The right of electing their own justiciar granted to the citizens by Henry resolves itself into little more than a confirmation of the right to elect their own sheriffs.(105) Just as sheriffs are known to have held pleas of the crown in the counties up to the time of the Great Charter (although their duties were modified by Henry I, and again by Henry II, when he appointed Justices in eyre) so in the city of London, no one, except the sheriffs of London could hold pleas of the crown, and an attempt made by the Barons in 1258 to introduce a justiciar into the Guildhall was persistently challenged by the citizens.(106) Even those who stedfastly maintain that in the country the sheriff and justiciar grew up to be two distinct officers, the one representing local interest and the other imperial, are willing to allow that in the city of London such distinction was evanescent. The office of justiciar in the city was twice granted _eo nomine_ to Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, and it is twice mentioned as having been held by one named Gervase, who (there is reason to believe) is identical with Gervase de Cornhill, a Sheriff of London in 1155 and 1156; but the office became extinct at the accession of Henry II.(107) (M72) The events which followed Henry’s decease afford us another instance of the futility of all attempts at this early period to settle the succession to the crown before the throne was actually vacant. The King’s nephew, Stephen of Blois, and the nobility of England had sworn to accept the King’s daughter Matilda, wife of Geoffery of Anjou, as their sovereign on the death of her father; yet when that event took place in 1135, Stephen, in spite of his oath, claimed the crown as nearest male heir of the Conqueror’s blood.(108) There was no doubt of his popularity, whilst Matilda on the other hand injured her cause by marrying an Angevin. On the continent a bitter feud existed between Norman and Angevin; in England the Norman had steadily increased in favour, and England’s crown was Stephen’s if he had courage enough to seize it.