cincts; where however his
translator, Pegge, suspects a mistake of the MS. in the numerals. And
this, with similar hyperboles, so imposed on the judicious mind of Lord
Lyttelton, that, finding in Peter of Blois the inhabitants of London
reckoned at quadraginta millia, he has actually proposed to read
quadringenta. Hist. Henry II., vol. iv. ad finem. It is hardly necessary
to observe that the condition of agriculture and internal communication
would not have allowed half that number to subsist.

The subsidy-roll of 1377, published in the Archaeologia, vol. vii., would
lead to a conclusion that all the inhabitants of London did not even
then exceed 35,000. If this be true, they could not have amounted,
probably, to so great a number two or three centuries earlier. But the
numbers given in that document have been questioned as to Norwich upon
very plausible grounds, and seem rather suspicious in the present
instance. [Note V.]

[57] This seditious, or at least refractory character of the Londoners,
was displayed in the tumult headed by William Longbeard in the time of
Richard I., and that under Constantine in 1222, the patriarchs of a long
line of city demagogues. Hoveden, p. 765. M. Paris, p. 154.

[58] Hoveden's expressions are very precise, and show that the share
taken by the citizens of London (probably the mayor and aldermen) in
this measure was no tumultuary acclamation, but a deliberate concurrence
with the nobility. Comes Johannes, et fere omnes episcopi, et comites
Angliae eadem die intraverunt Londonias; et in crastino praedictus
Johannes frater regis, et archiepiscopus Rothomagensis, et omnes
episcopi, et comites et barones, et cives Londonienses cum illis
convenerunt in atrio ecclesiae S. Pauli.... Placuit ergo Johanni fratri
regis, et omnibus episcopis, et comitibus et baronibus regni, et civibus
Londoniarum, quod cancellarius ille deponeretur, et deposuerunt eum, &c.
p. 701.

[59] The reader may consult, for a more full account of the English
towns before the middle of the thirteenth century, Lyttelton's History
of Henry II. vol. ii. p. 174; and Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.

[60] Frequent proofs of this may be found in Madox, Hist. of Exchequer,
c. 17, as well as in Matt. Paris, who laments it with indignation. Cives
Londinenses, contra consuetudinem et libertatem civitatis, quasi servi
ultimae conditionis, non sub nomine aut titulo liberi adjutorii, sed
tallagii, quod multum eos angebat, regi, lice