222
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
“ to the mayor and commune ” in their letters to foreign
communities, it was hardly ever used at this date, or for long
after, in royal letters to English towns.1
The little that is known of the English borough community
in the earlier sense of the word during the greater part of the
twelfth century can only be profitably discussed in connexion
with the remarkable institution on which a flood of light was
thrown half a century ago by the late Dr. Charles Gross in
his elaborate monograph, The Gild Merchant. Some modi-
fication of the picture which he presents of the gild in its
earliest stage is now made necessary by new evidence and a
rather different interpretation of part of that which he had
before him.
I. The Borough Community and the Gild Merchant
before the Age of Mayors and Fee Farms
Gross had an easy task in refuting the view of some of his
predecessors that the gild merchant in English towns was
merely a private trading society, with no public administra-
tive functions, but he found the opposite contention, that it
was the source and vital principle of municipal government,
much more difficult to deal with, because it was an exaggera-
tion of that intimate relation between community and gild
which is plain upon the face of the evidence. Stated briefly,
nearly in his own words, Gross’s conclusion was that there
were two distinct threads in the woof of municipal govern-
ment, the original community of burgage-holders and the
superadded gild of traders, not always quite identical bodies,
and with different officers, reeves, bailiffs, and mayors in the
one case, aidermen, stewards, etc., in the other, meeting the
one in portmoot, the other in morning-speech or gild-meeting,
yet so much merely different aspects of one body as, after a
while, to tend constantly towards, and ultimately in many
cases end, in amalgamation. As a rough general description
of a relationship which varied locally from a dominant gild
organization to no separate organization at all, or only for
occasional feasting and admission of burgesses, this may serve,
but the very firmness with which Gross held to the original
ɪ An exception is a notification by King John to the mayor and com-
mune of London on 5th April, 1200 {Rot. Chart., p. 6ob). Cf. references
to the mayor and commune in royal orders of 1221 and 1225 (Rot. Litt.
Claus, i. 445b, ii. 45b). The former also mentions the mayor and commune
of Winchester.
COMMUNITY AND GILD MERCHANT
223
duality of community and gild blinded him to some indica-
tions of their intimate connexion already in the twelfth cen-
tury and made him too prone to explain away other evidence
tending in the same direction. It was natural, indeed, that
he should reject the prima, facie meaning of “ in eorum com-
munam scilicet gildam ” in the well-known clause of Glanvill
dealing with the enfranchisement of villeins by settlement in
towns,1 for it was “ the only plausible argument ” for the
identity of community and gild ; and he may be right in this
instance, but he is driven into strange shifts to maintain his
position. He suggests alternatively that (l) the whole sen-
tence from ita quod to fuerit is a later interpolation ; (2) com-
типа is not the (borough) community, but a community
within it, viz., the gild (merchant); (3) “ communam scilicet
gildam ” means “ common charge, that is geld,” i.e. scot and
lot.2 As to the first suggestion, Dr. G. E. Woodbine of Yale
University, who is preparing an edition of Glanvill, informs
me that “ no sentence in the whole of the treatise is more
firmly supported by manuscript authority.” 3 The third,
though preferred by Gross, gives a very strained sense to
communa i and is otherwise refuted by the “ in pref ata gilda ”
of the enfranchisement clause of many boroughs in the west
of England and in Wales, referring to the gild merchant
granted in a previous clause.® With the second and more
reasonable suggestion there may be considered the rival inter-
pretation offered by Karl Hegel.® Unlike Gross, he takes
communa to be the borough community, but argues that if
that and the gild had been identical, there would have been
no need for “ scilicet gildam ” which he explains as meaning
1 “ Item si quis nativus quiete per unum annum et unum diem in aliqua
villa privilegiata manserit, ita quod in eorum communam scilicet gildam
tanquam ci vis receptus fuerit, eo ipso a vilenagio Iiberabitur ” (De Legibus
Anglie, lib. V, c. 5).
2 Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 102-3. Gneist had earlier stigmatized
" scilicet gildam ” as a later gloss (Gesch. der Communalverfassung, 2nd ed.,
p. no).
3 Dr. Woodbine kindly supplied me with the correct text of the whole
clause as given in n. I supra. The reading Communem for communam in
some manuscripts is therefore condemned, and where they read s. not sc.,
scilicet not seu is meant. Dr. Woodbine’s edition has since been published.
4 Gross (i. 103) even explains the (de) Communitate of the Huntingdon
writ of Henry I as such a charge !
5Ballard and Tait, British Borough Charters, i. 105; ii. 136. They
begin with the Hereford and Dunwich charters of 1215. Overlooking
prefata, Gross explains '' in gilda et hansa et lot et scot ” as “ a tautological
expression " for “ in scot and lot ” (op. cit. i. 59).
β Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker, i. 66-8.