34 Bradford-upon-Avon. 
burden. The trading municipia had as yet acquired no weight in 
the national council, and all that they desired was to be let alone. 
With regard to all except chartered boroughs or towns which were 
the actual or ancient demesne of the Crown, it was left to the dis- 
cretion of the sheriff to issue writs to such unincorporated places 
as could afford to defray the expense of their representatives, and 
had a notable interest in the public welfare. The wages of bur- 
gesses were tz shillings a day—a sum which at that time, when a 
quarter of wheat sold for 4s., and a sheep was considered rather 
high at 1s., would be equivalent to about 16 times as much now ;— 
and they were allowed a certain number of days for going and re- 
turning, about 35 miles being reckoned a day’s journey.’ It was 
really rather a costly luxury to the good burghers of Bradford, and 
no doubt, here, as elsewhere, the necessary sum was raised with 
reluctance by men little solicitous about political franchise. Other 
towns in Wiltshire seem to have been of the same mind, and to 
have induced the sheriff to omit them from his list. Thus, in the 
12th Edward III., the sheriff of Wiltshire, after returning two 
citizens for Salisbury, and burgesses for two boroughs, concludes 
with these words,—“ There are no other cities or boroughs within 
my bailiwick;”—and yet, in fact, eight other towns had sent mem- 
bers to preceding parliaments.” 
It was no doubt during this period that churches began to mul- 
tiply in Bradford. There is still remaining a fragment of the chapel 
on Tory—(so termed, it is conceived, because the highest part of 
the town,’ from the Anglo-Saxon word Tor, which signifies a 
1 John Halle and William Hore received for their services, as Burgesses for 
Salisbury, in Parliament for 163 days, the sum of £32 12s.—a sum equivalent 
now to £326!—See Duke’s ‘ Prolusiones Historice,’ p. 306. 
2 See on this subject, Hallam’s ‘ Europe in the Middle Ages,’ iii., 113. 
8 It is to this chapel Leland alludes when he says, ‘‘ Ther is a chapelle on the 
highest place of the toune as I entered.’””—Leland entered Bradford from Wrax- 
hall. His road lay through a part of Berrifield, then through the Conigre, and 
so down by the east end of Tory and Middle Rank into what is now called New 
Town. Mason’s lane, now the chief thoroughfare, did not then exist. As he 
emerged from the Conigre his attention would be naturally attracted by ‘ the 
chapel’ on Tory. In 1743, as appears from a map of the Methuen property at 
the time, there are represented only jive houses on the east side, and two, which 
