CHAPTER XIV

_Daily Life in the Town--the Merchants and the Market_

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 city in the morning light, with its ring of walls and upstanding posterns and gates over-topped by six tall spires, lying in the midst of fields and far-reaching common grounds in a slight dip in the plain. Entering the newly-opened gates, they were at once inside the narrow paved[506] streets, bounded on either side with black and white timbered houses, for travellers from the Warwick side did not make their entrance by spacious Hertford Street,[507] but by the Grey Friars' and Warwick Lanes, then part of the main thoroughfare of the city. Passing up the hill, they found that the street on a line with these--the Broadgate--belied its name, being but a very narrow thoroughfare, bounded on the left hand by a block of houses, whereof the removal in 1820[508] has caused moderns to think that the open space on the crown of the hill is very rightly named.

Soon after daybreak the streets were alive with the noise and press of a busy throng. It is true there were many impediments to traffic. Cattle[509] and ducks wandered hither and thither; fishmongers' stalls stood in the middle of the streets, greatly to the hindrance of the passers-by, whether horsemen or pedestrians;[510] while inn signs[511] had perforce to be limited in length, lest they should strike the heads of unwary riders in the by-lanes of the city. But the mediæval trader was well inured to inconvenience. Neither did noise distract him, though taverners and cooks standing at the door offered good things hot from the oven to passers-by, each seeking to cry louder than his neighbour; while in the open places the crier proclaimed the terms of a recent charter, or newly-made ordinance of leet or council;[512] and overhead the church bells pealed forth, calling folk to their prayers, to the market, or, in case of a brawl or riot, to a common meeting-place.[513]

Long before curfew the countryman had gone home to his village in the Arden country or by the London road to Dunsmoor Heath; while the traveller in his inn and the townsman under his own roof were soon abed. What light there was in the deserted streets on winter evenings came from the lamps which hung over the door of every hostelry and every substantial citizen's house, until nine o'clock,[514] after which time the city gates were closed,[515] and none were abroad save thieves and watchmen. Indeed, the very fact of being out after dark was in itself presumptive evidence of some dishonest purpose on the part of the belated wayfarer. At any suspicious sight or sound the watch were on the alert, and prepared to arrest the wanderer; should the prisoner escape and take to flight, they would instantly give chase, and fill the dark and empty streets with the echoes of their pursuit. A hue and cry would be raised, doors open, and householders pour forth to aid the watch. If the unlucky fugitive were captured, he would be committed to ward in all haste.[516]

What a crowd of different types of men must have jostled against one another in the noisy throng! Craftsmen, attired in the livery proper to their calling, a custom whereof we have this day a relic in the butcher's blouse; merchants from foreign parts, or natives fresh from a sea voyage; mayor and aldermen clad maybe in festal scarlet; the crier and sergeants in the livery of the city; men-at-arms, the retainers of some great lord, bearing the badge of the Earls of Warwick, or the Stafford knot; Benedictines, clad in white cassock and black gown and hood; Franciscans, with their brown habit and knotted girdle; Carmelites from Whitefriars in white frock and brown scapulary; Carthusians from the Charter-house, with white cassock and hood; chantry and parish priests--all these, laymen and clerics, warriors and traders, met, passed, and gave greeting in the streets.

Strange figures might be seen in the streets or the road neighbouring the city, such as the hermits, whose dwellings--the one by Bablake church,[517] the other at Gosford Green--stood at either end of the highway leading through Coventry. Times had changed; it was now customary for hermits to build by the highway, and no longer withdraw into solitary places, and spend their lives in prayer and meditation. They rather preferred to dwell in "boroughs among brewers," seeking society and good cheer. Nor did the pilgrims, who might be seen flocking to the shrine of S. Osburg[518] or to the image of Our Lady in the Lady Tower on the London Road hard by the Whitefriars' to pay their devotions, invariably set about their task in a religious spirit. Many who travelled to the far-famed shrines of S. Thomas of Canterbury, S. Edmund of Bury, S. Cuthbert of Durham, or to "Our Lady" of Walsingham, to the Roods of Chester and Bronholme, or the Holy Blood of Hales, looked on their journey as a holiday jaunt rather than as an act of devotion. The author of _Piers Plowman_ thought little spiritual good came from this gadabout religion. The Lollards were wont to condemn pilgrimages, and one John Blomstone of Coventry, a heretic, examined in 1485 declared:--

"That it was foolishness to go on a pilgrimage to the image of Our Lady of Doncaster, Walsingham, or the Tower of Coventry, for a man might as well worship by the fireside in the kitchen as in the aforesaid places, and as well might a man worship the Blessed Virgin when he seeth his mother or sister, as in visiting the images, because they be no more but dead stocks and stones."

