Here we have the explanation of an otherwise singular phenomenon. The Crown, which was receiving, as has been shown, £547 “numero” a year from the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, obtained less than half that amount when its own custodes were in charge! The proceeds for the first whole year were £238 5s. 7d. “numero,” and out of this, moreover, it had to pay Peter Fitz Walter £20 for his services, and the clerks and serjeants (servientes) employed under him £8 10s.; thus the net receipts were only some £200 “de exitu firme de Londonia et de Middilsexa.”[483] I infer from this that the ferm extorted for London and Middlesex had been shamefully high,[484] and that this was the cause of the sheriffs being often laden with debt when they went out of office,[485] as they had to make good, out of their own pockets, the difference between the proceeds of the dues and the ferm exacted by the Crown. It is possible that this was indeed the reason of four sheriffs, as in 1130, being so often appointed; the loss would thus be spread over a wider area, and the chance of recovering the debt greater. The system, on this hypothesis, was strangely analogous to that by which, at the present day, appointment as sheriff of a county is equivalent to exaction of a fine by the Crown. Combining, as I have elsewhere suggested, the fact that in 1130 each of the four sheriffs gave £12 to the Crown to be quit of his office with the clause in the earliest charter to Rouen that no citizen should be compelled to serve as sheriff against his will, we may certainly conclude that such sheriffs were the victims of Crown extortion. But obscurity must still surround the manner of their appointment.
There remains the salient fact that the Crown undoubtedly suffered a heavy annual loss by the substitution of custodes for sheriffs in 1174. As this is a fact new to historians, one is tempted to seek an explanation. The Crown’s loss being the city’s gain, it is at least worth consideration that the change virtually synchronized with the king’s arrival in London at the crisis of the feudal revolt. He was welcomed, Fantosme tells us, by the citizens, and reminded
Ke nul peiist le Lundreis traïtres apeler.
Ne fereient traïsun pur les membres colper.
In the previous year he had been assured that they were
La plus leale gent de tut vostre regné.
Ni ad nul en la vile ki seit de tel eë
Ki puisse porter armes, ne seit très bien armé.
This testimony is in harmony with the fact they gave the Crown that year (1173) a novum donum of 1,000 marcs, supplemented by 100 marcs apiece from three leading citizens. It is, therefore, perfectly possible that, as Rouen obtained from Henry II. a charter increasing its privileges, as a reward for its attitude in the rebellion, London may have been similarly rewarded by what was in practice financial relief.
But the change did not last. After two years of the custodes, they went out of office at Midsummer, 1176, their returns, “de exitu ejusdem civitatis,” even lower than before.[486] Their place was taken by William Fitz Isabel, whose account for the three months’ firma at Michaelmas shows that it, at once, leapt up to the huge sum formerly exacted.[487]