THE BANNER OF ST. PAUL
Blount's "Ancient Tenures," a meritorious seventeenth-century work which
has been edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, contains a description of the
military and civil functions performed, and the privileges enjoyed, by
the house of Fitzwalter, in connexion with the City of London. The
latter stand in close relation to the subject with which we have just
dealt, but it will be convenient to discuss first the obligations and
then the "liberties" annexed to their observance. By way of preface we
may recapitulate what Blount, who obtained his account from Dugdale, has
recorded, and, having done so, we will proceed to investigate and
amplify his version of what is beyond question an important chapter in
the early administration of the city.
Confining ourselves to the facts as there stated, we find that the duty
of providing for the safety of London devolved on the hereditary
castellans, the Fitzwalters, Lords of Wodeham, who discharged the office
of Chief Standard-bearer in fee for the castlery of Castle Baynard
within the City. When war loomed on the horizon Fitzwalter, armed and
astride his horse of service, and attended by twenty men-at-arms, who
were mounted on horses harnessed with mail or iron, proceeded to the
great door of the Minster of St. Paul with a banner of his arms
displayed before him. There he was met by the Mayor, Sheriffs, and
Aldermen, who came armed and afoot out of the Minster, the Mayor
bearing his banner which was _gules_ and charged with the image of St.
Paul, _or_, the head, hands, and feet _argent_, and in the hands a sword
also _argent_.
On perceiving their approach, Fitzwalter dismounted, saluted the Mayor
as his comrade, and, addressing him, said: "Sir Mayor, I am come to do
my service, which I owe to the City." The Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen
replied thereupon: "We allow you here, as our Standard-bearer of this
City in fee, this banner of the City to carry and govern to your power,
to the honour and profit of the City."
Fitzwalter then took the banner in his hand, and the Mayor and the
Sheriffs, following him to the door, presented him with a horse of the
value of £20, garnished with a saddle of his arms and covered with a
sendal of the same. They also delivered to his chamberlain £20 sterling
for his charges of that day. Holding the banner in his hand, Fitzwalter
mounted the horse presented to him, and, as soon as he was seated,
desired the Mayor that a marshal might be chosen straightway out of the
host of London. This request having been complied with, he preferred
another--namely, that the common signal might be sounded through the
City, when it would be the duty of the commonalty to follow the Banner
of St. Paul, borne before them by the Castellan, to Aldgate.
In the event of Fitzwalter marching out of the City, he chose from every
ward two of the sagest inhabitants to superintend the defence of the
City in his absence, and form a council of war, holding its sittings in
the Priory of the Trinity adjoining Aldgate. It was supposed that the
Army of London might be engaged from time to time in besieging towns or
castles; and should a siege exceed a year in duration, the utmost amount
Fitzwalter could claim as remuneration was one hundred shillings. If
such were the duties of the Castellan in time of war, he had rights
hardly less important in time of peace. Here it should be premised that
under Norman rule the King's justice or the King's peace was assured by
the grant of soke and soken--the former being the power of hearing and
determining causes and levying fines and forfeitures, and the latter the
area within which soke and other privileges were exercised. In the City
of London the Fitzwalters had a soken extending from the wall of the
Canonry of St. Paul as a man went down by the "bracine" or brewhouse of
St. Paul to the Thames; and thence to the side of the mill that stood on
the water running down by the Fleet Bridge, by London Walls, round by
the Friars Preachers to Ludgate, and by the back of the friary to the
corner of the wall of the said Canons of St. Paul. It embraced, in fact,
the whole parish of the Church of St. Andrew, which was in their gift.
Appendant to this soken were various rights and privileges. Fitzwalter
might choose from the sokemanry, or inhabitants of the soken, a Sokeman
_par excellence_; and if any of the sokemanry was impleaded in the
Guildhall on any matter not touching the body of the Mayor or any of the
Sheriffs for the time being, the Sokeman might demand the court of
Fitzwalter. But while the Mayor and Citizens had to allow him to hold
his court, his sentence was expected to coincide with that of the
Guildhall. He exercised, indeed, a co-ordinate rather than an appellate
jurisdiction, as may be shown in the following manner:
Suppose that a thief had been taken in the soken, stocks and a prison
were in readiness for him; and he was thence carried before the Mayor to
receive his sentence, but not until he had been conveyed to Fitzwalter's
court and within his franchise. The nature of the sentence, to which the
latter's assent was required, varied with the gravity of the offence. If
the person were condemned for simple larceny, he was conducted to the
Elms, near Smithfield--the usual place of execution before Tyburn was
adopted for the purpose--and there "suffered his judgment," i.e., was
hanged like other common thieves. If, on the other hand, the theft was
associated with treason, the crime, it was considered, called for more
exemplary punishment, and the felon was bound to a pillar in the Thames
at Wood-wharf, to which watermen fastened their boats or barges, there
to remain during two successive floods and ebbs of the tide.
