Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

(4) There was also as might be expected a burning controversy as to the city taxes.664 The mayor alleged that he and his deputies had been accustomed to collect in the cathedral precincts a certain proportion of the King’s taxes, the ferm, and the sums needed for general town expenses; and Shillingford supported this claim before the lord chancellor by “a long rehearsal thereof from King Edward’s time unto this day, how and under what form it was done of old time.”665 Of late however the bishop’s tenants had refused to come to the Guild Hall and have their share assessed, “by the commandment of the said bishop menacing the said tenants … to put them out of their tenures. And so they durst not come, set, nor pay as they have been wont to do.”666 The bishop justified his action by a variety of arguments. The King’s taxes he probably could not dispute with any show of reason. But with regard to the ferm he employed a comprehensive mode of reasoning which struck at the very foundation of all authority of mayor or commonalty; for that, he said, the town had no power whatever to collect, since Exeter had neither mayor nor bailiffs nor any fee-ferm at all till the time of Henry the Third, and even then the grant was illegally made by Richard of Almayne, who really possessed no rights in the borough.667 For the taxes connected with municipal expenses, or as the mayor called them, the “citizens’ spending,” he asserted that his tenants were not legally responsible. In any case he differed altogether from the citizens in his definition of the “ancient custom” by which the payment of the taxes should be regulated,668 and complained that his tenants had not been duly summoned to take part in the assessment, and “of malice” had been charged in their absence “an importable sum … so that there would have remained in the mayor’s hands a great sum thereof above the said dime,” like as there had remained in other mayors’ hands as much as £7 or £5, sometimes more or less.669

(5) In one of the most burdensome duties of town life, the keeping of watch and ward, the dependents of St. Peter’s fee had sought to throw the whole labour on the citizens.670 The bishop’s tenants when they were summoned “to come and keep the watch and the peace came not … but they were forbode upon a great pain, and charged if any of the mayor’s officers entered into any tenement of the bishop for to warn any man to come to the watch, that they should break his head.”671 The bishop in fact had ordered that a fine of 40s.– a fine quite beyond the power of an ordinary tradesman to pay – should be levied from any one who dared to serve on the watch. “Whereupon the mayor made right great wayward language to them. The mayor said waywardly he would do more, he would make levy both of the citizens’ spending and the fee-farm, and that he would well avow, and bade them of all to inform the Justice thereof, and that he would do the same; and so the mayor did.”672

(6) “The most disclaunderous article” of all, according to the bishop, was the question of the assize of wine, ale, and bread. While the mayor claimed the assize over the bishop’s demesne, the bishop asserted that such assize “of time that no mind is” belonged wholly to the bishop himself, and in no wise to the mayor.673 This matter was partly a question of finance, and partly a question of order. So long as wine was first smuggled in by the bishop’s tenants, and then sold in the houses of the canons and in the precincts, against “the ordinances and cry” made by the mayor, the town lost the customs which ought to be paid at the port of Exmouth on every pipe of wine; and as the ferm was paid out of these customs, the bishop’s tenants escaped their share of the rent,674 and left the whole burden to be borne by the citizens. The corporation further lost the “wine gavell” paid on all wine sold by retail in the town. Moreover fraudulent sellers went unpunished; for instead of allowing the town officers to cast into the canal wine which was condemned by the municipality as “corrupt and not whole for man’s body, damnable and which should be damned,” the bishop’s tenants actually found means to gather from it profits of iniquity; “the which corrupt wine hath been carried to Topsham and there shipped, and so led to Bordeaux, there to be put and melled among new wine, as it shall be well proved if need be.” In the same way the weighing of bread was resisted, and the due testing of beer, and the authority of the city set at nought.

