The near connection between these great cloth merchants and the corporation is one of the most striking features of municipal life in Coventry during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The marks of the drapers' influence in civic affairs are continually before our eyes. It was in a draper's mayoralty that ordinances were first made respecting the searching of cloth.[464] And when the system of overlooking was perfected in 1518, a few years later, it was to six men of this craft, that the task of superintending the searchers' investigations was assigned. Just as, about a hundred years before that time, when an unsuccessful attempt was made by the town rulers to exercise complete control over the dyers' craft, it was suggested that two drapers as well as two dyers, in either case nominees of the corporation, should keep watch over the dyers' movements, and "present" them for any "fault or confederacy" at the court of the mayor.[465] Measures framed by this body in the interest of any particular craft or class were doubtless found oppressive by those who had no lot or part in their enactment. Thus while the yea or nay of the fullers had little weight in municipal councils, the wealth of the drapers gave them a control over the local trade to an extent which we can hardly realise. The reason of this supremacy is not far to seek. The mercers and drapers in their character of wealthy men usually occupied the principal official posts in the city.[466] No one, unless he were possessed of a certain amount of wealth, could rise to a high place in the corporation. Men were ranked according to the amount of property in their possession, and to speak of a citizen as "of the degree of a mayor" or "bailiff," conveyed as definite an idea as the assertion that "So-and-so has a fortune of £20,000 or £30,000," would convey to our minds at the present date.