Queen Margaret could occasionally be gracious, and her eagerness to see the Mystery Plays performed at the feast of Corpus Christi must have flattered the citizens. She came "prively" from Kenilworth on the eve of the festival, and "lodged at Richard Wodes, the grocer,[264] where Richard Sharp sometime dwelled; and there all the plays were first played," save Doomsday, the drapers' pageant, which could not be seen, for evening came on and put a close to the performance. The mayor and bailiffs sent a present to Richard Wood's house, namely "ccc (300) paynemaynes,[265] a pipe of rede wyne, a dosyn capons of haut grece,[266] a dosyn of grete fat pykes, a grete panyer full of pescodes and another panyer of pipyns and orynges, & ij cofyns of counfetys, & a pot of grene gynger." Quite a little court was assembled at the grocer's house to witness those strange spectacles in which the dramatic instinct of the Middle Ages found vent. The Duke of Buckingham and "my lady his wife," who might be regarded as natives of the city, would do the honours of the place; and let us hope those ardent Lancastrians, Lord Rivers and his lady, father and mother of the future queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and the elder and younger Countess of Shrewsbury, applauded the ravings of Pilate and Herod, the pompous characters of the religious drama, or heard with complaisance the devil's jokes. It is hard to imagine Queen Margaret, that tireless fighter and plotter, or Lady Shrewsbury, the great Talbot's widow, whose feud with the Berkeleys filled Gloucestershire with strife for over a generation, engaged in such a harmless amusement as laughing over the quaint performances of their citizen supporters, nibbling the while some of the good mayor's supply of apples and sweetmeats. How delighted the citizens were at her highness's condescension! When she went next day "to her mete" to Coleshill, "right a good feliship—which plesid her highnes right well,"—attended her to the "vtmast side of theyre franchise, where hit plesyd her to gyff them grete thank bothe for theyre present and theyre gentyll attendaunce." In the August of that same year, Henry and his Queen again visited Coventry, sleeping there from August 31 until September 2, and "about x of the belle" on the latter day the Queen rode to Sharneford and on to sleep at Leicester "toward the forest of Rokyngham for to hunt," while at two o'clock Henry rode forth on his journey towards Northampton, and the men of Coventry did not see them again for two years, when a more troubled scene had opened.
The records of Coventry are nothing but a blank during the succeeding years; for the council merely met at the appointed season to elect a mayor, but transacted, as far as we know, no other business; tradition has it that the city was divided against itself, a highly probable case when we consider how high the tide of Yorkist and Lancastrian party spirit was running in the rest of the country. In the political world this season was filled by ineffectual peacemakings and renewed preparations for war. Warwick, after provoking the wrath of the Lancastrian party, fled to Calais, and his father, Salisbury, met and worsted Lord Audley, the royalist leader, who had been sent to capture him, at the field of Bloreheath (September 23, 1459). The Yorkist lords flew to arms; but when the King proposed to give battle at Ludford, weakened by the defection of a certain Andrew Trollope, they all dispersed and fled. The Yorkists being thus humbled, the time was come for Margaret's vengeance. No writs were sent to the principal Yorkist chiefs for the parliament summoned to meet at Coventry on November 20, and the knights and burgesses were nominated by the Lancastrian leaders. The assembly met, and, by one sweeping act of attainder, deprived twenty-three leading Yorkists of their inheritance. People called this the "diabolical parliament"; henceforward there was no hope of a reconciliation between York and Lancaster. A petition[267] presented by John Rous, the antiquary of Guy's Cliffe, to this parliament, calling attention to the enclosure of common lands and increase of pasture, is now lost; it fell on deaf ears at that time of party strife.
It seems that the Queen's late violent proceedings, or the plundering propensities of her followers, had caused the townspeople to grow somewhat cold in her cause. When a commission of array dated from Northampton arrived a few days before the Candlemas feast, 1460, the sheriffs kept it back, and it was fourteen days before the newly elected mayor, John Wyldegrys,[268] received the missive addressed to his predecessor conveying the king's command. This was surely not the result of accident but design, the sheriffs having their own reasons for thwarting the mayor, or being ardent Yorkists. Then the Duke of Buckingham arrived, perhaps to learn the reason of the delay, and the mayor bethought him of this indiscretion. "To my lord of Buckingham," lodging at the "Angel," he sent to ask whether "any hurt might grow to the city" because of the neglect of the commission, and to ensure the duke's goodwill, sent thirty loaves, two pike, two tench, some capons, a peacock, and a peahen to his lodging.