(7) There was also a quarrel about who was to get the profits from increased rents of stalls and shops and houses which opened on the market-place,675 and whose value altogether depended on the growth of the market and the town trade. Both the municipality and the church would willingly have seized the “unearned increment.” The convent had set up stalls and booths “on the ground of the said mayor and citizens without licence of them asked” – great stalls sixty feet long and over three feet broad, where of old time there had only been shop windows, “the leaves thereof going inward, and none other never were.” The bishop answered that any one in the town might put stalls outside his own house if he chose; and in any case, he added, with consistent denial of the authority of the corporation, it was a matter to be punished by the King, if at all, and not by the commonalty. When the townsmen further urged that they had always “of time that no mind is” held their fish-market in Fish Street, a sort of debateable land, which lay outside the cemetery but within the precincts of the close, but that now the dean and chapter had refused to let the market be held there, and had themselves made stairs and gardens encroaching on the street, which moreover cut off the mayor’s way to the town walls and towers, the bishop answered in quibbling wise that as there never was such a street as Fish Street, no market could well be held in it, nor could it be encroached upon: what the town chose to call Fish Street, the prelate explained, was in his nomenclature S. Martin’s or the Canon’s Street.676

(8) As in other fortified towns, where the wall of the ecclesiastical precincts ran side by side with the city wall,677 endless questions were raised as to the management and repair of walls and towers, and the control of the city gates, and the use of the narrow way that ran inside the wall for the movement of troops, the carriage of ammunition, and the approach of the city authorities, or of workmen – questions which in time of war or of civil revolt were of vital consequence, and which even in quiet days brought frequent trouble. Each side claimed the lane, and the mayor and corporation objected to the canons who, having back doors opening from the gardens into it, had made it into a mere rubbish heap, so “that no man therein may well ride nor go nor lead carriage to the walls, to the great hurt and hindering of the mayor and commonalty;” and who had further broken up the great drain which had been made to draw off rain water from the town and had carried away the stones. Moreover the commonalty had spent £20 on building a great tower “and right a strong door with lock and key made thereto and fast shut, to this intent there to bring in stuff for the war and defence of the city and other thing more of the said city there to be kept strong, safe, and sure; but whenever this lock, and those of various postern doors, were repaired “they have been right spitefully broke up by the bishop, and dean and chapter,” and the door of the tower left at all times open so that the canons could throw their rubbish into it. And finally, the canons having fitted one of the town gates with a new lock and key of their own, by night and day “full ungodly carriage have been led in and out.” “At which gate also ofttime have been great affrays and debate, and like to have been manslaughter, and divers night-walkers and rioters coming out at that gate into the city, and there have made many affrays, assaults, and other riotous misgovernance against the peace, and broken out over the town walls, and much more mischief like to fall by that gate without better remedy had.” To all these charges the canons answered that the lane was their own property, nor had they ever broken any gutter there nor thrown rubbish out; and as to the wall it was the commonalty which “by their frowardness to evil intent,” had let it fall down and had not repaired it “in any time this hundred year;” while the towers stood on ecclesiastical ground, “and the bishop sometime had his prison in that tower.”678

(9) The common use of the cathedral became a further subject of wrangling, as the corporation pressed for sole authority within the tower inclosure and the ecclesiastical party retorted by stricter protection of its own peculiar property. It had been the custom at fair-time to set up booths in the cemetery and even within the church; but the dean and chapter now began to demand tolls, especially from the jewellers’ stalls. This the town angrily resented, and the matter was referred to arbitrators, who decided that the chapter had no right to any such tolls within church or cemetery, “for anger and evil will whereof the said dean and chapter by their ministers and servants, ever since have put out all such merchants and merchandize contrary and against the old rule and use, and to the destruction of the fairs and markets.”679 Moreover the canons proceeded to lock the doors of a cloister adjoining the church which was according to the citizens “a common way for the mayor and commonalty” into the cathedral, and “a place of prayer and devotion to pray for all souls whose bones lay buried there.” It was in no sense, said the ecclesiastics, a “common way” of the townspeople; it was walled and glazed and had a chapter house and library, and the canons were much offended that “ungodly ruled people, most custumably young people of the said commonalty within the said cloister have exercised unlawful games as the top, ‘queke,’ ‘penny prykke,’ and most at tennis, by the which the walls of the said cloister have been defouled and the glass windows all to brost, as it openly sheweth, contrary to all good and ghostly goodness, and directly against all good policy, and against all good rule within the said cloister to suffer any such misruled people to have common entry.” The mayor still asserted however that “within time out of mind there was no such cloister there but all open church here, and a common way into the said church.” As to the games, “the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty say that they by the law be not bound thereto to answer.”680