Interesting, too, are several persons occurring in Coventry history, whose occupations were hardly so legitimate as those of pilgrim or hermit. We have had a glance at the ruinous house where John de Nottingham, the necromancer, by means of his waxen effigies wrought such terrible evil to one of the prior's servants, and revenged the wrongs of the Coventry men. We would fain know more of John French, the alchemist, who appears in the _Leet Book_,[519] only to disappear directly from its pages. We learn in 1477 that he intended, "be his labor, to practise a true and profitable conclusion in the cunnyng of transmutacion of meteals to" the "profyte and pleasur" of the King's grace, and was, so Edward IV. charged the mayor, never to "be letted, troubled, or vexed of his seid labor and practise, to th' entent that he at his good liberte may shewe vnto vs, and such as be by vs therfor appointed, the cler effect of his said conclusion." There can be little doubt that the citizens looked askance at John French, and whispered that he dabbled in black magic and had dealings with the Prince of Darkness. We know not how many years the alchemist spent in his fruitless labours; or if he imparted his views on the subject of the "transmutation of metals" to the citizens, or ever journeyed to London to pour a tale of hope deferred into the ears of the disappointed King.

There were many sights in a mediæval city to remind us that men seldom cared to cloak their brutality in those days. The stocks, where offenders were held by their feet, the pillory, where they were held by the head and hands, stood conspicuous, probably in neighbourhood of the guild-hall. A pillory, a favourite place for the chastisement of fraudulent bakers, may yet be seen in Coleshill, and stocks stand yet on many a village green.[520] Here the great punishment lay in the shame of exposure: the criminal stood for hours unable to move, a pitiful target for the derision of the multitude. The like penance was imposed on those who suffered at the cucking-stool, followed by ducking in water, a highly disagreeable incident in the punishment. The prisoners in the gaol looked out into the highway, and perhaps held conversation with their friends as they passed. Now and then a craftsman might be seen among the debtors pursuing his calling, for it was not thought expedient to bring a man to utter destitution by depriving him of the means of livelihood during imprisonment; and those who chose might cobble shoes or work at the loom during those monotonous days. Hard by the busy worker might stand a felon, traitor, or murderer, his mind full of gloomy thoughts of his coming end.[521] The gallows, naturally reared on high where all men might see them and their ghastly burden, were probably in sight of the prison; and rich and poor crowded to see a condemned man drawn in a tumbril, or executioner's cart, to the gallows, or a woman exposed to open shame. "It is ordained," an order of leet ran, "that William Rowett, capper, and his paramour be carried and led through the town in a car, in example of punishment of sin, and that all other that be proved in the same sin from this time forward shall have the same pain."[522] But these were only a few among many unpleasant sights that would attract the notice of a passing stranger. Heads of traitors stuck on the top of long poles often adorned the gates. Part of the body of Jack Cade was sent down in 1450, no doubt to breed terror into all disloyal beholders, and in 1470 the head of one Chapman[523] was set up on the Bablake gate; while that of Sir Henry Mountford, an adherent of Perkin Warbeck, shared the same fate in 1496.[524] Gosford Green was the Tower Hill, and the Little Park the Smithfield of Coventry. At the former place Lord Rivers and his son suffered death under Warwick in 1469; while the latter saw the burning of many martyrs, including the famous Marian victim, Laurence Saunders.

