"Aldredus autem Eboracensis archiepiscopus et iidem Comites cum civibus Lundoniensibus et butsecarlis, clitonem Eadgarum, Eadmundi Ferrei Lateris nepotem, in regem levare volueren, et cum eo se pugnam inituros promisere; sed dum ad pugnam descendere multi se paravere, comites suum auxilium ab eis retraxere, et cum suo exercitu domum redierunt."—Flor. Wigorn., i, 228.
Such is the description of William's march, as given by Malmesbury (ii, 307). Another chronicler describes his march as one of slaughter and devastation.—Flor. Wigorn., i, 228.
The bishop was certainly Norman, and so probably was the port-reeve.
Anglo-Sax. Chron. ii, 168-169.
This charter is preserved in the Town Clerk's Office at the Guildhall. A fac-simile of it and of another charter of William, granting lands to Deorman, forms a frontispiece to this volume. The late Professor Freeman (Norman Conquest, second edition, revised 1876, iv, 29) wrote of this venerable parchment as bearing William's mark—"the cross traced by the Conqueror's own hand"—but this appears to be a mistake. The same authority, writing of the transcript of the charter made by the late Mr. Riley and printed by him in his edition of the Liber Custumarum (Rolls Series, pt. ii, p. 504), remarks that, "one or two words here look a little suspicious"; and justly so, for the transcript is far from being literally accurate.
-Cf. "Ego volo quod vos sitis omni lege illa digni qua fuistis Edwardi diebus Regis." These words appear in the xivth century Latin version of William's Charter, preserved at the Guildhall.
Liber Albus (Rolls Series i, 26).
Opinions differ as to the derivation of the term port. Some, like Kemble, refer it to the Lat. portus, in the sense of an enclosed place for sale or purchase, a market. ("Portus est conclusus locus, quo importantur merces et inde exportantur. Est et statio conclusa et munita."—Thorpe, i, 158). Others, like Dr. Stubbs (Const. Hist., i, 404 n.), connect it with Lat. porta, not in its restricted signification of a gate, but as implying a market place, markets being often held at a city's gates. The Latin terms porta and portus were in fact so closely allied, that they both alike signified a market place or a gate. Thus, in the will of Edmund Harengeye, enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, we find the following: "Ac eciam lego et volo quod illa tenementa cum magno portu vocato le Brodegate ... vendantur per executores meos."—Hust. Roll, 114 (76).
Norton, Commentaries on the City of London, 3rd ed., pp. 258-259.
"London and her election of Stephen," a paper read before the Archæol. Inst. in 1866, by the late Mr. Green (p. 267).