The Lammas Lands
We have passed the period wherein the men of Coventry rebelled against their overlord the prior; in the late fourteenth century we enter upon one marked by internal strife. The law passed under Edward II.,[360] forbidding victuallers to hold any municipal office was frequently evaded, and in many towns the great power of this class was a source of endless trouble. Excitements in the guild-hall when the men, whose wages were fixed at statute rate, found they would not avail to buy them proper food, the shouting of angry crowds when the chamberlains at their Lammas ride refused to pull down fences to admit the freemen's sheep and cattle as they had done in times past, must have warned the mayor and his brethren to give heed to their ways. Murmurings were heard at an early date. In 1370 the customs laid on food for the purpose of raising money for murage provoked a rising. In 1387 the townsfolk "cast their loaves at the mayor's head, because the bakers kept not the assize",[361] neither did the mayor punish them according to his office, and again and again we hear of risings owing to that fruitful cause of trouble, the enclosure of the common lands.[362]
Swanswell Gate
Perhaps the townsmen were more sensitive with regard to the Lammas lands than on any other point. From time immemorial they had possessed certain rights over the common and Lammas pastures, which heretofore surrounded the city. There was still a great belt of these, about 2300 acres in extent in 1835, the commons, no doubt, representing the ancient manorial waste—Godiva's wood, two miles long and the same broad—and the Lammas and Michaelmas pastures, the manorial fields of meadow and arable, which were only free after the hay and corn harvest had been carried in. Thus, while there was on the common lands pasture for the cattle the whole year through, the citizens merely shared with various tenants or freeholders the use of Lammas and Michaelmas grounds, driving their cattle on them at certain seasons of the year, namely from Lammas (August 1) or Michaelmas (September 29) to Candlemas (February 2); during the remainder of the year the fields were in private hands. The extent of the common pastures was well known, but the peculiar tenure of the Lammas lands made it a more difficult matter to determine the exact area of pasture, held six months "in commonalty," and six "in severalty." From time to time angry disputes arose concerning the boundaries and extent of these lands, and a series of enclosures, whereof there was such bitter complaint in Warwickshire in the sixteenth century, did much to diminish the broad belt of pasture which once engirt the city. Various questions were, however, set at rest by a settlement in 1860, whereby half of the Lammas pasture was made over to the various freeholders who had half-yearly rights over them, and the remaining portion, held in trust for the freemen, was converted into common land for the whole year through. To this day there still remain tracts of breezy and often gorse-grown common at Hearsall, Stivichall, Whitley, Stoke, and Gosford Green. These and the small triangular patch, once known as Grey Friars' Green, form considerable relics of the freemen's pastures. Held, as the common report went, by the commonalty, "afore that any mayor or bailiff was,"[363] in other words before the incorporation of the city—these lands could not be alienated from the burghers' use without their consent.[364] The pastures were, however, frequently enclosed, openly for municipal purposes,[365] secretly for private gain. In the latter case there was naturally no word of consulting the burghers, and although in the former the community gave their consent to the measure, formally summoned by the mayor, the whole system of enclosures was so unpopular that it bred riots and endless discontent.
The whole question can be better surveyed by examining the careers of William Bristowe and Laurence Saunders in so far as they touch the little commonwealth of the city.
Close by Whitley Bridge is a piece of meadow called Alderford Piece,[366] which is still held by the owners of Whitley Abbey, although they have no other land on the Coventry side of the river Sherborne. Concerning this and sundry other meadows[367] a bitter feud was waged in Coventry during the fifteenth century between the family of Bristowe on the one hand, and the mayor, bailiffs, and community of the city on the other. The account of the struggle, which reveals some of the most interesting personalities in Coventry history, shows how tenacious were the memories of the commonalty where the extent of the Lammas lands was concerned, and how fierce their resentment when these suffered diminution by encroachment.