Mr. Maitland (Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Society, ii. 134-5) in discussing this question of the trading guarantee points out the difference between the responsibility of the “communitas” and of the “cives” or “burgesses” of a town, showing that the “communitas” did not form a juristic person, while “the citizens” of a town could sue and be sued collectively by a common name. He thinks that the “communitas” may mean the merchant guild “though not perhaps in all cases a duly chartered guild.” Of this there is no proof, and many serious difficulties lie in the way of accepting the hypothesis. In the case of Leicester, where there was a merchant guild, it is never mentioned, the responsibility lies on the “members of the community of Leicester,” (p. 145-7) and Thomas pleads, not that he was not in the merchant guild, but that he was from Coventry. So also “the whole community of Norwich” is spoken of in exactly the same way, but in Norwich there was _no_ guild merchant, (p. 149, 152. See also on this point Hudson’s Mun. Org. 36. Notes on Norwich in the Norfolk Archæology, xii. “The city and feudalism.”) In Nottingham, John Beeston (p. 153-4) brings a counter-charge against the community of Stamford, (p. 159); he was probably one of the very numerous licensed traders of Nottingham and not a burgher. (Nott. Rec. ii. 102-4, 240-4; iii. 349-52.) It is important to notice the words of the charter by which in 1255 the Nottingham burghers had obtained freedom from arrest, “except in case the debtors are of their commune and power, having whereof their debts may be wholly or partly satisfied, and the said burgesses shall have failed in doing justice to the creditors of the same debtors.” (Nott. Rec. i. 41.) For Wiggenhall, (Select Pleas, pp. 157-8.) The mutual responsibility must be considered in connection with the inter-municipal treaties (see Vol. ii. ch. iii.) which were always drawn up in the name of “the community” at this early time, and never at _any_ time in the name of the guild merchant. I have suggested in vol. ii. (see Norwich, Lynn, Nottingham, Southampton) another meaning of “communitas,” which seems to me to apply also to the instances here mentioned by Mr. Maitland.