[113] Divers natives of Warwickshire and citizens of London went bail for them.
[114] Parl. Writs, i. ii.
The Seigniory of the Prior and Queen Isabella
Hitherto it had fared ill with the Earl's-men in their struggle with the convent. Were they to be worsted like the men of S. Alban's or Bury S. Edmund's? The former were now utterly broken in spirit. After a hard fight lasting from the days of Henry III., they obtained in 1327 a charter, conferring on them the control over the local courts and the privileges of a free and independent borough. And yet they were powerless. Five years later they voluntarily surrendered their charter into the abbot's hands. They gave up the perambulation of their borough. They took their handmills—the initial cause of the contention—and left them in the churchyard in token of renunciation. They presented to the abbot the town chest with the keys belonging thereto, thus relinquishing all their rights as a free and independent community. Nor did better success attend the Bury S. Edmund's men, who had the same high hopes as the S. Alban's folk, and who in the same year compelled their abbot to concede to them a guild merchant, a community, a common seal, and the custody of their gates. Five years later they too were forced to abandon these claims, and, after a fruitless effort at the time of the Peasant Revolt in 1381,[115] both towns sank into apathy, each under the rule of the great local religious house.
But alone among convent towns, a piece of supreme good fortune awaited Coventry. The townsmen, just at a critical time, gained a powerful champion. In 1327, by some bargain between Isabella, widow of Edward II. and the representatives of the Chester family, the rents coming from the Earl's-half passed into the Queen's hands, to become after her death parcel of the duchy of Cornwall, heritage of the princes of Wales. We have nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the quarrel which raged for twenty years between the Queen and the prior of S. Mary's convent. The undoubted gainers in this conflict were the men of Coventry; for, helpless under Isabella's repeated attacks, the monks conceded to their tenants those rights of self-government whereof they had stood in need so long.
Soon after the Queen's entry into possession of the De Montalt estate, the prior had many bitter complaints to make of the treatment he received at her hands and at the hands of his "mortal enemies," the men of Coventry. His courts were deserted by the men of the Earl's-half, the profits of his franchise finding their way, no doubt, into the Queen's coffers, as her steward held a court at Cheylesmore. His dues, waifs, heriots, the mournful enumeration proceeds, were withheld, and certain tenements belonging to him seized into "my lady's hand" in spite of charters shown to prove his ample right to the same. Great destruction had been wrought in his woods at Whitmore under colour of the Queen's claim to gather her "estovers," or fuel, therein. And the boundaries about these woods had been violently thrown down, and if "they be not now enclosed to prevent cattle from pasturing therein, they will be ruined for ever past recovery." The men of the Earl's-half lived in the prior's tenements in the Earl's Orchard, detaining the rent, twenty marks a year, "by tort and force." But this was not the worst. By cover "of the Seigneurie of my said lady," the prior continued, a great part of the rents in Coventry were treacherously withheld, and the monks dared not take distress and force the defaulters to pay "for peril of death." For when their bailiff, Simon Pakeman, went to demand the aforesaid rents without making any distraint for the same, "up came Peter de Stoke and other mad folk ... and assaulted the said Simon with force of arms, and beat and maltreated him, saying ... that if the said prior and convent ever made any demand of the kind in the Earl's-half they would make their heads fly" (ferryent voler les testes).[116] Again and again the prior and convent poured forth their monotonous complaint. Now they "prayed restitution" for the rent of two messuages, "which for two years last past my lady had given to a demoiselle of her chamber."[117] Now they averred that she had put the bailiff of the Earl's-half out of his office, whereby they had lost all profits arising from their franchises. Still the spoliation continued; they fixed the damage the convent had sustained at £20,000,[118] and, turning from the deaf ears of Queen Isabel, besought the King to see justice done for God's sake, "and for love of our Lady, his dear Mother, in whose honour the priory" had been founded, lest the convent should be compelled to disperse.[119]
Meanwhile the men of Coventry were gaining every year important graces from Edward III. Now that the power of the prior was thus diminished, there was no one to prevent the acquisition of fresh liberties, and their money circulated freely at Westminster, the messengers bringing back in return the precious slips of parchment sealed with the King's seal, the testimony of new rights to be enjoyed by the townsfolk. In 1334 their merchandise was freed from toll in all places throughout the King's dominions.[120] Six years later licence was given them to form a merchant guild,[121] while other kindred societies sprang up, and received licence to hold land in mortmain.[122] In 1341 the King granted a charter to the effect that any inquisition of lands or tenements within the city should be taken by the townsmen, and not by strangers, an important provision at a time when there were frequent lawsuits between the Queen and the prior.[123]