The Story of London Author:Henry Benjamin Wheatley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER 11 The Walled Town and its Streets T N the mediaeval city the proper protection of the 1 municipality and the citizens largely depended upon the cond... more »ition of the walls and gates. The government of town life was specially congenial to the Norman, and the laws he made for the purpose were stringent; while the Saxon, who never appreciated town life, preferred the county organisation. Thus it will be found that, as the laws of the latter were too lax, those of the former were too rigorous. Riley, referring to the superfluity of Norman laws, describes them as ' laws which, while unfortunately they created or protected few real valuable rights, gave birth to many and grievous wrongs.' He proceeds to amplify this opinion, and gives good reason for the condemnation he felt bound to pronounce : ' That the favoured and so-called free citizen of London, even—despite the extensive privileges in reference to trade which he enjoyed—was in possession of more than the faintest shadow of liberty, can hardly be allowed, if we only call to mind the substance of the . . . enactments and ordinances, arbitrary, illiberal and oppressive : laws, for example, which compelled each citizen, whether he would or no, to be bail and surety for a neighbour's good behaviour, over whom it was perhaps impossible for him to exercise the slightest control; laws which forbade him to make his market for the day until the purveyors for the King, and the "great lords of theland," had stripped the stalls of all that was choicest and best; laws which forbade him to pass the city walls for the purpose of meeting his own purchased goods ; laws which bound him to deal with certain persons and communities only, or within the precincts only of certain localities; laws which dictated, under severe penalties, what ...« less