Many were the efforts made to keep the place clean and wholesome to live in; but frequent appearances of the plague show that they met with but partial success. At the awful visitation known as the Black Death there remained not "the tenth person alive," we are told, to bury the dead;[525] while in 1479 the plague is said (without doubt exaggeratively) to have carried off 3300 of the inhabitants.[526] Filth of every kind was deposited in the Cross Cheaping under the magnificent cross itself, much incommoding the folk who thronged to the market-place, "to the danger," the leet jury complained, "of infection of the plague," and by sweeping the pavement there dust was raised, which did "deface and corrupt" the said cross.[527] In that half of the city wherein the prior held sway the people put all the refuse of their houses just outside the Cook Street gate, with the result that when the country people did not come to carry it away to manure their fields, the lord prior could not "have his carriage through his orchard."[528]

According to orders of leet, however, a better system should have prevailed. The sergeants collected every quarter a penny from each citizen dwelling in a house with a hall door, and a halfpenny from every shop, to provide a cart which carried away the filth from the streets.[529] Moreover all the citizens were enjoined to clean that portion of the pavement which lay in front of their dwellings every saint's day under payment of a fine of 12d. This order was hardly a popular one, and the sergeants were continually taking distress from those who would not pay the quarterly cart-rate, or raising fines for the omission of the festal cleaning. For the good folk evaded all sanitary regulations whenever they might do so with impunity. As for those misdoers who threw filth into the common river, to inquire concerning them was a hopeless task.[530] This was, as the mayor and corporation owned to prior Deram when he loudly complained thereof, one of the worst evils of the city. Coventry seems, however, never to have fallen into such an evil plight as Hythe did in the fifteenth century. Here, owing to the abominable habit of casting refuse into the streets, to say nothing of blocking them with all imaginable obstructions,[531] they were more like evil-smelling swamps than highways fit for traffic.

Measures, somewhat primitive in character,[532] were taken to guard against an outbreak of fire, which so frequently wasted mediæval cities, where the plaster and timber of the houses, with their projecting storeys almost touching one another across the narrow streets, afforded excellent fuel for the flames. A stone house was a rarity, and in the fifteenth century bricks were as yet not in general use. The leet forbade the building of wooden chimneys or the roofing of houses with straw in lieu of tiles.[533] Moreover late mayors and other officers with "commoners of thrift," were forced to provide leather buckets, "such as the aldermen think sufficient" to hold the water wherewith to quench the flames. In order to prevent the supply of water--brought in a leaden pipe from a spring without the city[534]--from being exhausted, a lavish use of it was not permitted. The conduits, whereof there was one in Cross Cheaping, and another, called the Bull, probably by the Bablake Gate,[535] were kept locked during the night, and brewers were forbidden to take water thence for their brewing, or any one to wash linen and clothes therein.[536] The practice whereby individuals, by means of a grant sealed with the common seal, obtained a licence to take water continually from the conduit for their private use, was looked on most unfavourably, and finally forbidden by the leet.[537] No doubt the people who wished to obtain this permission were the wealthy brewers and victuallers who were answerable for so many disturbances in Coventry.

For here as elsewhere this important class of townsfolk made great profit out of the "pence of the poor," in spite of law and ordinance. One of the great problems facing mediæval legislators and local authorities was the task of ensuring the natural price of provisions. "No police of the Middle Ages," says Thorold Rogers, "would allow a producer of the necessaries of life to fix his charges by the needs of the individual, or, in economical language, to allow supplies to be absolutely interpreted by demand. The law did not fix the price of the raw material, wheat or barley. It allowed this to be determined by scarcity or plenty--interpreted, not by the individual's needs, but by the range of the whole market. But it fixed the value of the labour which must be expended on wheat and barley in order to make them into bread and ale."[538] The central government ordained what weight of bread was to be sold for a certain sum, and what price should be given for a gallon of ale; and the enforcing of the law was the business of the local authority. The local rulers themselves fixed the price of other provisions--fish, meat, poultry, and wine--allowing for profits according to a certain scale on their resale by victuallers.[539] Stringent rules were laid down against the enhancement of price by "forestalling and regratery," that is intercepting merchandise on the way to market and selling it at an increased price. For example, native fishmongers, it was feared, would lay in wait for travelling salesmen bringing in "panyers" of salt fish, and, after buying the same, would ask a higher price for it before the next fasting day. So to guard against this contingency, strangers selling fish were forbidden to be "osted or inned" in the house of a native brother of the craft, but to pass the night at inns at the mayor's "limitation," and after "making relation" to him of the kind of fish they brought, to sell the same openly in the common market-place.[540] A multitude of regulations were also made to ensure the good quality of provisions, the mayor examined all fish brought by foreign fishmongers, whilst ale-tasters, appointed by the bailiff, summoned by each brewer to taste his new beer, received "a gallon of the best ale" at the detection of any default. In addition to all these expedients for regulating price and quality, the statute-book provided for the giving of a just quantity to the buyer at the conclusion of every bargain. On each opening day of a new mayoralty all shopkeepers and victuallers delivered up their weights and measures for the mayor's inspection, and after comparison with the standard model, kept in the town chest, they were sealed if found correct, or, if faulty destroyed.

