citizens of London shall adjudge in such cases shall be deemed
right." The judicial usages, the municipal rights of each city were
assimilated by Henry's charter. "Of whatsoever matter the men of Oxford
be put in plea, they shall deraign themselves according to the law and
custom of the city of London and not otherwise, because they and the
citizens of London are of one and the same custom, law, and liberty."

[Sidenote: Life of the Town]

A legal connexion such as this could hardly fail to bring with it an
identity of municipal rights. Oxford had already passed through the
earlier steps of her advance towards municipal freedom before the
conquest of the Norman. Her burghers assembled in their own
Portmannimote, and their dues to the crown were assessed at a fixed sum
of honey or coin. But the formal definition of their rights dates, as in
the case of London, from the time of Henry the First. The customs and
exemptions of its townsmen were confirmed by Henry the Second "as ever
they enjoyed them in the time of Henry my grandfather, and in like manner
as my citizens of London hold them." By this date the town had attained
entire judicial and commercial freedom, and liberty of external commerce
was secured by the exemption of its citizens from toll on the king's
lands. Complete independence was reached when a charter of John
substituted a mayor of the town's own choosing for the reeve or bailiff
of the crown. But dry details such as these tell little of the quick
pulse of popular life that beat in the thirteenth century through such a
community as that of Oxford. The church of St. Martin in the very heart
of it, at the "Quatrevoix" or Carfax where its four streets met, was the
centre of the city life. The town-mote was held in its churchyard.
Justice was administered ere yet a townhall housed the infant magistracy
by mayor or bailiff sitting beneath a low pent-house, the "penniless
bench" of later days, outside its eastern wall. Its bell summoned the
burghers to council or arms. Around the church the trade-gilds were
ranged as in some vast encampment. To the south of it lay Spicery and
Vintnery, the quarter of the richer burgesses. Fish-street fell noisily
down to the bridge and the ford. The Corn-market occupied then as now the
street which led to Northgate. The stalls of the butchers stretched along
the "Butcher-row," which formed the road to the bailey and the castle.
Close beneath the church lay a nest of huddled lan