d his judicial position to a degree quite
intolerable to the victims.

I

"To the King and Council; the Burgesses of Oxford complain, whereas the
Chancellor and University of Oxford have cognizance of contracts,
covenants, and trespass between clerk and clerk, or clerk and lay, they
encroach on the franchise of the town, and draw to them these contracts,
etc., between laymen, especially in certain gifts and actions brought
before the Chancellor, wherein a clerk has some concern, who, by covine,
are made to incur large sums which were not due, and thus the defendants
are condemned and afterwards excommunicated in all the churches of the
town, unless they agree thereto; and if they are not absolved of the
sentence before the Chancellor, they are despoiled even to their
breeches, and must give all their goods to the clerk. In the same way a
plea of trespass in which there has been a cession to a clerk is made to
terminate in a plea of debt, and thus charges of rent upon free
tenements are proved, against law and in great burden to the tenements
of the town. Thus the Chancellor encroaches on the franchises of the
town, to the damage of the King's profits on writs and issues on pleas
of debts, &c., pleadable before the Justices, or before the Mayor and
bailiffs of the town. And with such proceedings taken before the
Chancellor concerning merchants and other strangers passing through, as
well as residents, the merchants will not repair thither on account of
such evil doings, and the town is thereby greatly impoverished."

II

"To the King and Council: Walter de Harewell, burgess and inheritor in
Oxford, showing that whereas the Chancellor of the University has
cognizance of offences and contracts between clerk and clerk, and clerk
and lay, in the town, but nowhere else, one William de Wyneye, clerk,
impleaded him before the Chancellor for offences done out of his
jurisdiction in a foreign county; the said Walter justified himself
before the Chancellor, but the said Chancellor, notwithstanding,
condemned him to prison and kept him in prison in Oxford till he
contented the said William with a large sum of money, and made an
obligation of L20 to be at the will of the said University, and still he
had to find mainprise before he could be set free. And because when he
was taken and led to prison by the bedels of the University, he entered
his house and shut his coffers and chests and the door of his room for
the safety of