BABLAKE AND S. JOHN'S CHURCH
Two "seditious bills"—one nailed on the minster door on S. Anne's Day—show how strained the situation was becoming. If ever, during a century and a half, the rule of the Coventry guilds had been as thoroughly detested as now, the feeling had never been put in words that have come down to us with such unmistakable force. Of these attacks, the second has a much loftier tone. After a passing reference to Laurence, lying in prison—
"You have hunted the hare,
You hold him in a snare"—
there come, in the first set of verses, a warning to all the great folk that have forgotten to rule justly:—
"Ye that be of myght,
Se that ye do right,
Thynk on your othe;
For wher that ye do wrong,
Ye shall mend hit among,
Though ye be never so loth."
The poet and his friends—he says in the second set of verses—show outward respect to their rulers, but their minds are full of bitterness:—
"This cyte is bond thad shuld be fre,
The right is holden fro the Cominalte;
Our Comiens that at lamas open shuld be cast
They be closed in & hegged full fast,
And he that speketh for our right is in the hall,[445]
And that is shame for yewe & for us all;
You can not denygh hit but he is your brother;
& to bothe Gilds he hath paid as moch as another."
As for the "commonalty," they have no more to lose, the verse goes on to say:—