Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Early in the summer of 1285 Edward I announced that he was sending John de Kirkby and a special commission of judges to the Tower to examine the state of public order in London. On 10 June, nineteen days before their coming, he issued letters patent: the area around St Paul's, he asserted, had become the haunt of thieves and vagabonds, and he empowered the Cathedral to enclose and incorporate it in the churchyard. The ‘area around St Paul's’ was nothing less than the site of the folk-moot and the muster. The moot was the primal city assembly, the muster the characteristic expression of communal patriotism. By this time, it is true, neither was much more than an institutional fossil, but both were integral and basic components of civic tradition. The sites were the city's freehold and there had been no preliminary inquest of any kind. As late as the <jats:italic>Iter</jats:italic> of 1321, when Hamo de Chigwell tried to reverse the decision, the affront still rankled.</jats:p>