In historians' perhaps ultimately futile consideration of whether "burgess" had a precise, technical application in the eleventh century, one criterion suggested as a defining feature has been the obligation of some town-dwellers to pay (normally to the king) certain customary dues that had, or had acquired, a distinctively urban character. These included tolls on goods brought to the town for sale and fixed rents for town properties. The former might be collected at various points of entry into the town or its market, including bridges, where such levies had names such as bridge-silver or pontage (a term usually applied to tolls levied to finance bridge maintenance). The latter were typically referred to as landgable or hawgable. "Gable" derives from an Anglo-Saxon term for a gift or tribute, and the gavelpence which was the subject of the Leicester inquest was essentially a version of hawgable; although it is possible to infer from the jurors' story that the original meaning of "gable" had been forgotten and was thought to be associated with the gable of the house from which hawgable rent was due.

Leicester has a long history, as a Roman base and one of the key boroughs of the Danelaw. It was held mainly by the king at the time of Domesday Book but, whereas most long-established boroughs were kept within the king's hand, Henry I turned over his lordship to Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan – probably the Robert de Medland mentioned in this document – who founded a dynasty of the Earls of Leicester, although it is not clear whether he had that title himself. This "mesne lordship" (i.e. intermediating between the community and the ultimate lordship of the king) put Leicester at a disadvantage compared to similarly sized and well-situated towns under the direct lordship of the king. The king saw both economic and political advantages in granting a certain measure of self-government to towns, whereas mesne lords had less to gain and tended to be more conservative with regard to surrendering revenues and authority in return for a fee-farm; Leicester was unable to obtain such a lease of local jurisdiction until 1375 (see "Grant of farm by a mesne lord").

We must view these two judicial inquiries in the larger context of Leicester's efforts to break free from the dominion of the earl.

The purported remission of gavelpence assumes that the interests of the community were being represented by particular individuals; and handing over to Lambert the quitclaim, apparently with other town documents, equally suggests some mechanism for communal decision-making and representation. There was a mechanism in place, in the form of the merchant gild; Robert de Beaumont formally recognized this gild early in the twelfth century, in a charter stating that it gild had existed since the time of William I, although we should not trust too much in such statements. It could simply have been that Lambert (as a resident perceived as wealthy) had a relatively sturdy and secure house, but a more likely reason for assigning important evidences to Lambert's safekeeping would have been that he was an officer of the merchant gild. Although the earliest surviving gild roll does not date earlier than 1196, the character of that record suggests it was neither exceptional nor the earliest in a series. The gild likely had kept records for a much longer period and would have had some approach to archiving them.

Robert II confirmed his father's recognition of the merchant gild in a charter whose principal aim was to grant the burgesses freedom from having to pay suit to any manorial or other court outside the town; instead the earl acknowledged the burgesses' right to have their cases heard in the community churchyard, probably referring to the location of the portmanmoot (reminding us of a similar situation at Ipswich); the church was not named but was possibly St. Nicholas, an early foundation of unusual size which has led to the suggestion it may have been built for a Mercian bishop, and opposite whose churchyard a moothall was built in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The merchant gild, although its principal duty was to protect and support the mercantile interests within the community, remained for some time – rather longer than in most other large towns – an important institution for furthering the aspirations of the community as a whole, not least because the portmanmoot could not be an effective tool in that regard, since the earl's provost presided over it and the revenues it generated went to the earl. The gild had its own periodic meetings at which minor transgressions and some infringements of local custom could be judged.

Unable to obtain control over the election of the provosts (bailiffs) of the town, Leicester resorted, around 1250, to giving the gild alderman a second hat to wear: that of mayor, an office more representative of the community as a whole. The mayor came to co-preside over the portmanmoot, and it is probably in that setting that the inquisitions recorded here were held. Although there is no extant record that the earl officially sanctioned any right to elect a mayor, he acquiesced on condition that the burgesses presented newly-elected mayors to him for confirmation. But there is indication in 1257-58 of some difficulty surrounding the mayoralty, since particular efforts were made to consult the earl on the mayoral elections. Possibly the mayoralty, or the limits of its powers, had become a bone of contention, as was the case at Lynn around the same period. Creation of a mayor was likely part of a broader initiative to commute traditional obligations to the earl into an annual farm. In the year before the inquisitions, a tax had been levied on the community to pay for anticipated costs when the king's justices itinerant came to the town, which may imply that the town was pursuing legal avenues in that forum. And during 1253-54 the merchant gild was displaying particular vigour in disciplining offenders against community interests.

To the modern eye the two inquisitions appear a ploy to establish a legal record registering the burgesses' interpretation of events, which they might then use to their advantage in negotiations with the earl; or perhaps one should rather say the interpretation of a selected group of burgesses among whom numbered several leading citizens possibly associated with the party interested in winning greater independence from feudal lordship. There are clearly elements of historical fact in the events recounted by the inquisition jury. It seems probable, however, that the story of the judicial combat itself was a local legend (although perhaps preserving a memory of some actual occurrence) which later became associated as an explanation for the custom of hawgable; the two elements may even have been tied together, through collusion of the jurors, specifically for the inquest, in order to suggest that the burgesses had agreed – we may infer, under a certain compulsion – to paying hawgable to the earl in return for the right to the medieval equivalent of trial by jury rather than the hated judicial combat. Whether the explanation of pontage by reference to a special toll on dead wood is likewise some kind of confusion cannot be said, but again it reflects a common burgess belief that, over time, legitimate levies might expand into unwarranted exactions. We should remember, however, that while we today might find the connections between, for example, the duel, the crowd's uproar (possibly a riot), and the agreement with the earl, tenuous – even though each individual event may have hold the memory of an actual occurrence – evidently to medieval people the connected sequence was plausible enough. What we may have here is not so much fabrication of events but temporal compression to suggest or emphasize their association.

Despite the possible intrusion of legend into these accounts, they nonetheless reflect some key features of the effort towards urban self-determination. Certainly both hawgable and exemption from combat were both features that historians have considered characteristics of borough status. But the introduction of the story of a specific duel was a device aimed at suggesting to the court that extenuating circumstances had forced them to concede a financial obligation they would not otherwise have incurred. The burgesses' belief that the earl's officers – provost and bridge-keeper – were exceeding their duties to the point of extortion is also a common feature in urban struggles for independence; the stories presented to explain the levies to which the burgesses objected are less important to us than the fact that the burgesses wished to rid themselves of those obligations to their overlord.

Following the findings of the inquisitions, the community authorities levied a special tax on residents to raise money to buy from the earl (ca.1254) a perpetual remittance of pontage, alias "briggesilvir", and gavelpence. The inquisitions may have been held to establish a rationale for such an initiative, or a legal record suggesting that earl's right to gavelpence and pontage was questionable, thus creating a stronger case for the burgesses prior to their entry into negotiations with the earl. The money raised would have been used to pay a lump sum to persuade the earl to issue his charter of remittance, and/or to help buy local properties whose annual rents were handed over to the earl as compensation for his loss of the traditional revenues.