THE TOWNS AND THE CHURCH
IN the history of Winchester we may perhaps find a clue to the
explanation of that great controversy which for centuries divided the
mediæval municipalities and the religious corporations into two hostile
armies,—armies that chafed under the restraints of an enforced and
angry truce, and from time to time broke into the brief exhilaration of
a free fight. There were certain towns, such as Exeter or Canterbury
or Norwich, where the municipality was as free as royal charters could
make it and acknowledged no dependence on Cathedral or Priory, and
where notwithstanding Town and Church were always in arms against one
another, and the task of adjusting their mutual relations presented
such insoluble difficulties that every other question seemed of easy
settlement in comparison with a problem so insistent, so manifold in
its forms, so tremendous in its proportions in the eyes of burgher
and of ecclesiastic. The convent or chapter, entrenched behind its
circuit of walls and towers, with its own system of laws, its own
executive, its independent trade and revenues, had practically no
interest either in the prosperity or the security of the town, while
its keenest activities, whether from the point of view of business or
religion, were enlisted in uncompromising defence of ecclesiastical
privilege. On the other hand the body of burghers, conscious of the
difficulties of government, with a mass of complicated business thrown
on their hands and a heavy financial responsibility, nervously keeping
guard over their franchises, inspired by a commanding sense of the
importance of strict organization, and an ambition stimulated by
tradition, success, and capacity, found in common experience reasons
for judging that a double system of law and a double authority was
the negation of order, peace, or material prosperity in their little
republic. Their avowed object was to put an end to this division of the
borough into two camps, and to secure for the community the ultimate
control of administration within the city boundaries. Hence the issues
raised between the townspeople and the clerical order were direct and
clear. Questions of temporal and spiritual power, of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, of the immunities claimed by the “clergy,” of the
gulf that separated the servant of the Church from the citizen of
the State—all these things were forced home to the people with the
sharpness, variety, and force of practical illustration. The war which
in the twelfth century had been waged on behalf of the State and the
Church by their great representatives, Henry the Second and Archbishop
Thomas, was during the next three centuries brought down into every
borough and fought out there in more humble fashion by provincial
mayors and ecclesiastics of a circumscribed and stinted fame.
And as the quarrel was long so it was practically universal. It
was this that made the struggle so momentous. Few boroughs after
all were subject to the absolute rule of ecclesiastical lords; and
their attempts to win freedom were local, isolated, without national
significance. But all the great towns had one or more ecclesiastical
bodies established within their boundaries, and all were able to
appreciate the character of the conflict entailed on them. Nor were the
consequences of the dispute exaggerated by the combatants on either
side. During centuries of strife they had abundant opportunity of
gauging its importance—from the time of Edward the First, when, by
the enclosing of churchyards and ecclesiastical precincts with walls,
the attempt was made to shut in religious authorities within their
own limits, and give the town undivided responsibility outside these
boundaries—till the time when triumphant burghers saw walls and towers
levelled to the ground under Henry the Eighth.
For in the war waged by burghers against clerics who used spiritual
authority to create temporal sovereignty, and in this temporal power
then found means to enforce spiritual claims,—though the combatants
were people of no account, fighting their quarrel out in remote and
isolated boroughs, and though the noise of the battle no longer
resounded as it had once done throughout Europe,—the conflict was
still the same, the questions were as vital for the just ordering of
human society, and the tenacity of the opponents was as great as ever.
