The story of Coventry

High above market-place and churchyard, above booth and stall, and the life and movement of a busy crowd, rose a forest of magnificent spires, three from the cathedral and one f...

We have passed the period wherein the men of Coventry rebelled against their overlord the prior; in the late fourteenth century we enter upon one marked by internal strife. The...

Coventry is well worth a whole day's visit, though the day may be an easy one, as the principal buildings lie very near together, and _are practically always open_, so that no t...

The men of Coventry settled down under the rule of Edward IV.; and if the clash of arms was heard in the north--for Margaret would not tamely submit to lose her son's inheritanc...

At the "beating of the bell called daybell," the townsfolk rose and began their daily work. Country people, wayfarers and chapmen, bearing their burdens of merchandise, saw the...

The men of Coventry, a city which, in later mediæval times, stood fourth among the wealthy towns of England,[451] gained a livelihood by the buying and selling of wool and the m...

We are now come to the time when the history of Coventry is closely interwoven with that of the nation at large. The city and its neighbourhood became the chosen home of the Cou...

So far was Coventry from the great centres of the national life, that there is little to connect the place in the earlier parts of its history with the history of the kingdom.

The Benedictine house was built in part upon the northern slope of a low hill, in part in the hollow through which the river Sherbourne flows. This was a situation well adapted...

After the Settlement of 1355 the figure of the head of the great religious house at Coventry fades into comparative insignificance, and all further quarrels between city and con...

But how did the men live who inhabited Coventry, who were neither warriors nor monks, but the rank and file of the townsfolk, the mere tillers of the ground and retailers of foo...

We have seen that it was the stable and well-to-do classes which bore rule over their fellow-citizens. Men of substance, and they only, were eligible for office, and the terms "...

In Coventry we now enter upon a period where the townsmen not only sought to make good the privileges they had already won, but strove to gain, either by fair means or foul, suc...

It was ever the boast of Coventry men that their city was of "much fame and antiquity,"[4] being "remembered," so John Throgmorton, the recorder, assured Queen Elizabeth, "by Po...

"Now flourishing with fanes, and proud pyramidès, Her walls in good repair, her ports so bravely built, Her halls in good estate, her cross so richly gilt, As scorning all the T...

Hitherto it had fared ill with the Earl's-men in their struggle with the convent. Were they to be worsted like the men of S. Alban's or Bury S. Edmund's? The former were now utt...

The place where the monks settled was probably little better than a village. We may picture it as a couple of straggling streets intersecting one another, with small wooden hous...