year in duration, the utmost amount
Fitzwalter could claim as remuneration was one hundred shillings. If
such were the duties of the Castellan in time of war, he had rights
hardly less important in time of peace. Here it should be premised that
under Norman rule the King's justice or the King's peace was assured by
the grant of soke and soken--the former being the power of hearing and
determining causes and levying fines and forfeitures, and the latter the
area within which soke and other privileges were exercised. In the City
of London the Fitzwalters had a soken extending from the wall of the
Canonry of St. Paul as a man went down by the "bracine" or brewhouse of
St. Paul to the Thames; and thence to the side of the mill that stood on
the water running down by the Fleet Bridge, by London Walls, round by
the Friars Preachers to Ludgate, and by the back of the friary to the
corner of the wall of the said Canons of St. Paul. It embraced, in fact,
the whole parish of the Church of St. Andrew, which was in their gift.

Appendant to this soken were various rights and privileges. Fitzwalter
might choose from the sokemanry, or inhabitants of the soken, a Sokeman
_par excellence_; and if any of the sokemanry was impleaded in the
Guildhall on any matter not touching the body of the Mayor or any of the
Sheriffs for the time being, the Sokeman might demand the court of
Fitzwalter. But while the Mayor and Citizens had to allow him to hold
his court, his sentence was expected to coincide with that of the
Guildhall. He exercised, indeed, a co-ordinate rather than an appellate
jurisdiction, as may be shown in the following manner:

Suppose that a thief had been taken in the soken, stocks and a prison
were in readiness for him; and he was thence carried before the Mayor to
receive his sentence, but not until he had been conveyed to Fitzwalter's
court and within his franchise. The nature of the sentence, to which the
latter's assent was required, varied with the gravity of the offence. If
the person were condemned for simple larceny, he was conducted to the
Elms, near Smithfield--the usual place of execution before Tyburn was
adopted for the purpose--and there "suffered his judgment," i.e., was
hanged like other common thieves. If, on the other hand, the theft was
associated with treason, the crime, it was considered, called for more
exemplary punishment, and the felon was bound to a pillar in the Thames
at Wood-wharf, to which waterme