levying fines, and administering justice within certain limits.
The practice of gildating or embodying the aggregate free population
of a town was of considerably later date. In France and in Flanders,
corporations and communes, or commonalties, appear to have existed in
the middle of the eleventh century, but the earliest mention of the
Corporation of London occurs in the second year of the reign of
Richard I. Availing himself of the king's absence in the Holy Land,
his brother John, Earl of Moreton, anxious to acquire the co-operation
of the city of London in his traitorous designs upon the crown,
convened a general assembly of the citizens, and confirmed their
ancient rights and privileges by a formal deed or charter. It was
then, for the first time, that the commonalty of the city was
regularly and officially recognized as a corporate body. The
distinctive rights of a town corporation were the election of a
council presided over by a mayor or bailiff, a common seal, a bell to
convoke the citizens, and local jurisdiction.

But although it was not before the reign of Richard I. that the
citizens of London were formed into a body corporate, they had
enjoyed, as the inhabitants of a free burgh, the immunities and many
essential privileges of a corporation, from the time of Edward the
Confessor, if not of Alfred. Without stopping to discuss the etymology
of the word "burgh," it may suffice to observe that at the period of
the Conquest by far the greater part of the cities and towns of
England were the private property of the king, or of some spiritual or
secular lord, on whom they had been conferred by royal grant. These
burghs, as they were called, were said to be held in demesne, and paid
to their superior certain tolls, duties, and customs, levied on goods
exposed for sale at markets and fairs. The inhabitants were actually
little better than villeins or serfs, and were entirely at the mercy