The Churches of Coventry | Page 6

didde; and when masse was 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 maze went afore the Kynge till he com withe in
his chambur, his seyd bredurn abydeng atte the chambur durra till the
Meyre cam ageyne. And at evensong tyme the same day, the Kynge, ...
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 19 s.
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