INTRODUCTION. 3 



These supplies for the royal table must often have failed. In 

 aid of them, a market for provisions was constantly kept at the 

 palace-gate wherever the king was. This was superintended by 

 an officer called Clerk of the Market of the King's house, who 

 was to burn all false weights and measures, to precede the King in 

 his progresses, and warn the people to bake and brew, and make 

 provision against his coming. He was also, by the oaths of twelve 

 men, to set the prices of provisions, beyond which no person 

 attending the court were to pay. 



But to ensure the supply of the King's house, the crown was 

 possessed of this prerogative of purveyance and pre-emption, which 

 was intrusted to officers called purveyors. They were in early 

 times appointed by the treasurer of the household, by warrant 

 under his seal, directed to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, 

 who made out their commissions. These commissions were some- 

 times under the great, sometimes under the small seal, but in later 

 times under the great seal onty, and were usually granted for six 

 months, at the expiration of which time they were returned to the 

 Board of Green Cloth, when the treasurer of the household either 

 superseded them and directed them to the clerk of the crown to be 

 renewed, or granted new warrants. 



At a period when the court removed from one place to another so 

 frequently as it used formerly to do, and when markets were few, 

 and provisions much less abundant than they now are, these officers 

 were particularly necessary. But vested with the powers of an 

 acknowledged prerogative in the days when people were little able 

 to contend even with unjust exertions of power, it is not to be 

 wondered at if purveyors abused their authority. 



Religious houses were not exempt except by charter, and the 

 visits of our kings and queens may be evidenced as a sort of 

 purveyance. The great fish-pond at St. Alban's was the occasion 

 of many of these royal visits, which were so expensive to the 

 Abbey that they drained and filled it in to get rid of these 

 troublesome guests. 



This privilege of purveyance seems always to have been con- 

 sidered an intolerable grievance; and about forty statutes were 

 passed upon the subject, many of them like all the important 

 early statutes, being a re-enactment of those preceding. Some of 

 the most stringent occur in the 36th year of Edward III. The 

 parliament of that year said to have been held for the honour 