On his entry into office, the mayor's "crye" or proclamation informed all and sundry of these regulations, and of the perils consequent on their infringement.

Here we learn the price of "coket" bread[541] and horse-bread at that time; how white wine of Rochelle was to be sold at 6d. a gallon, Malvoisey at 16d., and "no derer upon the peyn of xx_s._ at every trespas," and that on Oseney, Algarbe and Bastarde the "mayor and his peres" would set a price when any occasion of selling offered.[542] The "crye" tells us what penalties were laid on those who made use of fraudulent measures, "coppes and bollys" unsealed,[543] and how informers were stimulated by the promise that whosoever gave notice to the mayor of this abuse should "have iiii_d._ for his travayll and a galon of the best ale" and also what hard punishments were meted out to those who practised forestalling and regratery.[544]

But in spite of all these regulations the task of curtailing profits seemed a hopeless one, and again and again the worthy men of the leet confess that the law remains a dead letter through the frauds of the victuallers. These, we are told, holding their heads high, refused to sell their wares at the "limited" price, "and in maner destitucion the seid cite of wyne and vitayle" to the manifest hurt of the inhabitants and of all people "confluent to the same." While, when the mayor insisted that the bakers should obey the orders of leet regulating their trade, the whole craft "struck" with the greatest unanimity, and leaving the city "destitute of bread," took sanctuary at Bagington, a village about four miles distant. Night, however, brought counsel, and they submitted next day to the mayor, paying for their lawlessness a fine of £10.[545] As for the brewers in the sixteenth century, they found their calling so lucrative that others were thereby encouraged to forsake their occupations and take up this profitable trade. At that time, said the worthy men of the leet in 1544, "divers of the said brewers nothing regarding the displeasure of God, the danger of the laws of the realm nor the love and charity which they ought to bear to their neighbours nor the commonwealth of this city, for their own private lucre ... do ... regrate and forestall barley coming into this city to be sold," and sell ale at excessive and unreasonable prices.[546]

Regulations, however, affected this powerful and wealthy class but little, and in listening to the ever-renewed complaints against them we begin to realize the universal detestation in which they are held in the Middle Ages. Mediæval imagination, with its love of the grotesque, delighted to picture the unhappy end of those who bade defiance to the laws of God and man. How hardly shall an alewife, thought the Ludlow artist, "enter the kingdom of Heaven," and in carving the _miserere_ of the parish church he shadowed forth her fate. "A demon is bearing away the deceitful one; she carries nothing about her but her gay head-dress and her false measure; he is going to throw her into hell-mouth, while another demon is reading her offences as entered in his roll, and another is playing on the bag-pipes by way of welcome."[547] A pleasant man was that Ludlow artist,--one, we may fancy, who abhorred cheating, and dearly loved his glass.

Ordinances of leet were frequently passed upon the order to be maintained upon a market day, for there was but scanty room for traffic in the Cross Cheaping, even though the carts can have been no wider than trollies, taking up but "the brede of a yard" in passing by. Stalls and boards were a great encumbrance. "No fishmonger," runs an order of leet, "(can) have his board standing forth at large in the street for to let cart, horse or man, but that there be a reasonable space left ... between their houses and their boards."[548] Round about the market-place were clustered the dwellings of provision merchants and the lesser craftsmen. Ironmonger Row, Butcher Row or the Poultry, Cook Street, and the Spicer-Stoke[549] tell by their names the calling of those who lived or chiefly trafficked there;[550] while the drapers made their homes hard by the Drapery, in Bayley Lane and Earl Street.[551] On market days this neighbourhood was crowded with the overflow of stall-holders and salesmen; the poulterers standing before the Priory gates, and round about the Bull-ring "usque finem de le Litel Bochery,"[552] while the fishmongers and leather sellers had stalls within the Cheaping itself.[553] Other stalls were placed in the procession way in S. Michael's churchyard, and the sellers of cloth had an illicit market in the church porch opposite the Drapery door, until it was made forbidden ground by a leet ordinance. For all merchants and chapmen resorting to the city on the Friday were forced by this authority to sell all their mercery, cloth, and linen inside the Drapery;[554] and all sellers of wool to have their merchandise weighed at the Wool-hall hard by, and pay a fee for the weighing thereof at the "Beam" or public weighing machine.

