We find it related as an incident of the struggle between John and Longchamp in 1191, when Longchamp was deposed, that John and the barons conceded the commune of London and took oath to it, and about the same time we have proof that the city had its mayor. Documentary evidence has also been discovered of the existence at the same date of the governing body known on the continent as the échevins. But while the mayor and the échevins are closely associated with the commune, their presence is not conclusive evidence of the existence of a real commune, nor is the use of the word itself, though the occurrence of the two together makes it more probable. Early in 1215, when John was seeking allies everywhere against the confederated barons, he granted a new charter to London, which recognized the right of the citizens to elect their own mayor and required him to swear fealty to the king. If we could be sure that this oath was sworn for the city, it would be conclusive evidence, since the oath of the mayor to the lord of whom the commune as a corporate person "held" was a distinguishing mark of this relationship. The probability that such was the case is confirmed by the fact that a few weeks later, in the famous twelfth clause of the Great Charter, we find London put distinctly in the position of a king's vassal. This evidence is strengthened by a comparison with the corresponding clause of the Articles of the Barons, a kind of preliminary draft of the Great Charter, and much less carefully drawn, where there is added to London a general class of towns whose legal right to the privilege granted it would not have been possible to defend.[61] That London maintained its position among the king's vassals in the legally accurate Great Charter is almost certain proof that it had some right to be classed with them. But even if London was for a time a commune, strictly speaking, it did not maintain the right in the next reign, and that form of municipal organization plays no part in English history.[62] It is under the form of chartered towns, not communes, that the importance of the boroughs in English commercial and public life continued to increase in the thirteenth as it had in the twelfth century.
[57] Ralph de Diceto, ii, 113.
[58] Roger of Howden, iv. 46.
[59] Round, The Commune of London.
[60] Luchaire, Communes Françaises, 97.
[61] Articles of the Barons, c. 32; Stubbs, Select Charters, 393.
[62] See London and the Commune in Engl. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1904.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LOSS OF NORMANDY
The death of Richard raised a question of succession new in the history of England since the Norman Conquest. The right of primogeniture, the strict succession of the eldest born, carrying with it the right of the son of a deceased elder brother to stand in the place of his father, the principle which was in the end to prevail, had only begun to establish itself. The drift of feeling was undoubtedly towards it, but this appeared strongly in the present crisis only in the northwestern corner of the Angevin dominions in France, where it was supported by still stronger influences. The feudal law had recognized, and still recognized, many different principles of succession, and the prevailing feeling in England and Normandy is no doubt correctly represented in an incident recorded by the biographer of William Marshal. On receiving the news of Richard's death at Rouen, William went at once to consult with the archbishop and to agree on whom they would support as heir. The archbishop inclined at first to Arthur, the son and representative of John's elder brother, Geoffrey, but William declared that the brother stood nearer to his father and to his brother than the grandson, or nephew, and the archbishop yielded the point without discussion. Neither in England nor in Normandy did there appear the slightest disposition to support the claims of Arthur, or to question the right of John, though possibly there would have been more inclination to do so if the age of the two candidates had been reversed, for Arthur was only twelve, while John was past thirty.