cloth.  The woad-sellers no longer heaped up their measures, as of old, above the brim.  The constables on their side began to demand outrageous dues on the sale of herrings, and what was more, whereas of old heavy goods, such as wood, hides, iron, woad, were sold outside the fair and escaped dues, now the constable of the castle insisted on tolls for every sale even without the bounds—­a pound of pepper, or even more, had to go into his hand.  The citizens of Lincoln had analized the Witham, and built up an illustration of the rapid development of the trading towns.  As early as the beginning of the century its owner, the Bishop of Norwich, had seen its advantages, lying as it did at the mouth of the Ouse, and forming the only outlet for the trade of seven shires.  It was not long before the prudent bishops had made of it the Liverpool of medieval times.  The Lynn of older days, later known as “King’s Lynn,” with its little crowded market shut in between Guildhall and Church, the booths then as now leaning against the church walls, and a tangle of narrow lanes leading to the river-side, was in no way fit for the great demands of an awakened commerce; its life went on as of old, but the sea was driven back by a vast embankment, and the “Bishop’s Lynn” rose on the newly-won land along the river-bank, with its great market-place, its church, its jewry, its merchant-houses, and its guild-houses; and soon, in the thick of the busiest quarter, by the wharves, rose the “stone house” of the bishop himself, looking closely out on the “strangers’ ships” that made their way along the Ouse laden with provisions and with merchandise.

But this growing wealth was still mainly confined to the towns.  The great bulk of the country was purely agricultural, and had no concern in any questions of trade.  There is a record of over five hundred pleas of the Gloucestershire fifty years later, and among all these there is outside the town of Gloucester but one case which deals with the lawful width for weaving cloth, and one or two as to the sale of bread, ale, or wine.  The agricultural peasants seem, from the glimpses which we catch here and there, to have for the most part lived on the very verge of starvation.  Every few years with dreary regularity we note the chronicler’s brief record of cattle-plague, famine, pestilence.  Half a century later we read in legal records the tale of a hard winter and its consequences—­the dead bodies of the famine-stricken serfs lying in the fields on every side, and the judges of the King’s Court claiming from the starving survivors the “murder-fine” ordained by law to be paid for every dead body found when the murderer was not produced.  The system of cultivation was ignorant and primitive.  Rendered timid by the repeated failure of crops, the poor people would set aside a part of their land to sow together oats, barley, and wheat, in the hope that whatever were the season something would come up which might serve for