Equally stringent were the orders of leet, which curtailed the privileges of the "foreyn," who came to buy or sell within the city. He was not allowed to purchase corn in the market until mid-day, three hours after the townsfolk had been admitted to make their bargains.[555] A certain time of sale was assigned him,[556] and very frequently his goods were examined by the mayor ere he could dispose of them in the market. If his trade competed in any serious degree with that of the city craftsmen, there was no end to the restrictions wherewith he was hampered. Urged by a spirit of local monopoly, the authorities regulated the trade in hides and tallow in favour of the dealers of the city, though on the butchers' assertion that the country tanners would give a better price for the hides than their town brethren, the rules were somewhat relaxed. No chandler, however, was permitted to sell more than twelve pounds of candles out of the city[557] to one purchaser.

The frequent enactment of these and similar regulations in the early sixteenth century shows the terror with which the townsfolk looked on the spread of industry in country districts. Owing to the conversion of arable land to pasture for sheep farming, agricultural labourers had been thrown out of work; many therefore were employed in handicrafts in their own houses and their competition was thought to seriously threaten the prosperity of their town neighbours.[558]

At the Corpus Christi fair all was bustle and activity in Coventry, and the mayor had doubtless much ado to settle all the disputes arising from differences of currency or hard driving of bargains at the pypowders court, for all the world of the neighbourhood came to lay in stores for the year, and merchants from far and near to sell their wares. Eight weeks a year of a farmer's life is said to have been spent more or less at fairs and markets,[559] and undoubtedly a merchant employed a far longer period in travel to and from these centres of trade. Our forefathers were not altogether such simple stay-at-homes as we love to picture, but, rather, experienced travellers, and in those days travelling meant experience, and was not as it is now--at least in civilized countries--a method for getting from place to place which puts no tax on the body, and the least possible on the mind of the traveller. All manner of men and of merchandise[560] were to be seen at the fair. Irish traders brought druggets from Drogheda; coarse cloth came from the west country;[561] Frenchmen brought dyes for cloth; Bristol traders wine from Guienne and Spain; country gentlemen and local graziers bales of wool for export or home manufacture.

It is true that in spite of its popularity, the Corpus Christi fair never equalled the S. Giles' fair at Winchester, the centre of trade between the southern counties and France, or that of Stourbridge, near Cambridge, the great mart for horses, and the centre of commerce between the eastern counties and Flanders. To many, however, the fair at Coventry, the centre of traffic on the great road to the north-west, was the chief event of the whole year. The local makers displayed to the utmost advantage the bales of Coventry cloth, and the blue thread, to which the skill of the native dyers gave the colour which was the envy of the whole country. This merchandise could be bought openly by the strangers, who jostled against one another before the stalls in the Drapery. But many transactions, which the dealers hoped would not come to light, must have taken place unnoticed in the busy crowd. The prior of Sulby, in terror of the rapacity of Henry VIII., sold his cross-staff to the wife of a London goldsmith at Coventry fair one Corpus Christi day, just as the monks of Stoneley--provident men--about this time disposed of a silver censer, and other things "worth £14 or thereabouts," to Master John Calans, goldsmith, of Coventry.[562] Maybe the spare scholar might there be seen, as at the fair of S. Frideswide, at Oxford, counting the few coins his purse contained to find out if they would avail to purchase a book he coveted greatly. While in Elizabeth's days Puritan purchasers, who found the "Martin Marprelate" tracts edifying reading, could obtain these locally printed attacks on the episcopate from some discreet salesmen.[563] But the bulk of the buyers were local folk: farmers on the look-out for a good horse, or intent on replenishing the stock of sheep-dressing, and their wives keenly enjoying a bargain over some pewter vessels, or article of "mercery," a gay belt or kerchief for the daughters at home.

