The Story of London

by Henry B. Wheatley

It has been a generally received opinion that there was a succession of portreeves until the first appointment of a Mayor, but Mr. Round believes that the title of portreeve disappears after the Conqueror’s charter.[198] In this opinion he is opposed to the view of both Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Loftie. It is necessary to bear in mind that a reeve was an officer appointed by the King, just as the sheriffs (or shire reeves) of the various counties are still so appointed. There has been some difference of opinion as to the meaning of the title Port-reeve. It might at first sight be supposed to refer to the Port of London, but this is not the received opinion. Bishop Stubbs writes: ‘The word port in port-reeve is the Latin porta (not portus), where the markets were held, and although used for the city generally, seems to refer to it specially in its character of a mart or city of merchants.’[199]

The City of London obtained from Henry I. the right of appointing their own sheriffs, which was a very great privilege, and there must have been some very strong reason to induce the King to grant this great favour. Bishop Stubbs writes of this charter of Henry I. to the citizens of London: ‘The privileges of the citizens of London are not to be regarded as a fair specimen of the liberties of ordinary towns, but as a sort of type and standard of the amount of municipal independence and self-government at which the other towns of the country might be expected to aim. At a period at which the other towns were just struggling out of the condition of demesne, the Londoners were put in possession of the ferm or farm of Middlesex, with the right of appointing the sheriff; they were freed from the immediate jurisdiction of any tribunal except of their own appointment, from several universal imposts, from the obligation to accept trial by battle, from liability to misericordia or entire forfeiture, as well as from tolls and local exactions such as ordinary charters specify. They have also their separate franchises secured and their weekly courts, but they have not yet the character of a perpetual corporation or Communa, and thus although possessing, by virtue of their associations in guilds, of their several franchises, of their feudal courts, and of their shire organisation under the sheriff, many elements of strength, consolidation and independence, they have not a compact organisation as a municipal body. The city is an accumulation of distinct and different corporate bodies, but not yet a perfect municipality, nor although it was recognised in the reign of Stephen as a Communio, did it gain the legal status before the reign of Richard I.’[200] Mr. Round shows, however, that the city possessed the privilege only for a short time: ‘We see then that in absolute contradiction of the received belief on the subject, the shrievalty was not in the hands of the citizens during the twelfth century (i.e., from ‘1101’), but was held by them for a few years only, about the close of the reign of Henry I. The fact that the sheriffs of London and Middlesex were, under Henry II. and Richard I. appointed throughout by the Crown, must compel our historians to reconsider the independent position they have assigned to the city at that early period. The Crown, moreover, must have had an object in retaining this appointment in its hands. We may find it, I think, in that jealousy of exceptional privilege or exemption which characterised the régime of Henry II. For, as I have shown, the charters to Geoffrey remind us that the ambition of the urban communities was analogous to that of the great feudatories, in so far as they both strove for exemption from official rule. It was precisely to this ambition that Henry II. was opposed; and thus, when he granted his charter to London, he wholly omitted, as we have seen, two of his grandfather’s concessions, and narrowed down those that remained, that they might not be operative outside the actual walls of the city. When the shrievalty was restored by John to the citizens (1199) the concession had lost its chief importance through the triumph of the communal principle.’[201]

Mr. Round holds that the office of Justiciar of London was created by Henry I.’s charter, and as that officer took precedence of the sheriff he must have been for a time the chief authority of the city. Mr. Round’s explanation of this position is of so much importance that it is necessary to quote it here in his own words: ‘The transient existence of the local justitiarius is a phenomenon of great importance, which has been wholly misunderstood. The Mandeville charters afford the clue to the nature of this office. It represents a middle term, a transitional stage between the essentially local shire-reeve and the central justice of the King’s court.... The justitiarius for Essex or Herts, or London or Middlesex, was a purely local officer, and yet exercised within the limits of his bailiwick all the authority of the King’s justice. So transient was this state of things that scarcely a trace of it remains.... Now, in the case of London, the office was created by the charter of Henry I. (as I contend) towards the end of his reign, and it expired with the accession of Henry II. It is, therefore, in Stephen’s reign that we should expect to find it in existence, and it is precisely in that reign that we find the office eo nomine twice granted to the Earl of Essex and twice mentioned as held by Gervase, otherwise Gervase of Cornhill.’[202]

The question of the date of the charter of Henry I. is discussed in Geoffrey de Mandeville (p. 364), and reasons are given for dating it after 1130 instead of 1100 or 1101.

Bishop Stubbs specially refers to the foreign element in London at this time thus: ‘Richard the son of Reiner, the son of Berengar, was very probably a Lombard by descent; the influential family of Bucquinte, Bucca-uncta, which took the lead on many occasions, can hardly have been other than Italian; Gilbert Becket was a Norman.’ And further, in a note, he adds: ‘Andrew of London, the leader of the Londoners at Lisbon in 1147, is not improbably the Andrew Bucquinte whose son Richard was the leader of the riotous young nobles of the city who in 1177 furnished a precedent for the Mohawks of the eighteenth century.’[203] Andrew, who was present at the transference of the Cnihtengild’s land to the Priory of Holy Trinity (1125 or 1126), was one of the witnesses of the agreement between Ramsay Abbey and Holy Trinity after that date, where his name is written ‘Bocunte.’[204] He was Justiciar of London in Stephen’s reign.[205] The Buccarelli were another Italian family whose name is said to be preserved in Bucklersbury, and Round also mentions Osbert Octodenarii (otherwise Huitdeniers), a kinsman and employer of Becket.

The origin of the Commune of London has always been an exceedingly obscure problem, but Mr. Round has succeeded in throwing a flood of light upon the subject.

In the twelfth century there was a great municipal movement over Europe. Londoners were well informed as to what was going on abroad, and thoroughly dissatisfied with the existing organisation they waited and were constantly looking for an opportunity of obtaining the privileges of the Commune. Mr. Round points out that ‘even so early as 1141, when the fortunes of the Crown hung in the balance between rival claimants, we find the citizens forming an effective Conjuratio, the very term applied to their “Commune” half a century later by Richard of Devizes. Moreover, earlier in the same year (April), William of Malmesbury applies to their government the term Communio.[206] Miss Mary Bateson has gone to the manuscript from which Mr. Round obtained the Oath of Commune (B.M. Add. MS., 14,252), and her conclusion after consideration is that ‘the collection as a whole leaves the impression that “Communio quam vocant Londoniarum” (1141), as it is styled by William of Malmesbury, was not merely a unit in the eyes of the Exchequer, that the jurisdictional unity of the city organised in folkmoot and husting gave something substantial whereon the foundations of mayoralty and Commune could be laid.’[207]

Mr. Round writes: ‘The assumption that the mayoralty of London dates from the accession of Richard I. (1189) is an absolute perversion of history,’ and he adds that ‘there is record evidence which completely confirms the remarkable words of Richard of Devizes, who declares that on no terms whatever would King Richard or his father have ever assented to the establishment of the Communa in London.’[208]

In October 1191 the conflict between John, the King’s brother, and Longchamp, the King’s representative, became acute. William of Longchamp, Bishop of Ely (1189) and Chancellor to Richard I., was once described by Henry II. as the ‘son of two traitors.’ When Richard called a Council in Normandy in February 1190 Longchamp hurried over to the King in advance of his enemies and returned to England as sole justiciar. The Pope also made him Legate.

Longchamp bitterly offended the Londoners who, finding that they could turn the scales to either side, named the Commune as the price of their support of John.