AMONG the memorials of antiquity

abundant in American municipal institutions, is the very instructive and very interesting custom of tendering to distinguished visitors "the Freedom of the City." The ceremony is frequent. A recent occasion of it was the visit, in 1902, of Prince Henry of Prussia to New York City. Among the many notable instances of it in England, is that of the visit of General Grant to London. Minor examples in both England and America are innumerable.

But few Americans who have not pursued special lines of reading, comprehend the purport of such a courtesy. I have found many who connect it vaguely with some kind of gracious license to be at home, and at large, throughout the city-a permission similar to that given to prisoners who have the liberty of the jail yard. A Boston newspaper of highest standing recently represented the Collector of U. S. Customs in Boston as tendering to Lord Denbigh the Freedom of the Port. The attempts of another Boston paper, upon the occasion of Prince Henry's visit to New York, to define the practice by reference to ancient Greece and Rome, are quite equal in absurdity.

The custom is traceable to the most remote period of English history, to the beginning of the English people. It is a heritage from the sturdy "freemen" of the north countries of Europe, who were the progenitors of the Anglo-Saxon race. When history first regards those primitive Teuton tribes, they dwelt on the Baltic shores in little communities, which were composed of those who were bound together by bonds of blood and similar ties. Of each settlement, the rude huts clustered

about a large homestead, or several of them, within which its leaders, the "eorls," resided. The cluster was surrounded by a ditch or a hedge, called a tun (town), and by a wide strip of cleared land. No stranger might cross the open space, but he must blow a horn, or give other sign that he came openly and peaceably; for, if he were taken to come by stealth or otherwise than openly and peaceably, he would at once be killed.

The inmates were not, in civil standing, equal. A large number, consisting perhaps of men taken in battle and descendants of conquered tribes who had formerly inhabited the region, were abject slaves; many others, though they were superior to mere slaves, did not possess the liberties of full freedom. Freedom was the state of that band of independent, "freenecked," men, who owned no superior, no master; and who, in proud equality, ruled, defended, and supported the settlement. Their freedom, the freedom of their community, was that exemption from all servitude which they enjoyed, and the privileges to which they held themselves entitled by virtue thereof. Only the freeman bore shield and spear, partook in depredatory excursions, joined the great war-host of the aggregate tribes; or assembled in council, or shared the fields and meadows for agriculture; for the land was not held by individual ownership, but was divided into strips, which were annually allotted for tillage.

Beneath a sacred tree the village-moots convened. There the freemen met together and deliberated upon common affairs, apportioned land, ordained rules, declared justice according to the customs of their fath ers, as the elder men, "ealdermen," (alder

men) expounded them. There they also performed the ceremony of admitting a new member to their privileges, their freedom. Strangers who came to their village met with various receptions. Marauders and the unfree of other tribes were probably held in servitude; others, who had no claim to special respect, remained in the dependent class. But now and then one sought to be received who, because of kinship or other qualifications, was to be more favored. If the assembled freemen willed it so, he was admitted into their freedom; and under the great tree, with shield and spear clashing approval, was conferred upon him the freedom of the community.

After these hardy warriors had conquered and settled Britain, the independent groups grew and united into a nation; but the customs of the homeland were the general basis of their municipal organization. The rise of kings and nobles, however, stirrel this simplicity to confusion. Most villages and rural townships (tun-scipes) became subject to the nobles, as well as mediately to the king, though they clung to the remnants of their primal usages. But a class of larger towns retained, in some measure, a constitution and local government. These were the boroughs the fortified strongholds and the commercial and political centres of the country. They remained free of feudal subjection; they knew no lord but the king. Each had its own court and assembly. Each had a market; and that was a great privilege, for, by law, trading could be done only in open market, and such a market brought much commerce to the borough. The borough was a peculiar place also in that the king's peace, the sanctity of the king's own homestead, enveloped it. Because of these characteristics it was a privileged town, a free borough; and the exemptions and privileges which it enjoyed entered into and comprised its free

dom, and the freedom of its freemen, for in them were the liberties of the community vested. Admittance to burgherhood was investment with the freedom of the borough. A burgess was "free of" a certain borough; and to be made a burgess was to be "made free of" a certain borough. Those boroughs which were cathedral sites, the seats of bishops, were not only boroughs but "cities."

