urgesses were
compelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. Leicester was bound to find
the king a hawk or to pay ten pounds; while a sumpter or baggage-horse
was compounded for at one pound.

At Warwick there were two hundred and twenty-five houses on which the
king and his barons claimed tax; and nineteen houses belonged to free
burgesses. The dues were paid in honey and corn. In Shrewsbury there
were two hundred and fifty-two houses belonging to burgesses; but the
burgesses complained that they were called upon to pay as much tax as in
the time of the Confessor, although Earl Roger had taken possession of
extensive lands for building his castle. Chester was a port in which the
king had his dues upon every cargo, and where he had fines whenever a
trader was detected in using a false measure. The fraudulent female
brewer of adulterated beer was placed in the cucking-stool, a
degradation afterward reserved for scolds.

This city has a more particular notice as to laws and customs in the
time of the Confessor than any other place in the survey. Particular
care seems to have been taken against fire. The owner of a house on fire
not only paid a fine to the king, but forfeited two shillings to his
nearest neighbor. Marten skins appear to have been a great article of
trade in this city. No stranger could cart goods within a particular
part of the city without being subjected to a forfeiture of four
shillings or two oxen to the bishop. We find, as might be expected, no
mention of that peculiar architecture of Chester called the "Rows,"
which has so puzzled antiquarian writers. The probability is that in a
place so exposed to the attacks of the Welsh they were intended for
defence. The low streets in which the Rows are situated have the road
considerably beneath them, like the cutting of a railway; and from the
covered way of the Rows an enemy in the road beneath might be assailed
with great advantage.

In the civil wars of Charles I the possession of the Rows by the
Royalists, or Parliamentary troops, was fiercely contested. Of their
antiquity there is no doubt. They probably belong to the same period as
the Castle. The wall of Chester and the bridge were kept in repair,
according to the survey, by the service of one laborer for every hide of
land in the county. It is to be remarked that in all the cities and
burghs the inhabitants are described as belonging to the king or a
bishop or a baron. Many, even in the most privile