ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY days was to be omitted. On all principal feasts of the year, i.e. Christ- mas, Candlemas, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and the Dedication of the Church, the parishioners were to attend the solemn high mass at Chesham, to save the rights of the mother church. 1 As early as 1213 troubles began to arise between the monastic tenants and their lords on the subject of feudal service. There was a suit brought forward in the summer of this year in the Curia Regis' between the prior of Leighton 3 and his men. Later in the same reign the prior summoned five of his tenants for not rendering the customary services.* They in their turn appealed to the judgment of the three towns of Luton, Houghton and Leighton. The result is not recorded, but suits went on between the prior and his tenants up till 1290. 6 The difficulty at Leighton seems to have been mainly concerned with feudal services ; at Dunstable it was of a different character, and far more serious. In 121 9" the prior of Dunstable proved his right to hold a court in the town for all pleas of the Crown. In the follow- ing year the archdeacon of Bedford, John Houghton, was called in for the first time to witness a composition between the prior and his bur- gesses on the subject of fines, tithes of trade,' etc. But it was not till 1 228 s that the townsmen drew up a formal list of grievances. As at Leighton, they said that the prior demanded of them many things contrary to the liberties which they had always enjoyed. The jus- ticiars before whom they laid their grievances sent them on to the King's Court. There they failed to prove their case, in spite of bribes to Hubert de Burgh and others ; and the prior had his charters confirmed by Henry III., securing the same rights over the men of Dunstable as the king himself had in his own towns. The ill-feeling of the burgesses was not likely to be lessened by the prior's demand of 100 marks towards the £100 he had to pay for this confirmation. Blows and wounds were exchanged by the tenants and the servants of the prior over the collection of the money. Then the burgesses began to withdraw their offerings from the church ; excommunication from the prior they wholly disregarded, and paid only a temporary reverence to the threat of excommunication delivered from the pulpit by the bishop himself. For more than two months the solemn high mass in the parish church was discontinued.' 1 Cur. Reg. R. 2 John 24, n. 26. s Ibid. 56, n. 17 in dorso. 3 The priory of Leighton, afterwards called La Grave, was a cell of the order of Fontevraud. 4 Cur. Reg. R. John incerti temporis, 35, n. 2. 5 Ibid. n. 5. A jury was impanelled to decide between the prior and William, a certain clerk ; who, being required to send his men for given services, pleaded that he and his predecessors had held their land free of the lord king, before the manor was given to the nuns of Fontevraud ; and moreover, some of the jury were disqualified, by the fact of being customary tenants of the prior. In 1260 (Cur. Reg. R. 168, n. 2 in dorso) the men of Leighton summoned the prior for distraining them on similar grounds; the prior refused to appear. In 1290 (Coram Reg. R. 18 Edw. I. n. 22) Henry Child impleaded the prior on the same grounds. Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 54. T Ibid. 65. 8 Ibid. 105. 8 It was sung instead in the infirmary of the monastery, to which the townspeople would not have access, from I August to 9 October {Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. no). 319
