The Towns and the Gilds

As in the case of the village, so also the town, in the modern sense of the word, had its origin in the primitive settlements of the people. The only difference between a town and a village lay, originally, in the number of inhabitants, and in the fact that the town was a more defensible place than the rural settlement, since it probably had a rampart or a moat surrounding it instead of the mere hedges which ran round the villages. ¹ It was simply in the Anglo-Saxon period a more strictly organised form of the village community. ² In itself it was merely a manor or group of manors; as Professor Freeman puts it, one part of the district where men lived closer together than elsewhere. ³ The town had at first a constitution like that of the primitive village, but its inhabitants had gradually gained certain rights and functions of a special nature. ⁴ These rights and privileges had sometimes been received from the lord of the manor on which the town had grown up ⁵ ; for towns, especially provincial towns, were often at first only dependent manors, which gained safety and solidity under the protection of some great noble, prelate, or the king himself; ⁶ who finally would grant the town thus formed a charter. ⁷