In large towns there was a tendency among such trade guilds
to combine in a "united brotherhood," or "town guild," and this
organization at length acquired full control of the city government.
In London this process was completed in the course of the thirteenth
century. To obtain the full privileges of citizenship one had to
be enrolled in a guild. The guild hall became the city hall. The
_aldermen_, or head men of sundry guilds, became the head men
of the several wards. There was a representative board, or _common
council_, elected by the citizens. The aldermen and common council
held their meetings in the Guildhall, and over these meetings presided
the chief magistrate, or port-reeve, who by this time, in accordance
with the fashion then prevailing, had assumed the French title of
_mayor_. As London had come to be a little world in itself,
so this city government reproduced on a small scale the national
government; the mayor answering to the king, the aristocratic board of
aldermen to the House of Lords, and the democratic common council to
the House of Commons. A still more suggestive comparison, perhaps,
would be between the aldermen and our federal Senate, since the
aldermen represented wards, while the common council represented the
citizens.
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