Text, Visualisation and Politics: London, 1150-1250 Author(s): Derek Keene Source: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,

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RHS18 Transactions of the

doi:io.ioi7/Soo8o440io8ooo662

(2008), pp. 69-99 ? 2008 Royal Historical Printed in theUnited Kingdom

Society

TEXT, VISUALISATION
LONDON,

AND POLITICS:
1150-1250*

By Derek Keene
READ 2 FEBRUARY 2007

the paper discusses the interaction between Focusing on London, theoretical, descriptive and quasi-historical writing about cities, a growing capacity to visualise city landscape and activities, and forms of graphic representation that drew on those ideas. Reading this interplay as a political space, the paper explores the structure, content and purposes of the 'London Collection' of national laws, pseudo laws and city customs put together in London at about the time ofMagna Carta. Though no more than a preliminary investigation, the exercise reveals the extent to which London interests, especially with regard to the politics of international trade, the 'law of London', earlier episodes of communal activism and a sense of London's historic destiny within that of the nation pervade the collection as a whole. This casts some doubt on the supposed antiquity of some of the London laws in the collection, ABSTRACT. which may well have been adjusted for the occasion.

The

and city, its visual representation can historians profitably explore. urban culture is familiar enough concerning in this much

and startingpoint of thispaper is theproposition that in the twelfth on thirteenth centuries the of and others the early writings philosophers
its politics This occupied a common space that approach in later medieval of understanding most studies, notably for London, especially London are to an

marked by a distinct visual sensibility, while the stories they told had an impact on the way in which the city was portrayed graphically.
Some of those stories gave Londoners a strong sense of their past and

it has not been Italy,1 but adopted earlier period. Some of the texts concerning

I am grateful toJohn Gillingham, Lindy Grant, Judith Green, Bruce O'Brien, Richard Sharpe and Susan Reynolds for conversations which have helped shaped my thinking for this paper. 1 For a wide-ranging discussion of related themes, see C. Frugoni, A Distant City: Images Urban Medieval World, trans.W. McCuaig Experience in the of (Princeton, 1991), an updated e immagininet version of C. Frugoni, Una lontana citta: sentimenti Medioevo (Turin, 1983); and also Qj Skinner, Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Artist as Political Philosopher', Proceedings of the BritishAcademy, 72 (1986), 1-56, and idem, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Buon Governo Frescoes: Two Old Questions, Two New Answers', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes,62 (1999), 1-28.

69

70 were

TRANSACTIONS influenced by

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY of the city,

which thereby became an object for structured thought.That sense of history informed ideas of what was appropriate political action in the present, while at the same time political objectives informed rhetorical
manipulations

responses

to the physical

environment

what was currendy desired. justifying London's politics in thisperiod were complex and, as today, shaped by While internalconflictsand by relationswith powers outside the city itself.
some

of texts concerning

history,

custom

and

law with

a view

to

incidents emerge clearly from the records,much of the city'spolitical life

remains obscure and cannot be

of the personal

and

family

interests

of Londoners here.2

and

a few dramatic

that between London and the Crown, which drew heavily on the city for financial and other material support and exercised an undisputed while the same time acknowledging the collective rights lordship over it, of a large but ill-defined group of 'citizens' and allowing a degree of
self-determination close, tense, to certain

explored

key

relationship

was

with

periods ofwider conflict,as during thebaronial opposition toKing John. Internally, the city'spolitics were structured inpart by interestsassociated
commerce, by manufactures which and hierarchies of wealth or and in part loyalties could cut across class

ambiguous

and

specialised sometimes

groups.

This

relationship especially

was

confrontational,

in

This paper's approach

concerns and Carta

in that great apparent customs which was London and for more archive. For but than

to the politics is through some of the London

collection put of national laws, pseudo-laws the time of Magna together around afterwards remained intact within here as the 'London London's

family

and power, concerns.

a century

which led Collection'.3 The compilation illuminates thepolitical struggle elite pursued its interestsand denned and visualised themwithin a broad historical and geographical landscape. Most parts of Europe in the eleventh and twelfthcenturies witnessed a remarkable growth of towns and cities.4 In England, the material
evidence for rapid growth seems more apparent for the eleventh century up to the charter, also strongly indicates the way in which

the city's

convenience,

it is described

2 in this period, see C. N. L. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800-1216: The For London 'London from the Post-Roman Period to 1300', inThe Shaping ofa City (1975), and D. Keene, Britain, I: 600-1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), 187-216. CambridgeUrban History of 'fitz For recent accounts of family and political interests, see D. Keene, Ailwin, Henry', 'fitz National Biography (Oxford, 2004); idem, 'English Urban Guilds, Osbert', in Oxford Dictionary of in Guilds and Association inEurope, c. 900-1300: The Purposes and Politics of Association', goo-1900, ed. I. A. Gadd and P.Wallis (2006), 3-26. 3 See below, n. 36. 4 For a recent in The New 'Towns and the Growth of Trade', survey, see D. Keene, Medieval History, IV: c. 1024-c. ng8, Part I, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith Cambridge (Cambridge, 2004), 47-85, 758-76.

TEXT, VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

71

about One

than for the twelfth,but development picked up again rapidly from

1180 onwards. focused Overall, however, the twelfth century was marked

by the proliferation of literary and philosophical writing on the city.

on neo-Platonist ideas of the city or the state, and structure notion of the hierarchical of these organological developed a model most that became known of institutions, widely through John were in Policraticus written the There 1150s. Salisbury's significant spatial in these discussions. Thus the arx or citadel was and material elements or elders associated with the wise men the Senate who the governed strand an city under the prince, while the suburb in the same outside low the city was the preserve

of thosewho tilled the fields and served as the feet of the body politic.
Several treatises included, arts, whose mechanical sometimes listed

This indicates a striking scholarly engagement with everyday aspects of urban life. Another important strandwas the revival of the literary the of genre description and praise of cities, of which an influential Mirabilia Urbis Romae compiled at about the time of the example was the
establishment in of the Roman such and were commune and the restoration accurate of the Senate that drew included 1143.6 Many the urban scene, ancient models though incorporating constructions rhetorical, idealising a standard of themes. These repertoire texts, observation of on the

those position, in detail, sustained

craftsmen

the city.5

status of the with notable city by comparison places and heroic character and institutions the founders; the appealing characterised visualisations who about nature with of the site and acute visual its landscape awareness.7

such as Rome; origins of the inhabitants; and setting, which were often

It ishardly surprising that themost compelling of the twelfth-century

of urban 1180 adopted is that of a poet, Chretien landscape a that reminds modern viewpoint de Troyes, readers of

(1965-6), 308-40; J. Scattergood, 'Misrepresenting the City: Genre, Intertextuality and William fitz Stephen's Description ofLondon (c. 1173)', in London and LaterMiddle Europe in the 'The Experience ofModernity in Ages, ed. J. Boffey and P. King (1996), 1-34; J.M. Ganim, Late Medieval Literature: Urbanism, Experience and Rhetoric in Some Early Descriptions in The Performance of of London', Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honour of Martin Stevens,ed. J.J. Paxson, L. M. Clopper and S. Tomasch (Cambridge, 1998), 77-96; K. Arnold, 'Stadtelob und Stadtbeschreibung im spateren Mittelalter und der Friien und inderjruhenNeuzeit,ed. P.Johanek Neuzeit', in Stddtische Geschichtsschreibungim Spatmittelalter des Instituts fur vergleichende Stadtegeschichte (Stadteforschung: Verofendichungen Munster, Reihe A, Bd. 47; Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2000), 247-68. in

5T in the Political Theory of John of Struve, 'The Importance of the Organism Salisbury', in The World of John ofSalisbury, ed. M. Wilks (Oxford, 1984), 303-17; T. Gregory, 'The Platonic Inheritance', inA History ofTwelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. P. Dronke Frivolities ofCourtiers (Cambridge, 1988), 54-80, esp. 62; John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the and the Footprintsof Philosophers,ed. C.J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), 81, 125. 6 Mirabilia Urbis Romae, ed. E M. Nichols (1889), xi-xii, 86-7; M. Accame Lanzillotta, Contributisui Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Genoa, 1996), preface. 7 K. 'Medieval Descriptions of Cities', Bulletin of the J. Hyde, John Rylands Library, 48

72

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

the passage in de Gerteau's La pratiquede la quotidienne, concerning visual

engagement street.8 De while and with Certeau the city was as seen from above and as a walker in the inspired by the skyscraper allusions many view a York, to the commerce town as if from the of New

variety of tradesmenwith their specialised commodities and skills:

[Gawain] gazes on site of the casde, which sat on an arm of the sea, and saw that the walls and the towerwere so strong that they feared no assault. He gazes on at the entire town, thronging with many fair people and the tables of themoneychangers all covered with gold and silver and coins. He sees the squares and streets all full of good workmen

in a work Chretien, containing of towns, describes how Gawain observed politics his gaze the streets and and above, squares, traversing

encountering

engaged in different crafts according to their various skills.One makes helmets and another coats of mail; one saddles and another shields; one bridles and another spurs; here they furbish swords. Here they full cloths and here theyweave them; here they teasel them and here they shear them. Here they forge and cast silver, and theymake fine and expensive things: chalices, cups and bowls and vessels worked in niello, rings, belts, and buckles. One might well believe and declare that the town held a fair every was with so many riches: wax, pepper, grain [an expensive dye], ermine day, filled as it and grey furs, and all kinds ofmerchandise. They gaze on all these things, looking here and there.9 evocation arts echoes and contemporary prefigures of verbs philosophical concerns and later with the

This

mechanical Chretien's selection

to find a language for the exciting world of specialised luxury goods.