More important transactions than these frequently took place, and not at fair time only but throughout the year, as the records of the mayor's court of Statute Merchant clearly show. The amount of the various purchases was, when viewed from a mediæval standpoint, very large; a "gentilman" of Attleborough, for instance, in 1415, acknowledges that he is bound to certain Hinckley folk and others "in ducentis libris" (£200 sterling), while a Dublin merchant, Dodenhall, without doubt a connection and kinsman of the Coventry mayors of that name, owed in 1394 a fellow-merchant of the latter place £210, money which he did pay before distress was levied upon him. The following, however, would be a more usual example of recognition of debt: "On the eighteenth day of the month of February, in the third year of King Henry the Fifth after the Conquest, at Coventry, William Lyberd, hosier, of Coventry, acknowledges that he is bound ("recognoscit se teneri") to Thomas Dawe of Coventry, passenger, in sixteen pounds sterling, payable at Coventry at the feast of S. Michael the Archangel next ensuing."[564]

When all the bargaining was over, when the debt had been duly paid, or the amount enrolled at the mayor's court, men thought of other things. The "commons" of Coventry could discuss the everlasting "Lammas" question with the Nottingham men, while those who took more interest in national politics whispered to one another complaints against abuses in Church and State. They hinted darkly at the cause of the death of the "good" Duke Humphrey, condemned the malice of the Yorkists, the scandals of the archdeacon's court, or lifting their eyes to the defaced monastery and cathedral, spoke of the high-handed character of the "King's Proceedings."[565]

The nightly sojourn at inns was a great feature of the wayfaring merchant's life, for it was only in sparsely-peopled districts that monasteries afforded hospitality to the travelling trader.[566] "Strangers and baggers of corn between Yorkshire, Lancashire, Kendal, and Westmoreland and the bishopric," the people of the north declared at the dissolution, "were greatly helped both horse and man by the said abbeys; for never was in these parts denied either horse-meat or man's meat, so that the people were greatly refreshed by the said abbeys, where now they have no such succour."[567] But the majority of wayfarers sought shelter either at inns or at _herbergeors'_ houses, for the private citizens, even the richer merchants, frequently increased their gains by the entertainment of travellers. The public inns were often the scene of gambling and intrigue, and unwary guests, who had not the wherewithal to discharge the heavy bills they had been induced to contract, frequently found their baggage seized to several times the amount of the debt. "The greater barons and knights were in the custom of taking up their lodgings with herbergeors, rather than going to the public hostels; and thus a sort of relationship was formed between particular nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the strength of which the latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their signs."[568] It might still be possible to learn the story of the connection between certain noble houses and the inhabitants of a given district by means of inn-sign heraldry; while from the same source we could gather a hint of popular political feeling at a later date. The jubilant cavalier would swing his sign of the _Royal Oak_ at the Restoration, and the staunch adherent of the "Great Commoner" flaunt his _Old King of Prussia_ in the next century, just as surely as the mediæval inn-keeper decorated his sign with the _White Hart_, _White Boar_, or _Bear and Baculus_, in honour of his patrons Richard II., Richard III., or the Earl of Warwick. Famous old inns in Coventry were the _Crown_, in "platea vocata Brodeyatys" hard by the Langley's inn, the _Cardinal's Hat_, in Earl Street.[569] The _Peacock_, still existing in the last century, was in the Broad Gate, but the locality of the _Angel_, where Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, lodged, is unknown. One authority speaks also of the _White Rose_, of late years the _Roebuck_, still standing in Little Park Street, where the Yorkists held rendezvous, and the _Red Rose_ in Much Park Street, a meeting-place for Lancastrians.[570] The herbergeors frequently received distinguished guests. Henry VII., after a triumphal entry into Leicester on his way from Bosworth field, came to Coventry, and took up his lodging in the house of Robert Onley, the mayor, at the Bull, in Smithfield Street, a visit he repeated in two years' time, when he conferred on his host the honour of knighthood.[571]

