In Trinity Term, 36 Hen. VI. the king's attorney-general informed the court for the lord the king, that "whereas the lord the king who now is, by his letters patent made at Westminster on the eighteenth of November in the twenty-first year of his reign, granted to the mayor, sheriffs, and commons of the town of Drogheda, twenty marks to be received yearly out of the fee-farm of said town for repair and support of the walls of same; to hold to said mayor and commons and their successors, &c.: this notwithstanding, the aforesaid king's attorney says that the twenty marks of the said fee-farm for the thirty-fourth year of the now king's reign, at Drogheda, in the said year, to the hands of Nicholas Herdman and William Davy, then sheriffs of said town, came, and THEY DIVERTED THEM TO THEIR OWN USE and NOT TO WALLING the said town, in contempt of the said lord the king," &c.
These sheriffs afterwards were obliged to be exonerated of the penalty and pardoned of the offence by an Act of Parliament SPECIALLY PASSED for the purpose, as appears by a note on the case. (Gale)