Along with the wards were a number of sokes--areas in which persons or corporations held certain privileges. The first sokes mentioned are that of the Cnihten Gild (pre-Conquest), and that of St. Peter of Ghent (in 1081, see p. 97). The charter of Henry I. grants that "no guest tarrying in any soc shall pay custom to any other than him to whom the soc belongs." They appear to have been heritable, and free to some extent from civic jurisdiction: in the reign of Edward I. there were still upwards of twenty in existence in London.[150] "Bury" seems to have been applied to a manor or property surrounded by a wall or fence; "in London," says Mr. W. H. Stevenson, "it means a large house." Bucklersbury and Bloomsbury were the properties--post-Conquest--of one Blemund, and of the family of Bockerel. A Saxon will makes a bequest to Paul's byrig.[151] The termination "haw," present still in Bassishaw, is also common. A charter of the Confessor giving Stæninghaga in London to Westminster is printed by Kemble; Dr. Maitland in _Domesday and Beyond_ has shown that this was occupied by the men of Staines, and that Staining Lane probably preserves its memory even unto this day. There were forty-eight burgesses of London who counted with Staines in 1086. He suggests that we have here a trace of a system by which the shires garrisoned the burhs. * * * * * _The Palace._--There are but few references to a palace. Florence, writing of 1017, says that Cnut "being in London" ordered Edric to be "slain in the palace" and his body to be thrown from the walls--"into the Thames," says Malmesbury. Richard of Cirencester, who wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century, but whose testimony is of the more value as he was a monk at Westminster, says that Cnut was keeping his Christmas "in the castle which is now called Baynard's," and after the death of Edric took boat for Westminster. There is every reason to think that the ruler's house in London, as in Constantinople, Venice, Aachen, and Paris, would have adjoined the cathedral, as Baynard's Castle did. That Baynard's Castle should have been the old royal palace would seem to agree very well with its subsequent history; it would also explain the existence of this stronghold held under the king within the city walls, while none of the chroniclers speak of its site being taken from the city, and it would explain why early in the twelfth century Henry I. should give a part of the site to St. Paul's; for, if it had been built after the Conquest, it would hardly have been curtailed so early.[152]