A HISTORY OF NORFOLK The king appointed the prior of Binham warden of the property of the Norwich priory, and left the city on 27 September. The next day Prior Burnham resigned ; the convent elected William Kirkby in his place on I October, and the king redelivered to him the goods and revenues of the monastery. Under its new ruler the priory demanded of the city 4,000 marks for damage, appealing in 1274 to the Roman court to enforce the claim. The pope took the wise course of referring the whole matter to the decision of the king, who deter- mined (i) that all parties should try to be real friends ; (2) that the citizens should pay 3,000 marks towards rebuilding the church, in six annual sums of 5 00 marks ; (3) that they should give for the use of the high altar of the church a pix of gold weighing ten pounds, and worth
- {^I00; (4) that the priory might make new
gates to their monastery ; and (5) that some of the chief citizens should proceed to Rome at their own expense to assure the pope of the truth of the agreement, and to beg his pardon and peace. On the city complying with these terms, the king restored it to its ancient dignity. In 1276 the pope's general absolution came from Rome, and was published at Norwich on Palm Sunday by the priors of the Dominican and Franciscan houses of that city. On Advent Sunday, 1278, William de Mid- dleton was enthroned as bishop, and the now completely restored cathedral church was by him dedicated, in the presence of the king and queen, and of three other bishops and a great concourse of nobles.^ Other disputes between the priory and the city as to the respective limits of their jurisdic- tion took place during the reign of Edward I, but were solved by appeals to the law courts. In 1306 an important composition was agreed to with regard to the claim of the priory that Tombland, with Ratton Row, Holm Street, and Spiteland was their demesne, and that their tenants therein could sell and trade without con- tributing to any city tollage or tax. The agree- ment decided that henceforth Tombland should always be kept clear, and not used as a market, as a rope-walk, or to lay timber thereon, save that the priory might hold there their Whitsuntide fair, and that every Sunday at such times as there was a synod held at Norwich, victuals and fruit might, as usual, be sold at the priory gates ; that at every fair the citizens were to choose first which half they would have for their stalls, for which they were to pay no kind of toll, and that the other half was to be the prior's ; that the city coroner might hold inquests on the priory demesne, but that the prior should name a brother to act as his assessor, and that the jury should be drawn solely from the parish where the offence had occurred ; that the prior and Cott on, op. cit. 1, 401. coroner might hold their leets in Holm Street and Spiteland without any city officer ; and that the bailiffs were not to distrain or enter on the demesne, nor levy any tolls or customs for the city ; but if sny sold merchandise there they were to pay such tolls to the prior, and the prior was to answer for them to the city bailiffs.' Edward III and Queen Philippa, when they visited Norwich in 1344, and Richard II and his queen, during their visit were lodged in the priory.' In 1329 there was a fresh readjustment of the recurring disputes, whereby Prior William Worsted secured better terms than hitherto for his tenants in the exempt liberties, including toll-free passage on the River Wensum.* A strange kind of riot, called ' Gladman's in- surrection,' arose in the city in connexion with claims to mills in 1442. William Hempstede, mayor for that year, was charged with designedly raising an insurrection, declaring they had power in the city to slay both bishop and prior, and the abbot of Holm, and to spoil their goods, and that the king, by reason the city was a county by itself, had not the power to punish them for so doing ; whereupon John Gladman, a city merchant, rode on horseback as a king, with a paper crown on, and a sceptre and sword carried before him, and with a great armed troop of 3,000 on horseback and foot ' proceeded to the priory gates, calling out : ' Let us burn the priory and kill the prior and monks.' The priory gates being guarded, they dug a passage under them for entry, and carried wood thither to burn the priory, and placed guns against it. At last, by threats of killing the prior and all the monks, they obtained from them an evidence of the priory sealed with the city seal relative to the meadows by the river. This they took away, and for a week, from Monday after St. Paul s Conversion, kept the city gates shut as against the king, and would not suffer the Duke of Norfolk, nor the Earl of Oxford, or any of the king's ministers, though showing the royal commission, to enter. This extraordinary outburst ended in the liberties of the city being seized into the king's hands, and they thus continued until 1447, when Mayor Hempstede and his associates pleaded guilty and threw themselves on the king's ' Cited by Blomefield, Hist. ofNorf. iii, 7 1 -3. ' Blomefield, Hist, of Norf. iii, 88, 112.
- The elaborate agreement is set forth at length by
Blomefield {Hist, of Norf. iii, 143-4).
- The subsequent defence alleged that the procession
was but a Shrovetide sporting, and that Gladman was merely ' crowned as Kyng of Crestemesse ' ; tht riot, however, took place at the end of January, six weeks before any Shrovetide mummery was due ; possibly Gladman, who seems to have played the part of King of Misrule ' annually at the Shrovetide car- nival, put on his ' property robes ' in a spirit of semi- jesting riotousness, and was then carried by the temper of the mob further than he had intended. 320