In later years many additional privileges were granted to boroughs and cities by charter; and most large towns, not previously boroughs, were given privileges by charter from kings and lords, and so became boroughs because they became possessed of special privileges. Under the Norman and Angevin monarchs, charters became so various and so extensive that almost every borough of importance had a large, promiscuous cluster of special customs and liberties. The burgesses might hold their houses at a fixed rent, instead of by general feudal service; sometimes power to transfer their holdings freely was added; or they might take the revenues of the court or of the market, might elect a bailiff, might be exempt from certain interferences of the king's sheriff, might be exempt from summons to other than their own court. Then they acquired the privilege of farming all the revenues of the borough; and royal edict often ordained that all the trading of a certain region should be done within the borough of that region. But even more extensive mercantile privileges were bestowed by the king. Not only might the burgesses take tolls, they might be free of paying tolls, in any part of the realm; they might also organize themselves into a merchant guild, which had power to govern all the trade of the borough. All these special privileges entered into the freedom of the community of burgesses or citizens.

Eventually, by charter, the whole bor

fixed annual rent, into the hands of its burgesses. Then the freedom of the borough, or of the city, was indeed great. The burgesses elected their own officers and council-mayor, bailiffs, and chief burgesses and elected coroners to see that the bailiffs dealt justly with rich and poor; and through those officers they governed their community and its political and commercial affairs.

Though the serf class had diminished, there was yet a great number of inhabitants in each borough or city who were not burgesses. There were foreigners, strangers, women, minors, apprentices, menial servants, and those who either could not, or desired not, to contribute towards obtaining the charter, or to pay fees for "suing out their freedom," as it was termed. The body of enfranchised burgesses became smaller and smaller in comparison with the general inhabitants. Then the governing council came more and more to exercise all the powers of the body of burgesses, among which was the power to admit new burgesses. Later, charters were often granted to certain burgesses, as officers and council, empowering them to admit such as they chose to be freemen of the borough.

The custom of summoning representatives of a borough to Parliament, and the rise of the House of Commons, gave to membership in the body of burgesses a great political value; for the burgesses, or their select body, elected those representatives. Now residence in the borough was

never definitely required for burgess-ship; and the practice of admitting non-residents soon became quite general, sometimes as an honor, sometimes to control the elections. So honorary and non-resident freemen became numerous in English boroughs and cities. In the municipal reform of 1835, Parliament enacted that honorary freemen should not have a freeman's vote. Since that time the freedom of a borough or city has often been bestowed upon distinguished persons, especially guests, solely as an honor.

The customs and organization of English municipalities were transplanted to the American colonies. In the early charters of New York it is provided that the "Mayor Recorder and Alderman for the time being shall from time to time and at all times hereafter have full Power and Authority under the Common Seale to make free Cittizens of the said Citty and Libertyes thereof," ctc. A similar provision is in the charter of Penn to Philadelphia, 1701, and in the charters of other colonial cities. The General Court of the Colony of Plymouth ordered "that henceforth such as are admitted to bee freemen of this Corporation; the deputies of such Townes wher such persons live shall propound them to the Court being such as have been alsoe approved by the freemen in that towne wher such persons live."

Ultimately, in America, residence took the place of formal admission; but the ancient ceremony of conferring the freedom of the city, though it has lost its old sig nificance, is continued, as it is in England, as an honor to distinguished persons.

B

EFORE taking up the several more important town and gown riots, we should remember that the two contending forces were engaged in a life and death struggle. The University was fighting out the problem of a corporate existence within itself, the problem that was involved in its passing from a mere gathering of unruly men to a property-holding, influence-weilding institution, and at the same time it was fighting to keep its place within the city walls. Meanwhile the Town was bent on making all it could from the University, it granted no right to these hundreds of students which they did not wrest from it, and at the same time it was seeking to preserve its ancient liberties entire. With such widely divergent interests, serious friction between Town and Gown was inevitable.

The first considerable row happened in 1209. "A most unfortunate and unhappy accident fell out at Oxford," Wood tells us, "which was this. A certain clerk, as he was recreating himself, killed by chance a woman: which being done, he fled away for fear of punishment. But the fact being soon spread throughout the Town, the Mayor and several Burghers made search after him, and having received intelligence in what Hall he was resident, made their repair thither, and finding there three other Clerks laid hold on them, and though innocent yet cast them into prison. After certain days, King John, no great lover of the Clergy, being then in his Manor of Woodstock, commanded the three sd Scholars to be led out of the Town, and there to

1 Authorities differ as to the cause. Some claim the woman was assaulted, etc., Lyte, p. 16; others that she was killed "by a scholar practising archery;" Heber I., p. 88.

