The governance of London; studies on the place occupied by London in English institutions

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THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND.

Preface

In this book I have presented an anthropologist's view of London history. History to be of value must concern itself with something definite, and the something definite on which it appears to me to have been worth writing is the position of London as an English institution. Anthropologists know that institutions of quite unequal development do not coalesce, and the difficulty in the way of a Romanised Britain has always been that both tribal Celt and tribal Teuton stood in the way. The book, I hope, shows this difficulty, which was a very real one to our ancestors, to be an historical episode of very considerable importance in the evolution of the English state. Whether I have successfully solved it is another question. Perhaps anthropologists may question my right to apply their science and their principles to so purely a historical subject, and may dispute my conclusions as unscientific from that point of view. Perhaps historians may question my right to discuss the solemn matters of history with any other material than that supplied by the palaeographer, the chronicler, viii PREFACE

or the diplomat. Perhaps, too, the lawyer may say harsh things about the manner in which legal decisions have been treated.

I pray them to consider. Every law has its history. Every historical fact has its setting with crowds of other facts. All that I have attempted is to deal with the material at my disposal in this light, and if I fail I do not think it will be on the ground of method.

I had looked forward during the years this book has been in course of preparation to discussing it, when in proof, with Professor Maitland and Miss Bateson. And even while my sheets were yet fresh with their printed names, they have passed away. Their loss is almost irreparable. Professor Maitland allowed me sometimes to speak to him of the subjects which interested us both ; Miss Bateson, just before her death, wrote to me on another subject, and I heard through a friend of her interest in my research. The pleasure I should feel at the completion of my task is shadowed by the thought that I shall not receive their illuminating and always kindly criticism.

I must apologise for the tone of the book ; it is too didactic. This fault is not due to any feeling of satisfaction on my part with my own labours, but to the fact that originally my book was in the form of lectures, and without rewriting the whole I could not have changed the general standpoint.

PREFACE ix

My time for studies of this sort is so limited that I could not face the alternative of rewriting the whole, and so my determination had to be either to sacrifice the whole study or to issue it as it was. I trust that, in spite of many defects, my readers will not judge that the former was my proper course.

I have to thank Mr Graham Wallas for reading proofs, and for much valuable criticism. My old friend, Mr Fairman Ordish, has once more done me the inestimable service of reading my sheets and helping me over many a difficulty. I am also proud to add the name of my son, Allan Gomme, among those who have helped me considerably ; and of my son, Austin Gomme, who has worked at the maps for me.

LAURENCE GOMME.

24 Dorset Square, March 1907.

Contents

I. THE CONDITIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IN- STITUTIONS IN BRITAIN

GENERAL CONDITIONS ROMAN CONSTITUTION TRIBAL INSTITUTIONS POST ROMAN CONDITIONS SUMMARY .

II. ROMAN LONDON

Chapter I

Among the local institutions of England London holds a unique position. There is no other city with quite the same right to be called a Celtic stronghold of importance ; there is no other city of Roman Britain which can claim so fully to have built up her later position upon the remains of her Roman constitution ; there is no other city which became to the Anglo-Saxon monarchy the chief centre of its military power at a time when this meant the existence of the Anglo-Saxon state itself; and there is no other city which stands out as the inheritor of all these forces in its struggle for freedom in mediaeval and later times.1 Perhaps no other city is so gloriously placed for success as a city as London is, but be the causes what they may for the position it occupies as a city among local institutions, it is certain that while comparing faithfully enough in one

1 I am aware that Mr Freeman makes a similar claim for Exeter in his English Towns and Districts, 53-54, and perhaps also for Lincoln ; but not only is the claim not made out for these cities, it is not compared with that for London. Bishop Stubbs states the claim for London quite clearly. {Constitutional History, iii. 568.)

A detail or another with other cities, it possesses within itself innumerable features of uncommon interest and importance which do not compare with other cities.

It is worth while considering the place which London holds among the institutions of the country for many reasons. First, perhaps, because it is the capital city of the kingdom, but principally because of the interest of the subject in relation to the wider interests of national growth and development. The interest indeed is never entirely local. It is local only in its detail, and whether we are dealing with mediaeval London or Anglo-Saxon London, with Roman London or even with Celtic London, there crop up points of the greatest value to the student of institutions at all the various stages.

