“Si un étranger apporte son pain ou son vin dans la ville pour les y mettre en sûreté, et qu’ensuite un différend survienne entre son seigneur et les hommes de cette commune, il aura quinze jours pour vendre son pain et son vin dans la ville et emporter l’argent, à moins qu’il n’ait forfait ou ne soit complice de quelque forfaiture.
“Si l’évêque de Soissons amène par mégarde dans la ville un homme qui ait forfait envers un membre de cette commune, après qu’on lui aura remontré que c’est l’un des ennemis de la commune, il pourra l’emmener cette fois; mais ne le ramènera en aucune manière, si ce n’est avec l’aveu de ceux qui ont charge de maintenir la commune.
“Toute forfaiture, hormis l’infraction de commune et la vieille haine, sera punie d’une amende de cinq sous.”
It would be easy to add other examples of these early covenants between the towns and their seigneurs: but enough seems to have been said, to illustrate the line of argument adopted in the text. There is no single point in all mediæval history of more importance than the manner in which the towns assumed their municipal form; and none in which the gradual progress of the popular liberties can be more securely traced. But all these compromises imply a long apprenticeship to freedom before the “master’s” dignity was attained: and great is the debt of gratitude we owe to those whose sufferings and labour have enabled us to understand and to record their struggles.
APPENDIX B.
TITHE.
The importance of this subject requires a full statement of details: the following are all the passages in the Anglosaxon law which have reference to this impost.
“I Æðelstán the king, with the counsel of Wulfhelm, archbishop, and of my other bishops, make known to the reeves in each town, and beseech you, in God’s name, and by all his saints, and also by my friendship, that ye first of my own goods render the tithes both of live stock and of the year’s increase, even as they may most justly be either measured or counted or weighed out; and let the bishops then do the like from their own property, and my ealdormen and reeves the same. And I will, that the bishop and the reeves command it to all who are bound to obey them, so that it be done at the right term. Let us bear in mind how Jacob the Patriarch spoke: ‘Decimas et hostias pacificas offeram tibi;’ and how Moses spake in God’s law: ‘Decimas et primitias non tardabis offerre Domino.’ It is for us to reflect how awfully it is declared in the books: if we will not render the tithes to God, that he will take from us the nine parts when we least expect; and, moreover, we have the sin in addition thereto.” Æðelst. i. Thorpe, i. 195.
There is a varying copy of this circular, or whatever it is, coinciding as to the matter, but differing widely in the words. Thorpe, i. 195. The nature of the sanction is obvious: it is the old, unjustifiable application of the Jewish practice, which fraud or ignorance had made generally current in Europe. The tithe mentioned by Æðelstán is the prædial tithe, or that of increase of the fruits of the earth, and increase of the young of cattle.
The next passage is in the law of Eádmund, about 940. He says: “Tithe we enjoin to every Christian man on his christendom, and church-shot, and Rome-fee and plough-alms. And if any one will not do it, be he excommunicate.” Thorpe, i. 244.
“Let every tithe be paid to the old minster to which the district belongs; and let it be so paid both from a thane’s inland and from geneátland, as the plough traverses it. But if there be any thane who on his bookland has a church, at which there is a burial-place, let him give the third part of his own tithe to his church. If any one have a church at which there is not a burial-place, then of the nine parts let him give his priest what he will.... And let tithe of every young be paid by Pentecost, and of the fruits of the earth by the equinox ... and if any one will not pay the tithe, as we have ordained, let the king’s reeve go thereto, and the bishop’s, and the mass-priest of the minster, and take by force a tenth part for the minster whereunto it is due; and let them assign to him the ninth part; and let the eight parts be divided into two, and let the landlord seize half, the bishop half, be it a king’s man or a thane’s.” Eádg. i. § 1, 2, 3. Thorpe, i. 262. Cnut, i. § 8. 11. Thorpe, i. 366.