SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN MEDIÆVAL LONDON
Any town that has a past has a natural history no less
interesting than that of an anthill or a beehive-if only it
could find a Lubbock to unravel the long evolution of its social
instincts or a Maeterlinck to unfold its wealth of mystical
suggestion. Readers of the autobiography of Goethe cannot
easily forget his vivid account of his boyhood in Frankfort, of
the endless delight which his already creative imagination
took in the long vista of centuries which the daily sights
and the immemorial customs of his native city opened up to
him
"The street in which our house was situated," he tells us,
"passed by the name of Hirschgraben (Stag-ditch), but as
neither stags nor ditches were to be seen we wished to have
the expression explained They told us that our house stood
on a spot that was once outside the city, and that where the
street now ran had formerly been a ditch in which a number
of stags were kept because the senate every year, according
to an ancient custom, feasted on a stag"
He tells us how he loved to wander over the fourteenth
century bridge and to return by the ferry, with what reverence
he gazed on the Saalhof, which stood where the palace of
Charlemagne had been, how he lingered to spend his pocketmoney in the mediæval market that crowded the space in front
of St. Bartholomew's Church, how he roamed at will (as the
privileged grandson of one of the city magistrates through
the ancient vaults of the Romer (the City Hall), was shown
the three benches on which the three estates of citizens-the
magistrates, the middle class and the craftsmen-sat separately
on Council days, and how he listened with boyish delight
in the Election Chamber to the story of emperors who had
been chosen in that very room and whose portraits adorned its
walls He describes the bustle and excitement of the great
fairs,-the whole city pouring forth to meet the procession,
the solemn ceremonies of the Pipers' Court, the weird music
of the shawm, sackbut and the oboe, the symbolic gifts of
pepper and gloves
"But what chiefly attracted the child's attention," says
Goethe, " were the many little towns within the town, the
fortresses within the fortress, viz, the walled monastic
enclosures and several other precincts remaining from earlier
times and more or less like castles-such as the Nuremberg
Court, the Compostella, the Braunfels, the ancestral house
of the von Stallburg family, and several strongholds which
had been transformed into dwellings and warehouses
Everything bore witness to a remote past when the town and
its neighbourhood were seldom free from strife Gates and
towers still remained to mark the limits of the older city, and
beyond these a new line of gates, towers, walls, bridges,
ramparts encompassed the later growth"
The title which Goethe chose for his autobiography-
Poetry and Truth-is at once elucidated and justified by this
account of the environment of his childhood With a sure
instinct for what was essential and an imagination admirably
balanced between the demands of science and of art, he has
sketched, in a few broad but effective strokes, not only the
outer Frankfort of his boyhood, but the inner life of an earlier
time in which his own genius had its roots Most striking
of all perhaps is that last touch about the surviving mediæval
enclosures,-the little towns within the town, the deserted
shells in which the patrician burgher, the monastic community,
the company of foreign merchants had been held aloof by a
spirit of social exclusiveness Of this spirit the boy still
beheld a living instance as he gazed in fear and wonder
through the gate of the Jewish quarter at the abodes of a
people whose history had deeply impressed his growing
mind These survivals were not only well adapted to
captivate the romantic imagination of a young poet, they
bodied forth the earliest phase of the mediæval city, they
furnish me with my clue, the starting point of my essay
If we go back five centuries, from the middle of the
eighteenth to the middle of the thirteenth century, and betake
ourselves from Frankfort to London, we shall find the living
world represented by the survivals of Goethe's boyhood Let
us suppose a knight from the country on a visit to his cousin,
a London alderman, and riding in with him through the
western suburbs of the city As they pass through the Abbot
of Westminster's lands at Kensington the alderman talks of
business matters, and the knight is surprised to find how
extensive and complicated the affairs of a London alderman
are He knew, of course, that his cousin, though, like himself,
of mixed Saxon and Norman descent on one side, was
