By the 1220s it appears that there were four bailiffs acting each year as the city executive. A few years later this new status of the city was symbolized in the replacement of the old Tolbooth, as the home of city administration, with a new, enlarged Guildhall. The change is also reflective of a general increase in the ranks of city officialdom over time, as new powers were obtained through royal grants and as the business of urban administration became increasingly complex. The city's acquisition of its own coroners, sometime in the mid-thirteenth century, was indicative of growing judicial independence from Norfolk authorities. This ambition won its first victory in the gaining of the fee farm in 1194.
Subsequent charters show the citizens' strategy for gradual increasing their liberties.
They obtained exemptions from various judicial obligations and, more importantly, assured that a growing number of types of judicial process would be held in borough courts, rather than courts outside the city's jurisdiction. That the Crown was prepared to turn over to boroughs some of the powers of royal officials is an indication not so much of any royal policy favouring borough self-government as of the Crown's constant need for money and burgesses' preparedness to pay for grants of new liberties. Slowly, but surely, Norwich thus excluded the authority of all but its own officers in most matters with city bounds. The lowest jurisdictional level in the hierarchy of city courts was the leet system . Its initial objective was to bring offences to light and then decide which court had jurisdiction over them.