ficient importance under Harthacnut to
figure in the election of a king, and its principal street still tells of
the rapid growth of trade in its name of "Cheap-side" or the bargaining
place. But at the Norman Conquest the commercial tendency had become
universal. The name given to the united brotherhood in a borough is in
almost every case no longer that of the "town-gild," but of the
"merchant-gild."

[Sidenote: Emancipation of Towns]

This social change in the character of the townsmen produced important
results in the character of their municipal institutions. In becoming a
merchant-gild the body of citizens who formed the "town" enlarged their
powers of civic legislation by applying them to the control of their
internal trade. It became their special business to obtain from the crown
or from their lords wider commercial privileges, rights of coinage,
grants of fairs, and exemption from tolls, while within the town itself
they framed regulations as to the sale and quality of goods, the control
of markets, and the recovery of debts. It was only by slow and difficult
advances that each step in this securing of privilege was won. Still it
went steadily on. Whenever we get a glimpse of the inner history of an
English town we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, services
disappearing through disuse or omission, while privileges and immunities
are being purchased in hard cash. The lord of the town, whether he were
king, baron, or abbot, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture
of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building of some new
minster by a prior, brought about an appeal to the thrifty burghers, who
were ready to fill again their master's treasury at the price of the
strip of parchment which gave them freedom of trade, of justice, and of
government. In the silent growth and elevation of the English people the
boroughs thus led the way. Unnoticed and despised by prelate and noble
they preserved or won back again the full tradition of Teutonic liberty.
The right of self-government, the right of free speech in free meeting,
the right to equal justice at the hands of one's equals, were brought
safely across ages of tyranny by the burghers and shopkeepers of
the towns. In the quiet quaintly-named streets, in town-mead and
market-place, in the lord's mill beside the stream, in the bell that
swung out its summons to the crowded borough-mote, in merchant-gild, and
church-gild and craft-gild,