spring, before the death of pope Clement III. was known, _or
the archbishop of Rouen landed_ [April 27];--[442]
while the ‘Gesta’ distinctly state that Longchamp only set out against
Lincoln “after Midsummer.” If this were so, the discrepancy would be
obvious. But leaving aside, for the moment, the question of the Pope’s
death, we find, on reference, that William of Newburgh, so far from
placing the campaign, etc., _before_ the archbishop’s arrival, actually
places it _after_ that event.[443] The one real discrepancy, therefore,
is found to have no existence.[444]
As to the date of Longchamp receiving the news of the Pope’s death,
it must first be observed that William of Newburgh does not assert
categorically that it reached him shortly after the fall of Lincoln.
What he says is that the chancellor “learned that his office of legate
had expired through the death of the pope.”[445] If this merely meant
that he heard of the Pope’s death, it would be irreconcilable with
William’s own statement that all this happened after, and some time
after, the archbishop’s arrival (April 27). Those, therefore, who would
take the words in this sense, must admit that William has blundered,
for he contradicts himself. This would be sufficient for my argument;
but I think we may hold, in fairness to William, that what Longchamp
heard, after withdrawing from Lincoln, was that Pope Cœlestine had not
renewed his legation, and, therefore, that it had expired with the
death of the late Pope.[446] Great mystery surrounds, it is admitted,
the date of the eventual renewal; and one point, it seems to me, may
have escaped notice. According to the envoys’ report in Hoveden, Pope
Cœlestine himself had been earnestly entreated by Richard to make
Longchamp legate. But Cœlestine was not elected Pope till four days
after Richard had left Sicily for the East. If, therefore, the renewal
was granted at Richard’s instance, there must have been considerable
delay before the grant was obtained.
Moreover, those who uphold the view at present accepted have to explain
a difficulty they hardly seem to have realized. The ‘Gesta’ assigns the
Pope’s death to April 10 (1191), but so uncertain is the date that we
find Dr. Stubbs writing:
Clement III. died about the Pope Clement dies April 10:
end of March, and the news of the news would reach England
his death would reach England in a fortnight or perhaps less.
about three weeks later The chancellor, trembling for his
(‘Gesta,’ p. 208 note). legation, makes a hasty peace
(Rog. Hov., iii. 135 note).
If Clement died April 10--the date adopted by Mr. Howlett and Miss
Norgate[447]--the difficulty is that the news must have reached not
merely England, but Lincoln (_ex hypothesi_) in time to allow of
preliminary negotiations between John and Longchamp, of a conference
at Winchester being agreed to, and of their both reaching Winchester
in time for that conference on April 25. For this the news must have
reached Lincoln hardly later than April 20. Could it possibly have done
so?
Those who have thus far followed my argument will have seen that I hold
there to have been only one “campaign,” followed by a conference at
Winchester, which “campaign” did not begin till after midsummer. The
spring campaign, with the alleged conference of April 25 at Winchester,
I hold to be wholly imaginary.
In case any one should still be in doubt, I now bring up my reserves.
The undisputed statement that Longchamp was at Winchester on March 24
was supported, we saw, by record evidence that he was there on March
28. Of more importance is the record evidence that he was at Lincoln
on July 8,[448] for it strongly confirms the statement in the Gesta
that he set out “after midsummer,” and, having rapidly reduced Wigmore,
laid siege to Lincoln Castle. Although I have been trying for years to
collect evidence of Longchamp’s movements in this eventful year, I have
not been able to secure many fixed points. It is certain, however, that
he was at Cambridge on April 21.[449] This affords welcome support to
the crowning discovery I made, in a document preserved in France, that
he was there on April 24.[450] It will, I presume, not be disputed that
if the chancellor was at Cambridge on April 24, he cannot have devoted
the following day to a conference with John at Winchester.
