satire anywhere-says that Rochester and Chichester were mere villages or small towns (viculi) which had no right to be called cities, except that they were the seats of bishopsfamines is the pagan word which is put into the Hebrew mouth. This is a rather irreverent way of speaking of two immemorial chesters; but it clearly implies that, about the beginning of legal memory, it was believed that the presence of a bishop gave the rank of a city to a town which otherwise would have no claim to it. This is much the same as the doctrine of the Gloucester charter, much the same as the doctrine which was generally held till quite lately. By virtue of it the title of city was given by usage--whether always by law I cannot say to any place, great and small, which could boast of a bishopstool, while it was refused to the greatest town which had

none.

The cities of England and Wales ranged from London to Llandaff, while Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham were not cities. Some cities, as Peterborough and Westminster, had no municipal corporation; some, as Ely, had neither municipal corporation nor representation in Parliament. These last answered exactly to the description given by the Jew to the French boy. So it was, certainly from Henry the Eighth, perhaps from Richard the First, down to our own time. Whence did such a doctrine come? I can only say that it must have come from Gaul in some shape or other. There is nothing in Old-English practice or OldEnglish language to suggest it. Till King William came into England, or at least till King Edward began to take to French ways, men could do nothing but call York a burh and Northampton a burh, though York had a bishop and Northampton had

Yet we may be none the less sure that the notion of the connexion of city and bishopric was practically a French importation. Practically the bishoprics of Gaul answered to the civitates; so, under French influences, though not according to French formal practice, the doctrine came to be established in England that no town but a bishop's see could be a city, and that every town in which a bishop's see was placed either at once became a city or had a right to be made one.

3

After Henry the Eighth the question did not come up again till our own time. In the times between no new bishoprics were created; consequently, according to the rule which was by this time established, no towns were promoted to the rank of cities. In our day we have seen a good many. The first new bishopric since Henry the Eighth's time was Ripon in the reign of William the Fourth. Ripon calls itself a city. Can anybody tell me how it became one? Was it made a city by royal proclamation, or did it take the name of "city" without asking, as soon as it had a bishop? I do not exactly remember. Or is it just possible that the rank of Ripon as a city has something to do with that wonderful legend of a charter from West-Saxon Alfred in which people at Ripon gravely believed two or three years back? The next was Manchester, and from Manchester onwards there is no doubt. Manchester was undoubtedly made a city by royal proclamation. But, unless my memory quite fails me, it was not made a city till some time after it became a bishopric, not till the question had been raised whether it did not become a city at once by virtue of being a bishopric. I have some indistinct remembrance of a story about a document being brought before a judge in which mention was made of the "city of Manchester." The judge rejected the paper on the ground that there was no such city, and then Manchester was made a city by proclamation. Some Manchester friend

D

will doubtless be able to say whether my memory is accurate as to this story; but there is no doubt that Manchester became a city by procla mation, and that the proclamation did not immediately follow on the foundation of the bishopric. More lately Liverpool, Newcastle, Saint Albans, Truro, Wakefield-I am not sure of the chronological order have all received the same promotion. In all these cases the foundation of the bishopric has been speedily followed by a royal proclamation raising the borough to the rank of a city. This is exactly according to the doctrine implied in Henry the Eighth's Gloucester charter. The foundation of the bishopric does not make the borough a city, but it gives it a right to be made one. And, just as among the older sees, the new list takes in towns of very different classes, from Liverpool down to disfranchised Saint Albans. Still the line must be drawn somewhere; there is one bishop's see on which it would have been too grotesque to bestow the rank of a city. Leofric of Exeter and Remigius of Lincoln would have thought it passing strange that, when a bishopric was to be founded in Nottinghamshire, it should be founded at Southwell and not at Nottingham. But our time seems to have gone back from Leofric and Remigius to Saint David and Saint Cuthberht, and we now have in the episcopal village of Southwell an inland fellow of Menevia and Lindisfarn. I looked carefully for some time to see whether a proclamation would come making Southwell into a city; but I have not seen it yet.

And now comes a royal proclamation of quite another character, one not according to recent precedents, but which would have pleased Gregory of Tours and the compilers of Domesday. Gregory wondered why Dijon was not a city; many may have wondered why Birmingham was not one. But now that great borough has become a city, purely on the strength of

its civil greatness, without any reference to ecclesiastical arrangements. We have now in England one bishop's see which is not a city, one city which is not a bishop's see. To me at least this seems to be a happy return to the reasonable language of Domesday. The creation of cities, once begun, will perhaps not stop. Modern greatness may plead for Leeds and Bradford; ancient memories may say something for Shrewsbury and Nottingham.

