One of Warwickshire's oldest towns and best-preserved specimens of mediæval architecture is Coventry, famous for its legend of Lady Godiva, still commemorated by an annual procession during the great Show Fair, held the first Friday after Trinity Sunday and continued for eight days. From Warwick to Coventry is a drive of ten miles, past many villages whose windows and chimneys form as many temptations to stop and linger, but Coventry itself is so rich in these peculiarities that a walk through its streets is a reward for one's hurry on the road. One would suppose, according to the saying of a ready-witted lady, that the town must be by this time full of a large and interesting society, since so many people have been at various times "sent to Coventry." The origin of the saying, as an equivalent for being tabooed (itself a term of savage origin and later date), is reported to be the deserved unpopularity of the military there about a century ago, when no respectable woman dared to be seen in the streets with a soldier. This led to the place being considered by regiments as an undesirable post, since they were shunned by the decent part of the town's-people, and to be "sent to Coventry" became, in consequence, a synonym for being "cut." There are, however, other interpretations of the saying, and, though this sounds plausible, it may be incorrect. The heart of the town, once the strong-hold of the "Red Rose," is still very ancient, picturesque and sombre-looking, though the suburbs have been widened, "improved" and modernized to suit present requirements. The Coventry of our day depends for its prosperity on its silk and ribbon trade, necessitating all the appliances of looms, furnaces and dye-houses, which give employment to a population reaching nearly forty thousand. The continuance of prosperous trade in most of the ancient English boroughs is a very interesting feature in their history; and though no doubt the picturesqueness of towns is increased or preserved by their falling into the Pompeii stage and dwindling into loneliness or decay, one cannot wish such to be their fate. Few English towns that have been of any importance centuries ago have gone back, though some have stood still; and if they have lost their social prestige, the spirit of the times has gradually made the loss of less consequence in proportion as the importance of trade and manufactures has increased. The ribbon trade is indeed a new one, hardly two centuries old, but Coventry was the centre of the old national woollen industry long before. Twenty years ago, the silk trade having languished, the queen revived the fashion of broad ribbons, and Coventry wares became for a while the rage, just as Honiton lace and Norwich silk shawls did at other times, chiefly through the same example of court patronage of native industries. St. Michael's, Trinity and Christ churches furnish the three noted spires, the first one of the highest and most beautiful in England, and the third the remains of a Gray Friars' convent, to which a new church has been attached. Of the ancient cathedral (Lichfield and Coventry conjointly formed one see) only a few ruins remain, and the same is the case with the old walls with their thirty-two towers and twelve gates. The old hospitals and schools have fared better—witness Bond's Hospital at Bablake (once an adjacent hamlet, but now within the city limits), commonly called Bablake Hospital, founded by the mayor of Coventry in the latter part of Henry VII.'s reign for the use of forty-five old men, with a revenue of ten hundred and fifty pounds; Ford's Hospital for thirty-five old women, a building so beautiful in its details that John Carter the archæologist declared that it "ought to be kept in a case;" Hales' free school, where Dugdale, the famous antiquary and the possessor of Merivale Hall, near Warwick, received the early part of his education; and St. Mary's Hall, built by Henry VI. for the Trinity guild on the site of an old hall now used as a public hall and for town-council meetings. The buildings surround a courtyard, and are entered by an arched gateway from the street; and, says Rimmer, it is hardly possible in all the city architecture of England to find a more interesting and fine apartment than the great hall. The private buildings in the old part of the town are as noticeable in their way as the public buildings; and as many owe their origin to the tradesmen of Coventry, formerly a body well known for its wealth and importance, they form good indications of the taste of the ancient "city fathers." In 1448 this body equipped six hundred men, fully armed, for the royal service, and in 1459 they were proud to receive the Parliamentum Diabolicum which Henry VI. called together within shelter of their walls, and turned to the use of a public prosecution against the beaten party of the White Rose: hence its name. One of the private houses, at the corner of Hertford street, bears on its upper part an effigy of the tailor, Peeping Tom, who, tradition says, was struck dead for impertinently gazing at Countess Godiva on her memorable ride through the town.
