London Before the Conquest

by W. R. Lethaby

Bridge Ward is a narrow strip containing the Bridge Street up to the cross of Lombard Street. Bishopsgate Ward, beginning at this same crossways, goes all the way to Bishopsgate, the ward street passing through its midst.

Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street furnish the midrib to Langbourne Ward[141] in just as obvious a way. Stow thought that Langbourne Ward was called from a stream, but this has been shown to be untenable for physical reasons (see [p. 48]); and the plan of the wards shows instantly that here was no water-course, like the Walbrook, dividing wards, but a street passing through the midst of a ward. While deriving this ward’s name from a brook, Stow says that Lombard Street was so called of the Longobard merchants about 1300. I find that the street was called Langbourne Strate at the end of the thirteenth century;[142] and in a charter of Matilda to Holy Trinity, 1108-18, appears the Church of St. Edmund in Longboard Strete. The first mention I can find of the ward is also of the twelfth century; this is a demise by “Geoffrey, Alderman of the Ward of Langebord,” of land in Lime Street.[143] It is evident from this that the name of the street and the ward was originally one and the same—Langbard, Longbord, or Longford, as it occasionally appears. The street was written “Lumbard Strete” in 1319.[144]

The St. Paul’s documents show that important Lombards were resident in London early in the twelfth century, and they probably gave their name to the ward and street; two of these were Meinbod and his son Picot the Lombard. In Paris there is a Lombard Street, and other cities have the name. And the word is written Langeberde in old English.

Cornhill Ward, Cheap Ward, and the old Newgate Ward are just as clearly three wards strung on the street which respectively threads them in passing to the west gate, and properly takes the name of each ward in passing through it.

Lime Street and Aldgate Wards lie over Leadenhall (the old Aldgate) Street; from the look of it we might suppose that Lime Street Ward was formerly part of Aldgate Ward, as the division line is here formed by the street which gives its name to the ward. The backbone of Tower Ward is Great Tower Street, which passes into Billingsgate Street as East Cheap, and on westward as Candlewick Street. Coleman Street threads the ward of the same name, which is possibly derived from the Coleman named on [p. 83], and Cripplegate and Aldersgate Wards are formed on the ancient streets which went to those gates.

This examination of the forms of the wards in relation to the ancient streets which they overlie is enough to prove irresistibly that the main streets of the city existed before the wards, and that these wards originated not as “private property,” but as units of population inhabiting the houses along those streets, like so many villages or townships. These streets, in turn, however long and unbroken, evidently bore different names according to the wards they passed through.

The study of the wards might be carried further in one direction by means of a map on which the boundaries of the parishes, as well as of the wards, were carefully laid down. Although upwards of a hundred parishes can hardly date back so early as the institution of wards, it is possible that certain large parishes may have had an origin identical with the wards,[145] and most of them probably date from before the Conquest. It would be interesting also to compare the boundaries of the suburban parishes with the limits of the suburbs proper as defined by the bars.

It is generally accepted that a parallel holds between the organisation of the city and the shire, the ward and the hundred. “Hundreds and Tithings were part of the primitive Germanic constitution.” Dr. Stubbs has shown that in Domesday several towns figure as hundreds, and the wards of the city of Canterbury were called hundreds. Thus too, I suppose, it arose that the reports of the wards of London were inserted in the Hundred Rolls.

The wards in London most probably represented the groups of citizens belonging to several gilds; they may indeed be identical with the Peace gilds of Athelstane’s enactment, according to which the population were to be enrolled by tens and hundreds in associations for the preservation of peace and the suppression of theft.[146] In accordance with this idea of accounting for every man, we find that even in the thirteenth century no one was to stay in the city for more than two nights “unless he finds two sureties and so puts himself in frankpledge.” The aldermen were responsible for their wards,[147] and every hosteller was likewise responsible for his guest.[148] Dr. Maitland suggests that the Aldermen were the military captains of the burgmen. It is certain that the defence of the town gates was assigned to the men of the several wards.

The wards, then, were in the main organisations for the executive government, the ordering and policing of the city. “The ward-mote is so called as being the meeting together of all the inhabitants of a ward in presence of its head, the alderman, or else his deputy, for the correction of defaults, the removal of nuisances, and the promotion of the well-being of each ward.”[149] This function, indeed, is explained by the very name “ward,” and the “frankpledge” was a survival of primitive adoption into the tribe. Some recognition of this is made by Holinshed, who says the city is divided into twenty-six wards or “tribes.” It even seems possible that the wards may at first have been formed by symmetrical numerical units such as, say, a hundred freemen; or the space within the walls may have been divided up into twenty or twenty-four parts in such a way as to allow for density of population. Excavations in the city have shown that the population clustered most thickly along the river and in the great streets, and the wards are much more congested and regular in the central part by the bridge than nearer the walls: the old churches also seem to gravitate towards the same nucleus.