together with the gallows, tumbrel, and pillory, the cherished privileges and possessions of this religious' house, were to remain as before. It may have been this disposition on the part of the judges to question and abridge the conventual rights which excited the Dunstable chronicler against them, but, at any rate, he gives us a very sorry account of the judges under Edwarrt (pp. 355-6). All but two, he says, were corrupt, and many of them were discovered in their misdeeds and heavily fined. As to Thomas de Weyland, chief justice of the King's Bench, his story, as told here, has a strangely tragic cast. He was solemnly accused on the oath of twelve men, of having caused a murder to be committed and having afterwards received into his house the murderer. On this he was arrested by the king's officers, but he escaped from them, and reaching the house of the Grey Friars at Bury S. Edmunds, he demanded to be admitted a brother, and to receive asylum. The only way to get possession of him now was to put the convent into a state of siege, and this was done. After forty days, they were cut off from all importation of meat and drink, so that the brethren gradually stole away, leaving only three or four remaining, who still protected their unfortunate guest. Meantime the king sent for the general of the Franciscans, and asked him how his order dared to shelter and to admit as a brother a felon of the king. Of course the general professed to know nothing about the matter. But the unfortunate judge seeing starvation approaching, reassumed his lay dress and surrendered himself. The sentence upon him was not severe, the king being contented with banishing him; but the strange part of the story is, that he himself had made the law under which he suffered, having caused it to be enacted, that in case of an accused person taking sanctuary, if after forty days he did not appear, it should be lawful to keep from him all manner of victuals, that he might be forced to quit his refuge. But incivilities on the part of the judges were not the only rebuffs to which the Dunstable priory was subject. With the various disputed claims and lawsuits which the canons were carrying on, they necessarily came into collision with many of the neighbouring nobles and gentle folks. Thus, Eudo de la Suche, exasperated by some wrong or fancied wrong which he had suffered, broke open the prior's prison and carried off his gallows, and an internecine and most complicated quarrel was going on between the canons and Isabella, Countess of Albemarle, as well as between them and one David Flitwick, who seems to have been a genuine pig-headed yeoman of the

2

1 The account of Thomas de Weyland's misfortunes is also given in Bartholomew de Cotton, but with somewhat less of fulness.-Barthol.de Cotton (Ed. Luard), p. 171. 2 Annal. de Dunstap. p. 261.

thirteenth century. The most unprovoked outrage which we find to have been committed against the priory was done by a party of the king's falconers who were being entertained in the priory. Evidently, the conventual cerevisium had proved too much for their brains, for at night they sallied out, intent on mischief, and meeting with a chaplain of the priory, who in some way provoked them, they set upon the unfortunate clerk and killed him. They then chose to re-enter the convent, and when the porter tried to keep them out, they seized and beat him. The priory was treated by them as a captured city. They walked throughout it, knocking over every one they met, whether clerk or layman; the sleeping canons were awakened, and a scene of great confusion took place. Meantime the townspeople taking a ready part with the canons against these insolent strangers, rang the great bells of the town and rushed to arms, and it needed all the prior's authority and address to appease the tumult. By false oaths and counter-accusations in the king's courts, these malefactors afterwards managed to escape the punishment which was justly due to them.

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The house at Dunstable, though it showed a very sharp eye for worldly matters, was very greatly in debt. At the resignation of one of the priors this debt amounted to no less than 400 marks, which, as the yearly income (in money) was calculated at 1077., was a considerable burden.1 On one occasion they were obliged to sell their wool five years beforehand, which must have entailed a great loss and a considerable crippling of their farming operations in the Peak, where their flocks were chiefly pastured. We learn incidentally from the Annals' the price of a saccus of wool at different periods, which represents a very high value compared with the price of corn and provisions. In 1242 it was worth 100 shillings and 40 (?4) pence, or nearly 8 marks.2 In 1254, a sack is sold at Dunstable for 7 marks, and the remark is appended, Lana tunc fuit vilis. 3 In 1274, the price had risen considerably, for the priory was able to obtain 9 marks for the five years' wool which they sold beforehand. As to the price of provisions during the same period, wheat in 1253 was sold at 5 shillings the quarter; but in 1258, when a great scarcity of corn had arisen, a quarter of wheat was sold at Northampton for 20 shillings, at Bedford for 17 shillings, and at Dunstable. for 13s. 4d. Fluctuations of prices unknown to the betterregulated markets of modern days were liable to arise in those times, for in the year 1287 the quarter of wheat was only worth 20 pence ; while again, in 1294, a quarter of wheat in

1 Annal. de Dunstap. p. 259.
4 Ibid. p. 208.

2 Ibid. p. 195.
5 lbid. p. 338.

3 Ibid. p. 188.

the Peak was sold at 21 shillings, and in Dunstable at 16s. Sd. In 1363, the quarter of wheat fetched 23 shillings. In the year 1284, a sheep at Dunstable was only valued at a shilling.2 The human animal was at a little higher price, a knave and his family having been sold by the priory, about the same time, for the sum of one mark.3