This is not due to the work of its historians. Throughout the voluminous literature which has accumulated on London, there is nothing which tells us of London as an institution during the several stages of its history. A fact or a phase may be mentioned here and there in almost accidental fashion, but there is no guide to tell us of the consistent story which in point of fact lies at the back of the accumulated material. No one seems to have thought it worth while to turn from the archaeological remains to the interpretation of their meaning and significance, and no one has considered it of any importance to endeavour to get at the truth of things by approaching them from antecedent conditions, instead of from the views and ideas of later, if not of modern, times. There has been in fact no consistent and scientific attempt to trace out the English institution which is contained within the shell of London city, and English history, as well as the history of institutions in the western world, are the poorer from this neglect of a great subject. If I mistake not, the true method of enquiry is in the direction indicated by past neglect. One cannot come suddenly upon a given period and learn all it has to tell without first of all seeing what has gone before.

It is not too much to say that the study of English local institutions can only be properly undertaken by first understanding the position of London. It is my purpose to make this attempt. I shall be using old material, but using it in a different fashion and for a different purpose from that which has hitherto been accomplished. In its new position much of this old material will itself appear somewhat new, for at present it lies either as accumulated heaps of archaeological dkbris, scarcely even sorted out into its proper periods, or as collections of facts which have yet to find their value and place. A fact as a fact is of minor importance until it has been placed in its proper relationship to the group of facts to which it belongs. No doubt it is impossible to deal with this mass of material thoroughly, and no doubt much of it must remain undocketed and unable to find its place in the reconstructed picture. Nevertheless I think I can see sufficient connection between hitherto disconnected fragments for it to be worth while stating the case which appears to evolve from this new condition.

The question as to how far it is possible to trace back the development of any given institution is of course dependent not only upon the amount of material to hand, but upon the manner in which it lends itself to investigation. London, with its Norman castle and other remains and its Normano- Latin name of Londoniae * in the significant plural form ; with its Saxon history and name Londonbyrig ; 2 with its Roman remains and name Lundinium ; 3 with its Celtic name Lindun 4 — suggests a scope for enquiry which demands a preliminary statement of the essential conditions. And we are led at once to a consideration of the relationship of primitive, politics to fully developed institutions. In England this is necessary, because one of the most important factors in the history of English institutions is the Roman occupation of Britain. At almost every

1 The plural form is used throughout the Liber Custumarum, and the heading to William's first charter is " Charta Willelmi Bastard de libertatibus Londoniarum." Henry II.'s charter is to "Civibus meis Londoniarum." {Liber Cust. i. 25, 31.) Mr Wheatley brought the point forward in the Athenceum, 22nd January 1887, but no philologist has properly discussed it. See, however, Mr Round's note in his Geoffrey of Mandeville, 347.

2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno. 457.

3 Ammianus Marcellinus is the authority for the position of London as a Roman city. He says, " Lundinium vetus oppidum, quod posteritas augustam appellavit " (lib. 27, cap. 8). The first occurrence of the name of London on an Anglo-Saxon coin gives the spelling Lvndonia. {Num. Chron. 3rd ser. xx. 82.)

4 Various as are the derivations given of the word London, I think that which most nearly meets the condition of things has been given by Dr Charnock. The Welsh Hi, signifying a flood, flux, stream, was liable to take the form of lag, lud, Ion, lun, lyn, etc., hence Londinium, Lundinium, Lyndin, or London was formed out of purely Celtic elements. It was not derived from its place on the Thames lagoon, but from its place on some smaller river, as, for instance, the Fleet, and the name London can mean none other than a fortress or settlement on the water. See also Isaac Taylor, Names and Their Histories, 176.

point we are brought face to face with problems presented by the relationship of Roman influences to Celtic and Saxon influences — that is to say, the relationship of primitive politics to a highly organised polity. In an undeveloped country like Russia, for instance, this relationship is evident in several ways.1 But in England the question is more difficult for many reasons, and the difficulties have led to conclusions being drawn from the Roman occupation of Britain which are out of all proportion to the facts.

It is extremely important to make this clear, and I shall therefore have to make a somewhat extensive preliminary survey of the relation of the primitive politics of the tribal Britons to the state politics of the Roman government of Britain. Nothing can be attempted in the direct history of London as a local institution until this preliminary is settled — it is, in fact, the necessary preliminary to a study of English institutions just as the history of London is a necessary preliminary to the history of all other local institutions. That the Romans administered Britain when it was inhabited by a race of Celtic Britons who were in the tribal stage of political life ; that the Romans were themselves in an advanced stage of imperial politics ; that the English who conquered the Celtic tribesmen and the Roman cities were in the same tribal stage of political life as their Celtic opponents, are the factors in the case, and their definite relationship to each other,

1 Professor Kovalevsky has discussed this point in his masterly treatise on Modem Customs and A?icient Laws of Russia.

their influence upon each other and their final position are the facts we need to understand. Chronology alone does not help us here. Because the Roman was post - Celtic and the Saxon post - Roman, it does not follow either that the Roman borrowed anything from the Celt, or the Saxon from the Roman. People borrow from another people only what is capable of easy assimilation to their existing culture, and between the Roman and the Celt and the Roman and the Saxon there was a whole world of progress.

