But as early as the days of Cnut, London was beginning to be felt as the real centre of national life: and Eadward the Confessor, by founding Westminster Abbey, made it practically the home of the kings.

The Conqueror "wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester; on Pentecost at Westminster; and on Midwinter at Gloucester:" which probably marks the relative position of the three towns as the chief places in the old West Saxon realm at least.

Under AEthelstan, London had eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had only six, and Canterbury seven.
As regards the arts and traffic in the towns, they were chiefly carried on by guilds, which had their origin, as Dr.Brentano has shown with great probability, in separate families, who combined to keep up their own trade secrets as a family affair.

In time, however, the guilds grew into regular organisations, having their own code of rules and laws, many of which (as at Cambridge, Exeter, and Abbotsbury) we still possess.

It is possible that the families of craftsmen may at first have been Romanised Welsh inhabitants of the cities; for all the older towns--London, Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Rochester--were almost certainly inhabited without interruption from the Roman period onward.
But in any case the guilds seem to have grown out of family compacts, and to have retained always the character of close corporations.