Edward Augustus Freeman

“ 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". ”

“ In England, even in speaking of a real city, the word "city" is seldom used, except in language a little formal or rhetorical; in America it is used whenever a city is mentioned. But the American rule has the advantage of being perfectly clear and avoiding all doubt. And it agrees very well with the origin of the word: a corporate town is a civitas, a commonwealth; any lesser collection of men hardly is a commonwealth, or is such only in a much less perfect degree. ”

“ Exactly opposite to the Domesday notion of a city is that which has certainly been prevalent for several centuries. This is the doctrine that a city is a town which is or has been a bishopric, and that, when a bishopric is placed in a town, that town, if it does not become a city without more ado, has at any rate a right to be formally created a city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ City and borough then are both rather formal words; town is the word which comes most naturally to the lips when there is no special reason for using one of the others. Of the two formal words, borough is English, city is Latin; it comes to us from Gaul and Italy by some road or other. It is in Domesday that we find, by no means its first use in England, but its first clearly formal use, its first use of it to distinguish a certain class of towns, to mark those towns which are civitates as well as burgi from those which are burgi only. ”

“ It does seem to have been very seriously thought at Dundee that the chief magistrate of the new city has acquired a right to be called Lord Provost.
It will be well to keep the English and the Scottish cases distinct, because it does not at all follow that arguments and precedents which may be good in England will therefore be good in Scotland. The law of the two kingdoms is so different that it is wise to keep on the safe side in every case: it is specially needful in this case, because of the supposed relation between city and bishopric. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Jew who describes the several English towns to the French boy — one of the cleverest bits of 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 bishops — flamines is the pagan word which is put into the Hebrew mouth. ”

“ There was no 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 ”