The disputes covered the whole field of practical life. In matters of
trade there was not only the rivalry of two trading companies under
different conditions of wealth, influence, and protection;[615] but
even in the case of individuals there was unfair competition, as when
a citizen gave up his dwelling in the town, obtained a corrody in some
ecclesiastical house, and claimed the benefits of citizenship without
bearing its obligations.[616] Sometimes the burghers found themselves
called to defend against the ecclesiastical lawyers a right which had
been proved essential to their freedom—the right of being tried only
in their own courts—and the commonalty would make ordinances that
no process-server should carry or cite elsewhere men or women living
in the borough, and the jury of the Leet Court kept watch and made
their presentment of summoners, commissary, and clerks who had dealt
lightly with the liberties or goods of the citizens, or called them to
distant courts.[617] Or again, the invaluable privilege of having all
matters that concerned the commons of the borough tried by a jury of
inhabitants and not of aliens, might be put in jeopardy. In Lincoln
the dean and chapter had a special grudge against trials “by people
of the same city, which be so favourable one to another that they
doubt not to make false oaths, and that because they be encouraged,
forasmuch as they have not been before this time convict by foreigners
by colour of their franchise.” On their complaint “our lord the King,
willing, for the cause aforesaid, _to provide for the quietness of the
said church_, and full right to be done as well to the said bishop,
dean, and chapter and their successors,” ordered that henceforth “if
any of the parties feel himself grieved of a false oath made by such
assize, jury, or inquest, the attaint shall be granted to him, and the
record sent by writ into the King’s Bench or into the Common Pleas;
and that the sheriff impanel the jury of such attaint of foreigners
of the county, without sending to the franchise of the said city, and
that the justices shall take the same jury of the same foreigners,
notwithstanding any franchise granted to the same city, or other usage
to the contrary.”[618] The question of sanctuary, too, remained a
standing trouble, and the bailiffs of the borough who sent town clerks
and town serjeants to make proclamation for weeks together at the abbey
gate calling upon a debtor who had fled from his creditors to appear
for judgement, had small sympathy with the abbot’s privileges.[619]
Whenever burghers had liberty and opportunity to act on their own
judgement they found no difficulty in coming to a decision as to the
sanctity imposed by religion on territories consecrated to sacred
uses. From old premises they drew new conclusions. “As holiness becomes
the Lord’s House,” declared the mayor, jurats, and whole community
of Rye in 1483, “in future, to the honour of God and of the glorious
Virgin Mary, the parish church of the said town, with the churchyard
and the manse of the vicarage thereof, shall be of the same freedom,
and with as much liberty as the other houses of the freemen, especially
as to arrests and other matters.”[620]
There is perhaps no better illustration of the character and conditions
of the controversy between town and church than the story of the
quarrel between Exeter city and the Cathedral, which has been preserved
for us in the letters of an able mayor, who at a very important crisis
conducted the case of his fellow-citizens against the chapter, and
whose phrases, written in the heat of battle, carry us back into
the very midst of a long-forgotten strife. Descended from an old
county family which had thrown in its lot with the burghers of Exeter
and become traders in the city and leaders in its counsels, John
Shillingford was born into a tradition of civic patriotism. His father
served as mayor from 1428 to 1430 and was noted for being learned in
the law; and John Shillingford himself was mayor three times, and the
distinguished leader from 1445 to 1448 of a struggle for independence
which was already a hundred and fifty years old.
From 1206 or earlier Exeter had been governed by its own mayor and
bailiffs, and the citizens held their town at a fee-farm rent from
the King. But a century later the mayor was a mere dependent of the
Earl of Devonshire, wearing his “livery” as one of his retainers
and acknowledging his protection. However it happened on a certain
day in 1309 that the earl and bishop made an attempt to buy all the
fish in the Exeter market, leaving none for the townsfolk. Then the
mayor, “minding the welfare of the commons of the said city, and that
they also might have the benefit of the said market,” ruled that
one-third of the fish must be given to the citizens. The earl with
loud threatenings angrily ordered his rebellious dependent to appear
before him. Followed by a tumultuous procession of “his brethren and
honest commons of the said city,” the mayor went from the Guild Hall
to the earl’s house, entered his lord’s “lodging chamber,” and there
took off his “livery” coat and gave it back to the earl once for all,
the commons meanwhile beating at the door and loudly demanding their
mayor, till the terrified earl entreated him to quiet their clamour.
The town forthwith passed a law that no citizen should ever again
wear “foreigner’s livery,” and so began the long fight for municipal
independence.[621]
For the same two great powers ever kept watch on the Exeter citizens
and their market, if by chance there was any profit which could be
turned their way. At the town gates the Earls of Devonshire held Exe
Island and the adjoining suburb, commanded the navigation of the Exe,
forced the mayor to lay aside his mace as he approached the suburb,
and sought to recall the days when he had worn their livery. A more
dangerous enemy was encamped within the walls. Just opposite the
little town-hall rose the great wall with its towers which guarded
the bishop’s palace, the cathedral, and the ecclesiastical precincts;
and within this fortified enclosure ruled an august power that defied
the petty upstart forces of the mayor and his group of shopkeepers
outside. The conflict of the town with the Earls,[622] if it lasted for
something like three hundred years, was still of minor significance.
The conflict with the Church was far more dangerous in form and serious
in its issues.
The town and the close, as we are told by the mayor in 1448, had
“been in debate by divers times almost by time of eightscore years,
and that I could never know, find nor read that we ever took a suit
against them, but ever stand in defence as a buckler player, and smiter
never.”[623] Now at last, however, the citizens were resolved “once to
smite, taking a suit,”[624] as became the temper and traditions of the
fifteenth century when such quarrels were fought out, not with clubs
and daggers, but in the “paper wars of Westminster.” As the crisis
approached the townsfolk made ready for the fray. Determined that
their battle should be conducted by the most capable man among them,
at Michaelmas, 1444, they elected as their mayor John Shillingford.
