The chief quarrel however was as to the exact limits of the abbot’s authority as defined by an agreement drawn up in the thirteenth century, and carefully copied out anew by the city clerk in the fifteenth century; and the nice point under discussion during many generations was whether the abbots, under pretext of infang-theoff, should persist in arresting evildoers in Longport, which was the King’s highway and under the jurisdiction of his assignees, the corporation of Canterbury, but which ran for its whole length through the abbey lands.[700] It was only after 1475 that the dispute seems to have come to an end, when the abbot’s gallows at Chaldensham were, by the consent of the community and of the convent, broken to pieces. A Baron of the Exchequer and the Recorder of London chosen to arbitrate between the burghers and the monks, were welcomed at Canterbury with a fee for their pains, lodged at the Austin Friars, entertained sumptuously at the town’s expense with lavish supplies of choice food and drink,[701] and served with three meals a day, “fractio jejunii, jantaculum, et cœna,” till finally on a certain afternoon the monks and the corporation met to drink together in honour of the final peace, and the ambassadors set out on their journey homewards, treated to refreshments at every stage from the parting cup at Canterbury to the farewell drink at Newgate. In 1478 they delivered their arbitration at Westminster, and there was a fresh series of “potationes” to celebrate the settlement.[702]
III. The Abbot of S. Augustine’s was indeed a far less formidable neighbour than the Prior of Christ Church, between whom and the city there lay centuries of angry controversy. With him also there was of course the usual quarrel about the administration of justice. The Prior had his own gallows, where men were hung for sheep-stealing as well as for murder, and when the see of Canterbury was vacant convicted prisoners who “pleaded their clergy” were handed over to him as their ordinary—an arrangement which evidently must have been a source of much bitter feeling on the part of the townspeople; in 1313, for example, out of nine men who were convicted by a jury in the Assize court of stealing and murder and who all pleaded their clergy, seven purged themselves before the ecclesiastical judge and were set free.[703] Moreover the cathedral was turned into a sanctuary, where criminals fled from the just judgment of their fellow citizens. In 1425 Bernard the goldsmith, a stranger from over sea, escaped from the city prison and fled to the cathedral church, followed by the bailiffs and a wild mob of townsmen. As he crouched within the rails of the new monument put up to Archbishop Chicheley, the mob thrust their arms between the bars, seized him and beat him with sticks hidden in their sleeves, and at last tore him out of the enclosure, carried him into the nave, and would have dragged him back to gaol, save for the sudden interference of the commissary, who with his followers drove them back and rescued the prisoner from their hands.[704]
So also the question of taxes caused much wrangling. Christ Church, which owned within the franchise £200 of rent and five acres of land,[705] claimed to be free from any contribution for maintaining the walls of the city[706] after their circuit had been completed by Archbishop Sudbury and left to the people’s care; and this dispute was not settled till 1492, when the convent, having got possession of a part of the wall, undertook to keep that section of it in repair.[707] With regard to the costs of levying soldiers for the royal service[708] the citizens decided in 1327 to charge a part of this tax on lands held by the convent. The tax seems to have been required only from property in the city, and the archbishop was inclined to give way after discussion with his counsel, “however much those of our Church may wish to do otherwise,” but the prior resolutely held out and got a letter of special protection from the King for Church property.[709] At this the city was stirred to the utmost fury. The people held a meeting in Blackfriars’ churchyard, and passed a resolution that if the convent still refused they would break their windows in Burgate, disable their mills, drive their tenants out of their houses; that they would allow no one to give, sell, or lend meat or drink to monks, and would seize carts and horses carrying food from their manors and sell them in the market; that they would arrest any monk coming out of the monastery into the city and take his clothes and property; that the monastery should be cut off from the world by a deep trench dug in front of its gate, and that no pilgrim should be allowed to enter the cathedral until he had taken an oath not to make the smallest offering. Finally every man at the meeting swore that he would have from S. Thomas’s shrine a gold ring for a finger of each hand.[710] The threat of interference with their pilgrims was a serious matter to the convent, since the whole charge of providing for the comfort and safety of the pilgrims lay with the mayor. Not only was it his office to see that sufficient food was laid up in the city for the pilgrims and to have all the special directions which he judged necessary for their victuals and lodgings set forth on a post which stood before the court hall, but he was further responsible for keeping order among them, and there were occasions when travellers would set out on their journey with just apprehension unless, as happened at Lydd, official messengers from the town were sent before to Canterbury to arrange that its pilgrims might come and go in safety without danger of arrest, and won favour of the mayor’s wife by the gift of a quart of malmsey.[711] The corporation had in fact power to make a visit to the shrine so difficult and unpleasant as seriously to affect the flow of offering to the treasury of the saint, and this at a time when the anxiety of the convent about profits was heightened by the pressing demands of the Papal Court for a share in the spoils of its great Jubilee festivals.[712] Money quarrels in fact never failed on either side, and at the very end of the fifteenth century it would seem that Cardinal Morton saw in the old feuds a chance for making Canterbury pay its full tribute to the royal treasury; when in 1494 he issued demands for aid in money or in men for the Scotch war he seems to have sent several blank copies of the summons to his friend Prior Selling to be filled up by him and issued to corporations and citizens whom he thought rich enough to pay. Probably in his directions to the tax-gatherer Prior Selling did not forget old enemies of the convent.[713]
The quarrel as to the town market also lasted on throughout the fifteenth century. There the city magistrates had indeed undisputed control, but it was not always easy to enforce their control on the clever people of the convent. Sometimes the monks attempted to escape from the regulations and tolls of the burgesses by sending to buy their fish at the seaside; and the townsmen protected themselves by seizing any fish so bought on its way to the priory.[714] Other questions arose as to houses belonging to Christ Church which opened inwards on the precincts but had windows looking outwards on the market-place in Burgate just outside the priory gate, from which houses shutters and windows could be let down for the inhabitants to display their wares on market-day, whereat the town was doubly aggrieved both by losing the rent of stalls and by seeing the increasing rent of the houses pass away into the convent treasury. At last in 1493 convent and city sought to make a final settlement of the question. The boundaries of the monastery were defined, including many houses of laymen, and within these limits the town renounced all jurisdiction except over houses and shops which had doors or windows opening on the street; while the convent was allowed to distrain on any houses that belonged to it in the city. But in 1500 the quarrel broke out with intenser bitterness, and the mayor violently shifted the market from the prior’s gate to the open space near the city church, so that no house held by the convent should have the advantage of opening out upon it. Then ecclesiastical tenants refused to sell in the new market, and city stall-holders treated the convent servants with little courtesy. The citizens fell on the caterer of Christ Church as he was carrying a halibut he had bought from the market to the priory gate, and took it from him, “contrary to all right and good conscience;” and when the prior sent to the seaside for fish, it was seized at the entrance of the town by the citizens, “disappointing in the same the brethren of the place of their dinners.”[715] The prior brought his grievances before the London courts, upon which the whole town took up the question with ardour, and the burgesses collected a voluntary subscription to defend their cause. The mayor was charged with the conduct of the suit in London. Ten or twelve citizens were perpetually riding backwards and forwards and hanging about the courts, and the usual expenses entered in the town records for drink, supper, horse-meat, hire of horses to Rochester and hire of barges and cloaks for the travellers from thence to London, down to “threepence paid at Sittingbourne in washing of my shirts.”[716] Master Poynings, being at last commissioned by the King to take evidence on the spot, was entertained at a splendid banquet, and finally an exemplification of the market was sent up to the King’s Council in London. In 1501 a new messenger from the King “came to the city and tarried not because of death,[717] but spake with Mr. Mayor at S. Andrew’s Church, the which showed him the market and so he departed to Dover,” followed by a messenger of the mayor hurrying after him with presents of fish, game, poultry, and wine. Then new ambassadors were sent from the city to the King at Richmond, and the paying of fees, and costs for eating and drinking went on merrily. But the citizens won the day in the end, for the Canterbury market is still held by S. Andrew’s Church and was never brought back to the priory gate.
Even the control of the river brought its troubles, for whenever a question arose as to embanking and straightening the bed of the stream, the prior and the mayor met in the meadows about Chatham with their followers and carried on consultations refreshed by the usual supply of meat and drink. Business however was done at these parties, and the river turned from its meandering course from one side of the valley to the other into the straight channel in which it now flows.[718] The question of the mills was less easy to settle, with the dependent problems as to damming the water and dredging the shallows. A settlement made in 1431 to prevent the injury of the city mill failed to end disputes, and in 1499 the prior dug a trench which drew away the water from it, upon which the citizens destroyed the trench and proceeded to make a dam for the conservation of the water running to their mill. The prior in his turn cut the dam; whereupon the mayor called out his posse to fight the matter out in the meadows by the river, apparently routed the enemy’s forces, seizing their arms, and the next day in his wrath removed the market to its new place, as we have seen.[719]
So ended the fifteenth century in Canterbury amid a storm of invective and free fighting. The mayor protested that the prior, in addition to all his other crimes, had taken away the mace from the city serjeant, and had allowed the city ditch to be befouled. The prior retorted by accusing the mayor of riotous conduct, and breaking of boundaries and building of bridges and diverting of water-courses to his damage, and not only this, but of having for malice and grudge to the prior and convent broken the old custom of the citizens’ gathering at Christmas at the tomb of Sudbury to pray for his soul for the great acts he had done for the city, so that they now withdrew their prayers from thence to hold their service under the prison house called Westgate. Indeed they even refused to join the noblemen who brought the King’s offering to S. Thomas at the Christmastide feast.
As usual, however, all this mighty turmoil ended in nothing. The mayor was indicted by the convent for riot, and the verdict of the jury went against him, but no particular result seems to have followed; and though the persevering prior then had the case brought before the Star Chamber in 1501, it was passed over for want of leisure.[720]
Practically the same story was repeated at Canterbury as at Exeter and in every other city where there was a similar conflict.[721] Money and skill and labour and passion were expended without measure, and finally the courts adjudged that all must remain as it had been when the municipality scarcely existed three hundred years before, an order which statesmen possibly thought the safest course in the presence of opposing forces, neither of whom was strong enough to win, and neither of whom could dare to lose. But this was not the end of the matter. Through these three hundred years the towns had gathered strength, perfected their machinery of government, and realized their own might. Wealthy, highly organized, very centres of rationalism in politics and common sense in business, their controversy with the Church, singularly free as it was from theological pre-occupation, was inevitably in all questions of temporal government more keen and resolute in the fifteenth century than ever before. It was vain to renew attempts in one town after another to appease irreconcilable quarrels by arbitrations and compromises which left the real problem untouched, and the century before the Reformation was everywhere a time of restless dissatisfaction, and of spasmodic revolts against the alien ecclesiastical settlements which throve on the town’s wealth, and could never be absorbed into the town’s life. For a little space matters hung in the balance, and then came the crash of the Reformation. In the bitterness of feeling that grew out of the long struggle of the burghers, we have a measure of that temper of virile independence which created the boroughs of the Middle Ages; and as we stand now under the walls of Canterbury Cathedral and see its glory shattered and its carved work broken in pieces, we may well wonder whether in that great ruin there was no other motive at work than the fanaticism of a religious awakening.