Chapter 5

FOOTNOTES:[161]Leet Book, 597. They were afterwards reimbursed when the suit was decided against the prior.[162]Leet Book, 619.[163]See Green,Town Life, ii. 256, for examples of the punishments of those who insulted officials. In Coventry two men—John Smith and John Duddesbury—for their ill-behaviour to "men of worship" were, in 1495, put under surety from session to session until their submission should content the justices of the peace (Leet Book, 569).[164]Six of the mayor's council met every Wednesday. The sergeant kept the council-house doors so that no unauthorised person might enter (Ib., 516).[165]Leet Book, 544. The mayor was to be deprived of his "cloke" (i.e.official rank) and council, of which body he was anex-officiomember.[166]Leet Book, 662.[167]Leet Book, 521. The recorder was the legal adviser of the corporation.[168]Ib., 642.[169]Ib., 180.[170]Ib., 455.[171]Ib., 27.[172]Ibid.[173]Ib., 24.[174]Leet Book, 28.[175]Green,Town Life, i. 127.[176]The bailiffs by their oaths were compelled to pay all due ferms and fees, and to be present on court days and sessions of the peace (Leet Book, 224).[177]See the chamberlains' accounts (Ib., 54-5).[178]Leet Book, 107. Knight's fees to be paid by wardens, and not by chamberlains.[179]Ibid.[180]Leet Book, 334. If the cap cost more than 13s. 4d., the surplus was to be paid by the mayor.[181]Round,Commune of London, 237-8.[182]Bateson,Rec. Leic., i. 34-5.[183]Hudson,Norwich, xxxv.[184]See below, p. 93.[185]Any business touching the public weal—such as the payment of a royal debt, granting away of town property and the like—could not be transacted without the official consent of the community. Thus in 1422, when the mayor summoned sixteen of the magnates to weitness the sealing of deds relating to town property, "it was perceived by the mayor and all present that it would be more expedient ... for the mayor to summon these following and many concitizens" (Leet Book, 40).[186]Those who were summoned for purposes of consultation came according to their wards. Thus in 1384 it was determined that the mayor should summon four or six citizens out of every ward (vico), who should testify "tam pro seipsis quam pro tota communitate ville," what the general will was concerning the enclosure of certain meadows by the Trinity guild (Ib., 5).[187]Leet Book, 5.[188]Ib., 20.[189]The commons destroyed Julius (? Giles) Allesley's gardens without the Grey Friar Gate (Harl. MS. 6,388, f. 16). Giles Allesley was mayor in 1426. Attilboro, a member of the usual council of twenty-four, who took part in the election of the mayor (Leet Book, 22), and Southam, a justice of the peace (Ib., 44), had gardens which encroached on the common lands, for which they were allowed, when the survey was taken, to pay a composition (Ib., 50-1).[190]Leet Book, 42. These grants were given to enable certain citizens to dispense with the ordinary regulations of leet; probably much favour and affection were shown in the granting of them.[191]We cannot tell whether this council even met. In 1423 we hear that the chamberlains' accounts were audited in the presence of the mayor and "48 honest and legal men" elected by the aforesaid mayor to hear the accounts (Ib., 54). Query, were these the commoners, or the mayor's council of Forty-eight?[192]Leet Book, 44.[193]Ib., 520.[194]Ib., 157.[195]Ib., 228.[196]Leet Book, 647-8.

FOOTNOTES:

[161]Leet Book, 597. They were afterwards reimbursed when the suit was decided against the prior.

[162]Leet Book, 619.

[163]See Green,Town Life, ii. 256, for examples of the punishments of those who insulted officials. In Coventry two men—John Smith and John Duddesbury—for their ill-behaviour to "men of worship" were, in 1495, put under surety from session to session until their submission should content the justices of the peace (Leet Book, 569).

[164]Six of the mayor's council met every Wednesday. The sergeant kept the council-house doors so that no unauthorised person might enter (Ib., 516).

[165]Leet Book, 544. The mayor was to be deprived of his "cloke" (i.e.official rank) and council, of which body he was anex-officiomember.

[166]Leet Book, 662.

[167]Leet Book, 521. The recorder was the legal adviser of the corporation.

[168]Ib., 642.

[169]Ib., 180.

[170]Ib., 455.

[171]Ib., 27.

[172]Ibid.

[173]Ib., 24.

[174]Leet Book, 28.

[175]Green,Town Life, i. 127.

[176]The bailiffs by their oaths were compelled to pay all due ferms and fees, and to be present on court days and sessions of the peace (Leet Book, 224).

[177]See the chamberlains' accounts (Ib., 54-5).

[178]Leet Book, 107. Knight's fees to be paid by wardens, and not by chamberlains.

[179]Ibid.

[180]Leet Book, 334. If the cap cost more than 13s. 4d., the surplus was to be paid by the mayor.

[181]Round,Commune of London, 237-8.

[182]Bateson,Rec. Leic., i. 34-5.

[183]Hudson,Norwich, xxxv.

[184]See below, p. 93.

[185]Any business touching the public weal—such as the payment of a royal debt, granting away of town property and the like—could not be transacted without the official consent of the community. Thus in 1422, when the mayor summoned sixteen of the magnates to weitness the sealing of deds relating to town property, "it was perceived by the mayor and all present that it would be more expedient ... for the mayor to summon these following and many concitizens" (Leet Book, 40).

[186]Those who were summoned for purposes of consultation came according to their wards. Thus in 1384 it was determined that the mayor should summon four or six citizens out of every ward (vico), who should testify "tam pro seipsis quam pro tota communitate ville," what the general will was concerning the enclosure of certain meadows by the Trinity guild (Ib., 5).

[187]Leet Book, 5.

[188]Ib., 20.

[189]The commons destroyed Julius (? Giles) Allesley's gardens without the Grey Friar Gate (Harl. MS. 6,388, f. 16). Giles Allesley was mayor in 1426. Attilboro, a member of the usual council of twenty-four, who took part in the election of the mayor (Leet Book, 22), and Southam, a justice of the peace (Ib., 44), had gardens which encroached on the common lands, for which they were allowed, when the survey was taken, to pay a composition (Ib., 50-1).

[190]Leet Book, 42. These grants were given to enable certain citizens to dispense with the ordinary regulations of leet; probably much favour and affection were shown in the granting of them.

[191]We cannot tell whether this council even met. In 1423 we hear that the chamberlains' accounts were audited in the presence of the mayor and "48 honest and legal men" elected by the aforesaid mayor to hear the accounts (Ib., 54). Query, were these the commoners, or the mayor's council of Forty-eight?

