PROCEEDINGS FOR 1897 CLIX 



BKISTOL IN THE DAYS OF THE CABOTS. 



By W. E. Barker. 



One of the Bristol Delegates, 



The task which I have set myself is that of endeavouring to convey 

 some idea of what Bristol was at the period made famous by the dis- 

 covery of North America. I wish to include in this not merely the 

 peculiarities of the material town of Bristol, but also some references to 

 its government and condition, with such an interweaving of hints as to 

 its social aspects, as will, I hope, enable you to understand something of its 

 real life at that period. 



My special object does not require that I should enter upon the 

 doubtful question of the origin of the early settlement which afterwards 

 became the organised and fortified town ; that is to say, whether it had 

 anything to do with the British and Eoman periods, and, if so, to what 

 extent. But it will be expected of me that I should briefly indicate, how 

 the Bristol of the fifteenth century became developed from the small 

 beginnings of its settled existence as they probably shaped themselves in 

 Saxon times. 



Here we are on more solid ground, for there are undoubted historic 

 evidences in the examples of a Bristol coinage, and in the references of 

 early writers, showing that at that period there was an infant Bristol. 

 There also exists a conjectural representation of the town at that time, 

 showing its original limits, and how it became, as time went on, laid out 

 in thoroughfares occupied with houses, and enriched by the erection of 

 many churches. This earliest illustrative idea of the size and construction 

 of the town forms an illumination in a MS. volume which was a pro- 

 duction of the fifteenth century, and which is still in existence and in 

 use, called " The Mayor's Kalendar." This was compiled about the year 

 1478, in the time of Edward IV., by the then Town Clerk, Eobert Eicart, 

 who by means of this volume performed the duties of a public chronicler. 

 The plan which his own or another contemporary hand drew represents 

 the town as it originally stood upon a small oval area of about nineteen 

 acres. Here it occupied what was almost an island, the waters of the 

 Avon, and its tributary the Froom, touching it on all sides except towards 

 the east, where afterwards the famous Castle of Bristol completed the de- 

 fences which nature had so well begun. Standing on this little mound, 



