In this chapter I propose to put together a miscellaneous collection bearing upon the manners and customs of mediæval London. 1. Letters from the Corporation. It is not easy to arrange them in any kind of order. I begin, however, with certain letters, which illustrate the City Government and show that there was already some organised plan of communication between London and the chief centres in the country, by which the Corporation was kept informed as to matters concerning its interest in those cities and especially with regard to runaways and rogues. These letters, copies of those written 1330-1370 by order of the Mayor and Corporation, have been recently published. They may be divided into classes. The first class, of which there are one or two, illustrates the manner in which London, the parent of so many municipalities—twenty-seven at least can be proved to be the children of London—was looked to for guidance in difficult and doubtful procedure. Thus in 1357 the Mayor of Oxford writes to know the manner of holding Pleas of Land in the Hustings of London. The charter of Oxford expressly instructs the burghers or citizens that in cases of dispute they should refer to London. And the charters, not only of Oxford, but of Exeter, Gloucester, etc., conferred on the burgesses the same privileges and customs as those enjoyed by the citizens of London. This fact makes the early charters of London far more valuable than if they stood alone. We see London as the fountain of liberties, the exemplar, the free City, to which all the lesser cities looked as an example and a model. The next class is that of letters demanding the return of tolls and taxes levied on merchants in contempt of the Charter. Now, the most important of the early charters, after that short and comprehensive document, the Charter of William, was that of Henry I. (see vol. ii. pt. i. ch. ii.). In this there occurs the invaluable concession which placed the London merchants above the reach of the barons, that they were to be “quit and free, they and their goods, throughout England and the ports of the sea of and from all toll and passage and listage, and all other customs.... And if any shall take toll or custom of any citizen of London, the citizens of London shall take of the borough or town where toll and custom was so taken as much as the man of London gave for toll, and as he received damage thereby.”