[192]Leet Book, 44.

[193]Ib., 520.

[194]Ib., 157.

[195]Ib., 228.

[196]Leet Book, 647-8.

CHAPTER IX

Coventry and the Kingdom of England

Sofar was Coventry from the great centres of the national life, that there is little to connect the place in the earlier parts of its history with the history of the kingdom.

William I. may have passed through on his way from Warwick to Nottingham on one of his journeys to crush the rebellious Saxons, and Stephen, as we have seen, swept down on the castle—that famous "castlelet or pile"[197]in Earl Street—and razed it to the ground. Other notable travellers came during this period to Coventry, but secretly, for they wished to escape pursuit. Many evil-doers claimed the protection of the Church in those days, and when any fugitive entered the sanctuary, he was safe from pursuit. There he made confession of his crime, and, if he left of his own free will, he must abjure the kingdom, and make straight for some port appointed him by the coroner, there to take ship for foreign lands. Many criminals on quitting the sanctuary found their enemies lying in wait, and perished, although they held the cross, symbol of the Church's protection, in their hand. Men feared to incur the penalty of excommunication, which the violation of sanctuary always brought, by dragging Faulkes de Breautéfrom Coventry church; and this Norman adventurer, whom the favour of John and Henry III. had raised to riches and greatness until he was "plasquam rex in Anglia"—of more account than the King—put himself under the bishop's protection, and travelled in his company to Bedford to throw himself on the King's mercy. He was banished the kingdom. With him fell, in 1222, the foreign party under Peter des Roches, who for so many years had thwarted the designs of Henry's great minister, Hubert de Burgh.

In other ways the reign of Henry III. was locally a memorable one. During the siege of Kenilworth, which lasted from midsummer to December 1266, the neighbourhood was the centre of military operations, but when the castle containing the remnant of De Montfort's following surrendered, the smouldering fires of civil war died away. Part of the famous ruin that witnessed this siege, the Norman keep, or Cæsar's Tower, is standing yet. But of all these events the local documents tell us nothing. In spite of the stirring scenes enacted at Kenilworth, scarce five miles away, we do not know whether the folk of the town took part with De Montfort or with the King.

The city has no associations with Edward I.,[198]but his son, who had strong partisans among the convent folk, appointed a levy to meet him at Coventry on February 28, 1322, before he went to fight with and defeat Lancaster at Boroughbridge.[199]Edward III. tarried in Coventry in 1327, the year Cheylesmore passed into Isabella's hands. This queen is one of many women who bulk large in Coventry history. Her ears were always open to the complaints of the hard usage her tenants received from the prior, and messengers doubtless often travelled between Coventry and Castle Rising, in Norfolk, to bear news to the queen of her enemy'sundoing. She also took the Grey Friars, who had become famous for their sanctity, under her protection, and a letter[200]from her, written at their request, begging that there might be no interference with their privileges of burial, is still extant. At that time many bodies of great folk, who "as Franciscans thought to pass disguised," were buried clothed in the habit of the order in the Grey Friars' chapel, bringing no small profit to that famous house. No doubt the Queen's protection of their rivals was another drop in the monks' cup of bitterness.

After Cheylesmore and the Earl's-half became a royal manor, kings and princes very frequently visited the city; for as Coventry had by this time become an important place—already accounted the fifth city in the kingdom—its wealth was an attraction to needy kings, who desired to be on good terms with burghers who were becoming a power in the land. It was this wealth which enabled the citizens to establish their position in the reign of Edward III. and his grandson by the purchase of fuller and yet fuller charters of liberty; but this wealth did not relieve the city from the agrarian and industrial unrest which makes memorable the reign of Richard II. At the time of the Peasant Revolt in 1381 John Ball was taken in hiding in an old house, says Froissart, in Coventry, where he had possibly a home or relatives.[201]The commonalty of the city had, maybe, given ear to his doctrines of equality and communism in former days, for there was at that time great suffering and discontent among the poorer folk. The artizans were oppressed not by their lord—as the men of S. Alban's or Bury S. Edmund's—but by their own fellow-townsfolk, the rich merchants, who held high office in the corporation. Year after year there comes the same complaint. This or that mayor enclosed the commonpasture lands,[202]so that the people had not sufficient grass for their cattle, or refused to punish his brethren and allies the victuallers, who broke the assize of bread, so that the people were cheated of the barest necessaries of life. The enraged artizans, who, in 1387, "cast loaves at the mayor's head because the bakers kept not the assize, neither did the mayor punish them according to his office," would no doubt listen gladly to the discourses of this old-time socialist. "Good people," he would say to the assembled multitude, "the maters gothe nat well to passe in Englande, nor shall nat do tyll every thyng be common.... We be all come fro one father and one mother, Adam and Eve; wherby can they (the gentlemen) say or shewe that they be gretter lordes than we be?... They dwell in fayre houses, and we have the payne and traveyle, raine and wynde in the feldes; and by that that cometh of our labours they kepe and maynteyne their estates.... Thus Jehan [Ball] sayd ... and the people ... wolde murmure one with another in the feldes and in the wayes as they went togyder, affermyng howe Jehan Ball sayd trouthe."[203]Change a word here and there, substitute "merchant" for "gentleman," and "in the workshops" for "in the fields," and you have a discourse which would have greatly enraged the men of Coventry at the time of the Peasant Revolt.

The murmur about another name greater than that of John Ball had also reached the citizens. Lutterworth is scarcely fifteen miles distant from Coventry, and if we may judge by the tale of subsequent troubles and persecutions, there were many followers of Wickliffe within the city.[204]WilliamSwynderby, who had preached to crowds in the Lollards' chapel at Leicester, being forsaken of his friends because he had recanted rather than face martyrdom, left that place and so came to Coventry in 1382.

HIGH STREET, COVENTRY

There he tarried nearly a year, making many converts, but being forced by the clergy to depart, he vanishedinto the fastnesses of the forest beyond the Malvern Hills and there hid from his persecutors many years.[205]

Nevertheless the Wickliffite tradition must have persisted after his departure, for in Oldcastle's day the city had become a centre for the issue of Lollard books.[206]Nicholas Hereford, collaborator in Wickliffe's version of the Bible, is also associated with Coventry, where—after 1417—he died.

