History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS. 87
keeping the old connection together. Included in the r^pp^HvyTq
latter were some citizens who did not live in North- Chester.'
gate Street (the special district for that mill), and 13. Action
who should have therefore ground at Dee Mills. As against the
was afterwards pleaded, the Goodmans had made no ic67.^
demur to this while Bavand lived ; but in any case
after his death they took action against the widow, as
well as several other persons who were working mills
and attracting custom that should have gone to the
still so-called ''
king's
mills." This suit endured four
years.
In 1567 proceedings commenced with a Bill of Harl. MSS.,
Indictment entered in the Exchequer Court at Chester
by Ralph and Thomas Goodman against Margaret
Bavand, widow, occupier of one watermill, called the
Bache Mill, without the Northgate Street [also of
the windmill there] ; Robert Dandrey, esq., occupier
of a windmill near Spittle, Boughton ; Thomas
Ball,
occupier of a windmill at Christleton ; John Moreton,
occupying a watermill at Great Borrow ; Philip
Prince, occupying
a watermill at Marford :—each
of whom, it was alleged, ground corn taken out of
the city, to the prejudice of Dee Mills. The plaintiffs
pleaded that the late King Edward and his progenitors,
Earls of Chester, had always exercised the right to
seize as forfeited any corn carried out of the city to
be ground at other mills than' the Dee Mills, in accord-
ance with ancient custom. The whole of the
defendants, with the exception of Widow Bavand,
appear to have abstained from entering a defence,
allowing judgment to go by default, or, as is not
unlikely, arranging for a withdrawal ; two of them,
Dandrey and Ball, in fact, appearing in evidence
against her. Margaret Bavand fashion, that
pleaded, after the usual
''such a prescription in favour of Dee
Mills is injurious and against the law; for that a
*