The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: the Vill of Westminster 12001540The Alexander Prize Essay

Abstract

THE modern study of urban history began in the nineteenth century, and has since continued to reflect the preoccupations of its founders. For these historians, the towns of the European Middle Ages nurtured the seeds of political democracy and economic liberalism. Consequently, two great historians of the late nineteenth century, Charles Gross and F.W. Maitland, laid down criteria for the definition of towns which stressed above all the theme of administrative independence. It was declared that fundamental legal differences distinguished the borough from other forms of community, in particular the village. Burghal status, and the features associated with itsuch as the existence of a civil constitution, the right to representation in parliament, and the free tenure of propertyhave been exhaustively analysed by subsequent writers, not-ably James Tait. This emphasis upon the legal autonomy of towns has been strengthened by the prestige of the great medieval cities of Flanders, Germany and Italy, which repeatedly exemplify the trade centre fighting or bargaining to achieve communal independence from feudal overlords and control over the surrounding countryside. In accordance with this pattern of urban development, historians have tended to seek, as a necessary first stage of growth, evidence of such a struggle for self-governing independence.

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