Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

There is perhaps no better illustration of the character and conditions of the controversy between town and church than the story of the quarrel between Exeter city and the Cathedral, which has been preserved for us in the letters of an able mayor, who at a very important crisis conducted the case of his fellow-citizens against the chapter, and whose phrases, written in the heat of battle, carry us back into the very midst of a long-forgotten strife. Descended from an old county family which had thrown in its lot with the burghers of Exeter and become traders in the city and leaders in its counsels, John Shillingford was born into a tradition of civic patriotism. His father served as mayor from 1428 to 1430 and was noted for being learned in the law; and John Shillingford himself was mayor three times, and the distinguished leader from 1445 to 1448 of a struggle for independence which was already a hundred and fifty years old.

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

From London long letters to the “Fellowship” at home rehearsed every step of the negociations, from the moment when the mayor first “came to Westminster soon upon nine of the bell, and there met with my lord chancellor at the broad door a little from the stair-foot coming from the Star Chamber, I in the court, and by the door kneeling and saluting him in the most goodly wise that I could, and recommended unto his good and gracious lordship my fellowship and all the commonalty, his own people and bedesmen of the city of Exeter. He said to the mayor two times ‘Welcome’ and the third time ‘Right welcome, mayor,’ and held the mayor a great while fast by the hand, and so went forth to his barge and with him great press, lords and other.”640 In the same way Shillingford notes carefully every detail of the grave ceremonial observed before the arbiters of the city’s destiny, when “my lord took his chair and the justices sat with him, and both parties with their counsel kneeled before.”641 Then followed a long argument in which the mayor held his own against the lawyers, and “so we departed, standing afar from my lord, and he asked wine and sent me his own cup, and to no more;”642 also “my lord in this time did me much worship and openly … commended me for my good rule at home.” When a letter from the mayor was addressed to the lord chancellor, we hear how the recorder “kissed the letter and put it into my lord’s blessed hand, and my lord with a glad countenance received the letter, and said that the mayor and all the commons should have Christ’s blessing and his, and bade my master Radford643 to stand up, and so did, and anon my lord brake the letter even while grace was saying, and there right read it every deal or he went to his dinner.”

Business in London was best furthered by judicious gifts, and Exeter was constantly called on to send fish to the chancellor – conger eel, 400 of buckhorn or dried whiting, or a “fish called crabs.”644 Or again when the prudent mayor heard the lord chancellor bid the justice to dinner for a Friday, “I did as methought ought to be done … and sent thither that day two stately pickerellis and two stately tenches.”645 This proved a very successful venture, as “it came in good season” for the great lords and bishops who dined with the chancellor that day. At one stage of the business indeed the mayor thought it unwise to proceed with his argument until a certain present of fish should arrive. “I tarried and yet tarried because of the buckhorn, the which came not yet, me to right great anger and discomfort by my troth … for it had been a good mean and order, after speaking and communication above-said, the buckhorn to have been presented, and I to have come thereafter, and so to have sped much the better; but now it is like to fail to hindering.”646 Whether it was the fault of the treasurer of the town, or of the carrier, he did not know; he was sure each would accuse the other. “Christ’s curse have they both,” he breaks out, “and say ye amen, non sine merito, and but ye dare say so, think so, think so!” At last the buckhorn arrived on Candlemas even – ”better late than never,” said the irritated mayor. “That day was I at Lambeth with my lord at mass, and offered my candle to my lord’s blessed hand, I kneeling adown offering my candle. My lord with laughing cheer upon me said heartily ‘Graunt mercy, mayor;’ and that same day I abode there to meat by my said lord’s commandment; I met with my lord at high table end coming to meatward, and as soon as ever he saw me he took me fast by the hand and thanks enough to; I said to my said lord it was too simple a thing considering his estate to say on his ‘graunt mercy,’ but if I had been at home at this fair he should have had better stuff and other things. I went forth with him to the midst of the hall, he standing in his estate against the fire a great while, and two bishops, the two chief justices, and other lords, knights and squires, and other common people great multitude, the hall full, all standing afar apart from him, I kneeling by him, and after recommendation I moved him of our matter shortly as time asked.” He closed this argument against the prelate’s malpractices in his most graceful manner – ”I in my leave-taking saying these words, ‘My lord have pity and mercy upon that poor city, Jesus vidit civitatem et flevit super eam.’”647

But amid all the fashions of the chancellor’s court the mayor never for a moment lost the sense of his own dignity as the representative of a free city. Deferential and scrupulous in paying the grave courtesies of an exact formality, Shillingford was inflexible in all that lay beyond mere ceremonial; for, as he said, “the matter toucheth the great commonalty of the city of Exeter as well as him.”648 “The said mayor,” he writes on one occasion, “conceived and knew right well that his said lord bishop took unworthy, as he might right well, for simpleness and poverty to speak or entreat with him. Nevertheless he said, such simple as he was, he was Mayor of Exeter.”649 In every dilemma he fell back haughtily on his own “simpleness,” and on his subjection to the town council at home, “having no power, nor nought may do, say, agree, nor assent, without a communication had with my fellowship – a commonalty which is hard to deal with,”650 added the artful mayor, with a humour which his submissive subjects at Exeter doubtless fully appreciated.651

We may safely assume that great labour and cost were not expended without some serious reason by the Exeter citizens – a community of hard-working practical traders, who knew the value both of their time and their money. And in the mayor’s accounts of the proceedings in London we can gather up the long list of grievances which had gone on accumulating within the walls of this little city between Church and State, till the inhabitants found themselves ranged in two hostile armies, to either of which surrender meant ruin and enslavement.