His was a life of strange vicissitudes, for having endured imprisonment in a papal dungeon at Rome, and "grievous torment" in the archbishop's castle of Saltwood, Kent, he abandoned Lollardry, recanted at Paul's Cross, and rising to important position in the Church, learned to persecute those of his ancient faith. In later years he entered into the solitude and silence of the Carthusian monastery at Coventry and so vanished from our sight.[207]

The foundation-stone of the church of this very monastery had been laid in 1385, by that champion of orthodoxy, Richard, King of England, who, in the hearing of the mayor and other notables promised to be the founder thereof and bring the work to completion.[208]After the Dissolution this house passed into the hands of the Lincoln family; the arms of Edward Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, are painted in one of the rooms of the still existing house. Part of the Prior's lodging remains, and in one room a portion of a large fresco of the Crucifixion reveals the figure of Christ from the knees downwards sprinkled with fleur-de-lys. Two years later Richard again visited the city what time Chief-Justice Tressilian, the "hanging judge" of the Peasants' Revolt, and the court of King's Bench,[209]sat therein, and bestowed on the mayor the right to have the civic sword borne before him by an officer. The MS. Annals say that in 1384 themayor, John Deister, had forfeited this right, and that the sword was borne behind him, "because he did not justice." TheLeet Book, however, makes John Marton mayor in this year,[210]and indeed the Annals have come down to us in a state of sad corruption.

Maybe these frequent royal visits were not always welcome. A court of justice accompanied the King wherever he went, for the steward and marshal of the household had jurisdiction, superseding other authority of shire or borough, over an area of twelve miles to be counted from the King's lodging.[211]Before setting forth the steward gave notice to the sheriff of the place wherein the King proposed to sojourn, so that prisoners might be brought thither for trial at the household officers' court, a practice so little popular that rich and powerful towns purchased the chartered privilege, whereby the mayor became steward and marshal of the household. This right Coventry obtained in 1451. Kings, when they came to the city, were usually lodged at the Priory, though there was a quasi-royal residence, first occupied by the Mohauts, at Cheylesmore; but the vast retinue found shelter within the town. At the command of the marshal the doors of the principal folk of the place were marked with chalk, and the dwellers there found they had to accommodate some member of the royal party. There was a certain price to be paid for the advantages of situation as a great thoroughfare town between London and the north-west, and a manorial relationship to the Princes of Wales.

The most memorable sojourn of this vain, beautiful, decadent king, Richard II., within the city took place in 1397 when Coventry witnessed the preparations for the duel between Henry Bolingbroke and Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. The splendour of royal and knightly accoutrements at this meeting must have dazzled the sober townsfolk, and perhaps they shared in thebewilderment of the Court at the strange vacillation of the King, who, when all preparations were made, forbade the duel to take place. Holinshed[212]tells of the "sumptuous theater" on Gosford Green wherein the lists were made ready for the combat; and wherein too, after the combat had been stayed, the two adversaries sat two long hours waiting until the King's pleasure should be known. When sentence of banishment was pronounced and leave-takings over, "the duke of Norfolk departed sorrowfullie into Almanie, and at the last came to Venice, where he for thought and melancholie deceased"; for Harry Bolingbroke, however, whose sentence was not like his adversary's, for life, but for ten years, many active days remained. Gosford Green, where this scene was enacted, is still a green, and as yet unbuilt on. The ruins of Caludon Castle, where Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, passed the night before the meditated encounter with Bolingbroke, are still visible from the highway leading from Stoke to Leicester, but of Baginton Castle, where his adversary slept, scarcely more than the foundations remain. Richard was lodged in a tower belonging to Sir William Bagot, about a quarter of a mile without the town. Sir William, who with Bushy and Greene acquired such unenviable notoriety as creatures of Richard II., lies buried in Baginton church, where a monumental brass of rare workmanship, now placed immediately under the rafters of the chancel roof, once marked the place where he was laid.

It is likely that Richard saw Coventry once again when, badly horsed and in unkingly array, in 1399 they brought him, a prisoner, on the way from Flint on the last journey to London.

It is fitting that in a city so unorthodox as Coventry the first attack should be made on the vast possessions of the Church. At the summoning of the "Unlearned Parliament" in 1404 a special precept was given to thesheriffs to prevent the return of those skilled in the law as members of parliament, and Coventry, remote as it was from the law-courts at Westminster, was a happy spot to choose for such an assembly. The respect the clergy had once commanded was now withheld from them by reason of the dissolute lives so many led, and their greed of wealth, whereto we find such abundant allusion in "Piers Plowman" and Chaucer's poems, and the proposal to appropriate the wealth of the Church to secular ends was well liked by the knights of the shire. Archbishop Arundel pleaded in response to this attack that the clergy gave tenths and the laity only fifteenths towards the King's necessities; moreover, the Church was not wanting day nor night in rendering the King service by masses and prayers to implore God's blessing upon him. Whereat Sir John Cheyne, the speaker of the Commons, with a stern countenance, said "that he valued not the prayers of the Church." But it was early days for such words as these. "It might easily be seen what would become of the kingdom," was the severe reply, "when devout addresses to God, wherewith His Divine Majesty was pleased, were set so light by." The work of Henry VIII. was not to be anticipated, and the knights desisted from the attempt at the threat of excommunication.[213]

The town was witness at this time of an example of the lack of reverence for the mysteries of religion displayed by the people who were about the person of the King. Dysentery was very prevalent at Coventry during the session of parliament, and one day the archbishop of Canterbury encountered a procession bearing the Host through the streets to some sick man's bedside.[214]Thearchbishop bent his knee, but the King's knights and esquires, not interrupting their conversation, turned their backs upon the Sacrament. The ecclesiastic was filled with holy indignation at such irreverence. "Never before was the like abomination beheld among Christian men," he cried, and went to complain of the offenders to the King. Henry was at first loth to punish his followers, but he was finally moved to do so by the prelate's eloquence, for the House of Lancaster in its weakness had allied itself with the Church, and looking to that body for support, the King was careful not to alienate so powerful a friend as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Lancastrian kings were, however, better known in the city as borrowers than as champions of the orthodox faith. Royal folk at that time, in spite of their great array and state, were often at a loss for ready money, and the treasury of Henry IV. was notoriously an empty one. Henry V. too, wanting money to prosecute his wars, in the third year of his reign borrowed 200 marks from the mayor and community, leaving in pledge "his great collar, called Iklynton collar,"[215]garnished with 4 rubies, 4 great sapphires, 32 great pearls, and 53 other pearls of a lesser sort, weighing 36¾ oz., and then valued at £500. When the King or any great noble desired to borrow, and the citizens were willing to lend, collectors were appointed by the corporation to go through each ward and take from every man his contribution towards the loan. Each citizen paid, according to his ability, a sum varying from 13s. 4d., taken from the most substantial people, to a penny from those, of the poorest class. The extent of every one's property, more or less accurately gauged on these occasions, was a matter of common knowledge. Where there was so little privacy in life and such frequent assessments, neither wealth nor poverty could well be hid.

