of this market and fair; as well as by the circumstance of a Royal mandate having been addressed, about this period, to the Bailiffs of Hull, in common with the bailiffs of other sea-ports, directing them to examine all merchants leaving the kingdom, in order to discover plates of silver, clipped and broken coin, &c., in their possession. The bailiffs of this place were, doubtless, those appointed by the Abbot of Meaux; that dignitary having assumed the entire dominion of the town. Indeed, the Abbot's bailiffs were soon after officially recognised as such, in a writ addressed in the 18th of Edward I. (1290), to the Abbot of Melsa's Bailiffs of Hull, requiring them to assist Toricius, the Fleming of York, to take "rectas prisas" of wines coming to the Town of Hull, and to gauge the wines there, in the same manner as was then done in other parts of the kingdom.

To the taste and industry of Mr. Frost we are then indebted for the knowledge that when Wyke or Hull, together with the manor of Myton, became the property of King Edward, it was not as the early writers have it-an obscure corner, hitherto neglected, and consisting of a few huts for shepherds and cowherds, but a place of importance, the property of the monks of Meaux therein being, as we have seen, considerable; and it must be recollected that the monks were not the sole proprietors of the place, as the Canons of Watton Abbey, the Archbishop of York, the family of Sutton, and others, had property there.

The histories of the Abbey of Meaux record the anxiety of the King (who had contemplated the advantage of the situation of the place for a fortified town, and a great commercial port) to obtain the possession of this property, and they relate the particulars of the exchange of it for lands in Lincolnshire. By a deed of feoffment, executed by the Abbey and Convent, in the beginning of the year 1298, the Monarch acquired the absolute ownership of Wyke, and he immediately dignified it with the appellation of Kingston, or King's Town, adding the terms upon Hull, to distinguish it from Kingston-upon-Thames; and having constituted it a manor independent of Myton, he built a Manor Hall, or royal residence, and issued a proclamation, offering great freedoms, privileges, and immunities, to all those who should fix their habitations there. He placed the town under the government of a Warden (Custos) and Bailiffs; and appointed Peter de Campania to value and let it. This new valuation amounted to £78. 17s. 8d. per ann., which corresponds within a few shillings with the sum stated to have been received for the rent of the same property by the Abbot of Meaux. The first person appointed to fill the high office of Warden was Richard Oysel, the King's bailiff of the seigniory of Holderness, and keeper of the Royal Manor

VOL. II.

C

of Burstwick. The earliest charter granted to the town is dated 1st of April, 27th Edward I. (1299), and was obtained by the inhabitants upon their petition being presented to the King in person, while he was keeping his Christmas at Barnard Castle, the seat of Lord Wake, at Cottingham, near Hull, on his return from the north. Hull was now constituted a free borough, and in the same year the harbour was finished.*

"For the purchase of the extensive liberties and privileges granted by the charter," writes Mr. Frost, "the inhabitants of Kingston-upon-Hull offered only 100 marks, while the burgesses of Ravenser paid no less than £300. for a similar grant in their favour (in the same year); but this disparity affords no criterion for determining the relative importance of the two places. Ravenser had risen suddenly to the enjoyments of considerable commercial prosperity, and had become a formidable rival to the King's ports of Grimsby, Hedon, and Scarborough. Its merchants, neglecting no means of increasing their traffic, were ready to purchase their liberties at a price equivalent to the privileges to be conferred; while Hull, on the other hand, would naturally avail itself of the peculiar claim which it had on royal favour, in the circumstance of having so recently become the property of the King. To the relative situation, therefore, of the two places in this respect, may be attributed the regulation of the amount of the fines in the proportion mentioned. As a further proof that the disparity in the amount of these fines depended more upon such circumstances as we have alluded to, than on the ability of the parties to discharge them, it may be observed that the people of Hull paid a moiety of their fine immediately, and the remaining part in the following year, while the burgesses of Ravenser in the first year paid only £36. out of £300., leaving the remainder in charge in the Sheriff's account, until the 31st of Edward I."

Amongst the privileges conferred upon the town by this charter, was a grant to the burgesses, and their successors, for ever, to hold two markets in every week, one on Tuesday, and the other on Friday; and an annual fair, to continue for thirty days-" on the day of St. Austin, after Easter, and for twenty-nine days next following."

From this period the increase and prosperity of the place have been remarkable, and it was soon regarded as one of the principal towns in the kingdom; so much so, that when an extensive coinage was appointed, it was

A literal translation of the charter is printed in Tickell's Hist. of Hull, p. 11; and in Frost's Notices, p. 45. There are two originals of it amongst the town's records.

+ Frost's Notices, p. 56.

fixed upon as one of the places where mints were to be established. By degrees all the flourishing towns of these parts, such as Barton, Hedon, Patrington, Grimsby, and Ravenspurn, were drained of their chief inhabitants and trade—Hull monopolizing all to itself—so that as it continually increased, those towns proportionately decreased; and at present little, if any, commercial business is transacted in any of them, except in Grimsby, which, from its favourable position on the Humber, coupled with the formation of railways, has of late years risen rapidly in the scale of importance.

