[816]. Lands held immediately of the king, and administered by his own officers. People resident about the royal vills.
[817]. Leg. Hloð. § 16. Thorpe, i. 34.
[818]. Asser considers London to belong locally to Essex: he states that the Danes plundered it in 851. Vit. Ælfr. in anno. Berhtwulf of Mercia made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve it; so that it must be considered to have been a Mercian town at that period. Later it seems to have been left to itself, till Ælfred restored it in 886.
[819]. “Gesette Ælfred cyning Lundenburg ... and he ða befæste ða burg Æðerede aldormen tó healdanne.” Chron. Sax. an. 880. “Eodem anno Ælfred, Angulsaxonum rex, post incendia urbium, stragesque populorum, Londoniam civitatem honorifice restauravit, et habitabilem fecit: quam generi suo Æðeredo, Merciorum comiti, commendavit servandam.” Asser, Vit. Ælf. an. 886. In 880 the Danes wintered at Fulham, and may then have ruined London, if they had not done so before.
[820]. Chron. Sax. an. 912.
[821]. Swétman, portgeréfa. Cod. Dipl. No. 857. Ælfsige, ibid. Nos. 858, 861. Ulf. ibid. No. 872. The first mayor of London was elected probably in 1187. See Lib. de Ant. Legib. p. 1 seq.
[822]. “Cyninges geréfa binnan port,” the king’s reeve within the city. Leg. Æðelst. iii. § 7; iv. § 3. Canterbury appears to have had both a cyninges geréfa and a portgeréfa. The signatures of both these officers are appended to the same instrument. Cod. Dipl. No. 789.
[823]. The document De Institutis Londoniae, which is considered to date from the time of Æðelræd, that is the commencement of the eleventh century, gives the fine for burhbryce to the king; and inflicts a further bót of thirty shillings, for the benefit of the city, if the king will grant it, “si rex hoc concedat nobis.” Inst. Lond. § 4. Thorpe, i. 301.
[824]. Cod. Dipl. No. 293.
[825]. Leg. Æðelst. i. § 14. Thorpe, i. 206.