pporters in
full force, expecting an answer to be given by the council. At length the
council resolved to submit the whole question to arbitration, the city in
the meanwhile being placed in the custody of a warden. Before the
arbitrators got to work, the king died (16 Nov.), and rather than the city
should continue to be disturbed at such a crisis, the aldermen agreed to a
compromise, and Hervy was allowed to be mayor for one year more.(279)

CHAPTER V.

(M176)

Although the aldermen had been prevailed upon to give their assent to
Hervy's election to the mayoralty, his democratic tendencies made him an
object of dislike, more especially to Fitz-Thomas. When, therefore, that
chronicler records that throughout Hervy's year of office he did not allow
any pleading in the Husting for Pleas of Land except very rarely, for the
reason that the mayor himself was defendant in a suit brought against him
by Isabella Bukerel,(280) we hesitate to place implicit belief in his
statement.(281) We are inclined, moreover, to give less credit to anything
that Fitz-Thedmar may say against the mayor when we bear in mind that the
former had a personal grievance against the latter.(282)

(M177)

Hervy was a worthy successor to Fitz-Thomas, and, under his government,
the craft guilds improved their position. Fresh ordinances for the
regulation of various crafts were drawn up, and to these the mayor, on his
own responsibility, attached the city seal.(283) When Hervy's year of
office expired--these so-called "charters" were called in question as
having been unauthorised by the aldermen of the city and as tending to
favour the richer members of the guilds to the prejudice of the poorer.
After a "wordy and most abusive dispute" carried on in the Guildhall
between the ex-mayor and Gregory de Rokesley who acted as spokesman for
the body of aldermen, Hervy left the hall and summoned the craft-guilds to
meet him in Cheapside. There he told them that it was the wish of Henry le
Galeys (or Waleys) the mayor and others to infringe their charters, but
that if they could stand by him he would maintain those charters in all
their integrity.

Fearing lest a riot might follow, the chancellor--Walter de Merton, through
whose mediation Hervy had been at last accepted as mayor by the
aldermen--ordered his arrest. This was on the 20th December, 1273. Hervy
was, accordingly, attached but released on bail, and early in the
following January (127