We have now arrived at that point of our enquiry at which it behoves us to bestow our attention upon the origin and growth of towns among the Anglosaxons; and to this end we shall find it expedient to carry our researches to a still earlier period, and investigate, though in a slight degree, the condition of their British and Roman predecessors in this respect. At first sight it would seem natural to suppose that where a race had long possessed the outward means and form of civilization,—a race among whom great military and civil establishments had been founded, who had clustered round provincial cities, the seats of a powerful government, and whose ports and harbours had been the scenes of active commerce,—there need be little question as to the origin of towns and cities among those who conquered and dispossessed them. It might be imagined that the later comers would have nothing more to do than seize upon the seats from which they had expelled their predecessors, and apply to their own uses the established instruments of convenience, of wealth or safety. Further enquiry however proves that this induction would be erroneous, and that the Saxons did not settle in the Roman towns. The reason of this is not difficult to assign: a city is the result of a system of cultivation, and it is of no use whatever to a race whose system differs entirely from that of the race by whom it was founded. The Curia and the temple, the theatre and thermae, house joined to house and surrounded by a dense quadrangular wall, crowding into a defined and narrow space the elements of civilization, are unintelligible to him whose whole desire centres in the undisturbed enjoyment of his éðel, and unlimited command of the mark. The buildings of a centralized society are as little calculated for his use as their habits and institutions: as well might it have been proposed to him to substitute the jurisdiction of the praetor urbanus for the national tribunal of the folcmót. The spirit of life is totally different: as different are all the social institutions, and all the details which arise from these and tend to confirm and perpetuate them.
Nevertheless we cannot doubt that the existence of the British and Roman cities did materially influence the mode and nature of the German settlements; and without some slight sketch of the growth and development of the former, we shall find it impossible to form a clear notion of the conditions under which the Anglosaxon polity was formed.
If we may implicitly trust the report of Caesar, a British city in his time differed widely from what we understand by that term. A spot difficult of access from the trees which filled it, surrounded with a rampart and a ditch, and which offered a refuge from the sudden incursions of an enemy, could be dignified by the name of an oppidum, and form the metropolis of Cassivelaunus[[754]]. Such also among the Slavonians were the vici, encircled by an abbatis[abbatis] of timber, or at most a paling, proper to repel not only an unexpected attack, but even capable of resisting for a time the onset of practised forces: such in our own time have been found the stockades of the Burmese, and the Pah of the New Zealander: and if our skilful engineers have experienced no contemptible resistance, and the lives of many brave and disciplined men have been sacrificed in their reduction, we may admit that even the oppida of Cassivelaunus, or Caratac or Galgacus, might, as fortresses, have serious claims to the attention of a Roman commander. But such an oppidum is no town or city in the sense in which those words are contemplated throughout this chapter: by a town I certainly intend a place enclosed in some manner, and even fortified: but much more those who dwell together in such a place, and the means by which they either rule themselves, or are ruled. I mean a metaphysical as well as a physical unit,—not exclusively what was a collection of dwellings or a fortification, but a centre of trade and manufacture and civilization.
If the Romans found none such, at least they left them, in every part of Britain. The record of their gradual and successive advance shows that, partly with a politic view of securing their conquests, partly with the necessary aim of conciliating their soldiery, they did establish numerous municipia and coloniae here, as well as military stations which in time became the nuclei of towns.
It is however scarcely possible that Caesar and Strabo can be strictly accurate in their reports, or that there were from the first only such towns in Britain as these authors have described. It is not consonant to experience that a thickly peopled and peaceful country[[755]] should long be without cities. A commercial people[[756]] always have some settled stations for the collection and interchange of commodities, and fixed establishments for the regulation of trade. Caesar himself tells us that the buildings of the Britons were very numerous, and that they bore a resemblance to those of the Gauls[[757]], whose cities were assuredly considerable. Moreover a race so conversant with the management of horses as to use armed chariots for artillery, are not likely to have been without an extensive system of roads, and where there are roads, towns will not long be wanting. Hence when, less than eighty years after the return of the Romans to Britain, and scarcely forty after the complete subjugation of the island by Agricola, Ptolemy tells us of at least fifty-six cities in existence here[[758]], we may reasonably conclude that they were not all due to the efforts of Roman civilization.