Amid the endless and vulgar details of all this intricate quarrel, Shillingford held fast to the principles which he saw plainly were of the very essence of any true municipal life. Charters of freedom were of no use if in every question of trade, of police, of finance, of public order, ecclesiastical privilege stepped in and brought all government save its own to an end. All discussions from first to last invariably came back to the one central problem – the right of arrest – and here the mayor was determined that no persuasion should induce him to abate one jot of the city claims. He would give no assent to the bishop’s arguments drawn from an alleged friendly agreement which laid down that the town officers should make arrests in the cemetery only, and that they might not arrest there the canons or men wearing the religious habit or their ministers and servants, and steadfastly denied that any such writing had ever been known or proved. Henceforth he would not hear of concession or compromise; “it would seem if I so did that I had doubt of our right where I have right none,”681 as he said to the lord chief justice. When “my lord himself spake darkly of right old charters,” and conjured him to make an end of the matter, “and if I so did I should be chronicled;” the mayor still remained firm.682 “I held my own, I had matter enough.” He was especially pressed in sundry points by the lord chancellor, who as a learned man made merry over the tale of Vespasian’s connexion with the city, a piece of history upon which the mayor did not greatly care to dwell;683 and as former canon of Exeter cathedral he was ready at times to laugh over the stories of his Exeter days, and of the exciting arrests and lively disputes which he so well remembered; “all it was to tempt me with laughing cheer,” said the watchful mayor.684 “At the last fell to matter of sadness, and they spake of God’s house, St. Peter’s Church of Exeter, and my lord spake of his house, his hall, and the justice the same, how loath they would be to make arrests therein, and said that St. Peter’s Church was God’s house and His hall, &c., and made many reasons to bring in absence of arrests.685 They were answered as God would give us grace.” The chancellor, as was natural from his old association with the chapter, was especially anxious to bring about a compromise favourable to the church. He proposed that the city should have the view of frankpledge over the whole city and precincts, and should only make arrests ordered by that court; and on the other hand the bishop “to have his courts of his own tenants and to hold pleas of greater sum than the court baron, forty shillings, and spake of forty marks. Upon this mean he sticked fast and thought it was reasonable, and ever asked of me divers times what I would say thereto, all as I conceived to tempt me, and to consent to a mean; and then I said, my lord, if it please you, ye shall have me excused to answer, for though methought that it were a mean reasonable I dare not say yea, though I have power, for the matter toucheth a great commonalty as well as me, and so that I dare not say unto time that I have spoke with my fellowship at home.”686

For two years the discussions dragged on at one place or another, till in 1448 an agreement was made between Town and Church “by mean and mediation of Thomas Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and of Sir William Bonville, knight,” and was four days later (Dec. 16th, 1448) confirmed by the Chief Justice of Common Pleas and another Judge. Exeter was forgiven the enormous damages demanded by the convent for the illegal arrests made by the town officers within the precincts two years before – damages amounting to £1,000, or a sum which must have been equal to many years’ revenue of the borough. For the rest the arbitration reasserted in definite terms the division of authority against which the city had so vigorously protested. The bishop was left absolute lord of his fee. All he desired – court baron, leet, view of frankpledge, a rule without any disturbance of the mayor, bailiffs, or coroners of the city, and with absolute freedom from distress or arrest, was secured to him for ever. He was only bound not to arrest any of the mayor’s subjects in his precincts. As for the mayor and commonalty they retained their ancient powers in the city, but might make no arrests on church lands. They might summon the bishop’s tenants to keep the watch in their turn, and might fine them if they refused, making a levy on their goods found without the Fee. In the king’s taxes and the city murage the church tenants were to take their share, but it was to be raised by their own officers. Lastly the mayor and bailiffs might have their maces carried before them in the cathedral precincts without disturbance.687 It was decreed that no new charters were to disturb this arrangement;688 and hence forward the chapter guarded its privileges with accurate solicitude.689