descended on his mother's side from a well-known Jewish
banker of King John's time, that he had married the daughter
of a worthy Provencal knight, who had followed the Queen
Eleanor into England He knew also that his cousin had
inherited several manors in Kent and Surrey, the produce
of which was brought to the London market in his own
barges, that he was a purveyor to the King and the nobility,
and that he carried on a small loan office under forms adapted
to the prejudices of the age But he was not prepared to hear
that the alderman was nearly as much in Southern France,
where he bought wine for the King, as in England, that he
was a farmer of the tolls at Queenhithe, and that he was about
to have a share, along with an expert Italian, in coining the
new gold pennies with which the King had resolved to
celebrate his reign A man of such high connections is
evidently the right person with whom to see the town
They make a slight detour to see the sights of Westminster
All at once they come to a great field filled with an immense
crowd of traders of all nations, buying and selling at endless
lows of stalls, eating and drinking, listening to jongleurs or
friars This is the Abbey Fair, and the King has compelled
all the citizens of London to close their shops for a fortnight
and to come and trade in the fields The citizens are enraged
and swear they will not come next year, but the King is
determined to find money to finish the great abbey church
which you can see a-building yonder And so they pass the
Abbey through a crowd of debtors, beggars and outlaws
huddled within its precincts, and the great hall of Rufus,
where the King's three chief judgment seats are set, where
he lately kept the marriage-feast of his brother with thirty
thousand dishes of meat, and where he has on occasion fed six
thousand poor people at Christmas " The citizen who gets
the contract on these occasions," says the alderman, "may
make a fortune, but is as likely to lose one" They pass more
houses of great magnates, then the King of Scotland's town
house, and reach Savoy House, a palace newly built for the
Queen's uncle "A great household this," says the worthy
citizen. " I supply them with a ton of tallow candles yearly
and eighteen hundredweight of wax" Along the Strand
facing the river are the Bishops' town houses,-Worcester
Inn, Bath Inn, Chester Inn, Exeter Inn, and each has a little
population of retainers, servants and craftsmen attached to it
When they reach the great establishment of the Knights
Templars they find a crowd collected A waggon of the
King's treasures, guarded by men-at-arms, is passing through
the gate The Temple, in fact, serves as the national bank
They turn up the New Road (our Chancery Lane), pass
Chichester House (lately the residence of the Chancellor,
Ralph Nevill), and come to the house of the Black Friars,
who have not yet transferred their site to the Earl of Lincoln
for his New Inn and moved within the city wall Then,
turning the corner, they ride along Holborn with the Abbot of
Malmesbury's town house on their right and the Bishop of
Ely's town house on the left As they descend the hill to
cross the river Fleet the alderman points out the towers of the
Knights Hospitallers across the fields at Clerkenwell, with the
nunnery beside it, and around both a hamlet of settlers
There, too, they catch a glimpse, across the open ground of
Smithfield, of the Priory of St Bartholomew, with the
beautiful church that still remains to us, and of the hospital,
and the alderman would talk of the recent struggles of the
city with the Prior about St Bartholomew's Fair, and how
the Priory was like to rob the city of the cloth trade unless
it were sharply looked after And now they have climbed
Snow Hill and entered Newgate The half-finished walls of
the Grey Friars rise to their left The choir is already built,
by an alderman of the city, but three other aldermanic
benefactors who are destined to furnish the chancel, the dorter
and the chapter house are still in their cradles "The builder
of that choir," says the alderman, "my old friend William
Joynour, God rest his soul, was a right worthy man Although
he had been in the King's service, as we aldermen all are
sooner or later-our trade wouldn't prosper if we were not,-
yet when he was mayor in '39 he stood manfully for the
liberties of the city against the King, who wished to force
a sheriff upon us" "Ah," says the knight, "that will be the
affair of the 'commune' I heard some talk of" "No,"
replies the alderman, somewhat disconcerted, "that is another
matter That was a mere dispute we had with the riff-raff
of the city"
Threading their way across the market, in front of St.
