[335] Also at Andover; Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii. 320, 324. Public disapproval was held to be a powerful motive. In Hereford if a plaintiff brought a writ of right for the possession of a tenement into the court and the defendant refused to appear at the court, “there ought to be taken from the tenement demanded one post and to be brought unto the court and delivered to the bailiff; and the second time two; and the third time three; and this to be done always towards the street, in reproach to him, and to the noting of his fellow-citizens; and if he shall not come, the house ought to be thrown down, by taking one post towards the street, and so forward and forward until the whole house be thrown down to the ground.” (Journal Arch. Ass., xxvii. 481-2.)
[336] A copy of the Charter of Manchester, granted 1301, is given in Baines’ History of County of Lancaster ii. 175-6. A comparison of the special privileges of the burgesses with those in the Preston custumal illustrates the variety in the customs of different towns. (Cutts’ Colchester, 169-170. Davies’ Southampton, 111.)
[337] See von Ochenkowski, Die wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, 66. Stubbs’ Charters, 107, 159. The monopoly was sometimes the privilege of the Merchant Guild. “So that no one who is not of that Guild shall make any merchandise in the said town, unless with the will of the merchants.” (Hist. of Preston Guilds, Custumal, 73. Gross, ii. 122, 127, 129.) In other towns where we do not hear of a Merchant Guild it belonged to the whole body of burgesses. (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425.)
[338] An alien living in Romney paid double Scot to the town. (Lyon’s Dover, ii. 332.)
[339] English Guilds, 392, 384. Lyon’s Dover, ii. 332.
[340] Boys’ Sandwich, 521. Lyon’s Dover, ii. 365, 366, 367, 386; Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Soc. 137.
[341] An Act to prevent Mayors from levying shewage from denizens. Statutes 19 Henry VII., Cap. 8.
[342] “The Mayor of the city of York and his brethren made great instance” to Lord Surrey to see that their fellow citizen, Thomas Hartford, bower in Norwich, should not be annoyed by Thomas Hogan, a shoemaker. (Paston Letters, iii. 366.) This protection however was only given on the condition of his renouncing all other aid. The mayor of York and his brethren aldermen in 1488 were applied to by Sir Robert Plumpton to protect some “servants and lovers” of his dwelling in York from annoyance by certain York citizens. The mayor answered in the name of himself, the aldermen, and the common council, that these dependants of Plumpton’s had been franchised and sworn to keep the customs of the city of York, that they were therefore bound to show any variance or trouble to the mayor “and to none other, and he to see an end betwixt them.” The mayor plainly intimates that these men must either go home and live under the protection of their master there, or else if they stay in York must submit their affairs to the mayor alone “as their duties had been.” (Plumpton Correspondence, 57-58.)
[343] Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 425.
[344] Preston Guild Rolls, xxiv.; Freeman’s Exeter, 144; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 241, 242, 246. For instances of royal pressure brought to bear on the town courts, see Proc. Privy Council, ii. 152; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104.