English Gilds.*

the town of Aire in Artois , its laws and customs , such as his predecessors had already granted and recognised to the citizens , in order to secure them from the attacks of " wicked men . " There are hardly any records bearing reference to gilds in

Germany in the tenth and eleventh centuries ; probably because they had disappeared from public notice in consequence of the measures taken against them by princes and bishops ; yet the relations existing at a later period between th 9

" highest gild" and the town , leaves no doubt that here too the gild was the germ of the townconstitutions . " But the enigma , that many towns in France ( as even Paris , and almost in like manner in England , London ) had municipal

institutions , without such a commune or gild ever having been granted to them , finds its solution in the fact , that the gilds existed there before German municipalism had come into being , aud that the latter had developed itself unnoticed out of the former . " This may also be said of the great towns of Flanders .

The earliest notice of such a town gild upon the Continent , of that in Slesvvig , contains a noble instance of a daring fulfilment of the duties imposed upon the gild brothers . Magnus , the son of King Nicholas of Denmark , had slain the Duke

Canute Lavard , the alderman and protector of the Sleswig Gild . When King Nicholas , in 1180 , came to Hetheby ( that is , Sleswig ) , his followers advised him ( as an old Danish chronicle relates ) not to enter the town , for the townsmen put in

force the law with extreme severity within their gild , called Hezlagh , and did not suffer any one to remain unpunished who had killed or even injured one of their brethren . But the king despised the warning , saying , " What should I fear

from these tanners ( pelipers ) and shoemakers ? " Scarcely , however , had he entered the town , when the gates were closed , and at the sound of the gild bell the citizens mustered , seized upon the king , and killed him , with all who tried to defend him .

In Sleswig , at this time ( 1180 ) the gild still included the whole body of the citizens . The Chronicle at least speaks of the citizens in general , who mustered at the call of the gild bell ( the town bell ) . On the other hand , in Germany , at a somewhat

later period , the government of the town is everywhere found in the hands of a hi ghest gild . In England , where the gilds were far in advance of those of any other country , there were highest

gilds of the kind described , even in Anglo-Saxon times . There , according to Lappenber , the landed proprietors on or near whose estates the towns were built , for a long time exercised great influence in them , and constituted their aristocracy . Thus ,

in Canterbury , the condition of becoming an alderman was the possession of an alienable estate ( soca ) , the possessors of which were united with other landed proprietors to the there-existing old gild of the Thanes . But as there were at

Canterbuay two other gilds besides , this gild of the Thanes was probably the summum conviviwm of that city . Of London there is documentary evidence that the constitution of the City was based upon a

gild , and it served as a model for other English towns . According to the Judicia Civitatis Lunclonice of the time of King Athelstan , the frith , gilds of London united to form one gild that they might carry out their aims the more vigorously .

This united gild governed the town ; as is proved by the fact that their regulations bound even nonmembers . A similar union took place three centuries later at Berwick-upon-Tweed . In the years 1283 and 1284 the townsmen of Berwick agreed

upon the statutes of a single united gild : " that where many bodies are found side by side in one place , they may become one , and have one will , and , in the dealings of one toward another , have a strong and hearty love . "

A peculiar union of gilds must be inferred from an article in the gild statutes of Malmoe , iu Denmark . According to this article a confederation existed among the gilds of various places , and had general assemblies of the gild brothers at Skador .

Perhaps its condition was analogous to that of the Flemish ITanse , or of the confederacies of the German towns , or of Edinburgh , Stirling , Berwick , and Roxburgh , united to a general Scottish trade gild . It reminds one also strongly of the organisation of the English trade unions at the time of their charge from local into national

societies , when they united a great number of towns all over the country . It may not be out of place here , says Dr . Brentano , to dwell for a moment on the confederations among the German towns in the thirteenth century . They , too , originated from circumstances similar to those which called forth the first

Frithgilds ; they were emanations from the same spirit , were founded on the same principles , and had rules similar to theirs ; they were gilds with cor-