Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

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 Radford⁶⁴³ 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 cases⁶⁵² 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 40s.– a fine quite beyond the power of an ordinary tradesman to pay – should be levied from any one who dared to serve on the watch. “Whereupon the mayor made right great wayward language to them. The mayor said waywardly he would do more, he would make levy both of the citizens’ spending and the fee-farm, and that he would well avow, and bade them of all to inform the Justice thereof, and that he would do the same; and so the mayor did.”⁶⁷²

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

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

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

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

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