And now for a word or two about Dundee. As I am not a Scotch lawyer nor a Scotchman at all-though I was once asked on board a steamer bound for America whether I was not a Scotchman, because I looked so intelligent-I will not make so bold as to risk any opinion as to what makes a city in Scotland. In Wilkinson's Atlas, from which I first learned geography, it was said that Scotland had four cities which were also universities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Saint Andrews. Was this meant to imply that in Scotland the rank of city depended on having an university? Anyhow this rule would cut off all connexion between city and bishopric. For there were several Scottish bishoprics which had no universities, while at Edinburgh the rather modern university was at least older than the still more modern bishopric. But is the list right? Is not Perth a city? And I saw some years back a long argument, by which it was said that Mr. Gladstone had been convinced, to prove that Dunfermline was a city. Into these deep matters I will not pry. I wish only to say a little about the consequence which is supposed to follow on the elevation of Dundee to the rank of a city. It appears that the Provost of Dundee, and many (not all) people in Dundee, believe that, now the burgh has become a city, its Provost has ipso facto become a Lord Provost. I have read the new charter, and it contains not a word about the matter; but I do not at all deny that the Provost of Dundee may very

rightly be called a Lord Provost, if mankind in general choose to call him

So.

The question sets one thinking as to the application of the word "Lord", as a mere complimentary title, to anybody. Is there any law but that of usage which makes a man Lord Provost, Lord Mayor, Lord Bishop, Lord anything, save only the lord of the manor, whose lordship is not an honorary title, but a legal fact? I once wrote an article on "Titles" in another periodical, in which I tried to divide "titles into three classes. There are those which simply express a fact, the fact that a certain man holds a certain rank or office, as Duke, Bishop, General, Mayor, Provost, any other. There are complimentary periphrases, attributing to the holder of the rank or office some virtue which is supposed to be appropriate to it, Holiness, Majesty, Grace, any other. And there are complimentary adjectives, which do the same thing in another shape, calling him Noble, Honourable, Reverend, anything else. And I tried to show that these two last classes had arisen simply through usage. Men once called a man, specially a powerful man, whom they wished to please anything that they thought would please him; then the thing gradually stiffened by usage; each rank or office got its own complimentary periphrasis and its own complimentary adjective. There was longer any field for ingenuity in devising something which would please the Prince or the Duke. The Prince must be Highness and the Duke must be Grace; it would be bad manners either not to use those periphrases or to use any others. Still the whole thing is matter of usage, even if usage is sometimes confirmed by law. The Queen often grants to a certain person a certain precedence; the person to whom it is granted is at once called Lord, Lady, Honourable, whatever title custom has attached to that particular degree; but the Queen's grant of precedence says nothing about the conventional title. On the other

no

The

hand, without venturing into more august regions, it is certain that a royal proclamation not only gave County Court Judges a certain precedence, but prescribed for them a very ungrammatical description, that of "His Honour Judge A." So it is surely with the title of "Lord", as applied to Provosts, Mayors, holders of office of any kind. It at least began in usage, even if in some cases usage may have been sanctioned by formal authority. The older way of speaking, not "Lord ", but "my Lord" this or that, "my Lord Mayor" and so forth, shows how the phrase came into use. It exactly answers to the language of the Old Testament, where the stranger is addressed as "my lord", and the speaker calls himself "thy servant". When most people were the "men" of some "lord ", to call a great man "my lord" was for the speaker to profess himself, if only in courtesy, the "man" of that "lord". same thing is done whenever anybody begins a letter with "Sir", that is "Senior", the equivalent of "Dominus", and ends it with "your obedient servant". I feel sure that this is the true origin of all these uses of the lordly title. We must further remember that the title of "lord" has nothing to do with peerage; all peers are lords, that is, they are persons to whom it is becoming for others to profess a homage of courtesy; but many are lords who are not peers, that is, there are many besides peers to whom it is becoming to profess it. We now in common talk speak of any peer under a duke as "Lord A.", and in the lowest rank of peerage, "Lord" has, in all but the most formal language, displaced the proper title of "Baron". But "Lord" is not the formal title of any degree of peerage, and the old way of speaking, "my lord Duke", my lord of A.", showed how it came a customary title. In some official cases that old way of speaking is still kept on. Every one knows

