The Corporation and the Guilds
After the Settlement of 1355 the figure of the head of the great religious house at Coventry fades into comparative insignificance, and all further quarrels between city and convent hardly rise above the level of petty squabbles of no historical moment. The prior is no longer lord of the place; he merely appears as host of the royal folk, kings, and kings' sons, representatives of the ancient line of the Earls of Chester, when they sojourn within the city. The rent of the Earl's-half[128] now swells the revenue of the Princes of Wales, hence the appellation "Camera Principis," or the prince's (Treasure) chamber, the familiar motto on the city arms.[129]
With the disappearance of earl and prior from the foreground of the picture there emerges another figure, the city merchant, type of a newly-enriched class, the future guide of the destinies of the place. Curiously enough, it is this man's work in stone that has best survived the test of time. What has become of the castle of Hugh and Ranulf? It has utterly disappeared; indeed, its very existence has been sometimes doubted; the name "Broadgate" alone recalls the entrance (latam portam) whereto reference is made in one of Earl Hugh's charters.[130] Where is the priory of Irreys and Brightwalton? Mean streets cover the site, and of the cathedral nought remains but a few bases of clustered shafts in Priory Row and a portion of the North-West tower converted into a dwelling-place. But the outline of S. Michael's spire[131] built by the people is still the wonder of Coventry, and the guild-hall of S. Mary with its glorious roof and window has behind it five hundred years of continuous civic life.
Coventry was now a free and independent corporate borough. The townsmen had power to elect their own officers, and hold their own courts, taking for the common use the profits of jurisdiction, so long as they paid into the royal exchequer the annual fee-ferm of £50 and the prior's ferm of £10. The leading men of the place, most likely the wealthy merchants and others, who had won the charter of liberties from Queen Isabel,[132] now set to work to reorganise courts, elect officials, in short to shape the whole administration to fall in with the new order of things.[133] We know nothing of the manner in which this was done, and as so many of the early records have been lost we can give no account in many cases of the form of municipal rule chosen by the citizens. Here and there curious documents give us a glimpse of the working of certain courts, or the municipal action of this or that body of men. But the information concerning very important points is unfortunately lacking. We are referred, for instance, to the "old custom" of electing officials, but we do not know what the old custom was, and are hence left in ignorance of the manner in which the election was made.
What part the poorer folk—menus gentz—smaller craftsfolk, and working-people played in the struggle for liberty is dark to us, but we may infer from the analogy of other towns,[134] and from the subsequent history of Coventry, that they had but little effective power under the new constitution. The growth of oligarchy[135] in towns is a matter of much debate. How early the few in Coventry engrossed the governing power of which the whole community was—in theory at least—the source, it is impossible in our present state of knowledge to determine. We have testimony as early as 1450 of the great influence of the leading crafts, mercers, and drapers. The evidence—though not always so clear as we could wish—points to a gradual absorption of the conduct of affairs during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a small official class. In the end this clique succeeded so effectually in freeing itself from every device framed to ensure some regard for the popular will, that the charter of 1621 vested all power—and incidentally considerable official emolument—in a close select body "entirely independent of the rest of the community."[136] How early the citizens became aware of the trend of affairs we know not, but it is, maybe, significant that that popular discontent began to manifest itself within a generation after the incorporation of the city. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the commonalty set order at defiance, reviled the mayor in the guild hall, and sought occasion to break out in riot and tumult, while under the veil of religious societies, industrial combinations—akin to the modern strike—formed again and again, and were with difficulty suppressed.
After 1420, when the graphic chronicle contained in the Leet Book[137] begins to be available for our researches, a glimpse is given of a fully evolved constitution in working order. On January 25, the feast of the Conversion of S. Paul, the mayor, chamberlains, and wardens were annually elected, the permanent officials, the recorder, legal adviser of the corporation, and the coroner re-appointed, the justices of the peace selected, while the bailiffs, according to ancient custom, received nomination at the Michaelmas assembly of the court leet. The justices of the peace—with the exception of the recorder—served also as key-keepers of the chest containing the common treasure. The court of portmanmote, mentioned in Ranulf's charter, still survived under various names, and in it pleas for debt were tried by the presiding officers, the mayor, and bailiffs. At quarter sessions the mayor, recorder, and three other late mayors, justices of the peace, dealt with criminal offences, and it was, probably, the activity of these comparatively recently created officials,[138]that brought about the degeneration of the leet or view of frankpledge, normally a court of justice for the trial of minor criminal offences, particularly evasions of the assize of bread and beer.[139] By the fifteenth century, the Coventry leet had retained little or nothing of its judicial functions, and merely survived as a court wherein by-laws, binding on the whole community, and grounded on petitions of grievances, received the sanction of the jurats of the leet. Another body, which also possessed legislative functions, was the mayor's council of forty-eight, later known as the common council. While it is from a small select body called the council-house, of which the mayor and aldermen appear to have been ex-officio members, that there sprang the close, corrupt corporation of later times.
