OLD HOUSE BESIDE S. MARY'S HALL
Long before curfew the countryman had gone home to his village in the Arden country or by the London road to Dunsmoor Heath; while the traveller in his inn and the townsman under his own roof were soon abed. What light there was in the deserted streets on winter evenings came from the lamps which hung over the door of every hostelry and every substantial citizen's house, until nine o'clock,[514] after which time the city gates were closed,[515] and none were abroad save thieves and watchmen. Indeed, the very fact of being out after dark was in itself presumptive evidence of some dishonest purpose on the part of the belated wayfarer. At any suspicious sight or sound the watch were on the alert, and prepared to arrest the wanderer; should the prisoner escape and take to flight, they would instantly give chase, and fill the dark and empty streets with the echoes of their pursuit. A hue and cry would be raised, doors open, and householders pour forth to aid the watch. If the unlucky fugitive were captured, he would be committed to ward in all haste.[516]
What a crowd of different types of men must have jostled against one another in the noisy throng! Craftsmen, attired in the livery proper to their calling, a custom whereof we have this day a relic in the butcher's blouse; merchants from foreign parts, or natives fresh from a sea voyage; mayor and aldermen clad maybe in festal scarlet; the crier and sergeants in the livery of the city; men-at-arms, the retainers of some great lord, bearing the badge of the Earls of Warwick, or the Stafford knot; Benedictines, clad in white cassock and black gown and hood; Franciscans, with their brown habit and knotted girdle; Carmelites from Whitefriars in white frock and brown scapulary; Carthusians from the Charter-house, with white cassock and hood; chantry and parish priests—all these, laymen and clerics, warriors and traders, met, passed, and gave greeting in the streets.
Strange figures might be seen in the streets or the road neighbouring the city, such as the hermits, whose dwellings—the one by Bablake church,[517] the other at Gosford Green—stood at either end of the highway leading through Coventry. Times had changed; it was now customary for hermits to build by the highway, and no longer withdraw into solitary places, and spend their lives in prayer and meditation. They rather preferred to dwell in "boroughs among brewers," seeking society and good cheer. Nor did the pilgrims, who might be seen flocking to the shrine of S. Osburg[518] or to the image of Our Lady in the Lady Tower on the London Road hard by the Whitefriars' to pay their devotions, invariably set about their task in a religious spirit. Many who travelled to the far-famed shrines of S. Thomas of Canterbury, S. Edmund of Bury, S. Cuthbert of Durham, or to "Our Lady" of Walsingham, to the Roods of Chester and Bronholme, or the Holy Blood of Hales, looked on their journey as a holiday jaunt rather than as an act of devotion. The author of Piers Plowman thought little spiritual good came from this gadabout religion. The Lollards were wont to condemn pilgrimages, and one John Blomstone of Coventry, a heretic, examined in 1485 declared:—
"That it was foolishness to go on a pilgrimage to the image of Our Lady of Doncaster, Walsingham, or the Tower of Coventry, for a man might as well worship by the fireside in the kitchen as in the aforesaid places, and as well might a man worship the Blessed Virgin when he seeth his mother or sister, as in visiting the images, because they be no more but dead stocks and stones."
Whitefriar's Lane
Interesting, too, are several persons occurring in Coventry history, whose occupations were hardly so legitimate as those of pilgrim or hermit. We have had a glance at the ruinous house where John de Nottingham, the necromancer, by means of his waxen effigies wrought such terrible evil to one of the prior's servants, and revenged the wrongs of the Coventry men. We would fain know more of John French, the alchemist, who appears in the Leet Book,[519] only to disappear directly from its pages. We learn in 1477 that he intended, "be his labor, to practise a true and profitable conclusion in the cunnyng of transmutacion of meteals to" the "profyte and pleasur" of the King's grace, and was, so Edward IV. charged the mayor, never to "be letted, troubled, or vexed of his seid labor and practise, to th' entent that he at his good liberte may shewe vnto vs, and such as be by vs therfor appointed, the cler effect of his said conclusion." There can be little doubt that the citizens looked askance at John French, and whispered that he dabbled in black magic and had dealings with the Prince of Darkness. We know not how many years the alchemist spent in his fruitless labours; or if he imparted his views on the subject of the "transmutation of metals" to the citizens, or ever journeyed to London to pour a tale of hope deferred into the ears of the disappointed King.