itself from these facts is that London, for
more than two centuries after the Conquest, was not so exclusively a
city of traders, a democratic municipality, as we have been wont to
conceive. And as this evidently extends back to the Anglo-Saxon period,
it both lessens the improbability that the citizens bore at times a part
in political affairs, and exhibits them in a new light, as lords and
tenants of lords, as well as what of course they were in part, engaged
in foreign and domestic commerce. It will strike every one, in running
over the list of mayors and sheriffs in the thirteenth century, that a
large proportion of the names are French; indicating, perhaps, that the
territorial proprietors whose sokes were intermingled with the city had
influence enough, through birth and wealth, to obtain an election. The
general polity, Saxon and Norman, was aristocratic; whatever infusion
there might be of a more popular scheme of government, and much
certainly there was, could not resist, even if resistance had been
always the people's desire, the joint predominance of rank, riches,
military habits, and common alliance, which the great baronage of the
realm enjoyed. London, nevertheless, from its populousness, and the
usual character of cities, was the centre of a democratic power, which,
bursting at times into precipitate and needless tumult easily repressed
by force, kept on its silent course till, near the end of the thirteenth
century, the rights of the citizens and burgesses in the legislature
were constitutionally established. [1848.]

NOTE V. Page 26.

If Fitz-Stephen rightly informs us that in London there were 126 parish
churches, besides 13 conventual ones, we may naturally think the
population much underrated at 40,000. But the fashion of building
churches in cities was so general, that we cannot apply a standard from
modern times. Norwich contained sixty parishes.

Even under Henry II., as we find by Fitz-Stephen, the prelates and
nobles had town houses. "Ad haec omnes fere episcopi, abbates, et
magnates Angliae, quasi cives et municipes sunt urbis Lundoniae; sua ibi
habentes aedificia praeclara; ubi se recipiunt, ubi divites impensas
faciunt, ad concilia, ad conventus celebres in urbem evocati, a domino
rege vel metropolitano suo, seu propriis tracti negotiis." The eulogy of
London by this writer is very curious; its citizens were thus early
distinguished by their good eating, to which they added amusements les