the town to the hun vidual tributes are converted into a gross sum paid as a perpetual rent by the borough as a self-governing community.1 To the elements of organization thus derived by the borough Relation of from the township as parish and manor must be added those the consti which it derived from the constitution of the hundred, which tution of it so closely resembles. The most important local court in dred. the Old-English system, in the sense of being that court which brought justice and police protection nearest to every man's door, was the hundred court. How the hundred jurisdiction was vested by express grants of sac and soc in the Sac and soc. courts of the manor has been explained already. At the time of the Conquest those boroughs that did not possess the right to hold a hundred court by virtue of their own organization as hundreds, often received the right by a grant of sac and soc from the crown whenever they happened to be situated upon the royal demesne. When, therefore, the government of a borough appears to be vested in whole or in part in a court leet, it is easy to understand how that element of hundred jurisdiction passed into the borough constitution. In some instances the government of the town by the court leet has continued until modern times. It has been less than The corpofifty years since the corporate (representative) body in Bir- Birmingmingham was the bailiffs and court leet. In some of the ham the larger towns, however, the municipal constitution widened court leet beyond that of the hundred: such towns became counties, ago. with a complete shire constitution of their own, and with sheriffs of their own. This form of constitution, first bestowed upon London by the charter of Henry I., was afterwards extended to Bristol, to York, Newcastle - on - Tyne, Cities as Norwich, Lincoln, Hull, Southampton, and other cities, which counties in time became "counties corporate.' "5 In some of these instances the borough courts do not simply represent the hundred court, but the courts of the township, hundred, and 1 "The town was then said to be affirmed, or let in fee farm, to the burgesses and their successors forever." Hallam, M. A., vol. iii. p. 24, citing Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 1. 2 See above, p. 254. 8 "In some of the Domesday towns the sac and soc belongs, as in Lincoln, to the owners of manorial estates which are united within the walls. In some it belongs entirely to the king, or to the 4 See Introduction to Toulmin 5 Cf. Merewether and Stephens on the History of Corporate Boroughs. rate body in bailiffs and fifty years corporate." a distinct shire, shire under new names. Under the charter of Henry I., London as London1 is recognized as a distinct unity, entirely free from and above the organization of the county in which it is situated. As a distinct shire it has its own sheriff and justiciar, who are elective officers; it has its own folk-moot as the equivalent of the shire-moot; each ward has its own ward-moot, which is nothing but a hundred court; within the wards or hundreds the burgesses were grouped together in township, parish, or manor, to which are annexed the common lands which everywhere enter into the borough constitutions. Into ard for im itation. as a stand- the civic organization of London, to whose special privileges all lesser cities were ever striving to attain, the elements of local administration embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire thus entered as component parts.2 Into the constitutions of all other towns and cities, these identical elements, in different forms and in different combinations, everywhere entered as the constituents of municipal life.3 The gild. In the statement which has now been made of the elements out of which has been gradually developed the English municipal system, an omission has been made of a vitally important factor which at one time became the dominant and cohesive force in nearly all city and town constitutions. Out of that system of neighborhood association for mutual help and protection which gave rise to the institution of "frithborh," or "peace-pledge," also sprang that closer form of association for local self-help known as the gild. In the one form of association, men banded together in a given district and joined in a "borh," or pledge for the keeping of the peace, and performance of public duties, by themselves and all other members; in the other, men entered into a local association or benefit society, to which they gave their "wed," or individual promise, to abide by the by-laws or internal regulations made for the common benefit. 1 For Henry's charter to the citizens of London, see Fadera, i. p. 11. 2"The city is an accumulation of distinct and different corporate bodies, but not yet a perfect municipality, nor, although it was recognized in the reign of Stephen as a communio, did it gain the legal status before the reign of Richard I."- Select Charters, p. 107. 3 As to the general municipal history The spirit of association in of London, see Norton's Commentaries on London. 4"A gild was the association of men together for common objects of private and individual benefit, in which each man gave his 'wed' to abide by their internal by-laws; while a frithborh was the banding of men together, within the limits of a boundary, in which each joined in the 'borh,' or pledge for the origin of the account of which the gild system finds its origin has manifested itself Uncertain in many lands, and its historical beginning has been traced gild system. by some scholars to the banquets and sacrificial assemblies of the heathen Teutonic tribes,1 while others derive it from that form of association which existed in the Roman system under the name of collegia. The gild system seems, however, to have attained its highest development in the Teutonic countries, especially in England during the middle ages. One of the most eminent of the modern authorities has emphatically declared that he deems England the birthplace of gilds; and from three English gild-statutes, probably drawn oldest up at the beginning of the eleventh century, is derived the detailed oldest reliable and detailed account of gild organization. The gild organi zation Engearlier English gilds, traces of whose existence can be found fish. as far back as the laws of Ine, Ælfred, and Ethelstan, seem to have been scattered through country and town wherever the pervading spirit of association united men in clubs or societies for religious, charitable, or social purposes. In