“We see then that, in absolute contradiction of the received belief on the subject, the shrievalty was not in the hands of the citizens during the twelfth century (i.e. from ‘1101’), but was held by them for a few years only, about the close of the reign of Henry I. The fact that the sheriffs of London and Middlesex were, under Henry II. and Richard I., appointed throughout by the Crown, must compel our historians to reconsider the independent position they have assigned to the City at that period. The Crown, moreover, must have had an object in retaining this appointment in its own hands. We may find it, I think, in that jealousy of exceptional privilege or exemption which characterised the régime of Henry II. For, as I have shown, the charters to Geoffrey remind us that the ambition of the urban communities was analogous to that of the great feudatories, in so far as they both strove for exemption from official rule. It was precisely to this ambition that Henry II. was opposed; and thus, when he granted his charter to London, he wholly omitted two of his grandfather’s concessions, and narrowed down those that remained, that they might not be operative outside the actual walls of the City. When the shrievalty was restored by John to the citizens (1199), the concession had lost its chief importance through the triumph of the ‘communal’ principle. When that civic revolution had taken place which introduced the ‘communa’ with its mayor—a revolution to which Henry II. would never, writes the Chronicler, have submitted—when a Londoner was able to boast that he would have no king but his mayor, then had the sheriff’s position become but of secondary importance, subordinate, as it has remained ever since, to that of the mayor himself.”
As to the “independent position” of the City spoken of in this passage, perhaps that has been partly exaggerated. At the same time, when we consider (1) that London, as Stubbs states and Round agrees, was a bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which each had its own constitution; that (2) as Stubbs states and Round agrees, by Henry’s Charter, “no new incorporation is bestowed; the churches, the barons, the citizens retain their ancient customs”; (3) the really great concession made by Henry; and (4) the continuance of the form, if not the reality, of the Folkmote, we must acknowledge that the independence of the City was relatively great. And we must remember, further, that the Sheriff, or the Portreeve, was not the Mayor, nor was he the Justiciar; he was the financial officer of the King to look after the firma, and the taxes, fines, etc. The various jurisdictions and lordships had their own Courts; the City was not a corporate body; it had no head, unless it was the chief of that shadowy association, the Guild Merchant; it had no commune, and it had no Mayor.
(2) Henry gave them the right to appoint their own Justiciar.
Under the Saxon kings, criminal cases were tried in the Courts held by the Sheriff in his hundred, or the lord over his demesne. There were thus a very great number of Courts, the fines and forfeitures of which went to the owner of the soc or estate. William the Conqueror secured to himself the proceeds of these trials, together with the revenues arising from the new feudal tenures, by establishing the aula regis, the King’s Court, with the Chief Justiciar who sat in it. The aula regis went with the King wherever he went. Before long, persons were appointed to be itinerant justices, so that the aula regis included and suspended all older Courts. These new and uncertain jurisdictions were extremely unpopular. If, however, a city could obtain the privilege of electing its own Justiciar for its own cases, there would be some security of obtaining justice without delays—the Justiciar holding his office on good behaviour only; also that the ancient laws and customs would be observed; that there would be no temptation to impose arbitrary and grievous fines; that the numerous extortions connected with the new feudal tenure, possible where the royal revenues largely depended upon the amounts so raised, might in some measure be checked.
The office of Justiciar of London presents many difficulties, partly because there is no evidence, with a few exceptions, of the existence of such an officer. The office, Round contends (Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 373), “represents a middle term, a transitional stage, between the essentially local shirereeve and the central ‘justice’ of the King’s Court.” He shows that—
“The office sprang from ‘the differentiation of the sheriff and the justice,’ and represented, as it were, the localisation of the central judicial element. That is to say, the justitiarius for Essex, or Herts, or London and Middlesex, was a purely local officer, and yet exercised, within the limits of his bailiwick, all the authority of the king’s justice. So transient was this state of things that scarcely a trace of it remains. Yet Richard de Luci may have held the post, as we saw, for the county of Essex, and there is evidence that Norfolk had a justice of its own in the person of Ralf Passelewe. Now, in the case of London, the office was created by the Charter of Henry I., a charter which was granted (as I contend) towards the end of his reign, and which expired with the accession of Henry II. It is, therefore, in Stephen’s reign that we should expect to find it [the office of justiciar] still in existence; and it is precisely in that reign that we find the office eo nomine twice granted to the Earl of Essex, and twice mentioned as held by Gervase, otherwise Gervase of Cornhill.”
We find a good deal more.
In the second year of Stephen, the King was called upon to decide between the Priory of the Holy Trinity and the Constable of the Tower concerning certain lands on East Smithfield. Among those present in Court was one Andrew Buchuinte—“Bucca uncta”—an Italian by origin, with many other burgesses of London. The King called upon Andrew to speak in the name of the citizens as their Justiciar. This same Andrew is found as a witness at the investiture of the Priory with the Cnihten gild’s soke in 1125, and again as a witness in the agreement between Ramsey Abbey and Holy Trinity, between 1125 and 1130. During the existence of the office of Justiciar, the King addressed him by name, followed by the Sheriff and the citizens.
In 1339, Andrew had ceased to be Justiciar. He was succeeded by Osbert Octodenarius—“Huit deniers”—whom Garnier calls
Une riche hume Lundreis