[676] Shillingford’s Letters, 84-5, 99.
[677] In Canterbury also the Convent was bent on getting possession of that part of the covered way which lay along its territory, and the city wall itself so far as it touched the Cathedral precincts. Their first step was taken in 1160, and their final success was not assured till 1492, when the city resigned to the Convent the wall and covered way between Burgate and Northgate with the waste land adjoining, and the chapter was allowed to make a postern and to build a bridge across the foss. Such an arrangement was of course only possible at a time when peace with France, and the close of civil wars and riots at home had freed the town from danger of siege or revolution. (Lit. Cant., i. 60-2, iii. 318-20.) See also Davies’ Walks through York, 11, 12.
[678] Shillingford’s Letters, 88, 89, 96.
[679] Shillingford’s Letters, 93, 94.
[680] Shillingford’s Letters, pp. 85, 86, 101, 110.
[681] Ibid. 9.
[682] Ibid. 20.
[683] Shillingford’s Letters, 12.
[684] Ibid. 10, 19.
[685] The Commons had perhaps some reason to ask in 1371 that none but a layman should have charge of the seal. (Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors, i. 262.) This system, however only lasted till 1378, and in the next hundred years, out of 35 chancellors only eight were laymen.