The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

Whatever changes this transfer may have brought about, one thing is certain, it did not establish peace in Coventry. Twenty years later the old jealousy flamed up anew. About 1267 both townsmen and convent took advantage of Henry III.'s necessities to negotiate for a charter, but with a different result. The former obtained a bare confirmation of their ancient liberties,[100] the prior, on the other hand, owing, belike, to his superior command of the purse, or in return for help he may have rendered the King in the late wars, was able to purchase fresh concessions for himself and his men. He was allowed to appoint coroners for the town, and further, licence was given to form a merchant guild among his tenants.[101] The grant of these graces brought about an outbreak in the Earl's-half. Hitherto, it may be supposed, Earl's-folk and Prior's-folk had carried on their trade on fairly equal terms, but the new charter would bring about a revolution. The object of the formation of a merchant guild was to confine the trade of the district to its members; they would become local commercial monopolists. No wonder the Earl's-men resisted the foundation of this society. If it were once established, and they were excluded from its ranks, what a blow would be dealt to their prosperity.

The guildsmen would make it impossible for them to trade under anything like favourable conditions. They might be mulcted by tolls; subjected to the annoying supervision of the guild officials in respect to the weight or quality of their goods; restrictions affecting the time, place, or manner of their selling might be imposed on them; or they might have to relinquish bargains they had closed in favour of the members of the guild merchant.

So when the terms of this new charter were known the Earl's-folk rose in tumult, withstood the priory coroner when he attempted to see the body of a man, slain, no doubt, in these brawls, and prevented their neighbours in the Convent-half from forming the guild according to the permission vouchsafed to them. Nor could the sheriff's officer, sent by the royal order at the prior's request to proclaim these charters and liberties in Coventry, bring the unruly townspeople to obedience. "Certain men, we learn," ran the King's writ, "from those parts with others, armed with force, took Gilbert, clerk to the said sheriff, sent thither to this end, and imprisoned him, and broke" the royal "rolls and charters, and beat and ill-treated the men of the prior and convent."[102] What was the end of the tumult, or the fate of the luckless clerk, we cannot tell, but, as we hear no more of the prior's guild, it seems that this outbreak of the Coventry men "with others" prevented its establishment.

We now enter upon a fresh phase of the quarrel. It is no longer the Prior's-men but the prior himself who is the Earl's-men's enemy. Their whole energy is absorbed in the effort to free their trade from the restrictions the present lord of the Earl's-half has laid down for them to observe. For the Earl's-men appeared ill-content with the change of masters. Did the prior encroach upon the rights of the townsfolk? Probably not; previously established customs founded on the charter of Ranulf would bar his claims. But though the law may not alter, the interpretation of it may vary from time to time; so may the circumstances under which it is administered. It was so with the customs which had hitherto regulated the Earl's-men's lives. They and their present masters were disposed to differ as to the meaning these could bear, and hence a way was opened for numerous quarrels and lawsuits. Moreover, restraints, which had been borne without complaint in early days under the Chester lordship, were found unendurable when the townsfolk's commerce, and with it their desire for freedom, had increased.

The matter of the merchant guild was only the forerunner of more serious trouble. The townspeople were rapidly growing rich, whether by soap-making,[103] or the manufacture of woollen cloth, or the entertainment of travellers, or a happy combination of all three sources of wealth. Under Edward I. they were able to pave their city,[104] which had now risen to a sufficiently important position to be accounted a borough, and to return two members to the Parliament of 1295.[105] Its prosperity attracted the notice of Edward I., who in 1303 summoned two Coventry merchants to attend a council;[106] and of Edward II., who asked the inhabitants for a loan of 500 marks for the prosecution of the Scotch war. It is small wonder if the townsfolk were jealous lest this growing prosperity should be checked by the petty regulations the prior chose to lay on them. Was their wealth to be curtailed because, forsooth, the convent officials charged them, not to sell here, or make there, to relinquish a favourable bargain, or never to open stall or shop for sale of goods during certain hours of the day?

