"Mellitum vero Lundonienses episcopum recipere noluerunt, idolatris magis pontificibus servire gaudentes. Bede, Lib. ii, cap. vi.—Cf. Flor. Wigorn., i, 13.
"Ecclesiam ... beati Petri quæ sita est in loco terribili qui ab incolis Thorneye nunenpatur ... quæ olim ... beati Æthelberti hortatu ... a Sabertho prædivite quodam sub-regulo Lundoniæ, nepote videlicet ipsius regis, constructa est."—Kemble, Cod. Dipl., 555.
Roger de Hoveden (Rolls Series No. 51), i, 8, 16, 18.
Norton, Commentaries on the City of London, 3rd ed., p. 53, &c.
Thorpe, 114. The Troy weight was kept in the Husting of London and known as the Husting-weight.—Strype, Stow's Survey (1720), Bk. v., 369.
Anglo-Sax. Chron., ii, 55.
"And in the same year [i.e. 851] came three hundred and fifty ships to the mouth of the Thames, and landed, and took Canterbury and London by storm."—Id. ii, 56.
Anglo-Sax. Chron., ii, 64, 65.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—the existence of which in its present form has been attributed to Alfred's encouragement of literature—seems to convey this meaning, although it is not quite clear on the point. Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls Series No. 44, pp. 148-149) ascribes the recovery of London by Alfred to the year 886. The late Professor Freeman (Norman Conquest, i., 56) does the same, and compares the status of London at the time with that of a German free city, which it more nearly resembled, than an integral portion of a kingdom.
Freeman, Norman Conquest, i, 279.