[656] Ibid. 66, 10, 94.
[657] Shillingford’s Letters, 53.
[658] Ibid. 64.
[659] Ibid. 93, 104.
[660] Shillingford’s Letters, 16.
[661] Ibid. pp. 10, 14, 91, 99, 104.
[662] Ibid. 83-4.
[663] Shillingford’s Letters, 83, 84, 99. Compare Norwich, Blomefield, iii. 62. In Canterbury the murder of a citizen by a waggoner of the priory in 1313 gave rise to a hot dispute as to the jurisdiction of the city coroner. The Convent refused him admittance within the priory gates, smuggled in an alien coroner to view the body, and then had it buried by the prior’s grooms. The story is given in an Inspeximus of Richard the Second; Muniments of Canterbury.
[664] The distribution of taxes was a matter of special arrangement in the different towns. By the request of the canons the ecclesiastical tenants at Grimsby were not tallaged with the burgesses (Madox, 270). In Leicester the tenants of the Bishop’s Fee just without the walls did suit and service to the Bishop of Lincoln; a compromise had been made in 1281 by which it was decided that the Bishop’s tenants should share in certain common expenses, and should in return enjoy the franchises and free customs which had been won by the Merchant Guild of Leicester; but while the burgesses had to bear the charges both of “the community of the town,” and “the community of the guild,” the bishop’s tenants only paid for such matters as touched “the community of the guild,” and were not liable for the general town taxes. (Gross, ii. 140-1.) As early as 1189 the Guild of Nottingham obtained the right to raise contributions to the ferm rent from tenants of all fees whatsoever. In Norwich this was given in 1229 (Norwich Doc., Stanley v. Mayor, etc., 5, 6). But the question of collection still remained a burning one, and the itinerant justices having failed in 1239 to settle matters between the convent and the city, the King himself went to Norwich to insist on an agreement in 1241. (Blomefield, iii. 46.) See p. 357, note 4.
[665] Shillingford’s Letters, p. 13.