“Not all your possessions,” said the provost promptly. “There are within thetown some thirty or more messuages in your hold, and your tenants within them,and their children have to wade in the kennels of broken streets as ours do,and their horses break legs where the paving is shattered, as ours do.”

“Our tenants enjoy fair treatment from us, and considerate rents, and forsuch matters we are responsible. But we cannot be held responsible for thetown’s dilapidations, as we can for those here on our own lands. No,” said theabbot, raising his voice peremptorily when the provost would have resumed hisarguments, “say no more! We have heard and understood your case, and we are notwithout sympathy. But Saint Peter’s Fair is a sacred right granted to thishouse, on terms we did not draw up; it is a right that inheres not to me as aman, but to this house, and I in my passing tenure have no authority to changeor mitigate those terms in the smallest degree. It would be an offence againstthe king’s Grace, who has confirmed the charter, and an offence against thosemy successors, for it could be taken and cited as a precedent for future years.No, I will not set aside any part of the profits of the fair to your use, Iwill not increase the fee we pay you for it, I will not share in any proportionthe tolls on goods and stalls. All belong here, and all must be gathered here,according to the charter.” He saw half a dozen mouths open to protest againstso summary a dismissal, and rose in his place, very tall and straight, andchill of voice and eye. “This chapter is concluded,” he said.

There were one or two among the delegation who would still have tried toinsist, but Geoffrey Corviser had a better notion of his own and the town’sdignity, and a shrewder idea of what might or might not impress thatself-assured and austere man. He made the abbot a deep, abrupt reverence,turned on his heel, and strode out of the chapter-house, and his defeatedcompany recovered their wits and marched as haughtily after him.