Appendant to this soken were various rights and privileges. Fitzwalter might choose from the sokemanry, or inhabitants of the soken, a Sokeman _par excellence_; and if any of the sokemanry was impleaded in the Guildhall on any matter not touching the body of the Mayor or any of the Sheriffs for the time being, the Sokeman might demand the court of Fitzwalter. But while the Mayor and Citizens had to allow him to hold his court, his sentence was expected to coincide with that of the Guildhall. He exercised, indeed, a co-ordinate rather than an appellate jurisdiction, as may be shown in the following manner:
Suppose that a thief had been taken in the soken, stocks and a prison were in readiness for him; and he was thence carried before the Mayor to receive his sentence, but not until he had been conveyed to Fitzwalter's court and within his franchise. The nature of the sentence, to which the latter's assent was required, varied with the gravity of the offence. If the person were condemned for simple larceny, he was conducted to the Elms, near Smithfield--the usual place of execution before Tyburn was adopted for the purpose--and there "suffered his judgment," i.e., was hanged like other common thieves. If, on the other hand, the theft was associated with treason, the crime, it was considered, called for more exemplary punishment, and the felon was bound to a pillar in the Thames at Wood-wharf, to which watermen 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 Gildhallæ Londiniensis," and corresponds in all or most respects with what we have found in Blount.