The long struggle between the oligarchic and the popular party, which was carried on without cessation for at least two hundred years, was at its acutest and its worst in the thirteenth century. It must be noted here because it exercised great influence in the development of municipal institutions. To this point I will return after we have considered the leading features of the faction struggle complicated by the machinations of the King. We must note, at the outset, that the various Charters conferring and confirming old and new rights did not lay down laws for the government of the City; nor was it contemplated that the City was to be governed by the craftsmen. By Saxon custom every man was a lord or a dependant upon a lord; yet there was a Folk Mote: by Norman rule every townsman was under an over-lord and every countryman was under the Lord of the Manor; yet the Folk Mote was continued. That the craftsmen of the town were to be the rulers of the town; that they were to have a voice, as we understand it, in the management of the City was considered by the “Barons” of the City, the Aldermen, the wealthy merchants and the notables as a thing to be resisted in every way possible. Yet, to repeat, there was the Folk Mote with the lingering memory of a time when the people were summoned and shouted their approval or their refusal. Again, we have been accustomed for so long to consider London as one of the greatest and most important cities of the world that we fail to realise her position in the twelfth or thirteenth century, as compared with certain other cities of Western Europe, long since sunk into decay and insignificance. At that time the cities of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, now so shrunken and so deserted, were, in point of population, at least twice as great as London, while their trade and wealth were very much greater, even in proportion, and the liberties enjoyed by their citizens were such as London did not dream of until fired by their example. The trade between the Port of London and these towns, especially Bruges, made the citizens acquainted with these liberties as well as this wealth. It is difficult not to connect the newly-born ambitions and aspirations of the craftsmen of London with the liberties acquired by those of the Flemish towns.