repetition denoting seeing (esgarder, voire, regarder)

thirteenth-century

attempts

emphasises the visual engagement both with city space and with the
and consumption with such

of English and French towns in the period confirm the essential veracity
of Chretien's London Several landscape. account, or Winchester, which could both of which texts and concern easily he probably English knew.11 cities such as

topics.10 Moreover,

a feature of later texts of commodities, dealing records mundane legal and administrative

ofMonmouth's fictional 'History of the Kings of Britain', completed about 1136, a major theme in which is the destiny of the city and
8 M. de Certeau, L'invention du quotidien, I:Arts defaire, ed. L. Giard (Paris, 1990), 139-42. 9 Chretiende Roman du Perceval, ed. C. Mela (Paris, 1990), lines Troyes:Le Conte du Graal ou le 5680-710, pp. 406-8; translation by the author. 10 Especially in the Parisian Dictionarius ofJean de Garlande and Jean de Jandun's later 'Cultures de production, de distribution description of Les Halles, discussed inD. Keene, et de consommation en milieu urbain en Angleterre, 1100?1350', Histoire Urbaine, 16 (aout 17-38. 2006), 11 au debut duXlVe sucle (Paris, 1937); E. Chapin, Les villesdefoires de Champagne des origines Winton Domesday, ed.M. Biddle Winchester in the EarlyMiddle Ages: An Edition andDiscussion of Ike Grail (Chapel Hill (Oxford, 1976); U. T. Holmes and M. A. Klenke, Chretien,Troyes, and the 1959), 23-4

twelfth-century most The popular

with direcdy engaged of them was influential

London's Geoffrey

TEXT, its association with a

VISUALISATION realm

AND POLITICS

73 exercise of

literary construction, Geoffrey placed the 'Prophecies ofMerlin' in his work just before his account ofArthur, thereby sacralising theprophesied events which subsequendy unfolded in his story,including the fortunes of London.13 Like later urban historians, Geoffrey includes among his associating these landmarks with events in an invented history from his alleged Trojan foundation ofLondon onwards and by connecting his fable in this way to theknown world, Geoffrey lentan air of verisimilitude tohis fable and at the same time invitedhis audience to reflecton the events and Thus, Ludgate gives us King Lud, buried experiences of his own time.14 next to the gate, while Billingsgate gives us Belinus, the prince who had with a gate opening on to the built a marvellous (butfictional) tower there as tied indeed where up, port they actually did inGeoffrey's time ships
at starting points the real monuments and place-names of the city. By

single

of Britain.12

In a careful

toMerlin

Billingsgate's

distinctive

harbour.15

he seems to allude to plans to strengthen the defences by

the river into an enlarged city ditch, a

In a prophetic

passage

attributed

be attempted at theTower of London

that archaeological discoveries

introducing

in London

in 1190.16 John Clark has noted

of Roman bronze statues, not

project

that was

to

on Ludgate.17 Gonstantine

in themselves unlikely, could explain Geoffrey's storyof the embalmed body of Cadwallo being encased in a bronze equestrian statute placed
On the other (as was hand, then believed, awareness but which statue of the comparable we now know to be one of of

Marcus Aurelius) outside the Lateran palace inRome, described in the Mirabilia,18 may be a sufficient explanation and one which would allow an
assertion of London's status by association with Rome. Geoffrey's account

12 Unless otherwise stated, references toGeoffrey's 'History' are given to the chapter and section numbers assigned in the 'Vulgate' version edited from the Bern MS in vol. I of The Historia Regum Britannie ofGeoffrey Monmouth, ed. N. Wright and J. C. Crick (5 vols., of 1985-91), and to page numbers in The History of the Cambridge, Kings ofBritain, trans. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966). 13 C. Daniel, Les proprieties de Merlin et la culture politique (xiie-xiiie siecle) (Turnhout, 2006), 16-17; for the impact of Geoffrey's work on ideas of English and British history, see J. C. Monmouth: Crick, 'Geoffrey of Prophecy and History', Journal ojMedieval History, 18 (1992), 357-71, and eadem, 'British Past and Welsh Future', Celtica, 23 (1999), 60-75. 14 M. Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and ReferentialityinTwelfth-Century English Historical Writing The Evolution of a 1996), 69-80; J. Clark, 'Trinovantum (Chapel Hill and London, Medieval Legend', Journal of History, 7 (1981), 135-51. 15 Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, 44, 53; History, trans.Thorpe, 100, 106. 16 Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, 116(37);History, trans.Thorpe, 178; The History of the King's Works, II, ed. H. M. Colvin (1963), 708-9. 17 J. Clark, 'Cadwallo, King of theBritons, theBronze Horseman ofLondon', inCollectanea Londiniensia: Studies inLondon ArchaeologyandHistory Presented to RalphMerrifield, ed. J. Bird, H. and J. Clark (London and Middlesex Archaeological Chapman Society, Special Paper 2, 1978), 194-9; Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, 201; History, trans.Thorpe, 18 Mirabilia, ed. Nichols, 42. 280.

74

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

of Salisbury Galfredian

Ludgate and theadjacent church of StMartin.19 His audience of courtiers and clergywould have included its learned canons. A later dean, Ralph de Diceto, drew on Geoffrey'swritings inhis own historicalwork and John
mocked remark about

a not least cathedral and its environs, interest in St Paul's suggests special to in the matter of the cathedral's claim but also in status, metropolitan as the burial to his mention of London of and his references place kings

a between century property early thirteenth as 'the house an known of Diana', possibly new city in a distant the most island. Brutus called

into a Temple ofJupiter.20 Such links may explain the fact that by the
St Paul's and the river was who allusion his

the metropolitan the bishop's

of the see in a quasi pretensions to convert intention the cathedral

inGeoffrey's storyhad prophesied that theTrojan Brutus would found a

city 'New Troy', a notion

to the goddess

thatquickly became embedded inLondon's historical identity.21

Today, famous twelfth-century account of London

is that

which William fitzStephen wrote about 1173and placed at thebeginning of his lifeof Thomas the recentlymartyred archbishop of Canterbury, their special patron.22 This relentlessly rhetoricalwork in its idealisation of London deploys a horde of Latin tags and covers virtually the
entire the city's most famous son and soon to be adopted by the citizens as

demonstrably true and is notable for its sense of the landscape of the
city, the specialised trades there and the surrounding territory.23 In these

repertoire

of city praise.

Nevertheless,

it contains

much

that

is

19 Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, 112(4), ii5(i9)(24)j 20Ij History, trans.Thorpe, 172, 280. 175-6, 20 Radulfi deDiceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica, ed. W Stubbs (2 vols., Rolls Series, 1876), I, 10-15, 36, II, 222-32; GilbertFoliot and hisLetters,ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke John ofSalisbury, II: The Later Letters (1163-1180), ed. (Cambridge, 1965), 151-62; The Letters of W.J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1979), 666-7. 21 Historia Regum, ed. Wright and Crick, 21;History, trans. Thorpe, 64-5; Early Charters of Cathedral Church ofSt Paul, London, ed. M. Gibbs (Camden Society, 3rd series 58, 1939), the nos. 79-80. By the fifteenth century the house, then in the possession of the cathedral, was known as 'Diana's Chamber': H. C. Maxwell Lyte, 'Report on the Manuscripts of the Dean

D. Logan (New York, 1990). 23 a valuable critique from these points Scattergood, 'Misrepresenting theCity', provides and C. A. M. Clarke, Literary 'The Experience ofModernity', of view; see also Ganim, Idea of Landscapes and the England, yoo-1400 (Cambridge, 2006), 90-8.

and Chapter of St Paul's' (Appendix to theHistorical Manuscripts Commission, Ninth Report, 1883), I_72 at 4~5 22 For Becket's life, see F Barlow, Thomas Becket (London 1986). For texts of the description of London: Materials for the History ofThomas Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson and J. B. Sheppard (7 vols., Rolls Series, 1875-85), III, 2-13; the textwas incorporated inJ. Stow, A Survey of a new London (1598); in his edition of the 1603 edition of Stow's Survey, Kingsford included edition of the description which notes significant textual variations: J. Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908; reprinted 1971), 219-29, 387-8. Translations and commentaries include: F.M. Stenton, Norman London, anEssay (1934), including a translation William fitz Stephen,ed. Norman London by byH. E. Buder; Butler's translation is reproduced in

TEXT,

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

75

by history marked senses of the western other classical

William's text can be associated with a style of historical and respects, England thatdisplays a special quasi-historical writing in twelfth-century concern with the geography and landscape of the kingdom, associating themwith a new interpretation of the structure of British and English
successive and and disorder of order phases northern frontiers of the realm and have stimulated and his visual and

William's barbarous peoples beyond.24

authors may

reading of snippets from Virgil and

imagination, From but

new by of the lesser,

with

he also drew on twelfth-century writing in a way that indicates familiarity

discourses

ofMonmouth
concerning

its status

he adopted
as a

concerning

London

cities

the city's Trojan

citywalls and towers perhaps influenced his own detailed description. which inform William's emphasis on Notions of hierarchy and authority, use his of the also lie behind phrase arxpalatina to good lordship,may denote theTower of London, which is clearly intended to pair itwith end of the city,no longer in royal hands, were simply castella.25 Though
proudly noting both cities used Senate, London that London was older ancient laws and had than Rome, he points in common, institutions and out such the palatium regium at Westminster. The other great fortresses at the west

metropolitan

see, while

origin and the prophecy

Geoffrey's stories of the

in general.