There are certain fixed points in the history of London which have so direct a bearing upon this question that it is advisable to approach it through these channels, more particularly as they have been singularly neglected, if they have not been altogether over-looked, by all the authorities. They are :

(i) London as a city of the Roman empire.

(2) London under Anglo-Saxon rule.

(3) The grant of the charters.

The position of London in each of these periods is entirely different, and yet there is close connection between all. The differences do not tell for discontinuity of London life ; the connection does not tell for continuity of any one form of constitution ; while the complexity of the problem thus produced has caused the facts to be invested with certain popular characteristics which are not their true characteristics.

Under the first period it is essentially necessary to dismiss from the mind the idea that London was a city of Roman Britain. It was nothing of the kind. Roman London was a city of the empire, and Britain under the Roman dominion was nothing but a geographical expression. Politically, Britain was a part, or rather it constituted five parts (for it was finally divided into five provinces), of the Roman empire, and Lundinium was a Roman city, situated, as all Roman cities were, on a Roman road which connected it with Rome as the centre of the empire, deriving its power and its constitution, as all Roman cities did, from its external sovereign, the empire of Rome. Lundinium was no mere appropriation of a Celtic site for the purpose of continuing there a system of Romano-Celtic civilisation. It was the definite location of a Roman camp carefully selected for military purposes, and it grew to be a Roman city, developed by its unrivalled position for purposes of commerce. It was not created before the great roadway reached its site from the south. It took its place on the roadway no sooner than that great and primary undertaking had reached the Thames. All that Lundinium contains, therefore, by way of contribution to the full history of London, comes from Roman law and the Roman constitution, and we shall have to appeal to these sources, and these sources only, for whatever is to be learned from this part of its history.

The second period is a more difficult matter. London constitutionally never appears in Anglo- Saxon history at all. It appears as a fortified centre created by the great Alfred as a bulwark against the invaders of his country and sovereignty. It crops up in one or two ways which show how accidental its position was. It asserts rights against Anglo-Saxon laws in a manner which compels the question as to whence these rights came. It appears to own no formal allegiance to an external sovereign power, and no Anglo - Saxon king granted it a constitution. No Anglo - Saxon king appears to have done more than appeal to it when turned at bay by his enemies, and to neglect it, or leave it alone, when not troubled by foes. It possessed in later times many traces of its ancient Roman constitution and many traces of Anglo - Saxon custom. While retaining many rights in a considerable stretch of territory beyond its boundaries, it separates itself strangely from this territory which assumed a distinct Anglo - Saxon character, and it allows independent settlements and governments right up to its very walls, but not within its walls. All this is conflicting, not homogeneous, testimony of its life in Anglo-Saxon times, and it needs above all things to be explained and accounted for.

The third period at last brings us into the clear light of constitutional method. London as a chartered city has once more an external sovereign to whom it owes its constitution. But this brings with it the story of a fierce conflict with the monarchs who grant the charters — almost a fierce contest against the charters themselves, and it is accompanied by a continued exercise of rights which were unsanctioned by the sovereign until the sovereign, apparently for his own protection as sovereign and not as an endowment of London, gradually encroached upon them and swept all the most important of them into his charters. But this again is at variance with the position of Anglo- Saxon London and of Roman Lundinium, and shows that Norman Londoniae must have received from Anglo-Saxon London strange and strong rights of independence which Anglo-Saxon London could only have built up out of its Roman predecessor.

These are essential matters for consideration. They are new to this branch of constitutional history. No authority has touched upon them, no authority has collated them and decided that they needed investigation before we could begin to understand the position of London. It is clear that the charters did not begin London history, for there is so much at the back of the charters which explains so much that followed the charters. It is clear that Anglo - Saxon times did not begin London history, for there is an unmistakable appeal to something that has gone before. It is clear that if Roman times saw the beginning of constitutional London, it did not see the end of it. What we have to do, therefore, is to try to find a way through this tangle of contradictions and conflicting testimonies, and a way which shall guide us to an explanation, of the greatest problem of all, namely, that London, although the capital city of the empire, was not the seat of the English Parliament and the centre of the English Government. It has at last, in these modern days, attained that position by the incorporation of the ancient city in the larger county of London, which includes Westminster, the seat of io THE GOVERNANCE OF LONDON

Government. But even this has no constitutional significance, and London remains in this important respect the only capital city of the western world which is topographically separated from the seat of the state Government. The fact raises at least the presumption that there is something worth attention in so notable a distinction, and we shall find as we proceed that it contains the germ of the ancient antagonism between Roman London and the Anglo- Saxon tribal settlements around it.

