"For what you say," he exclaimed, "as to the multiplicity of burdens there is some sense in it. And it might well be that I could buy some of these rights from the King, or the Prince Bishop, or others, as it chances. And, for a market, I am well minded to buy the right to hold one from the King. And so was my father minded before me. But you know very well that your gossip, Corbit Jock—like the tough rogues that ye all are—this Corbit Jock stood in the way of it. For the only piece of land I have that is fitting for a market lies under the wall of that my Castle on the way running through that my township of Castle Lovell. And amid most of that, as ye know, Corbit Jock has a mound of his holding. How his father got it I know not. But there, running into my Castle wall, is his mound, and on it a filthy barn leaning against my Castle wall, and before the barnekyn a heap of dung and a shed that might harbour five goats. The whole is not worth to him ninepence by the year, and it is far from his house and of no use to him. Yet, though I would well and willingly buy this of him, and my father would have bought it of his father that there we might have a market holden, ye know very well that this Corbit Jock will not sell and I have no power to take it from him. For, though I might get a broad letter from the King in his Council to take this mound by force, and to pay him full value, yet such a letter must cost me much gold, and it is doubtful if the King’s writ, in such matters, runneth in these North parts. In the country of France, as I heard when I was there of the Sieur Berthin de Silly, such things are done every day by the King’s letters. Nay, he was about then engaged in such a matter with a peasant, whom he dispossessed, but paid well and so has a fair market below his Castle of La Roche Gayon. And so it may well be in the South of this realm for aught I know. But here it is different, and I am not minded to have a hornet’s nest of lawyers about my ears in order to give a market place—that should cost me dear enough when I bought the rights of my lord the King—to such rogues and cozeners as you and Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and the widow of Martin Taylor. But, if ye will talk of the matter with Corbit Jock that he may sell his mound to me, I will promise you this, that you shall have your market. For I am your very good lord. And so no more of talk for this time."