At the time of the Norman Conquest 'The City of Leicester', as it is called in the Domesday Survey of 1086, was a place of some importance, for it was a borough having a local administration of its own, and was presumably governed by its own officers. In other words there is evidence that a system of self-government was then in operation, the precise form of which we are left to imagine, but which it may be inferred had its origin in Saxon times.
The kind of local government in force in the time of the Mercian kings and the Saxon bishops is a matter of conjecture. Whatever its constitutional form may have been, its operations must have been much impeded during the frequent irruptions of the Danes, and their ultimate conquest and long period of domination over the Saxon inhabitants towards the close of the 9th Century.
With the restoration of the Anglo-Saxon line of kings and the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042, though the influence of the Danes proved in some respects to be lasting, the old Saxon system of local government was doubtless to a great extent re-established. The earliest written records of the borough tell us of two ancient and complementary institutions which together formed the germ and nucleus of Leicester's present system of municipal government. These were respectively known as the
Portmanmoot and the
Gild Merchant.