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in as

how the Lords of the Council are spoken of by devoted subordinates as

"my Lords". It would seem then that, in strictness, "Lord" is a title which other people should give to a man, but which he should not take to himself. And in many formulæ this rule is still followed. The Lord Chancellor"Lord High Chancellor", because there are many smaller chancellors-and the Lord Chief Justice write themselves "C." and "C.J." So does the Lord Mayor of London. "A. Mayor" stands as the heading of his formal acts. This surely marks the way in which the lordly title came to be habitually given to the chief magistrates of two cities in England, four perhaps in Scotland, and I believe one only in Ireland. The dignity of the Mayors of London and York was so great that their citizens habitually called them "my Lord "; that is, they habitually professed to be their "men". In other places custom treated the Mayor with somewhat less honour, and instead of "Lord" gave him no higher title of address than "Master". "Mr. Mayor we know everywhere: My Lord Mayor" is confined to two cities only.

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I am far from saying that a formal grant of the lordly title to a Mayoror to anybody else is impossible. I cannot here in Sicily prove a negative. I remember John Richard Green once saying something about a grant of the kind from Richard the Second to the Mayor of York. A mere grant of precedence would exactly fall in with what I have been saying. A direct grant of the title of "Lord Mayor" would be rather odd, as it would amount to a command to the citizens of York to speak of their Mayor as "my Lord". The homage would thus be no longer a voluntary offering. Still such a grant is possible; though I feel certain that, if it ever was made, it was a mere confirmation of an usage which had already grown up.

more

common among Scotch than among English officials. In our present immediate line four Provosts seem to be called "Lord" to two Mayors. One thing in the matter is certain, that, whatever there may have been in a charter of Richard the Second about the lordship of the Mayor of York, there is nothing in the charter of Queen Victoria about any lordship in the Provost of Dundee. His lordship is inferred from the grant of the rank of city to the burgh. Scotch

lawyers or Scotch antiquaries must say whether there is anything in this or not. To me at least it seems strange if it should be so ; but there are many things in Scotch law which do seem strange to Englishmen. I can better judge of another point on which something has been said at Dundee. It appears that it was formerly the custom of Dundee to call the Provost "Lord Provost", but that the title has gone out of use for a century or two. In the absence of an authoritative statement of Scotch law to the contrary, I should say that this fact settled the whole case. The burgesses of Dundee were in ancient times very respectful to their Provost; they called him "my Lord". Latterly, perhaps to their discredit, they have dealt with him less respectfully. It is now hoped that, being raised to the rank of citizens, they will become as respectful as their remoter forefathers were, and will talk of their Provost as "my Lord Provost". Perhaps it is right that they should; but-in the absence of any such statement of law as I before hinted at-it would seem that the matter rests wholly with themselves; it is certain that the Queen in no way orders them to do so. Perhaps indeed it is better that there should be no ordering in the case the homage will be more precious if it comes as a free gift. In my view of the case, if mankind in general and the citizens of Dundee in particular can agree for a century or two to call the Provost of Dundee " Lord Provost ", he will have as good a right to the lordly title as the Mayor

My

of London and the Provost of Edinburgh. If no such agreement can be had, one may fear that he must remain the fellow of the Mayor of Birmingham. It might be hardly civil to quote the answer of the Spartan -was it not a Spartan ?-to the Macedonian king's demand for divine worship: "If Alexander will be a god, let him". A possible Lord Provost is a graver personage than a heathen deity. We cannot venture to say, "If the Provost of Dundee will be a Lord Provost, let him ". For, if my theory is right, a Lord Provost, a Lord anything, is not made but grows. He must wait for the lordly title to come to him from some quarter; he must not take honour upon himself. He must wait for other people to say, "You are our lord: we are your men"; he must not himself say, "I am your lord: you are my men". For it is only by courtesy that they are his men ; and courtesy is essentially a free will offering.

I have been driven to write somewhat superficially on a matter which

is really a curious one, because I have just now no means of making myself certain on any point on which I may feel doubtful. It is hard to prove negatives in any case; it is harder still when you have no books to turn to. I have therefore tried to be as little positive as I could on any point, so that, if I am not right, I may at least not be wrong. Some points that I have started well deserve being worked out more fully than I could work them out in any case; for they would call for special, and often for local, knowledge. My only fear is lest a proclamation should really have been issued granting the rank of a city to Southwell. Then I should be in evil case. But I looked out very carefully for it for a good while after the foundation of the bishopric, and I do not think it is likely to have been put forth since I left the great island of the Ocean for the great island of the Mediterranean.

EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

CATANIA, March.