ar like
that of London that merchant guilds generally obtained control, and
government by mayor, aldermen, and common council came to be the
prevailing type. Having also their own judges and sheriffs, and not
being obliged to go outside of their own walls to obtain justice, to
enforce contracts and punish crime, their efficiency as independent
self-governing bodies was great, and in many a troubled time they
served as staunch bulwarks of English liberty. The strength of their
turreted walls was more than supplemented by the length of their
purses, and such immunity from the encroachments of lords and king
as they could not otherwise win, they contrived to buy. Arbitrary
taxation they generally escaped by compounding with the royal
exchequer in a fixed sum or quit-rent, known as the _firma
burgi_. We have observed the especial privilege which Henry I.
confirmed to London, of electing its own sheriff. London had been
prompt in recognizing his title to the crown, and such support, in
days when the succession was not well regulated, no prudent king could
afford to pass by without some substantial acknowledgment. It was
never safe for any king to trespass upon the liberties of London, and
through the worst times that city has remained a true republic with
liberal republican sentiments. If George III. could have been guided
by the advice of London, as expressed by its great alderman Beckford,
the American colonies would not have been driven into rebellion.

[Sidenote: Simon de Montfort and the cities.]
The most signal part played by the English boroughs and cities, in
securing English freedom, dates from the thirteenth century, when
the nation was vaguely struggling for representative government on a
national scale, as a means of curbing the power of the crown. In that
memorable struggle, the issue of which to some extent prefigured
the shape that the government of the United States was to take five
hundred years afterward, the cities and boroughs supported Simon de
Montfort, the leader of the popular party and one of the foremost
among the heroes and martyrs of English liberty. Accordingly on the
morrow of his decisive victory at Lewes in 1264, when for the moment
he stood master of England, as Cromwell stood four centuries later
Simon called a parliament to settle the affairs of the kingdom, and
to this parliament he invited, along with the lords who came by
hereditary custom, not only two elected representatives from each