The chief feature of London before the Norman Conquest seems to have been lack of proper municipal organisation. Dr. Stubbs describes the capital during the eleventh century as “a bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which each has its own constitution.”[480] It was thus a collection of small administrative units, rather than one large unit. Some semblance of legal unity was, it is true, afforded by the folkmoot, in which the citizens regularly assembled; by its smaller council known as “husteng”; and perhaps also by its “cnihtengild” (if, indeed, this third body be not entirely mythical); while the existence of a “portreeve” shows that for some financial purposes also the city was treated as one whole. London, however, prior to the reign of Henry I. was far from possessing machinery adequate to the duties of a local government for the whole community. ----- Footnote 480: Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, I. 439. Cf. Round, _Commune of London_, 220, who is in substantial agreement. Miss Mary Bateson, however, thinks that “there has been a tendency unduly to minimise the measure of administrative unity in the twelfth-century shire of London.” See the evidence produced by her, _Engl. Hist. Rev._, XVII. 480-510. ----- The first step towards acquiring a municipal constitution is generally supposed to have been taken by the citizens when they obtained a charter from Henry I. in the last years of his reign (1130-35). This is not strictly accurate. London, indeed, by that grant gained certain valuable privileges and enjoyed them for a short time, but it did not obtain a constitution. The chief rights actually conferred by Henry were as follows:—(1) The _firma_ was fixed at the reduced rate of £300 per annum, the citizens obtaining for this payment a lease in perpetuity of their own city with the surrounding county of Middlesex—the grant being made to the citizens and their heirs; (2) they acquired the right to appoint whom they pleased as sheriffs of London and Middlesex, implying the exclusion of the king’s tax-collectors by men of their own choosing; (3) a similar right of appointing their own nominee as justiciar was also conferred on them, to the exclusion apparently of the royal justices of eyre. Many minor privileges were confirmed which need not here be specified. Mr. J. H. Round[481] argues with convincing force that these concessions, important as they were, did not confer a civic constitution upon London. Henry’s charter, in his opinion, confirmed all the already existing separate jurisdictions and franchises, perpetuating the old state of disunion, rather than creating a new principle of cohesion. He proves, further, that these benefits continued in force only for a few years after Stephen’s accession. That king was coerced by the Earl of Essex into infringing the citizens’ chartered rights; and London did not regain the ground thus lost until the reign of Richard I. ----- Footnote 481: