The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

It is likely that Richard saw Coventry once again when, badly horsed and in unkingly array, in 1399 they brought him, a prisoner, on the way from Flint on the last journey to London.

It is fitting that in a city so unorthodox as Coventry the first attack should be made on the vast possessions of the Church. At the summoning of the "Unlearned Parliament" in 1404 a special precept was given to the sheriffs to prevent the return of those skilled in the law as members of parliament, and Coventry, remote as it was from the law-courts at Westminster, was a happy spot to choose for such an assembly. The respect the clergy had once commanded was now withheld from them by reason of the dissolute lives so many led, and their greed of wealth, whereto we find such abundant allusion in "Piers Plowman" and Chaucer's poems, and the proposal to appropriate the wealth of the Church to secular ends was well liked by the knights of the shire. Archbishop Arundel pleaded in response to this attack that the clergy gave tenths and the laity only fifteenths towards the King's necessities; moreover, the Church was not wanting day nor night in rendering the King service by masses and prayers to implore God's blessing upon him. Whereat Sir John Cheyne, the speaker of the Commons, with a stern countenance, said "that he valued not the prayers of the Church." But it was early days for such words as these. "It might easily be seen what would become of the kingdom," was the severe reply, "when devout addresses to God, wherewith His Divine Majesty was pleased, were set so light by." The work of Henry VIII. was not to be anticipated, and the knights desisted from the attempt at the threat of excommunication.[213]

The town was witness at this time of an example of the lack of reverence for the mysteries of religion displayed by the people who were about the person of the King. Dysentery was very prevalent at Coventry during the session of parliament, and one day the archbishop of Canterbury encountered a procession bearing the Host through the streets to some sick man's bedside.[214] The archbishop bent his knee, but the King's knights and esquires, not interrupting their conversation, turned their backs upon the Sacrament. The ecclesiastic was filled with holy indignation at such irreverence. "Never before was the like abomination beheld among Christian men," he cried, and went to complain of the offenders to the King. Henry was at first loth to punish his followers, but he was finally moved to do so by the prelate's eloquence, for the House of Lancaster in its weakness had allied itself with the Church, and looking to that body for support, the King was careful not to alienate so powerful a friend as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Lancastrian kings were, however, better known in the city as borrowers than as champions of the orthodox faith. Royal folk at that time, in spite of their great array and state, were often at a loss for ready money, and the treasury of Henry IV. was notoriously an empty one. Henry V. too, wanting money to prosecute his wars, in the third year of his reign borrowed 200 marks from the mayor and community, leaving in pledge "his great collar, called Iklynton collar,"[215] garnished with 4 rubies, 4 great sapphires, 32 great pearls, and 53 other pearls of a lesser sort, weighing 36¾ oz., and then valued at £500. When the King or any great noble desired to borrow, and the citizens were willing to lend, collectors were appointed by the corporation to go through each ward and take from every man his contribution towards the loan. Each citizen paid, according to his ability, a sum varying from 13s. 4d., taken from the most substantial people, to a penny from those, of the poorest class. The extent of every one's property, more or less accurately gauged on these occasions, was a matter of common knowledge. Where there was so little privacy in life and such frequent assessments, neither wealth nor poverty could well be hid.

Did Shakespeare glean any legends of Prince Hal from Coventry sources? He must often have visited the city as a travelling player, and, since both the names of Shakespeare and Ardern (or Arden) occur in the Coventry records, the poet may have had kinsfolk in the place. He brings the prince quite gratuitously thither, causing him to meet Falstaff followed by the famous ragged regiment on the high road leading to the city.[216] Falstaff was in his youth "page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,"[217] who held Caludon Castle, a few miles from Coventry, and Peto, whom his master bade meet him at the towns-end, bears a Coventry name.[218] It may be there is little or no contemporary evidence for the tale of Henry's wild doings, which Shakespeare localised at Gadshill and the "Boar's Head" tavern in Eastcheap, and it is more or less a matter of temperament or preconceived notions with historians whether, on weighing the testimony, they dismiss or accept familiar traditions of the prince's robbery of his own receivers,[219] or assault on Judge Gascoigne.[220] To the ordinary reader it seems as if there cannot have been such a vast deal of smoke without some little fire. The suspicion grows that Henry may well have passed a short time of idle apprenticeship before becoming a veritably industrious master.

