a Primate of England scamped his public duty? Was his attitude to a timber bridge inferior to that of the high priests of ancient Rome, who called themselves _pontifices_ because they built and repaired the Pons Sublicius, a bridge of stakes at the foot of Mount Aventine?[13] The sheriff and his officers had a different question to consider; they would wish to know whether the Archbishop had been an astute man of the world, whether he had made his tenants responsible to the _trinoda necessitas_. If not, then he and the Law were in a fix, and peasants over their ale would guffaw with malice. But enquiries proved that his Grace was a canny landlord; the tenants alone ought to have mended the bridge; and so the Law was free to act with a vigour that common folk knew too well. Its agent was the bailiff, good Simon Porter, and Porter set out at once to collect money from the tenants. If any tenant either declined to pay his share or was unable to pay it, then the bailiff put his hand on some marketable property, perhaps a few sheep, or a cow, or “a gaggle of geese.” The necessary thing was to take enough; never an easy thing to do in the country, as no one cared to pay a fair price for escheated live stock. The peasant has ever been at heart a pawnbroker. But Simon Porter had no reason to look upon his troublesome work as a high office of trust important enough to keep his name alive for six hundred years. It was when he met Hamo de Morston, a truculent fellow, that Simon entered into history. Hamo de Morston was a logical egoist, he fought for his own hand only, trying to use the State at a trivial cost to himself; but now this amusement, after prospering for years, brought him suddenly face to face with legal pains and penalties--a thing most irritating to a bad temper. So Hamo refused to pay; and his fury was terrific when Porter confiscated a horse. Even then he was not defeated, for he set lawyer against lawyer, and one day a petition was sent by him to King Edward II. The rascal was a good fighter, but his appeal to the supreme authority failed; the bailiff’s action was approved, and Hamo had costs to pay.