ii2 The Norman Conquest
sen the network of tolls by which they were surrounded
and which hampered the coming and going of traders.
Henry L granted a charter to London which may be re-
garded as inaugurating the boroughs' twelfth-century
struggle for independence. The privileges conferred by
this charter were great, considering the time, and it served
as an incentive to other boroughs.
The privileges of the citizens of London are not to be re-
garded as a fair specimen of the liberties of ordinary towns;
but as a sort of type and standard of the amount of municipal
independence and self-government at which the other towns
of the country might be expected to aim,1
The logical outcome of what the boroughs were aiming
at, just as in the case of continental municipalities, was
complete political separation. In all countries where the
feudal regime was supreme, the municipalities felt them-
selves to be alien units in hostile surroundings. They
were, in many respects, the advance guards of the mod-
ern in the midst of the medieval. They learned early
the particularity of their interests; their hand must be
against every man as every man's hand was against them;
the interests of the feudal warrior and of the citizen were
antipodal. Any possibility of the towns' profitably shar-
ing in the general government of the country was denied
by every condition of the time. Rather it was their pur-
pose to wall themselves off, literally and figuratively, from
all governmental surroundings and, while profiting by
the growing industrial demands and by commerce, work
out their own institutional salvation. They learned the
most effective ways to use their increasing numbers and
wealth. To buy privileges was their great method, but
they knew how to use force upon occasion. These con-
ditions were much the same in Germany, France, and
England in the twelfth century. In Germany, owing to
the break-down of the central government, the logical
1 Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 128-130.