76 ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN 
addressed to William the bishop, and Godfrey 
the portreeve, only grants to the citizens that 
they should all be law-worthy as they had been 
in King Edward’s days, i. e. that they should 
only be dealt with by form of law, the distinc- 
tion between a freeman and a villein or serf, 
and that ‘every child should be his father’s heir 
after his father’s days,’ which included an ex- 
emption both from the lord’s claim to his vassal’s 
property and also from the Norman law of primo- 
geniture. The commutation of the indefinite 
claims of the lord for a fee-farm rent from the 
whole borough had begun before the Conquest, 
and was much extended afterwards, though the 
right of talliage was still exercised. The ‘ con- 
suetudines’ which William Rufus and Henry I. 
granted to different cities were to enjoy exemp- 
tion from tolls and similar burdens, and it is 
very doubtful whether before the reign of Henry 
II. any city had received the privilege of elect- 
ing their own chief magistrate and judge.* 
The name of mayor seems to imply that the 
cities of France and Flanders, with which Eng- 
land was so closely connected, had furnished 
the model on which its municipalities were con- 
structed, as far as the state of the people 
* Hallam iii. 36. refers it generally to the reign of John. 
