Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/744

 734 Charles Gross their control or supremacy over all the inhabitants within the walls, sokemen as well as burghers, to make all submit to the municipal courts and bear their share of taxes and other burdensome obli- gations. Sometimes the struggle between the contending parties was so fierce that the king interfered. For example, in 1272 in a brawl with the servants of the prior of Norwich some of the citizens were killed, and the city coroner caused a warrant to be issued for the arrest of some of the prior's men. Thereupon the prior excom- municated the citizens, and, not content with the use of spiritual arms, his followers assailed the citizens and killed several of them. The men of Norwich retaliated by despoiling and burning the prin- cipal priory buildings, and by slaying many of the monks. Soon afterwards the prior gathered a body of armed men, who slew many of the citizens ; the bishop of Norwich placed the city under the interdict ; and Henry III. came to Norwich with his judges, who sentenced thirty-four of the chief offenders to be put to death, and he seized the liberties of the city.' Philip Augustus intervened in like manner at Noyon in 1223. The civic magistrates had arrested a servant of the chapter of Notre-Dame, and the city was placed under the interdict. Thereupon a mob of citizens, with shouts of " Commune ! Commune ! ", demolished the gates of the cathedral and wounded some of the church officers.^ Many other examples of such jurisdictional contests might be enumerated,'' but we are mainly concerned in this paper with an aspect of the subject regarding which information in the published sources is less abundant, namel}', the attitude of the burgesses towards gifts or bequests of burgage lands to the clergy. Aliena- tion of such lands in mortmain was regarded with disfavor by the burgesses mainly because the sokemen, the tenants of church estates ill the towns, were usually exempt from taxes, and therefore grants of land to the church diminished the total amount of taxable prop- erty and tended to increase the tax-rate or to curtail the total municipal revenue. The question of the exemption of sokemen from the payment of tallages or direct taxes gave rise, however, to many bitter contests in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen- turies. In 1402 the Commons complain that when tenths and fif- teenths are levied the people of the church in cities and boroughs ' Blomefield, Norfolk. III. 53-58- 2 Lefranc, Histoire de Noyon, 37-40. 3 Green. Town Life, I. 190-192, 317-383; Pauffin, Essai sur I' Organisation et la Juridiction Miinicipales, 204-282 ; Lavisse et Rambaud, Hist. Gcncrale, II. 460-461, 464-466.