A large number of these were no doubt merely castles or fortresses, and some of them, we are told, received stipendiary garrisons, that is literally, king’s troops, contradistinguished on the one hand from the free landowners who might be called upon under the hereban to take a turn of duty therein, and on the other from the unfree tenants, part of whose rent may have been paid in service behind the walls. But it is also certain that the shelter and protection of the castle often produced the town, and that in many cases the mere sutler’s camp, formed to supply the needs of the permanent garrison, expanded into a flourishing centre of commerce, guarded by the fortress, and nourished by the military road or the beneficent river. It is also probable enough that on many of their sites towns, or at least royal vills, had previously existed, and that the population whom war and its concomitant misery had dispossessed, returned to their ancient seats, when quiet seemed likely to be permanently restored.
It cannot be doubted that those who were already congregated, or for the sake of security or gain did afterwards collect in such places, were subject to the authority of the burhgeréfa or castellan, and that thus the burh by degrees became a Palatium or Pfalz in the German sense of the word. In truth burh does originally denote a castle, not a town; and the latter only comes to be designated by the word, because a town could hardly be conceived without a castle,—a circumstance which favours the account here given of their origin in general.
It is certain that the free institutions which have been described in an earlier part of this chapter, could not be found in towns, the right to which must be considered to have been based on conquest, or which arose around a settlement purely military. In such places we can expect to find no mint, except as matter of grant or favour: if there was watch and ward, it was for the fortress, not the townsmen: toll there might be—but for the lord to receive: jurisdiction,—but for the lord to exercise: market,—but for the lord to profit by: armed militia,—but for the lord to command. Yet while the lord was the king, and the town was, through its connexion with him, brought into close union with the general state, its own condition was probably easy, and its civic relations not otherwise than beneficial to the republic. In such circumstances a town is only one part of a system; nor is a royal landlord compelled to rack the tenants of a single estate for a fitting subsistence: the shortcoming of one is balanced by the superfluity of other sources of wealth. The owner of the small flock is ever the closest shearer. But even on this account, when once the towns became seigneurial, their own state was not so happy, nor was their relation to the country at large beneficial to the full extent. But all general observations of this character do not explain or account for the separate cases. It is clear that everything which we have to say upon this subject will depend entirely upon what we may learn to have been the character of any particular person or class of persons at any given time. The lord or Seigneur may have ruled well; that is, he may have seen that his own best interests were inseparably bound up with the prosperity, the peace and the rational freedom of his dependents; and that both he and they would flourish most, when the mutual well-being was guarded by a harmonious common action, founded upon the least practicable sacrifice of individual interests. Thus he may have contented himself with the legal capitation-tax, or even relinquished it altogether: he may have exacted only moderate and reasonable tolls, trusting wisely to a consequent increase of traffic, and rewarded by a rapid advance in wealth and power: he may have given a just and generous protection in return for submission and alliance; have supported his townsmen in their public buildings, roads, wharves, canals, and other laudable undertakings. Nay, when the re-awakened spirit of self-government grew strong, and the whole mighty mass of mediæval society heaved and tossed with the working of this all-pervading leaven, we have even seen Seigneurs aiding their serf-townsmen to swear and maintain a “Communa,”—that institution so detested and savagely persecuted by popes, barons and bishops,—so hypocritically blamed, but so lukewarmly pursued by kings, who found it their gain to have the people on their side against the nobles[[809]].
But unhappily there is another side to the picture: the lord may have ruled ill, and often did so rule, for class-prejudices and short-sighted selfish views of personal interest drove him to courses fatal to himself and his people. When this was the case, there was but one miserable alternative, revolt, and ruin either for the lord, the city, or both,—in the former case possibly, in the latter always and certainly a grievous loss to the republic. But before this final settlement of the question, how much irreparable mischief, how much of credit and confidence shaken, of raw material wasted and destroyed, of property plundered, of security unsettled, of internecine hostility engendered, class set against class, family against family, man against man! Verily, when we contemplate the misery which such contests caused from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, we could almost join in the cry of the Jacquerie, and wish, with the prædial and urban serfs of old, that the race of Seigneurs had been swept from the face of the earth; did we not know that gold must be tried in the fire, that liberty could grow to a giant’s stature only by passing through a giant’s struggles.