Did Shakespeare glean any legends of Prince Hal from Coventry sources? He must often have visited the city as a travelling player, and, since both the names of Shakespeare and Ardern (or Arden) occur in the Coventry records, the poet may have had kinsfolk in the place. He brings the prince quite gratuitously thither, causing him to meet Falstaff followed by the famous ragged regiment on the high road leading to the city.[216]Falstaff was in his youth "page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,"[217]who held Caludon Castle, a few miles from Coventry, and Peto, whom his master bade meet him at the towns-end, bears a Coventry name.[218]It may be there is little or no contemporary evidence for the tale of Henry's wild doings, which Shakespeare localised at Gadshill and the "Boar's Head" tavern in Eastcheap, and it is more or less a matter of temperament or preconceived notions with historians whether, on weighing the testimony, they dismiss or accept familiar traditions of the prince's robbery of his own receivers,[219]or assault on Judge Gascoigne.[220]To the ordinary reader it seems as if there cannot have been such a vast deal of smoke without some little fire. The suspicion grows that Henry may well have passed a short time of idle apprenticeship before becoming a veritably industrious master.

There is a familiar Coventry variant of the Gascoignestory wherein the mayor, John Hornby, plays, as it were, the part of the Chief-Justice, since he, in 1412, say the City Annals or Mayor-lists—"arrested the Prince in the Priory [one MS. reads "city"] of Coventry." Unfortunately the source whence this information is obtained—the MS. Annals or Mayor-lists—is not above suspicion. The annals are a collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents,[221]varying slightly among themselves, but evidently, as far as the bulk of the earlier entries are concerned, copies of a common original, now probably lost. A chronological tangle, they contain most valuable and authentic information—particularly about the mystery plays—coupled with entries that are manifestly corrupt. It is conceivable that the earliest annalist placed on record that the prince "rested,"i.e.remained at the priory during that particular mayoralty, or that he was concerned in some arrest made at the time, and that the entry has been transformed by the errors of successive copyists. In the latter case the process could be paralleled by the entry of 1425 when the MSS. gave as the principal event in the mayoralty of John Braytoft:—"He arrested the Earl of Warwick and brought him to the Gaol of this city." This is, beyond all possibility of doubt, an error. No Earl of Warwick was ever arrested at Coventry. Thomas Sharp, who worked eighty or ninety years ago, from documents that have been since destroyed, gives the early, correct version, borne out by independent testimony, when hereads: "The Earl of Warwick came to Coventry to seize on the Franchises, and inquisition was made of John Grace, and the mayor arrested him and brought him to the Gaol of the City."[222]It is therefore possible that similar errors may have crept into the Hornby entry, though this cannot be dismissed as a pure invention until a searching investigation has been made of contemporary records.

Henry V. seems to have been much beloved in Coventry, if we may judge by the hearty welcome given to him on his coming thither on March 21, 1421. The mayor and council ordered that £100 and a gold cup worth £10 should be presented to the King, and the same to the Queen "in suo adventu a Francia in Coventre," for those times a truly magnificent gift. The citizens never thereafter beheld the King. For in the following year, being overtaken at the Bois de Vincennes by a so grievous sickness that his physicians told him he had but two hours to live, he bade his confessors chant the Penitential Psalms. And in the midst of their chanting, as if in answer to an unseen adversary, he cried: "Thou liest, thou liest! My part is with the Lord Jesus." Thus died Henry V.

Troubles connected with religion soon came upon Coventry. In 1424 the preaching of a hermit attracted a great audience in the Little Park during five days' space. The preacher, one Grace, who had been first a monk, then a friar, and lastly a recluse, disarmed suspicion by announcing that he had been licensed to preach by the bishop's ministers of the diocese. At last, however, a report spread that he was not "licenciate," "and grett seying was among the people that the priour and frer Bredon wold have cursid all tho' that herdon the said John Grace preche." This rumour of the intention of the two most influential churchmen in the city—the head of S. Mary's convent,and the best-known member of the community of Grey Friars—greatly moved the townsfolk, and the two ecclesiastics above-named, fearful lest harm should befall them, refused to leave Trinity church, whither they had repaired for evensong, until the mayor should come to appease the multitude. "Notwithstandyng they myght have goone well inoughe whethur thei wold," theLeet Booksays, with a touch of contempt. And thus it was that a report went about in the country "that the comens of Coventre wer rysen, and wold have distroyd the priour and the said frer," which report unhappily spread to the ears of those that were about the King. The next year the Earl of Warwick and a special commission of justices were sent down from Westminster to inquire into this movement within the city.[223]For some time the franchises were in danger of confiscation; but after the citizens had borne great charges, upwards of £80 for "counsel" and other costs, their peace with the ruling powers was made.

It is natural to infer that this disturbance, which the city authorities treated as so trifling, but which appeared to the powers at Westminster a highly serious matter, was connected with Lollard preaching. It seems that this obscure sect was never wholly crushed, but lingered on in certain districts throughout the fifteenth century. Leicestershire, in Wickliffe's time, had been a perfect hot-bed of heresy. "There was not a man or woman in that county," it has been said, "save priests and nuns, who did not at that time openly profess their disbelief in the doctrines of the Church, and their approval of the new views of the Lollards."[224]The contagion soon spread to Warwickshire. No doubt persecution did its work in many parts. The open profession of Lollardism was highly dangerous in the fifteenth century, and the cause counted many martyrs.

The Coventry men were, most likely, implicated in the obscure rising under Jack Sharpe in 1431; at least arrests were made in their neighbourhood.[225]These offenders, whose scheme for the disendowment of the Church was both behind and in advance of those times, were shown no mercy, but suffered the penalty of treason. The bishops of Coventry, at a later date, made the city the theatre of their persecutions, whereat many recanted, but others endured to the end.