He refused to accept office, upon which they sent to Westminster and
procured a writ under the Privy Seal ordering him either to submit or
pay a fine of £1,000, a sum which probably no single individual in
Exeter at that time possessed. In February 1445 therefore, he “came
to the Guild Hall and there was sworn; and though at the first with
an evil will, yet in the end did perform it very well,”[625]—so
well indeed that the bishop even saw in “the wilful labour of John
Shillingford” the main cause of all “the great hurt and loss of the
said church and city.”[626]
Once Mayor Shillingford quickly threw down his challenge to the
chapter. On Ascension Day, 1445, the city serjeant followed a servant
of the chancellor into the precincts, and there arrested him when he
was actually taking part in a procession, holding up from the ground
his master’s golden cope;[627] and two more arrests of clerks followed
in a little over a year. A new mayor took his place at Michaelmas
1445, but when in April 1446 the chapter prepared to bring a suit
against the town, laying the damages at £1,000, the city again fell
back on Shillingford and for the two critical years of the strife he
remained supreme magistrate and led the fight as it broadened so as
to cover the whole range of the civic life. Party strife ran high,
and the inhabitants were soon on terms of open war. On one occasion
in the midst of the quarrel, a great stack of wood which lay between
the cathedral and the town was set on fire at nine o’clock in the
shortest time of the year. This, the burgesses cried out, was done
by the ministers of the cathedral to burn down the town. The charge
was thrown back in their teeth by the canons, who protested it was set
afire by men of the same city deliberately by consent of the commonalty
with intent to burn the church.[628] The tossing to and fro of such an
accusation gives us a glimpse of the state of feeling that existed. The
cathedral party hated the townspeople as a usurping and rebellious mob;
while to the townsfolk when their passion was aroused the cathedral
within its walls wore the aspect of a fortress in their midst, held by
the power of an ancient enemy.
Which was the “smiter” in the quarrel it would be indeed hard to say.
The claims raised on either side were absolutely irreconcilable, and
each denied with great frankness and conviction every assertion put
forward by the other. For convincing proof of its own dignity the
corporation boldly carried back its inquiries to some unknown period
before the Christian era, when Exeter “was a city walled, and suburb to
the same of most reputation;” and recounted how “soon upon the passion
of Christ it was besieged by Vespasian by time of eight days; the which
obtained not the effect of his siege, and so wended forth to Bordeaux,
and from Bordeaux to Rome, and from Rome to Jerusalem, and then he
with Titus besieged Jerusalem and obtained and sold thirty Jews’
heads for a penny, as it appeareth by Chronicles.” They then passed
on to its position under the Saxon Kings; and thence came directly
to the privileges of the mayor, derived from the good old time when
bailiffs and citizens held the town in fee-farm from the King, before
any monastery or cathedral church was built.[629] All the historical
research on this side in fact plainly proved the ecclesiastical
authority to be a mere modern usurpation, of no credit or value.
The bishop and chapter for their part ignored the times before
Vespasian, and bluntly “say that they doubt of Vespasian’s being at
Exeter, and so at Bordeaux and Jerusalem, to sell thirty Jews’ heads
for a penny;” so coming at once to their main contention, they declared
that St. Stephen’s Fee was no parcel of the city, as the Book of
Domesday would show, and was indeed “of elder time than is the city,”
for Exeter was nothing more than a borough till the first bishop had
been installed there by the Confessor. Indeed they observed that the
mayor himself was well known to be an officer of yesterday, since till
the time of Henry the Third there “was no mayor nor fee-farm,” but
the town was governed by the sheriff of the county, and the bishops
in their sphere had absolute jurisdiction, “without that time out of
mind there were any such mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty known in the
city.”[630]
But all the arguments of the bishop, “that blessed good man in himself
if he must be Edmund, Bishop of Exeter,”[631] as the mayor politely
remarked, were thrown away on Shillingford. “I said nay, and proved
it by Domesday,”[632] he writes, fully satisfied that my lord “had
no more knowledge of the ground of this matter than the image in the
cloth of arras there”[633]—a melancholy ignorance, “considering his
blessedness, holy living, and good conscience.” The prelate’s history,
indeed, like that of his antagonist, was not without reproach. Domesday
makes no mention of any separate lands of the Church in Exeter; but
copies of Domesday were scarce, and it was tolerably safe to refer to
its authority. In any case, however, the daily pressure of circumstance
was so strong that it mattered very little to the opposing forces
whether ancient history justified their position or no. To the burghers
the difficulties of a divided administration, and the humiliation of
submission, were made more galling every day by the growing prosperity
of the town and the independent temper of the time; while the chapter,
confident in the legal strength of their position, had not the least
hesitation in forcing on the conflict.
The suit which opened in London in 1447 was complicated and
costly,[634] and mayor and law officers and town councillors in
Exeter had to put forth all their resources. Perpetual consultations
were carried on in the Town Hall with the help of much malmsey; once
two plovers and a partridge helped the feast. As time went on the
expenses in meat and drink were heavy; judges had to be feasted, and
the municipal officers encouraged, and presents were needed for the
great folk in London, besides the serious cost of sending messengers
continually to London, Tiverton, and Crediton. Even after the matter
was finally decided the city had to make up in the next year rewards of
money, and gifts of fish and wine, for which it was still in debt.[635]
The most arduous and costly part of the work, however, lay in the
vast amount of historical and legal research which the case demanded.
“It asketh many great ensearches,” said Shillingford, “first in our
treasury at home among full many great and old records; afterward at
Westminster, first in the Chancery, in the Exchequer, in the Receipt,
and in the Tower; and all these ensearches asketh great labour long
time as after this, to make our articles we have many true against one
of theirs.”[636] Evidences and documents were read and re-read, and
arguments brought from the Black Roll of the city, from Domesday Book,
from Magna Charta, from statutes, charters, and letters patent, from
the eyres holden at Exeter by the judges of Edward the First, from
records of the “customs” under Henry the Third or Edward the Third. The
Recorder of Exeter worked hard, and the mayor turned confidently to
him when legal questions became peculiarly obscure. It “is dark to my
conceit as yet,” he writes from London; “but I trust to God it shall be
right well with your good information and help thereto; to which intent
I send you a roll in the which is contained copies of Domesday, copy of
eyres, of charters, and other things that is necessary to be seen in
making of these replications. I can no more at this time, but I pray
you be not weary to over-read hear and see all the writing that I have
sent home to you at this time; and if you be, no marvel though I be
weary, and God be with you.”[637]
Shillingford himself was constantly in London; where the record of one
day’s work may serve as an instance of his activity. He left Exeter at
6 o’clock on Wednesday morning, and reached London on Saturday at 7
A.M. “That day I had right great business,” he says. First he went to
the Exchequer to see about Exmouth Port; then to Westminster Hall to
speak with various lawyers; after that he visited the chief justice,
Sir John Fortescue, and rode with him homeward; then he called on
another justice, Sir Richard Newton; from thence he went to commune
“with our counsel of our matters;” and in the afternoon proposed to
visit the archbishop at Lambeth.[638] Meanwhile he kept a certain watch
over affairs at home, and sent an occasional order as to the conduct of
local business in Exeter. “Also I charge Germin (the treasurer) under
rule and commandment of J. Coteler, my lieutenant, that he do that he
can do, brawl, brag and brace, lie and swear well to, and in special
that the streets be right clean and specially the little lane in the
back-side beneath the flesh-fold gate, for there lieth many oxen heads
and bones, that they be removed away for the nonce against my coming,
as soon as I may by cokky’s bones.”[639]
From London long letters to the “Fellowship” at home rehearsed every
step of the negociations, from the moment when the mayor first “came
to Westminster soon upon nine of the bell, and there met with my lord
chancellor at the broad door a little from the stair-foot coming from
the Star Chamber, I in the court, and by the door kneeling and saluting
him in the most goodly wise that I could, and recommended unto his
good and gracious lordship my fellowship and all the commonalty, his
own people and bedesmen of the city of Exeter. He said to the mayor
two times ‘Welcome’ and the third time ‘Right welcome, mayor,’ and
held the mayor a great while fast by the hand, and so went forth to
his barge and with him great press, lords and other.”[640] In the same
way Shillingford notes carefully every detail of the grave ceremonial
observed before the arbiters of the city’s destiny, when “my lord
took his chair and the justices sat with him, and both parties with
their counsel kneeled before.”[641] Then followed a long argument in
which the mayor held his own against the lawyers, and “so we departed,
standing afar from my lord, and he asked wine and sent me his own cup,
and to no more;”[642] also “my lord in this time did me much worship
and openly ... commended me for my good rule at home.” When a letter
from the mayor was addressed to the lord chancellor, we hear how the
recorder “kissed the letter and put it into my lord’s blessed hand, and
my lord with a glad countenance received the letter, and said that the
mayor and all the commons should have Christ’s blessing and his, and
bade my master Radford[643] to stand up, and so did, and anon my lord
brake the letter even while grace was saying, and there right read it
every deal or he went to his dinner.”
Business in London was best furthered by judicious gifts, and Exeter
was constantly called on to send fish to the chancellor—conger eel,
400 of buckhorn or dried whiting, or a “fish called crabs.”[644]
Or again when the prudent mayor heard the lord chancellor bid the
justice to dinner for a Friday, “I did as methought ought to be
done ... and sent thither that day two stately pickerellis and two
stately tenches.”[645] This proved a very successful venture, as “it
came in good season” for the great lords and bishops who dined with
the chancellor that day. At one stage of the business indeed the
mayor thought it unwise to proceed with his argument until a certain
present of fish should arrive. “I tarried and yet tarried because of
the buckhorn, the which came not yet, me to right great anger and
discomfort by my troth ... for it had been a good mean and order,
after speaking and communication above-said, the buckhorn to have been
presented, and I to have come thereafter, and so to have sped much the
better; but now it is like to fail to hindering.”[646] Whether it was
the fault of the treasurer of the town, or of the carrier, he did not
know; he was sure each would accuse the other. “Christ’s curse have
they both,” he breaks out, “and say ye amen, _non sine merito_, and but
ye dare say so, think so, think so!” At last the buckhorn arrived on
Candlemas even—”better late than never,” said the irritated mayor.
“That day was I at Lambeth with my lord at mass, and offered my candle
to my lord’s blessed hand, I kneeling adown offering my candle. My lord
with laughing cheer upon me said heartily ‘Graunt mercy, mayor;’ and
that same day I abode there to meat by my said lord’s commandment; I
met with my lord at high table end coming to meatward, and as soon as
ever he saw me he took me fast by the hand and thanks enough to; I said
to my said lord it was too simple a thing considering his estate to
say on his ‘graunt mercy,’ but if I had been at home at this fair he
should have had better stuff and other things. I went forth with him
to the midst of the hall, he standing in his estate against the fire a
great while, and two bishops, the two chief justices, and other lords,
knights and squires, and other common people great multitude, the hall
full, all standing afar apart from him, I kneeling by him, and after
recommendation I moved him of our matter shortly as time asked.” He
closed this argument against the prelate’s malpractices in his most
graceful manner—”I in my leave-taking saying these words, ‘My lord
have pity and mercy upon that poor city, _Jesus vidit civitatem et
flevit super eam_.’”[647]
But amid all the fashions of the chancellor’s court the mayor never for
a moment lost the sense of his own dignity as the representative of a
free city. Deferential and scrupulous in paying the grave courtesies
of an exact formality, Shillingford was inflexible in all that lay
beyond mere ceremonial; for, as he said, “the matter toucheth the
great commonalty of the city of Exeter as well as him.”[648] “The said
mayor,” he writes on one occasion, “conceived and knew right well
that his said lord bishop took unworthy, as he might right well, for
simpleness and poverty to speak or entreat with him. Nevertheless he
said, such simple as he was, he was Mayor of Exeter.”[649] In every
dilemma he fell back haughtily on his own “simpleness,” and on his
subjection to the town council at home, “having no power, nor nought
may do, say, agree, nor assent, without a communication had with my
fellowship—a commonalty which is hard to deal with,”[650] added the
artful mayor, with a humour which his submissive subjects at Exeter
doubtless fully appreciated.[651]
We may safely assume that great labour and cost were not expended
without some serious reason by the Exeter citizens—a community of
hard-working practical traders, who knew the value both of their time
and their money. And in the mayor’s accounts of the proceedings in
London we can gather up the long list of grievances which had gone on
accumulating within the walls of this little city between Church and
State, till the inhabitants found themselves ranged in two hostile
armies, to either of which surrender meant ruin and enslavement.
(1) The most burning question at issue was the right of arrest of the
bishop’s tenants, or within the ecclesiastical precincts. Among many
other cases[652] the mayor alleged that of one “Hugh Lucays, tenant
of the said bishop, the most, or one of the most, misgoverned men
of all the city of Exeter, or of all the shire afterward,” who made
a fray upon a townsman at the very door of the Guild Hall, and when
the sergeant seized him “brake the arrest and went his way” into the
church, pursued by the two serjeants. The stewards of the city who
followed with the king’s mace to keep the king’s peace found the church
doors shut upon them, and the prisoner “violently with strong hand
taken away from them”; and various clerks and ministers of the church,
by order of the dean and chapter, fell on them with door-bars, swords,
daggers, long-knives, and “Irish skenes,” so that “both stewards and
serjeants stood in despair of their lives, and scarce escaped out of
the church with their lives.”[653] This was the mayor’s story. The
bishop on his part said that Hugh Lucas was an innocent man, who was
driven into the cathedral during divine service by the turbulent mob
of burghers brandishing “swords, daggers, and other invasive weapons,”
and intent only on wickedness and misrule.[654] Then again one of the
bishop’s servants who had struck a townsman in the eye with a dagger
almost unto death, could not be punished because he had been standing
within the Close gate, between the cemetery and the city. “Also
ofttimes the mayor hath not dared do the law and execution thereof
... for now almost every man taketh colour by my lord” the bishop. If
any riotous person made a fray, he would run off and “take the church
late;” if a man was arrested on Saturday, “he must be delivered to
make my lord’s work” on Sunday,[655] and by such devices both men and
women “by whom the mayor is rebuked” got off scot free. A compromise
had been made that the city officers should make no arrests in church
or cemetery from the ceasing of Our Lady bell to the end of Compline,
but the chapter later laid this against them in evidence that they had
no right ever to make any arrest there, “which is to the said mayor
and commonalty great vexation, hurt, and hindering; and to misgoverned
men, rioters, and breakers of the peace great boldness.”[656] The mayor
alleged that it was impossible to keep order in face of privileges
which rendered the clergy and their tenants practically independent
of the law. “Night walking, evil language, visaging, shouldering, and
all riotous rule” went on unchecked, seeing that the mayor “could no
longer rule the King’s people after his laws, nor do right as he is
sworn to, for dread of my lord.”[657] Just outside St. Peter’s Close
stood a well-known tavern, and the canons who owned the Broad Gate kept
its wicket open almost all the night, “out of which wicket into which
tavern cometh the great part of all the rioters into the Close, priests
and others,” said the townspeople, and there made sleep impossible the
whole night long to the neighbours. The canons however held that the
“mayor and such dreadful people of his commonalty be the misgoverned
people and incomers that they spoke of.” According to the clerical
party indeed the whole municipal body was altogether sunk in sin; the
very town serjeants were “wild and unreasonable fellows,” who had even
been heard to threaten “that there should many a priest of the Close
of Exeter lose his head once of midsummer even;”[658] and as for the
tavern, it was wholly the mayor’s business to keep order there, unless
indeed, as they suggested, it was he himself “that is cause and giver
of example to all such misgovernance.”[659] This charge, however, which
the chancellor had struck out with his own hands, was one about which
the mayor did not greatly trouble himself. “As touching the great venom
that they meaneth of my living,” he wrote to the Fellowship, “I take
right nought by and say sadly ‘_si recte vivas_,’ etc., and am right
merry and fare right well, ever thanking God and my own purse. And I
lying on my bed at the writing of this right early, merrily singing a
merry song, and that is this ‘Come no more at our house, come, come,
come!’ I will not die nor for sorrow nor for anger, but be merry and
fare right well, while I have money; but that is and like to be scarce
with me, considering the business and cost that I have had and like
to have; and yet I had with me £20 and more by my troth, whereof of
troth not right much I spend yet, but like, &c. Construe ye what ye
will.”[660]
(2) It was a further grievance to the townspeople that the bishop
claimed the right to hold both a court baron and leet and view of
frankpledge, and on this pretence called before himself various
pleas and matters that should have been tried before the mayor and
bailiffs, thus covetously gathering into his coffers fines on which
they themselves had set longing eyes; and moreover that he took to
himself any goods seized from felons.[661] There had been angry
feeling over the case of one John Barton, whom the town officers
pursued for robbing. But as it was a church that he had robbed, and
as he had hidden the stolen goods in a tenement of the bishop’s, the
ecclesiastics, rather than see justice done by the secular power, had
shut the door in the face of the municipal officers, and had hurried
off the sacrilegious thief into the cathedral, then smuggled him out
into a bakehouse, and so conveyed him out of the city; while the stolen
goods were kept with a strong hand to the use of the bishop, “to great
hurt and hindering of our sovereign lord the King and the said mayor
and commonalty.”[662]
(3) In all towns where the question of jurisdiction was raised between
the townsfolk and the Church party the quarrel about coroner’s
inquests ran high. Churchmen and laymen alike had to submit to the
coroner’s inquest. But chapters of cathedrals and monasteries found
it less humiliating to admit within their precincts an officer of the
shire than the town officer sent in by a mayor who was for ever keeping
his jealous watch at their gates. On the other hand, after their long
and determined struggle to be freed from foreign interference, the
towns looked with suspicion on the appearance within their walls on any
pretext whatever of any official of the shire. In Exeter as elsewhere
the city coroner claimed “to corowne prisoners dead in the bishop’s
prison,” but the bishop flatly refused to admit into the precincts
any officer save the coroner of Devonshire, and if the municipal
coroners on hearing of a prisoner’s death appeared at the gates of the
Close, they were turned back by “servants of the said bishop, and by
his commandment they were let to do their office there; and the said
prisoners so dead buried uncoroned.”[663]
(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 40_s._—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 1467[695] 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]
So also the question of taxes caused much wrangling. Christ Church,
which owned within the franchise £200 of rent and five acres of
land,[705] claimed to be free from any contribution for maintaining
the walls of the city[706] after their circuit had been completed by
Archbishop Sudbury and left to the people’s care; and this dispute was
not settled till 1492, when the convent, having got possession of a
part of the wall, undertook to keep that section of it in repair.[707]
With regard to the costs of levying soldiers for the royal service[708]
the citizens decided in 1327 to charge a part of this tax on lands
held by the convent. The tax seems to have been required only from
property in the city, and the archbishop was inclined to give way after
discussion with his counsel, “however much those of our Church may wish
to do otherwise,” but the prior resolutely held out and got a letter
of special protection from the King for Church property.[709] At this
the city was stirred to the utmost fury. The people held a meeting in
Blackfriars’ churchyard, and passed a resolution that if the convent
still refused they would break their windows in Burgate, disable their
mills, drive their tenants out of their houses; that they would allow
no one to give, sell, or lend meat or drink to monks, and would seize
carts and horses carrying food from their manors and sell them in the
market; that they would arrest any monk coming out of the monastery
into the city and take his clothes and property; that the monastery
should be cut off from the world by a deep trench dug in front of its
gate, and that no pilgrim should be allowed to enter the cathedral
until he had taken an oath not to make the smallest offering. Finally
every man at the meeting swore that he would have from S. Thomas’s
shrine a gold ring for a finger of each hand.[710] The threat of
interference with their pilgrims was a serious matter to the convent,
since the whole charge of providing for the comfort and safety of the
pilgrims lay with the mayor. Not only was it his office to see that
sufficient food was laid up in the city for the pilgrims and to have
all the special directions which he judged necessary for their victuals
and lodgings set forth on a post which stood before the court hall,
but he was further responsible for keeping order among them, and there
were occasions when travellers would set out on their journey with just
apprehension unless, as happened at Lydd, official messengers from the
town were sent before to Canterbury to arrange that its pilgrims might
come and go in safety without danger of arrest, and won favour of the
mayor’s wife by the gift of a quart of malmsey.[711] The corporation
had in fact power to make a visit to the shrine so difficult and
unpleasant as seriously to affect the flow of offering to the treasury
of the saint, and this at a time when the anxiety of the convent about
profits was heightened by the pressing demands of the Papal Court
for a share in the spoils of its great Jubilee festivals.[712] Money
quarrels in fact never failed on either side, and at the very end of
the fifteenth century it would seem that Cardinal Morton saw in the
old feuds a chance for making Canterbury pay its full tribute to the
royal treasury; when in 1494 he issued demands for aid in money or in
men for the Scotch war he seems to have sent several blank copies of
the summons to his friend Prior Selling to be filled up by him and
issued to corporations and citizens whom he thought rich enough to pay.
Probably in his directions to the tax-gatherer Prior Selling did not
forget old enemies of the convent.[713]
The quarrel as to the town market also lasted on throughout the
fifteenth century. There the city magistrates had indeed undisputed
control, but it was not always easy to enforce their control on the
clever people of the convent. Sometimes the monks attempted to escape
from the regulations and tolls of the burgesses by sending to buy their
fish at the seaside; and the townsmen protected themselves by seizing
any fish so bought on its way to the priory.[714] Other questions
arose as to houses belonging to Christ Church which opened inwards on
the precincts but had windows looking outwards on the market-place in
Burgate just outside the priory gate, from which houses shutters and
windows could be let down for the inhabitants to display their wares
on market-day, whereat the town was doubly aggrieved both by losing
the rent of stalls and by seeing the increasing rent of the houses
pass away into the convent treasury. At last in 1493 convent and city
sought to make a final settlement of the question. The boundaries of
the monastery were defined, including many houses of laymen, and within
these limits the town renounced all jurisdiction except over houses
and shops which had doors or windows opening on the street; while the
convent was allowed to distrain on any houses that belonged to it in
the city. But in 1500 the quarrel broke out with intenser bitterness,
and the mayor violently shifted the market from the prior’s gate to the
open space near the city church, so that no house held by the convent
should have the advantage of opening out upon it. Then ecclesiastical
tenants refused to sell in the new market, and city stall-holders
treated the convent servants with little courtesy. The citizens fell
on the caterer of Christ Church as he was carrying a halibut he had
bought from the market to the priory gate, and took it from him,
“contrary to all right and good conscience;” and when the prior sent
to the seaside for fish, it was seized at the entrance of the town by
the citizens, “disappointing in the same the brethren of the place
of their dinners.”[715] The prior brought his grievances before the
London courts, upon which the whole town took up the question with
ardour, and the burgesses collected a voluntary subscription to defend
their cause. The mayor was charged with the conduct of the suit in
London. Ten or twelve citizens were perpetually riding backwards and
forwards and hanging about the courts, and the usual expenses entered
in the town records for drink, supper, horse-meat, hire of horses to
Rochester and hire of barges and cloaks for the travellers from thence
to London, down to “threepence paid at Sittingbourne in washing of my
shirts.”[716] Master Poynings, being at last commissioned by the King
to take evidence on the spot, was entertained at a splendid banquet,
and finally an exemplification of the market was sent up to the King’s
Council in London. In 1501 a new messenger from the King “came to
the city and tarried not because of death,[717] but spake with Mr.
