for tolls for inclosing the city with walls and gates, while in 1344
the city was given a corporation, with mayor, bailiffs, a common seal,
and a prison. As the municipal importance and the dignity of the city
increased, the desire for their visible signs strengthened, and so, in
1355, work was begun on the walls, Newgate (on the London Road) being
the first gate to be built. Such undertakings proceeded slowly, and
nine years later the royal permission was obtained to levy a tax for
their construction, "the lands and goods of all ecclesiastical persons
excepted."

Twice afterwards we hear of licence being granted by Richard II to dig
stone in Cheylesmore Park, first for Grey Friars Gate, and later for
Spon Gate, "near his Chapel of Babelake." The walls so built were of
imposing extent and dimensions, being three yards in breadth, two and
a quarter miles in circumference, and having thirty-two towers and
twelve gates.[3] Nehemiah Wharton, a Parliamentary officer in 1642,
reports of the city that it is:

Environed with a wall co-equal, if not exceedinge, that of London,
for breadth and height; and with gates and battlements, magnificent
churches and stately streets and abundant fountains of water;
altogether a place very sweetly situate and where there is no stint
of venison.

To return to the monastic history. We have seen how, in the
mid-thirteenth century the Monastery had become the landlord of the
city; shortly before this it had been so impoverished with ceaseless
quarrels with the King and the Lichfield Chapter, involving costly
appeals to Rome, that the Prior was reduced to asking the hospitality
of the monks of Derley for some of the brethren. A period of