cum episcopis 34, et presbyteris et diaconibus
  quinque.” Thegan. Vit. Hludov. Imp. Pertz, ii. 597.

-----

But this gradual advance and this commanding power could not at first
have been contemplated. It is a common error to suppose that great
results, which seem necessarily produced by a long series of combined
causes, have from the first been prepared and foreseen. The spectator in
his own struggle after a logical unity rejects the accidental and
accessory facts, to fix his eyes upon the apparently essential
development; and supposes everything to have been grasped together,
because his intellect cannot conceive the whole variety of occurrences
without so grasping them. The relations of Rome with the Franks were
hardly the consequence of any deliberate or well-considered plan. The
Frankish kings had been selected as patrons merely because they could
afford the protection which was looked for in vain from Constantinople,
or indeed any other quarter; and had Italy not been overrun by Germanic
invaders of various race, from whose power there seemed no refuge, save
in other and still more barbarous Germanic defenders, the Western empire
might never have been restored: but when once it was so restored,—from
the moment when Pope Leo and the Roman municipality agreed to place the
command of the city, and the rights of the ancient Caesars, in the hands
of a barbarian king,—but one capable of appreciating and securing all
the advantages of his great position,—Rome itself became not only
identified with the new views, but necessary to their fulfilment[836].
Had the new emperor been a Roman, or had he selected Rome as his
residence, and thus made it the local as well as real and political
centre of his power, the Papacy would probably never have attained its
territorial authority. But the Frankish king remained true to the habits
of his people and of his predecessors, resided in peaceful times at
Ingleheim or Aix la Chapelle, and spent years in wandering from one
royal vill to another, or in the duties of active warfare upon the
several confines of his empire; and thus the government of the eternal
city practically fell into the hands of Frankish officers, dukes, missi,
counts palatine, and ministerials, who gradually proved no match for the
enlightened skill, unwearied diplomacy and increasing power of the
pontiffs, the Roman aristocratic families, and the resuscitated
municipality: yet the popes had hardly succeeded in attaining to a
complete independence of the German Caesars, when the son of Hugues,
called Capet, expelled the last Caroling from the soil of France; though
in the course of a policy long inexorably pursued, they had gone far to
prepare for a dismemberment of the empire which was to be of more
important consequence to the world than even that separation[837]. In
956—the year in which Eádwig, the mark of monkish calumny, came to the
throne of England, the Patrician Octavian, son of Alberic of Spoleto,
and through him grandson of the scandalous Marozia, caused himself to be
elected Pope; and thus united the highest worldly and spiritual
authorities in the city, concentrating in his own person all the rights
both of the empire and the papacy[838].

-----

Footnote 836:

