A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



The king appointed the prior of Binham 

 warden of the property of the Norwich priory, 

 and left the city on 27 September. The next day 

 Prior Burnham resigned ; the convent elected 

 William Kirkby in his place on I October, and 

 the king redelivered to him the goods and 

 revenues of the monastery. 



Under its new ruler the priory demanded of the 

 city 4,000 marks for damage, appealing in 1274 

 to the Roman court to enforce the claim. The 

 pope took the wise course of referring the whole 

 matter to the decision of the king, who deter- 

 mined (i) that all parties should try to be real 

 friends ; (2) that the citizens should pay 3,000 

 marks towards rebuilding the church, in six 

 annual sums of 5 00 marks ; (3) that they should 

 give for the use of the high altar of the church 

 a pix of gold weighing ten pounds, and worth 

 ;{^I00; (4) that the priory might make new 

 gates to their monastery ; and (5) that some of 

 the chief citizens should proceed to Rome at their 

 own expense to assure the pope of the truth of the 

 agreement, and to beg his pardon and peace. 

 On the city complying with these terms, the 

 king restored it to its ancient dignity. In 1276 

 the pope's general absolution came from Rome, 

 and was published at Norwich on Palm Sunday 

 by the priors of the Dominican and Franciscan 

 houses of that city. 



On Advent Sunday, 1278, William de Mid- 

 dleton was enthroned as bishop, and the now 

 completely restored cathedral church was by him 

 dedicated, in the presence of the king and queen, 

 and of three other bishops and a great concourse 

 of nobles.^ 



Other disputes between the priory and the 

 city as to the respective limits of their jurisdic- 

 tion took place during the reign of Edward I, 

 but were solved by appeals to the law courts. 

 In 1306 an important composition was agreed 

 to with regard to the claim of the priory that 

 Tombland, with Ratton Row, Holm Street, and 

 Spiteland was their demesne, and that their 

 tenants therein could sell and trade without con- 

 tributing to any city tollage or tax. The agree- 

 ment decided that henceforth Tombland should 

 always be kept clear, and not used as a market, 

 as a rope-walk, or to lay timber thereon, save that 

 the priory might hold there their Whitsuntide 

 fair, and that every Sunday at such times as there 

 was a synod held at Norwich, victuals and fruit 

 might, as usual, be sold at the priory gates ; that 

 at every fair the citizens were to choose first 

 which half they would have for their stalls, for 

 which they were to pay no kind of toll, and 

 that the other half was to be the prior's ; that 

 the city coroner might hold inquests on the 

 priory demesne, but that the prior should name 

 a brother to act as his assessor, and that the jury 

 should be drawn solely from the parish where 

 the offence had occurred ; that the prior and 



Cott 



on, op. cit. 1, 401. 



coroner might hold their leets in Holm Street 

 and Spiteland without any city officer ; and that 

 the bailiffs were not to distrain or enter on the 

 demesne, nor levy any tolls or customs for the 

 city ; but if sny sold merchandise there they 

 were to pay such tolls to the prior, and the prior 

 was to answer for them to the city bailiffs.' 



Edward III and Queen Philippa, when they 

 visited Norwich in 1344, and Richard II and 

 his queen, during their visit were lodged in the 

 priory.' 



In 1329 there was a fresh readjustment of 

 the recurring disputes, whereby Prior William 

 Worsted secured better terms than hitherto for 

 his tenants in the exempt liberties, including 

 toll-free passage on the River Wensum.* 



A strange kind of riot, called ' Gladman's in- 

 surrection,' arose in the city in connexion with 

 claims to mills in 1442. William Hempstede, 

 mayor for that year, was charged with designedly 

 raising an insurrection, declaring they had power 

 in the city to slay both bishop and prior, and 

 the abbot of Holm, and to spoil their goods, and 

 that the king, by reason the city was a county 

 by itself, had not the power to punish them for 

 so doing ; whereupon John Gladman, a city 

 merchant, rode on horseback as a king, with a 

 paper crown on, and a sceptre and sword carried 

 before him, and with a great armed troop of 

 3,000 on horseback and foot ' proceeded to the 

 priory gates, calling out : ' Let us burn the priory 

 and kill the prior and monks.' The priory 

 gates being guarded, they dug a passage under 

 them for entry, and carried wood thither to burn 

 the priory, and placed guns against it. At last, 

 by threats of killing the prior and all the monks, 

 they obtained from them an evidence of the 

 priory sealed with the city seal relative to the 

 meadows by the river. This they took away, 

 and for a week, from Monday after St. Paul s 

 Conversion, kept the city gates shut as against the 

 king, and would not suffer the Duke of Norfolk, 

 nor the Earl of Oxford, or any of the king's 

 ministers, though showing the royal commission, 

 to enter. This extraordinary outburst ended in 

 the liberties of the city being seized into the 

 king's hands, and they thus continued until 

 1447, when Mayor Hempstede and his associates 

 pleaded guilty and threw themselves on the king's 



' Cited by Blomefield, Hist. ofNorf. iii, 7 1 -3. 

 ' Blomefield, Hist, of Norf. iii, 88, 112. 



* The elaborate agreement is set forth at length by 

 Blomefield {Hist, of Norf. iii, 143-4). 



* The subsequent defence alleged that the procession 

 was but a Shrovetide sporting, and that Gladman 

 was merely ' crowned as Kyng of Crestemesse ' ; tht 

 riot, however, took place at the end of January, six 

 weeks before any Shrovetide mummery was due ; 

 possibly Gladman, who seems to have played the part 

 of King of Misrule ' annually at the Shrovetide car- 

 nival, put on his ' property robes ' in a spirit of semi- 

 jesting riotousness, and was then carried by the temper 

 of the mob further than he had intended. 



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