Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/660

THE RISINGS IN THE ENGLISH MONASTIC TOWNS IN 1327 In comparing the municipal history of England with that of the Continent, during the Middle Ages, several important points of difference suggest themselves. One of these, and perhaps the most striking, is that in English towns as a general rule there were few such fierce party struggles as occur, for example, in the history of even the smallest German city. The democratic character of English municipal government prevented, save in rare instances, any oppression by powerful patricians, or the formation of bitterly hostile factions in the town. In addition, the royal prerogative in England was too potent and far-reaching to allow of any such disorders.^ But the municipal history of England, nevertheless, is not altogether devoid of a series of factional conflicts. The history of one class of English towns is for over three centuries the history of long and bitter struggles, and violence and bloodshed fill their annals. The class of towns referred to is the monastic class, those under mo- nastic control, and the struggles are those which were made by the townsmen to obtain liberties and franchises from their lords. The status of the English monastic towns was a peculiar one. They were not full-fledged boroughs, according to the best author- ities of to-day, nor can they be relegated, save in a few exceptional cases, to the rank of mere market-towns or manors." Most of them were free boroughs by royal charter, but they were under the close and constant control of the abbot or prior of the monastery in their midst.^ The chief concern of the burgesses was to lessen this control, and to win for themselves the right of complete self- government, owing allegiance to the royal authority alone. Natur- ally enough, the monks withstood all such demands for greater 1 Gross, Gild Merchant, I. 106, 285 ; Hegel, Stddte und Gilden, p. 114. There are, it is true, a few examples of party strife in English towns, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for which see C. W. Colby, The Growth of Oligarchy in Eng- lish Towns, in the English Historical J^eziezc, 1 890. 2 Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 407-409, 425-426 ; Pollock and Maitland, History of Eng- lish Law, I. 641-642 ; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 217. ' For pictures of life in a monastic town see : Carlyle, Fast and Present (Abbot Sampson of Bury St. Edmunds) ; Froude, Annals of an English Abbey (St. Albans), in Short Studies; Green, Abbot and Taiun in Studies in England and Italy ; and Cornhill Magazine, VI. 858. (650)