On the fourth day the mayor and citizens put in their claim of liberties, which they supported by various charters.(379) The justiciars desired answers on three points, which were duly made,(380) and matters seemed to be getting forward when there arrived orders from the king that the justiciars should enquire as to the ancient right of the aldermen to record their liberties orally in the king’s courts. Having heard what the citizens had to say on this point, the justiciars were instructed to withhold their judgment; and this and other questions touching the liberties of the city were to be postponed for future determination.(381) (M230) On the ninth day of the Iter, a long schedule, containing over 100 articles upon which the Crown desired information, was delivered to each ward of the city.(382) Days and weeks were consumed in considering various presentments, besides private suits and pleas of the Crown. Suits were determined in the Great Hall of the Tower facing the Thames, whilst pleas of the Crown were heard in the Lesser Hall, beneath the eastern tower. The justiciars occasionally protracted their sittings till dusk, much to the disgust of the citizens, whose business was necessarily at a stand-still, and as yet no indictments had been made.(383) These were to come. (M231) On the thirty-fourth day of the Iter, John de Gisors was indicted for having during his mayoralty (1311-1313), admitted a felon to the freedom of the city, and fraudulently altered the date of his admission. The question of criminality turned upon this date. Had the felony been committed before or after admission? The accused declared in his defence that admission to the freedom had taken place before the felony; a jury, however, came to the opposite conclusion, and not only found that admission had taken place after an indictment for the felony, but that the mayor at the time was aware of the indictment. The judges therefore ordered Gisors into custody. He was soon afterwards released on bail, but not without paying a fine of 100 marks.(384) (M232) A similar indictment against his son Anketin, as having participated in his father’s offence, failed. Within a week of Gisors’s indictment, the mayor for the time being, Nicholas de Farndon, was deposed, and the city placed in the hands of Sir Robert de Kendale, the king’s commissioner.(385) (M233) For nine weeks in succession the citizens had suffered from the inconveniences of the Iter, when a brief adjournment over Easter took place. In the meantime, an assay was held at the Guildhall of the new weights and measures which Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, had, in his capacity as the king’s treasurer, caused to be issued throughout the country. One result of the trial was that whilst the city’s weight of eight marks was discovered to be slightly deficient, the city’s bushel was found to be more true than the king’s. (M234)