citizen could be compelled without the mete, or bounds of the borough, for any thing except of tenures without them. A citizen was to be quit of all murders within the borough and soken of the port; no burgess was to fight within the lists at tournaments; to be quit of all tolls and customs in all ports except for every ship laden with wine; to be free of chiedwitche [all fines for bondage of men and women residing in the borough]. No merchant coming into the borough, by land or water, could buy or sell till they were admitted into the borough, nor till their goods were weighed by the king's balance, &c. The burgesses were granted all the void places in the town, and all custom held by the city of London.

The same year John Percevant and Robert Walkelyn, two burgesses, sent to the King's Court, in behalf of the commons of the town, to dispatch affairs for the townsmen, made an acknowledgment in Chancery for a debt of seven marks to the king's chancellor, to be paid to his use the Whitsuntide next following.

Four years afterwards the king issued a writ to John de Metingham, justice itinerant, wherein he willed him to appoint some discreet knight to hear and determine pleas of tenures and transgressions within the town, according to the charter he had granted to the burgesses, of his beloved consort Eleanor, of Lyme, that they should not be impleaded out of the said town.

The king, in the 26th year of his reign, notifies to the bayliff and good men of Lyme the prolongation of a truce

In the following year he assigns the town cum pertin. value £35. 10s. among other things to Queen Margaret for her dower.-Reymer.

William Tuluse and Geoffrey le Ker, the first representatives in Parliament, were returued A.D. 1295. There were no returns during the last four years of Edward's reign, when the Parliament sat at Carlisle. About this time mention is first made of a religious house of Carmelite Friars, of which only the following particulars are now known :-It was found not to the king's prejudice if he granted licence to William Daie, or Dacre, to give a messuage and eight acres of land there to the Friars of the order of the blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, to build, de novo, an oratory and house for their habitation for ever; which premises were held of the king in capite, as parcel of his farm of Lyme, by service of paying yearly to him for the said farm 15s. 10d. They were mendicants, had little or no endowment of lands, and were called White Friars, from the colour of their habit. This Priory was probably subject to some foreign abbey. It is said to have been situated near the present "Stile House."*

The reign of Edward I. must, by every casual observer, be considered as highly propitious to the interests of Lyme, which, from his accession, took the turn that might have been anticipated.

Nothing remarkable occurred during the reign of the unfortunate Edward II. The merchants, favoured in their

* See account of this order in Ency. Britan.

negociations by the immunities granted by his predecessor, continued to flourish.

Edward III., in the fifth year of his reign, granted the burgesses the town in fee-farm, paying annually into the Exchequer 32 marks. Lyme had then attained the summit of its prosperity:-there were seventy-seven merchants, who had each a house, and were possessed of fifteen "large ships," and forty boats, twenty of which were employed in the fishery; without making mention of the mariners and villains residing in the town,

In 1335 Lyme and other towns received orders to send the ships then appointed to Portsmouth, the king being about to sail for Gascony.

The merchants in this reign built the Cobb in the sea, for the security of their ships, soon after they rented the town of the king. We must suppose that a work previously existed, but inconsiderable in point of extent. Having in the following pages treated of this structure, it would be improper to dwell here on the supposed origin, name, &c. The form in the earliest plans is preferable to the present one; though it must be confessed that the present manner of constructing it is greatly superior. Had heavier materials been substituted in the first instance for that precarious coping which inclosed a loose interior by the support of oaken piles, on which it was originally constructed, the work, secured from the shocks of the sea by its apex pointed towards and breaking the south-west swell, would probably have remained in that

form to the present day. The prosperity, and, probably, the existence of the town, since the erection of the Cobb, have been intimately connected with its security, alternately rising and falling with that structure, as will be perceived in the sequel. The extent of the Cobb, the immense labour and industry that must have been used in order to erect it in a situation of such difficulty, will remain a memorable proof of the enterprising genius, perseverance, and abilities of those merchants.

There was a Hospital for Lepers in the town, dedicated to St. Mary and the Holy Spirit, by which it is evident. the inhabitants had not been free from the afflicting disease of leprosy,-introduced, according to most authors, from Egypt, in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The infected persons were cast off from the society of mankind, and not permitted to ask alms, unless by a procurator appointed for that purpose. It must have been established at an early period: 10th Cal. Dec., 1336, indulgencies were granted by the Pope to collect alms towards repairing the fabric and its bell-tower. There is every reason to suppose that it subsisted solely by charitable donations. In the Chantry Roll it is valued at 38s. 11d. per annum.

*

* The Popes frequently granted indulgences to these establishments in order to their support, which held good for a certain number of years, on the repetition of a specified number of Paternosters and Ave-marias. The usual tenor of these bulls was that a contribution secured the donor of pardon "for all synes forgotten and offences done against fader and moder, and of all swerynges negli. gently made," &c. Mr. Flight's house, in Broad street, is supposed to have been built on the site of the former hospital. In old deeds it is called the Tower-House.

What an assistance the king derived from this town may be learnt from the roll of King Edward III.'s fleet at the siege of Calais, 1347, in the Cotton Library, where it appears that Lyme furnished the expedition with four ships and sixty-two mariners. They were to be provided with every necessary for fifteen days after setting sail at the town's expence, the rest of the time the king paid them.

The next year was marked by the occurrence of a serious calamity. Fabian, and the generality of our historians, say that the great plague which broke out at Cathay, in Asia, 1346, made its first appearance in England, on the sea-coast of Dorsetshire, from which its ravages were communicated through Devon and all parts of the kingdom. No pestilence had been so fatal since that in the time of Vortigern, mentioned by Bede. Few survived the seizure above two or three days; some died in a few hours. Knyghton observes things were sold almost for nothing :— A horse, worth 40s., was sold for 6s. 8d.; a good fat ox at 6s.; a cow at ls.; a heifer or steer at 6d.; a mutton at 6d.; an ewe at 3d.; a lamb at 2d.; a hog at 5d.-The inhabitants of towns fled into the country. The great pestilence had swept away so many priests that a chaplain could hardly be got to serve a church under ten marks, or ten pounds per annum; whereas before they might have been had at two marks, with their diet; and men would hardly accept of a vicarage at twenty marks per "The Sarum Registers," says Hutchins, "from August 8th, 1348, to Lady-day, 1349, contain the admission of seventy incumbents." The plague continued till

annum.