Nicholas' Church, they pass the gate of the sanctuary of
St Martin-le-Grand, through which they can see a whole
street of craftsmen's stalls, and behind them lodgings for
refugees, and so come to the open space on the north-east
side of St Paul's, with St Paul's Cross in the midst of it,
and the city belfry at one corner "This is the place of the
Folkmoot," explains the alderman, "where the people of
London assemble to meet the King, or to hear a Pope's bull,
or to proclaim an outlaw It would be better," he adds, "if
this old custom were allowed to drop It is but an occasion
of turbulence, and all the serious business of city government
has long been transferred to the hands of the aldermen in
their separate wardmotes or collectively in their Court of
Husting at the Guildhall But when the King, to serve his
own ends, has the bell sounded to summon the folk a great
crowd of pedlars and tinkers get together, and fancy that their
'Yea, Yea!' and 'Nay, Nay!' is to settle everything, and
that they are the commune of the city Now, I need not tell
you, that it is we men of substance who are the commune,
we men of good birth and knightly breeding, who are
aldermen and the sons of aldermen, who know the law and
custom of the city, who own the land and carry on the trade
It was we who gamed the commune and the mayoralty from
King Richard, and it is only our wary policy that can preserve
them, for the King could easily persuade the crowd to shout
their liberties away
"But, come," says the alderman, "lest you should think we
citizens were all a set of base handicraftsmen, let me show
you our place of arms" And he led the way to the open
space before the west end of the cathedral "Here the men
of London meet to go forth to battle And the lord of Castle
Baynard, whose towers you see near the river yonder, claims
an hereditary right to marshal the host and lead it forth On
occasions of war he comes riding with nineteen mounted
followers, and the mayor and aldermen coming forth
from the west door, fully armed, deliver to him the banner of
the city which bears the image of St Paul in gold, but the
face, hands, feet and sword are of silver Even in time of
peace the castellan of Castle Baynard has the whole parish
of St Andrew under his special supervision, with a court
and stocks and prison of its own, and the mayor must
summon him to all great councils and must rise to meet him
and set him by his side, and as long as the castellan remains
all judgments must be delivered by his mouth"
Then the alderman leads his companion between the
bakehouse and the brewhouse, whence 40,000 loaves and
60,000 gallons of beer are provided for the great household
of St Paul's every year, down to Paul's Wharf, where the
supplies from the manor houses are landed, and so along
Thames Street to the Bridge and the Tower Here the
knight marvels at all the sights and sounds of a great port,
but what surprises him most is to find how little of the riverside appears to be in the hands of the citizens themselves
Where the Fleet entered the Thames were the corn mills of
the Knights Templars, then the wharf of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, then Castle Baynard Wharf, then Paul's Wharf
Queenhithe, where all the corn supplies that came by water
were landed, had just been secured for the city from the Earl
of Cornwall by an enterprising mayor The trade of Vintry was
still mostly in the hands of Flemings and Gascons, and that of
Dowgate was dominated by the German merchants, who had
their gildhall in the Steelyard there The bridge itself was
controlled by wardens appointed by the King, and the wool
exporters, whose business occupies the river front from
Billingsgate to the Tower, were largely companies of Flemings
and Italians When the knight went to see the Guildhall he
would find it in the centre of a quarter peopled by a separate
community of Jewish bankers ruled by their own rabbis and
controlling much of the finance of the city
Nor was this atmosphere of exclusion and privilege
confined to foreigners-to religious communities, to feudal
magnates The very fishmongers and weavers were not, in
their trade matters, under the control of the city Each of
these trades had, like the Castellan and the Bishop, the Abbot
and the Knights Templars, a law of its own and a special court
to itself
These feudal forms were in fact a survival from what had
been till recently the dominant element in the constitution
At the beginning of the thirteenth century the King's letters
to London had been addressed to the barons and citizens, and
down to the middle of the fourteenth century there appeared at
the funeral of an alderman a rider on a caparisoned horse,
arrayed in the armour of the deceased and bearing his banner
and shield, as at the burial of a baron of the realm A class
of similar pretensions were the landlords and the rulers of all
the continental cities They lived in fortified stone houses,
fought on horseback, held office in royal or episcopal households and inter-married with the territorial nobility If we
seek an illustration, what better could we have than that of
the first Mayor of London, Henry FitzAylwin, and his
immediate descendants Henry died possessed of broad lands
in Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Hertfordshire His son
married the heiress to an estate in Surrey held by a service
of serjeantry in the King's kitchen Joan, the daughter of
this marriage, married Ralph the Furrier, a serjeant of the
King's Chamber, upon whom the King bestowed various
houses in London and Winchester, and who combined a
lucrative trade in foreign skins with the management of an
estate in Norfolk Robert, the son of Joan, and the grandson
