The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

[395] The prior, in 1498, is said to have refused to pay it for twenty years (Leet Book, 592).

[396] Ib., 430 sqq.

[397] Leet Book, 436 sqq.

[398] Leet Book, 348. "Cattle surcharging the common to be driven to the pound and distress taken." And yet this very year the corporation declared to the prior that the citizens always had driven their cattle "without number" on the commons.

[399] Leet Book, 439. The meadows in question were the Prior's Waste and the close by the New Gate. See above, p. 176.

[400] i.e. "eyes."

[401] Leet Book, 441.

[402] Leet Book, 443 sqq.

[403] Mayor's reply, Leet Book, 457.

[404] In the lord's outwoods, moors, and heaths, which were never under the plough, "he should not be stinted, for the soil is his" (Rogers, Six Cent. 90). It is extremely doubtful whether the common lands of Coventry should be included in this category; many of them had been "under the plough."