256
CIVIC BARONS
organization, as distinguished from that of the gild, shows
clearly to what quarter the eyes of the Londoners were turned.
It was as the setting up of a continental commune in England
that Richard of Devizes denounced the step then taken.
John’s policy as king showed a realization that the sworn
commune, under proper control, might be a bulwark instead
of a danger to the Crown. He made use of it on both sides of
the Channel for state purposes. There is little doubt that his,
whole scheme of defence in 1205, with its exhaustive system of
communes, in which every male over twelve was bound by
an oath of obedience to his officers and loyalty to the king
owed something to his earlier defensive policy in Normandy.
He—and others—not only founded single-town communes
bound by oath to render military service, but combined
towns and even groups of ordinary vills, like the English
visneta, in such communes for the same purpose of defence.1
Of one of these, not set up by John himself, headed by Evreux
in 1194, Adam the Englishman was mayor.2
APPENDIX II
The Barons of London and of the Cinque Ports
The civic use of “ baron ” in England was peculiar to its
chief city and to its unique naval confederation.3 Much un-
certainty has prevailed about the application of the term in
London. It seems to vary in content at different times.
1 Giry, Établissements de Rouen, i. 47 and n.
, Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, p. 147 ; Giry, loc. cit. ; Round,
Cal. of Dqcs. in France, p. 138.
s Spelman’s claim that Chester, York, and Warwick had barons seems
unfounded. His barons of Warwick are probably the external barons the
number of whose houses in the town is given in the first paragraph of the
Domesday description (i. 238). A charter of Henry I and two of Henry II
addressed respectively to the barons of Hampshire and Winchester and
to the barons of Lincoln and Lincolnshire (E.H.R. xxxv. (1920), 393 ;
Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 278) stand quite alone and are probably eccen-
tricities of chancery scribes, who sometimes extended the title of barons
to the burgesses of other ports than the Cinque Ports when the same writ
was directed to them (Foedera (O), iii. 222, iv. 284). In the first case the
common and correct “ barons of London and Middlesex ” may have been
running in their minds. As a civic title baron is also found in French usage,
but sporadically and in a narrow sense. Du Cange indeed says that it
was applied in the twelfth century to the citizens of Bourges and Orleans.
But at Bourges at any rate, where it seems first on record in 1145, the barons
were four officers who administered the city underthe royal prévôt (Luchaire,
Manuel, p. 397).
LONDON
257
King John grants the right of electing a mayor annually
(1215) to the barons of the city and the city’s common seal
bears to this day the .legend Sigillvm baronvm londoniarvm,
yet in the second half of the thirteenth century barons are some-
times distinguished from citizens in official documents, and in
the fourteenth they are identified with the twenty-five aider-
men. The late William Page took a middle line,1 equating
them with the burhthegns of three of the five London writs of
Edward the Confessor and with the oligarchic party of the
twelfth century, the probi homines of the communal oath of
1193,2 the “ great council ” of the Fitz Walter claim of 1303.3
Mr. A. H. Thomas, while prepared to accept the first identi-
fication, with the great sea-merchants who had become thegn-
worthy, adduces evidence to show that from the twelfth
century onwards “ barons ” had a wider meaning and was
in fact synonymous with “ citizens.” 4 Professor Stenton,
though not taking notice of the similarity of name, is in sub-
stantial agreement with this view, speaking of a transformation
of a patriciate of birth by an influx of a new wealthy element,
in part French and Italian, and by an equalization of London
wergilds at the IOO (Norman) shillings of the ordinary freeman.®
There certainly seems to have been a readjustment of wergilds
after the Conquest,® but it is hardly safe to say that the change
is clearly indicated in the writs of the Norman kings. William I
preferred the burhwaru of two of the Confessor’s writs 7 to
the burhthegns of the others in his English charter and writs,8
whether or not there was any real distinction involved, but
in one Latin writ addresses the barons of the city β and this
became the common form from the reign of Henry I, though
citizens is also occasionally used and exclusively in the Pipe
Rolls and in all charters but that of 1215 granting yearly
election of the mayor. In the chancery rolls, from their
beginning in John’s reign to the middle of the thirteenth
century, royal mandates on administrative matters are gener-
ally addressed to the barons and the occasional substitution
of citizens or prudhommes (probi homines) does not, as Mr.
1 London : its Origin and Early Development (1923), pp. 219 Й. Thegn
was of course usually Latinized as baro. 2 See below, p. 266.
3 Liber Custumarum in Mun. Gildh. Land. (R.S.), II, i. 147 fl. ; Stow,
Survey, ed. Kingsford, i. 62 ; ii. 279.
4 Cal. of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of London, 1364-81, pp. xxi. ff.
5 Norman London, 2nded., 1934, p. 19. 4 See above, p. 82.
, B.B.C. i. 126 (1042-44), Mon. Angl. i. 430, Kemble, 856 (1058-66).
8 Davis, Regesta, nos. 15, 265.
, Ibid. no. 246. In full in Essays presented to T. F. Tout (1925), p. 51.