eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had only six, and
Canterbury seven.

As regards the arts and traffic in the towns, they were chiefly carried
on by guilds, which had their origin, as Dr. Brentano has shown with
great probability, in separate families, who combined to keep up their
own trade secrets as a family affair. In time, however, the guilds grew
into regular organisations, having their own code of rules and laws,
many of which (as at Cambridge, Exeter, and Abbotsbury) we still
possess. It is possible that the families of craftsmen may at first have
been Romanised Welsh inhabitants of the cities; for all the older
towns–London, Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Rochester–were almost
certainly inhabited without interruption from the Roman period onward.
But in any case the guilds seem to have grown out of family compacts,
and to have retained always the character of close corporations. There
must have been considerable division of the various trades even before
the Conquest, and each trade must have inhabited a separate quarter; for
we find at Winchester, or elsewhere, in the reign of Æthelred,
Fellmonger, Horsemonger, Fleshmonger, Shieldwright, Shoewright, Turner,
and Salter Streets.

The exact amount of the population of England cannot be ascertained,
even approximately; but we may obtain a rough approximation from the
estimates based upon Domesday Book. It seems probable that at the end
of the Conqueror's reign, England contained 1,800,000 souls. Allowing
for the large number of persons introduced at the Conquest, and for the
natural increase during the unusual peace in the reigns of Cnut, of
Eadward the Confessor, and, above all, of William himself, we may guess
that it could not have contained more than a million and a quarter in
the days of Eadgar. London may have had a population of some 10,000;