The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

ARCHDEACON'S CHAPEL. HOLY TRINITY CHURCH

The earliest part of the church is the thirteenth-century north porch with its groined roof, and a beautiful double doorway, now blocked up, leading from the porch to S. Thomas's chapel. West of the porch, in the Archdeacon's chapel, is another blocked window, a fine example of the Decorated type. The nave is of the first half of the fourteenth century, and was built before the chancel. The fresco of the Last Judgment, which could once be discerned above the chancel arch, is now obliterated. As in S. Michael's the mullions of the fifteenth-century clear-story windows are continued to the top of the arches of the nave, forming a series of stone panels. Marler's-chapel, leading out of the north chancel-aisle, is the latest part of the structure, belonging to the sixteenth century. The stone pulpit dates from about 1470. The lectern, which is also antique, aroused the suspicions of the Puritans, and in 1654 there was some talk of selling it, a transaction which was happily not accomplished, though the "eagle" at S. Michael's, the gift of William Botoner, had been sold at so much the pound a few years before.

Scarcely a vestige now remains of the ancient stained glass which once made the church beautiful. Its disappearance was owing not perhaps so much to Puritan zeal, as to the deliberate action of the authorities in the last century. From 1774 to 1787 the masons of Coventry must have revelled in the work of mutilating the window traceries, and the old glass after being taken down was never put back. The old sexton told the antiquary, Sharp, particulars of the famous window, wherein Leofric and Godiva were represented, the former holding a charter with the words:

"I, Luriche, for love of thee
Doe make Coventre Tol-free."

But this was removed in 1779; but a few last fragments of glass are now in the window of the Archdeacon's chapel. A small figure is seen holding a spray of leaves and part of a horse; there are also architectural fragments in the stained glass that appear in Stukeley's drawing of the Godiva window, but they are very insignificant and broken.

In this same chapel is a brass to John Whitehead (1597) and his two wives in Elizabethan costume, and a monument in Philemon Holland (1636), once master of the grammar school, translator of Camden's Britannia. The font is of the fifteenth century. Close to the west door is a fine Elizabethan alms-box.

To the north of Trinity churchyard are the Cathedral ruins. Little more than the bases of a few fine pillars are left of the once splendid minster, dedicated to S. Mary, S. Peter, S. Osburg, and All Saints. From the gates of Trinity church you pass the top of the picturesque Butcher Row, and, if time does not fail you, may turn down Cross Cheaping—alas that the cross should be no longer there!—till you come to the Old Grammar School, at the corner of Hales Street. This was the ancient home of the Hospitallers, who tended the infirm and sick, but was converted after the Reformation into a free grammar school. It is now a parish room; but round the walls of the ancient chapel of the Hospitallers are the old stalls they once occupied, cut and hacked by many generations of schoolboys. The east window is a fine specimen of nearly flamboyant tracery. Here Dugdale received his education; also the Davenports and a great many more who have never risen to fame in the world. Mr Tovey, father of Milton's Cambridge tutor, and Philemon Holland, the "translator-general of his age," were masters here.

On returning up the Broadgate to the cross roads give a glance at the authentic "Peeping Tom" looking out of a window in the top storey of the King's Head Inn. It is a full-length wooden statue of a man in armour, with helmet, greaves, and sandals; the arms are cut off at the elbows. What the statue anciently represented is, I believe, unknown.