in 1311, that the collectors levied excessive amounts and applied to their own use several customs, including the murage. Auditors were thereupon sent down to examine the accounts since 1296, at which date the town had possessed a 'murage grant. The desire to surround towns with walls was not entirely for the purpose of military defence. The enclosure not only deterred the entry of a hostile force, but prevented peaceful traders from introducing their wares and disposing of them by stealth, thus escaping the customary tolls. Nothing could enter a walled town except by passing through the gates or openings in the wall and so coming under the eyes of the gate-keepers or of the watch at the openings. From start to finish, the task of building the walls was tedious and protracted. Though Blomefield would have us believe that Norwich obtained a patent for a murage in 1294 and that the walls were begun in that year, his statement remains unverified. Still he is undoubtedly correct when he adds that a similar licence was acquired in 1297.3 This was to run for seven years and when it expired the citizens petitioned parliament for its renewal. Their petition was granted and the murage was revived for another five years. A muragehouse, or loft as it was afterwards called, was erected in the market-place soon after the first grant, and here the tolls were collected and the accounts kept. It seems to have been elevated above the surrounding stalls so that the entire market could be overlooked from its windows. Some two months after the second grant the inhabitants of Norwich complained that excessive tallages were 1 Cal. Rot. Pat., p. 317. 3 Cal. Rot. Pat., p. 327. 4 4 Rot. Parl., vol. i., p. 161. 5 Norwich Records, vol. ii., p. 35, etc. exacted from them and misappropriated.' We are not informed that these tallages were in any way connected with the murage, but when the grant expired about 1310, it does not appear to have been renewed until seven years had passed. Then it was revived for three years, after which it seems to have been in abeyance until 1337. In that year the last murage grant was obtained. It was to run for five years and it was farmed out to a citizen, Richard Spynk, on the condition that he would complete the walls. This he had accomplished by 1343, though not without a considerable outlay of his own money, which he was public spirited enough to expend as a free gift to the city. It is well to observe that he finished the work forty-six years after it had been begun and before the great rise in the price of labour was occasioned by the Black Death. Yarmouth possessed no such generous townsman as Richard Spynk, and what might have happened at Norwich, but for him, may to some extent be guessed by the tale of the Yarmouth wall-building. Though more than twenty years elapsed after the murage grant of 1261 which was abortive, before another was obtained in 1285,5 yet a still greater interval occurred between this second and the third grant. Swinden says that the walls were begun about 1285.6 In that year, and on the same day as the grant was executed, letters were sent to the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer ordering them to discharge the payment of 40 marks by the men of Yarmouth, who had shown the king that they had spent more than this sum upon the enclosure 1 Cal. Rot. Pat., 1307-1313, p. 42. The complaint is referred to the 33rd year of E. I. See also Norwich Records, vol. i., p. 61. 2 Tb., 1317-1321, p. 50. 3 Ib., 1334-1338, p. 529. 5 Cal. Rot. Pat., 1281-1292, p. 177. Norwich Records, vol. ii., p. xxxiii. 6 Hist. of Yarmouth, p. 76. of their town and the ditches round it.' It may be that during the intervening years since 1261 a large sum of money had been accumulated for the projected walls by means of free gifts and legacies. This sum when augmented by the seven years' murage may, perhaps, have lasted until 13212 when the third murage was granted. From that date until 1399 the sequence of fourteen grants for periods varying between three and ten years is practically without a break. The only interval is between 1338 and 1346, but it is nearly filled by a pavage grant. Blomefield, or rather his editors, gives the opinion that the work of building the walls was not progressively carried on, and mentions as one cause of the neglect the visitation of the great plague in 1349. Yet in 13511 on the expiration of the grant of 1346, its renewal was immediately procured and, as we have said, the murage tolls were maintained for some fifty years longer. Very likely the yield after the plague was small in comparison to what it had been before, and as labour was dearer the work accomplished did not bear the same proportion to the funds expended. As we hear of no complaints that the funds were diverted to other purposes, and as the grants were renewed without demur, we may conclude that the erection of the walls proceeded though very slowly all the time. So slowly, in fact, that in 1369 the completed portions were already beginning to show signs of decay, and the ordinary murage grant obtained in that year was supplemented by another for the repair of the walls." 1 Cal. Rot. Claus., 1279-1288, p. 328. Little heed should be paid 4 Cal. Rot. Pat., 1350-1354, p.23. Rot. Pat., 43 E. III., pt. i., m. 4. |