Geoffrey

that

as a

perhaps thinking of contemporary events in Rome, had addressed by

that title when he wrote to the London commune at a date between

lesser magistrates, separate were senators its aldermen,

courts whom

The assemblies. regular the archbishop of Rouen,

and 1144.26Claims specific to London lie behind William's mention of the citizens' hunting rights in the surrounding territory, detailed in the
charter

1141

royal charter issued in 1133but ismore

of Henry

I to the Londoners,

which

has been

claimed

as a

likely to be a later compilation

genuine

24 'Realistic Observation inTwelfth-Century England', Speculum, 47 (1972), A.Gransden, 29-51; Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon,Historia Anglorum, the History of the English People, ed. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), esp. lvii-lviii; J. Gillingham, The English in the TwelfthCentury: andPolitical Values (Woodbridge, 2000); cf. National Identity Imperialism, J. Green, 'King Henry I and Northern England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 17 (2007),

35-55 25For the scale of thewestern fortresses, or fortress, see St Paul's: The Cathedral Church of London, 604-2004, ed. D. Keene, A. Burns and A. Saint (New Haven and London, 2004), 18 and Fig. 9. 2 He addressed the senatoribusinclitis, civibus honoratisetomnibuscommunie Londoniensis:Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp (2 vols., Camden 4th series, 31 and 33,1986-7), I, no. 463. Brihtmaer ofGracechurch, a mid-eleventh-century donor of London property toCanterbury Cathedral, was described in a rental of c. 1100 as senator.Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1939), 217,468-9; B.W Kissan, 'AnEarly List ofLondon Properties', Transactions of the London and Middlesex ArchaeologicalSociety,new series 8 (1938?40), 57?69.

76 based on

TRANSACTIONS a charter

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY below, further

elaborated

after William

of Stephen wrote was

as and possibly, suggested his account of London.27 not

To

judge from the number of survivingmanuscripts, William

praise of London widely circulated, although

fitz

text was and woodland.28 William's fields, meadows surrounding certainly a later was to to known Londoners and used thirteenth-century preface of the city's customs.29 of the the last quarter collection Moreover, London's but landscape, wealth and and trade, most to a lesser extent

tohave influenced some later writing, perhaps including a mid-thirteenth century verse abridgement of Geoffrey's History, which elaborated the account of the setting of the city founded by Brutus by detailing the

Stephen's

it seems

twelfth centurywas remarkable fora proliferation of brief descriptions of

History cases added of which drew on Geoffrey of on fitz Stephen's description, characterisations of their own. They

Monmouth's in some

distinctive

which noted the stabilityof London's food supply,described theway in Tower and characterised Thames at high tideflowed around the which the theThames as being more likea sea than a river, thereby suggesting a link with Chretien's description of his fictional town.Gervase's description is
embedded in a text that he addressed for the emperor's a critical period interest to the Otto Emperor in the city.32 IV about 1215,

fish of the river Thames;31

include one perhaps by Hugh ofMontacute and so dating to about metrical descriptions byAlexander Neckam of about 1200,which 1170;30 emphasise London as the burial place of kings and especially note the
and Gervase of Tilbury's remarkable account,

27 C. N. L. Brooke, G. Keir and S. Reynolds, 'Henry I's Charter for the City of London', Archivists,4 (1973), 558-78; C. W Hollister, 'London's First Charter of Journal of the Society of Medieval History, 6 (1980), 289-306;^ Green, 'Financing Liberties: Is ItGzmimtV, Journal of at Stephen's War', inAngb-Norman Studies, 14, ed. M. Chibnall (Woodbridge, 1992), 91-114, 106-7. The earliest surviving text of the 'charter' is as a copy in the early thirteenth-century London Collection, where it is inserted immediately afterHenry I's coronation charter near

the beginning of the textof theLegesHenrici Primi: Rylands Latin MS 155, fos. 78-9 (formerly numbered 77-8). The 'charter' itself is not mentioned in the otherwise comprehensive list of the city's royal grants of privileges surviving in the citizens' custody in 1212-14, also part of the London Collection: British Library [hereafter BL], Add MS 14252, fo. 106. See also London (Oxford, 1972), 81; J. H. Round, The Commune of LegesHenrici Primi, ed. L. J. Downer

and Other Studies (1899), 256. 28 The Gesta Regum Britanniae, being Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, V, at 32-3. 29 Liber Custumarum:pt 1oiMunimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis: LiberAlbus, Liber Custumarum et LiberHorn, ed. H. T. Riley (3 vols., Rolls Series, 1859-62), II, pt 1, 1-15. 30 Medieval Learning and A. B. Scott, 'Some Poems Attributed to Richard of Cluny', in Richard William Hunt, ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson Literature: Essays Presented to (Oxford, 1976), 181-99, text at 197.A. Rigg, The History ofAngb-Latin Literature, 1066-1422 (Cambridge, 1992), 135-6 n. 231. 31 De laudibusdivinae Same Author, Poem of the duo:With the AlexandriNeckamDe naturisrerumlibro sapientia, ed. T. Wright (Rolls Series, 1863), 410, 414-15, 458-9. 32Otia Recreation Tilbury, ed. S. E. Banks and J.W Binns for anEmperor,Gervase of imperialia: (Oxford, 2002), 398-403.

TEXT,

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

77

Figure

i Seal

of the barons ofLondon,

c. 1220, drawings from

surviving impressions.

Texts as reverse 'seal

such

as

these

almost

graphic representations ofmedieval London,

the earliest The ekphrasis. of the barons of London', of them recendy

certainly

informed are

the earliest

inwhat one could describe

on the city's characterised common as 'one seal, of the

surviving

outstanding civic seals of medieval Europe' displays St Paul and on the other St Thomas,
landscape. the year of Its style suggests the translation that the seal was of Thomas's

(Figure 1).On one side it each in relation to the city

commissioned at about 1220, on the Canterbury

remains

Jubilee of his martyrdom, when the citizens were initiatingan effort to commemorate him at his birthplace in the city.33 It includes a striking
and

To

central position with its tall spire,probably the 'tower' completed in 1221.
either side are substantial to the east and fortifications, representing to the west. The Casde Baynard's the Tower of view seems to

in many

ways

realistic

panorama

of London.

St Paul's

occupies

London

wall. Roman London had Thames lapping against the city show the river been walled against the river,but visible traces of thatpart of thewalled circuit had probably disappeared long before 1100, so the image may rather have been inspired by fitz Stephen's account of a wall with towers which had once enclosed the cityon the south but had been washed away, a notion itself perhaps derived less from observation or from knowledge of actual events than fromGeoffrey ofMonmouth's story of how King
33For a good photograph of an impression of the obverse and a note by T. A. Heslop on the style of the seal, see Age ofChivalry:Art inPlantagenetEngland, 1200-1400, ed. J. Alexander and P. Binski (1987), 273, no. 193. For a photograph of an impression of the reverse, see St Paul's, ed. Keene et al., Fig. 11.For the citizens' commemoration of St Thomas: D. Keene the GreatFire, I:Cheapside (Cambridge, 1987), London before and V Harding, Historical Gazetteer of no. 105/18.

78

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OF THE ROYAL

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SOCIETY

l*I;.^HfiBBHlllili^^

Matthew Paris in his itinerary i^r^ 2 London as depictedby from London to Board. All RightsReserved. BL, RoyalMS 14 Apulia, c. 1252. (? BritishLibrary
C.VIL>. 2).

Lud had entirely surrounded the citywith walls and towers. Certainly, the accounts and depictions of thisperiod convey the idea, common in on the seal may be intended to represent Belinus's tower at Billingsgate. In thisway Geoffrey's History both shaped perception of the city and became entwined with expressions of itspolitical identity. The other side of the seal portrays theLondoners before St Thomas, in what seems tobe
a group of men on one as Roman on matrons, there is a text, where as side and a group of women, apparendy portrayed the other. This refer to fitz Stephen's portrayal may an account between of comparable juxtaposition and a statement in praise of London's matrons of cities, that London's wall made representations tower with circuit. The the gate opening great a and perfect complete towards the river shown

Matthew Paris's famous sketch of London (Figure 2) conveys similar messages.34 Again, St Paul's is the focal point within a circuit of walls.
34S. Matthew Paris in theChronicaMajora Lewis, The Art of Fig. 204. (Aldershot, 1987), 332-5 and

the dignity of the citizens ipsae Sabinae.

TEXT,

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

79

v.

ttaSSOltmltaHltU|f?fKSUfWfWOMIItawr,

Figure j Drawing

Rights Reserved. BL, Royal MS

Board. All Britain', below thestory of the Kings of of Billingsgate.(? BritishLibrary

13 A.iii,fo. 28v).

ofLondon

c. 1300, added

to a text ofGeoffrey of Monmouth's

'History

The textabove describes the city as chef and founded by Brutus dengleterre who called it New Troy. Below, six citygates are named and are indicated by distinctive signs.This underlines the fact that the drawing serves as
an ideograph rather than an exact

is included. The mythical 'tower of Billingsgate' may be intended by the words la tur while theTower of London justwest of London Bridge (punt),
itself is shown on the other side of the river. This total of seven

gate, Aldersgate,

is omitted

and

representation, which Billingsgate,

for one was

city important not a gate at all,

them William fitzStephen's allusion toThebes inhis mythical, may justify account of London's defences, which he said included seven double gates in the citywall. Indeed, Matthew Paris's signs indicate double gates. An sketch added below the Billingsgate section of an earlier textofGeoffrey of Monmouth's History (Figure 3).Again, theview is south,with St Paul's
at the centre as a shown London, Belinus. The London widely to the left. The city walls to west the the of the Tower river, complete Against as that erected the large gate-tower is presumably intended and the Tower circuit. of London are of by equally meaningful graphic representation is an early fourteenth-century

gates,

one

of

current

the capital and organising principle of the kingdom. This

for some time and in particular was articulated

in these representations that this image of suggests consistency or texts was and in historical its expressions quasi-historical as to an also relate of London appreciated. They understanding

idea had been

the 1140s

during

in

80 accounts while

TRANSACTIONS of the events the Londoners in King

OF THE ROYAL Stephen's

HISTORICAL troubled reign:

SOCIETY London was the

'queen metropolis of the kingdom' and the 'head of thewhole kingdom',

were 'in effect magnates because of the greatness

of their city inEngland'.35 For fitz Stephen, some decades later, the city was the 'seat of the kingdom of the English' and the bishops and lay
magnates attendance and were 'almost to be counted and now on as citizens because business'. one in Manchester of their frequent there The for councils collection their own

This conjunction of textand image brings us to theLondon Collection

politics. survives in two parts,

and the other in the British Library, each containing about 130 folios.36 The text is largely intact, but not without some damage and possible disordering in the final section of thework. Itwas written by two scribes.
The work

four-fifths of theBritish Library part, carrying the collection ofmaterials into the reign ofJohn. The ruling and layout of the text demonstrates that the second scribe'swork (beginning on fo. 104V,immediately below the final lines written by the first scribe) was intended as part of the
same overall

first, using a script of an older the whole after 1204 and wrote

style than that of the second, of the Manchester part and

was

at

the first

and others datable to 1205-6 and later, the latest of which

the city's sheriffs holding office between the years 1188-9

project.