Echoes, first of the great doings of Englishmen in the French wars, and then of the reverses which befell them, reach us from time to time, chiefly in the form of requests to relieve the royal poverty. And the chief folk of the town frequently travelled to London in order to procure sureties for repayment of money lent to the King or other members of the royal house. Thus when the Earl of Warwick, in 1423, wrote to beg the citizens to relieve the necessities of the child-king Henry, "now in his tender age and his greatest need," informing them, as an incentive to their liberality, that the townsmen of Bristol had "notably and kindly acquit them" in these matters, the citizens lent £100 willingly enough. But with the prudence which distinguished their everyday doings, they sent John Leder, late mayor, to London to negotiate for pledges for future repayment,[226]which sureties, we are told, "might not be gotten without great labour."[227]Richard Joy and Laurence Cook[228]undertook a like errand the same year, for the protector Gloucester, the husband of Jacoba of Hainault, who proposed—so he informed the citizens—"to pass overthe sea with God's might ... to receive ... his lands and lordships," begged the good folk of Coventry to ease him in his undertaking with £200 "upon sufficient surety." Whether the good folk believed that the expedition to Flanders would turn to "right great ease of the people, and especially of these merchants of this realm," as the duke boasted, we cannot tell; but they sent him 100 marks, insisting nevertheless upon obtaining the security he had been so ready to offer. They gave, however, "with all their good hearts" to those more worthy of respect than Gloucester; and when Talbot was a prisoner in the hands of the French, they sent 23 marks towards his ransom.[229]To the King's later applications for a loan, they usually gave a favourable answer. In 1431 Laurence Cook bore to London £100, lent for the prosecution of the war, "and many lords, spiritual and temporal," theLeet Booksays, "that is to say, the worthy cardinal, then bishop of Winchester, the bishop of Bath, the bishop of Ely, and the bishop of Rochester, lords spiritual, the duke of York, the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Warwick, the earl of Stafford ... with other reverent barons and bachelors ... took the water at Dover, and riveden (arrived) thro' God's grace at Calais, and so comen to the city of Roan (Rouen) by the land of Picardy."[230]

Four years later the government was forced yet again to have recourse to borrowing, and on the occasion of the congress at Arras the same sum was collected to relieve the King's necessities "by way of loan" throughout the wards of the city.[231]

There were other charges besides direct loans that the citizens were forced to support that they might pleasure the members of the royal house. The Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford came frequently to the royal castle of Fullbrook, which lay some four miles beyond Warwick, and the good folk of the town felt called uponto furnish them with appropriate gifts. Thus, in 1434, a sum of 50 marks, with a silver cup, was presented to the Duchess of Bedford, and an offering to the Duke, of 24 pike, 12 bream, 12 tench, and a ton of red wine.[232]These presents were often not without some political significance. Thus, in 1431, the year wherein the protector Gloucester made a progress through England on the track of the Lollards, the Coventry men, who were, it seems, not free from the suspicion of holding unorthodox tenets, sent to the duke and duchess at Fullbrook a silver cup, 40 marks, and a plentiful supply of fish and wine.[233]

FOOTNOTES:[197]This castle, afterwards rebuilt, fell into decay, and was let out into tenements. Cheylesmore, where the De Mohaut's lived, had originally been a nursery for the Earl of Chester's children (Stowe in Harl. MS. 539, No. 4: see also Corp. MS. C. 61).[198]The borough sent two members to the 1295 parliament, but remained unrepresented from 1315 to 1452.[199]Stubb'sConst. Hist., ii. 49.[200]Sharp,op. cit., 179.[201]The name of Ball occurs in Coventry deeds. It is, of course, a common name.[202]On the Trinity guild enclosure of 1384, seeLeet Book, 6; on the formation of the first of the defiant artizan guilds about this year, see above andVict. County Hist., Warw., ii. 154.[203]Berners,Froissart's Chron.(1901) ii. 224.[204]Warwickshire may have been a county addicted to Lollardry. John Lacy, vicar of Chesterton, near Warwick, was charged with receiving and harbouring the famous Oldcastle, Lord Cobham (Diocesan Hist. Worcester, 103).[205]Trevelyan,Age of Wycliffe, 315; Knighton,Chron.ii. 198.[206]Eng. Hist. Rev.xx. 447.[207]Trevelyan,op. cit., 310;Dict. Nat. Biog.,s.v.Hereford, Nicholas.[208]Vict. Coun. Hist., ii. 84.[209]Knighton,Chron.ii. 235.[210]Leet Book, 3.[211]Green,op. cit., i. 209.[212]Holinshed, iii, 494.[213]Dugdale,Warw., i. 142. The only reference to Coventry in the business of this parliament is a petition from the convent against the men of Coventry, who injured the conduit built by the people of the priory (Corp. MS. B. 34).[214]Trokelowe and Blaneforde,Chron. S. Albani(ed. Riley), 394.[215]Leet Book, 70.Issue Roll of Exchequer, H. III.-VI., 402.[216]Shakespeare I.Hen.IV. iv. 2.[217]Ib., iii. 2. See my letter inAthenæum4330, p. 489.[218]Henry Peyto was mayor in 1423. The Peto family came from Chesterton.[219]Kingsford,Early Biographies of Henry V., inEng. Hist. Rev., xxv. 78. Although Stow'sChronicle, where this story first occurs, was not published until 1570, the author relied on early authority ultimately derived, it seems, from the Earl of Ormond, who died 1452.[220]See Solly-Flood, "Henry V. and Judge Gascoigne,"Trans. R. Hist. Soc., iii. 49; Harcourt, "The Two Sir John Fastolfs,"Ib.3rd Ser. iv. 47; Kingsford,Henry V., 80-93. The Gascoignes subsequently settled at Oversley, Warwickshire.[221]Two versions are printed, and there are at least seven in MS. For the former, see FordunScoti-chronicon(ed. Hearne). V. App.; Dugdale,Warw.(1730), i. 147-53; for MS. versions, see British Museum Harl. MSS. 6,388 (a compilation of several previously existing copies made in 1690 by Humphrey Wanley); Add. MSS. 11,364; Birmingham Free Library,Warw., MSS. 115,915 (seeAthenæum, No. 4328); Coventry Corp. MSS. A. 37, A. 43, A. 48. An eighteenth-century version in the hands of Mr Eynon of Leamington has relatively correct dates. See also Solly-Flood,op. cit., 50-1.[222]Sharp,op. cit., 205.[223]Sharp,Antiq., 205;Leet Book, 96-7.[224]Thompson,Hist. Leicester, 78.[225]Proc. Privy Counc., iv. 89; Ramsay,Lanc. and York, i. 437.[226]Leet Book, 83.[227]Ibid.[228]The surety for the loan "might not be gotten without great cost," and the different emissaries of the citizens spent, one 40s., one 13s. 4d., and another £6, 2s. 2d. in journeys to London, Boston, and Sandwich about this business (Ib.86).[229]Leet Book, 119-20.[230]Ib., 129-30.[231]Ib., 174.[232]Leet Book, 152. The total cost of these presents (exclusive of the 50 marks and the cup), with the carriage, was £12, 15s. 4d. In addition to this, the expenses of officers and all the worthy men, riding to Fullbrook, amounted to 29s. 6d.[233]Ib., 138.