My method of elucidating the interesting problem thus raised, for problem it is, will not be chronological in the strictest sense, because behind the date when a certain event occurs, the date when a certain charter is granted, the date when a custom is observed, is something much more important. There is the date or the period, for it is not possible or necessary always to deal with actual dates, when the event, the charter or the custom actually originated. If I observe, for instance, that on the 9th of November 1900 the Lord Mayor's procession took place, I am entitled to note that it took place on that particular date, in obedience, not to a sudden departure into a new line of operations, but in obedience to a long established rule, and I therefore take back the fact of a civic procession to the earliest date or period when it can be shown to have existed or originated, and I assume its continuance throughout all the intervening period, even if records fail me in proving such a continuance. Again, a charter of a given date may grant certain rights or privileges to the citizens, but the rights

[cap. i.] THE GOVERNANCE OF LONDON u

or privileges may not have originated with the charter — they may have been enjoyed by the citizens before the date of the charter, and have only become legalised, so to speak, by the charter. Where this is the case the date of the charter is only of secondary importance. The date or period of actual importance is that to which the rights or privileges really belong. And so with the observance of a custom. It may be noted by some chronicler at a given date, but this does not fix the date or period of the custom. It shows it had continued up to the date when it is recorded, but it does not go back to the date or period of origin. A custom is observed, because it is a custom, because the predecessors or ancestors of the late observers observed it, and we therefore take back the custom to the date or period when it first came into operation. What I shall be dealing with in all these matters is origins, not late observances.

These explanations are necessary, because I shall not follow chronology. Indeed, research into the history of institutions does not rest upon chronology so much as upon the evidence of certain stages of political development, and this evidence is drawn from a minute examination of origins, and from comparative custom. Before we can know anything about London's place among English institutions we must know something of the external conditions under which it came into existence, developed, and finally settled down, as we know it, and though a consideration of these external conditions will take us a little time it must be undertaken.

It will be advisable, in the first place, to deal with the Roman constitution. We need to understand this, in its contradistinction to the Celtic and Teutonic institutions. When Rome came into contact with Celt and Teuton in Britain, it was on its way to full state development. The genius of Caesar had lifted it from the narrow limits of a city-state to the position of an empire, and it was Caesar who first brought Britain into touch with this empire. To understand the principle of the Roman empire, we must understand something of what the city-state was in ancient politics, for the development of Rome from the status of the city - state suggests that the principles of the city - state ran through all its parts, and would be likely again to reassert themselves when the controlling hand of empire was removed. We know that Britain was part of the decaying empire as well as of the controlling empire, and we must therefore be armed with the materials which will help us to understand the conditions of decay.

The city-state was first developed by the Greeks, and between the Greek and Roman civilisations there was intimate relationship. Above all things it teaches us that the city life of the early western world was not a hateful necessity ; it was, on the contrary, an inspiring desire. It meant almost everything to the citizen. It began as an ideal, an ideal at once social and religious, and which always possessed a sustaining power of singular force and beauty. One cannot study the city life of the ancients without always being conscious of this ideal.1 To the Greeks the ttoXl? was the centre of all life and culture. It had a remarkable political and social influence, to which modern civilisation is almost an entire stranger, unless we can detect in the extraordinary development of the mediaeval Italian cities,2 and in the rapid growth of modern tendencies towards city life, the practical approach to what was ideal in ancient Greece. But between the modern tendencies and the early conditions there is a whole region of history — a region which is occupied by the ideals of Celtic and Teutonic life. We can only realise how different these ideals were from those of the ancient world, and then only to a limited extent, by an understanding of the principles of both, and we can best arrive at this by concentrating attention upon the different influences working upon one central example. It is from this point of view that the city-state of Greece and Rome becomes of importance to the proper consideration of the development of London as an English institution.

There is, however, no necessity to enter into details of this vastly interesting institution. My purpose will be served if I briefly refer to the salient features of the most conspicuous examples. Sparta arose from the coalition of three separate communities whose villages were concentrated to

1 The reader should consult Mr Fowler's excellent treatise on the City State of the Greeks and Romans, see pp. 8, 13, 14, 18, 116.