He

copied

several

items

originating

before

is a list of
1216-17.37

1204

and

35Gesta Stephani, ed. K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1976), 4, 112;William Of History, ed. E. King, trans.K. R. Malmesbury cawgo?1143, Historia Novella: The Contemporary Potter (Oxford, 1998), 94-5; cf. The Chronicle ofjocelin ofBrakebnd, ed. H. E. Butler (1949), 75-7 3 The first theJohn Rylands University Library, Rylands Latin part is now Manchester, MS 14252. See E Liebermann, Uber die Leges Anglorum 155, and the second, BL, Add. MS A Contemporary Manuscript saeculo xiii ineunte Londiniis collectae (Halle, 1894), and idem, of the Leges Anglorum Londiniis collectae', English Historical Review, 28 (1913), 732-45. A M. Bateson, selection of the London material inAdd. MS 14252 isprinted and discussed in A London Municipal Collection of theReign of John', English Historical Review, 17 (1902), 480-511,707-30, which also identifies the remaining materials previously printed elsewhere from the collection are from this or later MSS. The London laws, customs and memoranda M. Weinbaum, London unter Eduard I. undII comprehensively printed and described in (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1933), II, 5-91, which remains themost convenient and accurate version of thatmaterial so far published. The way inwhich the collection, for some of its contents, appears to have drawn on earlier and perhaps more accurate, but no longer surviving, transcripts isdiscussed in Brooke etal., 'Henry I's charter'. Recent discussions of aspects of Medieval England in Law and Governmentin the collection are: P.Wormald, iilQuadripartitus,'>, andNormandy: Essays in Honour ofSirJohn Holt, ed. G. Garnet and J. Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), 111-47;J. Gillingham, 'Stupor mundi: 1204 et un obituaire de Richard Coeur de Lion et ed. depuis longtemps tombe dans l'oubli', inPlantagenets etCapetiens: confrontations heritages, are briefly MSS M. Aurell and N.-Y. Tonnerre (Turnhout, 2006), 397-411. The quires of the described inN. N. R. Ker, 'Liber Custumarum and Other Manuscripts Formerly at the more Guildhall', The Guildhall Miscellany 1.3 (1954), 37-45, at 37. 37 The listof sheriffs isprinted in Weinbaum, London, II,48-9; see also Brooke etal., 'Henry I's charter', n. 7,where its last part is described as 'corrupt'. Allowing for normal variations

TEXT, The second scribe

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

81

time between role was London

after Prince Louis's

to order and their

over a short at some worked period, probably perhaps 1214 and 1216, and at least a part of his text was completed and copy

invasion or even after the death ofKing John. His

undertaken immediately before that of the second scribe, had consisted material specially mostly of copying earlier laws, but it included linking
The in the 'London for the occasion. many interpolations' composed texts of the laws, those in the 'Laws of Edward the Confessor', especially at that time. to an and even additions, may have been made Adjustments,

objectives

texts to the citizens of relating specifically at that time. The first scribe's work, perhaps

existing textof the supposed charter ofHenry I to the citizensmay have been part of thisprogramme. The laws ofHenry II are represented by a
distinctive and somewhat confused version of Glanville.38 The resonances

between the two parts of the collection seem to be a deliberate literary and polemical device, indicating that the compilation as a whole and
the

a single programmatic scheme, most likely in London and during the years immediately before and after the granting ofMagna Carta in
June

interpolations

in

the

earlier

texts were

planned

and

executed

as

both

well ordered and decorated overall, it is clear that Although the text is
scribes were hasty and sometimes

1215.

corrections and additions. Haste

text to be inserted later. Insertions

isalso indicated by the leaving of gaps for

sometimes turned out to be too large

inaccurate,

necessitating

marginal

for the space available and some gaps were not filled (Figure 4). The high incidence of ruled but unwritten gaps in the folios of the second scribe's
section was both suggests hasty and that the project not so much of gathering completed London's in 1216-17 laws and customs on as abandoned

or

the death ofKing John. The appearance of the manuscript thus conveys the drama of time inwhich it material written, with much of the linking
introductory material placed between sections apparendy not having

were

been fully composed by the time that the copying of those sections had been completed. Parts of a run of several blank folios left by thefirstscribe
used documents texts

formatand style very differentfrom thatof theother two scribes and so the These
presumably were inserted

a third for by transcripts of London interest, but

of two additional the folios were

texts.39 These

were

ruled not

and written

in a

two documents have been discussed as ifthey were an integralpart

after, but perhaps

long after,

1216-17.

in name forms and the haste with which the whole of the last part of the collection was the list overall is an accurate one and it is not necessary to was postulate that it or compiled copied after 1217. 38The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England CommonlyCalled Glanville, ed. G. D. G. Hall, with further notes byM. T Clanchy (Oxford, 1993), lv-lvii. 39 BL, Add. MS 14252, fos. 88V-89, 90V-91. compiled,

82

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

Figure 4 The hasty composition of the (London Collection', showing how the account of inmemory ofTroy was added after thedescription of the city's court of London's foundation and then continued in themargin. The description ofHusting relates to a clause in Husting Henry I's supposed charter to the citizens ofLondon theConfessor';for copied earlier in the collection. All

materialon this in thetext folio ispart of thelongest of the {London interpolations' of the the Latin MS 657. (Manchester, JohnRy lands University Library, Ry lands
of the collection the case.40 They and are had (Laws of Edward this section of the text, seeGesetze, ed. Liebermann, l,

the

155, fo. 6g).

as a place for collecting additional material relevant to the city,although

marginal annotations show that it was carefully scrutinised during the

a on its purpose, not but that was bearing clearly the only suggestion of any later use of the manuscript

the London waterfront to thewest ofQueenhithe (see D. Keene and V Harding, A Survey of Great Fire (London Record Society, for Property Documentary Sources Holding inLondon beforethe 22, 1985), 72). A concern with the river isperhaps the connection between them.

full 4?Bateson, London, II, 10-17. The 483-6; Weinbaum, 'Municipal Collection', significance of these additions is not clear. One, referring back to a dispute in the 1130s, concerns the rights of the lord of Baynard's Casde over thewater of theThames; the other, as a record of civic property, is in fact an extract from interpreted by Bateson and Weinbaum an early thirteenth-century rental of property belonging toCanterbury Cathedral Priory on

TEXT, VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

83

late thirteenthand early fourteenth centuries by those interested in the

city's laws.

The

leaders of London and of the canons of St Paul's in their confrontation with King John, as a statement of established laws and customs of the case against kings who acted unjustly and without due forms of principles underlay Magna Carta. Apart from the close involvement of London in the opposition toJohn, there are direct linksbetween parts of the collection and theArticles of the Barons and clauses inMagna
Secondly, the collection presents a providential sweep of British consent, and of an ideal of responsible government by counsel. These

not least as a result of the careful and pithy comments analysis appreciated, of the barons, of the mayor and of Felix Liebermann. It served the purpose

overall context and purpose of this collection has long been

Carta.

history emphasising the extent ofwhat English rule should be and tracing elements of thatdominion to the timeofKing Arthur. This vision drew on Monmouth, but with an additional emphasis, which reflects Geoffrey of mercantile interests (presumably those of the leading Londoners) and a concern for the links between the inhabitants of Britain and other peoples.41 Ralph Hanna has recentlydrawn attention to the fact that this
document and is far more

is how historians have tended to exploit it so far, and that its literary
rhetorical structure reveal much about its purpose and meaning.

than a simple

collection

of laws and

customs,

which

When Hanna's book appeared,42 I was thinkingon similar lines about the choices which determined the content of the collection, the light they
threw on London the London interests outside the immediate context of the baronial

of

opposition and what implications this might have for our understanding
customs as recorded in the document.

Laws

Hanna's ideas. thinkinghas benefited greatly from The arrangement of the material in the collection is striking(Figure 5).
are gathered in a chronological succession of groups according to

My

subsequent

the kings associated with them, from Ine, the king of Wessex who died in 726, through Alfred, Athelstan, Cnut, Edward the Confessor (said to have been confirmed byWilliam I, decrees attributed towhom are entered before Edward's laws), toHenry II, who died in 1189. Several of these groups conclude with a few lines of praise on themonarch in Arthur question, perhaps inspired by the characterisations of kings from onwards that Henry ofHuntingdon had included inhis history.43 Though
not totally formulaic these encomia have much in common, stressing the

41 Gillingham, 'Stupor mundi', 399-400, summarises J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge, 1992), 20, 55-7, 93-5, 42R. Hanna, London Literature (Cambridge, 2005), 56-8, a few passages. 43 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 98-9, 226-7, 298-9,

views on this purpose. See also and Wormald, ''''lQuadripartitus>>,. 70-2, 84-9; Hanna 318-19, 366-7. mistranslates

84

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

Tribal Hidage and Burghal (Rylands, fo.3v-4)

Hidage

approx 66 folios: laws, Ine toEdward theConfessor Description of the realm of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth) (Rylands, fo.70)

approx 73 folios (toend ofRylands MS): laws,Edward theConfessor (cont.) toHenry II approx 87 folios (from beginningofAdd MS 14252): lawsetc, Henry II ('Glanville') toRichard I Prester John's Letter (Add.MS, fos 92-97v) 4 folios:London lawsmostly concerning foreigners

