The citizens themselves delighted in music; some must have been practised singers, as the representation of the Corpus Christi pageants was diversified by songs. One of these, a lullaby from the tailors' and sheremen's play, is so pretty that it will well bear quotation.
"Lully, lulla, thow littell tine child,
By by, lully lullay, thow littell tyne child,
By by lully lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This pore yongling, for whom we do singe,
By by lully lullay?
Herod, the king, in his raging
Chargid he hath this day
His men of might in his owne sight
All yonge children to slay.
That wo is me, pore child, for thee,
And ever morne and may
For thi parting nether say nor singe
By by, lully lullay."
The provision of these games, pageants and processions must have entailed great cost and labour, yet every member of the various fellowships helped to support them, and bore as well his part in the common labours and duties involved in his citizenship. Every one was compelled to obey the mayor's summons under penalty of a fine, whether called upon to come to the leet, or the council, or to help in the common labour of the town. In 1451, when wars were threatening, the call went round for all to come and aid in the work of cleansing the town ditch.[721] The summons went twice round the town according to the watch, we are told, in "right great charge and in special" to the poor folk, who had to leave their other occupations in consequence, besides paying their quota towards the taxes, which were necessarily heavy at that time. And the council hearing thereof ordered that £12, 10s. should be collected from "thrifty" men to pay for the work, and the poor people spared, save that labourers earning 4d. a day were to pay 1d. or 2d. towards the required sum. In addition to their labour in the common defence, all citizens were required to make one of the company of watchmen when their turn came round, or to find a substitute. Fifteen men usually kept the nightly watch, but in times of disturbance their number was increased; thus in 1450 it was enacted that "forty men of decent, good and honest communication and strong in body ... shall nightly watch and guard the city from the ninth hour until the beating of the bell called daybell,"[722] and the light enabled all to see thief or enemy approach.
Neither were the citizens permitted to shirk the common military duties. At the "view of arms" all the freemen appeared in military accoutrement as suited their degree, and the threat of a siege turned artisans into soldiers and aldermen and councillors "for savegard of the cite" into captains of the wards and guardians of the gates. In 1469—the year of the battle of Edgcote—the city was changed into a very arsensal and barracks, so lively were the military preparations going forward at that time. The city accounts show the heavy charges which the distribution of arms and armour entailed upon the public purse.
"Item," says the Leet Book, "delyvered to Robert Onley on Maudelyn day a serpentyne ... for the Newe yate and a honde gunne with a pyke in the ynde and a fowler." To John Hadley for Bishop Gate "i staffe gunne." "Item delyvered to William Saunders, meyr, ii staffe gunnes and a grett gunne with iii chamburs, iii jacks and xxiv arowys." "Item ... to John Wyldgris i gunne with iii chamburs." There also follows the mention of the distribution of jacks and arrows to the various captains,[723] until possibly the supplies ran short, and the last obtained but "i newe jacke and a olde." In the "Lenton" of 1471 the scene was repeated. Guns and pelettes were again delivered to the captains for the gates, and money was hastily collected throughout the wards for the company of soldiers who followed my lord of Warwick to Barnet Field, whereby the citizens incurred King Edward's enmity and great displeasure.
The provision of soldiers according to the terms of the commissions of array, so common in civil warfare, were a heavy tax on municipal resources. When the city officers were ordered by the King's commission to send the local forces to join the royal army, the corporation had to "reteyn" their contingent, provide their dresses, badges and equipment, appoint a captain, and collect money, according to assessment, throughout the wards for their pay. At the beginning of the civil war all went merrily enough, and the citizens threw themselves with right good will into the equipment of the soldiers who were to have gone to St Alban's. But in a few years the artizans, called from their homes and business, were heartily weary of the continual strife, and clamoured for 12d. a day in payment. The hiring of recruits must have become a more difficult matter as time went on, though, like the clinching of all bargains in the Middle Ages, it was accompanied by plentiful drinking. The Leet Book records the following items in July 1470, after Edward IV. had summoned a company of archers to a rendezvous at Nottingham: "dedit ad le sowders ad bibendum xvid.," ... "a gallon wyne vid.," ... "pro ale to the sowders vid."[724] But even after the Wars of the Roses were over we have a sorry picture of the numerous inconveniences attending the hiring of troops. In February 1481, Edward IV. sent commissioners to find out what money or what number of men the burghers would provide in the event of an invasion of Scotland in the summer. After various discussions, commandings and countermandings, it was finally agreed that sixty men should be waged for the royal service for a quarter of a year at a cost of £148, 6s. 6d.; recruits were found and arrows and salets distributed amongst them. More, however, was to be wrung from the reluctant burghers; £40 was collected from 180 of the "most sufficient" men of the town to provide horses and jackets for the soldiery.[725] But sixty archers were not deemed a sufficient contingent by the Court; and when in the following June Lord Rivers came to know if the number could be increased, the mayor called a "Hall" of divers out of every ward to know what the common will was in this matter, and it was finally ordained that the citizens should equip and pay forty additional men, bringing up the number to 100. As all the recruits could not be drawn from the ranks of the townsfolk, the worthy men enlisted the service of strangers, and these had to be kept together, housed and fed, at great trouble and cost[726] until the time for departure. In the end, however, the levy was countermanded, and the troops thus laboriously collected were merely dispersed;[727] a statement of facts the town clerk may be pardoned for recording in a murmuring and discontented spirit.
