classes sitting about them on the bare ground. During the course of the thirteenth century houses began to be established for communities of poor scholars. These have developed into the modern colleges with organized bodies of masters, fellows, and scholars. Studies were grouped under various heads - liberal arts, theology, law, and, in some universities, medicine — each with its faculty or recognized hierarchy of teachers and governors. The faculty of arts gave instruction in the seven liberal arts, divided into the trivium, which included grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the quadrivium, including geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy.

Growth of Towns since the Conquest. The progress of boroughs and cities was marked by new and important stages during the reign. of the sons of Henry II. It should be recalled that before the Conquest they were distinguished by certain well-recognized characteristics: they were walled, they were under a special peace, they enjoyed certain market rights, and they paid a lump sum known as firma burgi, or farm of the borough, in place of the dues and taxes customarily collected by the sheriff. Concessions purchased from Kings after the Conquest were recorded in charters, which either confirmed old liberties and privileges or allowed new ones. Those to London were the most important and were much in advance of the others, for which they served to a large extent as models. While that of William I was little more than a promise in general terms that the liberties and property of the City should not be disturbed, Henry I, in 1100, granted a charter containing distinct concessions: in return for £300 a year he abandoned all revenues from Middlesex; he allowed the citizens to appoint their sheriff and to hold their court; he exempted them from trial by battle, from special tolls and exactions as well as from a number of general imposts; and limited fines or amercements in amount. No notable gains came under Henry II: he granted many charters; but as a rule they did nothing more than to confirm. liberties enjoyed in his grandfather's time. The reign of Richard I, however, marked a distinct stage in the progress of English municipal autonomy. The main aim was doubtless to get money, though some see in the royal policy an intelligent recognition of the signs of the times. Perhaps the most interesting concession to London, in 1191 was granted not by Richard, but by John to secure the aid of the city. against William Longchamp. While some features of the grant have been variously interpreted, the right to have a mayor is clear enough, and in the Lord Mayor, together with the board of aldermen, and a common council subsequently added, the government of the City is vested to-day.

The Gilds. Side by side with the municipal governments, other organizations grew up with the primary aim of controlling commerce, trade, and industry. These gilds, as they were called, were, in the original medieval sense, private voluntary societies for mutual help and pleasure. Some were merely social or religious in character. The merchant gilds, whose purpose was to further the trading privileges of members and to exclude from competition all non-members, date from the eleventh century and became very numerous in the twelfth. In course of time these gild merchants came to control a large number of the town governments and even in many cases to take their place. They were wealthy and exclusive bodies, a feature that led the handicraftsmen, according to a widely accepted view, to organize associations of their own, known as craft gilds. Of the latter sort, the earliest known is that of the weavers, who received a charter from Henry I, while, in the course of the twelfth and the following century, the bakers, the fullers, the grocers, the butchers, the clothiers, and many other mysteries, or crafts, came to have their separate organizations. The central government and the municipal authorities seem to have looked on their growth with some disfavor, or were, at least, very jealous in guarding their rights of granting them licenses.1 It would seem that the opposition existing between the aristocratic merchants and the humbler craftsmen has been exaggerated. At any rate a common motive of the latter in organizing craft gilds was not so much hostility to the gild merchants as a desire to raise their own standards of production and conditions of labor. London never had a gild merchant; but her craft gilds, growing in wealth and importance, came to take an important share in the government of the City. Markets and Fairs. Foreign Trade. Growth of London. With the growth of trade and industry there was also an increase in the number of markets, where local products were disposed of, and of fairs, held at less frequent intervals, to which people, foreigners as well as natives, came from far and near to buy and sell. Naturally there was much rivalry between neighboring markets, involving disputes as to their respective rights. Some were settled peaceably, in other cases the contending parties resorted to club law. London at this time was steadily increasing its trade relations with the merchant cities of northern Germany and the Low Countries. With the

1 A curious case occurred in 1201 when the citizens of London bought from John the privilege of turning out the weavers' gild. Having received the money he turned to the weavers and got them to pay him to take them under the royal protection, thus nullifying the privilege which he had just sold.