Description of Britain (largely Henryof Huntingdon)

(Add.MS, fos 101-104) approx 21 folios:London customs, laws and memoranda (possiblydividedat a royal of counties inthe judicialcircuits, 14thfolioby lists 1208-9), articles for
charter, descent of the honour of Boulogne

Hidage of Middlesex (Add.MS, fos 126-7) assize (London heroes?) 4 folios: fitz Ailwin's building Comhill family, in boldare the The texts LondonCollection. framing of the Figure5 The geographical
framing element.

military vigour of the king and the extent of his rule, sometimes using the isdeployed in connection with King which, significantly, adjective inclitus Arthur in themost significantof theLondon additions to the version of the 'Laws of Edward theConfessor' contained in the collection.44 The limitsof thekingdom established byArthur,while the longer statementon numerous territories Henry II emphasises his conquest of Ireland and the
44 These London additions are identified inLiebermann's edition of the laws: Die Gesetze derAngelsachsen, ed. F. Leibermann (3 vols., Halle, 1903-16), I, 627-70, with these references toArthur at 655, 659. The text in Gesetze should be read in conjunction with Liebermann, 'Contemporary Manuscript'. encomium on Athelstan, for example, declares that he ruled up to the

TEXT,

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

85

a rubric indicate and and a blank loss of Normandy, space at least an extract to include from intended this point it was s this final of that After the of Vinsauf extravagant king.45 Geoffrey praise on the of without focuses section of the collection John, reign although a sequence are framed as sections of texts by identifying him king. These the later at that

that he ruled between Norway and Spain. There follows a brief but warm encomium on Richard I, informed by knowledge of strikingly

of a different type, the purpose of which is to provide a geographical

or idealisation, element each indeed a visualisation, of the territory over

which themonarchs ruled. Although the text is not illustrated, there is

a strong visual in this

description

the texts or tables of their laws, such as can be seen holding prophets or architectural on or Visual cathedrals.46 Romanesque early Gothic was an in rhetoric and mnemonic and device cognitive framing important as to in narratives the case of the force which, oratory, adding expressive were often composed of multiple London stories, interrupted Collection, but interlaced.47 the forerunners to live up to. of this type programmes Sculptural rather different message of Christ. The sometimes portray of this collection,

history of theworld), or of a gallery of sculptures portraying kings or

sequence

of images,

defined

that structure, recalling a a frame (as in mural by

of a narrative or manuscript

compiled after the loss ofNormandy The

in 1204, is that King John had much

choice of geographical texts is illuminating (Figure 5). At the beginning, before King Ine's laws, are placed texts of the Tribal and of the Burghal Hidages, early listsof territoriesand townswhich serve to introduce the realm. Towards the end of the longest of the London kingdom of Britain, derived fromGeoffrey ofMonmouth.
interpolations in the 'Laws of Edward the Confessor' is a description of the

a transition on this description from an encomium Ine to an marks King account of the 'right and appendages of the crown of Britain' containing of Arthur, the 'most glorious of the kings of the Britons', and a praise

Significandy,

45 mistaken in the statement (at 410-11) Gillingham, 'Stupor mundi', 400-8. Gillingham is that the collection's favour towards King Richard is further indicated by its inclusion of the text of Richard's charter concerning Portsmouth issued in 1194: the text is not included, although, for different reasons, a copy forms part of later London collections. 4 G. Zarnecki, Later English Romanesque Sculpture,1140-1210 (1953), 48-9; idem, Romanesque Lincoln: The Sculpture of the Cathedral (Lincoln, 1988); The Romanesque Frieze and itsSpectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers, ed. D. Kahn (1992), passim, and esp.W. Sauerlader, Romanesque sculpture in itsarchitectural context', 17-43, and W. Cahn, 'Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator', 45-60. 47 H. R. Broderick, 'Some Attitudes towards the Frame inAnglo-Saxon Manuscripts of theTenth and Eleventh Centuries', Artibus et Historiae, 5 (1982), 31-42; M. Carruthers, The Craft ofThought:Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge, 1998), 122, 151?3, 201-4, 237-41; A. Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images inLiteratureand Art (Oxford, 2003), 27-8, 45-6, 77.

86

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

of Prester John's letter to the Emperor copy of one of the earliest versions a fictitious a Manuel text so earlier. Comnenus, composed generation

long listof the territorieshe had ruled.48At a later important transition point in the collection, thebrief section on King Richard is followed by a

This introduces the controversial reign ofKing John and the part of the collection which explicidy focuses on London. As a piece of exotica, the
letter may have been chosen for its appeal to an audience of barons and

wealthy merchants who would have had some knowledge of the east and its commodities, including the pepper carefully described in the letter and mentioned in the documents which immediately follow it as one of the commodities brought to London. The letter is also a powerful
statement of a 'moral Utopia',

priestly ruler.49In key respects thisresembled the realm ofKing Arthur as presented in the interpolations and itcertainly offered a model for John's kingdom of England, while its image of Christian rule, likeArthur's, would underline criticism ofJohn's failure to protect the church. After the letter, there is entered the first of the textswhich detail the laws
and customs of London. is that This the

territory, where

seventy-two

kings

a well-ordered, and extensive wealthy were to a and their provinces subject

which are in Latin. My previous and themajority of subsequent texts,

current

is in Anglo-Norman, in

in contrast

to all

be

of the leading citizens and the barons, deal with matters which might

hypothesis

texts

Anglo-Norman,

the vernacular

were sense drafts for in some contested specifically by the king and or internal rather than statements for public discussion, consumption texts of earlier from the archive. This straightforward city's copies Anglo three distinct, a crucial in the collection, text, which occupies position but not strongly sections. The first deals separated, is in with

Norman

legal procedures and rules concerning landholding and debt in the city's and aldermen and with the Husting court,with the roles of the sheriffs overseas; and the thirddeals with the city Folkmoot and its relation to theHusting. The concern with foreigners is emphasised by the text's proximity to the letterof PresterJohn. This text is followed immediately by another geographical description of Britain, inAnglo-Norman but largelydrawn fromHenry ofHuntingdon, a description of the territory clearlypaired with thatof PresterJohn's exotic realm. The firstscribe then
48For the I, 655-9. interpolation, see Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, 49B. Medieval History Hamilton, 'PresterJohn and theThree Kings ofCologne', inStudies in and R. I.Moore Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting (1985). For the date of the du Prete Jean (Groningen, particular version used in the collection, seeM. Gosman, La lettre 1982), 32-4, and B. Wagner, Die 'EpistolaPresbiteris Johannis': Lateinish undDeutsch;Uberlieferung, Mittelalter (Tubingen, 2000), 55.1. Bejczy, La lettre Textgeschichte, Rezeption undUbertragungenim dupretrejean (Paris, 2001), passim. See also Hanna, London literature,82-6. between the and relationship foreigners details merchants regulations concerning 'law of London'; the second from Lorraine and elsewhere

TEXT, VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

87

Libertas Londoniensis,

completed hiswork by introducing thefinal section of the collection as 'a part of the laws of the cityof London and of itsfranchises'.At thatpoint the second scribe took over. At the beginning of his, or his instructor's, selection of London material he placed theLatin textnow known as the
which deals with some

Folkmoot, Husting and rules forforeign merchants, including one limiting text seems to be based on a mid their stay in the city to forty This days. copied theHidage ofMiddlesex, listing the components of the territory immediately subject to London. After that he added twomore items,
twelfth-century exemplar. At the end of his London material the scribe

of the same matters,

including

The clearest statements of political principle in the collection are to be found in the interpolations in two earlier sets of laws, those ofKing and those attributed toEdward Henry I, originally compiled about 1117, theConfessor, which in theirfirstversion appear to have been compiled
in the

which,

as we

shall

see, may

have

been

intended

as a heroic

conclusion.

in the latter, which seem very likely to have been made specifically for the purpose of this collection, and presumably resulted in the 'laws of St Edward' that the barons were said to have sought fromKing John in emphasise the rightsof theCrown, the unity and extent of the kingdom, and the king's responsibility to protect the church and the realm, to promote good laws and abolish bad ones and to do justice according to
counsel. local and They also outline an ideal, but 1215.51 Recurrent themes in the London interpolations to Edward's laws52

1130s or a

litde

earlier.50

The

more

extensive

interpolations

were

communes and an oath of brotherhood which united nobility, townsmen

all people for the utility ideas seem of the realm. been This system was by older than

government

and

political

assembly,

structure based of historically common informed counsel, by

Arthur, who used it to consolidate the kingdom of Britain and drive out
enemies. These to have informed

great council convoked byJohn inLondon

adult population the realm.53 The was

caput regni... been founded have been

Troy', whose laws and liberties it stillcontained (Figure 4). These would
the laws that Arthur found. In addition there were more as direct allusions to London in the identification of aldermen senators,

to be into a commune for the defence of organised as the leading role of London interpolations emphasise et legum et semper curia domini regis and the way in which it had and built in the 'manner, form and memory of old, great or less

in 1205, followingwhich the

a memory

of the

50 Edward Leges, ed. Downer, 34-7; B. R. O'Brien, God's Peace and the King's Peace: The Laws of the Confessor (Philadelphia, 1999), 44-8. 51 Holt, Magna Carta, 115. 52 I, 635-7, 639-40, 655-60, 664. Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, 53The Historical Works Gervase ed.W. Stubbs (2 vols., Rolls Series, 1870-80), of ofCanterbury, l>96-7

88

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

or heretocii.

