es; propter frequentem convictum.

[55] Londinenses, qui sunt quasi optimates pro magnitudine civitatis in
Anglia. 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, a tempore quo Roma primo fundata fuit, et
civitatem Lundoniae, eodem tempore fundatam, talem debere habere
libertatem per totam Angliam, et ratione civitatis privilegiatae quae 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.

[56] Drake, the historian of York, maintains that London was less
populous, about the time of the Conquest, than that city; and quotes
Hardynge, a writer of Henry V.'s age, to prove that the interior part of
the former was not closely built. Eboracum, p. 91. York however does not
appear to have contained more than 10,000 inhabitants at the accession
of the Conqueror; and the very exaggerations as to the populousness of
London prove that it must have far exceeded that number. Fitz-Stephen,
the contemporary biographer of Thomas a Becket, tells us of 80,000 men
capable of bearing arms within its pre