bread at the Queen's ovens, and should forbear to bake any spiced bread or cakes, except that he might bake at his own oven such only and so much as the Mayor and Aldermen might give him license to do according to the direction of the Privy Council. Mr. and Mrs. Becket continued their private baking as before, apparently without any such license, and thereby roused the active resentment of the other bakers of the town. Their opposition became so violent, that in April, 1599, two months after the order of court, William Becket went over to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and laid his case before the powerful Earl of Huntingdon. The Earl took Becket's part, and sent him back to the Mayor of Leicester with the following letter. "Mr. Mayor: I understand by the bearer hereof, William Becket, that he hath been licensed to victual in your town of Leicester, and, for that his wife hath uttered, for the better maintenance of herself and her great charge, some spiced cakes or bread, whereat the bakers have seemed to take exceptions, and thereupon so molested them as thereby they be greatly impoverished; my desire is for the relief of him and his charge, that since it lieth in you to grant him a license to sell and utter such cakes, that you should so permit him to do without any further molestation by them offered: for as I do hear by information that there is an order set down in the Duchy Court that you may make and confirm him a license so to do, and thereby free the poor man from any trouble hereafter by any of them procured, which I would wish you to do for the better relief of him and his great charge. And so I bid you farewell. Ashby the viii April, 1599
Your friend,
George Huntingdon."
The Mayor does not seem to have acceded to the Earl's request. At any rate, in October of the same year, two Judges of the Court of Exchequer and the Attorney of the Council of the Duchy issued an Order, requiring the Mayor and Aldermen "to take such order with the bakers that you and they permit the said Becket to bake such small things as he hath used in your town in his own house, as divers others in that town have done, which in our opinions may be done in some measure, considering how
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