The rights of such a corporation were in truth royal. They had their own alliances and feuds; their own jurisdiction, courts of justice and power of execution; their own markets and tolls; their own power of internal taxation; their personal freedom with all its dignity and privileges. And to secure these great blessings they had their own towers and walls and fortified houses, bell and banner, watch and ward, and their own armed militia. Such too were the rights which, in more than one European country, the brave and now forgotten burghers of the twelfth century strove to wring from the territorial aristocracy that hemmed them in; when ancient tradition had not lost its vigour, though liberty had been trampled under the armed hoof of power. If we admire and glory in these true fathers of popular freedom, firm in success, unbroken by defeat,—steadfast in council, steadfast in the field, steadfast even under the seigneurial gibbet and in the seigneurial dungeon,—let us yet give our meed of thanks to those still older assertors of the dignity of man, duly honouring the gyldsmen of the tenth century, who handed down their noble inheritance to the less fortunate burgesses of the twelfth. Few pictures from the past may the eye rest upon with greater pleasure than that of a Saxon portreeve looking down from his strong gyld-hall upon the well-watched walls and gates that guard the populous market of his city[802]. The fortified castle of a warlike lord may frown upon the adjacent hill; the machicolated and crenelated walls of the cathedral close, with buttress and drawbridge, may tell of the temporal power and turbulence of the episcopate; but in the centre of the square stands the symbolic statue which marks the freedom of jurisdiction and of commerce[803]; balance in hand, to show the right of unimpeded traffic; sword in hand, to intimate the _ius gladii_, the right to judge and punish, the right to guard with the weapons of men all that men hold dearest. ----- Footnote 802: “Ealdredesgate et Cripelesgate, _i. e._ portas illas, observabant custodes.” Inst. London. § 1. Thorpe, i. 300. Footnote 803: In the cities of the Roman empire with Jus Italicum a statute of Marsyas or Silenus was erected in the forum. Servius ad Æneid. iv. 58. “Patrique Lyæo.—Urbibus libertatis est deus, unde etiam Marsyas, minister eius, per civitates in foro positus, libertatis indicium est; qui erecta manu testatur nihil urbi deesse.” So also Æneid, iii. 20. The reader of Horace will remember the Marsyas in the Forum as symbolizing the magistrate’s jurisdiction. Whether the Germanic populations derived their pillar, figure or statue from the Roman custom seems uncertain: certain however it is that the Rolandseule, the pillar or figure of Orlando, (and, as is sometimes said, of Charlemagne) denotes equally “nihil urbi deesse.” -----