* * * * *
I have purposely refrained as yet from discussing a distinct question,
namely, the terms of the agreement, or agreements, between Longchamp
and John. For they do not affect the question of the sequence of
historical events. We have (_a_) in Hoveden what purports to be an
actual recital of the agreement made after the chancellor’s enforced
withdrawal from Lincoln; (_b_) in Richard of Devizes a _résumé_ of such
an agreement effected, according to him, at a conference on July 28,
also, it would seem, consequent on the chancellor’s retreat.[451] Dr.
Stubbs has argued as against Palgrave, and apparently with complete
success, that two distinct agreements are in question. But this does
not establish their date (or respective dates), nor even their right
sequence. I have already disposed of the alleged conference on April
25, and both agreements, therefore, must be later than the Lincoln
business in July. Now, it is singular that William of Newburgh
distinctly speaks of two agreements, and implies that the second was
the less unfavourable to the chancellor’s claims. This is, at first
sight, in striking harmony with Dr. Stubbs’ conclusion that the
agreement recited by Hoveden is the later of the two, and that in it
“the chancellor gave way somewhat more than was wise, but less than he
had done in April”[452] (_i.e._ in the agreement described by Richard
of Devizes). But a more minute examination than Dr. Stubbs could give
reveals a serious difficulty. According to him, the earlier agreement
“engages the chancellor to support John’s claim to the crown in
case of Richard’s death”;[453] while the later one contains no such
provision. On this distinction he lays stress because “the succession
of Arthur,” he holds, was a “main point” of Longchamp’s policy;[454]
while the archbishop of Rouen also, he urges, would have “sacrificed
other considerations to ... obtaining the omission of any terms which
would have openly asserted John’s claim to the succession.”[455]
But on turning to the ‘Gesta’ and to William of Newburgh, we find that
the former, in what is admittedly, and the latter in what he explicitly
makes, the later of the two agreements, declare the recognition of
John as heir, in case of Richard’s death, to have been the feature
of that later agreement, in which, according to Dr. Stubbs, it was
conspicuously omitted.[456] This grave discrepancy would seem to have
escaped notice.
I do not profess to determine absolutely the sequence of the two
agreements, but I think it not impossible that the one recited by
Hoveden may prove, after all, to have been the earlier of the two. They
have hardly, perhaps, been examined with sufficient care. Dr. Stubbs,
for instance, writes that in the agreement described by Richard “each
party chooses eleven commissioners,” while in Hoveden, “each chooses
seven.”[457] But the latter were merely sureties for the oaths of the
parties to observe the agreement,[458] not arbitrators for arranging
its terms; while, in the other agreement, the eleven were actual
arbitrators, chosen (as for the Provisions of Oxford) for drawing up
the agreement independently of the parties. Again, closer investigation
shows that the agreement described by Richard of Devizes is, in some
ways, more, not less, favourable to the chancellor than the other.
Hoveden, for instance, makes John surrender Tickhill and Nottingham,
not to the chancellor, but to the archbishop as representing the king.
Richard, on the other hand, makes the chancellor not only receive the
castles, but personally take hostages from their keepers for their
safe custody. In Hoveden, indeed, the possession of these two castles
is made, on the contrary, a kind of security for the chancellor’s good
behaviour. Richard, to speak more generally, brings the chancellor
to the front, and leaves the archbishop in the background, which is
precisely what might be expected when Longchamp felt himself strong
enough to pose once more as the king’s representative.
Moreover, we have a hint as to the order of these agreements in their
provisions as to Gerard de Camville. In Hoveden’s document we read that
he is to be provisionally restored, then to have a fair trial, and, if
convicted, is to lose his castle and his shrievalty.[459] Richard, on
the contrary, describes him as restored to the chancellor’s favour,
and, therefore, to the permanent custody of the castle.[460] The
latter, surely, is a later stage.
On all these grounds I lean strongly to the view that Richard of
Devizes describes the later and final compromise, which, unlike its
predecessor, was arranged by formal arbitration. On this hypothesis the
archbishop of Rouen had refused to give way about the succession,[461]
while the chancellor purchased concessions from John by throwing over
Arthur. But as I do not claim to have demonstrated this, I hope my view
will be discussed by some duly qualified critic.
