From the beginning of the fourteenth century we can trace the progress of the long strife as the town gradually perfected its municipal organization. First came the necessary financial precautions. In 1305 the Guild established itself more firmly by a charter which secured to it all its lands and tenements; and the mayor obtained power to distrain for sums levied on the commonalty.[533] Then at an assembly held in the Guildhall in 1314 authority was given to twenty-six persons to elect twelve of the more sufficient of the town to make provision for all business touching the community in the King’s parliament and elsewhere.[534] But the real struggle seems to have begun about 1327 when much money was spent on lawyers, negotiations with the bishop, and a new charter, and the business was still going on in 1330 with more counsels’ fees and messengers to London. Finally in 1335 the town bought a new charter from the king at a cost of £55 and a multitude of gifts to king and queen and bishop.[535] In this year or the next it obtained, among other things, the right to have all wills that affected property in the town proved in the Guild Hall before the mayor and burgesses.[536] The bishop seems to have found means of defeating the burghers’ intention in this particular claim; but there still remained the one important question which lay behind all minor struggles—that of the administration of justice in the town—the question whether it was the mayor or an ecclesiastical officer who should preside in the courts, and whether their profits, fines, and forfeitures should go to enrich the treasury of the bishop or of the municipality. The mayor held a court in the Guild Hall twice a week, and had jurisdiction over all transgressions and debts arising by water between the limits of S. Edmondness and Staple Weyre,[537] and he seems now further to have laid claim to the view of frankpledge and the criminal jurisdiction of the Leet Court. The bishop answered with a vigorous retort. In 1347 he assumed the view of frankpledge of the men of Lynn and tenements formerly held by the corporation, and withdrew or threatened to withdraw from the burghers the right of electing their mayor. On this an appeal was made to the king, who sent a royal commission to enquire into the dispute, and meanwhile seized with his own hand the view of frankpledge and the lands, giving the first over for the time to the sheriff of the county and the second to the king’s escheator.[538] Possibly there was some attempt at a compromise, but the new charter of 1343 in which the bishop confirmed the liberties granted by his predecessors,[539] even if it may have allowed the mayor’s election, left the great question of the courts unsolved. The burghers still debated whether the town officers were not entitled to hold the view of frankpledge, and the husting court, and to have cognizance of pleas—in fact to exercise all the more important rights now monopolized by the bishop; and insisted on the election of their own mayor. It was in vain that Edward the Third ordered the mayor and community under pain of forfeiture of their liberties to alter their demeanour and not cause prejudice and damage to the bishop;[540] and the whole matter was at last brought before the King’s Court in 1352, when the judges decided against the town in every question raised. In spite of the verdict, however, there was one point on which the people refused to submit; and the bishop was compelled to confirm their right to elect yearly one of themselves as mayor, though he enforced a significant confession of subjection by requiring that the mayor should immediately after the election appear before himself or his steward, and swear to maintain the rights of the church of Norwich.[541]