The growing consciousness of urban government as a perpetual institution, increasingly recognized so before the law and through grants of incorporation, encouraged townsmen to ensure the maintenance of their anniversary services by assigning some of the responsibility to local government. This might be by way of assigning revenues allocated for chantry support to the management of that government, or by giving local officials a vested interest by paying them for attendance at and supervision of the anniversary. Local government was thereby drawn into the regulation of certain aspects of funerals and commemorative services; ordinances from Lynn and Henley provide examples of this.

In the case above, the Reading authorities were looking after their own, for we may reasonably suspect that "comburgesses" here is not being used in its literal sense of "fellow townsmen" but in its technical sense referring to those acting as a town council (possibly equivalent to members of the Guild of Reading). This was a question of mutual support of the sort that socio-religious gilds had long provided for their members. It was also a question of a public display of political solidarity, perhaps – although not necessarily – in the context of a political battle with the abbey and its supporters.