SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



petty law cases.^" At the same time the system must have been as costly as it 

 was detailed : no manufacture was left unsupervised. If the jury at Lyme 

 presented a shoemaker as ' faulty ' for not causing the leather to be well 

 curried, and the curriers were fined/*' it went still further into the matter 

 and decreed how long the tanners should keep their hides in the tan-pit. 

 Ale was tested to see that it was ' mighty of the corn ' and sold in proper 

 measures; each loaf had to be classified and stamped 'bene' or 'full weight.'*" 

 Neither luxuries nor the staple commodities of food and absolute necessaries 

 of clothing but were regulated, both in their manufacture and sale, throughout 

 the Middle Ages. 



In the civic fight for freedom much depended on the lord of the manor 

 who owned the borough ; also on the distant overlord, the king. Hence an 

 intricate network of bribery of all royal or private officials who could in any 

 way advance the interests of the community, Robert of Farendon, evidently 

 a man of influence, was presented by the bailiffs of Bridport on different 

 occasions with chickens, fish, beef, and veal ; and at another time with a 

 ' potell of wine.' '" Articles of horse-trapping were also popular gifts in 

 Bridport, where they were manufactured locally. Some ' horse-nets ' were 

 given to the collector of the royal tallage, and the still more typical gift of a 

 cord to the sheriff of the county.'" Bridport spent lavishly, but it belonged 

 to the ' successful order ' of towns, being a royal borough. It was generally 

 the policy of the king to strengthen the power of the towns, so that the 

 growth of Bridport was developed rather than checked by the overlord. Not 

 that this was universally the case in later times, when the royal power was 

 supreme ; in Shaftesbury Queen Elizabeth appropriated as of royal right lands 

 belonging to the borough, on the plea that they had been wrongfully con- 

 cealed from Her Majesty. Only in 1704, after passing through private 

 hands, did they again revert to the borough. ''" On the other hand, towns 

 such as Sherborne never attained to much independence ; the bishop and 

 abbot kept too tight a hold upon their lay dependants.'" Religious corpora- 

 tions never die, and never have a minority, nor could the individual members 

 go away to the wars. Near Sherborne all the manors belonged either to the 

 bishop or the abbot : '" the religious rivalled the lay population of the 

 borough. The ecclesiastical were distinct from the secular courts, whilst 

 the right of sanctuary caused interference with lay justice. The bishop 

 was lord of the fairs and markets,"' and owner of the corn-mills ; "* the 

 religious community throve on the town's wealth without ever being absorbed 

 in its life. Frequent disputes arose between the monks and the townsmen, 

 and the feud even extended into the abbey church.'" The nearest approach 

 to popular independence in Sherborne was the committee of twenty-four 

 townsmen to regulate the breweries, the number of retail houses, and the 

 character of the ale. But although this committee represented all the trades 

 in Sherborne the individual members were the nominees of the bishop.'" So 



"• Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v (Weymouth and Melcombe Regis) ; vi (Bridport) ; also Rec. of Shaftesburf. 

 "* Roberts, Social Hist. 185, 453 ; MS. in archives of Lyme Regis. 



"' Hist. MSS. Com. Rip. vi, 494. '" Ibid. 490. '" Ibid. 



"» C. H. Mayo, Rec. of Shaftesbury, 6-7. 



"' W. B. Wildman, Hist, of Sherborne (ed. 1896), 30. '" Ibid. 51. '" Ibid. 



'" Ibid. 54. No man was to build any malt-mill within the manor or town of Sherborne whereby the corn- 

 mills 'should be hyndered.' '*' Sec ' Religious Houses.' "' W. B. Wildman, Hist, of Sherborne (ed. 1896), 33. 



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