of a FitzAylwin, who inhabited his grandfather's mansion near
London Stone, married the daughter of the Earl of Derby,
turned his grandmother's Surrey manor house into a castle,
was lord of the hundred of Lambeth and a privy councillor
Many of the parish churches of London had been built by
the early aldermen as private chapels and chantries, and half
a dozen still bear their names
These examples clearly explain the nature of the power
exercised by these early rulers of the city. It rested primarily
on the ownership of land, official position, and family
connection, trade was only a secondary, though no doubt an
important, source of wealth This is true also of the great
continental cities In some cities trade became important
very early, as at Venice and in Flanders But even in the
Flemish cities, whose mercantile origins M Pirenne, their
historian, (fn. 1) has clearly demonstrated, the traders became
powerful through land ownership and official power
The mediæval city owed nearly as much to this patrician
class as it had done to its early bishops What M Pirenne
says of their achievements in the great Flemish cities, Bruges,
Ghent, Y pres, Douai, etc, might be applied with little modification to the early aldermen of London They gave urban
civilisation a permanent shape They set up a system of
municipal administration, of finance and taxation, of halls and
markets, in which the democracy that followed them found
little to alter They built solid walls, constructed ports, cut
canals, dredged rivers, established a water supply, organised
transport and postal service, created a civic bureaucracy and
inaugurated municipal records But their greatest service
was political By dint of skilful negotiation, timely pressure
and the judicious use of their opportunities and resources
they laid a firm foundation for civic independence The
aldermen of London might claim with some justice that it was
they who had won the liberties of the city Undoubtedly
there was another side to the matter Towards the end of
their régime, in the second half of the thirteenth century, a
universal cry goes up from all the cities of Western Europe
denouncing the abuse of magisterial power by the civil
oligarchies. They are accused of keeping all civic offices in
the hands of a clique, of laying all the taxes on the poorer
citizens, of creating trade monopolies for themselves, of
building their mansions on public land, of sitting in judgment
on their own causes
But whether used well or ill, their control over the destinies
of the city during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is
undoubted How did it pass from their hands ?
The story of how this was accomplished is the story of the
growth of the commune, upon which recent historical
investigation has shed much new light At the end of the
eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century there was a
widespread rising of the French cities against their episcopal
lords The inhabitants swore a secret oath to live and die
together, and took up arms in defence of their common
liberties The King of France favoured the movement as
tending to weaken the feudal power of the bishops and to
strengthen his own, and supported the commune by
swearing to it himself Thus there arose a new form of
municipal independence in close connection with the royal
power
The early historians of the communal movement-French
scholars with popular sympathies-looked upon it as a great
democratic upheaval-the first rising of the Third Estate We
now know that this was far from being the case The
communal movement was in fact carried to success by men of
that very patrician class I have just been describing
Without their leadership success would have been impossible,
and as a rule they retained control of the new political
instrument they had created But in one important respect
their rule differed from that of the patricians In the hour
of common peril all classes of inhabitants-knights, clergy and
citizens-had sworn the oath They had all a tacit claim to
share in the commune That claim was full of possibilities
The famous case of the London commune is the best
example of this development The policy of Henry II had
seriously diminished the civic liberties which the patrician
class had won for London, and they seized the opportunity
presented by the absence of Richard to extort the grant of a
commune and a mayor from John But for all practical
purposes the government of London remained the same The
aldermen presided in their ward-motes, gave judgment in
the husting and chose the mayor and the sheriffs Only under
royal compulsion did they take any counsel with the rest of
the citizens But whenever a popular protest is heard it takes
the form of an appeal to the communal ideal "We are the
Commune of London, and we ought to elect the mayor and
the aldermen"
In that cry we seem to hear the first expression of the spirit
of modern democracy But democracy, ancient or modern,
has done nothing without party discipline, and party discipline
needs a basis in social organisation If, therefore, we find the
commune ultimately widened, we look for the social forces
that achieved this result, and if the social forces from below
were not strong enough we must examine those that were
operating within the patrician class itself It was for the
purpose of gaining a brief preliminary survey of those forces
that we accompanied the knight and alderman in their ride
into the city of London
We found the early civic community closely hemmed in
by an environment-partly consisting of feudal households,
but still more of communities in whose life its own life was
very closely intermingled-bodies of monks and cathedral
clergy, of templars and hospitallers, and foreign merchants.
