same year the first sheriffs are
said to have been made (_facti_). But John, immediately after his
accession in 1199, granted the citizens leave to choose their own
sheriffs. And his charter of 1215 permits them to elect annually their
mayor. (Maitland's Hist. of London, p. 74, 76.) We read, however, under
the year 1200, in the ancient chronicle lately published, that
twenty-five of the most discreet men of the city were chosen and sworn
to advise for the city, together with the mayor. These were evidently
different from the aldermen, and are the original common council of the
city. They were perhaps meant in a later entry (1229):--"Omnes
aldermanni et magnates civitatis per assensum universorum civium," who
are said to have agreed never to permit a sheriff to remain in office
during two consecutive years.

The city and liberties of London were not wholly under the jurisdiction
of the several wardmotes and their aldermen. Landholders, secular and
ecclesiastical, possessed their exclusive sokes, or jurisdictions, in
parts of both. One of these has left its name to the ward of Portsoken.
The prior of the Holy Trinity, in right of this district, ranked as an
alderman, and held a regular wardmote. The wards of Farringdon are
denominated from a family of that name, who held a part of them by
hereditary right as their territorial franchise. These sokes gave way so
gradually before the power of the citizens, with whom, as may be
supposed, a perpetual conflict was maintained, that there were nearly
thirty of them in the early part of the reign of Henry III., and upwards
of twenty in that of Edward I. With the exception of Portsoken, they
were not commensurate with the city wards, and we find the juries of the
wards, in the third of Edward I., presenting the sokes as liberties
enjoyed by private persons or ecclesiastical corporations, to the
detriment of the crown. But, though the lords of these sokes trenched
materially on the exclusive privileges of the city, it is remarkable
that, no condition but inhabitancy being required in the thirteenth
century for civic franchises, both they and their tenants were citizens,
having individually a voice in municipal affairs, though exempt from
municipal jurisdiction. I have taken most of this paragraph from a
valuable though short notice of the state of London in the thirteenth
century, published in the fourth volume of the Archaeological Journal (p.
273).

The inference which suggests