Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/105

 THE MAYORALTY. 87 Piers Gaveston, who has been called the worthless parasite of a miserable monarch, was beheaded in 13 12. The King himself seems to have thenceforth held the earldom until 1327, when he died. In 13 1 6 Roger Renfrey granted to John Renfrey his brother all right and claim which the grantor had in 7d yearly received from his tenement in the borough of Donheved, between the tenement of Richard Athelard on the one part, and the gate which is called Sibardistret (sic) on the other part. Witnesses named : John the son of John, Mayor, John Cork and Adam Keyche, Provosts, Edward de Bollapitte, and John Gibba. Given on the Monday next after the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, 9th Ed. II. In 1 3 16 John of Launceton was returned to Parliament as one of the members for the County of Devon. We have seen that the office of Mayor was recognized in Dunheved from a very early period, and that such an officer thenceforth regularly existed ; but we have failed to discover who was the first mayor, or by whom appointed. The probability is that the Office and the Officer were originally created either by the King or by the Earl of Cornwall for the time being. The mayor may, here as elsewhere, have been originally charged with the duty of assessing and collecting the taxes due from the Borough. In many towns such an office was made the cause or pretence of great oppression, and in some cases the inhab- itants offered to pay a larger sum than had been previously exacted from them on condition that they might elect their own Chief Magistrate, and assess themselves. We know not whether such an offer was made to the Earl Richard as the consideration for his before-mentioned Charter, but, whatever the fact, it is certain that, from about the time of the grant of Richard Plantagenet, the burgesses of Dunheved did elect their own mayor.