There is a familiar Coventry variant of the Gascoigne story wherein the mayor, John Hornby, plays, as it were, the part of the Chief-Justice, since he, in 1412, say the City Annals or Mayor-lists—"arrested the Prince in the Priory [one MS. reads "city">[ of Coventry." Unfortunately the source whence this information is obtained—the MS. Annals or Mayor-lists—is not above suspicion. The annals are a collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents,[221] varying slightly among themselves, but evidently, as far as the bulk of the earlier entries are concerned, copies of a common original, now probably lost. A chronological tangle, they contain most valuable and authentic information—particularly about the mystery plays—coupled with entries that are manifestly corrupt. It is conceivable that the earliest annalist placed on record that the prince "rested," i.e. remained at the priory during that particular mayoralty, or that he was concerned in some arrest made at the time, and that the entry has been transformed by the errors of successive copyists. In the latter case the process could be paralleled by the entry of 1425 when the MSS. gave as the principal event in the mayoralty of John Braytoft:—"He arrested the Earl of Warwick and brought him to the Gaol of this city." This is, beyond all possibility of doubt, an error. No Earl of Warwick was ever arrested at Coventry. Thomas Sharp, who worked eighty or ninety years ago, from documents that have been since destroyed, gives the early, correct version, borne out by independent testimony, when he reads: "The Earl of Warwick came to Coventry to seize on the Franchises, and inquisition was made of John Grace, and the mayor arrested him and brought him to the Gaol of the City."[222] It is therefore possible that similar errors may have crept into the Hornby entry, though this cannot be dismissed as a pure invention until a searching investigation has been made of contemporary records.

Henry V. seems to have been much beloved in Coventry, if we may judge by the hearty welcome given to him on his coming thither on March 21, 1421. The mayor and council ordered that £100 and a gold cup worth £10 should be presented to the King, and the same to the Queen "in suo adventu a Francia in Coventre," for those times a truly magnificent gift. The citizens never thereafter beheld the King. For in the following year, being overtaken at the Bois de Vincennes by a so grievous sickness that his physicians told him he had but two hours to live, he bade his confessors chant the Penitential Psalms. And in the midst of their chanting, as if in answer to an unseen adversary, he cried: "Thou liest, thou liest! My part is with the Lord Jesus." Thus died Henry V.

Troubles connected with religion soon came upon Coventry. In 1424 the preaching of a hermit attracted a great audience in the Little Park during five days' space. The preacher, one Grace, who had been first a monk, then a friar, and lastly a recluse, disarmed suspicion by announcing that he had been licensed to preach by the bishop's ministers of the diocese. At last, however, a report spread that he was not "licenciate," "and grett seying was among the people that the priour and frer Bredon wold have cursid all tho' that herdon the said John Grace preche." This rumour of the intention of the two most influential churchmen in the city—the head of S. Mary's convent, and the best-known member of the community of Grey Friars—greatly moved the townsfolk, and the two ecclesiastics above-named, fearful lest harm should befall them, refused to leave Trinity church, whither they had repaired for evensong, until the mayor should come to appease the multitude. "Notwithstandyng they myght have goone well inoughe whethur thei wold," the Leet Book says, with a touch of contempt. And thus it was that a report went about in the country "that the comens of Coventre wer rysen, and wold have distroyd the priour and the said frer," which report unhappily spread to the ears of those that were about the King. The next year the Earl of Warwick and a special commission of justices were sent down from Westminster to inquire into this movement within the city.[223] For some time the franchises were in danger of confiscation; but after the citizens had borne great charges, upwards of £80 for "counsel" and other costs, their peace with the ruling powers was made.

It is natural to infer that this disturbance, which the city authorities treated as so trifling, but which appeared to the powers at Westminster a highly serious matter, was connected with Lollard preaching. It seems that this obscure sect was never wholly crushed, but lingered on in certain districts throughout the fifteenth century. Leicestershire, in Wickliffe's time, had been a perfect hot-bed of heresy. "There was not a man or woman in that county," it has been said, "save priests and nuns, who did not at that time openly profess their disbelief in the doctrines of the Church, and their approval of the new views of the Lollards."[224] The contagion soon spread to Warwickshire. No doubt persecution did its work in many parts. The open profession of Lollardism was highly dangerous in the fifteenth century, and the cause counted many martyrs.