[56] Drake, the historian of York, maintains that London was less populous, about the time of the Conquest, than that city; and quotes Hardynge, a writer of Henry V.'s age, to prove that the interior part of the former was not closely built. Eboracum, p. 91. York however does not appear to have contained more than 10,000 inhabitants at the accession of the Conqueror; and the very exaggerations as to the populousness of London prove that it must have far exceeded that number. Fitz-Stephen, the contemporary biographer of Thomas à Becket, tells us of 80,000 men capable of bearing arms within its precincts; where however his translator, Pegge, suspects a mistake of the MS. in the numerals. And this, with similar hyperboles, so imposed on the judicious mind of Lord Lyttelton, that, finding in Peter of Blois the inhabitants of London reckoned at quadraginta millia, he has actually proposed to read quadringenta. Hist. Henry II., vol. iv. ad finem. It is hardly necessary to observe that the condition of agriculture and internal communication would not have allowed half that number to subsist. The subsidy-roll of 1377, published in the Archæologia, vol. vii., would lead to a conclusion that all the inhabitants of London did not even then exceed 35,000. If this be true, they could not have amounted, probably, to so great a number two or three centuries earlier. But the numbers given in that document have been questioned as to Norwich upon very plausible grounds, and seem rather suspicious in the present instance. [Note V.] [57] This seditious, or at least refractory character of the Londoners, was displayed in the tumult headed by William Longbeard in the time of Richard I., and that under Constantine in 1222, the patriarchs of a long line of city demagogues. Hoveden, p. 765. M. Paris, p. 154. [58] Hoveden's expressions are very precise, and show that the share taken by the citizens of London (probably the mayor and aldermen) in this measure was no tumultuary acclamation, but a deliberate concurrence with the nobility. Comes Johannes, et fere omnes episcopi, et comites Angliæ eâdem die intraverunt Londonias; et in crastino prædictus Johannes frater regis, et archiepiscopus Rothomagensis, et omnes episcopi, et comites et barones, et cives Londonienses cum illis convenerunt in atrio ecclesiæ S. Pauli.... Placuit ergo Johanni fratri regis, et omnibus episcopis, et comitibus et baronibus regni, et civibus Londoniarum, quod cancellarius ille deponeretur, et deposuerunt eum, &c. p. 701. [59] The reader may consult, for a more full account of the English towns before the middle of the thirteenth century, Lyttelton's History of Henry II. vol. ii. p. 174; and Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.