THE FIGURE IN PANIER ALLEY
Fitz-Walter dying, and being buried at Dunmow, the scene of his joys and sorrows, was succeeded by his son Walter, who was summoned to Chester in the forty-third year of Henry III., to repel the fierce and half-savage Welsh from the English frontier. After Walter's death the barony of Baynard was in the wardship of Henry III. during the minority of Robert Fitz-Walter, who in 1303 claimed his right as castellan and banner-bearer of the City of London before John Blandon, or Blount, Mayor of London. The old formularies on which Fitz-Walter founded his claims are quoted by Stow from an old record which is singularly quaint and picturesque. The chief clauses run thus:—
"The said Robert and his heirs are and ought to be chief bannerets of London in fee, for the chastiliary which he and his ancestors had by Castle Baynard in the said city. In time of war the said Robert and his heirs ought to serve the city in manner as followeth—that is, the said Robert ought to come, he being the twentieth man of arms, on horseback, covered with cloth or armour, unto the great west door of St. Paul's, with his banner displayed before him, and when he is so come, mounted and apparelled, the mayor, with his aldermen and sheriffs armed with their arms, shall come out of the said church with a banner in his hand, all on foot, which banner shall be gules, the image of St. Paul gold, the face, hands, feet, and sword of silver; and as soon as the earl seeth the mayor come on foot out of the church, bearing such a banner, he shall alight from his horse and salute the mayor, saying unto him, 'Sir mayor, I am come to do my service which I owe to the city.' And the mayor and aldermen shall reply, 'We give to you as our banneret of fee in this city the banner of this city, to bear and govern, to the honour of this city to your power;' and the earl, taking the banner in his hands, shall go on foot out of the gate; and the mayor and his company following to the door, shall bring a horse to the said Robert, value twenty pounds, which horse shall be saddled with a saddle of the arms of the said earl, and shall be covered with sindals of the said arms. Also, they shall present him a purse of twenty pounds, delivering it to his chamberlain, for his charges that day."
THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL AD BLADUM
The record goes on to say that when Robert is mounted on his £20 horse, banner in hand, he shall require the mayor to appoint a City Marshal (we have all seen him with his cocked hat and subdued commander-in-chief manner), "and the commons shall then assemble under the banner of St. Paul, Robert bearing the banner to Aldgate, and then delivering it up to some fit person. And if the army have to go out of the city, Robert shall choose two sage persons out of every ward to keep the city in the absence of the army." And these guardians were to be chosen in the priory of the Trinity, near Aldgate. And for every town or castle which the Lord of London besieged, if the siege continued a whole year, the said Robert was to receive for every siege, of the commonalty, one hundred shillings and no more. These were Robert Fitz-Walter's rights in times of war; in times of peace his rights were also clearly defined. His soke or ward in the City began at a wall of St. Paul's canonry, which led down by the brewhouse of St. Paul's to the river Thames, and so to the side of a wall, which was in the water coming down from Fleet Bridge. The ward went on by London Wall, behind the house of the Black Friars, to Ludgate, and it included all the parish of St. Andrew. Any of his sokemen indicted at the Guildhall of any offence not touching the body of the mayor or sheriff, was to be tried in the court of the said Robert.
"If any, therefore, be taken in his sokemanry, he must have his stocks and imprisonment in his soken, and he shall be brought before the mayor and judgment given him, but it must not be published till he come into the court of the said earl, and in his liberty; and if he have deserved death by treason, he is to be tied to a post in the Thames, at a good wharf, where boats are fastened, two ebbings and two flowings of the water(!) And if he be condemned for a common theft, he ought to be led to the elms, and there suffer his judgment as other thieves. And so the said earl hath honour, that he holdeth a great franchise within the city, that the mayor must do him right; and when he holdeth a great council, he ought to call the said Robert, who should be sworn thereof, against all people, saving the king and his heirs. And when he cometh to the hustings at Guildhall, the mayor ought to rise against him, and sit down near him, so long as he remaineth, all judgments being given by his mouth, according to the records of the said Guildhall; and the waifes that come while he stayeth, he ought to give them to the town bailiff, or to whom he will, by the counsel of the mayor."
This old record seems to us especially quaint and picturesque. The right of banner-bearer to the City of London was evidently a privilege not to be despised by even the proudest Norman baron, however numerous were his men-at-arms, however thick the forest of lances that followed at his back. At the gates of many a refractory Essex or Hertfordshire castle, no doubt, the Fitz-Walters flaunted that great banner, that was emblazoned with the image of St. Paul, with golden face and silver feet; and the horse valued at £20, and the pouch with twenty golden pieces, must by no means have lessened the zeal and pride of the City castellan as he led on his trusty archers, or urged forward the half-stripped, sinewy men, who toiled at the catapult, or bent down the mighty springs of the terrible mangonel. Many a time through Aldgate must the castellan have passed with glittering armour and flaunting plume, eager to earn his hundred shillings by the siege of a rebellious town.
Then Robert was knighted by Edward I., and the family continued in high honour and reputation through many troubles and public calamities. In the reign of Henry VI., when the male branch died out, Anne, the heiress, married into the Ratcliffe family, who revived the title of Fitz-Walter.