Note 469 — Chapter VII

Southampton, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 104. Cases of interference occur in the unpublished records of Coventry. For Romney see Lyon’s Dover, 313. In 1489 there was some such trouble in Leicester (Thompson, Mun. Hist., 84). And in 1512 there is another instance in Nottingham (Records, iii. 341-2). From the time of Richard the Third there seems evidence of the growth of a new anxiety in the central government about the democratic movement in the boroughs, and a determination to reserve power in the hands of a small corporation. An earlier instance may perhaps be found in the Exeter quarrel from 1477 to 1482 (English Guilds, 305, &c.); and in York in 1482 (Davies, 122-4).