The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

William Saunders, the father of Laurence, had been mayor in the year the Prior's Waste was enclosed. He must have been a wealthy citizen to rise to the mayor's degree. Since 1434 the family had lived in Spon Street,[393] a convenient neighbourhood for those of the dyer's occupation, as the river flowed near. If he had been of a submissive temper, in all likelihood Laurence would have risen to high places, as his father had done. Owing perhaps to William Saunders's influence, early in life the son once gave his adherence to the municipality, in so far as, when the question of enclosing the Waste was brought forward, his name appears among the two hundred and sixteen who consented to the measures which, on looking back eleven years later, he unreservedly condemned. It was in 1480 that he was chosen to fill the post of chamberlain or treasurer, and probably from that time, as a member of both the guilds, or as a late municipal officer, he was on the roll of those liable to be summoned by the mayor to attend the council.[394] The chamberlainship was an irksome post. The officers were overseers of the common pasture, and took fines from the owners of strayed cattle. They received the murage dues, which were devoted to repairing the walls and city buildings, giving in an account of the outlay at the end of the year. The murage money was continually running short about this time, as the prior could not be induced to pay his share, and the chamberlains were frequently called upon to make up the deficit.[395]

The corporation quickly found they had reason to repent of their choice. Laurence was a "masterful" man; "where he is subject and servant he would subdue us all if he might get assistance," the mayor complains in a letter written this year to the Prince of Wales. The Leet Book gives a specimen of the new officer's insubordination.[396] It appears that labourers had been set to quarry for stone required for repairing the town wall. At the end of the week the two chamberlains, Saunders and his fellow, William Hede, refused, contrary to custom, to give them their wages, Laurence saying "presumptously" to the mayor that "those that set them awork shuld pay for him." The two officers were there and then committed to prison, where they lay for a week. In the end the petitions of their friends obtained a release. Both were, however, bound in £40 to abide by the decision of the mayor and council as to their punishment. The mayor and council fixed upon a fine of £10, and of this they afterwards gave back £6 to the two chamberlains, a piece of liberality which shows that the town rulers knew their cause was weak, or thought it impolitic to push Saunders to extremities while such a strong feeling in his favour existed throughout the city.

Matters did not improve as time went on. The Leet Book relates how Laurence, in spite of the forbearance shown towards him, was "wilfully disposed" against both the mayor and "common people," distraining their cattle and taking "excess" fines for the pound. When summoned before the mayor to "see direction," according to custom, he "many times grudged so to do, and in manner at all times disdained to be led by the said mayor." Finally, on September 20, having obtained licence to leave the city on the plea of business at Southampton, he turned his horse's head in the direction of Ludlow and rode thither, bearing in his hands a petition addressed to the Prince of Wales, who, as Duke of Cornwall, was the lord and special protector of the city. The prince, a child of ten years old, kept his court at Ludlow Castle, at that time under the guardianship of his uncle, the Earl Rivers.

THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, ST. MARY'S HALL

It is very evident that this account of the first falling-out between the chamberlains and the corporation does not go to the root of the matter. Laurence's conduct is more explicable when we turn to the version he gives of the affair in the "Petition of the chamberlains and citizens of Coventry,"[397] for in this document, which he tendered to the prince's council, his finger can be distinctly traced. According to this petition, there were two grievances under which the community then laboured. In the first place the prior, the recorder, Bristowe, and others, withheld from them half of the common lands; in the second, a favoured few "maintained" by the recorder and the mayor, "surcharged" the pasture with what number of sheep they chose, while the common folk of the city were not allowed to go beyond their "stint," the number laid down by the authorities. In a city where there was much clothmaking, and wool greatly in request, there was naturally a good deal of scope for the grazier, and no doubt the men of this calling had come to an understanding with the municipality. The chamberlains' duty, however, was perfectly clear. They were enjoined by an order of leet, passed only nine years before, to drive the flocks of those who surcharged the commons to the pound, and take distress from the owners until they should pay the customary fine.[398] This order they accordingly fulfilled, but whether they really asked for what the municipal version calls an "excess" fine there is no means of discovering. But the mayor desired that they should be ruled by his likings and accordingly tried the persuasion of a week's imprisonment. Finding that after their release the chamberlains still persisted in this course, he again and again delivered up the sheep and remitted the fine. Whenever this was done the officers sustained the loss of several shillings, for the charge for every score was fourpence, and there is mention of nine and ten score, and even of 300 sheep driven into the pound. It would seem that in all these matters the mayor was but the tool of the recorder, Harry Boteler, or Butler, who had succeeded to the recordership in 1456, in the room of Thomas Littleton, of famous memory. It was Boteler who, according to the petition, kept Saunders and Hede in prison over the day of the Easter leet, and "wolde in no wyse suffre" them "to speke a worde for the said comown." He, too, urged on them the signing of the recognisance in £40 "to obbeye the meirs commandements" about the pinfold charges, although the chamberlains "grudged" to do so, "in so moche as they were solemply sworen to the contrarie." And from this bond he would not release them, he cried a month later, "for the best pece of scarlet in England." As for the prior's sheep, though four hundred of them were grazing on the common, "contrarie to old custom," the recorder would not suffer them to be pinned, because the prior, forsooth, was "lord of the soil." And when the chamberlains asked that the closes which the prior kept in severalty might be thrown open at Lammas, it was Boteler who refused, alleging the "composition" made between the prior and the community "in the time of William Saunders beying meir."[399]

"Wher it ought to be comen as all the body of the city knowen; in that the forseid Laurens, on of the said Chamberleins, grugged (grudged) insomoche as the seid mair, decessed, was his fadir and myght not answer for hymself, but said 'that he trusted in God to see hit comen ayen.'"

Then the recorder burst forth: