I. For many centuries Sandwich belonged to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and so long as it was a humble little port powerful kings like Eadgar, Cnut, Henry the First, and Henry the Second had been content to have it so, and with indifferent acquiescence confirmed the monastic rights over the town. But when in the course of time Sandwich became the port through which almost the whole of the continental trade with England passed, when its commerce and revenue increased till it stood far before Dover in importance,[764] when it was the chief harbour from which monarchs or their ambassadors set sail for France, or from which armies were sent forth in time of war, the King began to look more seriously on the powers exercised over it by the convent. An inquest ordered by the Crown in 1227 reported in favour of the rights of Christ Church over Sandwich, but by judicious bargaining matters were finally arranged to the royal satisfaction. At the price of a grant of lands in Kent Edward the First bought the town, and though the monks were still allowed certain lands and houses free from municipal charges, and continued to receive large sums from the wharf which was known as Monkenkey with its crane for loading and unloading ships,[765] and from the warehouses enclosing it, they had to abandon their powers of taxing at discretion all passengers and goods which crossed the bounds of their territory.[766]
The Sandwich people had elected their own mayor since the beginning of the thirteenth century; while the royal interests were now looked after by a bailiff appointed by the King.[767] The townsmen however kept a jealous watch over their own prerogatives. When in 1321 Christ Church obtained a royal writ to protect their property from the town taxes the mayor and community refused to accept it because it had been issued to the King’s bailiff, and the convent had to get a new writ.[768] The bailiff’s powers were carefully defined and kept in strict subordination to those of the mayor. He collected the King’s dues on goods brought into the town;[769] and it was he who summoned the Hundred Court every three weeks to meet in S. Clement’s church for view of frankpledge, for pleas of land, questions of trespass, covenant, debt, battery, bloodshed, and so on;[770] but he could not hold the court without the mayor’s leave, nor issue the summonses without the mayor’s orders.[771] The mayor for his part, if he was elected in S. Clement’s, the church where the courts of the King were held, had his seat of government in S. Peter’s, a church that stood in the very centre of the town near the Market-place and Common Hall, and in whose tower the “Brande goose bell” hung which summoned jurats and council men to the Common Assembly, and rang out the hours for the market. He gathered the Town Council for business to S. Peter’s, and in S. Peter’s he sat every Thursday, and if business required it on other days, to judge the people.[772] Though the bailiff sat by his side and took part in the business of the court, yet for offences against the corporation the mayor and jurats might punish the freemen “without consulting the bailiff or any one else.”[773] To them belonged the entire regulation of trade and the management of weights and measures, for “the bailiff has nothing to do with this business.” In no case was he allowed to interfere with the town market; “that business belongs wholly to the mayor and jurats,” the town customs declared.[774]