  No sooner was Charlemagne crowned as emperor by Leo III. (Dec. 20th,
  800) than he caused an oath of fidelity to be administered to all his
  subjects who were above the age of twelve years. See on this subject
  Dönniges, p. 2, etc. He thus obtained all the rights of the ancient
  emperors over the church and the Roman provincials, in addition to the
  powers as a German king, which in his vigorous hands assumed a
  consistency and compass unknown to his predecessors. Charlemagne
  required all the aid of the Pope against the great Frankish families,
  who might have given him a mayor of the palace, as they had given his
  own progenitors to the Merwingian kings. The following important
  passage will show in what spirit he considered the imperial authority
  which he had assumed, “A.D. 802. Eo anno demoravit domnus Caesar
  Carolus apud Aquis palatium quietus cum Francis sine hoste; sed
  recordatus misericordiae suae de pauperibus, qui in regno suo erant et
  iustitias suas pleniter [h]abere non poterant, noluit de infra palatio
  pauperiores vassos suos transmittere ad iustitias faciendum propter
  munera, sed elegit in regno suo archiepiscopos et reliquos episcopos
  et abbates cum ducibus et comitibus, qui iam opus non [h]abebant super
  innocentes munera accipere, et ipsos misit per universum regnum suum,
  ut ecclesiis, viduis et orfanis et pauperibus, et cuncto populo
  iustitiam facerent. Et mense Octimbrio congregavit universalem synodum
  in iam nominato loco, et ibi fecit episcopis cum presbyteris seu
  diaconibus relegi universos canones quas sanctus synodus recepit, et
  decreta pontificum, et pleniter iussit eos tradi coram omnibus
  episcopis, presbyteris et diaconibus. Similiter in ipso synodo
  congregavit universos abbates et monachos qui ibi aderant, et ipsi
  inter se conventum faciebant, et legerunt regulam sancti patris
  Benedicti, et eam tradiderunt sapientes in conspectu abbatum et
  monachorum; et tunc iussu eius generaliter super omnes episcopos,
  abbates, presbyteros, diaconos seu universo clero facta est, ut
  unusquisque in loco suo iuxta constitutionem sanctorum patrum, sive in
  episcopatibus seu in monasteriis aut per universas sanctas ecclesias,
  ut canonici, iuxta canones viverent, et quicquid in clero aut in
  populo de culpis aut de negligentiis apparuerit, iuxta canonum
  auctoritate emendassent; et quicquid in monasteriis seu in monachis
  contra regulam sancti Benedicti factum fuisset, hoc ipsud iuxta ipsam
  regulam sancti Benedicti emendare fecissent. Sed et ipse imperator,
  interim quod ipsum synodum factum est, congregavit duces, comites et
  reliquo christiano populo cum legislatoribus, et fecit omnes leges in
  regno suo legi, et tradi unicuique homini legem suam, et emendare
  ubicumque necesse fuit, et emendatam legem scribere, et ut iudices per
  scriptum iudicassent, et munera non accepissent; sed omnes homines,
  pauperes et divites, in regno suo iustitiam habuissent.” Annal.
  Lauresham, xxv. Pertz, i. 38. In the theory of that great man, the
  imperial title was no empty name.

Footnote 837:

  A.D. 987. See Dönniges, p. 197 _seq._ Thierry, Lettres sur l’Histoire
  de France, let. xii.

Footnote 838:

  Since A.D. 924 there had been in fact no Emperor of Germany, and the
  empire itself might seem to have been resolved anew into its original
  and discordant elements. From the year 904, when the elder Theodora
  succeeded in placing Sergius the Third upon the papal throne, the
  faction of that profligate woman and her daughters had completely
  disposed of all the dignities of the city, and the bed of the
  Theodoras or Marozia was the best introduction to the Chair of St.
  Peter.

-----

Three hundred and sixty years earlier, Gregory, then bishop of Rome, had
despatched a missionary adventure to this country.

The zeal of modern polemics has dealt more hardly with Gregory than
justice demands[839]. Who shall dare to attribute to him, or to any
other man, entire freedom from human error, or total absence of those
faults which, for the very happiness of man, are found to chequer the
most perfect of human characters? But even if we admit that he shared,
to not less than the usual degree, in the weakness and selfishness of
our nature, it is impossible to withhold the meed of our admiration from
the man whose intellect could combine, whose prudence could direct, and
whose courage could cope with, all the details of a conversion such as
that of Saxon England. Let us only consider the circumstances under
which he found himself placed at home, and we shall the better
comprehend the power of mind which could devise and execute the vast
design of a spiritual colonization, a transplantation of religion as it
were from Rome the centre, to Britain the extreme, the least known, and
most barbarous point of the ancient empire[840]. Temporal as well as
spiritual ruler of the city, abandoned by those miserable intriguers who
inherited from the emperors nothing but their title and their vices, and
pressed on every side by the vigorous advance of the Langobardic arms,
it was Gregory’s fate or fortune to pass in the midst of political
excitement a life which he had hoped to devote to pious meditation. But
he possessed a character capable of moulding itself to all the
exigencies of his situation; whether reluctantly or not, he flung
himself into the gap, and comprehended, with a perfect singleness of
insight, that to whom belongs the post of greatest honour, on him lies
also the burthen of the greatest toil and greatest danger. By turns
soldier, captain, negotiator, and priest,—now wielding the pen to
instruct, now the sword to protect or to chastise,—now pouring
passionate exhortations from his pulpit, now providing for the resources
of his commissariat, or superintending the builders engaged on the
material defences of his walls,—we see in him one of those men whom
troublous times have often educated to cope with themselves, and whose
names have thus justly become the very landmarks and pivots of history.