The great variety in the designs of windows and chimneys, and the disregard of regularity or conventionality in their placing, are characteristics which distinguish old English domestic architecture, as also the lavish use of wood-carving on the outside as well as the inside of dwellings. No Swiss chalet can match the vagaries in wood common to the gable balconies of old houses, whether private or public: one beautiful instance occurs, for example, in a butcher's stall and dwelling, the only one left of a similar row in Hereford. Here, besides the ordinary devices, all the emblems of a slaughter-house—axes, rings, ropes, etc., and bulls' heads and horns—are elaborately reproduced over the doors and balconies of the building, and the windows, each a projecting one, are curiously wreathed and entwined. This ingeniousness in carving is a thing unknown now, when even picture-frames are cast in moulds and present a uniform and meaningless appearance, while as to house decoration the eye wearies of the few paltry, often-repeated knobs or triangles which have taken the place of the old individual carvings. The corn-market of Coventry, the former Cross Cheaping, is another of the city's living antiquities, as busy now as hundreds of years ago, when the magnificent gilded cross still standing in James II.'s time, and whose regilding is said to have used up fifteen thousand four hundred and three books of gold, threw its shadow across the square. Even villages of a few hundred inhabitants often possessed market-places architecturally worthy of attention, and sometimes the covered market, open on all sides and formed of pillars and pointed arches, supported a town-hall or rooms for public purposes above. The crosses were by no means simply religious emblems: though their presence aimed at reminding worldlings of religion and investing common acts of life with a religious significance, their purposes were mainly practical. Proclamations were read from the steps and tolls collected from the market-people: again, they served for open-air pulpits, and often as distributing-places for some "dole" or charity bequeathed to the poor of the town. A fountain was sometimes attached to them, and the covered market-crosses, of which a few remain (Beverly, Malmesbury and Salisbury), were merely covered spaces, surmounted with a cross, for country people to rest in in the heat or the rain, and were generally the property of some religious house in the neighborhood. They were usually octagonal and richly groined, and if small when considered as a shelter, were yet generally sufficient for their purpose, as most of the market-squares were full of covered stalls, with tents, awnings or umbrellas, as they are to this day. The crosses were sometimes only an eight-sided shaft ornamented with niches and surmounted by a crucifix, and very often, of whatever shape they were, they were built in memoriam to a dead relative by some rich merchant or landlord. As objects of beauty they were unrivalled, and improved the look of a village-green as much as that of a busy market.
But Coventry, as I have said before, is a growing as well as an ancient city; and when places grow they must rival their neighbors in pleasure as well as in business, which accounts for the yearly races, now established nearly forty years, and each year growing more popular and successful. No doubt the share of gentlemen's houses which falls to the lot of every county-town in England has something to do with the brilliancy of these local gatherings: every one in the neighborhood makes it a point to patronize the local gayeties, to belong to the local military, to enter horses, to give prizes, to attend balls; and if politics are never quite forgotten, especially since the suffrage has been extended and the number of voters to be conciliated so suddenly increased, this only adds to the outer bustle and success of these social "field-days." Coventry has a pretty flourishing watchmaking trade, besides its staple one of ribbon-weaving; and indeed the whole county, villages included, is given up to manufacture: the places round Warwick and Coventry to a great extent share in the silk trade, while Alcester has a needle manufacture of its own, Atherstone a hat manufacture, and Amworth, which is partly in Staffordshire, was famous until lately for calico-printing and making superfine narrow woollen cloths: it also has flax-mills. The kings of Mercia used to keep state here, and the Roman road, Watling Street, passed through it, with which contrast now the iron roads that pass every place of the least importance, and in this neighborhood lead to the busy centre of the hardware trade, smoky, wide-awake, turbulent, educated, hard-headed Birmingham. This, too, is within the "King-maker's" county, and how oddly it has inherited or picked up his power will be noted by those familiar with the political and parliamentary history of England within the last forty years; but, though now an ultra-Radical constituency, it is no historical upstart, but can trace its name in Domesday Book, where it appears as Bermengeham, and can find its record as an English Damascus in the fifteenth century, before which it had been already famous for leather-tanning. The death, a year ago, of one of the most gifted though retiring men of the English nobility, the late Lord Lyttleton, makes it worth mentioning that his house, Hagley, stands twelve miles from Birmingham, and that both his house and his forefathers were well known as the home and patrons of literary men: Thomson, Pope and other poets have described and apostrophized Hagley. The late owner was a good antiquary and writer, but in society he was painfully shy.
The southern part of Warwickshire, adjoining Gloucestershire, or rather a wedge of that shire advancing into Worcestershire, is the most rich, agriculturally speaking, and besides its apple-orchards is famous for its dairy and grazing systems, while the northern part, once a forest, is still full of heaths, moors and woods. There is not much to say about its farms, unless technically, nor the appearance of the farm-buildings, the modern ones being generally of brick and more substantial than beautiful. Country-seats have a likeness to each other, and a way of surrounding themselves with the same kind of garden scenery, so that unless where the whole face of Nature has some strongly-marked features, such as mountains or moors, the houses of the local gentry do not impart a special individuality to a neighborhood; but in a mild and blooming way one may say that Warwickshire has a fair share of pretty country-houses and attractive parsonages. Still, the beauty of the southern and midland counties is altogether a beauty of detail and cultivation, of historical association and architectural contrast; not that which in the north and east depends much upon the beholder's sympathy with Nature unadorned—wild stretches of seashore and pathless moors, mountain-defiles and wooded tarns. Wales and Cornwall, again, have the stamp of a race whose surroundings have taught them shrewdness and perseverance, and their scenery is such that in many places, though the eye misses trees, it hardly regrets them. In the midland counties, on the other hand, take the trees away and the landscape would be scarcely beautiful at all, though the land might be equally rich, undulating and productive. Half the special beauty of England depends on her greenery, her hedges, her trees and her gardens, in which the houses and cottages take the place of birds' nests.