[457] Rot. Parl. i. 433.
[458] Madox, 94.
[459] In the list of taxpayers to the poll-tax of 1380 in Oxford, we find four aldermen mentioned—a vintner, a draper, and two others whose trade is not mentioned, but who had eight and ten servants, a number very greatly above the average. The vintner and draper each paid, like the mayor, 13s. 4d.; but the man with ten servants gave only 12d.; and the man with eight is not registered as having paid at all. (Oxford City Documents, Oxford Hist. Soc. 8-45.)
[460] See Note A at end of chapter.
[461] In 1327 a violent dispute broke out between the great people of Andover and the rest of the community. The story of the election of a sort of council of fifteen of the richer people in 1303, and of incidents leading to the riot of 1327 can be traced in the entries quoted in Gross, ii. 297-321.
[462] Inaugural Address at Oxford by Mr. Froude, Oct. 26th, 1892.
[463] Cases occur in the towns under the game laws. The Jurats of Hythe present Henry Colle as “a common destroyer in killing hares with snares and pypys to the great destruction of the sport of the gentry and against the statute”; and another man “for keeping one ferret for hunting against the statute.” (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 1, 431, 2.)
[464] See Piers Ploughman. Pass. ix. 20-31; ii. 96; x. 223, et sq.
“Then louh (laughed) there a lord and ‘by this light’ said,
‘I hold it right and reason to take of my reeve
All that mine auditor or else my steward
Counselleth me by their account and my clerk’s writing.
With spiritus intellectus they took the reeve-rolls,
And with spiritus fortitudinis fetch it, will he, nil he.’”