So important a franchise in the City was in itself a high honour, and it
carried other distinctions with it. The Fitzwalter of the day, when the
Mayor was minded to hold a Great Council, was invited to attend, and be
a member of it; and on his arrival, the Mayor or his deputy was required
to rise and appoint him a place by his side. During the time he was at
the hustings, all judgments were pronounced by his mouth, and such waifs
as might accrue whilst he was there were presented by him to the
bailiffs of the City or to whomsoever he pleased, by the advice of the
Mayor.
Such is the story as we find it in the pages of Blount, in which it
appears apropos of nothing--merely as an instance of curious and
picturesque usages which had long ceased to exist. Blount, as we have
seen, gives as his authority Sir William Dugdale, who alludes to the
subject in his "Extinct Baronage of England," and Dugdale seems to have
owed the information to the "Collection of Glover, Somerset Herald."
Stow also knew of the "services and franchises," and it is thought that
he had seen a copy of them in the "Liber Custumarum." The latter is
accessible in print in Riley's edition of the "Munimenta Gildhallæ
Londiniensis," and corresponds in all or most respects with what we have
found in Blount.
So much for the antecedents of the story.
The Fitzwalters are said to have come over with the Conqueror, and to
have been invested with the soke before mentioned by his favour and in
requital of their services. That the family had at one time
extraordinary rights in the City of London is shown by the evidence of
the Patent Rolls, from which we learn that in the third year of Edward
I. (1275) Robert Fitzwalter received licence from the Crown to transfer
Baynard Castle, "adjoining the wall of the City, with all walls and
fosses thereunto pertaining, as also the Tourelle called Montfichet," to
Robert Kilwardley, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of founding
the House and Church of the Friars Preachers--"provided always that by
reason of this grant nothing shall be extinguished to him and his heirs
which to his Barony did belong, but that whatsoever relating thereto, as
well in rents, landing of vessels, and other franchises and privileges
in the City of London or elsewhere, without diminution unto him the said
Robert, or to that Barony, have recently belonged, shall henceforth be
reserved."
This Robert was the son of Walter Fitzwalter and grandson of his more
illustrious namesake, the Marshal of the Army of God and Captain of the
Barons in the days of King John; and it may be noted in passing that
either to the last-named or his son Walter, as lord of Dunmow in Essex,
has been ascribed the institution of the Flitch. Thirty years after the
sale of his patrimonial estate Robert Fitzwalter, in 1303, recited and
claimed his services "and franchises" before Sir John le Blount, Warden
of the City; and as late as 1321, as shown by the "Placita de Quo
Warranto," the Justiciars of the Iter were inquiring into the claims of
Fitzwalter in relation to the City of London. One of his rights he was
prepared to waive--namely, that of drowning traitors at Wood-wharf. The
Justiciars refused to take cognizance of the matter, but the Fitzwalters
did not soon or easily abandon their demands, which were renewed by
John, grandson of Robert Fitzwalter, in 1347. On the feast of St.
Matthew in that year it was announced to the Mayor, Aldermen, and
Citizens in Common Council "that John, Lord Fitzwalter, claims to have
franchises in the Ward of Castle Baynard wholly repugnant to the
liberties of the City, and to the prejudice of the estate of his
lordship the King, and of the liberties of the City aforesaid. For now
of late he has made stocks for imprisonment of persons in the said Ward
and [has claimed] to make deliverance of persons imprisoned." Thereupon
it was agreed "that the said John had no franchise within the liberties
of the City aforesaid, nor was he in future to intermeddle with any
pleas holden in the Guildhall of London or with any matters touching the
liberties of the City."
