Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy

by John Horace Round

Now, it is absolutely certain that the shrievalty (vicecomitatus) and the ferm (firma) mentioned in this passage are the shrievalty and the ferm not of Middlesex apart from London, nor of London apart from Middlesex, but of "London and Middlesex." For there is never, from the first, but one ferm. It is here called the ferm of "Middlesex;" in the almost contemporary Pipe-Roll (31 Hen. I.) it is called the ferm of "London" (there being no ferm of Middlesex mentioned); and Geoffrey's charters clinch the matter. For while Stephen grants him "the shrievalties of London and Middlesex,"[1010] the Empress, in her turn, grants him "the shrievalty of London and Middlesex."[1011] Further, the Pipe-Rolls of Henry II. describe this same firma both as the ferm of "London," and as that of "London and Middlesex;" while in the Roll of 8 Ric. I. we find the phrase, "de veteri firma Comitat' Lond' et Middelsexa." Lastly, the charter of Henry III. grants to the citizens of London—

"Vicecomitatum Londoniæ et de Middelsexia, cum omnibus rebus et consuetudinibus quæ pertinent ad predictum Vicecomitatum, infra civitatem et extra per terras et aquas; ... Reddendo inde annuatim ... trescentas libras sterlingorum blancorum.[1012]

And so, to this day, the shrievalty is that of "London and Middlesex."[1013]

The royal writs and charters hear the same witness. When they are directed to the local authorities, it is to those of "London and Middlesex," or of "London," or of "Middlesex." The three are, for all purposes, used as equivalent terms. There was never, as I have said, but one ferm, and never but one shrievalty.[1014]

Now, this completely disposes of the view that the "Middlesex" of Henry I.'s charter was Middlesex apart from London. This prevalent but erroneous assumption has proved the cause of much confusion and misunderstanding of the facts of the case. It has nowhere, perhaps, been assigned such prominence as in that account of London by Mr. Loftie which may derive authority in the eyes of some from the editorial imprimatur of Mr. Freeman.[1015] We there read as follows:—

"It may be as well, before we proceed, to remember one thing. That London is not in Middlesex, that it never was in Middlesex, ... is a fact of which we have to be constantly reminded" (p. 125).

From this interpretation of the "Middlesex" of the charter, it, of course, followed that the writer took the firma of £300 to be paid in respect of Middlesex exclusive of London.[1016] We need not wonder, therefore, that to him the grant is difficult to understand. Here are his comments on its terms:—

"If we could estimate the reasons which led to this grant with any degree of certainty, we should understand better what the citizens expected to gain by it besides rights of jurisdiction.... The meaning and nature of the grant are subjects of which we should like to know more. But here we can obtain little help from books ... and we may inquire in vain for a definition of the position and duties of the sheriff who acts for the citizens in their subject county.... There must have been advantages to accrue from the payment by London of £300 a year, a sum which, small as it seems to us, was a heavy tax in those days. We may be sure the willing citizens expected to obtain correspondingly valuable liberties" (pp. 121-123).

Then follow various conjectures, all of them necessarily wide of the mark. And as with the ferm, so with the sheriff. Mr. Loftie, taking the sheriff (vicecomes) in question to be a sheriff of Middlesex exclusive of London (which he hence terms a "subject county"), is of necessity baffled by the charter. For by it the citizens are empowered to appoint (a) a "vicecomes," (b) a "justitiarius." As the "vicecomes," according to his view, had nothing to do with the City itself, Mr. Loftie has to account for "the omission of any reference to the portreeve in the charter," his assumption being that the City itself was at this time governed by a portreeve. Though his views are obscurely expressed, his solutions of the problem are as follows. In his larger work he dismisses the supposition that the "justitiarius" of the charter was the "chief magistrate" of the City, i.e. the portreeve, because the citizens must have been "already" entitled to elect that officer. Yet in his later work, with equal confidence, he tells us that by "justitiarius" the portreeve is "evidently intended." The fact is that he is really opposing two different suppositions; the one that Henry granted by his charter the right to elect a portreeve, the other that he did not grant it, but retained the appointment in his hands. Mr. Loftie first denies the former, and then, in his later work, asserts the former to deny the latter. But really his language is so confused that it is doubtful whether he realized himself the contradictory drift of his two arguments, both based on the same assumption, which "it is manifestly absurd," we learn, to dispute.[1017] And the strange part of the business is this, What is the "proof" that Mr. Loftie offers for the later of his two hypotheses? If the "trial" to which he refers had ever taken place at all, and, still more, if it had taken place before 1115, the fact would have an important bearing. But, in the first place, he has wrongly assigned to the record too early a date, and, in the second, it represents Gilbert Prutfot, not as a judge, but as a culprit. The expression used is, "Terra quam Gillebertus Prutfot nobis disfortiat."[1018] Now "defortiare" (or "disfortiare") is rendered by Dr. Stubbs, in his Select Charters (p. 518), "to deforce, to dispossess by violence." We have here, therefore, an interesting, because early, example of the legal offence of "deforcement," defined by Johnson as "a withholding of lands and tenements by force from the right owner." But the point to which I would call attention is that, even if this writer were correct in his facts (which he is not), his "proof" that (a vicecomes and a justitiarius being mentioned in the charter) the justitiarius was "evidently" the portreeve consists in the fact that a vicecomes had "given judgment" in a trial, and being styled vicecomes, was the portreeve! That is to say, the justitiarius must have been the portreeve because the portreeve was styled (not "justitiarius," but, on the contrary,) vicecomes. Such is actually his argument.[1019]

I have dwelt thus fully on these observations, because they illustrate the hopeless wandering which is the inevitable result of the adoption of the above fundamental error.