Note 459 — Chapter IV · SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY.[188] (continued 2)

Roman de Rou, 6070;

“Asez tost oï Richard dire

Ke vilains cumune faseient.”

It does not necessarily follow that the word “commune” was used at the time, though I know no reason why such may not have been the case. It would be quite enough if Wace applied to the union of the peasants a name which in his time had become perfectly familiar, in the instinctive feeling that the earlier movement was essentially a forerunner of the later. Compare the “conjurationes” so strictly forbidden in the Carolingian Capitularies. See Brentano on Gilds, p. lxxvi; and for a full account of these “conjurationes,” Waitz, iv. 362–364.