The prior in the days of Edward II. was Henry Irreys, and his hand lay heavy on the townsmen. They were not able to live, they complained, "by reason of his oppression." Moreover, like the jolly, illiterate Abbot of S. Alban's named Hugh, who "feared nothing so much as the Latin tongue,"[107] and so oppressed his tenants, Prior Irreys was an ally of Edward II., for it was by "maintenance of the King and of Spencer, Earl of Winchester" (i.e. Despenser), that he was enabled to keep the malcontents in check. In his days arose a second dispute concerning traffic, but at what date we cannot tell. The Friday market had always been held in the Prior's-half, and there only were the Earl's-men permitted to sell their wares on that day.[108] Now certain of them broke through the prior's order, and sold openly in their own houses[109] during market hours. Appeal was made to the law. In vain the townsmen pleaded that by virtue of the clause in Ranulf's charter, giving them the same liberties as the Lincoln folk, they were free to sell their goods when or where they would. Vainly, too, they tried to strengthen their case by declaring that before the prior had purchased the Chester estate they had been wont to hold a fair in the Earl Street, where now their shops stood. These pleas availed nothing, and a verdict was returned for the prior with £60 damages, the Earl's men being forbidden to sell anywhere but in the Prior's-half during market hours. The prescribed payment must have well-nigh ruined William Grauntpee and other traders concerned in the struggle, for £60 was then accounted a great sum.[110]

It was in 1323 that the townsfolk sought, after a very novel fashion, to rid themselves of their oppressors. Their enemies accused them, whether truly or untruly we cannot tell, of having recourse to the black art, and strange rumours were afloat concerning the unlawful dealings of the citizens with one Master John de Nottingham, limb of Satan and necromancer, who inhabited a ruinous house in the neighbourhood of the town. Witchcraft was not then considered an ecclesiastical offence, but one against the common law, and it was, it seems, before the Court of King's Bench that the approver, Robert le Mareshall, told his story. He had been living, he said, with one Master John de Nottingham, necromancer, of Coventry. To whom, on the Wednesday next before the feast of S. Nicholas, in the seventeenth year of the King's reign, came certain men of the town, citizens of good standing, and promised them great profit—to the necromancer, £20, and "his subsistence in any religious house in England,"[111] and to Robert le Mareshall, £15—if they would compass the lives of the King and others by necromancy. Having received part of the promised payment as earnest at the hands of John le Redclerk, hosier, and John, son of Hugh de Merington, apprentice of the law, with seven pounds of wax and two yards of canvas, the magicians began their work. On the Sunday after the feast of S. Nicholas they fashioned seven magical images in the respective likenesses of Edward II., with his crown, the elder and younger Despenser, Prior Henry, Nicholas Crumpe, his steward, the cellarer of the convent, and Richard Sowe, probably one of the priory underlings who had made himself unpopular. As far as the last-named enemy upon the list was concerned—for upon him they chose to experiment "to see what might be done with the rest"—they were entirely successful. On the Friday before the feast of the Holy Rood about midnight John de Nottingham gave his helper, Robert le Mareshall, a leaden bodkin, with command to thrust it into the forehead of the figure of Richard Sowe. The effect was well-nigh instantaneous. When the necromancer sent Robert on the morrow to inquire how Richard did, the messenger found him crying "Harrow," and mad as mad could be. And on the Wednesday before the Ascension, John having on the previous Sunday removed the bodkin from the forehead of the figure and thrust it into its heart, Richard Sowe died.[112]

Meanwhile the necromancer and the accused gave themselves up in court, consenting to plead before a jury. All, save the necromancer, were admitted to bail.[113] He no doubt looked to receive no mercy, and when after sundry delays the trial came on, the marshal certified that Master John de Nottingham was dead. Another of the accused, Piers Baroun, who had been a burgess at the Parliament of 1305,[114] died also during the interval.