In this chamber is to be seen a beautiful piece of tapestry, executed in 1450, measuring thirty feet by ten, and containing eighty figures.
In the free school, founded by John Moles, in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir William Dugdale, the antiquarian and historian of Warwickshire, was educated. The income is about £900 a-year, and the scholars have open to competition two fellowships of St. John’s College, Oxon, one at Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either University. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by a large number of scholars.
There are more than a dozen educational and other charities for the benefit of the poor, enjoying a revenue of many thousands a-year.
There are also several curious specimens of domestic architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to be found in Coventry. It is, however, on the whole, a dark, dirty, inconvenient city. The surrounding belt of Lammas lands on which the freemen have the right of pasturing their horses and cows, has prevented any increase in the limits of the city.
In the middle ages Coventry was celebrated for its “mysteries and pageants,” of which an account has been published by Mr. Reader, a local bookseller.
The chief manufactures are of ribands and of watches, both transplantations from the Continent. The electors of Coventry distinguished themselves by their consistency during the Free-trade agitation. They exacted a pledge from their members in favour of Free-trade, except in watches and ribands. More recently these same Coventry men have had the good sense to prefer a successful man of business, the architect of his own fortunes, to a Right Honourable Barrister and ex-Railway Commissioner.
One thing needful to preserve the manufacturing position of Coventry is, a first-rate School of Design—labour, and coal, and ample means of conveyance they have, east and west, and north and south; and now the manufacturers only need the cultivation of true principles of taste among the whole riband-weaving population. For taste is a rare article, and many draughts of small fry must be made before one leviathan salmon can be caught. Great advances have been made recently in the production of the best kinds of ribands. A specimen produced by subscription for the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851, proved that Coventry was quite able to rival the choicest work of France in the class of machine-made ribands. The application of steam power to this class of manufactures is of but recent date. Coventry surveyed, and this may be done in a few hours, unless the traveller is able and willing to examine its rich manufactories, it is difficult to resist the invitation of the railway porter, bawling, to Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick, names calling up a crowd of romantic associations, from Shakspeare to Scott and Bulwer; but for the present we must keep steadily on to Birmingham, where steam finds the chief raw materials of poetry and fashioner of beauty.
BIRMINGHAM.
A run of nineteen miles brings us to what the inhabitants call the Hardware Village, a healthy, ugly town, standing upon several hills, crowned with smoke, but free from fog.