A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



among them Benedict Spichfat and Henry Grindecobbe, were to perambulate 

 the bounds of the vill, which was recognized as a borough ; all the tenements 

 being burgages and all the people burgesses." They were to elect two bur- 

 gesses to send to Parliament, and their juries were to be composed of towns- 

 men only ; moreover, they were only to come to the hundred court when 

 impleaded by writ. The assize of bread and ale was to be kept by burgesses, 

 and the town bailiff alone was to make executions. The only concession to 

 the convent was that the burgesses should grind at the abbot's mills. To 

 this the burgesses set their seals on 12 March," with imaginable alacrity. 

 But the chapter protested and refused until the king ordered them to seal 

 likewise. On 14 April the indenture received confirmation by Letters 

 Patent." 



The townsmen were thus established as burgesses. They improved the 

 victory by demanding common rights in Barnet Wood, as well as rights of 

 fishing and rights of taking game, all of which the abbot conceded." But 

 they were charged with breaking the charter by making and maintaining 

 eighty hand-mills." As to this there is no evidence. For five years " the 

 men of St. Albans lived under the new conditions. 



Abbot Hugh died before September 1327," and Richard of Wallingford, 

 his successor," cannot have settled down in St. Albans much before the early 

 summer of 1328.°° He must have known that he was embarking on a 

 struggle with the burgesses when he began to exercise his spiritual jurisdiction 

 in the town. He cited one John the Marshal, apparently an innkeeper, and 

 one of the most considerable burgesses, on a charge of adultery." On 

 13 May 1328 his officer went to arrest the man, was attacked, struck back, 

 fought his way to the market-place, and fell there under the blows of the 

 townsmen. Meantime John the Marshal had died of his wound. Both 

 sides thus had a casus belli ; but the men of St. Albans took the offensive, 

 and indicted"'* the abbot before the coroner. The burgesses obtained a royal 

 mandate, in pursuance of their charter, that no foreigners should be joined 

 with them on their jury before the justices." But this precaution did not 

 help them, for when the time came the abbot and his servants were 

 acquitted by the verdict of three other hundreds — an infringement of the 

 borough charter." 



Then, in November 1328, the abbot made a counter accusation 

 against the townsmen of the death of his man. At the ensuing conference 

 the abbot was represented by many lawyers and others ; the burgesses only 

 by one serjeant of the King's Bench and by a notable Londoner, Simon 

 Francis, then a sheriff and later mayor."' But the assembly broke up over 

 the first subject of debate, the question of hand-mills." 



No Abbot of St. Albans with a 14th-century conscience could have 

 any other object than the destruction of the borough charter. The same 

 process occurred in such other monastic towns as Bury St. Edmunds, 

 Sherborne and elsewhere. Abbot Richard must have been well able to see 



^^ Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 1 66—70. M Ibid. 



^ Cal. Pat. 1327-30, p. 93. 65 Waliingham, op. cit. ii, 175. »« Ibid. 176. 



5' Ibid, (see below). Seven years, as stated on p. 21 5, is an exaggeration. 



58 Cal. Pat. 1327-30, p. 167. M Ibid. 184. 80 jbid. 272. 



" Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 216-17. <=- Ibid. 218, 221. "' Ibid 2 10 



" Ibid. " Ibid. 222. « IbiJ. " 



178 



