In 1257 occurred another of the many strange stories of this time. A sealed Roll was found in the King’s wardrobe at Windsor. No one knew who wrote it, or how it came there. The Roll contained “many articles against the Mayor, to the effect that the City had been aggrieved by him and his abettors beyond measure, as well as in respect of tallage and of other injuries that had been committed by them.” In other words, the Roll contained a statement, no doubt highly coloured, of the discontented. The King, pretending to be resolute that the poor should not be treated unjustly, sent John Maunsell, Justiciar, to London with orders to hold a Folk Mote and to inquire into the truth of the allegations, which was done. Then the Aldermen were ordered to convene their ward motes, and to cause the people in each ward to elect six-and-thirty deputies, _the Aldermen being absent_; and these six-and-thirty men were ordered to appear in the hall of the Bishop of London. They were there put on oath; but they refused to make oath, alleging that by the laws of the City they ought not to make oath except upon a question of life or limb, or where land was to be lost or gained. The next day, at the Guildhall, the deputies still refused to take oath. Whereupon the King sent word that all he desired was to learn the truth; that he was willing to leave their franchises unimpaired, and that he desired to ascertain how his faithful people had been aggrieved in tallages and by whom. Then John Maunsell spoke pleasantly to the people, asking if they were not content with the promise of the King. And they shouted, “Yea, Yea,” “in disparagement,” says the Chronicler, who belonged to the City Barons, “of their own franchises, which, in fact, these most wretched creatures had not been the persons to secure.” John Maunsell then proceeded to seize the City for the King, and to depose the Mayor, Sheriffs, and City Chamberlain. There was a trial at Westminster before the King; there was another Folk Mote, at which the people were persuaded by the silver-tongued John Maunsell to shout for the destruction of their own liberties, of which they understood little indeed. The Chronicler, in indignation, calls them “sons of divers mothers, many of them born without the City, and many of servile condition.” At that time, one observes, they were very far from the possibility of a democracy.