On the other hand, the earlier part of this paper does, I hope,
demonstrate that the accepted view of the order of events in the year
1191 must be altogether abandoned. This, of course, involves the
correction of no fewer than four works in the Master of the Rolls’
series, and of every modern history of England which deals with the
period in any detail. Yet the chief interest of the enquiry will be
found in its bearing on historical probability and in its demonstration
of the value of minute critical study.[462]
XI
The Commune of London
When in 1893, the seventh centenary of the year in which a Mayor of
London first appears, I read before the Royal Archæological Institute
a paper on “The origin of the Mayoralty of London,”[463] I expressed
the hope that some document might yet be discovered which would throw
further light upon the Mayor and on his connection with the “Commune”
of 1191. Such a document I have since found. Its confirmation of the
fact that a “Commune” was actually established in London is as welcome
as it is important; but the essential fact which it enables us to
determine is that this foreign organization was transplanted bodily to
London. It has hitherto been supposed that the only change involved
by the erection of the “Commune” was the appearance of its typical
officer, the “Mayor,” as an addition to the pre-existent sheriffs and
the aldermen of the city wards. It can, however, now be shown that the
aldermen of the wards had no part in the “communal” organization, which
was modelled exclusively on foreign lines, and was wholly unconnected
with the old and English system.
The historian’s time can be profitably spent on minute and thorough
examination of London institutions in the 12th century. For the origin
and development in England of municipal liberties is still, in spite of
their paramount interest, involved in much obscurity. As Dr. Stubbs has
truly observed:
London claims the first place in any such investigation, as the
greatest municipality, as the model on which by their charters
of liberties the other large towns of the country were allowed
or charged to adjust their usages, and as the most active,
the most political, and the most ambitious. London has also a
pre-eminence in municipal history, owing to the strength of the
conflicting elements which so much affected her constitutional
progress.[464]
And yet, as he reminded his hearers in one of his Oxford lectures,
“Mediæval London still waits for its constitutional historian.”
Occupying as it did, among English towns, a position apart, in wealth
as in importance, London had a municipal development of her own, a
development of which our best historians can only tell us that it
is “obscure.” That obscurity, however, has been sadly increased by
the careless study and the misapprehension of her great charters of
liberties. Broadly speaking, and disregarding for the moment the
statements of our accepted authorities, the great want of London, in
her early days, was an efficient, homogeneous government of her own.
The City--for the City was then London--found itself in fact, during
the Norman period, in the same plight as greater London found itself
in our own days. “The ordinary system of the parish and the township,”
as an accomplished writer has observed, “the special franchises and
jurisdictions of the great individual landowners, of the churches, of
the gilds--all these were loosely bundled together.” For the cause
of this state of things we should have to go back to the origins of
our history, to show that the genius of the Anglo-Saxon system was
ill-adapted, or rather, wholly unsuitable, to urban life; that, while
of unconquerable persistence and strength in small, manageable rural
communities, it was bound to, and did, break down when applied to
large and growing towns, whose life lay not in agriculture, but in
trade. In a parish, a “Hundred,” the Englishman was at home; but in a
town, and still more in such a town as London, he found himself, for
administrative purposes, at his wits’ end.
Putting aside the “English Knightengild,”--the position of which as a
governing body has been far too rashly assumed,[465] and rests upon
no foundation,--the only institutions of which we can be sure are the
“folkesmote” and the weekly “husteng” of Henry I.’s charter, and the
Shrievalty. The “folkesmote” was the immemorial open-air gathering,
corresponding with the “shire-moot” or “hundred-moot” of the country,
the “borough-moot” or “portman-moot” of the town. The small “husteng,”
as is obvious from its name, was a Danish development, akin to the
“lawmen” of the Danish boroughs. If these represented, in London, a
kind of legal unity, the shrievalty, on the other hand, involved a kind
of financial unity. If, however, as I have urged in my study on the
early shrievalty,[466] the administrative development of London had
proceeded upon these lines, it would no more have brought about a true
municipal unity than the sheriff and the county court could evolve it
in the shire; a “Corporation” was wholly alien to administration on
county principles.
