This was the case in Reading. The burghers fell back on the Guild as the one authorized mode of association for public purposes, and in its “morghespeche,” or “morning talks,” the leading townsfolk discussed how the independence of the borough might be advanced. Successive mayors of the Guild, though still to all appearance appointed as officers of the abbot, became really the representatives of the town, identified themselves absolutely with its interests, and readily led their fellow citizens in revolt against the convent. In 1378 the burghers paid about £5 for a new charter; and twice sent the mayor to London to assert their privileges, and to insist that the convent should be forced to bear a just share of the burden of taxation, and pay a part of the tenth demanded by the King. The messengers were lavish with their gifts to judges and officers and lawyers who might befriend them, eels and pike, perches and salmon and capons; and succeeded so well that the town charters were confirmed in 1400, in 1418, and in 1427.[563] In 1391 the burghers carried the dispute about the appointment of constables to the king’s judges at Westminster; and seem to have succeeded in this matter too, for in 1417 the mayor elected the constables in the Guild Hall, and the justices of the peace admitted them to office. About 1420 a Guild Hall was built close to the Hallowed Brook, though the burghers complained of being “so disturbed with beating of battle-dores” by the women washing in the brook that they could scarcely hold their courts or do any public business.[564] They made payments for the clock house, and set up a bell for the community,[565] and appointed a permanent salary for the mayor of five marks, to be paid from the Common Chest instead of the uncertain rent of the Portmanbrok. But when they went on to build a new “Outbutchery,” and buy “smiting stocks” for butchers not living in the town, the abbot at once saw an attempt to limit his own market profits which he immediately resented, denying the burghers’ right to hold their new out-butchery or receive rents from it. They on their side protested that their Guild was a body corporate, having a Common Hall, a seal, and the right of possessing common property; that they held also a wharf, a common beam or weighing-machine, and the stocks and shambles; that they had been granted freedom from toll throughout the kingdom; that they returned two burgesses to Parliament; and were freed from shire and hundred courts; and finally they asserted, to sum up all the rest, that they had held of the King long before the monastery was founded.[566] In 1431 lawyers were appointed to search the evidences in the Common Chest as to agreements between the town and the abbot. At the same time a Register of the Acts of the mayor and burgesses was begun, and continued year after year without break. In 1436 and 1439 payments were made for the writing out of certain articles as to the privileges of the town; and counsel were again employed to look over the evidences in 1441.[567]