in the mention of folkmoots being summoned by a bell and in references to hunting rightsand to local armies being led by aristocratic constables

term 'common The counsel' several times in (commune consilium) used a a resonance the interpolations have had for Londoners, may particular to between 1212 and for the copy of a city inventory, datable 1214 and lists a 'seal of the common council' part of the collection, forming kept with some of the charters 'in the

council' (to be distinguished from the latermedieval common council of the city) which may have been identicalwith the body of twenty-four in 1205-6 swore that itwould legally see to counselling (ad consulendum) according to its custom by the right of the king and that no member of the body would take a bribe when giving judgement.54 The oath taken aldermen of by thisbody, which presumably comprised the twenty-four was perhaps influenced by the statute arising from the great the city, council which John had summoned inLondon in 1205, according to the
terms of which itwould have alternative included interpretation a number ofprobi as in this period supporting represented is that the 'common the commune council' of the city. An of this period also from time to time appear

treasury'

(in thesauro). This

'common

be distinct from the larger body which constituted the commune.55 The
code of 1212, for example, building in which and refers to the way was made scotales

are recorded homines, who the mayor and aldermen

and who

to

was enacted at civitatis consilium apud Gildehallam,although the code itself Guildhall by 'the mayor and other barons of the city'.56The 'seal of the
barons and discussed of London', above, appears was so the 'seal of the common council' A letter from the mayor and stylistically presumably to be later in date

per consilium proborum virorum commune could be licensed per

may not have been owned by a body precisely comparable to although it

the 'barons'. universitas of London there were is usually

its predecessor,

said to be sealed with the communi Londonie, a phrase which sigillocivitatis

could where denote either this seal and folkmoot

in 1219 was

at the cityguildhall, but given the close association between St Paul's and
the London and between the canons and this time, plus the role of cathedrals as custodians the leading of archives citizens at relating to

of the seals, if indeed the charters were kept

two.57 The

assumed

treasury to have been

54 Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', 507-8; Round, Commune, 237;Weinbaum, London, II, 49-50. The inventory's phrase cum sigillo de communicons cannot refer to a seal attached to the charter which precedes it in the list since that charter was a royal one. 55 Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', 509-11. 56 Weinbaum, London, II, 89-91. 57Patent Rolls 1216-1225 (1901), 211.

TEXT, VISUALISATION county administration,58 the cathedral treasury The interpolations

AND POLITICS

89 'treasury' was laws

it is at least equally at St Paul's. indicate the particular

likely that the interest

that Edward's

had for theLondoners and theway inwhich that interestextended back

the city's earlier of 1191 to Stephen's their commune reign and beyond commune in a common and barons had united citizens of 1141 which were cause. terms with In that year, when the Londoners negotiating

the Empress Matilda, they had asked that theymight be allowed to live under the excellent laws of King Edward rather than the severe ones of her father, King Henry. Matilda harshly refused and London turned against her.59 Perhaps the idea of a distinctive London law of
some antiquity was consolidated at that time, for the story that Brutus

had given the Londoners their lawwas added to the original version of With regard to the kingdom as a whole, Geoffrey's History before 1155.60
the laws of King of all Edward best which laws, but would apply a status as the had by 1100 or soon after achieved were in 1141 it seems that the Londoners laws seeking were reasons to them. Moreover, there specifically

King Edward as why rulers ofLondon might have a particular regard for the source of their law.Thus, thefirst Ailwin, members mayor, Henry fitz of theCornhill family and possibly other leading families at the time of
the

London guild of cnihtas, which had received fromKing Edward a writ writ was placed on confirming itsjurisdiction and good laws. In 1125 that the altar of theLondon priory ofHoly Trinity Aldgate as confirmation of writ would stillhave been at the the guild's giftof land and rights,and the was in 1212.61Itmay be that the two Ailwin there when fitz buried priory
documents added

1191 commune

could

count

among

their ancestors

members

of the

to signal thisEdwardian
Anglo-Norman, and the second named

at the very end of the collection and

of the Cornhill

link, for the firstof themwas a genealogy, in

related London families supposedly to his most well-known in relation act up after the Great shall Fire of London also of the the as we code, as a concluding

(Figure

5)

were

intended

fitz Ailwin code in Latin.

as mayor, the city building 1212 and written in July have been included

drawn This

see, may

in the collection one

effectiveness of the city's government based at Guildhall. This pairing

may deliberately underline of the collection's pervading themes,

expression

58Cf. R. L. Poole, 'The Publication of Great Charters by the English Kings', English Historical Review, 28 (1913), 444-53. 59The Chronicle II and III (Oxford, 1995-8), III, 296-7. Worcester,ed. P.McGurk, of John of 60 Historia Regum, ed.Wright and Crick, II (the 'first variant version'), cap. 22. 61 Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1952), 231-5; The Cartulary of Holy Aldgate, ed. G. A.J. Hodgett (London Record Society 7, 1971), 168. The members of Trinity the guild in 1125 included Robert and his brother Ailwin, sons of Leofstan (ofwhom the latterwas probably Henry fitz Ailwin's father) and Edward Hupcornhille, ancestor of the Cornhills.

90

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

Norman

unity of differentpeoples within the kingdom, for Henry fitzAilwin was of English descent and, according to the genealogy, theGornhills had a
ancestor.

Given primacy among the foreign groups named in the London interpolations toEdward's lawswho by right should live in thekingdom of were Bretons from Britain as propriicives Armorica. Here the interpolator
drew on

between Britain and Brittany and of the prophecy that the cives (that is theBretons) of the island shall return to it,a prophecy that William fitz highlighting of the Bretons might form part of the case against John,
not least on account of his role in the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, to London. related Stephen to the eventual this prophecy From its context, later readers could relate loss of Normandy.62 Thus the interpolator's

Geoffrey

of Monmouth's

account

of

the

close

connections

The

collection conveys a sense that the rules by which Londoners

their public lives were regarded as law rather than custom,

in 1203.

that iswith a general and binding purpose rather than ofmerely local application. Such a distinction was made by the Pisans in the late 1150s when they envisaged a double code for their city,one of legesand one
in Pisa, however, the distinction law and custom between some London were as customs, rules described in while fuzzy a few other towns of the as 'laws and the rules were described period so far as I am aware, customs'. towns, only London, Among English was marked to its 'law' in the references alone.64 Moreover, by singular were as models customs to London for those granted widely employed was and other actual certain collection. towns or and this may have contributed of London's not the documents clearly perceived special choices concerning For example, status as to their standing seems customs that were the aim to assemble 'law'. This to explain in the of usus.63 Even

governed

included

itwas

a set of the

citizens' royal grants of privileges, of which twelve (or seven, excluding duplicates) were listed in the inventory of 1212-14 already mentioned. The collection includes texts of only two such grants, that of Henry I,
which, if it had ever

of Henry II, both copies of which were then in the custody of private citizens. In theLondon Collection, the textsofHenry I's and ofHenry
IPs charters to the citizens as 'coronation

existed,

survived

only

as a copy

in 1212-14,

and

that

mentioned significance of theprivileges enjoyed by London. The former the law of London and the latter confirmed to the Londoners the law
62 Daniel, Les propheUes,43-4; Brooke and G. Keir, London 800-1216, 120-1. 63C. Wickham, Courts and Conflictin Twelfth-Century Tuscany (Oxford, 2003), 108,112,114-16. 4 Up to 1216, 'laws' or 'laws and customs' are mentioned only in royal charters toLincoln, Newcasde, Northampton, Oxford and Hartlepool (followingNewcastle).

charter',

are placed immediately if to emphasise the high

after

the monarch's and

standing

wider

TEXT, of his have grandfather's day,

VISUALISATION seemingly

AND POLITICS authoritative to the

91 which may

statements

have been the charters' principal value for the compiler. They would
resonated with the several references 'law of London'

in the to

collection

important first textdetailing London customs which was entered in the

immediately after Prester John's letter. Later royal charters

London which mention its law simply repeat the phrase fromHenry IPs
between what was in the thirteenth century, as the difference charter, while more local became fixed and general and what was established, clearly to London law faded away. Itmay be relevant here to note the references

to suppress the which directed the mayor and sheriffs royal letterof 1235 in Brand that 'laws' the this of Paul may relate suggested city. teaching to some developing synthesisofRoman and English laws,65but it seems
that instead, or perhaps as well, it concerned the complex laws

possible

of London itself, perhaps as yet only imperfecdy recorded inwriting, the which of could be viewed as subversive. teaching
Important elements in the collection's argument concern trade.

Especially significant is what is clearly an early thirteenth-century statement copied by the first scribe into a gap he had left in an early
section.66 the unity This statement drew on earlier

ideas and some notions contrary to those favoured by theking. It affirmed

of weights, measures, currency, tolls and mercantile customs

sources,

but also

included

new

(possibly an allusion toLondon law) throughout the ports and the entire kingdom of Britain. In addition, it affirmed the freedom of merchants with the qualification that theycould neither go with theirgoods beyond the legal limitsof the ports out into the kingdom nor stay in the ports
than of London to the customs restrictions which allude clearly forty days, near the end of the collection. Carta also recorded Magna freedom of entry and departure but, reflecting what (presumably foreign merchants) to enter and return through the ports,

more

stated merchants' free to move about

had been royal policy since the time ofRichard

England the ports, thereby at least in London. materials Britain of war,

by declaring thatwool cannot be taken overseas out of the kingdom of

without

and said nothing about them to restricting to have been older custom, appears ignoring what on statement notes The the restriction exporting a but makes addition 1200, customary by significant been woven into cloth. There was no royal policy

were I, added that they

of restricting the export ofwool, except during periods ofwarfare, and so thisprohibition must reflect the interestof native merchants who were active in theproduction and export of cloth and theirfears concerning the loss of trade in the face of competition fromFlemish towns.Here too, the
65P. Brand, 'Westminster Hall and Europe: European Aspects of the Common London andEurope, ed. Boffey and King, 55-83. 66 115, fo. iov; Liebermann, Leges Anglorum, 12-14. Rylands Latin MS Law', in

having

92 London

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

interest was includes, strong, for the latter part of the collection in Anglo-Norman, and the 'law of the weavers fullers' of Winchester to merchants towns which and other asserted weavers' and subjection was to be the custom in 1202 the citizens of London, said also where briefly managed or had been within active to suppress the weavers' a major living memory, since at London was, independence.67 centre of cloth manufacture twelfth The

