[11] London was not apparently before other cities in the winning of liberties. (Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 372.) There were reasons enough for especial caution of Henry the Second in the matter of London.
[12] Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 73, note; Archæologia, vii. p. 337-347; Stubbs, ii. 486.
[13] Burgage rents in the earliest times were accounted for by the officers not in a lump sum but “as the pennies come in.” Rep. on Markets, 13.
[14] Cutt’s Colchester, 111-117, 126-7.
[15] Two other innkeepers had much the same stock-in-trade.
[16] Hist. MSS. Com. vi. part i. 491-2, 478, 489. In Reading at the muster roll of 1311 there appeared eight men armed with sword, bow, arrows, and knife; thirty-three with bows, arrows, and knives; and over two hundred and thirty-five (besides some names lost at the foot of the roll) with hatchets and knives. In 1371 the town was able to raise a body of archers for service abroad; and under Edward the Sixth it sent fifty soldiers armed with bills, swords, daggers, bows, and arrows, and paid each soldier forty pence “for the King’s affairs into Boulogne.” Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 7, 171, 182.
[17] Ibid. v. 497.
[18] Act of Parliament for paving Gloucester, 1455; Fosbrooke’s Gloucestershire, i. 157. For Exeter in 1466; Freeman’s Exeter, 91. For Canterbury in 1474, because the “evil report” carried away by pilgrims “would be stopped if the roads were properly pitched with boulders and Folkestone stone”; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 168, 144, 174. For Southampton in 1477, after a century of vain attempts to pave the streets; Davies, 119, 120; in 1384 a tax was levied for pavage; in 1441 accounts were rendered of paving stones provided; payments were made in 1457 to a London paviour. By the Act each citizen was ordered to pave before his own door as far as the middle of the street since “the town was full feebly paved and full perilous and jeopardous to ride or go therein, and in especial in the High Street,” so that “strangers thither resorting have been oftentimes greatly hurt and in peril of their lives.” For Bristol in 1491 when the whole town seems to have been new paved. Ricart, 47-48.
[19] To take a single instance, in 1421 the water-supply of Southampton was undertaken by the council, and new leaden pipes provided by the grant of a burgess who had thus bequeathed his money “for the good of his soul.” An aqueduct was made at considerable expense in 1428; 261 days’ work at it was paid at from 4d. to 6d. a day; over £12 more was spent on an iron grating for it, and 27s. 2d. given to the plumber who fixed it; great stones from Wathe called “scaplyd stonys” were carried, with loads of chalk, quicklime, pitch, rosin, solder, wax, and wood. In 1490 a new well was made with a “watering-place for horse and a washing-place for women.” Davies, 115, 117; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 138-40. In many towns wells were repaired, enclosed with a wall and covered with a roof and put under the care of wardens.
[20] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 137, 145. See Paston, i. 434; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 7, 169; x. 4, 529-30.