FOOTNOTES:

[197]This castle, afterwards rebuilt, fell into decay, and was let out into tenements. Cheylesmore, where the De Mohaut's lived, had originally been a nursery for the Earl of Chester's children (Stowe in Harl. MS. 539, No. 4: see also Corp. MS. C. 61).

[198]The borough sent two members to the 1295 parliament, but remained unrepresented from 1315 to 1452.

[199]Stubb'sConst. Hist., ii. 49.

[200]Sharp,op. cit., 179.

[201]The name of Ball occurs in Coventry deeds. It is, of course, a common name.

[202]On the Trinity guild enclosure of 1384, seeLeet Book, 6; on the formation of the first of the defiant artizan guilds about this year, see above andVict. County Hist., Warw., ii. 154.

[203]Berners,Froissart's Chron.(1901) ii. 224.

[204]Warwickshire may have been a county addicted to Lollardry. John Lacy, vicar of Chesterton, near Warwick, was charged with receiving and harbouring the famous Oldcastle, Lord Cobham (Diocesan Hist. Worcester, 103).

[205]Trevelyan,Age of Wycliffe, 315; Knighton,Chron.ii. 198.

[206]Eng. Hist. Rev.xx. 447.

[207]Trevelyan,op. cit., 310;Dict. Nat. Biog.,s.v.Hereford, Nicholas.

[208]Vict. Coun. Hist., ii. 84.

[209]Knighton,Chron.ii. 235.

[210]Leet Book, 3.

[211]Green,op. cit., i. 209.

[212]Holinshed, iii, 494.

[213]Dugdale,Warw., i. 142. The only reference to Coventry in the business of this parliament is a petition from the convent against the men of Coventry, who injured the conduit built by the people of the priory (Corp. MS. B. 34).

[214]Trokelowe and Blaneforde,Chron. S. Albani(ed. Riley), 394.

[215]Leet Book, 70.Issue Roll of Exchequer, H. III.-VI., 402.

[216]Shakespeare I.Hen.IV. iv. 2.

[217]Ib., iii. 2. See my letter inAthenæum4330, p. 489.

[218]Henry Peyto was mayor in 1423. The Peto family came from Chesterton.

[219]Kingsford,Early Biographies of Henry V., inEng. Hist. Rev., xxv. 78. Although Stow'sChronicle, where this story first occurs, was not published until 1570, the author relied on early authority ultimately derived, it seems, from the Earl of Ormond, who died 1452.

[220]See Solly-Flood, "Henry V. and Judge Gascoigne,"Trans. R. Hist. Soc., iii. 49; Harcourt, "The Two Sir John Fastolfs,"Ib.3rd Ser. iv. 47; Kingsford,Henry V., 80-93. The Gascoignes subsequently settled at Oversley, Warwickshire.

[221]Two versions are printed, and there are at least seven in MS. For the former, see FordunScoti-chronicon(ed. Hearne). V. App.; Dugdale,Warw.(1730), i. 147-53; for MS. versions, see British Museum Harl. MSS. 6,388 (a compilation of several previously existing copies made in 1690 by Humphrey Wanley); Add. MSS. 11,364; Birmingham Free Library,Warw., MSS. 115,915 (seeAthenæum, No. 4328); Coventry Corp. MSS. A. 37, A. 43, A. 48. An eighteenth-century version in the hands of Mr Eynon of Leamington has relatively correct dates. See also Solly-Flood,op. cit., 50-1.

[222]Sharp,op. cit., 205.

[223]Sharp,Antiq., 205;Leet Book, 96-7.

[224]Thompson,Hist. Leicester, 78.

[225]Proc. Privy Counc., iv. 89; Ramsay,Lanc. and York, i. 437.

[226]Leet Book, 83.

[227]Ibid.

[228]The surety for the loan "might not be gotten without great cost," and the different emissaries of the citizens spent, one 40s., one 13s. 4d., and another £6, 2s. 2d. in journeys to London, Boston, and Sandwich about this business (Ib.86).

[229]Leet Book, 119-20.

[230]Ib., 129-30.

[231]Ib., 174.

[232]Leet Book, 152. The total cost of these presents (exclusive of the 50 marks and the cup), with the carriage, was £12, 15s. 4d. In addition to this, the expenses of officers and all the worthy men, riding to Fullbrook, amounted to 29s. 6d.

[233]Ib., 138.

CHAPTER X

The Red and White Rose

Weare now come to the time when the history of Coventry is closely interwoven with that of the nation at large. The city and its neighbourhood became the chosen home of the Court circle during the earlier part of the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause found some of its staunchest supporters among the folk of the "Queen's secret harbour," as the city was called, because Margaret of Anjou so often took refuge therein to plot and scheme for the undoing of the Yorkists. But the devotion of Coventry to Lancaster did not last throughout the struggle; the citizens' minds were alienated by the Queen's partizan fury at the "Diabolical Parliament" in 1460, and by the unruliness of her troops, and they afterwards professed themselves devoted followers of Edward IV. These professions did not, however, hinder them from backing the winning side when Edward's supremacy was imperilled through Warwick's revolt, and the Yorkist King punished their treachery by the confiscation of the city liberties. It was only by means of Clarence's costly mediation and the payment of an enormous fine that the citizens were enabled to make their peace with Edward. Thus Coventry partook to a greater extent than other towns of the miseries of this dynastic conflict. The citizen class were, as a rule, only too glad to let the barons fight out the question among themselves, submitting, as far as we can judge, to whichever army was victoriousand at their gates. After all, the battles of the Roses meant little more than the concentration of the fighting power of the kingdom, usually at that period employed in desultory local warfare, into one place, and frequent provincial frays and skirmishes were really more harmful to the district wherein the feud raged than civil war itself.

