A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



county, and had only a few houses and some acres of ' No man's land.'" 

 There were only twenty-four tenants-in-chief. The lay holders, either 

 English or Norman, held a very small proportion of the land compared 

 with the large holdings of the bishop of London and the abbot of West- 

 minster," and many of the lay tenants, such as Geoffrey de Mandeville 

 and Earl Roger, possessed vastly greater estates in other counties than 

 those which they held in Middlesex. 



Owing to the unimportance of the lay tenures, it was saved from the 

 evils which attended the building of feudal castles, not one being raised 

 within its boundaries. 



In William IPs reign the only incident of importance connected 

 with Middlesex occurred in 1095. The quarrel between the king and 

 Archbishop Anselm was then at its height, and the Council of Rocking- 

 ham had been held in the spring of that year to discuss the question of the 

 recognition of Urban II as pope. Anselm kept Whitsuntide at Mortlake, 

 but immediately after the festival he was summoned to the neighbourhood 

 of Windsor where the king then held his court, and therefore came to his 

 manor of Hayes. He was visited there the day after his arrival by nearly 

 all the bishops, who tried to prevail on him to make his peace by a pay- 

 ment of money to the king." He refused to buy the king's friendship, 

 and refused also to accept the pallium which had been sent privately 

 to William from Rome. The bishops retired discomfited, and William, 

 realizing that Anselm was inflexible, and being already concerned with 

 Mowbray's threatened rebellion in the north, sent messages of reconcilia- 

 tion to Hayes. 88 A few days later the king and archbishop met publicly 

 as friends at Windsor. 



The most important aspect of the history of Middlesex under the 

 Normans and Angevins is to be found in the definition of the county's 

 relation to London. Henry I granted Middlesex to the city of London 

 to farm for 300 per annum, and granted to the citizens the right to 

 appoint from among themselves whom they would to be sheriff. 89 It 

 cannot be said that the grant of the sheriffwick made the county a 

 dependency of the City, but rather that London and Middlesex were from 

 that time to be regarded as one from an administrative point of view. 80 

 The citizens were to be responsible for the City and shire as a unity, not 

 for the City and its dependency. 31 Both the 'firma' and the shrievalty are 

 spoken of sometimes as of ' London,' 3S sometimes as of ' Middlesex,' and 

 sometimes as of ' London and Middlesex,' ss but ' for fiscal purposes, 

 London and Middlesex under any name are indivisible.' 3 * The relation 

 between the City and shire remained on this basis until the Local 



" Domesday Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 127. * Ibid, ii, 57-63 ; ibid, i, 23-5, 34, 44. 



17 Eadmer, Hist. Novorum (ed. M. Rule), 70. " Ibid. 71. 



" Liber Albus (Rolls Ser.), i, 128-9 Rymer, Toed. (Rec. Com.), i, II. 



10 Cf. Hund. R. of Edw. I (Rec. Com.), ii, 403 sqq. 



11 Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347 seq. ; cf. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, i, 42 ; Stubbs, 

 Const. Hist, i, 439. 



" Pipe R. (Rec. Com.), 31 Hen. I, 143. Pipe R. 8 Ric. I. 



14 Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347. 



It 



