How the City of London Maintained its Charter. only in name, as it was removed some years ago, and only a pillar marks its ancient po sition. The walls have disappeared, the gates are only kept in remembrance as the names of streets, and yet the City of London, a city within a city, guards its rights and privileges as tenaciously as it did five hundred years ago. It is impossible to give the date of the first charter, although Geoffrey of Monmouth as serts that the city was founded by Brutus, nephew of /Eneas, and called Trinovantum or New Troy, and that King Lud built the walls round it, called it Caer-Lud, or Lud's Town, and granted it a charter. But that was so far in the misty past that we may well rele gate the story to the realm of legendary ancient history, and look at its charter in the light of more modern times. A perusal of the history of its charter shows the great number of times the city has had to contend with monarchs for the maintenance of its rights. The citizens were ready at all times to for feit property, money, and other valuables, so long as the rights, privileges and customs of the city were undisturbed. They showed a loyalty and patriotism which ennobles their memory. In the ninth year of Richard I, it cost the citizens 1,500 marks, a mark being equal to 133. 4d.; King John extracted 3,000 marks from them; Henry III, in the second year of his reign, threatened the city with an abro gation of its charter unless the citizens paid him one-fifteenth part of the value of their movable goods. The citizens agreed to be mulcted, on condition that the King would guarantee not to interfere with them again. To this he readily consented, and the people paid the tribute. Alas for kingly honor! Henry, in the ninth year of his reign, revoked the liberties of the city, and when the Lord Mayor and aldermen knelt before him and asked that the charter should be restored, they were insulted, and told that he had other ideas. However, he restored the charter on
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the payment of another fifteenth of their prop erty; 'in the thirty-sixth year of his reign he made the city give him 500 marks; three years after that he got 600 more marks; the next year he compelled the payment of 4,000 marks; and in the fiftieth year he again levied on the city for the sum of 20,000 marks. These sums were not paid willingly, but as the king abrogated the charter each time, the citizens submitted in order to have their rights restored. When Edward I came to the throne he ob tained 3,000 marks from the city, whilst Ed ward II borrowed £1,400, a sum which it is needless to say is still owing. In 1392 Richard II wanted the city to loan him £1,000, but the burghers refused, where upon the King imprisoned the Lord Mayor and aldermen and took all their privileges from them, and the citizens were glad to get them back by paying the king £20,000, and giving a number of jewels for the queen's crown. Henry VI had another way of making the city pay for its rights. He compelled the Lord Mayor, at each inauguration, to attend before him and prove the citizens' rights to certain privileges, taking care to make the in coming mayor pay a goodly sum before the proof would be admitted. Charles II seized the charter and made certain alterations in it, which the citizens had to accept, for there was a reaction politically, after the commonwealth, and for the first time in history the City of London bent the knee before the king's power. The principal changes were in giving the king the right to approve of the selection made by the citizens for the various offices, and in giving the king power to remove any mayor who should be obnoxious to him. The Lord Mayor's procession to Westmin ster, on the ninth of November, is for the pur pose of obtaining the monarch's consent to his appointment to that high office. In the thirty-fifth year of his reign, Charles II made some serious inroads into the rights of the city, and used the power, which he
