officer and the chief judge. The burgesses
could also elect their sheriff, although in all rural counties Henry's
father, William the Conqueror, had lately deprived the people of
this privilege and appointed the sheriffs himself. London had its
representative board, or council, which was the equivalent of a county
court. Each ward, moreover, had its own representative board, which
was the equivalent of a hundred court. Within the wards, or hundreds,
the burgesses were grouped together in township, parish, or manor....
Into the civic organization of London, to whose special privileges
all lesser cities were ever striving to attain, the elements of local
administration embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire
thus entered as component parts.[5] Constitutionally, therefore,
London was a little world in itself, and in a less degree the same was
true of other cities and boroughs which afterwards obtained the same
kind of organization, as for example, York and Newcastle, Lincoln and
Norwich, Southampton and Bristol.

[Footnote 5: Hannis Taylor, _Origin and Growth of the English
Constitution_, vol. i. p. 458.]

[Sidenote: The guilds.]
[Sidenote: mayor, aldermen, and common council.]
In such boroughs or cities all classes of society were brought into
close contact,--barons and knights, priests and monks, merchants and
craftsmen, free labourers and serfs. But trades and manufactures,
which always had so much to do with the growth of the city, acquired
the chief power and the control of the government. From an early
period tradesmen and artisans found it worth while to form themselves
into guilds or brotherhoods, in order to protect their persons and
property against insult and robbery at the hands of great lords and
their lawless military retainers. Thus there came to be guilds, or
"worshipful companies," of grocers, fishmongers, butchers, weavers,
tailors, ironmongers, carpenters, saddlers, armourers, needle-makers,
etc. In large towns there was a tendency among such trade guilds
to combine in a "united brotherhood," or "town guild," and this
organization at length acquired full control of the city government.
In London this process was completed in the course of the thirteenth
century. To obtain the full privileges of citizenship one had to
be enrolled in a guild. The guild hall became the city hall. The
_aldermen_, or head men of sundry guilds, became the head men
of the several wards. There was a representati