A letter which he received from the King about this time hardly tended, it may be thought, to reassure John Wyldegrys.[269] "For asmuche," the King wrote, "as credible reporte is made vn to us howe diuers of th' inhabitantes of oure cite of Coventre haue, sithe the tyme of oure departyng from thens, vsed and had right vnfittyng langage ayenst oure estate and personne, and in favouring of oure supersticious[270] traitours, and rebelles, nowe late in oure parlement there attaincted, wherby grete comocions and murmur ben like to folowe, to the grete distourbance of oure feithfull, true subgettes, onlesse that punisshement and remede for the redresse therof the rather be had, we therfor ... charge you diligently t' enquer and make serche among the seid inhabitants of suche vnfittyng langage as is aboue seid, and do theym to be emprysoned and punisshed accordyng to their demerits, and in example of other of semblable condicion, as ye desyre to do that shall plaise vs."[271]
John Wyldegrys probably executed this commission with all the alacrity of fear, and we hear that in the following October the Duke of York had a strange commission to sit in judgment on various offenders in Coventry "to punish them by the fawtes to the kyng's lawys." But the duke, who was on his way home from Ireland, could not afford to tarry, having weightier business on hand, namely, the laying claim to the throne of England, and the drawing up of a genealogy to lay before parliament, showing that his claim to the throne was based on rightful inheritance. Since the battle of Northampton (July 10, 1460), the King had been in the hands of the Yorkist lords, Salisbury and Warwick.[272] At this battle, too, Henry lost Buckingham, the most powerful man at the time in Warwickshire, and a pillar of the Lancastrian cause. After his death, maybe, the men of Coventry felt more free to choose what side they would, and the plunder wherein Margaret's host indulged after Wakefield (December 14) and S. Alban's (February 17, 1461) completed their alienation from the Lancastrian party. The Yorkists had now the upper hand in the city. After the battle of S. Alban's £100 was collected throughout the wards for men to go to London with "the earl of March,"[273] who, since his father's death at Wakefield, had become the hope of the Yorkist cause. On the day after his coronation (March 5) Edward IV. dispatched a letter to the mayor and his brethren full of thanks for the citizens' loyalty to his cause, praying for their "good continuance in the same," and praising their "good and substantial rule." He thus assured the support of the people of the place, and on the terrible field of Towton, where "the dead hindered the living from coming to close quarters," the men of Coventry fought under the standard of the Black Ram in the Yorkist ranks. The Leet Book tells us that £80 was collected throughout the wards for the 100 men "which went with oure soverayn liege lord kyng Edward the IIIIthe to the felde yn the north."[274]
Many of the towns took part with Edward in this famous battle, for order and good government seemed more likely to follow from the Yorkist than the Lancastrian rule. Each town went to the field under their ancient ensign. As a contemporary ballad has it:—
"The wolf came fro Worcester, ful sure he thought to byte,
The dragon came fro Gloucester, he bent his tayle to smyte;
The griffin cam fro Leycester, flying in as tyte,
The George cam fro Nottingham, with spere for to fyte."[275]
The citizens certainly continued to deserve the King's favour. They presented him with £100 and a cup to his "welcome to his cite of Coventre from the felde yn the North,"[276] and decorated the city with pageants and goodly shows in his honour, the smiths' craft providing the character of Samson, who no doubt gave in appropriate verses the promise to use his great strength in defending the King's just claim "to his newly-acquired sovereignty."[277] In that year also all men dwelling in the city were sworn to King Edward to be "his true lege men." In later times the King learnt to distrust this ancient Lancastrian refuge, but for the present there was nothing but amity between himself and the citizens. So vivid was the remembrance of the plundering of Margaret's army, that the old loyalty towards the Lancastrians turned to rancour. And the same spring, on the King-maker's coming—the first important mention of him in the city annals—£40 was collected to be given to him for the payment of forty men that went to the north to resist "kyng Herry and quene Marget that were, and alle other with theym accompanyed, as Scottes and Frenchemen, of theyre entre yn to this lande." The mere whisper of a foreign alliance and invasion was sufficient to damn the Lancastrian cause, for Lord Rous, with other refugees, aided by the Scots, were making trouble on the Border. The men returned on July 29, for the north was pacified, men believed, the Scots having rebellions, stirred up by King Edward, to look to nearer home.
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