The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0091/00912.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 32KB | 496 lines

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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part XII}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book VIII: The Constitutional History Of England
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part XII

     From the middle of the twelfth century to that of the thirteenth the
traders of England became more and more prosperous.  The towns on the southern
coast exported tin and other metals in exchange for the wines of France; those
on the eastern sent corn to Norway - the Cinque Ports bartered wool against
the stuffs of Flanders. ^w Though bearing no comparison with the cities of
Italy or the Empire, they increased sufficiently to acquire importance at
home.  That vigorous prerogative of the Norman monarchs, which kept down the
feudal aristocracy, compensated for whatever inferiority there might be in the
population and defensible strength of the English towns, compared with those
on the continent.  They had to fear no petty oppressors, no local hostility;
and if they could satisfy the rapacity of the crown, were secure from all
other grievances. London, far above the rest, our ancient and noble capital,
might, even in those early times, be justly termed a member of the political
system.  This great city, so admirably situated, was rich and populous long
before the Conquest.  Bede, at the beginning of the eighth century, speaks of
London as a great market, which traders frequented by land and sea. ^x It paid
15,000l. out of 82,000l., raised by Canute upon the kingdom. ^y If we believe
Roger Hoveden, the citizens of London, on the death of Ethelred II., joined
with part of the nobility in raising Edmund Ironside to the throne. ^z Harold
I., according to better authority, the Saxon Chronicle and William of
Malmesbury, was elected by their concurrence. ^a Descending to later history,
we find them active in the civil war of Stephen and Matilda.  The famous
Bishop of Winchester tells the Londoners that they are almost accounted as
noblemen on account of the greatness of their city; into the community of
which it appears that some barons had been received. ^b Indeed, the citizens
themselves, or at least the principal of them, were called barons.  It was
certainly by far the greatest city in England. There have been different
estimates of its population, some of which are extravagant; but I think it
could hardly have contained less than thirty or forty thousand souls within
its walls; and the suburbs were very populous. ^c These numbers, the enjoyment
of privileges, and the consciousness of strength, infused a free and even a
mutinous spirit into their conduct. ^d The Londoners were always on the
barons' side in their contests with the crown.  They bore a part in deposing
William Longchamp, the chancellor and justiciary of Richard I. ^e They were
distinguished in the great struggle for Magna Charta; the privileges of their
city are expressly confirmed in it; and the mayor of London was one of the
twenty-five barons to whom the maintenance of its provisions was delegated.
In the subsequent reign the citizens of London were regarded with much dislike
and jealousy by the court, and sometimes suffered pretty severely at its
hands, especially after the battle of Evesham. ^f

[See English Market: From the middle of the twelfth century to that of the
thirteenth the traders of England became more and more prosperous.]

[Footnote w: Lyttelton's History of Henry II., vol. ii. p. 170. Macpherson's
Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 331.]

[Footnote x: Id. p. 245.]

[Footnote y: Id. p. 282.]

[Footnote z: Cives Lundinenses, et pars nobilium qui eo tempore consistebant
Lundoniae, Clitonem Eadmundum unanimi consensu in regem levavere. p. 249.]

[Footnote a: Chron. Saxon. p. 154.  Malmesbury, p. 76.  He says the people of
London were become almost barbarians through their intercourse with the Danes;
propter frequentem convictum.]

[Footnote b: Londinenses, qui sunt quasi optimates pro magnitudine civitatis
in Anglia.  Malmsb. p. 189.  Thus, too, Matthew Paris: cives Londinenses, quos
propter civitatis dignitatem et civium antiquam libertatem Barones consuevimus
appellare. p. 744.  And in another place: totius civitatis cives, quos barones
vocant. p. 835.  Spelman says that the magistrates of several other towns were
called barons.  Glossary, Barones de London.

     A singular proof of the estimation in which the citizens of London held
themselves in the reign of Richard I. occurs in the Chronicle of Jocelyn de
Brakelonde (p. 56 - Camden Society, 1840).  They claimed to be free from toll
in every part of England, and in every jurisdiction, resting their immunity on
the antiquity of London (which was coeval, they said, with Rome), and on its
rank as metropolis of the kingdom.  Et dicebant cives Lundonienses fuisse
quietos de theloneo in omni foro, et semper et ubique, per totam Angliam, a
tempore quo Roma primo fundata fuit, et civitatem Lundoniae, eodem tempore
fundatam, talem debere habere libertatem per totam Angliam, et ratione
civitatis privilegiatae quae olim metropolis fuit et caput regni, et ratione
antiquitatis.  Palgrave inclines to think that London never formed part of any
kingdom of the Heptarchy. Introduction to Rot. Cur. Regis. p. 95.  But this
seems to imply a republican city in the midst of so many royal states, which
seems hardly probable.  Certainly it seems strange, though I cannot explain it
away, that the capital of England should have fallen, as we generally suppose,
to the small and obscure kingdom of Essex.  Winchester, indeed, may be
considered as having become afterwards the capital during the Anglo-Saxon
monarchy, so far as that it was for the most part the residence of our kings.
But London was always more populous.]

[Footnote c: Drake, the historian of York, maintains that London was less
populous, about the time of the Conquest, than that city; and quotes Hardynge,
a writer of Henry V.'s age, to prove that the interior part of the former was
not closely built.  Eboracum, p. 91.  York however does not appear to have
contained more than 10,000 inhabitants at the accession of the Conqueror; and
the very exaggerations as to the populousness of London prove that it must
have far exceeded that number.  Fitz-Stephen, the contemporary biographer of
Thomas a Becket, tells us of 80,000 men capable of bearing arms within its
precincts; where, however, his translator, Pegge, suspects a mistake of the
Ms. in the numerals.  And this, with similar hyperboles, so imposed on the
judicious mind of Lord Lyttelton, that, finding in Peter of Blois the
inhabitants of London reckoned at quadraginta millia, he has actually proposed
to read quadringenta.  Hist. Henry II., vol. vi. ad finem.  It is hardly
necessary to observe that the condition of agriculture and internal
communication would not have allowed half that number to subsist.

     The subsidy-roll of 1377, published in the Archaeologia, vol. vii., would
lead to a conclusion that all the inhabitants of London did not even then
exceed 35,000.  If this be true, they could not have amounted, probably, to so
great a number two or three centuries earlier.  But the numbers given in that
document have been questioned as to Norwich upon very plausible grounds, and
seem rather suspicious in the present instance. [Note XX.]]

[Footnote d: This seditious, or at least refractory, character of the
Londoners, was displayed in the tumult headed by William Longbeard in the time
of Richard I., and that under Constantine in 1222, the patriarchs of a long
line of city demagogues.  Hoveden, p. 765.  M. Paris, p. 154.]

[Footnote e: Hoveden's expressions are very precise, and show that the share
taken by the citizens of London (probably the mayor and alderman) in this
measure was no tumultuary acclamation, but a deliberate concurrence wit