Organisa. tion and officers.

man.

existed as early as the end of the 7th century, long anterior to the time of Alfred, to whom their institution has been popularly attributed. In the laws of Ina, King of the West Saxons (cir. A.D. 690), provision is made for the case of a plaintiff failing to obtain justice from his scirman, or other judge: if an ealdorman compound a felony it is declared that he shall forfeit his scir; and the defendant is forbidden secretly to withdraw from his lord into another scir. As Wessex gradually annexed the other kingdoms, these naturally fell into the rank of shires; or where they themselves had arisen from the union of several early settlements, were split up into several shires on the lines of the old tribal divisions.1

The government of the shire was administered concurrently by an ealdorman, and the scir-gerefa, or sheriff. The Ealdor. The Ealdorman (the princeps of Tacitus and the comes of the Normans) was originally elected in the general assembly of the nation; but there was a constant and increasing tendency to make the office hereditary in certain great families. On the annexation of an under-kingdom, the ealdormanship usually became hereditary in the old royal house; but in all cases, down to the Norman Conquest, the consent of the King and Witan was required at each devolution of the office. Sometimes several shires were administered by one ealdorman, but this arrangement did not involve an amalgamation of the separate The Sheriff. organisations of each shire. The Sheriff (or as he was termed after the Norman Conquest, vice-comes-a title apt to obscure his independence of the ealdorman) was the special representative of the regal or central authority, and as such usually nominated by the King. He was judicial

1 On the various origin of the different historical shires or counties, see Palgrave, Commonwealth, p. 116; and Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 109-10, who says: 'The constitutional machinery of the shire represents either the national organisation of the several divisions created by West Saxon conquest; or that of the early settlements which united in the Mercian kingdom, as it advanced westward; or the rearrangement by the West Saxon dynasty of the whole of England on the principles already at work in its own shires.'

It is probable, on early analogy, that the gerefa was chosen in the folkmoot; but there is no proof that within historical times this was the case,

president of the scir-gemot, or shiremoot, executor of the law, and steward of the royal demesne.1 At first the sheriff seems to have exercised co-ordinate authority with the ealdorman, but gradually the civil administration became almost entirely concentrated in the former, leaving to the latter, as his principal function, the command of the military force of the shire. Unlike the office of ealdorman, the sheriffdom, as a rule, never became hereditary. This circumstance was productive of important constitutional effects after the Norman Conquest, as the kings found ready to hand a machinery which enabled them to effectually assert the central authority in every shire, and thus to check the growth of local feudal jurisdictions.

The burh, or town, was in its origin 'simply a more The Burgh. strictly organised form of the township. It was probably in a more defensible position; had a ditch or mound instead of the quickset hedge or "tun" from which the township took its name; and as the "tun" was originally the fenced homestead of the cultivator, the "burh" was the fortified house and court-yard of the mighty man-the king, the magistrate, or the noble.'

tion.

Other burhs were gradually developed out of the village Its organisa township, or were founded on the Folkland. In these the municipal authority was similar to that of the free township. The chief magistrate was the gerefa, in mercantile places the port-gerefa, in others the wic- or tun-gerefa, who presided in the burh-gemot, or meeting of all the freeholders of the burh. In the larger towns, which were made up of a

although the constitutionalists of the thirteenth century attempted to assert it as a right, and it was for a few years conceded by the Crown.'-Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 113.

[The sheriff appears to be styled Præpositus (and is so taken by Stephen, Commentaries (1880), iii. p. 284) in the Laws of Edward the Elder, c. 11, where his duties are thus defined: "Præpositus ad quartam circiter septimanam frequentem populi concionem celebrato: cuique jus dicito: litesque singulas dirimito." On Sheriffs in Scotland, see Alexander Robertson, Laws, Constitution, and Government of Scotland, 1878, and Law Magazine and Review, No. ccxli., for Aug., 1881, art. by Sheriff Lees. On Sheriffs in Ireland, see Law Magazine and Review, No. ccxlix., for Aug., 1883, art. by W. H. Faloon, Q.C.-ED.]

2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 92.

The Guilds.

The 'frith gild.'

The merchant-guild.

cluster of townships or lordships, the organisation more nearly resembled that of the hundred than that of the simple township.

Side by side with the town constitution, and to a certain extent influencing its development, was the organisation of the municipal guilds. The ancient municipal guilds (so called from gildan, to pay or contribute) were voluntary associations for ecclesiastical or secular purposes, analogous to our modern clubs. By some the guilds have been regarded as an inheritance from the Roman municipal constitution; but an uninterrupted Roman descent can nowhere, in England, be traced. The similarity to be found in the oldest municipal denominations and institutions on both sides of the German Ocean points rather to a common origin in the ancient heathen sacrificial guilds, in which the common banquet, 'the cradle of many a political institution,' formed a leading feature. The suppression of these devil's guilds (deofol-gild), as they were termed in the Christian laws, proving extremely difficult, they were for the most part continued with the substitution of Christian for heathen rites. Some guilds had for their principal object the mutual defence of their members and the preservation of peace; and by the laws of Ina and Alfred, in case of homicide of or by one of the members, the guild-brethren were to share in the receipt or payment of the wergild.2

