cohort_, of guard. The commanding officer of the guard at
the gate had oversight of the market, punished such as sold by false
weights and measures, brought bad provisions, or were guilty of any other
offence in the market, and arbitrated in all cases of dispute. The
Saxons, those exterminating conquerors, who so liberally parcelled out
their neighbours' territory into the famous divisions of the Heptarchy,
next figured upon the scene, and the _castellans_ succeeded the officer
of the guard in the duties of his office, in later times to be fulfilled
by pie-powder courts and clerks of the market. At this period, markets
at the castle gates grew so important as to be composed of durable
houses, as durable at least as wooden shambles were likely to be; and of
such like constructions were the first outlines of the market-place
composed, the fishmongers' and butchers' shops of the present day being
the nearest similitudes that can be found to illustrate their features.

From this time the history of the market-place becomes identified with
the progress of the borough, its struggles for growth being somewhat
impeded, we fancy, by the tithes and taxes extorted by barons and
bishops, between whom we may fancy the poor fisherfolks began to "fare
rather sadly," scarcely knowing what was their own, or if, indeed, they
had any own at all. To sum up their miseries, old chroniclers record
that about this time the sea began to withdraw its arm, which to them had
been a great support, and the fishermen, who were bound to pay an annual
tithe of herrings to the bishops of the _see_, found themselves in much
the same plight as the Israelites of old, when doomed to make bricks
without straw--in their case to supply herrings without a fishery--and
were therefore reduced to the unpleasant necessity of thenceforth
purchasing the wherewith to pay the lasting imposition. Notwithstanding
all these impediments the progress of the borough was rapid; houses and
churches sprung up thick and fast; so that at the time of the survey, in
the reign of the "Confessor," we find record of twenty-five parish
churches, and one thousand three hundred burgesses; of sheep-walks,
mills, and hides of land, (a hide being as much as one plough could till
in a year,) of taxes, of honey, and bear dogs.

Churches were owned indiscriminately by bishops, earls, and burgesses;
the materials of which they were constructed, chiefly wood, though
occasionally rough flint