Two points necessarily arrest our attention in considering the case of every city; the first of these is the internal organization, on which the freedom of the inhabitants itself depends: the second is the relation the city stands in to the public law, that is to say, its particular position toward the state. The Anglosaxon laws do contain a few provisions destined to regulate the intercourse between the townspeople and the country: for example we may refer to the laws which regulate the number of mints allowed to each city. In the tenth century it was settled that each burh might have one,—and from this very fact it is clear that “burh” was then a legal term having a fixed and definite meaning,—while a few cities were favoured with a larger number. The names of the places so distinguished are preserved, and from the regulations affecting them in this respect we may form a conclusion as to their comparative importance. Under Æðelstân we find the following arrangement:—At Canterbury were to be seven moneyers; four for the king, two for the bishop, one for the abbot. At Rochester three; two for the king, one for the bishop. At London eight. At Winchester six. At Lewes, Hampton, Wareham, Exeter and Shaftsbury, two moneyers to each town. At Hastings, Chichester, and at the other burhs, one to each town[[825]].
It is right to observe that all these places are in Æðelstán’s peculiar kingdom, south of the Thames, and that his legislation takes no notice of the Mercian, Eastanglian or Northumbrian territories. But half a century later, it was ordered that no man should have a mint save the king, and that any person who wrought money without the precincts of a burh, should be liable to the penalties of forgery. The inconvenience of this was however too great, and by the ‘Instituta Londoniae,’ each principal city (“summus portus”) was permitted to have three, and every other burh one moneyer[[826]].
Again, the difficulty of guarding against theft, especially in respect to cattle, the universal vice of a semi-civilized people,—led to more than one attempt to prohibit all buying and selling except in towns; and this of itself seems to imply that they were numerously distributed over the face of the country. But this provision, however beneficial to the lords of such towns, was too contrary to the general convenience, and seems to have been soon relinquished as impracticable. The enactments on the subject appear to have been abrogated almost as soon as made[[827]]: but the machinery by which it was proposed to carry their provisions into effect are of considerable interest. In each burh, according to its size, a certain number of the townspeople were to be elected, who might act as witnesses in every case of bargain and sale,—whom both parties on occasion would be bound to call to warranty, and whose decision or veredictum in the premises would be final. It was intended that in every larger burh (“summus portus”) there should be thirty-three such elective officers, and in every hundred twelve or more, by whose witness every bargain was to be sanctioned, whether in a burh or a wapentake. They were to be bound by oath to the faithful discharge of their duty. The law of Eádgár says: “Let every one of them, on his first election as a witness, take an oath that, neither for profit, nor fear, nor favour, will he ever deny that which he did witness, nor affirm aught but what he did see and hear. And let there be two or three such sworn men as witnesses to every bargain[[828]].”
The words of this law seem to imply that the appointment was to be a permanent one; and it is only natural to suppose that these “geǽðedan men,” jurati, or jurors, would become by degrees a settled urban magistracy. We see in them the germ of a municipal institution, a sworn corporation, assessors in some degree of the geréfa or the later mayor[[829]]. They were evidently the “boni et legales homines,” the “testes credibiles,” “ða gódan men,” “dohtigan men,” and so forth, of various documents, the “Scabini,” “Schoppen” or “Echevins,” so familiar to us in the history of mediæval towns, which had any pretensions to freedom. They necessarily constituted a magistracy, and gradually became the centre round which the rights and privileges of the municipality clustered.
It is to be regretted that we have so little record of the internal organization of these municipal bodies, which must nevertheless have existed during the flourishing period of the Anglosaxon rule. Of Ealdormen in the towns, and in our modern sense, there naturally is, and could be, no trace: that dignity was very different from anything like the geréfscipe of a city, however wealthy and influential this might be: but the ‘Instituta Londoniae’ mention one or two subordinate officers: in these, beside the Portgeréfa, Burhgeréfa or Wícgeréfa,—names which all appear to denote one officer, the “praepositus civitatis,”—we are told of a Túngeréfa, who had a right to enquire into the payment of the customs[[830]]; and also of a Caccepol, catch-poll or beadle, who appears to have been the collector[[831]].
The archæologist, not less than the historian, has reason to lament that no remains from the past survive to teach us the local distribution of an Anglosaxon town. Yet some few hints are nevertheless supplied which enable us to form a faint image of what it may have been. It is probable that the different trades occupied different portions of the area, which portions were named from the occupations of their inhabitants. In the middle ages these several parts of the city were often fortified and served as strongholds, behind whose defences, or sallying forth from which, the crafts fought the battle of democracy against the burgesses or the neighbouring lords. We have evidence that streets, which afterwards did, and do yet, bear the names of particular trades or occupations, were equally so designated before the Norman conquest, in several of our English towns. It is thus only that we can account for such names as Fellmonger, Horsemonger and Fleshmonger, Shoewright and Shieldwright, Tanner and Salter Streets, and the like, which have long ceased to be exclusively tenanted by the industrious pursuers of those several avocations. Let us place a cathedral and a guildhall with its belfry in the midst of these, surround them with a circuit of walls and gates, and add to them the common names of North, South, East and West, or Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate Streets,—here and there let us fix the market and its cross, the dwellings of the bishop and his clergy, the houses of the queen and perhaps the courtiers, of the principal administrative officers and of the leading burghers[[832]],—above all, let us build a stately fortress, to overawe or to defend the place, to be the residence of the geréfa and his garrison, and the site of the courts of justice,—and we shall have at least a plausible representation of a principal Anglosaxon city. Much as it is to be regretted that we now possess no ancient maps or plans which would have thrown a valuable light upon this subject, yet the guidance here and there supplied by the names of the streets themselves, and the foundations of ancient buildings yet to be traced in them, coupled with fragmentary notices in the chroniclers, do sometimes enable us to catch glimpses as it were of this history of the past. The giant march of commercial prosperity has crumbled into dust almost every trace of what our brave and good forefathers looked upon with pardonable pride: but the principles which animated them, still in a great degree regulate the lives of us their descendants; and if we exult in the conviction that our free municipal institutions are the safeguard of some of our most cherished liberties, let us remember those to whom we owe them, and study to transmit unimpaired to our posterity an inheritance which we have derived from so remote an ancestry.
[754]. Bell. Gall. v. 21. Caesar stormed it, and had therefore good means of knowing what it was. His further information was probably derived from his British ally Comius. Strabo gives a very similar account: πόλεις δ’ αὐτων εἰσιν οἱ δρυμοι’· περιφράξαντες γὰρ δένδρεσι καταβεβλημένοις εὐρυχωρῆ κύκλον καλυβοποιοῦνται, καὶ τὰ βοσκήματα κατκσταθμέυουσιν, οὐ πρὸς πολὺν χρόνον. lib. iv.
[755]. “Hominum est infinita multitudo.” Bell. Gall. v. 12. Εἶναι δὲ καὶ πολυάνθρωπον τὴν νῆσον ... βασιλεῖς τε καὶ δυνάστας πολλοὺς ἔχειν, καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον εἰρηνικῶς διακεῖσθαι. Diodor. Sicul. v. 21.
[756]. Οὐενέτοι ... χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ. Strabo, lib. iv.