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PREFACE
form chapters VII-XI of the present volume. Another, on
the borough courts and assemblies, had been planned when my
attention was diverted to the pre-Conquest period by the
appearance in the English Historical Review in July, 1930, of
a revolutionary article by Dr. Stephenson in which he sought
to prove that, with inconsiderable exceptions, the Anglo-Saxon
boroughs were still no more than administrative and militarv
centres in 1066. A thorough re-study of all the evidence for
that very difficult period took so long that, save for a chapter
on its origins, the subject of borough jurisdiction has had
regretfully to be left to younger investigators. Another and
more deliberate omission is the history of formal incorporation
on which, I am glad to say, my friend Dr. Martin Weinbaum
has a book in the press.
The chapters dealing with the Anglo-Saxon borough were
nearly complete when Dr. Stephenson’s enlarged treatment of
the subject in his book Borough and Town appeared, in 1933.
His modifications of his views as originally stated are, how-
ever, practically confined to a large extension of his list of
exceptions, his conception of the “ ordinary ” borough re-
maining unaltered, so that it was not necessary to recast
completely what I had written. When required, references
are given to a summary (chapter VI) of the exceptions Dr.
Stephenson now allows.
In his article of 1930, the late Professor Pirenne’s con-
ception of town life in the Netherlands as the result of mercan-
tile settlement under the shelter of fortified administrative
centres was applied to England with such rigour as virtually
to make the Norman Conquest the starting-point of its urban
development. And though in his book Dr. Stephenson ad-
mits earlier mercantile settlements in the populous boroughs
of the Danelaw and makes some wider but vaguer concessions,
he still retains, in his title and general exposition the sharp
antithesis between borough and town. For this he claims,
as forerunners, Maitland and Miss Bateson, but, apart from
his “ garrison theory,” Maitland was much more cautious and
Miss Bateson’s estimate of French influence upon the post-
Conquest borough is pressed too far. She did not, for in-
stance, regard it as inconsistent with the view that the Anglo-
Saxon borough had a distinctively urban court, a view which
Dr. Stephenson strongly combats.
Even in the country of its first statement the antithesis
tends to be less sharply drawn. M. Paul Rolland’s study of
PREFACE
vɪɪ
“ the origins of the town of Tournai ” (1931) shows that in
suitable spots a trading population could develop gradually
from an agricultural one.1 At Tournai there was no large
mercantile settlement from without (See English Historical
Review, IQ33, P- 688)∙
At first sight Dr. Stephenson’s concession that even if
there had been no Norman Conquest “ London’s charter
might well have contained the same major articles, if it had
been granted by a son of Harold, rather than by a son of
William ” might seem to yield more ground than has been
indicated. But it is qualified by a statement that by 1066
Anglo-Saxon England was only just coming under the influence
of the commercial revival on the Continent. It is difficult to
reconcile this with the fact that London’s foreign trade c.
IOOO was as wide, if not as great, as it was under Henry I.
This limited recognition of an urban continuity across the
Conquest does not extend to the agricultural aspect of the
borough. A stronger contrast could hardly be imagined than
that between the manorial system which Dr. Stephenson con-
ceives to have prevailed in the cultivation of the fields of
the Anglo-Saxon borough and that which is found in working
after the Conquest, and no explanation of this unrecorded
transformation is offered.
Dr. Stephenson deserves every credit for his pioneer
effort of reconstruction, he has done good service in diverting
attention from vain attempts to find precise definitions in
a non-defining age to the safe ground of social and commercial
development, while his treatment of the problem of early
borough jurisdiction, though not wholly acceptable, rightly
emphasizes the very general origin of burghal courts as units
in the hundred system of the country at large. But his book
contains too much that is disputable to constitute the first
part of a definitive history of the English borough.
Dr. Stephenson’s own criticisms of some of the views
advanced in my reprinted articles, e.g. as to the influence of
the Continental commune upon the communal movement in
England at the end of the twelfth century, are discussed in
appendices to the respective articles. This has involved
some repetition, but the articles were already sufficiently
controversial and the opportunity has been gained of adding
a little fresh matter. The document of 1205 preserved by
1 With its bishop’s see Tournai may have been more favourable to such
growth than the ordinary feudal burg.