The Churches of Coventry | Page 6

don, the Meyre and his peres brought on the Kynge to his chambur in lyke wyse as they fet hym, save only that the Meyre with his mase went afore the Kynge till he com withe in his chambur, his seyd bredurn abydeng atte the chambur durre till the Meyre cam ageyne. And at evensong tyme the same day, the Kyng, ... sende the seyde gowne and furre that he were when he went in p'cession, and gaf hit frely to God and to Sent Michell, insomuch that non of the that broughte the gowne wolde take no reward in no wyse.
In 1451 he made the city with the villages and hamlets within its liberties into a county "distinct and altogether separate from the county of Warwick for ever," and in 1453 the King and Queen again visited the Priory. Perhaps out of gratitude for all this royal favour, Coventry adhered to the Lancastrian cause and in 1459 was chosen as the meeting place for the "Parliamentum Diabolicum," so called from the number of attainders passed against the Yorkists. The year 1467 however saw Edward IV and his Queen keeping their Christmas here, while less than two years later her father and brother were beheaded on Gosford Green (Aug. 1469).
After the king's landing at Holderness in 1471 the king-maker, declining a contest, occupied the town for the Lancastrians, and Edward passing on to London soon after turned and defeated the earl at Barnet. After Tewkesbury Edward paid the city another visit, and in return for its disloyalty seized its liberties and franchises, and only restored them for a fine of 500 marks. Royal visits still continued. Richard III came in 1483 to see the plays at the Feast of Corpus Christi; in 1485 Henry VII stayed at the mayor's house after his victory at Bosworth Field; and in 1487 kept St. George's Day at the Monastery, when the Prior at the service cursed, by "bell, book, and candle," all who should question the king's right to the throne. The importance of the Gilds is shown by the king and queen being made a brother and sister of the Trinity Gild; and the part that pageantry played in the lives of all men is seen in the many occasions on which kings and princes came hither to be entertained, not only with the plays "acted by the Grey Friars" but those in which the "hard-handed men" of, for instance, the Gild of the Sheremen and Tailors, "toil'd their unbreathed memories" in setting forth such subjects as the Birth of Christ and the Murder of the Innocents. But although Henry VIII himself was received in 1511 with pageantry and stayed at the Priory, royal favours and monastic hospitality availed neither men nor buildings when the Dissolution came. On 15th January, 1539, Thomas Camswell, the last Prior of St. Mary's, surrendered. "The Prior," reported Dr. London, the king's commissioner, "is a sad, honest priest as his neighbours do report him, and is a Bachelor of Divinity. He gave his house unto the king's grace willingly and so in like manner did all his brethren." The Doctor asks for good pensions for the dispossessed, not on the plea of justice but so that "others perceiving that these men be liberally handled will with better will not only surrender their houses, but also leave the same in the better state to the King's use."
The yearly revenue had been certified in the valuation at ￡731 19s. 5d. Deducting a Fee-Ferme rent to the Crown, reserved by Roger de Montalt, and other annual payments, the clear remainder was ￡499 7s. 4d. Bishop Rowland Lee, writing to "my singular good Lord Cromwell," implies that he had a promise from him to spare the church. "My good Lord," he says, "help me and the City both in this and that the church may stand, whereby I may keep my name, and the City have commodity and ease to their desire, which shall follow if by your goodness it might be brought to a collegiate church, as Lichfield, and so that fair City shall have a perpetual comfort of the same, as knoweth the Holy Trinity, who preserve your Lordship in honour to your heart's comfort."
But his entreaties, and those of the mayor and corporation, were all in vain, the church and monastic buildings were dismantled and destroyed piecemeal, and like so many other magnificent structures became a mere quarry for mean buildings and the mending of roads.
The site having been granted by Henry VIII to two gentlemen named Combes and Stansfield, passed soon into the hands of John Hales, the founder of the Free School, and in Elizabeth's reign was purchased by the Corporation.
The changes in religious opinion of the successive sovereigns were felt here by many poor victims.