Edward I., in the course of a progress to the north, visited Hull in the year 1300. He crossed the Humber, from Barton to Hessle, on the 26th of May, and the passage of the royal party across the ferry appears to have occupied two days; the sum of 13s. having been paid for the wages of Galfrid de Seleby and other sailors, with eleven barges and boats employed during that time. The high road northward (via regia) lay at that time in a direct line from Hessle to Beverley; but the King took a circuitous route thither, solely for the purpose of viewing the state of the newly-created borough of Hull. His stay there was of short duration, but the effects of his visit were soon visible in the various improvements by which it was succeeded, and particularly in the pavement of the streets; for defraying the expense of which a grant was made soon after the King's departure, of certain tolls, to be levied on all goods coming to the town for sale, within the five succeeding years. The roads in the vicinity were also repaired; and in 1303 the three great roads from Hull to Holderness, Beverley, and Anlaby, were appointed to be made. In the 19th of this reign (1291), a ferry was established between Barton and Hull, the extreme value of which, in 1320, was 40s. In 1356 it was leased at the yearly rent of £535. Os. 4d.; and in 1831, at a yearly rent of £800. The ferry now belongs to the Railway Company.

At a very early period, long anterior to the time that the situation of Hull attracted the attention of Edward I., the river Hull had experienced the change in its course, alluded to in the account we have given of that river in vol. i., page 32. As we have there shown, the old river was formerly on the west side of the town-the inlet, known by the name of Lime Kiln Creek being a part of it. The present river Hull, from the Humber to Sculcoates Gote, then called Sayer's Creek, but now the Old Harbour, is supposed to have been cut by Sayer de Sutton, to drain the marshes. The entire district for many miles round, being liable to violent floods, the country must have had the appearance of one vast lake, dotted with innumerable islands. Though it must perhaps remain undecided whether the diversion of the course of the river was the result of accident or design, it is not unreasonable

to suppose, from the frequent irruptions of the rivers Hull and Humber, and the incessant and violent inundations to which the neighbourhood of the town was subject, that it is to be attributed to the former.

'Holderness, which has been described as an island," says Mr. Frost, "together with the entire district for many miles round Wyke and Myton, was peculiarly liable to the attacks of sudden floods, and in 1256 an extraordinary influx of the sea, which, according to Stowe and Walsingham, overflowed the whole of the eastern coast of England, extended to the fisheries and woods of Cottingham, belonging to the monks of Melsa, and swept away numbers of people of both sexes, together with many head of cattle; it also washed into the Humber a considerable quantity of land, which the monks had in Myton, and which was afterwards regained. These inundations were attended with the most serious consequences, and the sufferings they occasioned are described in terms of horror in an official letter, addressed by Archbishop Corbridge to the Prior and Convent of Giseburn, in 1301, which states, that in conveying the bodies of deceased persons from the chapel at Kingston to the parish church of Hessle for interment, it often happened that the bodies and attendants were all washed away by the water of the Humber. So dangerous indeed had these floods rendered the travelling between Hull and Anlaby, that the Commissioners, who were charged with the superintendence of the banks, and the protection of the country against inundations, found it necessary, at the commencement of the fourteenth century, to raise the road six feet above its ordinary level; this great work was effected by taking earth from the lands which lay to the north of the road, and the expenses incurred were directed by the Commissioners to be paid by the inhabitants of Kyngeston sur Hull, Hesill, Feriby, Swanland, Braythwayte, Westelveley, Willardby, Wolfreton, and Anlaghby.'"*

The irruptions of the Hull too were often attended with destructive consequences; and on one occasion the monks of Meaux complained of a loss from the inundations of that river and the Humber, of about six acres of arable land in Drypool, which was stated to be worth 2s. 6d. per ann.† Various ancient provisions have been made since the beginning of the reign of Edward II., for draining and embanking these parts. In the 30th of Edward III. (1356), it was reported to the King that the tides of the rivers Hull and Humber flowed four feet higher than usual, so that the road leading to Anlaby, and all the adjacent lands, were overflowed; his Majesty therefore granted letters patent for cleaning out the old ditch, and enlarging

it twelve feet; and for cutting a new ditch, twenty-four feet broad, right through the pasture of Myton, into Hull, by which the waters might pass to and fro; and also for raising the road considerably higher. In the same year an ordinance was made by the Mayor and Commonalty, that all their lands without the walls, beyond the west postern, reaching from Lyle Street (now Mytongate) to the river Humber, should be let, free of rent, to such persons as would undertake to maintain the banks of the Humber in front of those lands, with a view to the safety and protection of the town and the adjacent country. The tides still continuing to rise higher than formerly, various commissions were issued to obviate this calamity; and in 1366 the tide rose so high, that the banks between Sculcoates and Hull gave way, and the water breaking in, not only swept away the cattle, but numbers of people were drowned in the general inundation, which flooded the whole country.

"In the reign of Richard II.," says Mr. Frost, "the possibility of the port being annihilated by the influx of the sea, was contemplated in the judgment pronounced against Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and in the time of Henry VI., the river had shifted so far from the town, that the greatest apprehensions were entertained, not only of the entire destruction of the port, but of the consequent desertion and depopulation of the place. With a view to prevent the occurrence of such a calamity, the King granted his license to the Mayor and Commonalty to purchase land to the extent of £100. per annum, for the reparation and protection of the port."*

The town and port were again threatened with destruction from the ravages of the Humber in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but by subsequent provisions the country was not only secured, but the low lands, which were unwholesome, not so much from their situation as from the effects of stagnant waters, rendered more healthy. The fact that this locality was subject to such dreadful inundations, scarcely leaves room for a doubt that the change in the course of the river was the effect of accident, occasioned by the breach of the bank under the influence of some overwhelming torrent, and Mr. Frost seems inclined to fix the period when this accident occurred, at the time of the great flood in 1256. In an agreement, made in 1269, between the Lady Joanna Stuteville and the Archbishop of York, mention is made of the former and her predecessors having had long previously enjoyed the privilege of putting down an iron chain across the river Hull at a place called Stanfordrak, from sunset to sunrise, in the time of war and tumult, for the security of the country against foreigners and disturbers of the peace.