isit of each newly-elected chief magistrate to his tomb in a
little chapel which he had founded in the churchyard of St. Paul's. Yet
Gilbert was one of the Norman strangers who followed in the wake of the
Conqueror; he was by birth a burgher of Rouen, as his wife was of a
burgher family from Caen.

[Sidenote: Freedom of London]

It was partly to this infusion of foreign blood, partly no doubt to the
long internal peace and order secured by the Norman rule, that London
owed the wealth and importance to which it attained during the reign of
Henry the First. The charter which Henry granted it became a model for
lesser boroughs. The king yielded its citizens the right of justice; each
townsman could claim to be tried by his fellow-townsmen in the town-court
or hustings whose sessions took place every week. They were subject only
to the old English trial by oath, and exempt from the trial by battle
which the Normans introduced. Their trade was protected from toll or
exaction over the length and breadth of the land. The king however still
nominated in London as elsewhere the portreeve, or magistrate of the
town, nor were the citizens as yet united together in a commune or
corporation. But an imperfect civic organization existed in the "wards"
or quarters of the town, each governed by its own alderman, and in the
"gilds" or voluntary associations of merchants or traders which ensured
order and mutual protection for their members. Loose too as these bonds
may seem, they were drawn firmly together by the older English traditions
of freedom which the towns preserved. The London burgesses gathered in
their town-mote when the bell swung out from the bell-tower of St. Paul's
to deliberate freely on their own affairs under the presidency of their
alderman. Here, too, they mustered in arms if danger threatened the city,
and delivered the town-banner to their captain, the Norman baron
Fitz-Walter, to lead them against the enemy.

[Sidenote: Early Oxford]

Few boroughs had as yet attained to such power as this, but the instance
of Oxford shows how the freedom of London told on the general advance of
English towns. In spite of antiquarian fancies it is certain that no town
had arisen on the site of Oxford for centuries after the withdrawal of
the Roman legions from the isle of Britain. Though the monastery of St.
Frideswide rose in the turmoil of the eighth century on the slope which
led down to a ford across the Thames, it is long be