heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

176 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
as a fishmonger, and that the building comprised a wharf, a loft, and a
tower built by him.
In the gth Edward III., 1374, he was elected mayor of London; and
in 1377, a temporary enactment having been passed that aldermen should
be chosen yearly, and should not hold office two years in succession, he
vacated his office as alderman, but was re-elected the following year.
Municipal life, however, does not seem to have been, in those days, a
bed of roses, any more than, I suppose, it is in the present day ; for in
that same year "he made plaint" by his attorney, before the mayor and
a certain Alice, wife of Robert Godrich, did come to his
corporation, that
house and did " horribly raise the hue and cry upon the said William, as
" though against a thief, and without cause, calling him a false man, and
" imputing to him that he had unjustly disinherited her of 20 value of
" land yearly, and that, by his mastery, he had unjustly detained the afore-
" said Robert in prison for that reason, to the great scandal of the
" offices which the said William had held in the city aforesaid, and to his
" own damage of ,100.
" The persons, however, before whom she was tried for this, acquitted
" him, and for her lies and slanders the mayor and aldermen sentenced
" her to have the punishment of the pillory called ' the thewe,' for such
" women provided, to stand upon the same for one hour in the day, with
" a whetstone in the meantime hung from her neck ;
and that the said
"William should recover against the said Robert and Alice 40 pounds as
" his damages, taxed by the court.
" And thereupon," we are " told, came here the said William, begging
" and entreating the said mayor and aldermen that the punishment of
" the pillory might be remitted to the said Alice, that the payment of
" the sum of money might be put in respite during the good behaviour of
" the said Alice, and that she might be released from prison." *
Which requests were immediately granted at Walworth's intercession
and we shall not deem this the least noble trait in his chivalrous
character.
Yes ;
and had I space I could recount many quaint
instances of the
rough and ready way in which justice was administered by the worthy
alderman and those associated with him, for men's lives or persons, rather
than their liberties, paid the penalties of their evil deeds. Prisons there
were few, and they wretched dens of misery, where the unhappy prisoners
lived, and often starved, at their own charges, or pined away and died
from jail-fever, the result of the malaria arising from many closely confined
in ill-ventilated and undrained dungeons. Never, till John Howard arose
some three hundred years later, was anything done to mitigate them ;
and,
*
Riley.