establish a mutual responsibility as close as that of the old.  “Let all share the same lot,” ran its law; “if any misdo, let all bear it.”  A member could look for aid from his gild-brothers in atoning for guilt incurred by mishap.  He could call on them for assistance in case of violence or wrong.  If falsely accused they appeared in court as his compurgators, if poor they supported, and when dead they buried him.  On the other hand he was responsible to them, as they were to the State, for order and obedience to the laws.  A wrong of brother against brother was also a wrong against the general body of the gild and was punished by fine or in the last resort by an expulsion which left the offender a “lawless” man and an outcast.  The one difference between these gilds in country and town was this, that in the latter case from their close local neighbourhood they tended inevitably to coalesce.  Under AEthelstan the London gilds united into one for the purpose of carrying out more effectually their common aims, and at a later time we find the gilds of Berwick enacting “that where many bodies are found side by side in one place they may become one, and have one will, and in the dealings of one with another have a strong and hearty love.”  The process was probably a long and difficult one, for the brotherhoods naturally differed much in social rank, and even after the union was effected we see traces of the separate existence to a certain extent of some one or more of the wealthier or more aristocratic gilds.  In London for instance the Cnighten-gild which seems to have stood at the head of its fellows retained for a long time its separate property, while its Alderman—­as the chief officer of each gild was called—­became the Alderman of the united gild of the whole city.  In Canterbury we find a similar gild of Thanes from which the chief officers of the town seem commonly to have been selected.  Imperfect however as the union might be, when once it was effected the town passed from a mere collection of brotherhoods into a powerful community, far more effectually organized than in the loose organization of the township, and whose character was inevitably determined by the circumstances of its origin.  In their beginnings our boroughs seem to have been mainly gatherings of persons engaged in agricultural pursuits; the first Dooms of London provide especially for the recovery of cattle belonging to the citizens.  But as the increasing security of the country invited the farmer or the landowner to settle apart in his own fields, and the growth of estate and trade told on the towns themselves, the difference between town and country became more sharply defined.  London of course took the lead in this new developement of civic life.  Even in AEthelstan’s day every London merchant who had made three long voyages on his own account ranked as a Thegn.  Its “lithsmen,” or shipmen’s-gild, were of sufficient importance under Harthacnut to figure in the election of a king, and its principal street still tells of the rapid growth of trade in its name of “Cheap-side” or the bargaining place.  But at the Norman Conquest the commercial tendency had become universal.  The name given to the united brotherhood in a borough is in almost every case no longer that of the “town-gild,” but of the “merchant-gild.”