n fastened their boats or barges, there
to remain during two successive floods and ebbs of the tide.

So important a franchise in the City was in itself a high honour, and it
carried other distinctions with it. The Fitzwalter of the day, when the
Mayor was minded to hold a Great Council, was invited to attend, and be
a member of it; and on his arrival, the Mayor or his deputy was required
to rise and appoint him a place by his side. During the time he was at
the hustings, all judgments were pronounced by his mouth, and such waifs
as might accrue whilst he was there were presented by him to the
bailiffs of the City or to whomsoever he pleased, by the advice of the
Mayor.

Such is the story as we find it in the pages of Blount, in which it
appears apropos of nothing--merely as an instance of curious and
picturesque usages which had long ceased to exist. Blount, as we have
seen, gives as his authority Sir William Dugdale, who alludes to the
subject in his "Extinct Baronage of England," and Dugdale seems to have
owed the information to the "Collection of Glover, Somerset Herald."
Stow also knew of the "services and franchises," and it is thought that
he had seen a copy of them in the "Liber Custumarum." The latter is
accessible in print in Riley's edition of the "Munimenta Gildhallae
Londiniensis," and corresponds in all or most respects with what we have
found in Blount.

So much for the antecedents of the story.

The Fitzwalters are said to have come over with the Conqueror, and to
have been invested with the soke before mentioned by his favour and in
requital of their services. That the family had at one time
extraordinary rights in the City of London is shown by the evidence of
the Patent Rolls, from which we learn that in the third year of Edward
I. (1275) Robert Fitzwalter received licence from the Crown to transfer
Baynard Castle, "adjoining the wall of the City, with all walls and
fosses thereunto pertaining, as also the Tourelle called Montfichet," to
Robert Kilwardley, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of founding
the House and Church of the Friars Preachers--"provided always that by
reason of this grant nothing shall be extinguished to him and his heirs
which to his Barony did belong, but that whatsoever relating thereto, as
well in rents, landing of vessels, and other franchises and privileges
in the City of London or elsewhere, without diminution unto him the said
Robert, or to that Barony, have rec