OF MODERN CORPORATIONS. 59 
one of 943 in the same work, iv. 174. the oldest 
examples probably on record. The gilds of the 
Anglo Saxons described by Turner, (iii. 98) were 
something different; yet it is evident that before 
the conquest merchant gilds had been formed, 
since a gildhall at Dover is mentioned in 
Domesday book, and the charter of Henry II. 
to the citizens of Lincoln (quoted by Hallam, 
iii. 31.) if it speak truth, attributes to the gild 
of that place, a jurisdiction not only over the 
merchants of Lincoln, ‘but of the whole county. 
The possession of common property and the 
administration of it by persons chosen among 
themselves, was one of the least alarming rights 
which a community could exercise, and this the 
burgesses of English cities appear undoubtedly 
to have possessed before the Conquest. See 
Sir H. Ellis’s Indexes to Domesday Book. 
The internal history of the older cities on the 
continent, is nothing else than that of the suc- 
cessive transfer of power from the sovereign to 
his secular or ecclesiastical vassal, from him to 
the nobility, from the nobility to the wealthier 
of the mercantile class, and from them to the 
incorporated tradesmen and artificers, till either 
anarchy ended in despotism, or the sovereign by 
the recovery of his legitimate authority restored 
