The Story of London

by Henry B. Wheatley

Bishop Stubbs, in his Introduction to the Chronicle of Roger de Hoveden, after referring to the negotiations between Longchamp and John, and describing the hastening of the two parties to London on Monday, 7th October, when Longchamp met the citizens in the Guildhall, writes: ‘The magnates of the city were divided—Richard Fitz-Reiner, the head of one party, took the side of John. Henry of Cornhill was faithful to the Chancellor. These two knights had been sheriffs at Richard’s coronation, and both represented the burgher aristocracy.’ Longchamp betook himself to the Tower, and a meeting was held at St. Paul’s on Tuesday the 8th, and the barons welcomed the Archbishop of Rouen as chief justiciar, and saluted John as Regent. ‘This done, oaths were largely taken: John, the justiciar and the barons swore to maintain the Communa of London; the oath of fealty to Richard was then sworn, John taking it first, then the two archbishops, the bishops, the barons, and last the burghers, with the express understanding that should the King die without issue they would receive John as his successor.’[209]

Mr. Round writes: ‘The excited citizens, who had poured out overnight, with lanterns and torches, to welcome John to the capital, streamed together on the morning of the eventful 8th October at the well-known sound of the great bell, swinging out from its campanile in St. Paul’s Churchyard. There they heard John take the oath to the “Commune” like a French King or lord; and then London for the first time had a municipality of her own.’[210] After this the influence of Longchamp at once faded away. He stood a three days’ blockade in the Tower, after which he was forced to surrender, and was deposed from all secular offices.

As to the results of this revolution Mr. Round writes: ‘Of the character of the “Commune” so granted, of its ultimate fate, and of the part it played in the municipal development of London, nothing has been really known. The only fact of importance ascertained from other sources has been the appearance of a Mayor of London at or about the same time as the grant of a “Commune.” It cannot, indeed, be proved that, as has been sometimes supposed, the two phenomena were synchronistic, for no mention of the Mayor of London, after long research, is known to me earlier than the spring of the year 1193. But there is, of course, the strongest presumption that the grant of a “Commune” involved a Mayor, and already, in 1194, we find a citizen accused of boasting that, “come what may, the Londoner shall have no King but their Mayor.’ ”[211]

Mr. Round then states very clearly the divergent views of Bishop Stubbs, Mr. Loftie and Mr. Coote on the question of the concession of the Commune. The bishop held that it was difficult to decide with certainty on the point, as no formal record of the confirmation of the Commune is now preserved. Mr. Coote believed that a charter was granted in 1191, which has been lost, and Mr. Loftie dates the mayoralty from 1189, and deemed the Commune to have been of gradual growth, and to have been practically recognised by the charter of Henry I.

In reply to Mr. Coote’s view that in the case of London, which had acquired all other things, the Commune expressed for its citizens the mayoralty only, Mr. Round writes: ‘We find, however, that on the Continent the word “Commune” did not of necessity imply a Mayor, for Beauvais and Compiègne, though constituted “Communes,” appear to have had no Mayors during most of the twelfth century. The Chroniclers, therefore, had they only meant to speak of the privilege of electing a Mayor, would not have all employed a word which did not connote it, but would have said what they meant. Moreover, his theory rests on the assumption common till now to all historians that the citizens had continuously possessed from the beginning of the twelfth century the privileges granted in the charter of Henry I. But I have shown in my Geoffrey de Mandeville that these privileges were not renewed by Henry II. or Richard I., and this fact strikingly confirms the explicit words of Richard of Devizes when he states that neither the one nor the other would have allowed the Londoners to form a “Commune” even for a million of marcs.’[212]

Of Mr. Loftie’s argument that Glanville’s words prove that London, if not other towns as well, had already a Commune under Henry II., Mr. Round remarks that it had been disposed of by Dr. Gross in his Gild Merchant (i. 102).[213]

We have now to refer specially to Mr. Round’s remarkable discovery among the manuscripts of the British Museum of the Oath of the Commune, which proves for the first time that ‘London in 1193 possessed a fully-developed “Commune” of the continental pattern.’

This discovery not only gives us information which was unknown before, but upsets the received opinions as to the early governing position of the aldermen. From this we learn that the government of the city was at that time in the hands of a Mayor and certain échevins (skivini).

Of the existence of these skivins in England no suspicion has previously been expressed. Mr. Round, indeed, points out that Dr. Gross, in his Gild Merchant, considers these governing officers as a purely continental institution.

Twelve years later (1205-1206) we learn from another document, preserved in the same volume, that ‘alii probi homines’ were associated with the Mayor and échevins to form a body of twenty-four (that is twelve skivini, and an equal number of councillors).