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Domesday deals with Exeter, in which city, it is recorded, the king had
285 houses rendering customary dues. The generally debased character of
the coinage of the time led to various expedients being adopted by the
Exchequer for securing approximately accurate payment of a specified sum
of money. Among other things the entries in Domesday state that in the
total--

"This (city of Exeter) renders 18 pounds per annum. Of these
Baldwin the Sheriff has six pounds by weight and assay, and Colvin
has of them 12 pounds by tale for the service of Queen Eadgyth".

This entry is significant, for one pound or twenty shillings meant one
pound or twelve ounces troy of silver; and when money was payable by
weight twenty shillings were not taken as the equivalent of one pound
unless they fully weighed one pound. In this instance it is observable
that the portion of the customary dues rendered for the 285 houses,
which went to the Exchequer, was collected by the sheriff under the
strictest rules of weight and assay, whereas the portion allotted to the
widow of Edward the Confessor was received by the tale only. The
authorities took care that the sheriff collected the full amount due to
the Crown, but did not trouble themselves about the ex-queen's share.

It has been affirmed that it was by the Normans that the fairs of
England were moulded into the shape with which we are most familiar. At
Exeter, in 1276, in reply to a writ of _quo warranto_, it was
satisfactorily shown that the rights of the city, its fee-farm rent and
its farms, dated from pre-Conquest days. The privileges and emoluments
attached to fairs in large towns were very great. During the time
allotted to them the citizens were often debarred from selling anything,
whereas strangers could vend their wares during the fair, but at no
other period of the year. In Cossin's _Reminiscences of Exeter_ (1877)
we are told how "at Exeter, on the occasion of the Lammas Fair, a
procession yet perambulates the city, one man bearing a pole with a
gigantic stuffed glove at the top of it, the latter being subsequently
hung out at the Guildhall".

Many of England's reigning sovereigns have visited the city, among them
being Edward IV and Richard III. Henry VII came thither on 7 October,
1497, on the suppression of Perkin Warbeck's rebellion, when that rebel
had attempted to capture the city. The rebels were brought before the
king, bareheaded and with halters roun