I contend that these two passages ought to be read together. No one appears to have observed the fact that the sequel to the above Lincoln entry is to be found in the Pipe-Roll of 1157 (3 Hen. II.). We there find £140 deducted from the ferm of the shire in consideration of the severance of the city from the corpus comitatus ("Et in Civitate Lincol[nie] CXL libræ blancæ"). But we further find the citizens of Lincoln, in accounting for their firma to the Crown direct, accounting not for £140, but for £180. It must, consequently, have been worth their while to offer the Crown a sum equivalent to about a year's rental for the privilege of paying it £180 direct rather than £140 through the sheriff.[1047] Such figures are eloquent as to the extortions from which they had suffered. The citizens of London, as I have said, set to work a different way. They simply sought to lease the shrievalty of the shire themselves. I can, on careful consideration, offer no other suggestion than that the hundred marcs for which they account in the Roll of 1130, represent the payment by which they secured a lease of the shrievalty for the year 1129-1130, the shrievalty being held in that year by the "quatuor vicecomites" of the Roll. I gather from the Roll that Fulcred fitz Walter had been sheriff for 1128-29, and his payment "de gersoma" is, I take it, represented in the case of the following year (1129-30) by these hundred marks, the "quatuor vicecomites" themselves having paid nothing "de gersoma." On this view, the citizens must have leased the shrievalty themselves and then put in four of their fellows, as representing them, to hold it. But, obviously, such a post was not one to be coveted. To exact sufficient from their fellow-citizens wherewith to meet the claims of the Crown would be a task neither popular nor pleasant. Indeed, the fact of the citizens installing four "vicecomites" may imply that they could not find any one man who would consent to fill a post as thankless as that of the hapless decurio in the provinces of the Roman Empire, or of the chamberlain, in a later age, in the country towns of England. Hence it may be that we find it thus placed in commission. Hence, also, the eagerness of these vicecomites to be quit of office, as shown by their payment, for that privilege, of two marcs of gold apiece.[1048] It may, however, be frankly confessed that the nature of this payment is not so clear as could be wished. Judging from the very ancient practice with regard to municipal offices, one would have thought that such payments would probably have been made to their fellow-citizens who had thrust on them the office rather than to the Crown. Moreover, if their year of office was over, and the city's lease at an end, one would have thought they would be freed from office in the ordinary course of things. The only explanation, perhaps, that suggests itself is that they purchased from the Crown an exemption from serving again even though their fellow-citizens should again elect them to office.[1049] But I leave the point in doubt.
The hypothesis, it will be seen, that I have here advanced is that the citizens leased the shrievalty (so far as we know, for the first time) for the year 1129-30. We have the names of those who held the shrievalty at various periods in the course of the reign, before this year, but there is no evidence that, throughout this period, it was ever leased to the citizens. The important question which now arises is this: How does this view affect the charter granted to the citizens by Henry I.?
We have first to consider the date to which the charter should be assigned. Mr. Loftie characteristically observes that Rymer, "from the names appended to it or some other evidence, dates it in 1101."[1050] As a matter of fact, Rymer assigns no year to it; nor, indeed, did Rymer himself even include it in his work. In the modern enlarged edition of that work the charter is printed, but without a date, nor was it till 1885 that in the Record Office Syllabus, begun by Sir T. D. Hardy, the date 1101 was assigned to it.[1051] That date is possibly to be traced to Northouck's History of London (1773), in which the commencement of Henry's reign is suggested as a probable period (p. 27). This view is set forth also in a modern work upon the subject.[1052] It is not often that we meet with a charter so difficult to date. The formula of address, as it includes justices, points, according to my own theory, to a late period in the reign, as also does the differentiation between the justice and the sheriff. And the witnesses do the same. But there is, unfortunately, no witness of sufficient prominence to enable us to fix the date with precision. All that we can say is that such a name as that of Hugh Bigod points to the period 1123-1135, and that, of the nine witnesses named, seven or eight figure in the Pipe-Roll of 1130 (31 Hen. I.). This would suggest that these two documents must be of about the same date. Now, though we cannot trace the tenure of the shrievalty before Michaelmas, 1128, from the Roll, there is, as I have said, no sign that this charter had come into play. Nor is it easy to understand how or why it could be withdrawn within a very few years of its grant. In short, for this view there is not a scrap of evidence; against it, is all probability. If, on the contrary, we adopt the hypothesis which I am now going to advance, namely, that the charter was later than the Pipe-Roll, the difficulties all vanish. By this view, the lease for a year, to which the Pipe-Roll bears witness, would be succeeded by a permanent arrangement, that lease of the ferm in perpetuity, which we find recorded in the charter.