-----

Footnote 839:

  See Soames, Anglos. Church, p. 40 _seq._, and Latin Church during
  Anglos. Times, p. 12 _seq._, 19 _seq._ On the other side, Schrödl, Das
  erste Jahrhundert der Englischen Kirche, p. 10 _seq._

Footnote 840:

  It must not be forgotten that the Southerns shuddered at the Saxons,
  as the most savage and barbarous of all the Germanic tribes. However
  unjust the opinion might be, it was the fashionable one at Rome.

-----

A great writer, who sometimes suffers his hostility against Christianity
and its professors to outweigh the calmer judgment of the historian, has
left us this graphic account of the condition of Rome at the end of the
sixth century[841].

-----

Footnote 841:

  Gibbon, Dec. and Fall, chapter 45.

-----

“Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks,
we again inquire into the fate of Rome[842], which had reached, about
the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By
the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the
provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted;
the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed,
was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left
to wither on the ground. The ministers of command and the messengers of
victory no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian Way, and the hostile
approach of the Lombards was often felt and continually feared. The
inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit without an
anxious thought the garden of the adjoining country, will faintly
picture in their fancy the distress of the Romans; they shut or opened
their gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the flames of
their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who were
coupled together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond
the sea and the mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the
pleasures and interrupt the labours of a rural life; and the Campagna of
Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which
the land is barren, the waters are impure, and the air is infectious.
Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of
the world: but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering
stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the
city, and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are
the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tiber swelled above its
banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the
seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the
deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that fourscore persons expired
in an hour in the midst of a solemn procession, which implored the mercy
of heaven[843]. A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry
prevails, soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war; but
as the far greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless
indigence and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and
the gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human
race[844].”

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Footnote 842:

  “The passages of the Homilies of Gregory, which represent the
  miserable state of the city and country, are transcribed in the Annals
  of Baronius, A.D. 590, No. 16; A.D. 595, No. 2. etc.”

Footnote 843:

  “The inundation and plague were reported by a deacon, whom his bishop,
  Gregory of Tours, had despatched to Rome for some relics. The
  ingenious messenger embellished his tale and the river with a great
  dragon and a train of little serpents.” Greg. Turon. lib. x. cap. 1.

Footnote 844:

  “Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15) relates a memorable prediction
  of St. Benedict. ‘Roma a gentilibus non exterminabitur sed
  tempestatibus, coruscis turbinibus et terrae motu in semetipsa
  marcescet.’ Such a prophecy melts into true history, and becomes the
  evidence of the fact after which it was invented.”

-----

It was in the midst of scenes such as these that Gregory found time to
organize the mission of Augustine to Britain. In the absence of definite
information, derived from his own account, or the relations of his
friends and contemporaries, it is impossible to penetrate the motives
which led the pontiff to this step. They have been variously interpreted
by the zeal of opposing historians, who have construed them by the light
of their own prejudices, in favour of the conflicting interests of their
respective churches. Nor, with such insufficient means, do we attempt to
reconcile their differences: human motives are rarely unmixed, rarely
all good or all evil: it is possible that there may be some truth in all
the conflicting views which have been taken of this great act; that
while an earnest missionary spirit, and deep feeling of responsibility,
led the Pope to carry the blessings of an orthodox Christianity to the
distant and benighted tribes of Britain, he may have contemplated—not
without pardonable complacency—the growth of a church immediately
dependent upon his see for guidance and instruction. It may be that some
lingering whispers of vanity or ambition spoke of the increase of wealth
or dignity or power which might thus accrue to the patriarchate of the
West. Nay, who shall say that, looking round in his despair upon Rome
itself and the disject members of its once mighty empire, he may not
even have thought that England, inaccessible from its seas, and the
valour of its denizens, might one day offer a secure refuge to the last
remains of Roman faith and nationality, and their last, but not least
noble, defender?