The period during which the city had been acquiring its
political independence on a patrician basis had been marked
by an immense growth of communities representing nearly
every variety of religious, social and economic aim There
were communities of ecclesiastical and social reformers, of
popular preachers, of slum workers, communities to house the
pilgrim, to visit the prisoner, to tend the leper, to nurse the
sick, to console the dying, communities of adventurous
younger sons such as now go to the colonies or join a
filibustering raid, communities of alien merchants, and last,
but not least, communities of students of theology, and the
arts, of law and medicine
Yet, in spite of this extreme variety of membership and of
purpose, most of these communities had some striking
characteristics in common They almost all represented at
first an upgrowth from below, the powerful spontaneous
impulse of new religious, social and economic forces to
re-shape the old order, or to transfuse it with a new spirit
They were nearly all international organisations, and most of
them united within a single community members of widely
different social ranks and origins The living principle of their
organisation was in every case that of the religious fraternity,
whilst its external and legal aspect was almost as universally
that of a collective feudalism
The functions which the gilds performed in the later period
of civic development were performed by these communities
for the city of the patrician period They were largely
recruited from the patrician class, and served as the natural
organs of its expansion The class out of which the early
oligarchies of the cities were formed was increasing by
additions from above and from below much too rapidly to find
room within the limits of what was becoming more and more
a close coterie of families It cast off swarms in every
direction-swarms of monks, of knights, or scholars, of
merchant adventurers, and the communities which we find
filling so large a space in city topography and operating so
powerfully upon it as an environment were settlements from
these swarms
It is one of the many merits of Dr Rashdall's History of
the Universities in the Middle Ages to have emphasised the
close analogy between those earlier associations and the later
gilds The rise of the universities, he says, was "merely a
wave of that great movement towards association which began
to sweep over the cities of Europe in the course of the eleventh
century" Only a wave, but surely the most influential wave
and also the most significant For with the rise of universities
the meaning of the whole movement becomes clear It is
laying the foundations of the liberal and learned professions,
just as the later gilds were to lay the foundations of the
mercantile and industrial professions It may be a matter
of dispute which group was the more important of the two,
but both were undoubtedly essential to the fully-developed
city, and still more to the realisation of that national life of
which the city was to be the organ
The direct control exercised over city life by these noncivic communities was very great Monastic and clerical
bodies and universities have ruled or dominated cities like
Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Rome Alien merchants were
the earliest rulers of Prague and Stockholm, and still dominate
the life of many a city in the East of Europe to-day Acre
and Tyre and Antioch during the rule of the crusading
knights, were full of palaces, on whose roofs noble ladies
walked with crowns of gold, whilst knights hospitallers from
Yorkshire were collecting rents in the villages of the
Archbishop of Nazareth The Teutonic Order of Knights,
turning aside from the failure of the crusades to Germanise
Slavonic Europe, founded and ruled a group of Baltic cities
that grew into a powerful commercial state And three great
orders of knights who dwelt in Castilian cities from which
they had expelled the Moors almost constituted a separate
estate in all the later monarchies of Spam
But it is with the indirect effects of this stimulating
environment on the growth of the city that I am chiefly
concerned
When we read the biographies of the men who played a
leading part in the twelfth century we realise how much of
the industrial freedom, the social fluidity, the carrière ouverte
aux talens which we associate with city life could be attained
by a skilful use of the opportunities offered by the earlier
communities Thomas "À Becket," born in Cheapside, the son