But from this painful school of manhood it pleased the providence of the Almighty to save our forefathers; nor does Anglosaxon history record more than one single instance of those oppressions or of that resistance, which make up so large and wretched a portion of the history of other lands[[810]]. Suffering enough they had to bear, but it was at the hands of invading strangers, not of those who were born beneath the same skies and spake with the same tongue. The power of the national institutions was too general, too deeply rooted, to be shaken by the efforts of a class; nor does it appear that that class itself attempted at any time an undue exercise of authority. One ill-advised duke did indeed raise a fierce rebellion by his misgovernment; but even here national feeling was probably at work, and the Northumbrians rose less against the bad ruler, than the intrusive Westsaxon: the interests of Morcar’s family were more urgent than the crimes of Tostig. Yet these may have been grave, for he was repudiated even by those of his own class, and the strong measure of his deprivation and outlawry was concurred in by his brother Harald.
In addition to the natural mode by which the authority of a lord became established in a town built on his demesne, the privileges of lordship were occasionally transferred from one person to another. Like other royalties, the rights of the crown over taxation, tolls or other revenues, might be made matter of grant. The following document illustrates the manner in which a portion of the seigneurial rights was thus alienated in favour of the bishop of Worcester. It is a grant made by Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd to their friend Werfrið, about the end of the ninth century[[811]].
“To Almighty God, true Unity and holy Trinity in heaven, be praise and glory and rendering of thanks, for all his benefits bestowed upon us! Firstly for whose love, and for St. Peter’s and the church at Worcester, and at the request of Werfrið the bishop, their friend, Æðelrǽd the ealdorman and Æðelflǽd commanded the burh at Worcester to be built, and eke God’s praise to be there upraised. And now they make known by this charter that of all the rights which appertain to their lordship, both in market and in street, within the byrig and without, they grant half to God and St. Peter and the lord of the church; that those who are in the place may be the better provided, that they may thereby in some sort easier aid the brotherhood, and that their remembrance may be the firmer kept in mind, in the place, as long as God’s service is done within the minster. And Werfrið the bishop and his flock have appointed this service, before the daily one, both during their lives and after, to sing at matins, vespers and ‘undernsong,’ the psalm De Profundis, during their lives; and after their death, Laudate Dominum; and every Saturday, in St. Peter’s church, thirty psalms, and a mass for them whether alive or dead. Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd proclaim, that they have thus granted with good-will to God and St. Peter, under witness of Ælfred the king and all the witan in Mercia; excepting that the wain-shilling and load-penny[[812]] are to go to the king’s hand, as they always did, from Saltwíc: but as for everything else, as landfeoh[[813]], fihtwite, stalu, wohceápung, and all the customs from which any fine may arise, let the lord of the church have half of it, for God’s sake and St. Peter’s, as it was arranged about the market and the streets; and without the marketplace, let the bishop enjoy his rights, as of old our predecessors decreed and privileged. And Æðelrǽd and Æðelflǽd did this by witness of Ælfred the king, and by witness of those witan of the Mercians whose names stand written hereafter; and in the name of God Almighty they abjure all their successors never to diminish these alms which they have granted to the church for God’s love and St. Peter’s!”
A valuable instrument is this, and one which supplies matter for reflection in various ways. The royalties conveyed are however alone what must occupy our attention here. These are, a land-tax, paid no doubt from every hide which belonged to the jurisdiction of the burhgeréfa, and which was thus probably levied beyond the city walls, in small outlying hamlets and villages, which were not included in any territorial hundred, but did suit and service to the burhmót. And next we find the lord in possession of what we should now call the police, inflicting fines for breaches of the peace, theft, and contravention of the regulations laid down for the conduct of the market. And this market in Worcester was not the people’s, but the king’s, seeing that not only are the bishop’s rights, beyond its limits, carefully distinguished, but that Æðelred grants half the customs within it, that is, half the tolls and taxes, to the bishop. In this way was an authority established concurrent with the king’s or duke’s, and exercised no doubt by the biscopes geréfa, as the royal right was by the cyninges or ealdormannes burhgeréfa. Nor were its results unfavourable to the prosperity of the city: there is evidence on the contrary that in process of time, the people and their bishop came to a very good understanding, and that the Metropolis of the West grew to be a wealthy, powerful and flourishing place: so much so that, when in the year 1041 Hardacnut attempted to levy some illegal or unpopular tax, the citizens resisted, put the royal commissioners to death, and assumed so determined an attitude of rebellion, that a large force of Húscarlas and Hereban, under the principal military chiefs of England, was found necessary to reduce them. Florence of Worcester, who relates the occurrence in detail[[814]], says that the city was burnt and plundered. From his narrative it seems not improbable that the whole outbreak was connected with the removal of a popular bishop from his see in the preceding year.
