The names of those who owned the manors, together with the names found in contemporary documents, sufficiently prove how the Norman kings kept their promise and left the London merchants in possession of their property and their land. For with a few exceptions they are all Saxon names. The first, Mayor, Henry of London Stone, was FitzAylwin: Basing, Batt, Rokesby, Durman, Pountney, Bukerel, Billing, Faringdon, Thetmar, Orgar, Leofwin, Brechmar, Alwold, Algod, Esgar, Algar, Liured are all Saxon. Becket, it is true, is a name from Caen in Normandy. Blunt is Blond; Anketill de Auverne proclaims his origin.
We remark also that lads from the country had already begun to seek their fortune in London. We find Henry de Covyntre, Wolmar de Essex, John de Northampton, and many others.
We are considering in this place the City only. But we cannot avoid connecting the land all round the City, especially the land of Middlesex, held in farm by the citizens, with the City itself.
The City was surrounded by a broad belt of manors. These were very largely held by the Bishop, the cathedral, and certain abbeys and religious houses: in addition to these proprietors there were also a few nobles and private persons. The Abbey of Westminster owned a great estate, including the Strand and the lands between the river and Oxford Street: the De Veres held the manor of Kensington, but passed it over to the Abbey of Abingdon. The Chapter of St. Paul’s possessed manors at Willesden, Brondesbury, Brownswood, Chamberlain Wood, Mapesbury, Marden, Harlesden, Twyford, St. Pancras, Rugmere (St. Giles’s), Tottenhall, Kentish Town, Islington, Newington, Holborn, Portpool (Gray’s Inn), Finsbury, Hoxton, Wincock, Barn, Mora, and Fald Street; “covering a belt of land extending from St. Pancras on the west to the episcopal Manor of Stepney on the east.”
This being the case, the question arises as to the advantages accruing to the City in obtaining the Farm of Middlesex at £300 a year. It is certain that they would not have welcomed the privilege so eagerly but for the advantages it offered. These advantages may be summed up by the simple fact that the King’s rights over Middlesex were farmed out to the City. To begin with, the shire could no longer remain, as Southwark continued to be, a refuge or safe asylum for criminals whom it was difficult to catch, and still more difficult, in the conflict of royal and manorial rights, to bring to justice: next, it was a great step, though not at first understood, to creating the unity of the City. Other advantages in the grant are set forth by Archdeacon Hall:—
“The Sheriffs of Middlesex—every London burgher, that is—henceforth found themselves in possession, so to speak, when disputes arose between king and people; there was also a certain income from the courts which may eventually have been greater than the rent; the military protection of the City was rendered more easy when its civil jurisdiction extended so far beyond the walls, and the right conceded to the citizens to hunt in the surrounding forests formed the outward symbol of the completeness of their rule—a symbol which signified more under a Norman king than at any time since. To recognise the customs and laws of the City itself; to allow the ancient assemblies, the husting and the folkmote; to sanction the election of magistrates by the still unincorporated burghers; all these things were of importance, but the grant of Middlesex was more than any of them.”
It has been said that these manors made the growth of the suburbs impossible. But not in all directions. There was no obstacle to the growth of the riverside suburb called the Strand; here a long line of stately houses displaced the fishermen from Blackfriars to Westminster stairs: there was no obstacle to the extension of London along the river to the east, yet it did not extend in that direction. How the Church, which was the principal owner of the suburban manors, affected the successive settlements is described by Archdeacon Hall:—
“The suburbs, as I have said, owe their present condition not so much to the City as to the Church. By the time Henry I. made his grant of the county to the City, the broad lands of Middlesex had, almost wholly, passed into the possession of the great ecclesiastical foundations. What St. Paul had left, St. Peter acquired; and St. Martin, St. Bartholomew, and a little later, Holy Trinity at Aldgate, were watching to pick up fragments that the others had overlooked. Therefore, we must ascribe the modern suburbs, with their curious anomalies of local government, the so-called ‘metropolitan area’ with its imaginary boundaries, its districts and precincts, its boards and its vestries, answering to the sokes and liberties, the sanctuaries and wards within the walls, more to the clergy than to the municipality. The City supplied the population to colonise the wastes and woods; but the Church supplied the houses for them to dwell in, marked out their streets, and controlled the direction of each fresh stream of emigrants. When the first settlers along Holborn, or in Norton, or by the White Chapel, went forth from the City gates, it might have been expected that the rulers who had sway within the walls, and to whom Middlesex now belonged, as much as it had belonged to Earl Leofwine in the good days of King Edward, would have guided their steps and continued to govern their actions. But, where the citizens formed ‘wards without’ the walls, it was only by the leave, or in spite of the prohibition, of the Church. The King, when he gave to London the jurisdiction he had exercised in Middlesex, could give no land with it. At the time of the Survey, the royal estates had passed already to the Church, and William hardly owned an acre in the county. The estates of the Norman nobles had nearly all gone into the same hands by the time of Henry’s accession; and an enumeration of the Middlesex manors which never, at any time, were held ‘in mortmain’ would not comprise half-a-dozen names. The citizens could not protect their public meeting-place, their parade-ground, their markets within the walls, from the grasp of the ‘dead hand’; much less could they protect the new colonies of citizens in Kensington or Chelsea, in Hackney or Tyburn, far out in the open country.”