Note m — Chapter VIII

Londinenses, qui sunt quasi optimates pro magnitudine civitatis in Angliâ. Malmsb. p. 189. Thus too Matthew Paris: cives Londinenses, quos propter civitatis dignitatem et civium antiquam libertatem Barones consuevimus appellare. p. 744. And in another place: totius civitatis cives, quos barones vocant. p. 835. Spelman says that the magistrates of several other towns were called barons. Glossary, Barones de London.

A singular proof of the estimation in which the citizens of London held themselves in the reign of Richard I. occurs in the Chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelonde (p. 56—Camden Society, 1840). They claimed to be free from toll in every part of England, and in every jurisdiction, resting their immunity on the antiquity of London (which was coeval, they said, with Rome), and on its rank as metropolis of the kingdom. Et dicebant cives Lundonienses fuisse quietos de theloneo in omni foro, et semper et ubique, per totam Angliam, à tempore quo Roma primo fundata fuit, et civitatem Lundoniæ, eodem tempore fundatam, talem debere habere libertatem per totam Angliam, et ratione civitatis privilegiatæ quæ olim metropolis fuit et caput regni, et ratione antiquitatis. Palgrave inclines to think that London never formed part of any kingdom of the Heptarchy. Introduction to Rot. Cur. Regis. p. 95. But this seems to imply a republican city in the midst of so many royal states, which seems hardly probable. Certainly it seems strange, though I cannot explain it away, that the capital of England should have fallen, as we generally suppose, to the small and obscure kingdom of Essex. Winchester, indeed, may be considered as having become afterwards the capital during the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, so far as that it was for the most part the residence of our kings. But London was always more populous.