Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/306

 284 NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. inefficient these early "trained bands" may have been in the field, they were quite adequate to the suppression of those disorders within the city which arose from the antagonism of political partizans, or jealousies between the various classes of operatives, which sometimes reached an alarming height of violence: such was the outbreak in 1260 among the goldsmiths, tailors, and white-leather-dressers ; who maintained a conflict in the streets for three successive nights, amounting in numbers, says our chronicler, to more than five hundred. The riot was at last quelled by the bailiffs and citizens ; more than thirty of the ringleaders being captured were imme- diately tried at Newgate before the king's justiciary, and about thirteen appear to have been hanged. But excepting on such occasions there was no active exertion on the part of the authorities. The city swarmed with thieves and bad characters ; who were fostered and protected by the numerous sanctuaries then recognised, as well as by the facility with which they could escape from one soke to another where the bailiffs could not pursue them. In the reign of Edward the First the dean and chapter of St, Paul's obtained a license to enclose their church and buildings with a strong wall, as a protection against the malefactors who infested it nightly, committing every species of crime, and converting that which should have been the most sacred, into the vilest place in the city. If we take the trouble, however, to turn over the legal records of the time, the number of murders and violent assaults upon the person do not appear so numerous as might have been expected amidst a population of which every man and youth was constantly armed with his anlace or Irish-knife. We trust these remarks may have the effect of directing attention to this valuable work, and that they may prove useful as introductory to, and in some degree explanatory of, the principal events narrated in it. Before concluding, however, it may be permitted to say a few words respecting the singular title of the work. Why it should have been called " Liber de Antiquis Legibus," the " Book of Ancient Laws," is not very apparent. No ancient laws are contained in it, if we except the assize of 1 189; there are, indeed, numerous allusions to privileges claimed or exercised by the citizens, but they are wholly incidental to the narrative, and cannot be regarded in the light of an ordinary collection of precedents. The title is, we apprehend, not older than the end of the fourteenth or the be- ginning of the fifteenth century, and was probably attributed to the manu- script from its being frequently cited in proof of civic rights called into dispute, for though not a legal document, it had long been in proper cus- tody, and was therefore admissible as evidence on behalf of the corpora- tion, and has been so admitted in our own times. Strictly speaking it is an irregular narrative of historical events combined with such an amount of irrelevant matter as almost to deserve the name of a common-place book. Taken as a whole it is a curious and invaluable record of a stirring period in our national annals, and of popular manners and popular struggles in an almost fortjotten a^e.