Despite identity of usage at Dover and Reading on the subject of the stake, it would be pardonable to conclude that in those times of difficult communication there existed a great diversity of burghal laws, entailing considerable inconvenience and hardship, especially in the case of those engaged in trade. Since the adoption or growth of customs depended on the interests or sentiments of particular communities, diversity was, to some extent, inevitable, but the tendency to local independence--an independence tenaciously maintained and jealously guarded--was tempered by counter-tendencies. Thus it was not always to the interest of a town or city to stand in complete isolation from centres of a similar type, or possibly of a superior organization; and, in such instances, a smaller, weaker, less perfectly developed community might seek to improve its status or fortune by modelling its arrangements on those of a more advanced and more powerful neighbour, and in addition to and as a corollary of this, enter into a formal or informal alliance with it, in which the latter would hold the position of protector or patron.
In the Middle Ages there subsisted between the towns and the feudal aristocracy an antagonism sometimes silent and slumbering, sometimes wakened into fierce consciousness and expressing itself not only in hardy words, but in sanguinary deeds. On the Continent the towns were the hotbeds of revolution, and the commune, with its mayor as figure-head, signalized the triumph of the insurrectionary temper. This state of things was more marked on the Continent than in England, where the Barons led the assault on tyranny, and where, for his own purposes, the monarch fostered the prosperity of towns of his own planting. But Mr. J. H. Round, in his singularly able article on "The Origin of the Mayoralty of London," contributed to the "Archæological Journal," shows conclusively that this institution, now the ægis of all that is staid, stable, and respectable, was the offspring of the spirit of revolt which spread like a contagion from Italy to France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and thence to the Thames.
Dr. Gross's valuable contribution to the "Antiquary" (1885), treating of the affiliation of towns, is of a general character, and illustrated largely by continental examples; anyone, however, who wishes to grasp the full significance of mediæval relationships as between town and town, will be well advised in consulting that succinct account. Here we must confine ourselves to English experience, in which the same traits appear, only more faintly. Before proceeding to this inquiry it may not be amiss to advert briefly to another aspect of the subject. We have said above that, in England, the monarch inclined to favour certain towns for his own purposes, and such towns were naturally of the highest precedence. If we turn to Liverpool, we shall find that in 1206 it received a visit from King John, who the following year issued letters patent of which the following is a translation: