Chapter XI: The Towns and the Church (1)

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.