and finishing and Henry fitzAilwin and his family appear to have been
in that business least the early century.68

compiler of the collection endowed thispowerful statement of London mercantile interests with special authority as long-standing custom in Britain by placing itamong the laws of Ine. Thus, Liebermann named it
'Pseudo-Ine'. Commercial

at variance with royal policy overseas during this period. Dynastic ties and periodic alliances between Plantagenet and German Welf kings, togetherwith the position of Cologne as a focus ofWelf interest and
a major in which trading English a of London, partner diplomatic shaped monarchs manoeuvred and German environment

interests,

especially

London

ones, were

in several

respects

interestsagainst French kings by building up regional alliances which where possible included Cologne. Cologne merchants had long enjoyed special privileges in London, which in 1194Richard I had extended by freeing them of a rent due from their guildhall in the city and allowing
them freedom and to travel

to protect

their

deprived Londoners of profitable distributive trade.John, in a letter to the

mayor commune of London

throughout

England

and

to visit fairs. This

grant

merchants to travel inEngland, while immediately freedom of all foreign after the loss ofNormandy in 1204, he acknowledged the freedom of the
merchants to travel in his realm. After 1207, in association with

in the first year

of his reign,

declared

the

Otto IV,John attempted tobuild up a Rhineland alliance against France,

and

Cologne

Richard I's quitclaim to the citizens ofCologne in the rent theyhad been accustomed to pay from theirLondon guildhall and in all customs, but was to be 'saving the libertyof London'.69 That with the caveat that it
509; F. Consitt, The London Weavers' Company 'Municipal Collection', (Oxford, 1933), pp. 1-6, 180-1. 68 His uncle had been responsible for the London weavers' guild and his own city establishment was in the cloth-making district of Candlewick Street, surrounded by cloth tenters and dubbers (probably dyers): Keene, 'fitzAilwin, Henry', in OxfordDictionary of National Biography, s.n.; Cartulary of Holy Trinity,ed. Hodgett, no. 426; Corporation of London Records Office, Bridge House Deed, F35. 69J. P. Huffman, Family, Commerce and Religion inLondon and Cologne (Cambridge, 1998), Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-GermanRelations (1066-1307) (Ann The Social Politics of 9-22; idem, Arbor, 1999), 168- 222; H. Stehkamper, 'England und die Stadt Koln alsWahlmacher Konig derStadtKoln Ottos IV, in Koln das Reich undEuropa: Abhandlungen iiber weitraumigeVerflechtungen 7 Bateson,

in 1213, when

both

he and Otto

were

inweak

positions,

he confirmed

TEXT, VISUALISATION phrase and the assertion in Pseudo-Ine

AND POLITICS that foreign

93 merchants were to

remain in theports indicates thatdespite thebenefits ofRhineland trade, theLondoners' political programme at this time included opposition to the rights thatCologne merchants enjoyed inLondon and elsewhere. The
importance of these issues is also indicated by the appearance in the final

Renaud part of the collection of a genealogy of the counts ofBoulogne, for ofDamartin, count of Boulogne, was John's chief agent in building up
an alliance in the Low Countries, France and in 1212, in London, against a not to make he and John publicly peace with France.70 separate agreed a few years It was later the defeat and of Otto presumably following the capture guildhall, of Renaud at Bouvines they had and when London interests came

the fore inEngland - that theCologne merchants lostpossession of their Although theLondon Collection for its Anglo-Saxon
Latin collection known today as for in 1219-20 to pay 30 marks to recover it.71

to

laws draws on the

which

probably originated during the reign of Henry I,72 it includes no laws of iEethelred II, whose legislation is included in 'Quadripartitus'. The
reason his collection for this may have of laws as the London been the London of a the works Collection desire compiler's succession of heroic one

twelfth-century

'Quadripartitus',

other

so to pass direcdy fromAthelstan to Cnut omitting ^Ethelred. On

hand, contains text which

to present kings and relates

the
to

of London

legislationwhich at present is commonly attributed to ^Ethelred. That text is the highly commercial second part of theAnglo-Norman account
customs placed in the collection after the letter of Prester

John. The relevantmaterial attributed to ^Ethelred is the setof regulations

concerning the city and port of London, and in particular the well-known form of the code known which the since tolls', part 'Billingsgate opening as so dated to c. iooo.73 'IV iEthelred' and It is clear that 'IV 1840 is a composite its London document, to the rest. Moreover, character 'IV element ^Ethelred' and raises of a very being is not present

^Ethelred' different of

of 'Quadripartitus' manuscripts the mid-twelfth and later.74 This century were the materials 'IV ^Ethelred' comprising

in the earliest

not put

appears only in those the possibilities that together before the

in Mittelalter (Mitteilungen aus dem Stadtarchiv von Koln, 1971), Politik,Rech und Wirtschqft im 213-44; Rotuli Cartarum, ed. T. D. Hardy, I.i (1837), 60,194; Hansisches Urkundenbuch,ed. Verein furHansische Geschichte (11vols., Halle and Leipzig, 1876-1916), I, nos. 40, 84. 70 Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', 728; A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, w8y-i2i6 (Oxford, 1955), 449-53; Huffman, Social Politics, 209, 211, 214. 71The Great Roll Fourth Tear of the of the Pipefor the Reign of King Henry III, Michaelmas 1220, ed. B. E. Harris (Pipe Roll Society, new series 47, 1981-3), 136. 72P. Wormald, TheMaking of English Law: King Alfred to the TwelfthCentury, I:Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), 236-44. 73 I, 232-5; The Laws of the Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, Kings of Englandfrom Edmund to Henry I, ed. A.J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), 70-3, 322-4. 74 Wormald, Making of English Law, 240-1, 320-2, 371.

94

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

was no earlierOld English version and that the twelfth century, that there London element may not have been composed until the twelfthcentury, possibly even in the reign of Stephen when the original version of the
document been we now know as

as towhether the towns in theMeuse valley (Huy, Liege and Nivelles) mentioned in 'IV iEthelred' were sufficiendy developed as commercial
centres by the year 1000 for their merchants to be regular visitors

compiled.

Furthermore,

to London Fs charter also have may Henry seems to be some there now uncertainty

to

England, as implied by the record of Billingsgate tolls.75 One of the features of the account of Billingsgate tolls is the favoured men of theEmperor', position said tohave been enjoyed inLondon by 'the merchants from Lorraine and the lower Rhineland and so essentially those trading throughCologne, especially by comparison with those from
Rouen, towns.

The men of the emperor who came to London in their shipswere 'held sicutetnos).This legum worthy of good laws, likeus' (bonarum digni tenebantur Londoners or that, like the Londoners, they enjoyed good laws of their own. The reference here may be to the privileges in the city enjoyed by themen of Cologne, which were confirmed and extended by two royal charters granted in the 1170s,one of which enjoined the Londoners to
to the men of give perpetual protection Cologne.76 in twelfth-century London have been acceptable That and presumably means either that they were subject to the same laws as the

Flanders, This part

Ponthieu, Normandy, was of the document

France

and

the Meuse

written

in the

imperfect

valley tense.

men ofCologne could context for theBillingsgate toll record (although the have enjoyed similar rights inLondon long before the royal charters), but it would have been a privilege too far forLondon merchants of the early
thirteenth

suggests

privilege a

would

possible

now seems possible that those ruleswere drafted for the specificpurposes were of the Londoners during the early thirteenthcentury or that they
a

a copy of in the city is usually Lorraine merchants concerning regulations or even much to to the mid-twelfth assumed earlier,77 but it century belong

The Anglo-Norman

century.

statement in theLondon Collection

that includes

reign ofJohn.78 Dealing with procedures of the city's court of Husting

concerning 75 M. affray, rents and debts according to 'the law of London',

of some earlier, probably version heavily manipulated text or texts. The need be no first part of the statement

twelfth-century, earlier than the it

Meuse de Sedan aMaastrich (des originesa 1600) Suttor, Vie et dynamiqued'unefleuve: la (Brussels, 2006), 15, 182-3, 242> 3?2~6, 346-51. 7 Huffman, Family, Commerceand Religion, 14-17. 77 Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', 495-502; Weinbaum, London, II, 29-38; cf.Brooke and The Grocers'Company and Keir, London, 266-8; P. Nightingale, AMedieval Mercantile Community: the Politics and Trade of London, 1000-1485 (New Haven and London, 1995), 7-10, 44-5. 78 Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', 485-95; Weinbaum, London, II, 13-17.

TEXT, VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

95

makes no mention of privileges enjoyed by foreigners,but itdoes define a specificprocedure for a foreigner (forein) taking an oath concerning debt merchant (marchant and then states thatby the law of London no foreign forein) has soke there 'neither at the guildhall nor elsewhere' (ne gildhalle
ne

of the citizens of London, but ismore

of the Cologne merchants on the Thames

aillurs).*79 This

is usually

is taken

to be

reference

to

likely to concern the guildhall

waterfront, described in one of

the guildhall

Henry IPs charters as their 'house' and subsequently as theirguildhall. In this text the Londoners appear to be challenging the rights of the Cologners to an independent jurisdiction, contrary to the provisions of theBillingsgate toll record. As we have seen, theCologners subsequently lost theirguildhall for a while. The second part of this statement,which
reads as a continuation

the 'law of the Lorrainers', clearly intending to differentiate it from the 'law of London' and thusperhaps alluding to theBillingsgate toll record, on which itdraws in otherways but with some significantchanges. Thus
the toll record's river statement that the men

of the first, opens

with

statement

concerning

down

unloaded (discarcatd) wool

to London

and was same

(perhaps meaning wool

available

of the emperor in the open

could

that had been shipped

market) and melted Lorrainer

purchase

Norman

fatand three livepigs for their shipsbecomes more restrictivein the Anglo
version of the

can purchase unworked wool, a variety of other goods (including (desfaite)

'broken

passage

which

asserts

that no

the earlier text)or anymore than three live pigs as provisions. In itsaim to protect London's clothing industryand in its rule that the Lorraine merchants could stay in the cityno longer than forty days, this statement
statement, and debts is immediately with comparable references tomake to Pseudo-Ine. and Husting a similar reference to Moreover, to procedures to another the first part concerning of the lands historic

wines',

vinz descusuz,

evidently

derived

from

the dissutum

unctum of

supposedly in the collection, to the citizens, I's supposed charter authority Henry which affirmed the procedure of Husting and the city's law concerning lands and debts. The conclusion of this Anglo-Norman section of the

seems

St Paul's

authoritative bell at St Paul's, just possibly reflects the dramatic events at

between 1212 and 1216.80 It certainly resonates with the account

collection,

with

its account

of the Folkmoot

and

its summoning

by

the

of folkmoots in the London interpolations to the Laws of Edward the mention a bell and the need there Confessor,81which like this statement tomake provision against fire,a point reinforcedby the inclusion later in the collection of the building code implemented after the fire of 1212.