of a London citizen, is educated by a community of monks, at
Merton, enters a community of students at Paris, serves for a
time as a civic official, acquires the accomplishments of knighthood, joins the feudal household of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, enters deacons' orders, and enjoys a plurality of
living, qualifies as a lawyer at the University of Bologna,
becomes an Archdeacon, a clerical emissary to Rome, a royal
favourite, Warden of the Tower of London, Chancellor of the
Realm, Archbishop The rungs in this astonishing ladder of
promotion are furnished by the great households and the
great communities Or, to take another familiar instance-
Carlyle's Abbot Sampson He was not fortune's favourite
like Thomas, he made his own way, and all the rungs of his
ladder were provided by the Abbey at Bury St Edmunds
Yet what a remarkable range of talents-none of them of a
religious kind-does this monastic community find scope for
In the obscure poverty of his youth and early manhood,
Sampson sees the world as a student at Paris, as an emissary
at Rome Later on he is an estate agent, an improving
landlord, an architect, an acute financier, the progressive
autocrat of a thriving town, the lord of fifty knights, a peer
of Parliament, a Royal Commissioner
Thomas of London and Abbot Sampson reached the goal of
their ambition, but very few of the thousands who were thronging the Universities of Bologna and Paris or returning from an
adventurous but profitless youth spent in the Crusades could
hope to become archbishops and abbots The applicants
for what we may call Civil Service appointments must have
been numerous, and one of the chief avenues to that service
was controlled by the patrician oligarchy in the city When
that oligarchy showed signs of becoming an hereditary caste
of inter-related families the discontent of outsiders of the
same class must have been great But discontent might have
a nobler motive The aldermen were oppressing the poorer
citizens, and a fervent religious sympathy with the wrongs
and sufferings of the poor was one of the strongest
characteristics of the best minds of that age-the age of Arnold
of Brescia, Peter of Lyons, and Francis of Assisi The rising
of London under William FitzOsbert in 1196 is best explained
by a combination of both these motives Only five years
before the patricians had invoked all the forms of a popular
insurrection to secure a restoration of civic independence on a
firmer basis John had sworn to the commune The aldermen
who held office for life as rulers of the wards and judges
and administrators in the Court of Husting, had elected
Henry Fitz-Aylwin to be mayor on the same tenure There is
no evidence that they gave the rest of the citizens any share
in the constitution Indeed, ten years after FitzOsbert's
rising, and fifteen years after the grant of the commune, we
find King John commanding the city to elect a special council
of twenty-four to enquire into the wrongs inflicted by those
who are set over the administration of the law and over the
assessment and collection of taxes, and over the government
of the city, who are accused of collecting much money from
the common people and of withholding it from the King
But the most definite and the most interesting things we
know of FitzOsbert's rising relate to FitzOsbert himself He
had fought as a crusading knight in Portugal He was learned
in the law, and equally learned in the Scriptures He
preached to the people in the streets and open spaces-in
St Paul's itself He took his texts from Isaiah, and declared
it to be his mission to save the poor from the oppression of
the rich When he was dragged from sanctuary and hanged
the common people accounted him a martyr Such was
London's first demagogue But he was himself an alderman,
a patrician, a knight, a learned man In this class also
belonged the later leaders of the commons of London, Thomas
FitzThomas, Walter Hervy The patricians were divided
amongst themselves
If we look around the cities of Western Europe in the
latter half of the fourteenth century, a great revolution appears
to have been accomplished Instead of the hereditary rule
of a score of families who circulated the offices amongst
themselves, we find in some of the greatest cities a wellorganised democracy In place of or beside a court of landowning magistrates, aldermen with feudal pretensions and
aristocratic connections holding office for life, we find a
Council elected annually from tradesmen by tradesmen The
increasing list of trades which share in this right of election
