The Churches of Coventry | Page 9

to the vicarage, in 1291 we find the priory receiving fifty marks and paying the vicar eight and a half.
Since 1537 the patronage has with that of Trinity, been exercised by the Crown.
The internal evidence of the date of the building is given in the description of the fabric. Of external evidence in the shape of records or deeds we have very little. Tradition says that there was once a brass tablet in the church bearing the following lines:
William and Adam built the Tower, Ann and Mary built the Spire; William and Adam built the Church, Ann and Mary built the Choir.
Now we know that William and Adam Botoner, who were each Mayor thrice between 1358 and 1385, built the tower, spending upon it ��100 a year for twenty-two years, but what foundation there is for the other statements cannot now be determined. The tower was in building from 1373 to 1394, and the choir is contemporary with it, the nave was in building from 1432 to 1450, and the spire was begun in 1430. As William was Mayor in 1358 it can hardly have been less than one hundred years after his birth that both nave and spire were begun. It is however, likely that other members of the family (if not he, by bequest) contributed largely to the general building fund.
Much of the history of a parish church is concerned with its internal economy but even the records of this are not quite trivial for they enlighten us on many points wherein we are rightly curious. We are, for instance, constantly reminded, as Dr. Gasquet points out in "Mediaeval Parish Life," that "religious life permeated society in the Middle Ages, particularly in the fifteenth century, through the minor confraternities" or gilds.
Thus the Drapers' Gild made itself responsible not only for the upkeep of the Lady Chapel but also for the lights always burning on the Rood-loft, every Master paying four pence for each "prentys" and every "Jurneman" four pence. The cost of lights formed a serious item in church expenditure, needing the rent of houses and lands for their maintenance. Guy de Tyllbrooke, vicar in the late thirteenth century, gave all his lands and buildings on the south side of the church to maintain a light before the high altar, day and night, for ever, "and all persons who shall convert this gift to any other use directly or indirectly shall incur the malediction of Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin, St. Michael and All Saints."
Royal visits to the church have been noticed in the history of the priory and city, especially that in 1450 which was apparently intended to mark the completion of the church. Reference has also been made to the plays and pageants with which such visitors were entertained. The site for the performance of the cycle of Corpus Christi plays was the churchyard on the north of St. Michael's. Queen Margaret, whose visits were so frequent that the city acquired the fanciful title of "the Queen's Bower" came over from Kenilworth on the Eve of the Feast in 1456, "at which time she would not be met, but privily to see the play there on the morrow and she saw then all the pageants played save Doomsday, which might not be played for lack of day and she was lodged at Richard Wood's the Grocer."
There is evident reference to the dedication of the church in the pageant of the "Nine Orders of Angels" shown before Henry VIII and Queen Catherine in 1510 (p. 47).
The history of the church since the Reformation has been not unlike that of a vast number of others. Fanatic destruction, followed by tasteless and incongruous innovations, and these again by "restorations" sometimes as destructive, sometimes as tasteless, and nearly always feeble; such is their common history. In 1569 even the Register books were destroyed because they contained marks of popery, while from 1576 onward a want of repair is plainly suggested by frequent items of expenditure for catching the stares (starlings) in the church, at one time for a net, at another for "a bowe and bolts and lyme." In 1611 James I addressed a strongly worded letter to the Mayor and Corporation and the Vicar requiring them to reform the practice of receiving the Holy Sacrament standing or sitting instead of kneeling, "As we our Self in our person do carefully perform it." Whereupon the Bishop wrote that he "felt persuaded that there were not above seven of any note who did not conform themselves" to the church ordinances; while the Vicar said he "did not know of half seven of any note but do the like."
A Puritanical writer in 1635 thus mentions the changed position of the Communion Table, which had formerly stood away from the east wall: "The