Where Medieval Power Meets Modern Finance And The Untold Story of the City of London
https://x.com/onechancefreedm/status/1997065838663254136
Where Medieval Power Meets Modern Finance And The Untold Story of the City of London
point resonates because the City of London really does sit inside the U.K. with a political and legal structure unlike anything else in the country. Its odd status isn’t modern at all, it’s the product of a series of agreements that go back nearly a thousand years. After the Norman Conquest, William I issued a charter in 1067 guaranteeing that London’s citizens could keep their ancient laws and customs. That single act effectively recognized the City as a semi autonomous community inside the kingdom at a time when royal authority was consolidating everywhere else. In 1215, Magna Carta singled out the City explicitly, promising it would retain all its ancient liberties and free customs. And around that same period, London secured the right to elect its own mayor, a privilege no other English town had. These weren’t symbolic flourishes; they created a civic identity that endured through dynasties, civil wars, imperial expansion, and the rise of the modern British state.
Those liberties also positioned the City to become the country’s financial engine. By the late 1600s, after the Glorious Revolution reshaped the constitutional order, money and politics in England were fused more tightly than ever. In 1694, City merchants founded the Bank of England to finance government debt, marking the beginning of Britain’s permanent national debt and the architecture of modern public finance. As the empire expanded, the City became the clearinghouse of global commerce, all while retaining its unusual governance as a medieval municipal corporation run by livery companies and business interests rather than a typical democratic electorate. When Werner says the U.K. doesn’t have finance; the City of London has it, he is pointing to this long trajectory. Britain’s financial power grew through the City’s institutions rather than through Westminster, giving the Square Mile a center of gravity that sits somewhat apart from the rest of the country.
Why It Still Feels Separate And What the Law Says Today
The City’s modern structure reinforces this older story. It is still the only jurisdiction in the U.K. where businesses have formal voting power in local elections, a system updated in 2002 but still rooted in medieval corporate representation. The City also maintains the office of the Remembrancer, a centuries old official who sits inside Parliament to monitor legislation affecting the City’s interests. And the famous ritual where the monarch pauses at the City’s boundary to be greeted by the Lord Mayor is a surviving symbol of those ancient arrangements, not a legal limit on royal authority. Today, under U.K. law, the City is fully subject to parliamentary sovereignty. Acts like the Local Government Act 1972 and the Representation of the People Acts apply there, and during the U.K.’s membership in the EU, EU law applied equally to the City.
Even so, the City feels distinct because its institutions predate the modern state, and Parliament has historically chosen to respect those ancient liberties rather than rewrite them. When London underwent its Big Bang deregulation in 1986 and transformed into one of the world’s most global financial centers, the City of London Corporation, the same corporate body shaped by documents stretching back to 1067 continued to govern the Square Mile. That continuity creates the impression that the City wasn’t created by the British state but absorbed into it, carrying its older wiring into a very different era.
This is the context behind Werner’s comments. The City isn’t separate from Britain, but it is one of the oldest components of Britain, a place where medieval charters, imperial finance, and modern global markets sit on top of one another, still shaping how power works inside the U.K. today.
posted by Satish Sharma at
04:17
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home