Note 327 — Chapter IX · The State.

Leg. Burg 70, 71. The Hanse was simply that kindred association, known as the Hant-Gemahl, without which no Teuton seems in early times to have been entitled to “free right.” (Appendix F.) The Northerns carried with them into the Burh their old customs, this association amongst the number. A Hanse seems strictly to have been an association of four; there were four classes of towns in the great Hanseatic League, of which Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and Cologne were “the Four Burghs.” When Roxburgh and Berwick fell into the hands of the English, Lanark and Linlithgow were added to complete the necessary number of four Scottish Burghs. The Northern Burgh seems to have been simply the reproduction of the rural system within the walls, the Burgh-Thanes, or probi homines, of London, who chose their Tything-men and Hynden-men—representing the Tuns-men of the country districts—who also chose their Head-borough and Hundred’s Ealdor. Neither originally chose their Gerefa. I cannot look upon the Northern Burgh as simply a repetition of the Roman city, or the Roman city, with its Roman customs, enfranchised, and its citizens, living by Roman law, converted into burghers. The Hanse was scarcely Roman, but it was a necessary ingredient in the free right of every “full-born” Teuton. “Bare is back without brother behind it,” says the old northern proverb. The Echevin was a thoroughly Teutonic personage, the Scabinus, or Scepen, of the rural district; and wherever such features are traceable “in-burgh,” I must look upon the original burghers, not as a trading class enfranchised, but rather as a class of free Teutons introduced above the traders for defence—carrying arms for the defence of the country being the mark of freedom—and introducing with them the free allodial customs of the rural districts. The Anglo-Saxon Burgher, and the member of the great Hanseatic Burghs of northern Germany, were thoroughly Teutonic personages, owing little, if anything, directly to Rome and her municipal institutions, in early times, I should imagine.