The city and liberties of London were not wholly under the jurisdiction of the several wardmotes and their aldermen. Landholders, secular and ecclesiastical, possessed their exclusive sokes, or jurisdictions, in parts of both. One of these has left its name to the ward of Portsoken. The prior of the Holy Trinity, in right of this district, ranked as an alderman, and held a regular wardmote. The wards of Farringdon are denominated from a family of that name, who held a part of them by hereditary right as their territorial franchise. These sokes gave way so gradually before the power of the citizens, with whom, as may be supposed, a perpetual conflict was maintained, that there were nearly thirty of them in the early part of the reign of Henry III., and upwards of twenty in that of Edward I. With the exception of Portsoken, they were not commensurate with the city wards, and we find the juries of the wards, in the third of Edward I., presenting the sokes as liberties enjoyed by private persons or ecclesiastical corporations, to the detriment of the crown. But, though the lords of these sokes trenched materially on the exclusive privileges of the city, it is remarkable that, no condition but inhabitancy being required in the thirteenth century for civic franchises, both they and their tenants were citizens, having individually a voice in municipal affairs, though exempt from municipal jurisdiction. I have taken most of this paragraph from a valuable though short notice of the state of London in the thirteenth century, published in the fourth volume of the Archæological Journal (p. 273).
The inference which suggests itself from these facts is that London, for more than two centuries after the Conquest, was not so exclusively a city of traders, a democratic municipality, as we have been wont to conceive. And as this evidently extends back to the Anglo-Saxon period, it both lessens the improbability that the citizens bore at times a part in political affairs, and exhibits them in a new light, as lords and tenants of lords, as well as what of course they were in part, engaged in foreign and domestic commerce. It will strike every one, in running over the list of mayors and sheriffs in the thirteenth century, that a large proportion of the names are French; indicating, perhaps, that the territorial proprietors whose sokes were intermingled with the city had influence enough, through birth and wealth, to obtain an election. The general polity, Saxon and Norman, was aristocratic; whatever infusion there might be of a more popular scheme of government, and much certainly there was, could not resist, even if resistance had been always the people's desire, the joint predominance of rank, riches, military habits, and common alliance, which the great baronage of the realm enjoyed. London, nevertheless, from its populousness, and the usual character of cities, was the centre of a democratic power, which, bursting at times into precipitate and needless tumult easily repressed by force, kept on its silent course till, near the end of the thirteenth century, the rights of the citizens and burgesses in the legislature were constitutionally established. [1848.]
If Fitz-Stephen rightly informs us that in London there were 126 parish churches, besides 13 conventual ones, we may naturally think the population much underrated at 40,000. But the fashion of building churches in cities was so general, that we cannot apply a standard from modern times. Norwich contained sixty parishes.
Even under Henry II., as we find by Fitz-Stephen, the prelates and nobles had town houses. "Ad hæc omnes fere episcopi, abbates, et magnates Angliæ, quasi cives et municipes sunt urbis Lundoniæ; sua ibi habentes ædificia præclara; ubi se recipiunt, ubi divites impensas faciunt, ad concilia, ad conventus celebres in urbem evocati, à domino rege vel metropolitano suo, seu propriis tracti negotiis." The eulogy of London by this writer is very curious; its citizens were thus early distinguished by their good eating, to which they added amusements less congenial to later liverymen, hawking, cock-fighting, and much more. The word cockney is not improbably derived from cocayne, the name of an imaginary land of ease and jollity.
The city of London within the walls was not wholly built, many gardens and open spaces remaining. And the houses were never more than a single story above the ground-floor, according to the uniform type of English dwellings in the twelfth and following centuries. On the other hand, the liberties contained many inhabitants; the streets were narrower than since the fire of 1666; and the vast spaces now occupied by warehouses might have been covered by dwelling-houses. Forty thousand, on the whole, seems rather a low estimate for these two centuries; but it is impossible to go beyond the vaguest conjecture.
The population of Paris in the middle ages has been estimated with as much diversity as that of London. M. Dulaure, on the basis of the taille in 1313, reckons the inhabitants at 49,110.[g] But he seems to have made unwarrantable assumptions where his data were deficient. M. Guérard, on the other hand (Documens Inédits, 1841), after long calculations, brings the population of the city in 1292 to 215,861. This is certainly very much more than we could assign to London, or probably any European city; and, in fact, his estimate goes on two arbitrary postulates. The extent of Paris in that age, which is tolerably known, must be decisive against so high a population.[h]
The Winton Domesday, in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London, furnishes some important information as to that city, which, as well as London, does not appear in the great Domesday Book. This record is of the reign of Henry I. Winchester had been, as is well known, the capital of the Anglo-Saxon kings. It has been observed that "the opulence of the inhabitants may possibly be gathered from the frequent recurrence of the trade of goldsmith in it, and the populousness of the town from the enumeration of the streets." (Cooper's Public Records, i. 226.) Of these we find sixteen. "In the petition from the city of Winchester to king Henry VI. in 1450, no less than nine of these streets are mentioned as having been ruined." As York appears to have contained about 10,000 inhabitants under the Confessor, we may probably compute the population of Winchester at nearly twice that number.
The Lords' committee extenuate the presumption that either knights or burgesses sat in any of these parliaments. The "cunctarum regni civitatum pariter et burgorum potentiores," mentioned by Wikes in 1269 or 1270, they suppose to have been invited in order to witness the ceremony of translating the body of Edward the Confessor to his tomb newly prepared in Westminster Abbey (p. 161). It is evident, indeed, that this assembly acted afterwards as a parliament in levying money. But the burgesses are not mentioned in this. It cannot, nevertheless, be presumed from the silence of the historian, who had previously informed us of their presence at Westminster, that they took no part. It may be perhaps, more doubtful whether they were chosen by their constituents or merely summoned as "potentiores."