[196] Leet Book, 647-8.
Coventry and the Kingdom of England
So far was Coventry from the great centres of the national life, that there is little to connect the place in the earlier parts of its history with the history of the kingdom.
William I. may have passed through on his way from Warwick to Nottingham on one of his journeys to crush the rebellious Saxons, and Stephen, as we have seen, swept down on the castle—that famous "castlelet or pile"[197] in Earl Street—and razed it to the ground. Other notable travellers came during this period to Coventry, but secretly, for they wished to escape pursuit. Many evil-doers claimed the protection of the Church in those days, and when any fugitive entered the sanctuary, he was safe from pursuit. There he made confession of his crime, and, if he left of his own free will, he must abjure the kingdom, and make straight for some port appointed him by the coroner, there to take ship for foreign lands. Many criminals on quitting the sanctuary found their enemies lying in wait, and perished, although they held the cross, symbol of the Church's protection, in their hand. Men feared to incur the penalty of excommunication, which the violation of sanctuary always brought, by dragging Faulkes de Breauté from Coventry church; and this Norman adventurer, whom the favour of John and Henry III. had raised to riches and greatness until he was "plasquam rex in Anglia"—of more account than the King—put himself under the bishop's protection, and travelled in his company to Bedford to throw himself on the King's mercy. He was banished the kingdom. With him fell, in 1222, the foreign party under Peter des Roches, who for so many years had thwarted the designs of Henry's great minister, Hubert de Burgh.
In other ways the reign of Henry III. was locally a memorable one. During the siege of Kenilworth, which lasted from midsummer to December 1266, the neighbourhood was the centre of military operations, but when the castle containing the remnant of De Montfort's following surrendered, the smouldering fires of civil war died away. Part of the famous ruin that witnessed this siege, the Norman keep, or Cæsar's Tower, is standing yet. But of all these events the local documents tell us nothing. In spite of the stirring scenes enacted at Kenilworth, scarce five miles away, we do not know whether the folk of the town took part with De Montfort or with the King.
The city has no associations with Edward I.,[198] but his son, who had strong partisans among the convent folk, appointed a levy to meet him at Coventry on February 28, 1322, before he went to fight with and defeat Lancaster at Boroughbridge.[199] Edward III. tarried in Coventry in 1327, the year Cheylesmore passed into Isabella's hands. This queen is one of many women who bulk large in Coventry history. Her ears were always open to the complaints of the hard usage her tenants received from the prior, and messengers doubtless often travelled between Coventry and Castle Rising, in Norfolk, to bear news to the queen of her enemy's undoing. She also took the Grey Friars, who had become famous for their sanctity, under her protection, and a letter[200] from her, written at their request, begging that there might be no interference with their privileges of burial, is still extant. At that time many bodies of great folk, who "as Franciscans thought to pass disguised," were buried clothed in the habit of the order in the Grey Friars' chapel, bringing no small profit to that famous house. No doubt the Queen's protection of their rivals was another drop in the monks' cup of bitterness.
After Cheylesmore and the Earl's-half became a royal manor, kings and princes very frequently visited the city; for as Coventry had by this time become an important place—already accounted the fifth city in the kingdom—its wealth was an attraction to needy kings, who desired to be on good terms with burghers who were becoming a power in the land. It was this wealth which enabled the citizens to establish their position in the reign of Edward III. and his grandson by the purchase of fuller and yet fuller charters of liberty; but this wealth did not relieve the city from the agrarian and industrial unrest which makes memorable the reign of Richard II. At the time of the Peasant Revolt in 1381 John Ball was taken in hiding in an old house, says Froissart, in Coventry, where he had possibly a home or relatives.[201] The commonalty of the city had, maybe, given ear to his doctrines of equality and communism in former days, for there was at that time great suffering and discontent among the poorer folk. The artizans were oppressed not by their lord—as the men of S. Alban's or Bury S. Edmund's—but by their own fellow-townsfolk, the rich merchants, who held high office in the corporation. Year after year there comes the same complaint. This or that mayor enclosed the common pasture lands,[202] so that the people had not sufficient grass for their cattle, or refused to punish his brethren and allies the victuallers, who broke the assize of bread, so that the people were cheated of the barest necessaries of life. The enraged artizans, who, in 1387, "cast loaves at the mayor's head because the bakers kept not the assize, neither did the mayor punish them according to his office," would no doubt listen gladly to the discourses of this old-time socialist. "Good people," he would say to the assembled multitude, "the maters gothe nat well to passe in Englande, nor shall nat do tyll every thyng be common.... We be all come fro one father and one mother, Adam and Eve; wherby can they (the gentlemen) say or shewe that they be gretter lordes than we be?... They dwell in fayre houses, and we have the payne and traveyle, raine and wynde in the feldes; and by that that cometh of our labours they kepe and maynteyne their estates.... Thus Jehan [Ball] sayd ... and the people ... wolde murmure one with another in the feldes and in the wayes as they went togyder, affermyng howe Jehan Ball sayd trouthe."[203] Change a word here and there, substitute "merchant" for "gentleman," and "in the workshops" for "in the fields," and you have a discourse which would have greatly enraged the men of Coventry at the time of the Peasant Revolt.