This “final” settlement gave to the city all that any lawyer could have given it in the fifteenth century, for lawyers after all could only declare the legal principles that had been laid down in times when the power in the State had been very differently balanced, and the fashioning of the law in these matters had lain in the hands of ecclesiastics. Statesmen like the chancellor moreover could discuss the question with philosophic calm; in the greater concerns of national administration the problem between Church and State had been decided for them in the days of Henry the Second, by methods as rough and ready as any which burghers of later times had attempted; and they therefore now looked at the townspeople’s troubles from afar off. The pressure of difficulty had changed, and whereas it was the people who had once gained profit from ecclesiastical immunities, while kings and statesmen had to bear the violence of the battle for order and the authority of government, now the brunt of the fight fell on the common folk, while rulers at Westminster sat at ease and calmly recounted the old arguments which their greater predecessors had found it necessary to repudiate utterly three hundred years before.

For the experience of Exeter was by no means exceptional or rare, and if we turn to the history of Canterbury or Norwich we find the same record of centuries of passionate strife, with fire and pillage and murder and costly processes of law ending in yet fiercer antagonism. To multiply instances would prove wearisome repetition, but considering the great importance which these questions had for the mediæval burgher, and the gravity of their results in later history, it may be well to note in the history of another town how, with a few superficial differences, the fundamental difficulty was always the same.

In Canterbury, as we might expect, things were yet more complicated than in Exeter, and the situation of the citizens was one of considerable perplexity. From almost every considerable holding in the town some religious corporation claimed a rent charge which had to be deducted in the city accounts. The Convent of S. Gregory declared itself to be in the shire of Kent and outside the city bounds, and as late as 1515 asserted its freedom by refusing to take its share in the payment of a subsidy; when the mayor levied a distress the convent sued him for trespass, and a long and costly lawsuit followed.690 The hospitals of S. Nicholas at Harbledown and of S. John Northgate were exempted by royal charter from all tallages, aids, and contributions; and their lands and woods in the hundred of Westgate were made free from contribution for the defence of the coast.691 But these trifling grievances scarcely came into notice beside the troubles caused by greater ecclesiastical powers – the Priory of Christ Church, the Convent of S. Augustine’s, and the Archbishop. The old dissensions that had once disturbed their common harmony had all been appeased by means of a complete separation between the property and jurisdiction of the Archbishop and the Convent of Christ Church, which had been finally arranged somewhere about 1260; and by an agreement which was concluded about the end of the fourteenth century, between S. Augustine’s and Christ Church, as to their special disputes about ecclesiastical prerogatives, or about the rights of the convents on the high sea, on the quay at Fordwich, in the common meadows at Sturry, and in the neighbouring harbours of Sandwich which belonged to Christ Church, and Stonor which belonged to S. Augustine’s.692 But in the general peacemaking the city was left out, and the city had its own separate grievances against archbishop, abbot, and prior.

I. For the archbishop possessed certain rights which were exceedingly inconvenient to the borough. In case of a quarrel, he could refuse to ordain Canterbury men, to confirm Canterbury children, or to allow the offices of the Church to sick people, unless the townsfolk swore to obey him in all things. He could forbid his tenants to join in the great city festival of the Translation of S. Thomas. He was known to have cited 140 of the chief citizens to appear before him at Charing, twelve leagues away from Canterbury and without proper victuals, whereas by custom they should be summoned to appear in their own cathedral. Such were the complaints which the struggling town had to make in 1290.693 His borough of Staplegate, just opposite the palace and within the city boundaries, was surrounded by a wall and exempt from the jurisdiction of both the city and the county;694 even the royal writ did not run in it. Since his tenants in Westgate and Wingham were free from the town authorities, when Westgate men took to building their houses so near the river that the stream was driven against the city walls with such force as to make them fall, the town was helpless to check the evil, and complained as loudly of the wrong in 1467695 as it had done in 1290. Or when Wingham men intercepted for their market the provisions which were on the road to Canterbury, and thus both diminished the tolls of provisions taken at the Canterbury gates and increased the price of food, the corporation had no remedy, for the archbishop’s right to hold a market at Wingham could not be denied.696 Moreover the Whitstaple fishermen, also tenants of the archbishop, were supported by him in 1431 in their claim of a right to sell fish in the city free from any toll save a farthing for each person; and in 1481 when the fishwives refused to pay toll or to sell in a new market built by the citizens, the townsfolk had no resource save to make up out of their own pockets the losses of the tax collector during these troubles.697 We have the record of yet another quarrel in 1480, when the archbishop seized the tithe of the aftermath in the King’s Mead, upon which the mayor immediately collected his posse, marched to the meadow about a mile distant, and there ordered sixteen pennyworth of wine to be served out all round for the refreshment of his troop.698

