Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 city⁷⁰⁶ 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 service⁷⁰⁸ 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.