IV. All these officers represented the king as supreme head of the law; but other messengers came from the court, as unbidden and unwelcome as the last, who claimed for the sovereign a tribute which belonged to his personal dignity and state. When the monarch travelled he carried his own law with him; wherever he went the steward and marshal of his house had jurisdiction for twelve miles to be counted from the lodging of the king;[394] and their authority superseded all other law whether of the borough or the shire. The marshal demanded such supply of horses as was necessary for the king or his messengers;[395] the purveyors and larderers and officers of the household levied provisions on all townsfolk,[396] save the few who had been lucky enough to gain the king’s grant of protection,[397] seized what they needed of their corn and bread and salted meats, called out the inhabitants for forced labour, billeted the crowd that made up the royal train on the various householders,[398] and in fact governed at their own will any town through which the king passed. A happy obscurity and distance from the court could alone preserve a little borough like Bridport from exactions of royal travellers; and its people might bear with resignation a poverty and insignificance which at least protected them from evils of so great magnitude to poor and over-tasked workers.
V. There was yet another form in which the power of the crown pressed upon the inhabitants of a borough. Privileges granted by the king might be withdrawn at his caprice; and the burghers lay absolutely at his mercy for all the liberties and rights which they enjoyed. At the beginning of every reign the confirmation of their charters, and the affixing of the new king’s seal, had to be won by such payments and bribes as the officials in high places judged that the burghers could afford.[399] The king might at any moment raise a question as to the value of their charters; or he might make some public revolution or local disturbance the occasion for a revision or a threatened withdrawal of ancient “customs.”[400] When their rights were menaced the townsmen had but one resource, and hastily met together, as in the case of Bridport, to order by the “common assent” that reins and horse nets should be provided at the public cost and sent to London, for “furthering the common business.”