(1) The most burning question at issue was the right of arrest of the bishop’s tenants, or within the ecclesiastical precincts. Among many other cases652 the mayor alleged that of one “Hugh Lucays, tenant of the said bishop, the most, or one of the most, misgoverned men of all the city of Exeter, or of all the shire afterward,” who made a fray upon a townsman at the very door of the Guild Hall, and when the sergeant seized him “brake the arrest and went his way” into the church, pursued by the two serjeants. The stewards of the city who followed with the king’s mace to keep the king’s peace found the church doors shut upon them, and the prisoner “violently with strong hand taken away from them”; and various clerks and ministers of the church, by order of the dean and chapter, fell on them with door-bars, swords, daggers, long-knives, and “Irish skenes,” so that “both stewards and serjeants stood in despair of their lives, and scarce escaped out of the church with their lives.”653 This was the mayor’s story. The bishop on his part said that Hugh Lucas was an innocent man, who was driven into the cathedral during divine service by the turbulent mob of burghers brandishing “swords, daggers, and other invasive weapons,” and intent only on wickedness and misrule.654 Then again one of the bishop’s servants who had struck a townsman in the eye with a dagger almost unto death, could not be punished because he had been standing within the Close gate, between the cemetery and the city. “Also ofttimes the mayor hath not dared do the law and execution thereof … for now almost every man taketh colour by my lord” the bishop. If any riotous person made a fray, he would run off and “take the church late;” if a man was arrested on Saturday, “he must be delivered to make my lord’s work” on Sunday,655 and by such devices both men and women “by whom the mayor is rebuked” got off scot free. A compromise had been made that the city officers should make no arrests in church or cemetery from the ceasing of Our Lady bell to the end of Compline, but the chapter later laid this against them in evidence that they had no right ever to make any arrest there, “which is to the said mayor and commonalty great vexation, hurt, and hindering; and to misgoverned men, rioters, and breakers of the peace great boldness.”656 The mayor alleged that it was impossible to keep order in face of privileges which rendered the clergy and their tenants practically independent of the law. “Night walking, evil language, visaging, shouldering, and all riotous rule” went on unchecked, seeing that the mayor “could no longer rule the King’s people after his laws, nor do right as he is sworn to, for dread of my lord.”657 Just outside St. Peter’s Close stood a well-known tavern, and the canons who owned the Broad Gate kept its wicket open almost all the night, “out of which wicket into which tavern cometh the great part of all the rioters into the Close, priests and others,” said the townspeople, and there made sleep impossible the whole night long to the neighbours. The canons however held that the “mayor and such dreadful people of his commonalty be the misgoverned people and incomers that they spoke of.” According to the clerical party indeed the whole municipal body was altogether sunk in sin; the very town serjeants were “wild and unreasonable fellows,” who had even been heard to threaten “that there should many a priest of the Close of Exeter lose his head once of midsummer even;”658 and as for the tavern, it was wholly the mayor’s business to keep order there, unless indeed, as they suggested, it was he himself “that is cause and giver of example to all such misgovernance.”659 This charge, however, which the chancellor had struck out with his own hands, was one about which the mayor did not greatly trouble himself. “As touching the great venom that they meaneth of my living,” he wrote to the Fellowship, “I take right nought by and say sadly ‘si recte vivas,’ etc., and am right merry and fare right well, ever thanking God and my own purse. And I lying on my bed at the writing of this right early, merrily singing a merry song, and that is this ‘Come no more at our house, come, come, come!’ I will not die nor for sorrow nor for anger, but be merry and fare right well, while I have money; but that is and like to be scarce with me, considering the business and cost that I have had and like to have; and yet I had with me £20 and more by my troth, whereof of troth not right much I spend yet, but like, &c. Construe ye what ye will.”660

(2) It was a further grievance to the townspeople that the bishop claimed the right to hold both a court baron and leet and view of frankpledge, and on this pretence called before himself various pleas and matters that should have been tried before the mayor and bailiffs, thus covetously gathering into his coffers fines on which they themselves had set longing eyes; and moreover that he took to himself any goods seized from felons.661 There had been angry feeling over the case of one John Barton, whom the town officers pursued for robbing. But as it was a church that he had robbed, and as he had hidden the stolen goods in a tenement of the bishop’s, the ecclesiastics, rather than see justice done by the secular power, had shut the door in the face of the municipal officers, and had hurried off the sacrilegious thief into the cathedral, then smuggled him out into a bakehouse, and so conveyed him out of the city; while the stolen goods were kept with a strong hand to the use of the bishop, “to great hurt and hindering of our sovereign lord the King and the said mayor and commonalty.”662

(3) In all towns where the question of jurisdiction was raised between the townsfolk and the Church party the quarrel about coroner’s inquests ran high. Churchmen and laymen alike had to submit to the coroner’s inquest. But chapters of cathedrals and monasteries found it less humiliating to admit within their precincts an officer of the shire than the town officer sent in by a mayor who was for ever keeping his jealous watch at their gates. On the other hand, after their long and determined struggle to be freed from foreign interference, the towns looked with suspicion on the appearance within their walls on any pretext whatever of any official of the shire. In Exeter as elsewhere the city coroner claimed “to corowne prisoners dead in the bishop’s prison,” but the bishop flatly refused to admit into the precincts any officer save the coroner of Devonshire, and if the municipal coroners on hearing of a prisoner’s death appeared at the gates of the Close, they were turned back by “servants of the said bishop, and by his commandment they were let to do their office there; and the said prisoners so dead buried uncoroned.”663