To the pontiff and the statesman it was not unknown that the Britannic
islands were occupied by two populations different alike in their
descent and in their fortunes; the elder and the weaker, of Keltic
blood; the younger and the conquering race, an offshoot of that great
Teutonic stock, whose branches had overspread all the fairest provinces
of the empire, and had now for the most part adopted something of the
civilization, together with the profession, of Christianity. He was
aware that commercial intercourse, nay even family alliances, had
already connected the Anglosaxons with those Franks, who, in opposition
to the Arian Goths, Burgundians and Langobards, had accepted the form of
faith considered orthodox by the Roman See[845]. The British church, he
no doubt knew, in common with others which claimed to have been founded
by the Apostles[846], still retained some rites and practices which had
either never been sanctioned or were now abandoned at Rome: but still
the communion of the churches had been maintained as well as could be
expected between such distant establishments. British bishops had
appeared in the Catholic synods[847], and the church of the Keltic
aborigines reverenced with affectionate zeal the memory of the
missionaries whom it was the boast of Rome to have sent forth for her
instruction or confirmation in the faith[848]. On the other hand, it had
reached the ears of the Pope, that the Germanic conquerors themselves
yearned for the communication of the glad tidings of salvation; that
tolerance was found in at least one court,—and that, one of
preponderating influence; while an unhappy instinct of national hatred
had induced the British Christians to withhold all attempts to spread
the Gospel among their heathen neighbours[849].

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Footnote 845:

  “I cannot bear to see the finest provinces of Gaul in the hands of
  those heretics,” cried Clovis, with all the zeal of a new convert. The
  clergy blessed the pious sentiment, and the orthodox barbarian was
  rewarded with a series of bloody victories, which mainly tended to
  establish the predominance of the Frank over all the other elements in
  Gaul.

Footnote 846:

  If traditions could be construed into good history, Britain was
  abundantly provided with apostolical converters: Joseph of Arimathea,
  Aristobulus, one of the seventy, St. Paul himself, have all had their
  several supporters. Nay even St. Peter has been said to have visited
  this island: Ἔπειτα [ὁ Πέτρος] ... εἰς βρεττανίαν παραγίνεται· Ἔνθα δὴ
  χειροτριβήσας καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἀκατοναμάτων ἐνθῶν εἰς τὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ
  πίστιν ἐπισπασάμενος ... ἐπιμείνας τὲ τοῖς ἐν βρεττανὶᾳ ἡμέρας τινὰς,
  καὶ πολλοὺς τῷ λόγῳ φωτίσας τῆς χάριτος, ἐκκλησίας τε συστησάμενος,
  ἐπισκόπους τε καὶ πρεσβυτέρους καὶ διακόνους χειροτονήσας, δωδεκάτῳ
  ἔτει τοῦ Καίσαρος αὖθις εἰς Ῥώμην παραγίνεται. Menolog. Graec. xvi.
  Mart.

Footnote 847:

  At Arles in 314, Sardica in 347, and Rimini in 359.

Footnote 848:

  Not to speak of Ninian, Palladius and Patricius, we may refer to
  Germanus of Auxerre, who is stated to have been sent as Papal Vicar to
  England, to arrest the progress of Pelagianism, at the beginning of
  the fifth century. Schrödl asserts this in the broadest terms: “Auf
  Bitten der Britischen Bischöfe, und gesendet von Pabst Cölestin,
  besuchte der Bischof Germanus von Auxerre in der Eigenschaft eines
  päbstlichen Vicars, zweimal Britannien,” etc. Erste Jahrh. p. 2.
  Lingard is somewhat less decided: he says, “Pope Celestine, at the
  representation of the deacon Palladius, commissioned Germanus of
  Auxerre to proceed in his name to Britain,” etc. Ang. Church, i. 8.
  Both these authors refer to Prosper, in Chron. _anno_ 429. “Papa
  Coelestinus Germanum Autisiodorensem episcopum _vice sua_ mittit, et
  deturbatis haereticis Britannos ad Catholicam fidem dirigit.” Prosper
  was not only a contemporary of the facts he relates, but at a later
  period actually became secretary to Celestine: his authority therefore
  is of much weight. Still it is observable that Beda, in his relation,
  does not attribute the mission of Germanus to the Pope. He says, that
  the Britons having applied for aid to the prelates of Gaul, these held
  a great synod, and _elected_ Germanus and Lupus to proceed to England.