But the burghers never yielded their consent to the decision of the King’s justices, and at every provocation loudly renewed their protest. When the bishop visited Lynn in 1377, he demanded that in recognition of his supremacy the town serjeant should carry before him the wand tipped at both ends with black horn, which was usually borne before the mayor himself. For their part they were heartily willing, answered the courteous mayor and aldermen, but they feared that at such a flagrant breach of their ancient customs and liberties, the commons, “always inclinable to evil,” would certainly fall on the bishop’s party with stones and drive them out of the town. But the bishop roughly rebuked the mayor and his brethren for “mecokes and dastards,” thus fearing the vulgar sort of people, as if it mattered to him what the common folk should say; and set out on his ride with the rod borne before him. He rode alone with his followers, however, for no burghers would accompany him; and as he went the whole people rose, and with their bows and clubs and staves and stones broke up the brave procession, and put the bishop and his men to flight, carrying off many hurt and wounded.[542] It seems possible that the fray was really excited by the astute mayor and council as a means of making a final breach between the bishop and the common people. But their opponent was too strong for them. The bishop carried his complaint to the King’s Council, and “for the transgression done to him in the town” the burgesses barely escaped punishment by spending a sum equal perhaps to two years of the town revenues in fines and gifts to the king, his mother, and others who had “laboured for the community”; besides paying £116 10_s._ 0_d._ for the expenses of the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, in going to London on the business.[543] Seventy years later, after a series of constitutional troubles, the old quarrel as to rights of jurisdiction and the use of the symbols of supreme authority broke out anew. The mayor in 1447 got a grant from the King allowing a sword to be carried before him[544] with the point erect, the last and highest emblem of absolute jurisdiction. At this outrage to his dignity the bishop interfered promptly and resolutely, and the next year the King had to write that in spite of his good inclinations he must remember his coronation oath to observe the rights of the Church, and that the mayor must henceforth cease from having any sword or mace borne before him. In 1461, however, whether the town had got a new grant from Edward, or was taking advantage of troubled times to re-assert its claim, the common accounts register a payment of 4_d._ for the “cleaning of the mayor’s sword,” and 6_s._ 8_d._ for “crimson velvet for the sword and for making it up.”[545] And when in 1462 the bishop came to the town with a following of sixty armed men, and ordered the gates to be shut after him, the attitude of the people was not to be mistaken, “the mayor and all the commonalty of Lynn keeping their silence” when the bishop was openly defied in the streets by the lord of Oxenford with his fellowship, even though “the bishop and his squires rebuked the mayor of Lynn, and said he had shamed both him and his town for ever, with much other language.” So clear was the state of things to the bishop’s sixty men-at-arms that “when we met there bode not with him over twelve persons at the most with his serjeant-at-arms, _which serjeant was fain to lay down his mace_; and so at the same gates we came in we went out, and no blood drawn, God be thanked.”[546]