The extraordinary privileges of the Dunstable Priory in its jurisdiction over the town, were fully confirmed by a charter granted by Edward III.; but in the days of his successor, when in unhappy England a Rehoboam had succeeded Solomon, and exactions and tyrannies were multiplied without any set-off in the way of national glory and greatness, the down-trodden commons at last turned upon their oppressors, and the tyrannies of the 'religious' houses received a momentary check. One is reminded by the history of those days of the scenes on the Continent in 1848, when one small German potentate after another was forced by aggrieved artisans to 'grant a constitution.' So it was in the wild days of Wat Tyler. The people of S. Alban's, encouraged by the success of the London rioters, demanded and obtained a charta libertatis of the trembling abbot, and some Dunstable traders who witnessed the scene enacted at S. Alban's thought that it furnished a wholesome precedent for their own case at home. Accordingly, Thomas Hobbes, the mayor of Dunstable, sought an interview with the prior, and being civilly greeted by the latter, and asked whether he had any commands to him from the king, answered, 'with a fierce and menacing countenance-The king commands you to give a charter of liberty to his burgesses of Dunstable, such as they had in the time of Henry I.' At this the prior was completely paralysed with amazement, but afterwards hearing of what had been done at London and S. Alban's, and not wishing to experience the fate of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prior of Clerkenwell, taking advice also with certain fugitive nobles who had sought refuge in the abbey, he proceeded to draw up a charter, granting the liberty which they sought, and sealed it with the priory seal. But it was now, as afterwards in the days of Jack Čade,-when Dick, the butcher of Ashford, arose to cause sin to be struck down like an ox, and iniquity's throat to be cut like a calf,'-the butchers had evidently a leading part in the Dunstable movement. Butchers indeed are naturally opposed to ecclesiastical rule which interferes somewhat arbitrarily with the sale of their goods, and on this occasion their prominence in sedition is shown by the provision contained in the exacted charter, that no butcher or fishmonger

1 Annal. de Dunstap. pp. 391, 414.

2 Ibid. p. 308. 3 Ibid. p. 297.

not belonging to the town should be allowed to sell his goods in Dunstable. When, however, the slow understandings of that part of the mob which was more consumer than provider, had taken in the full effect of this arrangement, they manifested unmistakeable signs of impatience, and a tumult arose among the champions of liberty. This made them perhaps receive the extorted charter with less careful examination as to its contents than they otherwise would have bestowed, for in it the prior had adroitly inserted the clause that the burgesses should pay all due fidelity to the Prior of Dunstable. It is greatly, however, to the credit of the prior that when soon afterwards the rebellion was put down, and terrible vengeance was taken upon the unhappy commons, he used great pains, and expended much money to shield his men' from the severity of the law, and thus his much hated supremacy proved of at least some value to them. With this episode the Dunstable Annals' conclude, and we take leave of these Black Canons and their numerous intrigues and disputes with their neighbours. Before, however, we finally quit the records of their history, we must note the intimations given in the Chronicle' of the rise of another power close to them, which eventually proved more influential in the land than their own, and which they evidently regarded with the greatest jealousy. Under the year 1259, it is recorded that the Friars' Preachers, after great pains and much craft used, succeeded, in spite of us and against our will, in getting a footing in the town of Dunstable, and we were obliged to 'consent to their remaining, at the instance of the king and queen and certain nobles. 2 There are divers indications in the succeeding years of little jealousies between the two bodies, and under the year 1286 we are told that in order to hinder 'the machinations and the mischiefs of the Friars' Preachers in 'Dunstable, we made Thomas our porter buy a messuage which adjoined the premises of the said Friars, lest in spite of us they 'should attempt to extend their bounds.'3 Those indeed who imagine that repose and contemplation were the characteristics of a medieval monastery, must have religiously formed their views from an outside view of the case, and not from any real acquaintance with the facts which the annals of these houses reveal. In the 400 pages which record the proceedings of Dunstable we can find but one allusion to the inward religious life of the priory, to their Church services, and devotional exercises. In the same year (1273) we first began to say in the 'convent, Ave Maria, plena gratiæ, mater misericordiæ, tu nos ab 'hoste protege; in horâ mortis suscipe.' The remainder of 3 Ibid. p. 336. 4 Ibid. p. 258.

6

1 Annal. de Dunstap. pp. 417-19. 2 Ibid. p. 213.

4

the long history either treats of public affairs, or of the neverending squabbles about presentations and tithes, rights of pasture, rights of taxing, and so on. We entirely agree with Mr. Luard in his preface, when he says, As to the historical value of the "Annals of Dunstable," I scarcely think we can 'estimate it too highly. It is probably the most accurate ' record extant of the ordinary secular proceedings of a monastery in the thirteenth century; and though quarrels with the neigh'bouring landholders or the townspeople are things of minor 'importance, they serve to bring before us in a very vivid manner the every-day life of the time.' The value of these 'Annals' also seems to us very great in another point of view. They serve to bring out into strong relief a characteristic of the monastic system, which has not been sufficiently noted, viz. its essentially aggressive and litigious character-the selfish way in which it dealt with its neighbours, whether lay or ecclesiastical, and the obstacles to all good government, either in Church or State, which were formed by its prevalence.

1 Preface, p. xxxii.

1