cities Tendency and towns where populution was densest, the tendency of of gilds to gilds crowded together in close neighborhood was to coalesce in a single body. As early as the time of Æthelstan the gilds of London thus united for the purpose of more effectually carrying out their common objects; and at a later day the gilds of Berwick-upon-Tweed enacted "that where many bodies are found side by side in one place they may become one, and have one will, and in the dealings of one with another have a strong and hearty love."4 "The united brotherhood or town gild" thus created, partaking of the commercial spirit In keeping of the peace, and performance of public duties by all others." troduction to Smith's English Gilds, by Miss Lucy T. Smith, p. xv. 1 Wilda, who dissents from this view, finds in the family union the germ from which the gild was developed. See Wilda, Das Gildewesen im Mittelalter, Halle, 1831, p. 28 seq. See, also, Hartwig (Untersuchungen über die ersten Anfänge des Gildewesens, p. 153), who agrees with Wilda in the conclusion that nothing which is essential to the gild can be derived from the custom of holding feasts. 2 Cf. De collegiis et corporibus opificum, in Heineccii opera omnia, tom. ii. p. 390, Genevæ, 1766, and also Cicero, 8 "The oldest reliable and detailed This is the language of the "Statutes of the Gild," whose first article provides that "All separate gilds, heretofore existing in the borough, shall be brought to an end."- See Smith's English Gilds, pp. 338, 339, Brentano's Essay, p. xcix. consolidate. gild" be comes the "merchant gild." The "town which by the time of the Conquest had become universal, begins to be known from that time as the "merchant-gild," 1 whose relation to the government of the towns becomes of the closest and most perplexing character. The confusing relation which thus grew up between the merchant-gild and the borough, of which it was the inner circle, has been thus Its relation defined: "Those sworn fraternities for the protection of right to the borough. and the preservation of liberty, of which mention has already been made in Part I., arose independently of the towns. Yet in the towns the necessity of protecting liberty, property, and trade against the violence of neighboring nobles. must have specially moved the small freemen to the formation of the societies above referred to. These inhabitants of the towns were old, free landed proprietors; partly of the neighboring estates, but chiefly of land within the territory of the towns themselves. Most of them carried on trade; some probably also handicrafts. But the possession of townland is the distinguishing mark of these earliest burghers. To this possession alone was full citizenship everywhere attached in the first movements of civic life. . . . Naturally, therefore, the whole body of full citizens, that is, of the possessors of portions of the town-lands of a certain value, the 'civitas,' united itself everywhere into one gild, 'convivium conjuratum'; the citizens and the gild became identical; Gild law be- and what was gild-law became the law of the town."2 The gild hall became the town hall, and the merchant-gild, which gild hall be arose within the town and yet independently of it, merged its organization in that of the town in such a manner as to draw to itself the real exercise of all municipal authority.3 No one could enjoy the full status of burgher or citizen unless he were a member of the gild; and even the villein (nativus) who obtained admission into the brotherhood, and remained unclaimed by his lord for a year and a day, became a freeman. comes town law; the comes the town hall. The cities and towns thus constituted, which grew up 1 Green, History of the Eng. People, vol. i. p. 211. 2 Dr. Brentano's Essay in Smith's English Gilds, p. xciii. 8" When the merchant guild had become identified with the corporation or governing body, its power of regulation of trade passed, together with other functions and properties, into the same hands."- Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. iii. p. 563. gle for sheriff and within the jurisdiction of the shires, and upon the demesnes The strugof the king or some other great lord, began the struggle for emancipamunicipal independence with the effort to free themselves tion from from the financial and judicial administration of the sheriff lord. upon the one hand, and from the control of the lord upon the other. Until their severance from the general shire administration, the sheriff exercised the same jurisdiction over the towns as over the rest of the county; he collected from them the rents which formed a portion of the ferm of the shire; and he looked after the king's rights in their courts of justice. In order to render their portion of the burden thus imposed clear and definite, the towns first required the sheriff to fix the amount which they were called upon to pay apart from the general contribution of the shire. The next step was to obtain a charter from the crown permitting the towns to pay directly to the exchequer a fixed rent in lieu of the sum contributed through the sheriff. The fixed rent thus paid by the towns directly to the crown, which was known as the firma burgi, the burghers apportioned and The firma burgi. collected among themselves by means of their own internal regulations. Thus freed from the financial interference of the sheriff, the next effort made by the towns was to free themselves from his judicial authority. Those boroughs which of themselves constituted hundreds, and those which by virtue of an express grant of sac and soc possessed the jurisdiction of a private hundred court, were exempt, of course, from all other forms of hundred jurisdiction. But such exemption did not relieve the burgesses from attendance upon the courts of the shire. Only by virtue of a special privilege, or exemption secured by fine or charter, could the townsmen claim the right to have all causes affecting themselves tried and finally determined within their own limits and in their own courts, according to the ancient methods of legal procedure, free from the Norman innovation of trial by battle. This exemption from the ordinary sessions of the county court did not extend, however, to the greater courts held in the shires by the itinerant justices. In these 1 See Brady on Boroughs, p. 40 seq.; Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 18; Hist. of the Exch., p. 226 seq. An instance of a firma burgi before the Conquest is afforded by the case of Huntington, in |