For the whole of this complicated system of administration was kept in working order by a generous system of bribes—bribes given largely and openly, registered in the public accounts, and granted indifferently to any official, great or small, who might be induced by a timely gift to “show his friendship.” Towns won the renewal or the preservation of their chartered rights by offerings to king or queen, to chancellors and bishops and great officers of the household, with whom they interceded by the aid of a “cow-pull” of swans or cygnets or heronshaws, a porpoise, a store of dried sprats, or a cask of wine. “The law is ended as a man is friended,” said the wise folk of the fifteenth century, and if any legal question arose the town could only “have a verdict” when due “courtesies,” as they were called, were prepared for justices and their clerks, barons of the exchequer and sheriffs and counsel and attorneys, besides any sums required to pay a “friendly” jury.[401] If the king sent pressing and overwhelming demands for money, a deputation of leading burghers would hurry up to Westminster, carrying gifts and bribes to the Clerk of the Rolls and the usher of Parliament as a peace offering.[402] Or some gracious patron might be persuaded to divert from the town “a quest of the Admiralty, that it would not come thither as was intended to come.”[403] When men were called out for war the community would consult by what gifts or “courtesies” it might arrange “to have pardoning that we should not ride up so many men as the said warrant commanded.”[404] At the appearance of the King’s harbinger or sergeant-at-arms the first thought was to collect a sum which might induce their formidable guest to limit the number of troops billeted on the town, or even to march them away altogether.[405] In the same way if a messenger appeared bearing part of the body of a traitor who had been executed, which by the King’s orders was to be set up on the gate of the borough, the inhabitants would give him a present to carry on his burden to some other town.[406]