Happily for the Coventry men there was in the earlier part of the fifteenth century no great lord living within the walls to drag them into his frays and quarrels, and to anticipate that great period of party strife which was so soon to break in upon the kingdom. It is true that the townsfolk had not always been able to keep clear of baronial influence. We hear of fighting between the young Earl Stafford, the lord of Maxstoke, and the citizens, though we are not told what was the cause of the quarrel. Such animosity was felt by the two parties at variance that in 1427 the Duke of Gloucester summoned the mayor with others of the citizens to Leicester, and bound them over to keep the peace.[234]Men held this earl, better known by his later title of the Duke of Buckingham, in great awe, for in war-time he could arm two thousand fighting men bearing the Stafford knot.[235]"The indignation of the lordship of the said duke,"[236]said Sir Baldwin Montfort, whom Buckingham imprisoned in Coventry because he made some difficulty about surrendering his manor of Coleshill into the duke's keeping ... "had in those days been too heavy and unportable for me to have born." We find the citizens, however, on good terms with this omnipotent nobleman during the civil war; and in 1458 the mayor and his brethren received an invitation to come and share in the festivities which took place at Maxstoke Castle on the occasion of the marriage of one of his younger sons.

It is doubtful whether even Buckingham's great influence would have been sufficient to turn the scale in favour of Lancaster in the coming season of strife if the frequent visits of the King and the princes of the reigning family, as well as the old connexion between the city and the first prince of the blood as Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, had not bred among the citizens a feeling of loyalty, which kept them on the side of Henry and Margaret for many years. The year 1449 marks a crisis in the reign of King Henry. The re-opening of the French war was the herald of a series of swift disasters, which put an end to the rule of the English in France. Town after town opened its gates to the invading host of Frenchmen, and Rouen, and with Rouen the last English foothold in Normandy, capitulated after a siege of nineteen days. To this pass had England been brought under the guidance of Suffolk and Somerset, and the King not only breathed no word of dismissing these unpopular ministers, but gave them every mark of his favour and support.

An unmistakable sign of the times was to be found in the fact that the nobles were quietly arming; and acting probably on a hint from the Court, the Coventry men made ready to equip a goodly number of men for the city's defence. Every man that had been mayor was commanded by order of leet to provide 4 jacks, with as many sallets, habergeons, and sheaves of arrows for this purpose; while late bailiffs, chamberlains, and all commoners able to bear the cost were respectively required to furnish three, two, and one of these several parts of an archer's accoutrement.[237]By this means there was provision made for over six hundred men. In the following year, wherein Jack Cade held London in fearfor many days, a strong guard of forty armed men kept nightly watch within Coventry.[238]As the year drew to a close, there were expectations of war on every side. Wherefore in the beginning of Richard Boys' mayoralty (1451) it was resolved that all the fortifications should be made ready in case of attack. At a great meeting of the worthies of the council on the Saturday after the feast of the Purification, a plan of operations was laid down "for strengthening this city, if need be, which God forbid."[239]The town ditch was cleansed by common labour, so as to furnish a surer means of protection. Portcullises were made for the gates, and iron chains to close up the ends of divers lanes in the city.[240]There was some debate as to whether aldermen should be made over every ward, to whom the men of their several districts might have recourse "if ony aventure falle," but it seems no steps were taken in this direction. Of ammunition the worthy men laid in a plentiful store. Four "gonnes of brasse," two greater called "serpentynes,"[241]and two smaller, were cast and brought from Bristol at great cost, for they weighed, we are told, 328 lbs., and the price of transport amounted to 6s. 8d. These guns, "a barell of gonnepowdur" thirteen "pelettes" of iron for the larger, and four dozen of lead for the smaller guns, were kept in the tower of Bablake Gate, in readiness for the troubled times which were at hand.

Though England was rid of Suffolk, who, after his impeachment and banishment, was killed on board theNicholas of the Towerby some political enemies, affairs in 1451 prospered no better under the guidance of Somerset and the Queen, and the whole kingdom was uneasy with foreboding of the coming strife. Doubtless the news of the good order which prevailed in Coventry, and of the great military efforts the citizens had made, reached the ears of the King, as he made a progressthrough the Midlands in the late summer of that year. And on September 21 he came from Leicester, another famous Lancastrian fortress, to bestow his praises on the rulers of the city.[242]The men of Coventry made great preparations for his welcoming. And in order to avoid "stody and labur" hereafter, the mayor "let to compile" the account of the King's reception and residence within the city, a sort of manual of etiquette to be referred to in future.

View of Interior of Saint Michaels

"When the kyng our soveren lorde," theLeet Booksays, "came from Leycestur toward Coventre, the meyre ... Richard Boys and his wurthy bredurn arayed in skarlet and all the commonalty[243]cladde in grene gownes and rede hodes, in Haselwode beyonde the brode oke on horsbak, attented the comeng of our soveren lorde. And also sone as they haddon syght of our soveren lordes presens, the meyre and his peres lyghton on fote, [and] mekely thries kneleng on their knees dud unto our soveren lorde ther due obeysaunce, the meyre seyeng to hym thes wordes: 'Most highest and gracious kyng, ye arn welcome to your true lege menne withe all our hertes'"; and therewith, after taking the mace from a sergeant, he kissed it, and presented it to Henry. "The kyng," theLeet Bookcontinues, "tarieng and herkening the meyres speche in faverabull wyse, seyde thes wordes: 'Well seyde, Sir meyre, take your hors.' The meyre then rode forthe afore the kyng bereng his mase in his honde with the knyght-constabull next afore the kynges swerde, the bayles of this cite rideng afore the meyre withe ther mases in ther hondes makeng wey & rome for the kynges comeng; and so they ridon aforethe kyng till the kyng come to the vttur[244]yate of the priory. The kyng then forthewithe send for the meyre and his bredurn be a knyght to come to his presence and to speke withe hym in his chambur, and the meyre and his peres accordeng to the kynges comaundement come into his chambur, and thries ther knelleng dudde ther obeysaunse. Thomas Lytelton then recordur[245]seyde unto the kyng suche wordes as was to his thynkyng most pleasaunt, our soueren lorde seyeng agayne thes wordes, 'Sirs, I thank you of your goode rule and demene and in speciall for your goode rule the last yere past for the best ruled pepull thenne withe in my reame. And also I thank you for the present that ye nowe gaue to vs'—the whiche present was a tonne wyne & XXtigrete fatte oxon. The kyng then moreover gaf hem in comaundement to govern well his cite and to see his pease be well kepte as hit hathe been aforetyme, seyeng thenne to hem he wolde be ther goode lorde, and so the meyre and his peres departed."

