, and sold his prisoners as
slaves to Ireland. A contemporary chronicler describes Bristol castle as
"seated on a mighty mound, and garrisoned with knights and foot soldiers or
rather robbers and raiders," and he calls Bristol the stepmother of
England.

The history of the charters granted to Bristol begins about this time. A
charter granted by Henry II. in 1172 exempted the burgesses of Bristol from
certain tolls throughout the kingdom, and confirmed existing liberties.
Another charter of the same year granted the city of Dublin to the men of
Bristol as a colony with the same liberties as their own town.

As a result probably of the close connexion between Bristol and Ireland the
growth of the wool trade was maintained. Many Bristol men settled in
Dublin, which for a long time was a Bristol beyond the seas, its charters
being almost duplicates of those granted to Bristol. About this time
Bristol began to export wool to the Baltic, and had developed a wine trade
with the south of France, while soap-making and tanning were flourishing
industries. Bristol was still organized manorially rather than municipally.
Its chief courts were the weekly hundred court and the court leet held
three times a year, and presided over by the reeve appointed by the earl of
Gloucester. By the marriage of Earl John with the heiress of Earl William
of Gloucester, Bristol became part of the royal demesne, the rent payable
to the king being fixed, and the town shook off the feudal yoke. The
charter granted by John in 1190 was an epoch in the history of the borough.
It provided that no burgess should be impleaded without the walls, that no
non-burgess should sell wine, cloth, wool, leather or corn in Bristol, that
all should hold by burgage tenure, that corn need not be ground at the
lord's mill, and that the burgesses should have all their reasonable gilds.
At some uncertain date soon after this a commune was established in Bristol
on the French model, Robert FitzNichol, the first mayor of Bristol, taking
the oath in 1200. The mayor was chosen, not, like the reeve whom he had
displaced, by the overlord, but by the merchants of Bristol who were
members of the merchant gild. The first documentary evidence of the
existence of the merchant gild appears in 1242. In addition, there were
many craft gilds (later at least twenty-six were known to exist), the most
important being the gilds of the weavers, tuckers and fullers, and the Gild
of the Kalendars