e great walled city and its busy and wealthy port under the Norman
kings. This was the grant of Middlesex to the citizens by Henry I. This
grant, which was only abrogated in 1888 by Act of Parliament, gave
London the same rights over the county that were held in those days by
the earls and reeves of shires. Dr. Reginald Sharpe seems to think that
this charter was granted for a heavy money payment. But there are other
ways of looking at the matter. It would appear probable that King Henry
recognised the help the city had given him; first, in obtaining the
crown, and afterwards in maintaining his position. The King, no doubt,
wanted money. The citizens did not expect favours without payment; it
would have been contrary to all previous experience. But the gift was a
very real boon, one which could not very well have been valued in gold.
That a Norman king should have been willing to grant away the deer which
his father was said to have loved like his children shows clearly that
there was a strong sense of obligation in the King's mind.

The constitution of the city during the reigns of the Norman kings, if
we may judge by what we find in twelfth-century documents at St. Paul's
and in thirteenth-century documents at the Guildhall, must have been, as
Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman have pointed out, that of a county.
The municipal unity was of the same kind as that of the shire and the
hundred. The Portreeve accounted to the King for his dues. He was the
justice, and owed his position to popular election as approved by the
King. Under him were the aldermen of wards, answering very nearly to
lords of manors. The people had their folkmote, answering to the
shiremote elsewhere. Their weekly husting eventually became a "county
court," and there was besides the wardmote, which still exists, and led
eventually to the abolition of proprietary aldermen in favour of
aldermen elected by the wards.

At this period the buildings of the city began to assume a certain
importance we do not hear of under the Saxons. St. Paul's became a
notable example of what we now call Norman architecture. The nave
survived until the fire in 1666. The church of St. Mary le Bow, in
Cheap, still retains its Norman crypt. The great white tower, with which
the Conqueror strengthened the eastern extremity of the Saxon and Roman
wall, contains still its remarkable vaulted chapel. A few other relics
of the style survive, but St. Bartholomew's is outside the