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42 HISTORY OF CORN MILLING: vol. iv.
II.
SHREWSBURY
ABBEY
MILLS.
6. Monastic
Soke broken,
1267.
Hist. Shby.,
i. 129.
in its true light.
Its commencement, we are told,
''must be mentioned," as it is ''a domestic trans-
action which throws some light on the state of society
in Shrewsbury in the thirteenth century." But,
peradventure, '' in discussing it the local historian
is obliged to descend from the dignity of his narra-
tive, from princes and nobles and the infraction of
national treaties, to the minor details of daily life and
the adjustment of petty differences." Yet, it may be
that the story is not without a certain dignity of
its own, in its delineation of the monastic mill-owners
striving during successive centuries to protect their
perfectly legal chartered rights against spoliation by
the populace ; while, unfortunately for the abbey,
there is certainly not lacking even an allusion to kings
and the infraction of treaties.
Between 1227 and 1267 the burgesses of Shrewsbury,
bound to grind at the manor mills, endeavoured
to break the soke, and erected private mills. As the
historians grandiloquently observe, the burgesses were
"
prompted to spurn the slavish badge of their former
subjection" — a statement which, in any case, does
not correctly describe a revolt against the law of the
land and the rights of property. The abbot, not
being manorial lord, had not himself the right to
destroy the illicit mills, and accordingly brought an
action at Salop Assizes to restrain their owners from
using them. The hearing was pending, when, in the
autumn of 1267 (Henry III. being then in Shrews-
bury, intent on promoting the loyalty of the great
border city), the case was withdrawn " by the action of
common friends" and a ; so-called ''compromise" was
made. By this the abbey absolutely lost its manorial
milling rights ; and there can be no question who the
"common friends" were. The fact is that at the
time William de Upton, abbot, was in disgrace at