Note 290 — Chapter IV

Shillingford’s Letters, 48, 94. For the church of S. Nicholas Romney, 1422, see Hist. MSS. Com. v. 542. In Dover barons of Cinque Ports met at the church of S. James. (Ibid. v. 528, 538.) For Rye, Ibid., 499. The meetings of the town council in Southampton were probably first held in the church of S. Cross or Holy Rood, where the assembly bell and curfew bell hung; and so closely did the idea of the town life come to be connected with this spot that when a town hall was built in the fourteenth century the church was moved further back that the hall might stand on its exact site. As late as 1470 the mayor and his brethren met in the parish church to settle a question of town business.