shows the growing organised political power of the once
despised craftsmen Indeed, it is often enacted that no one
can acquire the position of a citizen without being a member of
a trade gild The old patricians held craftsmen in contempt,
and regarded commerce mainly as an official perquisite, their
politics were of a feudal cast, they backed one episcopal
candidate-one royal pretender-against another The new
civic community shuts its gates on feudal anarchy, and puts
trade and industry frankly in the first place How has this
great change been effected? It looks at first sight as if the
organised trades and handicrafts had gone up against the
patrician stronghold, and carried it by storm
But closer study does not confirm this notion The great
families still remain, or others have taken their place Their
collective hereditary control is gone, but their social prestige
is still great, and they fill many elective offices both in the
city and the gilds In their style of living and dying they
are as feudal as ever Sir John Pulteney, who was Mayor of
London in the middle of the fourteenth century, and lived in
the mansion vacated by the Earl of Norfolk, endowed by his
will seven priests to sing in a new-built chapel for his soul,
and bequeathed ruby and diamond rings to his friends, the
Bishop of London and the Earl of Huntingdon, that they
might see his wishes properly carried out Richard
Whittington of famous memory made a similar will
The trade gilds, on the other hand, when we know more
about them, do not appear likely to have contrived the overthrow of the patricians The poorer gilds are not strong
enough, the more powerful gilds not sufficiently democratic
These greater gilds, indeed, had always been full of patrician
members If the gilds have conquered patrician feudalism in
any sense, it can only have been by absorbing it There
has been no abrupt transition, no complete displacement of the
knightly class by the bourgeois The patricians have been
gradually transformed from within
Much of this gradual transformation is no doubt to be
attributed to the gilds, but not by any means all of it They
came into the field when the work was already half done
Friendly societies of craftsmen had indeed probably existed
here and there since Roman times, but these could not
overthrow or undermine a strong patrician society The gilds
of merchants which were very active in the twelfth century
cities, were certainly one of the chief means of transforming
the garrisons of knights and officers into a mercantile
community But the merchant gild was so far from
destroying the exclusiveness of the patrician class that it had
become one of its chief organs Its rules strictly forbid the
admission of craftsmen-"men with blue nails" The craft
gilds did not win collective recognition or play any effective
part in political life till the end of the thirteenth century
Even then they won but partial and temporary victories, and
they fought under patrician leaders
And now let us suppose ourselves out for a final ramble
through the city at a period part way between the Middle Ages
and our own time-the end of the sixteenth century-the time
of Shakespeare We might have many guides who know and
love every inch of the ground, but before all others we should
be wise in preferring old John Stow, tailor, antiquarian,
annalist, chronicler We shall naturally find a great change
from the thirteenth century The population is at least five
times as great, the shops and houses-especially those of the
middle-class citizens-are immensely improved If we could
peep inside we should notice more improvement still
Tapestry, Turkey work, pewter, brass, fine linen and costly
cupboards of plate worth £500 or £600 "For such
furnishing," we are told, "is to be seen in the houses of
knights, gentlemen, merchant men and other wealthy
citizens" Most of the houses are the timber structures we
think of as Elizabethan, but a few of the older stone houses
that were inhabited by the city magnates of our earlier time
still remain to attract the gaze of the curious and the study
of the antiquarian It is even more interesting to find the old
feudal halls with their enclosures still shutting out the
intrusion of the crowded city, the houses of kings, nobles,
bishops, of monks, friars, hospitallers and Templars Most
of these appear to preserve a life that is modelled on the social
ideals of the past, the style of the great household of the feudal
baron
We turn aside into one of these mansions-for our guide
