The municipal debt of course grew as fast as the municipal expenditure, and in 1408 the corporation owed the guild between £400 and £500.[828] The council of jurats borrowed generously from the fraternity in their capacity of town councillors, and lent as generously to the corporation in their capacity of members of the guild. The inevitable abuses which belong to financial administration conducted on this system presently made themselves felt. Perhaps there was an attempt at reform when in 1402 changes were made in the manner of keeping and auditing accounts, and each of the four chamberlains had to return a separate statement of receipts and outgoings.[829] But if so the remedy was ineffectual, and for the state of Lynn, as for far bigger states, the question of finance ended in a question of revolution, or was at last the pretext of revolution. The angry discontent of the community finally broke out in 1411, when the people demanded the repayment into the town treasury of a sum of £458, which the last five mayors had spent without the consent of the community in litigation with the Bishop, to the serious prejudice and extreme depoverishment of the town. The five mayors on their side, at the head of the potentiores, retorted by claiming from the town £280 to repay losses which they had incurred in its service during their terms of office.
Thus the traditional “sweetness of peace” was at an end, and Lynn was presently plunged into the excitement of a revolution. Fortunately for the people the ruling body found itself face to face with all its enemies at once; for the mediocres and inferiores, alike excluded from places of honour and power, were as of old drawn into close relations and were together thrown on the protection of their lord the Bishop for the defence of their rights; while the Bishop himself, with whom the municipality had been dragging on a long quarrel for the last thirteen years, was probably in no conciliatory mood. Everything, however, was conducted on strictly constitutional lines. By common consent a committee of eighteen men of the town was appointed to deal with the grievances of the state, and every section of the town society was required to give pledges of obedience to its decision. The mayor and twenty-two potentiores bound themselves in sums of £100 each to submit to the decrees of the eighteen; eighty-four of the mediocres pledged themselves in sums of £50 each; and sixty-six of the inferiores in sums of £5 11_s._ 2_d._ On the committee itself each of the three classes that made up the community was represented. There were twelve burgesses, of whom seven were potentiores and five mediocres, and six non-burgesses or inferiores.