THE CITY IN HISTORY 741
In France, on the other hand, the necessities of war devel- oped a strong central government as early as the twelfth century, cutting short the period of municipal independence. In England the centralizing policy of Henry VIII. and Wolsey demanded the subordination of the towns to the purposes of the king. The crown saw clearly that independence of local policy develops political ties and political ideas inherently antagonistic to a strongly centralized system. The necessity of obtaining control over the towns was made imperative by the desire of the king to maintain his supremacy in parliament through the manipulation of the borough representation. In order to assure himself of the support of this important element of parliamentary representa- tion, a system of returning members was devised, to which the peculiar development of borough government lent ready aid. As the concentration of municipal authority in the hands of a few guild representatives became more pronounced, it became the custom, in adjusting inter-municipal relations, to identify these individuals with the municipality. The corporate concept, which was just making its appearance in the English law — having been first applied to ecclesiastical and eleemosynary institutions — fur- nished a ready means of effecting the purpose of the crown. The essence of the corporate idea is the legal personification of a collection of individuals. If, by any means, the crown could make its own nominees the corporate body, there would be no difficulty in controlling the parliamentary representation of the borough. This was done by issuing writs of quo warranto and sub- stituting for the charters forfeited under this proceeding a form of organization in which those constituting the corporate body (i. e., the returning parliamentary organ) were specifically named.
Such proceedings would have aroused a storm of oppo- sition, even revolution, at an earlier period, when the citizen body was in closer touch with municipal powers and preroga- tives. As we have already had occasion to point out, the grow- ing industrial independence had greatly weakened local ties. With the exception of the larger cities, such as London, little opposition was encountered. The people were too much absorbed in exploiting the new commercial and industrial opportunities to
