Note 789 — Chapter XIV

Charges that the mayor had sealed with the common seal measures bigger than the standard measures for certain favoured citizens, and that the people were forced to sell to them by these measures; that he had made an evil use of the Pye-powder Court, using its summary and autocratic procedure to imprison many men wrongly and tyrannically (one John Wetherby had been imprisoned); and that he sustained an illegal guild in the city called Le Bachery. In 1477 a statute was made that the Pye-powder Court could only deal with contracts or bargains made during the fair. (Blomefield, iii. 169.)