mmediate election of a successor, to be presented at the next court.(285)

(M181)

From this time forward nothing more is heard of Hervy. The same cloud
envelopes his later history, that gathered round the last years of his
predecessor and political tutor Thomas Fitz-Thomas. The misfortune of both
of these men was that they lived before their age. Their works bore fruit
long after they had departed. The trade or craft guilds, as distinguished
from the more wealthy and influential mercantile guilds, eventually played
an important part in the city. Under Edward II, no stranger could obtain
the freedom of the city (without which, he could do little or nothing),
unless he became a member of one of these guilds, or sought the suffrages
of the commonalty of the city, before admission to the freedom in the
Court of Husting.(286)

The normal and more expeditious way of obtaining the freedom was thus
through a guild. If Hervy or Fitz-Thomas lived till the year 1319, when
the Ordinances just cited received the king's sanction, he must have felt
that the struggle he had made to raise the lesser guilds had not been in
vain. The mercantile element in the city, which had formerly overcome the
aristocratic element,(287) in its turn gave way to the numerical
superiority and influence of the craft and manufacturing element. Hence it
was that in 1376--when the number of trade or craft guilds in the city
compared with the larger mercantile guilds was as forty to eight--the
guilds succeeded in wresting for a while from the wards the right of
electing members of the city's council.(288)

(M182)

In the meantime, King Edward I, arrived in London (18th August, 1274),
where he was heartily welcomed by the citizens,(289) and was crowned the
following day. He had expected to have returned much earlier, and had
addressed a letter to the mayor, sheriffs, and commonalty of the City of
London, eighteen months before, informing them of his purposed speedy
return, and of his wishes that they should endeavour to preserve the peace
of the realm.(290) He was, however, detained in France.

(M183)

Edward's right to succeed his father was never disputed. For the first
time in the annals of England, a new king commences to reign immediately
after the death of his predecessor. _Le Roi est mort, vive le_ _Roi_!
Within a week of his father's decease, a writ was issued, in which the
hereditary right of succession was distinctly asserted as forming Edward