[Sidenote:  The borough as a county.] But now as certain boroughs grew larger and annexed outlying townships, or acquired adjacent territory which presently became covered with streets and houses, their constitution became still more complex.  The borough came to embrace several closely packed hundreds, and thus became analogous to a shire.  In this way it gained for itself a sheriff and the equivalent of a county court.  For example, under the charter granted by Henry I. in 1101, London was expressly recognized as a county by itself.  Its burgesses could elect their own chief magistrate, who was called the port-reeve, inasmuch as London is a seaport; in some other towns he was called the borough-reeve.  He was at once the chief executive officer and the chief judge.  The burgesses could also elect their sheriff, although in all rural counties Henry’s father, William the Conqueror, had lately deprived the people of this privilege and appointed the sheriffs himself.  London had its representative board, or council, which was the equivalent of a county court.  Each ward, moreover, had its own representative board, which was the equivalent of a hundred court.  Within the wards, or hundreds, the burgesses were grouped together in township, parish, or manor....  Into the civic organization of London, to whose special privileges all lesser cities were ever striving to attain, the elements of local administration embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire thus entered as component parts.[5] Constitutionally, therefore, London was a little world in itself, and in a less degree the same was true of other cities and boroughs which afterwards obtained the same kind of organization, as for example, York and Newcastle, Lincoln and Norwich, Southampton and Bristol.

[Footnote 5:  Hannis Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, vol. i. p. 458.]

[Sidenote:  The guilds.] [Sidenote:  mayor, aldermen, and common council.] In such boroughs or cities all classes of society were brought into close contact,—­barons and knights, priests and monks, merchants and craftsmen, free labourers and serfs.  But trades and manufactures, which always had so much to do with the growth of the city, acquired the chief power and the control of the government.  From an early period tradesmen and artisans found it worth while to form themselves into guilds or brotherhoods, in order to protect their persons and property against insult and robbery at the hands of great lords and their lawless military retainers.  Thus there came to be guilds, or “worshipful companies,” of grocers, fishmongers, butchers, weavers, tailors, ironmongers, carpenters, saddlers, armourers, needle-makers, etc.  In large towns there was a tendency among such trade guilds to combine in a “united brotherhood,” or “town guild,” and this organization at length acquired full control of the city government.  In London this process was completed in the course of the thirteenth century.