Coulson notes:
1. Only grant. No remains (referencing Turner)
2. Clearly no verification of the ambitious terms of the petition.
3. Is there a pattern to these late medieval initiatives c.f. Melcombe Dorset?
4. Stone walls and high towers suggests desire to differentiate Ilfracombe from the nearby ports with an ostentatious 'castle' (which is what it would have been if it had been allowed).
5. The comment 'begun to build' is standard. Public spiritedness of such enclosures is now so assured the royal aid/ratification was asked.
6. The impression is of a venture with an ulterior motive of putting the place 'on the map' as an independent entity. It had no mayor of bailiffs and can not have been much more than a fishing village.
I would add that one years murage in a small port was not going raise significant amounts of money (and may well have put off the little exterior trade such a town had) and nobody either at court or in Ilfracombe could have thought otherwise. The port is isolated and probably vulnerable to Irish pirates, but this is true for dozens of other similar ports. Also nearby Branstaple had walls dating back to Saxon times but seems to allowed these to decay so that they were gone by Leland's time and probably of little use in the C15, when much of the town was outside the walls (although the market was still within the walls and the gates, which seem to have survived for longer).
ILFRACOMBE 2513 1473. Borough 1249 (BF, p. 92). 1334 Subsidy £30. Market town c.1600 (Everitt, p. 471). (Letters, S., 2003, Gazetter of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 (Centre for Metropolitan History) online copy)