2 Mr Hammond in his Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeksh.a.s an exceedingly valuable summary of this point (pp. 1-22).

form the city. After this concentration the power of Sparta began to extend itself by degrees over the adjacent territory and to subdue the towns.1 But Sparta remained a city. It became a sovereign city with subordinate cities owing obedience to it ; it never became a nation where the whole people of the extended area took upon itself the form of a sovereign state. The city of Sparta was the state. In Attica the population dwelt originally in small communities, each independent of the rest in political life. Then certain large towns obtained sway over the smaller ones ; in other cases, towns more equal in size joined together in religious leagues. Athens itself was formed from three separate communities, the Ionian community on the Agra having compelled the others to combine with it and adopt the Acropolis Hill as the political centre of the new state. Athens, the city, became a sovereign city with dependencies and conquered territory, but the idea of a state did not develop beyond the city.2 There was more chance of it at Athens than elsewhere in Greece,3 but the genius of the people did not grasp it. And so it was in all the early stages of Greek political life. As Mr Freeman has expressed it:

" The independence of each city was the one cardinal principle from which all Greek political life started. The State, the Commonwealth, was in Greek eyes a city, an organised body of men dwelling in a walled town as the

1 Gilbert {Constitutional Antiquities of Greece, 9-14) gives all the necessary particulars.

2 Gilbert, op. cit. 100-102. Miss Harrison's very valuable study of Primitive Athens should be particularly consulted.

3 Hammond, Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks, 62.

hearth and home of the political society, and with a surrounding territory not too large to allow all its free inhabitants habitually to assemble within its walls to discharge the duties of citizens." 1

We are thus prepared for the definition which Aristotle gives of the state — "such a number of persons qualified [as citizens] as is sufficient for an independent life" (iii. (1)).

I can now turn to the evidence of Rome. Rome is above all political organisations of the utmost importance in matters of European history. " It was in Italy," says Mr Freeman,

" that the idea of the city, the single independent city — the ruling city — was carried out on a scale in which it never was before or after. A group of Latin villages grew together to form a border fortress of Latium on the Etruscan march. That border fortress grew step by step to be the head of Latium, the head of Italy, the head of the Mediterranean world. The idea of the city — the ruling city — gathering around it the various classes of citizens, half-citizens, allies, and subjects, all looking to the local city as the common centre, whether of freedom to be exercised or dominion to be endured, all this finds its greatest and mightiest development in the Latin city of Rome."2

The seven hills upon which Rome was built are known to all students. They mark the original hill forts of separate communities, which ultimately coalesced to form the city. I need not for my present purpose relate the story pieced out so ably by Niebuhr and Mommsen from ancient legend, ancient history, and ancient monumental remains,

1 Comparative Politics , 83.

nor will I dwell upon what visitors to Rome at the present day can see for themselves.1

It was the city of Rome which subdued city after city in the Italian peninsula, until the whole of Italy was subjected to her sway ; it was the city of Rome which grew jealous of her rival at Carthage, and then looked for the first time for conquest beyond the bounds set by geography ; it was the city of Rome which held nearly all Europe at her feet, a great part of Asia and of North Africa ; it was to the city of Rome that Britain was a subject country. We do not now speak of the city of Rome, but of the kingdom of Italy in which Rome is situated ; there are now no Romans to the outside world but Italians, and this change in nomenclature

1 The most important existing relics of the time when Roman history begins, though dimly, to take definite shape, are the so called " walls of Romulus." These were built round the circuit of the famous Roma Quadrata of the Palatine Hill. The chief remains of this wall exist at the western angle of the hill (near the modern entrance to the Palatine) ; all along the north-west side pieces of the wall remain embedded in the walls of the houses of the late Republican and early Imperial period, and at other places, thanks to Professor Middleton's discoveries and those of other explorers, traces are to be found. {Ancient Ro?ne in 1885, 48-53.) Even the three gates are to be traced. {Ibid. 53-56.) These remains of the fortified hill-city of the Palatine community are, however, of less interest to us than the remains of the great circuit wall, by which, in the words of Professor Middleton, a number of isolated towns or village forts on separate hills, originally occupied by independent communities, were linked together and formed into one large city by the fusion of several different races and tribes into a united people, under one king. {Ibid. 58.) The great wall is said to have been begun by Tarquinius Priscus and mostly built by Servius Tullius. It enclosed the seven hills of Rome, namely, the Palatine, the Capitoline, the Aventine, the Quirinal, the Caelian, the Esquiline and the Viminal, and many pieces of this wall still exist. The student will refer to Professor Lanciani's discoveries, and to the great work of the British school at Rome, for the detail of archaeological excavation and the conclusions drawn therefrom.