58o Coiistitutional History. [chap.
institution chosen and sworn to assist the mayor in the care of the city ɪ ;
of aidermen. . ... . . 1 ,
if these twenty-five jurats are in this respect the predecessors
of the twenty-five aldermen of the wards, the year 1200 may
be regarded as the date at which the communal constitution
of London was completed. The more ancient designation of
barons, with ‘ sac and soc ’ in the several franchises, would
AMermen gradually disappear. The title of aiderman had been applied
in the reign of Henry II to the head of a craft guild2 ; early in
the reign of Henry III the twenty-five wards appear ; and, as
the name ‘ Aldermaneria ’ seems to be used exchangeably with
‘ Warda,, thus much of the municipality was already in exist-
ence. Before the end of John’s reign, York, Winchester and
Lynn, and many other towns, had their mayors; possibly by
special grants or fines in each case, but more probably by a
liberal interpretation of the clause inserted in their charters,
by which they were entitled to the same liberties as London.
In those towns in which there was no mayor the presidency
of the local courts remained with the bailiffs, whether elected
by the townsmen or nominated by the lord of the town. The
development however of the idea of municipal completeness as
represented by a mayor and aidermen may be placed at the
very beginning of the thirteenth century3.
l i Hoc anno fuerunt xxv electi de discretioribus civitatis et jurati pro
Consulendo civitatem una cum majore ;, Lib. de Antt. Legg. p. 2. There
are now twenty-six wards, two of them sub-divisions of older wards. One,
* Cordwainer/ retains the name of a guild ; Castle Baynard that of a
magnate, Portsoken that of the ancient jurisdiction of the Cnihtengild and
Portreeve. All the rest are local divisions. Faringdon Without was
created in 1394; Rot. Parl. iii. 317. In 1229 the Aldermanni acted with
the ‘magnates civitatis, in framing a law; Lib. de Antt. Legg. p. 6.
These must have been the aidermen of the wards, the magnates being the
lords of franchises, such as the lord of CastIe Baynard, and the eccle-
siastical dignitaries who joined in the government of the city, such as the
Prior of Trinity Aidgate.
2 See Madox, Hist. Exch. p. 490. Of the wards there mentioned all are
designated by the name of the aiderman of the time except the t Warda
Fori/ or Cheap, Portsoken, and Bassishaw : Michael de S. Elena was
probably the aiderman of Bishopsgate ward. Under Edward II the wards
had all acquired the names which they still bear ; ib. p. 694 ; Firma Burgi,
p. 30. In a list of aidermen of adulterine guilds in 1180, three appear as
aidermen of the Gilda de Ponte.
3 The following towns are mentioned, in the Rolls of John, as having
mayors : Bristol, York, Ipswich, London, Lynn, Northampton, Norwich,
Oxford, and Winchester.
XXL.]
The Guilds.
581
The history of the merchant guild, in its relation to the craft Beiations of
,1 , e the guilds,
guild ou the one hand, and to the municipal government on the
other, is very complex. In its main features it is a most importance
. .11 ,ɪ , . . _ Ofthestrug-
ιmportant illustration of the principle which constantly forces giθfθrɑɪass
itself forward in medieval history, that the vindication of class
privileges is one of the most effective ways of securing public
liberty, so long as public liberty is endangered by the general
pressure of tyranny. At one time the church stands alone in
her opposition to despotism, with her free instincts roused by
the determination to secure the privilege of her ministers ; at
another the mercantile class purchase for themselves rights and
immunities which keep before the eyes of the less highly
favoured the possibility of gaining similar privileges. In both
cases it is to some extent an acquisition of exclusive privilege,
an assertion of a right which, if the surrounding classes were
already free, would look like usurpation, but which, when they
are downtrodden, gives a glimpse and is itself an instalment
of liberty. But when the general liberty, towards which the
class privilege was an important step, has been fully obtained,
it is not unnatural that the classes which led the way to that
liberty should endeavour to retain all honours and privileges
which they can retain without harm to the public welfare.
But the original quality of exclusiveness which defined the
circle for which privilege was claimed still exists ; still it is an
immunity, a privilege in its strict meaning, and as such it
involves an exception in its own favour to the general rules
of the liberty now acquired by the community around it; and
if this is so, it may exercise a power as great for harm as it
was at first for g,ood. Such is one of the laws of the history
of all privileged corporations; fortunately it is not the only
law, and its working is not the whole of their Iiistoiy. It
■applies however directly to the guild system.
The great institution of the ‘ gilda mercatoria ’1 runs back, as Antiquity of
we have seen, to the Norman Conquest and far beyond it ; the the gul'ds'
1 On tlɪe Merchant Guild the most recent speculations and conclusions
are to be found in Dr. Charles Gross’s The Gild Merchant, Oxford, 1891 ;
Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of English Law, i. 648 sq.