But in the meanwhile, the great movement in favour of municipal
liberties, which was so prominent a feature of the stirring 12th
century, was spreading like wildfire through France and Flanders, and
London, which, since the coming of the Normans, had become far more
cosmopolitan, was steadily imbibing from foreign traders the spirit
and enthusiasm of the age. But this by no means suited the views, at
the time, of the Crown, which, here as in Germany, looked askance on
this alarming and, too often, revolutionary movement. When the history
of London at this period comes to be properly studied, it will be
found that the growing power of the Londoners, who had practically
seated Stephen on the throne, and had chevied the Empress Matilda from
their midst, were sharply checked by her son Henry, whose policy, in
this respect at least, was faithfully followed by his successor,
Richard the First. The assumption, therefore, that the Mayoralty of
London dates from Richard’s accession (1189) is an absolute perversion
of history. There is record evidence which completely confirms the
memorable words of Richard of Devizes, who declares that on no terms
whatever would king Richard or his father have ever assented to the
establishment of the “Commune” in London.[467]
Writing mainly for experts, I need scarcely explain that the “sworn
Commune,” to give it its right name--for the oath sworn by its members
was its essential feature--was the association or ‘conspiracy’ as
we choose to regard it, formed by the inhabitants of a town that
desired to obtain its independence. And the head of this Association
or “Commune” was given, abroad, the title of “Maire.” It was at about
the same time that the “Commune” and its “Maire” were triumphantly
reaching Dijon in one direction and Bordeaux in another, that they
took a northern flight and descended upon London. Not for the first
time in her history the Crown’s difficulty was London’s opportunity.
Even so early as 1141, when the fortunes of the Crown hung in the
balance between rival claimants, we find the citizens forming an
effective “conjuratio,”[468] the very term applied to their “Commune,”
half a century later, by Richard of Devizes.[469] Moreover, earlier
in the same year (April), William of Malmesbury applies to their
government the term “communio,” in which the keen eye of the bishop
of Oxford detected “a description of municipal unity which suggests
that the communal idea was already in existence as a basis of civic
organization.”[470] But he failed, it would seem, to observe the
passage which follows and which speaks of “omnes barones, qui in eorum
communionem jamdudum recepti fuerant.” For in this allusion we discover
a distinctive practice of the “sworn commune,” from that of Le Mans
(1073),[471] to that of London, now to be dealt with.
When, in the crisis of October, 1191, the administration found itself
paralysed by the conflict between John, as the king’s brother, and
Longchamp, as the king’s representative, London, finding that she held
the scales, promptly named the “Commune” as the price of her support.
The chroniclers of the day enable us to picture to ourselves the scene,
as the excited citizens who had poured forth overnight, with lanterns
and torches, to welcome John to the capital, streamed together on the
morning of the eventful 8th October, at the well-known sound of the
great bell, swinging out from its campanile in St. Paul’s churchyard.
There they heard John take the oath to the “Commune,” like a French
king or lord; and then London for the first time had a municipality of
her own.
This much at least we may deem certain; but what the chroniclers tell
us has proved to be only enough to whet the appetite for more. Of the
character of the “Commune” so granted, of its ultimate fate, and of
the part it played in the municipal development of London, nothing
has been really known. The only fact of importance ascertained from
other sources has been the appearance of a Mayor of London at or
about the same time as the grant of a “Commune.” It cannot, indeed,
be proved that, as has sometimes been supposed, the two phenomena
were synchronistic; for no mention of the Mayor of London, after long
research, is known to me earlier than the spring of the year 1193.[472]
But there is, of course, the strongest presumption that the grant of
a “Commune” involved a Mayor, and already in 1194 we find a citizen
accused of boasting that “come what may, the Londoners shall have no
king but their Mayor.” It was precisely in the same spirit that the
‘Comuneros’ of Salamanca exclaimed of their leader in 1521: “Juras à
Dios no haber mas Rey ni Papa que Valloria.”
