1921 IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 67 for the examinyng preuvyng deuidinge castynge & wrytynge of everye accompte ... if there be shippyng of wolles & no reteyners nor lycence . . . 265. Sd. If there be reteyners or lycence . . . 40s. If there be no shyppynge of wolles 135. id. For every viewe 10s. if there was shipping of wool, 65. Sd. if there was not. And in the office of the chamberlains 5s. for joining of tallies. This list of fees compared with the text of the poem suggests that in the fifty years or so between its date and the date of the ordinance, the gifts and bribes complained of by John Bell had become recognized payments. Caesar's curious description of the verses as ' privileges of the Exchequer Court, Chamber and men ' suggests that he considered the extortions as corresponding with the fees whose existence had long been sanctioned by custom and which had become very much greater than those of the ordinance. M. Dorothy George. Five Indentures between Edward IV and Warwick the Kingmaker Although the earl of Warwick was entrusted with the keeping of the sea, the captaincies of Calais, Guines, and Hammes, and the general guardianship of the northern border of England from the beginning of the reign of Edward IV, he apparently signed no indentures with the king until the early months of 1462, when Edward was much perturbed by the conspiracy of the earl of Oxford. No copy of the agreement for the keeping of the sea seems to have escaped destruction, but from a warrant which Edward sent to the exchequer on 26 February 1462 we learn that it was drawn up on 13 February of that year, which was the day after Oxford's arrest, that the earl was to serve the king for three years, beginning with the feast of St. Martin in winter last past, and that ' among other things contained in the said inden- ture ' it was agreed that the earl should be paid a thousand pounds .a year. 1 Very soon after Oxford's execution Edward started on s, progress through his kingdom, and it was at Lichfield that Warwick signed the indenture making him captain and warden of Carlisle and of the west marches towards Scotland. Of this indenture a copy is preserved in Exchequer Accounts 71/5, and, though it is without date, we learn from a warrant which Edward sent to the exchequer on 10 June 1463 authorizing the payment of what was ' behind unpaid ' of the earl's wages, 2 and also from 1 Warrants for Issues, 1 Edw. IV, 26 February. 2 Ibid. 3 Edw. IV, 10 June. F 2