be hanged by the neck 'in contempt of Ecclesiastical liberty.' Whereupon the Scholars of the University being much displeased at this unworthy act, they, to the number of three thousand left Oxford, so that not one remained behind, but either went some to Cambridge, some to Reading, and others to Maydestone in Kent, to make a further progress in their studies." 2

News of these events was sent to the

Bishop of Lincoln, and finally to the Pope who "did forthwith interdict the Town, that is commanded religious Service to cease, Church doors to be shut up, none to be buried in consecrated ground, none to have the Sacrament administered to them, etc." And we can readily believe the old record, which adds that "this dispersion of students was a great stop to the progress of Literature, and the more, because that such that lived remote and beyond the seas never returned again."

But if the University suffered, its troubles were as nothing in comparison with the punishment inflicted upon the Town. Five years after the riot, in 1214, we have a letter from the Papal Legate imposing the penalties. Half the rent payable for the halls occupied by students was remitted for ten years, or the halls were to rent for as much "as the Clerkes thought fit to pay in conscience." Fifty-two shillings was to be paid annually by the Town for the support of poor scholars, and every year on St. Nicholas' Day a hundred poor students were to be fed. The Town also had to pledge itself to furnish the University with provisions at a reasonable price. Then followed a condition which struck at the root 2 Wood, Annals, I., p. 82.

of the essential liberty of the Town. "If it should happen that any Clerk (and all the students at this time were clerks) should be taken in a fault (that is, arrested), the Commonalty should not deal with him, but cause him to be delivered to the Bishop, or the Chancellor, to be punished." An oath to keep these provisions was to be taken annually, and these pledges were to be embodied in a charter to which the Town must affix its seal. "The chiefest of the Burghers," furthermore, "must strip themselves of their apparel, and go barefoot with scourges in their hands to every Church in the Town of Oxford, and there to require of the Parish Priest the benefit of Absolution by saying the 51st Psalm 'Have mercy on me, O God,' etc." And we are told that the Burghers "performed this penance in every particular, not all in one day, but in as many as there were Churches, by taking for one day, one Church, so that they, as well as others, might dread to do such wickedness again."

The Town soon transferred to the Convent of Eynsham the feast and annual payment.

What compensation the Town gave to the Convent does not appear. Nor is it plain just what bearing these concessions by the Town had upon existing conditions. It is only certain that the conditions were not much improved. In 1227 we find this record in Wood's Annals: 2 "This year the Town of Oxon was taken into the King's hands; but the reason unless some fray with the Scholars, I know not."

And when we come to the "latter end of next year," 1228, we find that "a dissention arose between the Scholars and Laics," which was "for a time very fierce, many of

'Lyte, p. 21; Hulton, p. 43. "Austey (Num. Acad.) describes this as the real foundation of the University. Since the Fourteenth Century the amount has been paid punctually by the Crown."

2 I., p. 197.

each party were wounded, and the Inns of the Scholars were broken open. For which cause the Town was interdicted by the Bishop of Lincoln. All lectures and other exercises ceased. Which interdict continuing a considerable while, the bodies of such that then deceased were buried in the highways and paths without the Town. At length the strikers and abusers of the Clerks were sent to Rome,3 to be there examined and tried by the Pope's Court." The goods stolen from the Clerks were restored, and the Laics gave the University fifty marks to be divided among poor students. And "it was furthermore ordered, that if like matter should happen hereafter, the sd Laics should submit themselves to the abitrement of four Masters that were then the chiefest in the University, by whose judgment the fault should be canonically punished, all manner of appeal being laid aside."4

In the following year, 1229, a serious town and gown row in Paris, which led to the temporary dissolution of the University, and gave Henry III. the opportunity to invite foreign students to England, brought large numbers of scholars to Oxford. The increased importance thus given to the University by larger numbers may be seen in the succession of royal briefs. In 1231 the King ordered the Mayor to give the use of the town prison to the Chancellor for confinement of Clerks, and later the Constable is ordered to give the use of the prison in the Castle for the same purpose." In this same year we catch a glimpse of the further difficulties of the loosely organized University in trying to keep order among its motley gathering of students. By another royal brief, the Sheriff is directed to expel all so-called scholars who were not under a

"Such a thing would have been impossible a century later." Rashdall, II., 2, p. 393.

'Wood, I., p. 203.

"Rashdall, II., 2, p. 293.