THE ROMAN COLLEGIA.
40
Upon
the point
as an authority.
we
By
now
Mr
Pike has established a good claina to be accepted
"
this conscientious historian, it has been observed,
that the priority of any
are
of the three forms of gnikl
considering,
becomes a mere matter of conjecture, and the source of the whole
doubtful.
Regarded from one point of view, the guild has a
must necessarily remain
sj'stem
strong resemblance to the family tie of the Teutonic and other barbarous tribes regarded from
another, it is a species of bail, which involves a principle too universally applied to be con;
sidered characteristic of any one people;
regarded from a third,
is
it
strikingly like that
companies which was always familiar to the Romans, and which we
know from inscriptions to have existed in Britain during the Roman occupation, both in the
form of the religious guild and in the form of the craft guild."
institution of colleges or
"
It
would be
possible, indeed, to elaborate a
of the whole guild system out of
Roman
very plausible argument for the development
institutions rather than oi;t of the family tie of the
—
might have come to pass by two wholly distinct processes either
a tradition handed down by the ancient Roman townsmen, or through a new introthrough
Germans.
This, indeed,
duction at the time
when Roman
missionaries
came
to restore Christianity in that part of
had become pagan England. The second process would fully account for the
existence of guilds in parts of Germany never conquered by the Romans.
Human nature,
whether civilised or barbarous Greek, or Roman, or Teutonic has everywhere some
however,
Britain which
—
kind of social instinct
and the common
;
country, or a language, that
repeated.
The truth
but that there
no
—
historical blunder of attributing to a race, or a
which belongs
to humanity shall, in this place at least, not be
that the guild system existed before and after the Norman Conquest,
is,
historical evidence of its beginning.
It is, however, a fact of too
importance to be forgotten, that the guilds afterwards became, for a time, in one form at
is
much
least,
the vital principle of the towns."
"
There
is, however, one point upon which those who regard the Teutonic wave as a deluge
with those who regard it as a wave and nothing more. Even if it be
may agree
supposed that
the invaders, after putting the inhabitants to death, left not one stone
another in any
upon
town which they found
in the island,
it
must, nevertheless, be admitted that the towns were
One of three possible cases must be accepted as fact new towns were
ancient name on or near the ancient site or new inhabitants
occupied the
sooner or later rebuilt.
with the
built
:
;
towns, of which the former possessors were slaughtered, wholly or in part or the original
These are
possessors retained their hold after the new comers had settled round about them.
;
the limits of conjecture
;
history gives but one fact to aid
it
—towns
bearing their
Roman
names existed when Bede, the first historian, began to write, nearly three hundred years after
the date which has commonly been assigned to the
mythical voyage of Hengist and Horsa.
Every one may imagine the events of the intervening period according to his own wishes or
prejudices, for it may be shown that the history of our towns begins at the same point, whether
we
accept the
In
Roman
or the
Teuton as the founder."
^
now
proceeding with the inquiry into the early history of the Collegia, it will suffice,
I think, as regards their extreme
antiquity, to state that, whilst their institution has been
commonly
ascribed to
Numa,
this figure of speech is
expressing that their existence was coeval with that of
'
i.,
L. O. Pike, History of Crime, 1873, vol.
p. 229,
and
vol. ii., pp. .309-311.
i.,
pp. 65, 69, 70.
most probably only another way of
Rome
itself.
Compare, however, Kemlile, Saxons in England,
vol.