It is, indeed, evident that the contrary view rests solely on the guess at "1101," or on the assumption of Dr. Stubbs that the charter was earlier than the Pipe-Roll. Mr. Freeman and others have merely followed him. Dr. Stubbs writes thus:—
"Between the date of Henry's charter and that of the great Pipe-Roll, some changes in the organization of the City must have taken place. In 1130 there were four sheriffs or vicecomites, who jointly account for the ferm of London, instead of the one mentioned in the charter; and part of the account is rendered by a chamberlain of the City. The right to appoint the sheriffs has been somehow withdrawn, for the citizens pay a hundred marks of silver that they may have a sheriff of their own choice," etc., etc.[1053]
But our great historian nowhere tells us what he considers "the date of Henry's charter" to have been. If that date was subsequent to the Pipe-Roll, the whole of his argument falls to the ground.
The substitution of four sheriffs for one, to which Dr. Stubbs alludes, is a matter of slight consequence, for the number of the "vicecomites" varies throughout. As a matter of fact, the abbreviated forms leave us, as in the Pipe-Roll of 1130, doubtful whether we ought to read "vicecomitem" or "vicecomites," and even if the former is the one intended, we know, both in this and other cases, that there was nothing unusual in putting the office in commission between two or more. As to the chamberlain, he does not figure in connection with the firma, with which alone we are here concerned. But, oddly enough, Dr. Stubbs has overlooked the really important point, namely, that the firma is not £300, as fixed by the charter, but over £500.[1054] This increases the discrepancy on which Dr. Stubbs lays stress. The most natural inference from this fact is that, as on several later occasions, the Crown had greatly raised the firma (which had been under the Conqueror £300), and that the citizens now, by a heavy payment, secured its reduction to the original figure. Thus, on my hypothesis that the charter was granted between 1130 and 1135, the Crown must have been tempted, by the offer of an enormous sum down, to grant (1) a lease in perpetuity, (2) a reduction of the fee-farm rent ("firma") to £300 a year. As the sum to which the firma had been raised by the king, together with the annual gersoma, amounted to some £600 a year, such a reduction can only have been purchased by a large payment in ready money.
It was, of course, by such means as these that Henry accumulated the vast "hoard" that the treasury held at his death. He may not improbably in collecting this wealth have kept in view what appears to have been the supreme aim of his closing years, namely, the securing of the succession to his heirs. This was to prove the means by which their claims should be supported. It would, perhaps, be refining too much to suggest that he hoped by this charter to attach the citizens to the interests of his line, on whom alone it could be binding. In any case his efforts were notoriously vain, for London headed throughout the opposition to the claims of his heirs. I cannot but think that his financial system had much to do with this result, and that, as with the Hebrews at the death of Solomon, the citizens of London bethought them only of his "grievous service" and his "heavy yoke," as when they met the demand of his daughter for an enormous sum of money[1055] by bluntly requesting a return to the system of Edward the Confessor.[1056]
In any case the concessions in Henry's charter were wholly ignored both by Stephen and by the Empress, when they granted in turn to the Earl of Essex the shrievalty of London and Middlesex (1141-42).
A fresh and important point must, however, now be raised. What was the attitude of Henry II. towards his grandfather's charter? Of our two latest writers on the subject, Mr. Loftie tells us that