[596] The bailiff of the Soke was sometimes called the Mayor of the Soke to emphasize his independence.
[597] Gross, ii. 254. For the way in which a bit of the town under ecclesiastical and not under municipal control might serve as a sort of sanctuary against the tax gatherers, see the complaint of the Bristol commonalty about Temple Street. (Rot. Parl. i. 434.)
[598] They had once been occupied by “good citizens,” but all through the Middle Ages were filled by a very poor population. (Kitchin’s Winchester, 75.)
[599] Kitchin’s Winchester, 46-7, 75-7.
[600] In 1264 there was a violent fray near the King’s Gate, the citizens fighting to keep the monks from admitting the followers of De Montfort. (Ibid. 130.) The convent kept control of the King’s Gate till 1520. (Ibid. 132.)
[601] For the bishop’s rights during the fair such as tronage, authority to take all weights and measures and bear them to the Pavilion and there make assay, to demand that the people of the city should come to the Pavilion to present cry raised and bloodshed, and other things touching the peace of our Lord the King, see Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 595-605. Compare his powers in Southampton during the same fair. There he might send his bailiff to see that only food was weighed or sold in the town, that no merchant whether resident or not ventured to sell anything except food, that there was no weighing or measuring, that merchants who came with their goods swore they did not bring them to sell at this time. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, pp. 67, 68.) The convent also had its own home and foreign trade on a very large scale. (Kitchin’s Winchester, 161.)
[602] English Guilds, 353, &c. 358. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 495-605.)
[603] This custom, once common (Madox, 152-3), was abandoned in Ipswich as early as 1317, and seems to have generally died out in the fourteenth century, though Gloucester sent its bailiffs to Westminster till 1483.
[604] In 1244 a mayor who had obeyed the King’s orders to shut the city gates against a bishop whose election the King opposed, was severely punished by the bishop when he gained possession of his see and palace. (Kitchin’s Winchester, 121.) The mayor was thrown into a London prison because a state prisoner had escaped from Winchester. (Ibid. 139.)
[605] Compare the action of Norwich. In the Wars of the Roses the Winchester people were, like their bishop Wayneflete, Lancastrian, but they had neither energy nor power to play any important part. (Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 147.)