II. There were not very many cases where a lay lord became a formidable enemy to municipal freedom, either from the extent of his property in a town, or from his power of enforcing his claims. Such disputes as did arise were settled in various ways by purchase or friendly compact, or by gaining from the Crown a charter which conferred such rights of control as were necessary for discipline and order. Boroughs on the royal demesne naturally found themselves supported by the King in urging these demands, but the appeal to force always lay behind the legal settlement, and there was occasionally a serious battle before the question of supremacy was finally decided. A bitter fight was waged between Bristol[581] and the lords of Berkeley, who owned Redcliffe, and claimed the river where they had built a quay as part of their lordship; who had their own courts and their own prison; who held their own markets and fair; and who broke the Bristol weights and measures, and refused to take the measures of assize from the mayor even though in such matters he acted as the King’s marshal. They fought long and fiercely for their power, even after a royal charter in 1240 had given the jurisdiction over Redcliffe to the mayor.[582] In 1305 an energetic young lord Maurice of Berkeley to whom his father had given Redcliffe Street tried to assert his rights, but at the ringing of the common bell the Bristol men assembled, broke into Maurice’s house, took away a prisoner from him, and refused to allow him to hold any court, or to buy and sell any wares in Redcliffe Street. Upon this the young lord, appearing with “great multitudes of horse and foot,” forced the burgesses to do suit to him, and cast those who refused into a pit, while the women who came to help their husbands in the fray were trodden under foot. He set free prisoners from the Bristol gaol, assaulted Bristol burgesses at Tetbury fair, claimed dominion over the Severn, and seized the Bristol ships. All this did Maurice, “than whom a more martial knight, and of a more daring spirit, of the age of twenty-four years, the kingdom nor scarce the Christian world then had;” and the mayor and burgesses left King and Parliament no rest with their petitions, telling of outrage after outrage committed by him, till commissioners were appointed to examine their complaints, and to Lord Maurice the sequel of this angry business was a fine of 1,000 marks, afterwards commuted to service with the King’s army with ten horsemen. A few years later moreover the Bristol men found opportunity to avenge their bitter grudge, for when he was taken in rebellion the mayor and the commonalty, “out of an inveterate hatred and remembrance of former passages,” threw into the common gaol every man who was even suspected of having adhered to the faction of Maurice.[583] Troubles again broke out in 1331, and the mayor and burgesses gathered at the ringing of the common bell for an assault on a Lord Thomas of Berkeley, destroyed his tumbrill and pillory, carried his bailiff to the Guild Hall, and forced him to swear that he would never again execute any judgements in the courts. The next year however the town, “taking the advantage of the time while the said lord was in trouble about the murder of King Edward the Second in his castle of Berkeley,” settled the matter for ever by an opportune payment to the King of £40, for which the mayor and burgesses obtained a confirmation of all their charters, and especially that which granted that Redcliffe Street should be within their jurisdiction.