ion of the Chapter and the Archbishop had been
somewhat restricted by the Reformation, and the secular jurisdiction of
the Liberty--especially in criminal cases--had been partly transferred
to the king's itinerant justices. The Archbishop, however, still
retained some criminal jurisdiction and also his 'Court Military,'
which, strange to say, came to hear civil cases. During the latter half
of the fifteenth century the secular cases heard by the Chapter had been
chiefly cases of debt, and under the new constitution they were
authorized to hold a court, which was called the Canon Fee Court, for
cases of debt and other civil cases. Some obscurity exists as to the
mediaeval relation of the Archbishop to the town. There was, of course, a
town council, and its president the Wakeman[26] (an official peculiar to
Ripon) had charge of what would now be called the town police. The
ancient town bridges (of which only one remains) were under the charge
of the Archbishop. During the sixteenth century the borough constitution
had been the subject of disputes, in which Cardinal Wolsey had been
concerned in 1517 and Archbishop Hutton in 1598. James I. therefore now
granted a new Charter, under which the Wakeman became a Mayor; and
henceforth the borough had also an independent court of its own. The
dissolution of the Chapter in 1547, coming as it did upon the decay of
the manufacture of woollen cloth, had been a great blow to the
prosperity of the inhabitants,[27] and it was no wonder that when James
visited the town in 1617 he received an ovation.

In 1625 a plague, such as had not occurred here since 1546, prevented
the country folk from approaching the minster, and obliged them to have
their children baptized in the fields. Several changes in the
surroundings of the church took place at this time. The Bedern, with its
quadrangle, hall, and chapel, had been demolished by 1625, in which year
the Deanery was erected, perhaps upon its site. Of the old prebendal
houses some had been sold, or let; others, perhaps, were occupied by the
Prebendaries of the new foundation. In 1629 the ancient Palace, which
stood to the north of the minster and west of the Deanery, was turned
into a poor-house. The town (and doubtless the minster) was visited in
1633 by Charles I. on his way to his coronation at Edinburgh.[28] A few
years later he was to pass through again, a captive on his way to Holmby
House.

Ripon had escaped the Wars of the Roses, but i