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SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



did not know, and successive adjournments for three years did not enlighten 

 them. He must have been fairly prosperous, for in 1386 he took a 

 tenement of the lord on a year's lease, paying i os.*" 



The disputes between the abbot and the townsmen of St. Albans throw 

 a light on the conditions of the tenants of mesne boroughs. There was in 

 the I 3th century no definite tenure or custom which exactly distinguished a 

 borough from an ordinary vill," but the legislation of Edward I tended to a 

 greater exactitude in legal definition. Burgesses, lawyers of the day would 

 probably argue, must be entirely free ; those who were not so in all the 

 incidents of their tenure were unfree and came under the general term of 

 villeins. At St. Albans multure claimed by the abbot was a base service *''^ ; 

 hence the contentions that the inhabitants were villeins, and for this reason 

 the battle raged so furiously around this particular point. St. Albans had 

 been established as a market town in the loth century, was called a 

 borough*' in the Domesday Book, had four Frenchmen and forty-six 

 burgesses in 1086, and had been confirmed to the abbot as a borough*' by 

 Henry II. Further, in 1253 a charter,'" addressed by the king directly to 

 the ' good men ' of St. Albans, practically acknowledged their burghal 

 rights. Yet when the borough had attained a considerable degree of 

 prosperity by the latter half of the 13th century, greatly by the encourage- 

 ment of the abbey, its progress seems suddenly to have provoked the 

 intense disapproval of the abbots as overlords, who opposed every symptom 

 of independence with all the vindictiveness they could exercise. 



The restraint the abbots attempted to impose was harmful to trade 

 and was opposed in spirit, if not in deed, to the treatment the early 

 burgesses had received. There seems also to be evidence that the friction 

 caused by the abbot's jealousy of the increasing independence of the towns- 

 men was accentuated by their opposition to the penitential discipline 

 and probate jurisdiction of the Church. We know that in 1381 the 

 bitterest complaints were made against the archdeacon's disciplinary jurisdic- 

 tion, and his records were eagerly sought out and destroyed by the mob." 

 Similar difficulties were being experienced at many other towns formed 

 under the shadow of a great church. Bury St. Edmunds particularly is a 

 case in point, but at Sherborne, Rochester, Wells and elsewhere disputes 

 and disturbance of almost, if not quite, equal importance had arisen. 



Discontent spread from the towns to the country, and all the disturbing 

 factors gathered strength with the dearth of labour after the Black Death, 

 and only awaited an opportune moment to show themselves. In the 

 rebellion of 1381 it was the rural population that was mainly aggrieved. 

 The townsmen had their grievances, which in the Hertfordshire market 

 towns were mostly agrarian. Their better education and business training, 

 however, enabled the townsmen to play the part of leaders and organizers, 

 and it is this organization which is perhaps one of the most interesting 

 features of the rebellion. 



^* Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 47. 



*'' Pollock and Maitknd, Hisl. of Engl. Lazu, i, 635 et seq. The editor is responsible for this and the 

 two following paragraphs. 



^''^ Compare case in Maitland, Bracton's Note Bk. ii, 131-2. Here it was decided in 1222 that, the 

 defendant being a free man, multure was not due from him. ^' F.C.H. Herts, ii, 477. 



*9 Ibid. 478. so Ibid. " Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 308. 



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