II. With the Abbot of S. Augustine’s the city had disputes concerning mill and market. For the “Abbot’s Mill” was supposed to injure the City Mill, which lay a little higher up the stream, and the grievance was so serious that in 1415 iron-topped stakes were driven into the river bed by a board of inspectors to mark the highest level for the water at the Abbot’s Mill, so that the fall might be deep enough for water coming from the wheel of the City Mill.699 As late as 1522 there was a consultation between the town body and “Milord of S. Austin’s” about the fish-market, which ended in a friendly manner with the present of a conger-eel and a bottle of Malmsey to the abbot.

The chief quarrel however was as to the exact limits of the abbot’s authority as defined by an agreement drawn up in the thirteenth century, and carefully copied out anew by the city clerk in the fifteenth century; and the nice point under discussion during many generations was whether the abbots, under pretext of infang-theoff, should persist in arresting evildoers in Longport, which was the King’s highway and under the jurisdiction of his assignees, the corporation of Canterbury, but which ran for its whole length through the abbey lands.700 It was only after 1475 that the dispute seems to have come to an end, when the abbot’s gallows at Chaldensham were, by the consent of the community and of the convent, broken to pieces. A Baron of the Exchequer and the Recorder of London chosen to arbitrate between the burghers and the monks, were welcomed at Canterbury with a fee for their pains, lodged at the Austin Friars, entertained sumptuously at the town’s expense with lavish supplies of choice food and drink,701 and served with three meals a day, “fractio jejunii, jantaculum, et cœna,” till finally on a certain afternoon the monks and the corporation met to drink together in honour of the final peace, and the ambassadors set out on their journey homewards, treated to refreshments at every stage from the parting cup at Canterbury to the farewell drink at Newgate. In 1478 they delivered their arbitration at Westminster, and there was a fresh series of “potationes” to celebrate the settlement.702

III. The Abbot of S. Augustine’s was indeed a far less formidable neighbour than the Prior of Christ Church, between whom and the city there lay centuries of angry controversy. With him also there was of course the usual quarrel about the administration of justice. The Prior had his own gallows, where men were hung for sheep-stealing as well as for murder, and when the see of Canterbury was vacant convicted prisoners who “pleaded their clergy” were handed over to him as their ordinary – an arrangement which evidently must have been a source of much bitter feeling on the part of the townspeople; in 1313, for example, out of nine men who were convicted by a jury in the Assize court of stealing and murder and who all pleaded their clergy, seven purged themselves before the ecclesiastical judge and were set free.703 Moreover the cathedral was turned into a sanctuary, where criminals fled from the just judgment of their fellow citizens. In 1425 Bernard the goldsmith, a stranger from over sea, escaped from the city prison and fled to the cathedral church, followed by the bailiffs and a wild mob of townsmen. As he crouched within the rails of the new monument put up to Archbishop Chicheley, the mob thrust their arms between the bars, seized him and beat him with sticks hidden in their sleeves, and at last tore him out of the enclosure, carried him into the nave, and would have dragged him back to gaol, save for the sudden interference of the commissary, who with his followers drove them back and rescued the prisoner from their hands.704