[546] Paston Letters, ii. 86-7.
[547] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 205.
[548] Ibid. 246.
[549] Proc. Privy Council, i. 127. Beecham’s Hist. Cirencester, 154-8.
[550] In 1333 St. Alban’s brought its charter to the King’s Chancery and renounced there all the liberties contained in the said charter. The keeper of the rolls at their request broke off the seal of wax, and cancelled the enrolment in the Chancery rolls. The townsmen also brought their common seal of silver, which at their request was destroyed and the silver given to the shrine of St. Alban. (Madox, 140.) Common as it was in France for a commune to renounce its freedom, there is scarcely any instance in England save on ecclesiastical property. The case of Dunwich was peculiar and I have met with no other.
[551] Occasionally a convent drove a hard bargain. In 1440 an agreement was made between the convent of Plimpton and the commonalty of Plymouth, by which the commonalty was to pay £41 yearly, and if this rent was unpaid fifteen days after quarter day, the officers of the convent might seize all the goods and chattels of the mayor and commonalty and of any burgesses and of any others residing and abiding there which could be found within the borough and the precinct thereof. Madox, 222-3.
[552] The organization of the guild does not seem to have been at all of a democratic or “advanced” kind, but after the pattern of the oligarchic societies of the time. Four men owning goods to the value of 10 marks were elected yearly, by a committee of twelve burgesses, to hold the guild, and summoned to do their duty by two officers of the guild called “les Dyes.”
[553] Gross, ii. 29-36. Yates’ Bury S. Edmunds, 123-135.
[554] Statutes, 6 Richard II., 2, cap. 3.
[555] Coates’s Reading, 49.