[h] Id. p. 282.
[] Cives Lundinenses, et pars nobilium qui eo tempore consistebant Lundoniæ, Clitonem Eadmundum unanimi consensu in regem levavere. p. 249.
[k] Chron. Saxon. p. 154. Malmsbury, p. 76. He says the people of London were become almost barbarians through their intercourse with the Danes; propter frequentem convictum.
[m] Londinenses, qui sunt quasi optimates pro magnitudine civitatis in Angliâ. Malmsb. p. 189. Thus too Matthew Paris: cives Londinenses, quos propter civitatis dignitatem et civium antiquam libertatem Barones consuevimus appellare. p. 744. And in another place: totius civitatis cives, quos barones vocant. p. 835. Spelman says that the magistrates of several other towns were called barons. Glossary, Barones de London.
A singular proof of the estimation in which the citizens of London held themselves in the reign of Richard I. occurs in the Chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelonde (p. 56—Camden Society, 1840). They claimed to be free from toll in every part of England, and in every jurisdiction, resting their immunity on the antiquity of London (which was coeval, they said, with Rome), and on its rank as metropolis of the kingdom. Et dicebant cives Lundonienses fuisse quietos de theloneo in omni foro, et semper et ubique, per totam Angliam, à tempore quo Roma primo fundata fuit, et civitatem Lundoniæ, eodem tempore fundatam, talem debere habere libertatem per totam Angliam, et ratione civitatis privilegiatæ quæ olim metropolis fuit et caput regni, et ratione antiquitatis. Palgrave inclines to think that London never formed part of any kingdom of the Heptarchy. Introduction to Rot. Cur. Regis. p. 95. But this seems to imply a republican city in the midst of so many royal states, which seems hardly probable. Certainly it seems strange, though I cannot explain it away, that the capital of England should have fallen, as we generally suppose, to the small and obscure kingdom of Essex. Winchester, indeed, may be considered as having become afterwards the capital during the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, so far as that it was for the most part the residence of our kings. But London was always more populous.
[n] Drake, the historian of York, maintains that London was less populous, about the time of the Conquest, than that city; and quotes Hardynge, a writer of Henry V.'s age, to prove that the interior part of the former was not closely built. Eboracum, p. 91. York however does not appear to have contained more than 10,000 inhabitants at the accession of the Conqueror; and the very exaggerations as to the populousness of London prove that it must have far exceeded that number. Fitz-Stephen, the contemporary biographer of Thomas à Becket, tells us of 80,000 men capable of bearing arms within its precincts; where however his translator, Pegge, suspects a mistake of the MS. in the numerals. And this, with similar hyperboles, so imposed on the judicious mind of Lord Lyttelton, that, finding in Peter of Blois the inhabitants of London reckoned at quadraginta millia, he has actually proposed to read quadringenta. Hist. Henry II., vol. iv. ad finem. It is hardly necessary to observe that the condition of agriculture and internal communication would not have allowed half that number to subsist.
The subsidy-roll of 1377, published in the Archæologia, vol. vii., would lead to a conclusion that all the inhabitants of London did not even then exceed 35,000. If this be true, they could not have amounted, probably, to so great a number two or three centuries earlier. But the numbers given in that document have been questioned as to Norwich upon very plausible grounds, and seem rather suspicious in the present instance. [[Note V.]]
[o] This seditious, or at least refractory character of the Londoners, was displayed in the tumult headed by William Longbeard in the time of Richard I., and that under Constantine in 1222, the patriarchs of a long line of city demagogues. Hoveden, p. 765. M. Paris, p. 154.
[p] Hoveden's expressions are very precise, and show that the share taken by the citizens of London (probably the mayor and aldermen) in this measure was no tumultuary acclamation, but a deliberate concurrence with the nobility. Comes Johannes, et fere omnes episcopi, et comites Angliæ eâdem die intraverunt Londonias; et in crastino prædictus Johannes frater regis, et archiepiscopus Rothomagensis, et omnes episcopi, et comites et barones, et cives Londonienses cum illis convenerunt in atrio ecclesiæ S. Pauli.... Placuit ergo Johanni fratri regis, et omnibus episcopis, et comitibus et baronibus regni, et civibus Londoniarum, quod cancellarius ille deponeretur, et deposuerunt eum, &c. p. 701.
[q] The reader may consult, for a more full account of the English towns before the middle of the thirteenth century, Lyttelton's History of Henry II. vol. ii. p. 174; and Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.