There is another important document of nearly the same period as the grant to Werfrið, by which Eádweard the son of Ælfred gave all the royal rights of jurisdiction in Taunton to the see of Winchester[[815]]. He freed the land from every burthen, except the universal three, whether they were royal, fiscal, comitial or other secular taxations: he granted that all the bishop’s men, noble or ignoble, resiant upon the aforesaid land, should have every privilege and right which was enjoyed by the king’s men, resiant in his royal fiscs[[816]], and that all secular jurisdiction should be administered for the bishop’s benefit, as fully as it was elsewhere executed for the king’s. Moreover he attached for ever to Winchester the market-tolls (“villae mercimonium, quod anglice ðæs túnes cýping adpellatur”), together with every civic census, tax or payment. Whatsoever had heretofore been the king’s was henceforth to belong to the bishop of Winchester. And that these were valuable rights, producing a considerable income, must be concluded from the large estates which bishop Denewulf and his chapter thought it advisable to give the king in exchange, and which comprised no less than sixty hides of land in several parcels. The bishops, it is to be presumed, henceforth governed Taunton by their own geréfa, to whom the grant itself must be construed to have conveyed plenary jurisdiction, that is the blut-ban or ius gladii, the supreme criminal as well as civil justice.
These examples will suffice to show in what manner seigneurial rights grew up in certain towns, and how they were exercised. From the account thus given we may also see the difference which existed between such a city and one founded originally upon a system of free gylds. These associations placed the men of London in a position to maintain their own rights both against king and bishop, and indeed it is evident from the ‘Judicia Civitatis’ itself, that the bishops united with the citizens in the establishment of their free communa under Æðelstán. We are not very clearly informed what was the earliest mode of government in London; but, from a law of Hloðhære, it is probable that it was presided over by a royal reeve, in the seventh century. The sixteenth chapter of that prince’s law provides that, when a man of Kent makes any purchase in Lundenwíc, he is to have the testimony of two or three credible men, or of the king’s wícgeréfa[[817]]. In the ninth century, when Kent and its confederation had passed into the hands of the royal family of the Gewissas, London may possibly have vindicated some portion of independence. It had previously lain within the nominal limits at least of the Mercian authority[[818]]: but the victories of Ecgberht and the subsequent invasions of the Northmen destroyed the Mercian power, and in all likelihood left the city to provide for itself and its own freedom. We know that it suffered severely in those invasions, but we have slight record of any attempt to relieve it from their assaults, which might imply an interest in its welfare, on the part of any particular power. In the year 886 however, we learn, Ælfred, victorious on every point, turned his attention to London, whose fortifications he rebuilt, and which he re-annexed to Mercia, now constituted as a duchy under Æðelred[[819]]. On the death of this prince, Eádweard seized Oxford and London into his own hands, and it is reasonable to suppose that he governed these cities by burhgeréfan of his own[[820]]. But very shortly after we find the important document, which I have already mentioned, the so-called ‘Judicia Civitatis,’ or Dooms of London, which proves clearly enough the elasticity of a great trading community, the readiness with which a city like London could recover its strength, and the vigour with which its mixed population could carry out their plans of self-government and independent existence. Henceforward we find the citizens for the most part under portgeréfan or portreeves of their own[[821]], to whom the royal writs are directed, as in counties they are to the sheriffs. We must not however suppose that at this early period constitutional rights were so perfectly settled as to be beyond the possibility of infringement. Circumstances, whose record now escapes us, may sometimes have occurred which abridged the franchise of particular cities: we cannot conclude that the Portgeréfa was always freely elected by the citizens; for in some places we hear of “royal” portreeves[[822]], from which it may be argued either that the king had made the appointment by his own authority, or, what is far from improbable, that he had concurred with the citizens in the election. Moreover the direction of writs to noblemen of high rank, even in London, seems to imply that, on some occasions, either the king had succeeded in seizing the liberties of the city into his own hand, or that the elected officers were sometimes taken from the class of powerful ministerials, having high rank and station in the royal household[[823]]. Where there existed clubs or gylds of the free citizens, we may also believe that similar associations were established by the lords and their dependents, either as a means of balancing the popular power, or at least of sharing in the benefits of an association which secured the rights and position of the free men; and thus, the same document which reveals to us the existence of the “Ingang burhware” or “burghers’ club” of Canterbury, tells us also of the “Cnihta gyld,” or “Sodality of young nobles” in the same city[[824]].