The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

Here we learn the price of "coket" bread[541] and horse-bread at that time; how white wine of Rochelle was to be sold at 6d. a gallon, Malvoisey at 16d., and "no derer upon the peyn of xxs. at every trespas," and that on Oseney, Algarbe and Bastarde the "mayor and his peres" would set a price when any occasion of selling offered.[542] The "crye" tells us what penalties were laid on those who made use of fraudulent measures, "coppes and bollys" unsealed,[543] and how informers were stimulated by the promise that whosoever gave notice to the mayor of this abuse should "have iiiid. for his travayll and a galon of the best ale" and also what hard punishments were meted out to those who practised forestalling and regratery.[544]

But in spite of all these regulations the task of curtailing profits seemed a hopeless one, and again and again the worthy men of the leet confess that the law remains a dead letter through the frauds of the victuallers. These, we are told, holding their heads high, refused to sell their wares at the "limited" price, "and in maner destitucion the seid cite of wyne and vitayle" to the manifest hurt of the inhabitants and of all people "confluent to the same." While, when the mayor insisted that the bakers should obey the orders of leet regulating their trade, the whole craft "struck" with the greatest unanimity, and leaving the city "destitute of bread," took sanctuary at Bagington, a village about four miles distant. Night, however, brought counsel, and they submitted next day to the mayor, paying for their lawlessness a fine of £10.[545] As for the brewers in the sixteenth century, they found their calling so lucrative that others were thereby encouraged to forsake their occupations and take up this profitable trade. At that time, said the worthy men of the leet in 1544, "divers of the said brewers nothing regarding the displeasure of God, the danger of the laws of the realm nor the love and charity which they ought to bear to their neighbours nor the commonwealth of this city, for their own private lucre ... do ... regrate and forestall barley coming into this city to be sold," and sell ale at excessive and unreasonable prices.[546]

Regulations, however, affected this powerful and wealthy class but little, and in listening to the ever-renewed complaints against them we begin to realize the universal detestation in which they are held in the Middle Ages. Mediæval imagination, with its love of the grotesque, delighted to picture the unhappy end of those who bade defiance to the laws of God and man. How hardly shall an alewife, thought the Ludlow artist, "enter the kingdom of Heaven," and in carving the miserere of the parish church he shadowed forth her fate. "A demon is bearing away the deceitful one; she carries nothing about her but her gay head-dress and her false measure; he is going to throw her into hell-mouth, while another demon is reading her offences as entered in his roll, and another is playing on the bag-pipes by way of welcome."[547] A pleasant man was that Ludlow artist,—one, we may fancy, who abhorred cheating, and dearly loved his glass.

Ordinances of leet were frequently passed upon the order to be maintained upon a market day, for there was but scanty room for traffic in the Cross Cheaping, even though the carts can have been no wider than trollies, taking up but "the brede of a yard" in passing by. Stalls and boards were a great encumbrance. "No fishmonger," runs an order of leet, "(can) have his board standing forth at large in the street for to let cart, horse or man, but that there be a reasonable space left ... between their houses and their boards."[548] Round about the market-place were clustered the dwellings of provision merchants and the lesser craftsmen. Ironmonger Row, Butcher Row or the Poultry, Cook Street, and the Spicer-Stoke[549] tell by their names the calling of those who lived or chiefly trafficked there;[550] while the drapers made their homes hard by the Drapery, in Bayley Lane and Earl Street.[551] On market days this neighbourhood was crowded with the overflow of stall-holders and salesmen; the poulterers standing before the Priory gates, and round about the Bull-ring "usque finem de le Litel Bochery,"[552] while the fishmongers and leather sellers had stalls within the Cheaping itself.[553] Other stalls were placed in the procession way in S. Michael's churchyard, and the sellers of cloth had an illicit market in the church porch opposite the Drapery door, until it was made forbidden ground by a leet ordinance. For all merchants and chapmen resorting to the city on the Friday were forced by this authority to sell all their mercery, cloth, and linen inside the Drapery;[554] and all sellers of wool to have their merchandise weighed at the Wool-hall hard by, and pay a fee for the weighing thereof at the "Beam" or public weighing machine.

Equally stringent were the orders of leet, which curtailed the privileges of the "foreyn," who came to buy or sell within the city. He was not allowed to purchase corn in the market until mid-day, three hours after the townsfolk had been admitted to make their bargains.[555] A certain time of sale was assigned him,[556] and very frequently his goods were examined by the mayor ere he could dispose of them in the market. If his trade competed in any serious degree with that of the city craftsmen, there was no end to the restrictions wherewith he was hampered. Urged by a spirit of local monopoly, the authorities regulated the trade in hides and tallow in favour of the dealers of the city, though on the butchers' assertion that the country tanners would give a better price for the hides than their town brethren, the rules were somewhat relaxed. No chandler, however, was permitted to sell more than twelve pounds of candles out of the city[557] to one purchaser.

The frequent enactment of these and similar regulations in the early sixteenth century shows the terror with which the townsfolk looked on the spread of industry in country districts. Owing to the conversion of arable land to pasture for sheep farming, agricultural labourers had been thrown out of work; many therefore were employed in handicrafts in their own houses and their competition was thought to seriously threaten the prosperity of their town neighbours.[558]

At the Corpus Christi fair all was bustle and activity in Coventry, and the mayor had doubtless much ado to settle all the disputes arising from differences of currency or hard driving of bargains at the pypowders court, for all the world of the neighbourhood came to lay in stores for the year, and merchants from far and near to sell their wares. Eight weeks a year of a farmer's life is said to have been spent more or less at fairs and markets,[559] and undoubtedly a merchant employed a far longer period in travel to and from these centres of trade. Our forefathers were not altogether such simple stay-at-homes as we love to picture, but, rather, experienced travellers, and in those days travelling meant experience, and was not as it is now—at least in civilized countries—a method for getting from place to place which puts no tax on the body, and the least possible on the mind of the traveller. All manner of men and of merchandise[560] were to be seen at the fair. Irish traders brought druggets from Drogheda; coarse cloth came from the west country;[561] Frenchmen brought dyes for cloth; Bristol traders wine from Guienne and Spain; country gentlemen and local graziers bales of wool for export or home manufacture.

It is true that in spite of its popularity, the Corpus Christi fair never equalled the S. Giles' fair at Winchester, the centre of trade between the southern counties and France, or that of Stourbridge, near Cambridge, the great mart for horses, and the centre of commerce between the eastern counties and Flanders. To many, however, the fair at Coventry, the centre of traffic on the great road to the north-west, was the chief event of the whole year. The local makers displayed to the utmost advantage the bales of Coventry cloth, and the blue thread, to which the skill of the native dyers gave the colour which was the envy of the whole country. This merchandise could be bought openly by the strangers, who jostled against one another before the stalls in the Drapery. But many transactions, which the dealers hoped would not come to light, must have taken place unnoticed in the busy crowd. The prior of Sulby, in terror of the rapacity of Henry VIII., sold his cross-staff to the wife of a London goldsmith at Coventry fair one Corpus Christi day, just as the monks of Stoneley—provident men—about this time disposed of a silver censer, and other things "worth £14 or thereabouts," to Master John Calans, goldsmith, of Coventry.[562] Maybe the spare scholar might there be seen, as at the fair of S. Frideswide, at Oxford, counting the few coins his purse contained to find out if they would avail to purchase a book he coveted greatly. While in Elizabeth's days Puritan purchasers, who found the "Martin Marprelate" tracts edifying reading, could obtain these locally printed attacks on the episcopate from some discreet salesmen.[563] But the bulk of the buyers were local folk: farmers on the look-out for a good horse, or intent on replenishing the stock of sheep-dressing, and their wives keenly enjoying a bargain over some pewter vessels, or article of "mercery," a gay belt or kerchief for the daughters at home.