Note 800 — Chapter VII · THE TOWNS.

The word communa occurs at almost every page of the ‘Liber de antiquis Legibus,’ to express the whole commonalty of the city of London. Glanville himself uses communa and gyldae as equivalent terms. “Item si quis nativus quiete per unum annum et unum diem in aliquâ villâ privilegiatâ manserit, ita quod in eorum communiam, scilicet gyldam, tanquam civis receptus fuerit, eo ipso a villenagio liberabitur.” Lib. v. cap. 5. The reader may consult with advantage Thierry’s history of the Communes in France, in his ‘Lettres sur l’histoire de France,’ a work which has not received in this country an attention at all commensurate to its merits, or comparable to that bestowed upon his far less sound production the ‘Conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands.’ At the same time it would be an error to apply the example of the French Communes to our own or those of Flanders, which had frequently a very different origin. See Warnkönig, Hist. de Flandre, par Gheldolf: Bruxelles, 1835, particularly vol. ii. with its valuable appendixes.