With what a glow of pride the town clerk must have recorded all these gracious sayings, little knowing that the King's good will could avail them nothing in the troublous times that were at hand! Henry, it appears, remained several days at Coventry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Duke of Buckingham attending upon him there with a numerous following. He was engaged, the historian tells us, upon an ineffectual attempt to bring the Dukes of York and Somerset to friendly terms,[246]but the former, far from desiring peace, was at that moment weaving plans for his rival's overthrow. The good-hearted King did not neglect religion in all this pressure of political business.[247]"The kyng then abydeng stille inthe seide priory apon Michaelmas Evon sende the clerke of his closet to the churche of sent Michell to make redy ther his closette, seyeng that the kyng on Michaelmas day wolde go on procession and also her there hygh masse." The "meyre and his peres" suggested that the Bishop of Winchester (Waynflete) should be asked to officiate. "And agayne the kynges comeng to sent Michell churche, the meyre and his peres cladde in skarlet gownes with ther clokes and all oder in ther skarlet gownes wenton vnto the kynges chambur durre ther abydeng the kynges comeng." Possibly as an especial honour to the Trinity guild the clerks of Bablake went in the procession through S. Michael's churchyard before the celebration, the King devoutly walking in the train, bare-headed, and "cladde in a gowne of gold tussu furred with a furre of marturn sabull, the meyre bareng the mase afore the kyng ... tille he come agayne to his closette. At the whyche masse when the king had offerd and hes lordes also, he sende the lorde Bemond (Beaumont) his chamburlen to the meyre, seyeng to him, 'hit is the kinges will ye and your bredurn come and offer,' and so they dudde." After the evensong the King sent by "two for his body and two yeomen of the crown," "the seyde gowne and furre ... and gave hit frely to god and to sent Michell. Ynsomyche that non of them that brought the gown wolde take no rewarde in no wyse."[248]

Henry did not remain long in Coventry after the celebration of the Michaelmas festival. On the following Tuesday he went to Kenilworth, the corporation and the "commonalty" riding with the company and preserving the same order as they had used at his welcoming a few days previously. When they came to a place beyond Asthill Grove, "agayne a brode lane the (that) ledethe to Canley ... the kyng willeng to speke with the meyre and his bredurn seyde to hemthes wordes: 'Sires, I thank you of your goode rule and demene at this tyme, and for goode rule among you hadde and in speciall for your good rule of the yere last past, and where as ye ben nowe baylies we will that ye be herafter sherefes, and this we graunt to you of our own fre wille and of no speciall desire. Moreour,'" he went on, mindful no doubt of his own danger, and of the preparations for war among the factious nobles of the country, "'we charge you withe our pease among you to be kepte and that ye suffer no ryottes, conventiculs ne congregasions of lewde pepull among you, and also that (ye) suffer no lordes lyvereys, knyghtes, ne swyers (squires) to be reseyved of no man withe in you for hit is agayne our statutes ... and yif ye be thus ruled we will be your goode lorde.' And thus don, the meyre and his bredurn takeng ther leve of the kyng ... departed and ridon to Coventre agayne," no doubt astounded at the idea of this new responsibility and greatness now thrust upon them. The mayor and council held great consultations concerning the bailiffs' acquisition of the sheriffs' dignity summoning Thomas Littleton, their recorder, and Henry Boteler, who was soon to be this famous lawyer's successor in the office, to their deliberations, to learn what privileges were most needful for them to include within the charter which was to convert their city into "the city andcountyof Coventry."[249]

In the year 1453, which saw the close of the Hundred Years' War and the birth of a Prince of Wales, Henry was attacked by insanity.[250]In 1454 the King's recovery marked the close of the Duke of York's protectorateand the restoration to power of the Queen's friends, particularly Somerset. The Yorkist party fell into disgrace, and measures were taken to compass their destruction the following spring in a parliament to be held at Leicester. The duke on hearing this drew sword in the north, and marched on London with a goodly following at his back. The royal troops barred his way at S. Alban's; but when the first battle of that long and weary struggle was fought out at that town on the great London highway, the Coventry men were not found in Henry's ranks. In fact the battle was hardly looked for at that time. It is true the townsfolk received a summons for "such feliship ... in their best and most defensable aray" as they could furnish, and that "having tendurnes of the well fare and also of the saveguard of our soveren lorde," they duly equipped 100 men. Much ado was made to provide the men with a new "pensell" or standard "in tarturne," at a cost of 16d.; 14d. went "in rybands" to the same, while the making, with a tassel of silk attached to it, cost a similar sum; "bends," or badges of red and green, were also provided, with a garment of red, green, and violet for the captain. But in spite of all this preparation the men never saw S. Alban's fight, or the terrible execution done by Richard, Earl of Warwick, among the Lancastrian ranks. For on May 22, the day whereon the mayor received the commission, the battle was fought and over, and the King in the hands of his victorious enemies. "They wenton not," says theLeet Book, with some reticence in referring to the soldiers, "for certen tydenges that wern brought," the King having returned to London.[251]

Gosford St

Henry was shortly after this again attacked by insanity, and for a few months York was appointed regent. Duke Richard's power did not, however, wholly cease with the King's recovery, and after March 1456 he continued for some months to direct the government, whichwas nominally in the hands of the Bourchiers, half-brothers of the Duke of Buckingham. Meanwhile the two arch-enemies, the Queen and the Duke of York, watched and "waited on" each other ceaselessly until August, when Margaret's plans were laid, and she drew off the King to sport in the Midlands, having fortified Kenilworth with cannon in case of another appeal to arms. A great council of notables was summoned to meet at Coventry for October 7.[252]The news of theQueen's intended visit reached the city about August 24, and a council was called to provide for her highness's welcome.[253]A hundred marks was collected throughout the wards to be given as an offering to the Prince of Wales and his mother, together with two cups whereof the joint value amounted to £10, 7s. 1d. The prince did not, however, accompany the Queen on this occasion, so fifty marks were laid aside "against his coming," though the magnificence of his mother's reception was not lessened on this account. The "makyng of the premesses " of the Queen's welcoming fell to the lot of one John Wedurby, of Leicester,[254]and by his arrangement pageants as gaily dressed as at the Corpus Christi festival, with appropriate personages standing thereon to utter words of welcome, were placed at all the principal points in the streets between Bablake and the "utter" gate of the Priory. John Wedurby thought as other men of his time, that Margaret's son would one day have rule in England, and hoped that each party would forget their differences and live in peace under his government.

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