Caesar says indeed nothing of London, yet it is difficult to believe that this was an unimportant place, even in his day. It was long the principal town of the Cantii, whom the Roman general describes as the most polished of the inhabitants of Britain; and as we know that there was an active commercial intercourse between the eastern coast of England and Gaul, it is at least probable that a station, upon a great river at a safe yet easy distance from the sea, was not unknown to the foreign merchants who traded to our shores[[759]]. One hundred and sixteen years later it could be described as a city famous in a high degree for the resort of merchants and for traffic[[760]]: but of these years one hundred had been spent in peace and in the natural development of their resources by the Britons, undisturbed by Roman ambition; and we have therefore ample right to infer that from the very first Cair Lunden had been a place of great commercial importance. The Romans on their return found and kept it so, although they did not establish a colonia there. The first place which received this title with all its corresponding advantages was Camelodunum, probably the British Cair Colun, now Colchester in Essex[[761]].
As the settlement of the nations, and their reduction under a centralizing system, followed the victories of the legions, municipia and coloniae arose in every province, the seats of garrisons and the residences of military and civil governors: while as civilization extended, the Britons themselves, adopting the manners and following the example of their masters, multiplied the number of towns upon all the great lines of internal communication. It is difficult now to give from Roman authorities only a complete list of these towns; many names which we find in the itineraria and similar documents, being merely post-stations or points where subordinate provincial authorities were located; but the names of fifty-six towns have been already quoted from Ptolemy, and even tradition may be of some service to us on this subject[[762]]. Nennius sums up with patriotic pride the names of thirty-four principal cities which adorned Britain under his forefathers, and many of these we can yet identify: amongst them are London, Bristol, Canterbury, Colchester, Cirencester, Chichester, Gloucester, Worcester, Wroxeter, York, Silchester, Lincoln, Leicester, Doncaster, Caermarthen, Carnarvon, Winchester, Porchester, Grantchester, Norwich, Carlisle, Chester, Caerleon on Usk, Manchester and Dorchester[[763]]. To these from other sources we may add Sandwich, Dover, Rochester, Nottingham, Exeter, Bath, Bedford, Aylesbury and St. Alban’s.
Whatever the origin of these towns may have been, it is easy to show that many of them comprised a Roman population: the very walls by which some of them are still surrounded, offer conclusive evidence of this; while in the neighbourhood of others, coins and inscriptions, the ruins of theatres, villas, baths, and other public or private buildings, attest either the skill and luxury of the conquerors, or the aptness to imitate of the conquered[[764]]. But a much more important question arises; viz. how many of them were ruled freely, like the cities of the old country, by a municipal body constituted in the ancient form: what provision, in short, the Romans made or permitted for the education of their British subjects in the manly career of citizenship and the dignity of self-government[[765]].
The constitution of a provincial city of the empire, in the days when the republic still possessed virtue and principle, was of this description, at all events from the period of the Social, Marsic or Italian war, when the cities of Italy wrested isopolity, or at least isotely, from Rome. The state consisted of the whole body of the citizens, without distinction, having a general voice in the management of their own internal affairs. The administrative functions however resided in a privileged class of those citizens, commonly called Curiales, Decuriones, Ordo Decurionum (or sometimes Ordo alone), and occasionally Senatus. They were in fact to the whole body of the citizens what the Senatus under the Emperors was to the citizens of Rome[[766]], and their rights and privileges seem in general to have varied very much as did those of the higher body. They were hereditary, but, when occasion demanded an increase of their numbers, self-elected. Out of this college of Decuriones the Magistratus or supreme executive government proceeded. In the better days I believe these were always freely chosen for one year, by the whole community, but exclusively from among the members of the Ordo: and after Tiberius at Rome transferred the elections from the Comitia to the Senate, the Decuriones in the provinces may have become the sole electors, as they were the only persons capable of being elected. The Magistratus had the supreme jurisdiction, and were the completion of the communal system: they bore different names in different cities, but usually those of Duumviri or Quatuorviri, from their number. Sometimes, but very rarely, they were named Consules. In fact the general outline of this constitution resembled as much as possible that of Rome itself, which was only the head of a confederation embracing all the cities of Italy.
A somewhat similar arrangement was introduced into the cities of the various countries which, under the name of provinces, were brought within the influence of the Roman power: only that in these the communal organization was throughout subordinated to the regulation and control of the Consularis, the Legatus, Procurator, and other officers military and fiscal, who administered the affairs of the province. A principal point of distinction between the free communities of Italy and the dependent provincial corporations lay in this: that in the latter, the magistrates were indeed elected by the Ordo or Curia, but upon the nomination of the Roman governor: their jurisdiction in suits was consequently very limited, while political functions were for the most part confined to the civil and military officers of the empire.