John Stow's Survey of London records that the "soke" – in this context the right to extract fines as a source of income[5] – (later "liberty") was granted in the time of Saxon king Edgar the Peaceful, east of Aldgate to a guild of knights, the Cnichtengild, in exchange, essentially, for regular jousting.

Norman kings confirmed these rights but later the land was voluntarily transferred to the Priory of the Holy Trinity by the descendants of the guild.

In 1120 or 1121 (the exact date is unknown), the Portsoken was granted as a liberty to the Priory of Holy Trinity, which had been founded in 1107 by Queen Matilda, the wife of King Henry I.

The sitting prior of Holy Trinity became, ex officio, an alderman of the City of London Corporation representing the Portsoken ward, and remained so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in 1531.

[6] The Ward was originally coterminous with the once slightly larger parish of St Botolph without Aldgate and extended as far south as the Thames.

[11] This pattern of diversity continued, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate as a whole (both the Portsoken and East Smithfield parts) is recorded as having a population of at least 25 people identified as "blackamoors.

In 2014 William Campbell-Taylor made history when he became the first ever party politician to win a seat on the City of London's Common Council, standing as a Labour candidate in a by-election in the ward of Portsoken.

Two incumbent councillors, Munsur Ali and Jason Paul Pritchard, who were elected as Labour candidates in 2017, stood jointly and were both re-elected.