But the form of guild which exercised the most permanent and extensive influence on the town constitution was the merchant-guild, ceapmanne gild, or hansa, to which all the traders of the town were, as a rule, obliged to belong. At first independent of the governing body of the town,

1 Lappenberg, England under the Anglo-Saxons, by Thorpe, ii. 350. 2 In the Judicia civitatis Lundoniae, drawn up under King Athelstan (cir. A.D. 930) by the bishops and reeves belonging to London, and confirmed by the pledges of the 'frith-gegildas,' is preserved a complete code of a 'frithgild' of the city of London, with minute directions for the pursuit and conviction of thieves, the exacting of compensation, and the carrying out of the dooms which Athelstan and the Witan had enacted at Greatley, Exeter, and Thundersfield.-Thorpe, Anc. Laws and Inst.; Select Chart. 65.

the merchant-guild gradually coalesced with it, monopolising the rights which had originally belonged to all the free inhabitants. But the process was a very slow one, and though it began prior to the Norman Conquest, its principal development proceeded during the two centuries following that event. In the reign of Henry II.,' says Bishop Stubbs,' there can be little doubt that the possession of a merchant-guild had become the sign and token of municipal independence; that it was in fact, if not in theory, the governing body of the town in which it was allowed to exist. It is recognised by Glanvill as identical with the communa of the privileged towns, the municipal corporation of the later age.'1

The City of London has always occupied an exceptional The City of position, and though it has never stood to the rest of London. England in the same peculiar relation as Paris to the rest of France, it has just claims to be regarded, even in very early times, as a member of the political system.' 2

stitution

the shire.

Whilst the constitution of ordinary towns resembled that Its conof the hundred, the constitution of London was analogous analogous to that of the shire. From time immemorial the City has to that of been divided into wards, answering to the hundreds in the shire, each having its own wardmoot, answering to the hundred court, and its elected ealdorman. The chief municipal court-the general assembly of the citizens-was called the Hus-thing, whence the modern name Husting, a term derived probably from the Danes, and signifying a court or assembly in a house as distinguished from one held in the open air. Side by side with the jurisdiction of the several wardmoots, landowners, both secular and eccle

1 Const. Hist. i. 418.

2 Hallam, Midd. Ages, iii. 24 (11th Edit.). According to Roger Hoveden, the citizens of London, on the death of Ethelred II., joined with a portion of the nobility in raising Edmund Ironside to the throne. They concurred, say the Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmesbury, in the election of Harold I.; and in later times they took an active part in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. They sided with the harons in their contests with the Crown, and assisted in deposing Longchamp, the chancellor and justiciar of Richard I. The mayor of London was one of the twenty-five barons empowered to maintain the provisions of the Great Charter.

the Con

queror to London.

siastical, possessed their exclusive sokens or jurisdictions within the city and its outlying liberties. These private sokens gradually gave way before the increasing power of the citizens; but while they existed, the inclusion of an aristocratic element within the municipality doubtless added much to its power and influence, until the citizens were strong enough to hold their own as a purely commercial community.

Towards the close of the pre-Norman period the two chief officers of the City of London, the representatives of the civic unity of the various wards, townships, parishes, and lordships of which it was composed, were the Port-reeve Charter of and the Bishop. It is to these two that the charter of William the Conqueror confirming to London the laws which it had enjoyed under King Edward is addressed: 'William the King greets William the bishop and Gosfrith the port-reeve,1 and all the burghers within London, French and English, friendly and I do you to wit that I will that ye twain be worthy of all the law that ye were worthy of in King Edward's day. And I will that every child be his father's heir after his father's day; and I will not endure that any man offer any wrong to you. God keep you.' 2

Ecclesiastical divisions.

:

The original bishoprics were conterminous with the limits of the various kingdoms at the time of the conversion to Christianity; but under Archbishop Theodore the dioceses were subdivided on the lines of the still earlier tribal divisions. As churches were gradually erected

1 The word port in port-reeve is the Latin " porta" (not portus), where the markets were held, and although used for the city generally, seems to refer to it specially in its character of a mart or city of merchants. The port-gerefa at Canterbury had a close connexion with the " ceapmanne gild"; and the same was probably the case in London, where there was a cnihten-gild, the estates of which were formed into the ward of Portsoken. From the position assigned to the port-reeve in this writ, which answers to that given to the sheriff in ordinary writs, it may be inferred that he was a royal officer who stood to the merchants of the city in the relation in which the bishop stood to the clergy; and if he were also the head of the guild, his office illustrates very well the combination of voluntary organisation with administrative machinery which marks the English municipal system from its earliest days.'-Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 404, n.

2 Munim. Gildhallae Lond., Lib. Custum. [pp. 25, 247]; Select Charters, 79.