Mediæval London, Volume 2: Ecclesiastical

by Walter Besant

The long struggle between the oligarchic and the popular party, which was carried on without cessation for at least two hundred years, was at its acutest and its worst in the thirteenth century. It must be noted here because it exercised great influence in the development of municipal institutions. To this point I will return after we have considered the leading features of the faction struggle complicated by the machinations of the King.

We must note, at the outset, that the various Charters conferring and confirming old and new rights did not lay down laws for the government of the City; nor was it contemplated that the City was to be governed by the craftsmen. By Saxon custom every man was a lord or a dependant upon a lord; yet there was a Folk Mote: by Norman rule every townsman was under an over-lord and every countryman was under the Lord of the Manor; yet the Folk Mote was continued. That the craftsmen of the town were to be the rulers of the town; that they were to have a voice, as we understand it, in the management of the City was considered by the “Barons” of the City, the Aldermen, the wealthy merchants and the notables as a thing to be resisted in every way possible. Yet, to repeat, there was the Folk Mote with the lingering memory of a time when the people were summoned and shouted their approval or their refusal.

Again, we have been accustomed for so long to consider London as one of the greatest and most important cities of the world that we fail to realise her position in the twelfth or thirteenth century, as compared with certain other cities of Western Europe, long since sunk into decay and insignificance.

At that time the cities of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, now so shrunken and so deserted, were, in point of population, at least twice as great as London, while their trade and wealth were very much greater, even in proportion, and the liberties enjoyed by their citizens were such as London did not dream of until fired by their example. The trade between the Port of London and these towns, especially Bruges, made the citizens acquainted with these liberties as well as this wealth. It is difficult not to connect the newly-born ambitions and aspirations of the craftsmen of London with the liberties acquired by those of the Flemish towns.

London was governed, as we have seen, by the owners of the land; they were presently joined by the richer merchants; but they remained few in number. And they ruled the City in their own interests. We have seen how valuable was the Charter of Henry the First, how it assisted the City to advance, how it enabled the merchants to conduct their trade with greater security and ease, how it gave the citizens the right of electing their own sheriffs and their own justiciar, who were to be appointed by the citizens. What this meant, I take it, was that the Aldermen nominated the sheriffs, and their election by the people took the form of an assent declared at a noisy and tumultuous Folk Mote. It certainly could not be, and was not, an election by the citizens as we understand it. That the governing body had the power of election was a concession of the highest importance to them. The privileges of freedom from toll, etc., were again of enormous value to the merchants, but only indirectly to the craftsmen; now craftsmen understand direct advantage only. In a word, the Charters did not interfere with the government of the City, which remained in the hands of the small company of Aldermen. The Charters were intended to advance the trade and the prosperity of the City, not to confer new liberties upon the working man. Yet the craftsman began to understand the possibilities open to him.

The struggle begins, so far as history knows of it, with the brief and stormy episode of William Longbeard, shortly before the granting of the Commune. His is the first articulate voice heard among the murmurs of popular discontent. Perhaps there were other Hampdens before him whose dust lies beneath our feet, and whose blood like his tinged the earth of Smithfield, but we do not know of them.

Towards the close of the twelfth century change was impending. Guilds there were. As yet, they were not, as a rule, trading, but religious societies. As we have seen, in 1186, Henry the Second fined as many as eighteen for having been incorporated without license. What can this indicate but that the regulation of trade was contemplated by these guilds as well as the charitable and religious objects for which such associations were at first founded?

Even more important than the regulations of trade is the great fact that by means of their guilds the people, who had hitherto been inarticulate and powerless, were now becoming able to speak and to listen and to act.

Their grievances seem to have been at first founded rather on suspicion than on proof. When the City was taxed, the assessors were the Aldermen; the craftsmen had to pay what they were ordered to pay; no one knew what the Aldermen themselves paid. They were therefore, very naturally, accused of shifting the whole burden of taxation from their own shoulders to those of the craftsmen. But a grievance of suspicion, among a rude and ignorant people, is as dangerous as a grievance founded on fact. Another grievance was the poll tax, in which the poor men paid as much as the rich men. And a standard grievance in every industrial city, and in every age, is the question of wages and hours.

Presently the Deliverer arose—who yet was to prove no Deliverer.