Note 198 — Chapter VIII · The Governors of the City

‘The acceptance of this view will at once dispose of the alleged disappearance of the portreeve, with the difficulties it has always presented, and the conjectures to which it has given rise. The style of the “portreeve” indeed disappears, but his office does not. In the person of the Norman vicecomes it preserves an unbroken existence. Geoffrey de Mandeville steps, as sheriff, into the shoes of Ansgar, the portreeve.’—Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 354.