Mayor at S. Andrew’s Church, the which showed him the market and so
he departed to Dover,” followed by a messenger of the mayor hurrying
after him with presents of fish, game, poultry, and wine. Then new
ambassadors were sent from the city to the King at Richmond, and the
paying of fees, and costs for eating and drinking went on merrily. But
the citizens won the day in the end, for the Canterbury market is still
held by S. Andrew’s Church and was never brought back to the priory
gate.
Even the control of the river brought its troubles, for whenever a
question arose as to embanking and straightening the bed of the stream,
the prior and the mayor met in the meadows about Chatham with their
followers and carried on consultations refreshed by the usual supply
of meat and drink. Business however was done at these parties, and the
river turned from its meandering course from one side of the valley to
the other into the straight channel in which it now flows.[718] The
question of the mills was less easy to settle, with the dependent
problems as to damming the water and dredging the shallows. A
settlement made in 1431 to prevent the injury of the city mill failed
to end disputes, and in 1499 the prior dug a trench which drew away
the water from it, upon which the citizens destroyed the trench and
proceeded to make a dam for the conservation of the water running to
their mill. The prior in his turn cut the dam; whereupon the mayor
called out his posse to fight the matter out in the meadows by the
river, apparently routed the enemy’s forces, seizing their arms, and
the next day in his wrath removed the market to its new place, as we
have seen.[719]
So ended the fifteenth century in Canterbury amid a storm of invective
and free fighting. The mayor protested that the prior, in addition to
all his other crimes, had taken away the mace from the city serjeant,
and had allowed the city ditch to be befouled. The prior retorted by
accusing the mayor of riotous conduct, and breaking of boundaries and
building of bridges and diverting of water-courses to his damage, and
not only this, but of having for malice and grudge to the prior and
convent broken the old custom of the citizens’ gathering at Christmas
at the tomb of Sudbury to pray for his soul for the great acts he had
done for the city, so that they now withdrew their prayers from thence
to hold their service under the prison house called Westgate. Indeed
they even refused to join the noblemen who brought the King’s offering
to S. Thomas at the Christmastide feast.
As usual, however, all this mighty turmoil ended in nothing. The mayor
was indicted by the convent for riot, and the verdict of the jury went
against him, but no particular result seems to have followed; and
though the persevering prior then had the case brought before the Star
Chamber in 1501, it was passed over for want of leisure.[720]
Practically the same story was repeated at Canterbury as at Exeter
and in every other city where there was a similar conflict.[721]
Money and skill and labour and passion were expended without measure,
and finally the courts adjudged that all must remain as it had been
when the municipality scarcely existed three hundred years before,
an order which statesmen possibly thought the safest course in the
presence of opposing forces, neither of whom was strong enough to win,
and neither of whom could dare to lose. But this was not the end of
the matter. Through these three hundred years the towns had gathered
strength, perfected their machinery of government, and realized their
own might. Wealthy, highly organized, very centres of rationalism in
politics and common sense in business, their controversy with the
Church, singularly free as it was from theological pre-occupation,
was inevitably in all questions of temporal government more keen and
resolute in the fifteenth century than ever before. It was vain to
renew attempts in one town after another to appease irreconcilable
quarrels by arbitrations and compromises which left the real problem
untouched, and the century before the Reformation was everywhere a time
of restless dissatisfaction, and of spasmodic revolts against the alien
ecclesiastical settlements which throve on the town’s wealth, and could
never be absorbed into the town’s life. For a little space matters
hung in the balance, and then came the crash of the Reformation. In
the bitterness of feeling that grew out of the long struggle of the
burghers, we have a measure of that temper of virile independence which
created the boroughs of the Middle Ages; and as we stand now under
the walls of Canterbury Cathedral and see its glory shattered and
its carved work broken in pieces, we may well wonder whether in that
great ruin there was no other motive at work than the fanaticism of a
religious awakening.