seems to take a certain affectionate pride in it Here is a
group of buildings in which a prince of the blood need not
be ashamed to dwell-a great banqueting hall that will seat
two hundred guests, with windows of Flemish glass and
tapestries like those at Hampton Court A chapel, a portraitgallery, a king's chamber, an exchequer chamber, a treasury,
a wardrobe, a pantry, a buttery, a larder, a kitchen, a storehouse, a bakehouse, a brewery, a gardener's house and stables
Near the gateway stand a row of cottages "These," says
our companion, "are the company's almshouses, and yonder
livings," he adds, pointing to the steeples of several adjacent
churches, "are in the company's gift" "The Company"
What company can this be? But we have no time to ask
questions, for we are hurried in by our eager companion to see
the records, and from these we only gather that the company
is a fraternity of St John the Baptist In a great scroll under
a baronial coat-of-arms, magnificently emblazoned, consisting of "Argent, a tent royal between two parliament robes,
gules, lined ermine, on a chief azure a lion of England, crest
the Holy Lamb in glory proper, supporters two camels, motto
concordia parvae res crescunt" On the scroll we see a list
of honorary members embracing seven kings, two princes,
and bishops, dukes and earls by the score The ordinary
leading members we find are aldermen and sheriffs, baronets
and knights, merchant princes and lawyers, whose sons and
brothers hold high office in church and state We are still
puzzling over the social basis of this remarkable company,
when, as we are examining the rich treasures of its wardrobe
and, amongst other things, a richly-embroidered hearse-cloth
-where pascal lambs alternate with heads of John the
Baptist-we notice with some surprise several embroidered
pairs of scissors A light strikes us-the meaning of the
"Parliament robes, lined ermine," clears up "What
company did you say this was?" we ask our companion
-John Stow draws himself up in astonished pride "My
company-the honourable Merchant Taylors"
We explain our former bewilderment and how we took this
for a great baronial mansion "There is no marvel in that,"
replies Stow, "it was once the house-though then much
smaller-of Sir Oliver de Ingham, the Seneschal of Gascony
under Edward III" He proceeds to show us parallel cases
Here is St Helen's Priory, inhabited by the Leather-sellers
There is the mansion of the FitzWalters, taken over by the
Grocers Yonder the manor-house of the Nevilles, occupied
by the Pewterers And each of these communities appears
to be a microcosm of the social life of the great city
Beneath the top dressing of aldermen, merchants and
professional men there was a main body of wealthy shopkeepers, a large contingent of master craftsmen, a following
of journeymen and apprentices, who in their spare hours read
the chap-book lives of Sir John Hawkwood and Sir Richard
Whittington-and aspire to marry their master's daughter
and become Lord Mayor
Gravely pondering on the social transformation that has
been thus gradually wrought we pass out of Newgate-along
Holborn-down Chancery Lane Here, we remember, were
formerly houses of chancellors, justices and bishops, and also
the great community of Knights Templars These we now
find inhabited by gilds of lawyers, which together make
up a great legal university In all outward respects these
communities resemble those we have left behind, in their
feudal style, halls, gardens and chapels, arms and liveries and
hierarchies of classes But the residents are not all of civic
extraction, indeed, one of their number has just written a
book to prove the direct contrary This is John Ferne of the
Inner Temple, and his work is entitled "The Glory of
Generosity" "Nobleness of blood," says he, "joined with
virtue, counteth the person as most meet to the enterprising
of any public service, and to that cause it was not for naught
that our ancient governors in this land did with a special
wisdom and foresight provide that none should be admitted
into the house of Court except he be gentleman of blood"
Yet, notwithstanding this pardonable vaunt, we shall find the
sons of citizens mingling with the sons of gentry of every
degree in this training-ground of the statesmen and the
administrators of the growing nation
Note-The statement made on p 13 about the constitution
of London in the reign of John is based upon a writ printed in
Rotuli Litterarum Clausarm, Vol I, p 64 (ed 1833), which
appears to have been overlooked by the historians of London