Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Alice Stopford Green

From 1206 or earlier Exeter had been governed by its own mayor and bailiffs, and the citizens held their town at a fee-farm rent from the King. But a century later the mayor was a mere dependent of the Earl of Devonshire, wearing his “livery” as one of his retainers and acknowledging his protection. However it happened on a certain day in 1309 that the earl and bishop made an attempt to buy all the fish in the Exeter market, leaving none for the townsfolk. Then the mayor, “minding the welfare of the commons of the said city, and that they also might have the benefit of the said market,” ruled that one-third of the fish must be given to the citizens. The earl with loud threatenings angrily ordered his rebellious dependent to appear before him. Followed by a tumultuous procession of “his brethren and honest commons of the said city,” the mayor went from the Guild Hall to the earl’s house, entered his lord’s “lodging chamber,” and there took off his “livery” coat and gave it back to the earl once for all, the commons meanwhile beating at the door and loudly demanding their mayor, till the terrified earl entreated him to quiet their clamour. The town forthwith passed a law that no citizen should ever again wear “foreigner’s livery,” and so began the long fight for municipal independence.[621]

For the same two great powers ever kept watch on the Exeter citizens and their market, if by chance there was any profit which could be turned their way. At the town gates the Earls of Devonshire held Exe Island and the adjoining suburb, commanded the navigation of the Exe, forced the mayor to lay aside his mace as he approached the suburb, and sought to recall the days when he had worn their livery. A more dangerous enemy was encamped within the walls. Just opposite the little town-hall rose the great wall with its towers which guarded the bishop’s palace, the cathedral, and the ecclesiastical precincts; and within this fortified enclosure ruled an august power that defied the petty upstart forces of the mayor and his group of shopkeepers outside. The conflict of the town with the Earls,[622] if it lasted for something like three hundred years, was still of minor significance. The conflict with the Church was far more dangerous in form and serious in its issues.

The town and the close, as we are told by the mayor in 1448, had “been in debate by divers times almost by time of eightscore years, and that I could never know, find nor read that we ever took a suit against them, but ever stand in defence as a buckler player, and smiter never.”[623] Now at last, however, the citizens were resolved “once to smite, taking a suit,”[624] as became the temper and traditions of the fifteenth century when such quarrels were fought out, not with clubs and daggers, but in the “paper wars of Westminster.” As the crisis approached the townsfolk made ready for the fray. Determined that their battle should be conducted by the most capable man among them, at Michaelmas, 1444, they elected as their mayor John Shillingford. He refused to accept office, upon which they sent to Westminster and procured a writ under the Privy Seal ordering him either to submit or pay a fine of £1,000, a sum which probably no single individual in Exeter at that time possessed. In February 1445 therefore, he “came to the Guild Hall and there was sworn; and though at the first with an evil will, yet in the end did perform it very well,”[625]—so well indeed that the bishop even saw in “the wilful labour of John Shillingford” the main cause of all “the great hurt and loss of the said church and city.”[626]

Once Mayor Shillingford quickly threw down his challenge to the chapter. On Ascension Day, 1445, the city serjeant followed a servant of the chancellor into the precincts, and there arrested him when he was actually taking part in a procession, holding up from the ground his master’s golden cope;[627] and two more arrests of clerks followed in a little over a year. A new mayor took his place at Michaelmas 1445, but when in April 1446 the chapter prepared to bring a suit against the town, laying the damages at £1,000, the city again fell back on Shillingford and for the two critical years of the strife he remained supreme magistrate and led the fight as it broadened so as to cover the whole range of the civic life. Party strife ran high, and the inhabitants were soon on terms of open war. On one occasion in the midst of the quarrel, a great stack of wood which lay between the cathedral and the town was set on fire at nine o’clock in the shortest time of the year. This, the burgesses cried out, was done by the ministers of the cathedral to burn down the town. The charge was thrown back in their teeth by the canons, who protested it was set afire by men of the same city deliberately by consent of the commonalty with intent to burn the church.[628] The tossing to and fro of such an accusation gives us a glimpse of the state of feeling that existed. The cathedral party hated the townspeople as a usurping and rebellious mob; while to the townsfolk when their passion was aroused the cathedral within its walls wore the aspect of a fortress in their midst, held by the power of an ancient enemy.

Which was the “smiter” in the quarrel it would be indeed hard to say. The claims raised on either side were absolutely irreconcilable, and each denied with great frankness and conviction every assertion put forward by the other. For convincing proof of its own dignity the corporation boldly carried back its inquiries to some unknown period before the Christian era, when Exeter “was a city walled, and suburb to the same of most reputation;” and recounted how “soon upon the passion of Christ it was besieged by Vespasian by time of eight days; the which obtained not the effect of his siege, and so wended forth to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to Rome, and from Rome to Jerusalem, and then he with Titus besieged Jerusalem and obtained and sold thirty Jews’ heads for a penny, as it appeareth by Chronicles.” They then passed on to its position under the Saxon Kings; and thence came directly to the privileges of the mayor, derived from the good old time when bailiffs and citizens held the town in fee-farm from the King, before any monastery or cathedral church was built.[629] All the historical research on this side in fact plainly proved the ecclesiastical authority to be a mere modern usurpation, of no credit or value.

The bishop and chapter for their part ignored the times before Vespasian, and bluntly “say that they doubt of Vespasian’s being at Exeter, and so at Bordeaux and Jerusalem, to sell thirty Jews’ heads for a penny;” so coming at once to their main contention, they declared that St. Stephen’s Fee was no parcel of the city, as the Book of Domesday would show, and was indeed “of elder time than is the city,” for Exeter was nothing more than a borough till the first bishop had been installed there by the Confessor. Indeed they observed that the mayor himself was well known to be an officer of yesterday, since till the time of Henry the Third there “was no mayor nor fee-farm,” but the town was governed by the sheriff of the county, and the bishops in their sphere had absolute jurisdiction, “without that time out of mind there were any such mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty known in the city.”[630]

But all the arguments of the bishop, “that blessed good man in himself if he must be Edmund, Bishop of Exeter,”[631] as the mayor politely remarked, were thrown away on Shillingford. “I said nay, and proved it by Domesday,”[632] he writes, fully satisfied that my lord “had no more knowledge of the ground of this matter than the image in the cloth of arras there”[633]—a melancholy ignorance, “considering his blessedness, holy living, and good conscience.” The prelate’s history, indeed, like that of his antagonist, was not without reproach. Domesday makes no mention of any separate lands of the Church in Exeter; but copies of Domesday were scarce, and it was tolerably safe to refer to its authority. In any case, however, the daily pressure of circumstance was so strong that it mattered very little to the opposing forces whether ancient history justified their position or no. To the burghers the difficulties of a divided administration, and the humiliation of submission, were made more galling every day by the growing prosperity of the town and the independent temper of the time; while the chapter, confident in the legal strength of their position, had not the least hesitation in forcing on the conflict.

The suit which opened in London in 1447 was complicated and costly,[634] and mayor and law officers and town councillors in Exeter had to put forth all their resources. Perpetual consultations were carried on in the Town Hall with the help of much malmsey; once two plovers and a partridge helped the feast. As time went on the expenses in meat and drink were heavy; judges had to be feasted, and the municipal officers encouraged, and presents were needed for the great folk in London, besides the serious cost of sending messengers continually to London, Tiverton, and Crediton. Even after the matter was finally decided the city had to make up in the next year rewards of money, and gifts of fish and wine, for which it was still in debt.[635]

The most arduous and costly part of the work, however, lay in the vast amount of historical and legal research which the case demanded. “It asketh many great ensearches,” said Shillingford, “first in our treasury at home among full many great and old records; afterward at Westminster, first in the Chancery, in the Exchequer, in the Receipt, and in the Tower; and all these ensearches asketh great labour long time as after this, to make our articles we have many true against one of theirs.”[636] Evidences and documents were read and re-read, and arguments brought from the Black Roll of the city, from Domesday Book, from Magna Charta, from statutes, charters, and letters patent, from the eyres holden at Exeter by the judges of Edward the First, from records of the “customs” under Henry the Third or Edward the Third. The Recorder of Exeter worked hard, and the mayor turned confidently to him when legal questions became peculiarly obscure. It “is dark to my conceit as yet,” he writes from London; “but I trust to God it shall be right well with your good information and help thereto; to which intent I send you a roll in the which is contained copies of Domesday, copy of eyres, of charters, and other things that is necessary to be seen in making of these replications. I can no more at this time, but I pray you be not weary to over-read hear and see all the writing that I have sent home to you at this time; and if you be, no marvel though I be weary, and God be with you.”[637]

Shillingford himself was constantly in London; where the record of one day’s work may serve as an instance of his activity. He left Exeter at 6 o’clock on Wednesday morning, and reached London on Saturday at 7 A.M. “That day I had right great business,” he says. First he went to the Exchequer to see about Exmouth Port; then to Westminster Hall to speak with various lawyers; after that he visited the chief justice, Sir John Fortescue, and rode with him homeward; then he called on another justice, Sir Richard Newton; from thence he went to commune “with our counsel of our matters;” and in the afternoon proposed to visit the archbishop at Lambeth.[638] Meanwhile he kept a certain watch over affairs at home, and sent an occasional order as to the conduct of local business in Exeter. “Also I charge Germin (the treasurer) under rule and commandment of J. Coteler, my lieutenant, that he do that he can do, brawl, brag and brace, lie and swear well to, and in special that the streets be right clean and specially the little lane in the back-side beneath the flesh-fold gate, for there lieth many oxen heads and bones, that they be removed away for the nonce against my coming, as soon as I may by cokky’s bones.”[639]