"That if any member of the royal household, or any retainer of the nobility, shall attempt to take possession of a house within the City either by main force or by delivery [of the Marshal of the King's Household]; and, if in such attempt he shall be slain by the master of the house, then, and in such case, the master of the house, shall find six of his kinsmen [i.e. as compurgators], who shall make oath, himself making oath as the seventh, that it was for this reason that he so slew the intruder; and thereupon he shall go acquitted."
Pre-emption
The humbler people who escaped billeting might still have cause to regret royal journeys owing to the inconsiderate exercise of the right of pre-emption. Subjects were compelled to sell; and the worst of it was that the King's purveyors were in the habit of paying not in cash down, but by means of an exchequer tally, or a beating! A tally was a hazel rod which had certain notches indicating the amount due. It obtained its name from the circumstance that these rods were in pairs, the creditor having one and the debtor the other, so that they could be used for the purpose of comparison. In practice it was found no easy matter to recover under this system, which lent itself to the worst exactions, and is the subject of numerous complaints in our early popular poetry. Thus in "King Edward and the Shepherd":
"I had catell, now have I none;
They take my beasts, and done them slon,
And payen but a stick of tree ...
They take geese, capons, and hen
And all that ever they may with ren
And reaves us our catell....
They took my hens and my geese
And my sheep with all the fleece
And led them forth away."
Somewhat similarly, when a ship arrived in port with a cargo of wine, the prerogative of prise was enforced, whereby the King was entitled to "a tun before and one abaft the mast," or the equivalent in money.
The royal household and those of "the great lords of the land" enjoyed the right of pre-emption not only in the country but in the London markets. Dealers in fish, for example, were not allowed to quit the City in order to meet a consignment "for the purpose of sending it to any great lord or a house of religion, or of regrating it," until the King's purveyors had first purchased what was required for their master's table.
When fish had been brought to the City, no fishmonger might buy "before the good people have bought what they need." It was the same with poultry. Until prime had been sounded at St. Paul's, poulterers were forbidden to buy for resale, the object being that "the buyers for the King and great lords of the land, and the good people of the City may make good their purchases, so far as they shall need."
Livery
So much for purveyance. As regards the disposition of the provisions thus obtained, it was expressed by the term "livery," formerly of much wider application than at present. The word comprehended all that was delivered or dispensed by the lord to his underlings or domestics—money, victuals, wine, garments, fuel, and lights; but no doubt it was employed more particularly of external and distinctive garb. The Wardrobe Book of 28 Edward I. and the Household Ordinances show that officers and retainers of the Court were presented with a roba estivalis and hiemalis. The livrée des chaperons, so often mentioned, refers to hoods or tippets of a colour sharply contrasting with that of the garment over which they were worn. Subsequently this mark took the form of a round cap, attached to which was a long liripipe, which might be wound round the head, but more usually hung over the arm. In the dress of the City Liverymen traces of it may still be found.
This suggests the remark that livery was used not by the members of great households merely, but by brotherhoods and gentz de mester; hence it is that Chaucer in his Prologue of the "Canterbury Tales" enumerates