Probably this resolution served as a quietus of the efforts of the
Fitzwalters to establish or re-establish the right of jurisdiction over
the citizens of London. It seems likely that these were endeavours to
reinstitute ancient privileges rather than to create new. The document
in the "Liber Custumarum," used in support of the claims of Robert
Fitzwalter in 1303, contains a reference to the Friars Preachers, which
would lead to the supposition that it was drawn up at the time; but
Riley believes that it was remodelled, perhaps only to the extent of
this interpolation, and that otherwise it was a copy of an earlier
pronouncement pertaining to the days of the first Robert Fitzwalter, who
would have been the actual owner of Baynard Castle.
This has an important bearing on the reality of the dual or reciprocal
obligations, which were apparently embodied in a compact between the
Mayor and Citizens of London on the one part, and their military chief
or champion on the other. Thus it will be necessary to glance at the
personal history of the elder Robert Fitzwalter, on which something has
been already said. According to the Chronicle of Dunmow and other early
records, the principal reason of Fitzwalter's insatiable hatred of King
John was that the monarch had attempted the chastity of Matilda,
Robert's fair daughter, who, by the way, is identified by Anthony Munday
and other Elizabethan playwrights with the Maid Marian of Robin Hood.
Dugdale is disposed to accept this story; but, granting that it is true,
it hardly suffices to explain Fitzwalter's pre-eminence in the forces of
the rebellious Barons. This seems to have been due to his influence with
the wealthy citizens of London, who were among the staunchest opponents
of the astute and tyrannous sovereign. On May 24, 1215--the Sunday next
before Ascension Day, when many of the inhabitants would have been in
attendance on Divine service--the army of the Barons, marching from
Ware, were permitted to enter the City, unopposed, through the gate of
Aldgate. Fitzwalter's position as Castellan, and his connexion with the
Priory of Holy Trinity at Aldgate, furnish an easy and natural
explanation of this proceeding. In 1217 the citizens of London raised a
force of 20,000 men for the assistance of the Dauphin of France against
King Henry and his guardian William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and
Robert Fitzwalter acted as commander. He died in 1234, and was buried
before the high altar in the church of Dunmow Priory.
In the description of the banner delivered to Fitzwalter by the Mayor we
have the earliest mention of the assumption of any sort of arms by the
City of London. It may be noted that the sword is stated by some
heraldic authorities to have been argent, whilst by others this detail
is omitted. In Saxon times York also had its standard-bearer. The "Great
Gate" of St. Paul's was probably the Northern Gate.
Still keeping to the military aspects of the subject--at the
commencement of the fourteenth century there was at the west end of St.
Paul's Cathedral a waste piece of ground, which was the property of the
City; and here it was the custom for the citizens to make a muster of
arms under the command or inspection of the lord of Baynard Castle for
the defence of the City, "so often as the said citizens might see fit."
Moreover, at the east end of the church lay a smaller plot, on which the
citizens held folkmotes and made parade of arms for preserving the
King's peace. This was perhaps a relic of the Anglo-Saxon institution of
Inward, which is mentioned in Domesday, and was designed for the
maintenance of order within the walls. Adjacent to this smaller plot was
the clochier or campanile of St. Paul's, which was a distinct building
from the cathedral proper, and contained the great bell, known as the
_motbelle_, by which the citizens were summoned to the Folkmote or an
assembly of arms on occasions "when within the respective bailiwicks of
the Aldermen anything unexpected, doubtful, or disastrous against the
realm, or the royal crown, chanced suddenly to take place." When the
King required the services of the Host of London against foreign enemies
or outside the confines of the City, it is natural to suppose that the
muster was held on the larger of the two spaces.
The musters and parades of the Host probably lapsed when, by the sale of
Baynard Castle, the Fitzwalters ceased to be _de facto_ Castellans of
London. This is a fair inference from the circumstance that in 1321 the
citizens complained before the Justiciars Itinerant that the Dean and
Chapter had unlawfully taken possession of the vacant spaces, enclosed
them with walls, and even erected dwelling-houses on the eastern plot.
The blazonry of the Banner of St. Paul, which would have been no longer
used, was so far forgotten that eighty or a hundred years later nothing
remained but the sword, which was supposed to stand for the dagger of
that militant mayor, Sir William Walworth, who is said to have
terminated therewith the lawlessness of Wat Tyler.
URBAN