IO
ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
acquired the haw of Ceolmund the reeve (praefectus} at a
yearly rent of 12rf. in addition to the purchase price. With
the haw, it is stated, went the liberty of having “ modium
et pondus et mensura, sicut in porto mos est.” 1 The privilege
was one of exemption from royal dues, as is more clearly
brought out in the grant more than thirty years later to
Ælhun’s successor of the curtis called by the Londoners “ At
Hwaetmundes Stane,” to which was attached “ urnam et
trutinam ad mensurandum in emendo sive vendendo ad usum
suum ad necessitatem propriam,” free from all toll to the
king. This, however, became payable if any of the bishop’s
men traded outside the house, either in the public street or on
the quay (in ripa emptor alt).2
There is much earlier evidence of royal tolls at London
and elsewhere. Exemptions were granted by Ethelbald of
Mercia c. 732-745 for ships belonging to the abbess of Minster
in Thanet and to the bishops of Rochester and Worcester,
both in the port (in portu, “ harbour ”) or hythe of London
and at Fordwich and Sarre on the Stour below Canterbury.3
Already in the eighth century there was some foreign trade.
In 789 Charles the Great in a quarrel with King Offa closed
all the Frankish ports to English merchants and, when the
embargo was removed on both sides, stipulated that merchants
and smugglers should not enter in the guise of pilgrims.
Merchants of both nations were to have royal protection as
before and direct appeal to emperor or king as the case might
be. Charles wrote to Offa that his subjects complained of
the length (prolixitas) of the cloaks (sagi) sent from England,
and asked him to see that they were made as of old.4 There
is no hint that any of these negotiatores were slave-traders.
1 C.S. 492, ii. 95. Portus in this sense seems always declined as a
noun of the first declension.
8 Ibid. 561, ii. 200. In later London the tron {trutina) or great beam
was for weighing coarse goods by the hundredweight (Riley, Memorials of
London, p. 26 n.).
’ Ibid. 149, i. 216 ; 152, i. 220 ; 171, i. 246 ; 188, i. 267 ; 189, i. 268.
For salt toll at Droitwich (emptorium salis) c. 716 see ibid. 138, i. 203,
and in the ninth century ibid. 552. ii. 174 and 579, ii. 222.
4 This and other evidence is collected by Miss H. Cam in Francia and
England (1912), pp. 15 f. " Cloak ” is her translation of sagus, but these
sagi may possibly be the “ drappes ad camisias ultramarinas quae vulgo
berniscrist (see Du Cange, s.v.) Vocitantur “ purchased by the monks of St.
Bertin (Giry, Hist, de Saint.-Omer, p. 276). About 975 Irish traders
brought saga with other merchandise to Cambridge (Lib. Eliensis, p. 148).
Ethelwerd's story that the Danes who first landed on the south coast
were taken for traders, from whom the king’s official went to collect toll,
may be true.
BEFORE THE DANES CAME
II
An important result of this commercial intercourse with
Francia was the substitution of the silver penny for the
sceatt in England and the adoption there of the gold coin
known as the mancus. It is first mentioned in an undoubtedly
genuine charter of 799J
The evidence which is available for a view of the condition
of urban centres in England before the age of fortification
against the Danes is not, to say the least, abundant and it is
almost confined to the south-east, but, so far as it goes, it
does not reveal a purely agricultural economy. It is a striking
illustration of the little light that can be expected from the
early land charters that those of Rochester and Canterbury
only once mention a trader as such. A royal grant of land
in Canterbury to a thegn in 839, already referred to, conveyed
also, in close conjunction with two weirs on the Stour, “ unum
merkatorem quern lingua nostra manger e nominamus.” 2
It would certainly be rash to infer that this “ monger ” was
personally unfree3 and in any case unreasonable to draw from
one instance any general conclusions as to the status of the
class to which he belonged. At the best, they were clearly
very humble folk, compared with the churchmen and royal
servants to whom the kings were “ booking ” considerable
portions of their domain within and without the old walls.
It is possible that some of them held small tenements by
folkright derived from the original agricultural settlers, but
it seems likely that for the most part they were tenants or
grantees of the great churches 4 and thegns, and in the latter
case it is very improbable that the tenements were conveyed
by charter.® There is evidence that in some quarters at
any rate houses in Canterbury closely adjoined one another
on the street frontages. An endorsement on a charter of
868 recording the sale for i20√. of a small tuun, measuring
six rods by three and bounded on all four sides by the land of
different owners, mentions that by customary law (Jolcaes
* C.S. 293, i. 409. 2 C.S. 426, i. 598.
3 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries burgesses and other undoubted
freemen were sometimes transferred with the land they rented. See, for
example, Reg. Antiqmssimum Cath. Line., ii. no. 324.
4 In the exemption from toll of a London house of the bishop of
Worcester (C.S. 561 ; see above, p. ɪo) the case of the bishop’s men trading
outside the privileged tenement is provided for. If they do, they must
Pay the king’s toll.
3 But the burhware, who in the tenth century had " book acres ” in the
fields, may have included merchants (C.S., no. 637, ii. 314).