England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

Chester was the Bristol and Gloucester of the north-west, trading centre and Welsh bulwark. Beyond the Dee, cultivation had barely touched the western moors; eastern Yorkshire, harried by the Conqueror in 1068, still lay bare for sixty miles around York, a city that had kept its primacy, its commerce, and a merchant-gild with an alderman and a hans-house. Far north, Carlisle, ruined by the Danes in 875, had been restored and repeopled by Rufus in 1092, its site re-fortified with Roman masonry, and was now growing so vigorously that it was separated as a diocese. Newcastle, founded for Scottish defence, was beginning an industrial life; its customs regulated both inland and outland trade. Beverley had grown round S. John’s minster into a town whose charter, from Archbishop Thurstan, was copied from York’s. The north, however, was still a wild, isolated region, speaking a tongue “we southrons could make nothing” of; even Henry still reinforced his body-guard when crossing the Humber.

The chief station on York’s southern highway was Lincoln, raised to new importance by the Normans. The Conqueror had cleared 166 houses to build his castle; Bishop Remigius had translated his see from Dorchester and raised a great cathedral on the hill. A new town, free of the hill’s cramping limits, had grown beyond the Witham around S. Mary-le-Wigford and S. Peter-at-Gowts. The Witham, with tide enough for small ships and connected by the cleared Foss Dyke to the Trent at Torksey, brought Lincoln a vast trade. The men of city and shire had a merchant-gild, and in 1130 the citizens paid two hundred marks of silver and four of gold to hold their city in chief of the king. The same policy of placing sees in chief towns had moved Lichfield to Chester and Coventry, and Thetford to Norwich—once more populous than any city except London and York, but wrecked by Ralf of East-Anglia’s rebellion, though a Norman “new borough” was rising around Bishop Herbert’s new cathedral.

The most vigorous town life, however, grew in the Thames valley. Oxford, decayed before Domesday Book, had been restored by the Roberts of Oilly; by Henry’s death it had ramparts, a great western fortress soon to figure in Stephen’s wars, a merchant-gild with a gild-hall, the leather-sellers’ and weavers’ gilds, and Port-meadow. London, in all its medieval completeness, belongs to a later date, but its main features were already there. An irregular half-ellipse, walled on the north and open to the Thames, with the Tower at the east and Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet at the west, it had S. Paul’s as the rallying-point of municipal life—folkmoot in peace, armed gathering in war under the lord of Baynard. Its constitution was a bundle of jurisdictions: parishes, townships, churches, gilds, sokens, wardmoots, the husting and folkmoot, all loosely united under the bishop and port-reeve. By Henry’s reign the citizens had won a royal charter exchanging the royal port-reeve for a sheriff of their own choice, holding Middlesex in ferm, exempt from all tolls and suits outside the walls; the pleas of the crown were entrusted to a justiciar they elected. Yet London was “a shire covered with houses,” not a compact municipality. The fusion of races had begun early: English and Normans lived contentedly side by side in the chief cities, and intermarriage was frequent. Norman merchants from Rouen and Caen, long visitors, now settled in great numbers during Normandy’s troubles after the Conqueror’s death, bringing enterprise, refinement, and culture. Gilbert Becket, a Rouen merchant who had served as port-reeve, married Rohesia of Caen, and their son Thomas, grown to manhood, would answer of his origin that his parents were “citizens of London, dwelling blameless and respected among their fellow-burghers.” A typical London citizen of the early twelfth century, in his Cheapside house under the shadow of S. Mary Colechurch and S. Mary-at-Bow, illustrates the fusion that made the city’s greatness.

Flemings were the second new element. Bruges merchants were more familiar in London than those of Rouen; the English wool-trade was the basis of the Flemish weaving industry, and Flemish colonies were spreading to Dover and all wool-producing shires. William the Conqueror had brought Flemings; under Henry I they were numerous and prosperous enough to excite jealousy. In 1111 Henry planted a colony of them in southern Pembrokeshire to hold the Welsh in check—a daring experiment that succeeded so completely that “little England beyond Wales” remains Teutonic to this day.

The Jews stood apart. The Conqueror had brought a colony from Rouen to London; Rufus had favored them; under Henry they were less prominent but already established in most chief towns. They were the king’s chattels, exempt from toll and tax but liable to seizure at his will, lending money at interest forbidden to Christians, and so contributing indirectly to commercial expansion. Shut in their own quarters, exempt from all civic jurisdiction, they had no share in the political or social development of the towns.