II. With the Abbot of S. Augustine’s the city had disputes concerning mill and market. For the “Abbot’s Mill” was supposed to injure the City Mill, which lay a little higher up the stream, and the grievance was so serious that in 1415 iron-topped stakes were driven into the river bed by a board of inspectors to mark the highest level for the water at the Abbot’s Mill, so that the fall might be deep enough for water coming from the wheel of the City Mill.[699] As late as 1522 there was a consultation between the town body and “Milord of S. Austin’s” about the fish-market, which ended in a friendly manner with the present of a conger-eel and a bottle of Malmsey to the abbot.
The chief quarrel however was as to the exact limits of the abbot’s authority as defined by an agreement drawn up in the thirteenth century, and carefully copied out anew by the city clerk in the fifteenth century; and the nice point under discussion during many generations was whether the abbots, under pretext of infang-theoff, should persist in arresting evildoers in Longport, which was the King’s highway and under the jurisdiction of his assignees, the corporation of Canterbury, but which ran for its whole length through the abbey lands.[700] It was only after 1475 that the dispute seems to have come to an end, when the abbot’s gallows at Chaldensham were, by the consent of the community and of the convent, broken to pieces. A Baron of the Exchequer and the Recorder of London chosen to arbitrate between the burghers and the monks, were welcomed at Canterbury with a fee for their pains, lodged at the Austin Friars, entertained sumptuously at the town’s expense with lavish supplies of choice food and drink,[701] and served with three meals a day, “fractio jejunii, jantaculum, et cœna,” till finally on a certain afternoon the monks and the corporation met to drink together in honour of the final peace, and the ambassadors set out on their journey homewards, treated to refreshments at every stage from the parting cup at Canterbury to the farewell drink at Newgate. In 1478 they delivered their arbitration at Westminster, and there was a fresh series of “potationes” to celebrate the settlement.[702]