But however onerous these duties may have been, the Coventry men were loyally proud of their city and citizenship. Albeit a traveller, the mediæval merchant loved, as he loved nothing else on earth, the small stretch of land enclosed by the walls of his native town. He or his ancestors had won and maintained at great cost the city's liberties, and he and they spared no pains to make it beautiful. Historians are wont to despise the English burgher of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, by reason of his insignificance and poverty, and his neglect of the highest forms of art, and pointedly contrast his small achievements with those of the merchant princes of Italy, or the proud and daring members of the Hanseatic League. It is true he was a commonplace person, living in what was for his country a commonplace age; nevertheless his doings are worthy of remembrance. If the English townsfolk never produced a Van Eyck or a Da Vinci, a Peter Fischer or a Donatello, they patronised all the local forms of art they knew. They had the same great delight in the common possession of a beautiful object as the people of the Italian republics. Though they lacked wealth to build themselves tall and stately houses like their brethren on the Continent, the English burghers could raise tall steeples, build vast churches, adorn their common halls, and rear exquisite crosses in the market place. The fifteenth century glass in S. Mary's Hall, Coventry, still attests the skill of John Thornton, a native of the city, and one of the first acts of the council of Forty-eight was to decree that a cross should be set up in the Cheaping, which was done, though at a cost of £50.[728] In Coventry, as elsewhere, the rich merchants and craftsmen set carvers to carve the miserere seats—enjoying the grim humour these sometimes display, a quality which crops up everywhere in the fifteenth century, even now and then in legal documents—and bade the engraver commemorate the dead by tracing their effigies on brass, or the mason by fashioning their portraits in stone.
Neither should we regard as contemptible the Englishman's achievements in trade and travel. The Merchant Adventurers, in the teeth of the opposition of the Staplers and the Hanseatic League, first by piracy and chance trading and then by organised and chartered commerce, filled the North Sea with their ships, founded settlements at Bergen and Antwerp, and on the ruins of their rivals built up one of the most successful trading companies of northern Europe. English merchants carried from Crete or Lisbon the precious stores of eastern wine and spices, and brought their bales of wool to the port of Pisa to supply the makers of Florentine cloth, or to the ports of Normandy to supply the looms of northern France.[729]
But it is not for his patronage of art or for his enterprise in foreign trade that the English burgher is chiefly noteworthy, but rather for his "politic guiding" of the cities in which he lived. Pirates, perhaps, on the Narrow Seas, he and his fellows were at home, for the most part, law-abiding men. A certain innate conservatism, a truly British love of appeal to custom and precedent, marks their rule, and, although the populace was frequently unquiet and discontented, the result was, on the whole, happy and successful. If the dangers of foreign commerce made them hardy and fearless, their political and civic life, with its manifold responsibilities, taught them a prudence and worldly wisdom, which appears in all their transactions. Never were men who paid such heed to the Gospel precept, "Be ye wise as serpents." Liable to be deserted or oppressed by the King, thwarted by the open violence or secret maintenance of some great noble or the factiousness of some fellow-burgher, their self-reliance turned these necessities to "glorious gain." It is true that we meet with little heroism, and few distinct types of character. The men of this class can boast of no individuals who can be rightly considered as important historical figures. Like the great Gothic architects, these men, who built up such a flourishing and successful society, have been chary of leaving their names to us. Now and then, however, a bit of grimy and neglected parchment reveals a striking history. We see the clothes they wore and hear the words they said. The quarrel resounds once more in the guild-hall. The stern recorder testifies against the supposed factiousness of Laurence Saunders; and the aged men, lifting up their hands, swear to the ancient extent of the common pasture. These are not heroic or world-known scenes, but they represent the life of the citizens of an old-time city, men whose labours are not entirely forgotten.
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