2 In 1194, Richard, supplementing an earlier concession of Henry II, granted to the citizens of Cologne a gild hall in the city, and probably the hall, known from

extension of trade and the increase of wealth considerable building was undertaken, which may explain an interesting ordinance of 1212, framed by the common council to provide against fire. Wooden houses were to be replaced by stone at dangerous points such as the market place; thenceforth no thatched roofs were allowed, only tiles, wooden shingles, and lead might be used; a tub of water must be placed before each building; and cooks and bakers might not work at night.

Rural Life. - Among rural classes the customary services were apparently becoming lighter, with a consequently increasing tendency to substitute rents in money and kind in their place. Moreover, rents were rising, for the tillers of the soil were beginning to share in the general prosperity. Even at that, some payments were successfully resisted,—as when the cellarer and the men of the Abbot of Bury, in a forcible attempt to collect reap-silver, were stopped by a body of old women who berated them with hard words and threatened them with saucepans. Some villeins rose from the ranks to become great scholars and prelates, yet, in general, the lot of the villein was a hard one and there was ordinarily little hope of bettering it. They were occasionally sold apart from the land as late as the thirteenth century; toward the end of the twelfth the Canons of Osney bought one man for twenty shillings, another for four pounds and a horse. Living conditions were grievous: leprosy and skin diseases prevailed, while lack of drainage and ventilation, the difficulty of communication, and the necessity of subsisting on salted fish and meats made the winters cheerless and unhealthy.

Fusion of Races. — In spite of serious obstacles, Henry II and the Ministers who carried on his work had wrought well; their administrative and judicial reforms, aided by time, had welded Saxon and Norman into a united English people, while the foreign policy of the King and his son Richard had secured for England a recognized place among the powers of Europe.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Narrative. Besides Ramsay, Davis, G. B. Adams, Norgate already mentioned, Stubbs, Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series (ed. Hassall 1902) a volume made up of Bishop Stubbs's introductions to certain of the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain, commonly known as the "Rolls Series," and embodying some of the soundest work on the periods.

the fourteenth century as the Steelyard, which came to be the headquarters of the Hanseatic merchants, dates from this period.

Medley has a good brief account of the origin and development of boroughs; for a fuller treatment see A. Ballard, The English Boroughs in the Twelfth Century (1914). Stephens covers this period on the Church. For social and intellectual conditions, in addition to the works already cited, see two brilliant and learned lectures on "Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II" in Stubbs, Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History (1900). The standard work on the universities is H. Rashdall, The Universities of the Middle Ages (2 vols., 1895).

Selections from the sources, Adams and Stephens, no. 21.

CHAPTER IX

THE REIGN OF JOHN (1199-1216). THE LOSS OF NORMANDY, THE QUARREL WITH THE CHURCH, THE BARONIAL REVOLT AND MAGNA CHARTA

Reigns of John and Henry III. In 1199, after years of intrigue against his brother Richard and against Richard's next lineal heir, his nephew Arthur,' John at length attained the Crown. His reign and that of his son Henry III mark the most important constitutional crisis in England's history; they witnessed the first significant limitation of the royal absolutism since the Conquest, together with the rise of an institution that was gradually to voice the will of the nation in such limitation — sharing in the government and ultimately controlling it - the English Parliament. While the chief responsibility for precipitating the crisis by which these changes came about rests with John, circumstances were to some degree operative: the existing sources of supply were inadequate to meet the growing needs of the State, and, in order to secure sufficient revenues, it was necessary to demand more than the customary services and taxes, a demand that was bound to be resisted. To increase the revenues and meet the inevitable discontent, to mold the representatives of the subjects as willing instruments of the royal will would have been a critical problem for a capable and worthy ruler.

Character of John. Contemporary writers were almost unanimous in their denunciation of John. Giraldus Cambrensis, for example, declared "that of all tyrants of history" he "was the very worst"; truly he was "burdensome to rich and poor," there was no truth or sincerity in him, and " through thirty years of public life," it has been truly said, " we search in vain for any good deed, one kindly act to set against his countless offendings." A younger son, greedy of lands and power, he plotted against his father and against his brother; he was ungrateful to them and to the Ministers who faithfully served him. Cruel, too, beyond measure, he is reported to cite a single

1 See table in Introd.