[443] Piers Ploughman, Passus ii. 156, 157.
[444] Warkworth’s Chronicle, 2.
[445] See Gross, ii. 245.
[446] The instances of similar grants made to various towns at almost the same date are too numerous to give, but they would form a striking list.
[447] Charter of Lincoln the same year; that of Winchester, 1190. (Stubb’s Charters, 257-8). Nottingham and Northampton in 1200 (ibid. 301-3). The system of government adopted at Norwich was followed or imitated a little later by the neighbouring towns of Yarmouth and Colchester.
[448] Norwich Doc. Stanley v. Mayor, &c. p. 3. In the great majority of cases this grant was made once for all; but occasionally it was renewed from time to time. Thus Henry the Sixth in 1437 gave the mayor and burgesses of Bristol a lease of the town and its profits for a term of twenty years. In 1446 he granted a new lease for sixty years. In 1461 Edward the Fourth renewed the lease, not for a term of years, but for ever. (Seyer’s Charters of Bristol, 105.) The ferm was granted in the same way for a term of years in the case of Dunwich, a royal town, where it was let out to the highest bidder. Here, however, the collection of rent was peculiarly uncertain from special circumstances (Madox, 235-8, 241); and in 1325 Dunwich, ruined by the filling up of its port, prayed to have the town taken into the King’s hand and a guardian appointed. (Rot. Parl. i. 426.) For the inconvenience of this letting out to the highest bidder, see Madox, 251.
[449] Hudson, Municipal Organisation in Norwich, 20; Leet Jur. in Norwich, Selden Society, xvi. lxxii.
[450] Hudson’s Notes about Norwich, Norfolk Arch. vol. xii. p. 25.
[451] In 1288 the four bailiffs presided over the courts of these leets. (Hudson, Municipal Organisation, 16, 21.)
[452] Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, &c., p. 5.