79 Weinbaum's reading and translation are here preferable to Bateson's. 80 St Paul's, ed. Keene etal.,$i. 81 I, 657. Gesetze, ed. Liebermann,

96

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE ROYAL

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

Texts on later folios,82 themajority of them in Latin and so perhaps

long-standing memoranda are careful collection: oaths records of city custom, are more in the nature selection of evidential concerning and relate city procedures. to points made Their and section ordering of the

the Libertas

notJohn's charter granting them to choose their sheriffs (but, significantly, which the commune could that right), statements concerning theways in conflict within the city,and articleswhich informed Magna Carta. Finally, it is worth noting the collection's distinctive attention to Norway and its significance for London interest in that period. This
reflects levy money for collective purposes, a matter which been a cause of bitter

the analysis of these After occasion. further texts concerning Londoniensis, merchants, they include to the commune, material relevant associated with the citizens' right

in the preceding connections is for another

least through the foundation of Cistercian monasteries)84 with England

during the twelfth century and Geoffrey ofMonmouth's stories of Arthur's

Norway's

close

trading,83

religious

and

cultural

relations

(not

conquest ofNorway and his overlordship ofGodand. It also builds on the emphasis in the original version of the 'Laws ofEdward theConfessor' on Danish and Norwegian laws and customs being among those observed in England.85 But the London Collection went much further,adding
references to

had caused the one God

providing in eastern a detailed Baltic once

Norway

to several

Moreover, Edward theConfessor was creditedwith having established the

Norwegians, of the realm. implication as London as immigrants, collection's the Indeed, 'sworn brothers' and 'almost citizens' 'law of the Lorrainers' the same than freedom ends with to trade an in By

from German listing, derived was which Arthur supposed regions

to be venerated throughout Norway,86 and

of places sources, to have ruled.87

texts,

stressing

the way

in which

Arthur

London had seven churches dedicated to St Olaf the late twelfth century, one to while itsfour churches dedicated and St Magnus (d. 1116), (d. 1030) to St Botolph suggest indirect Norwegian connections via Boston. Trade

that Norwegians the Danes, that

enjoy is a greater freedom

should

the Lorrainers.

505-730; Weinbaum, 14252, fos. 106-28; Bateson, 'Municipal Collection', London, II, 39-91. 83See E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England. Towns, Commerce,and Crafts, 1086-1348 History ofScandinavia, ed. K. Helle (Cambridge, (1995), 188 (includes errors); The Cambridge 2003), 385. 1992), 77-98, 119-22, 281-4, 322-4, 84J.France, The Cistercians inScandinavia (Kalamazoo, 328, 493, 522-5, 535. 85 O'Brien, God's Peace, 186-7, 190-3. 86 I, 635, 659-60. E.g. Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, 87L. in the Leges AnglorumLondiniis Collectae', Muir, 'King Arthur's Northern Conquests Medium Aevum, 37 (1968), 253-62.

82 Add. MS

TEXT, VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

97

Gotlanders

in eastern Baltic goods

were significant Bergen

to England,
intermediaries,

in which
was a

the Norwegians
increasing and

and

merchants were attempting to gain a foothold there. In 1186 King Sverri

of Norway came to where there was

Cologne

between

ships and the 'Southmen' (evidendyGermans from theRhineland) had was cheaper than ale. This led to fighting imported somuch wine that it
the Northmen against and the Germans. and Sverri then spoke attempt at a the evils of drink the Germans' public to corner

great

number

of merchant

assembly

a was wheat, special honey, flour and cloth. For Sverri St Botolph's day in the saga were named feast and two Norwegians named The Botolph. seem to reflect the in references the London thus Collection Norwegian Londoners'

trade, contrasting themwith theEnglish, whom he thanked forbringing

with a friendlypeople who had more direct access to Baltic trade. This
explains Edward's a reference to in one of the civitas, named Engra interpolations one laws as the origin of the 'Saxons of who were Germany' as 'sworn brothers' claimed and citizens' potential 'proper

antagonism

towards

Cologne

and

preference

for dealing

to

of of

theEnglish. Engra was presumably Schleswig, at the neck of theAngeln peninsula and under the authority of the king of Denmark, who also periodically controlled Liibeck, its successor as a hub forBaltic trade.89 It is especially striking,therefore, that a year after the death of John a
commercial treaty was concluded with made but men by possible the terms, stating that the two and merchants shall have freedom Liibeck's charter the recent reconciliation was the king of Norway. That of warring in parties Norway, so that their lands shall be common to come than and go, express the ideal indicates

the groups

Carta.90

of quasi co-citizenship stated in the London Collection and inMagna thatCologne

imperial of less a decade later

had attempted to control that trade at themouth of the markets inEngland, from which Rhine, blocking theLiibeckers' access to
the charter released them.91

of prophecy. Prophecy had informed William fitz history as the fulfilment The compiler of theLondon collection followed Stephen's view of the city.
a similar prophetic came the collection line. Many of those London aspirations expressed to fruition between there 1215 and 1217, while in are

Geoffrey

of Monmouth

had

structured

his

88 Sverissaga: The Saga of King Sverri of Norway, trans.J. Sephton (1899), 49> J66, 128-30,198; for the reliability of this source, seeHistory ofScandinavia, ed. Helle, 502. S9 I, 658; D. Kattinger, Die Gotldndische Genossenschqft: der Gesetze, ed., Liebermann, Handel in Nord- undWesteuropa (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, fruhansisch-gotldndisch 1999), 13-23, 155-87; Codex Diplomatics Lubecensis: Urkundenbuch der Stadt Lubeck, ed. Verein fur Liibeckische Geschichte (11vols., Lubeck, 1843-1905), I, nos. n-15, 20, 23, 27-8. 90 Foedera, ed. T. Rymer et al. (3 vols, in 6 parts, 1816-30), I.i, 149;History ofScandinavia, ed. Helle, 375-6. 91Codex Diplomaticus Lubecensis, no. 35; Huffman, Family Commerceand Religion, 23-4.

98 signs

TRANSACTIONS that around

OF THE ROYAL setdement

HISTORICAL was made

SOCIETY in the city's internal

1220 a new

affairsand in itsrelationswith Cologne and Lubeck.

This has that paper argued of variety writings concerning the cities resemblances in general, and

echoes

between in particular,

and London

indicate that in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries there developed a widely shared community of ideas about London and its A physical, cultural, social, historical,mythological and political identity. was to to to and its visualise the city respond developing capacity depiction
part

storytellingnot so distincdy separated as theyare today, informedboth an appreciation of city landscape and strategiesforachieving political ends. It
even

of this process.

Literary

and

visual

modes

of expression,

two forms

of

were

circulate in many informal ways, including thevisual. So faras Londoners

concerned, St Paul's and its environs was in this period probably

to assume is not necessary to listened readings

that all

involved ideas,

from

them:

in the process read the texts or stories and vocabulary could

themost important site for such exchanges. The cathedral linked them to the circles inwhich key textswere composed and debated. Some of
its canons were members

some of the writers and military Moreover, purposes. political religious, as the less educated', for a wide Tor the many... involved wrote audience, had it.92 'less educated' of The groups put middling Henry Huntingdon learning Paul's.93 law. The who engaged politics in controversial were not least debate, political a strong sense of the by texts put together

and itsprecinct constituted the citizens' principal site of assembly, for

of leading

London

families

and

the cathedral

in London, outside the ruling elite, certainly included people of some

at St city's Those informed

standing and its role in relation to the nation (orBritain) and to ideas of a complex literaryconstruction informed during the reign ofJohn, itself and visual principles, unites these aspects of the city's identity, by spatial not least bymeans of itshistorical and geographical breadth. Moreover, it indicates how the citizens, or their leaders, in rehearsing the legitimacy
of their claims on their awareness great collection of laws and other in London

crisis, on the documented rightsof deeply entrenched groups and on an were selected,manipulated and fabricated to furtherthe interestsof texts particular topic,dealing with only a few elements ina single collection and
leaving many as to how we The unresolved. findings problems such this and other address should raise serious collections questions of laws and those groups. This paper has done no more than scratch the surface of this imaginative visualisation of the past. In the compilation of this collection,

on contemporary not only focused in earlier of ideas developed

concerns episodes

but

also

drew

of communal

92 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 93 'fitz Osbert, William'. Keene,

lviii, 584-5.

TEXT, customs in the future.

VISUALISATION

AND POLITICS

99 of London, including texts as evidence for

It seems have

that those historians used some of these should be more

the present older much For all

author, who city law and

custom,

cautious

from now

on.

the positivistic, achievements, decontextualising approach more to establish of the past, the 'uncorrupted' text, has missed seeking at the new than a trick or two. At the same time we should insights rejoice its great that these and other sources of the time continue to offer us into London's

complex cultural and political identity.