Before I explain my discoveries on the “Commune” granted to London,
it may be desirable to show how great a discrepancy of opinion has
hitherto prevailed on this important but admittedly obscure subject.
The first historian, so far as I know, to treat the subject in the
modern spirit was the present bishop of Oxford; and it is a striking
testimony to his almost infallible judgment that what he wrote on the
subject a quarter of a century ago is the explanation that, to this
day, has held the field. In his ‘Select Charters’ (1870), he expressed
the view that
the establishment of the ‘Communa’ of the citizens of London,
which is recorded by the historians to have been specially
confirmed by the Barons and Justiciar on the occasion of
Longchamp’s deposition from the Justiciarship is a matter of
some difficulty, as the word ‘Communa’ is not found in English
town charters, and no formal record of the act of confirmation
is now preserved. Interpreted, however, by foreign usage, and
by the later meaning of the word ‘communitas,’ it must be
understood to signify a corporate identity of the municipality,
which it may have claimed before, and which may even have been
occasionally recognised, but was now firmly established; a sort
of consolidation into a single organized body of the variety of
franchises, guilds, and other departments of local jurisdiction.
It was probably connected with and perhaps implied by the
nomination of a _Mayor_, who now appears for the first
time. It cannot, however, be defined with certainty (p. 257).
And in his ‘Constitutional History’ he holds that it practically “gave
completeness to a municipal constitution which had long been struggling
for recognition.” These comments, on the whole, suggest rather a
development of existing conditions than the introduction of a foreign
institution.
Mr. Coote, the next to approach the subject, contended that Dr. Stubbs’
“view falls very far short of the reality.” In his able paper “A
Lost Charter,”[473] he insisted that a charter was actually granted
in 1191 to the Londoners empowering them to elect a Mayor, and that
this is what the chroniclers meant when they spoke of the grant of
“Commune,” for the citizens, he urged, had possessed all the rights of
a “Commune” from the days of the Conqueror. With Mr. Loftie’s work came
the inevitable reaction. Wholly ignoring the definite and contemporary
statement as to the grant of a “Commune,” he deemed it “far safer
to adopt the received and old-fashioned opinion,” and to date the
Mayoralty from 1189, while, as for the “Commune,” he deemed it to have
been of gradual growth, and to have been practically recognised by the
charter of Henry I.
Now, whatever the grant of “Commune” implied, it certainly implied
something, and something of importance. “Upon this point there is,”
as Mr. Coote justly observed, “a cloud of contemporary evidence,
clear, exact and positive.” He put together the versions of the
chroniclers,[474] contemporary and well-informed, and their harmony is
complete. The fact, moreover, that the Commune was extorted at a great
crisis, proved that only when the government was weak could so great a
concession be wrung from it. Lastly, the phrase of Richard of Devizes:
“Concessa est ipsa die et instituta Communia Londinensium,” and that
of Giraldus: “Communa seu Communia eis concessa,” correspond exactly
with the formal phrases in the French charters of “Commune.” In the
case of Senlis (1173) it was “Communiam fieri concessimus”; in that of
Compiègne (1153): “Burgensibus villæ concessimus Communiam”; in that
of Abbeville (1185) “concessi eis Communiam habendam”; in that which
Queen Eleanor granted to Poitiers (1199): “Sciatis nos concessisse ...
universis hominibus de Pictavi et eorum heredibus communiam juratam
apud Pictavim.” But if any doubt were yet possible, it would be finally
removed by the words of Richard of Devizes:
Nunc primum, indulta sibi conjuratione, regno regem deesse
cognovit Londonia, quam nec rex ipse Ricardus nec prædecessor
et pater ejus Henricus pro mille millibus marcis argenti fieri
permississet.
There is no escaping from these words, and Mr. Loftie’s theory is,
consequently, out of court.[475]