The Coventry merchants, like their fellows in other towns, had plentiful dealings with the outside world. The Botoners, whom tradition credits with the building of S. Michael's spire and chancel, held intercourse, it seems, with the men of Bristol, for they married a daughter of their house to a native of those parts, and she became the mother of the chronicler, William Worcester.[572] As the traders of a later generation, the Botoners, most likely, conveyed their wine and wax in vessels towed up the River Severn, a journey beset with difficulties, as the towing-path was overgrown with brushwood, and private landowners and corporate towns on the river bank demanded tolls from the passers-by.[573] The Bristol men, too, were not averse from straining a point in the matter of tolls, and in spite of the grants of freedom the Coventry men possessed, demanded "cayage" from them,[574] when their goods were upon the landing stage. Many times did Adam and William Botoner serve in the mayor's office, and their donations to the church, to town guilds, murage funds, and the like are numberless. As for the great tower of S. Michael's steeple that the brothers built, tradition credits them with spending £100 every year for twenty-one years upon the work.[575] In the early part of the fifteenth century the family entered the ranks of the country landowners by the purchase of an estate at Withybrook. Not only at Bristol, but at Southampton, the chief port of the south, where French dyes were sold, did Coventry men carry on a great part of their trade. And William Horseley, mayor in 1483 and member of the dyers' craft, brought about an agreement between the men of this port and his fellow-citizens in 1456, whereby mutual freedom of tolls was secured.[576]

But the trading enterprise of these inland-dwelling townsfolk was not confined to their native country merely. Another family, the Onleys, whereof one John Onley, the founder, was mayor of the Calais Staple,[577] had dealings with merchants beyond the sea. This foreign intercourse was often beset with danger to life and limb. John Onley, son of the above, was apprenticed to one Thomas Aleyn, a London mercer. When travelling to Bruges in 1413, where the chief staple for cloth then was, on his master's errand, this apprentice fell into the hands of a goldsmith of that place, who, because he could not obtain redress for the treatment he and his goods had received from an English "roberdesman" in the neighbourhood of Dover, kidnapped and kept John Onley as hostage. At last the good folk of Bruges, fearing the anger of the English, forced him to let the apprentice go.[578] Our sympathies are divided between the innocent lad and the outraged goldsmith, for in the wilder parts of England "roberdesmen" were a veritable scourge to the foreign trader. Did not Henry III. hang more than sixty of the brigands of Alton, who had plundered certain merchants of Brabant, though the whole county of Hants conspired to ensure the acquittal of the accused?[579] Occasionally the highwaymen also attacked English folk. In the days of the third Edward, there was a pretty gang, composed chiefly of "gentlemen born," who beneath the shelter of Cannock Chase did much harm to the merchants of Lichfield, and apportioned what spoil they took "to each according to his rank."[580]

But foreigners were quick at reprisal when debts were owing to them, or any injury had been done by English merchants. And the proud traders of Lübeck and Bergen, members of the Hanseatic League, who warred with and dictated to kings, were especially sensitive in this respect. This may be seen by the fate which befell Laurence Cook, afterwards twice mayor of Coventry, in the days of his apprenticeship to William Bedforth, and Thomas Walton, servant to John Cross, another local merchant, who aided in the erection of S. Mary's Hall. For in 1398, as they lay in the ship of one Thomas Herman, of Boston, in the port of Stralsund, certain allies of the League, who had some grudge against the English traders, fell upon the apprentices, beat and wounded them _minus juste_, taking moreover from the ship 240 dozen pieces of cloth of divers colours, Bedforth's property, valued at £200; "much merchandise" belonging to Cross, worth half the sum, and other pieces of cloth, exported by a third Coventry merchant, valued at £50.[581] Such incidents as these were not uncommon in the lives of mediæval merchants, and for the making of a successful trader it was necessary that a man should have a dash of the warrior and a great deal of the adventurer in his composition. Trained by exposure to such perils by land and sea as nowadays only explorers undergo, it is little wonder that they proved themselves keen, energetic, and resourceful in their civic life.

The servant of one Mr Wheatley had a happier adventure than Laurence Cook when in the sixteenth century he undertook a journey to Spain. For, wishing to purchase steel gads, he bought a chest at a fair, and lo! when it was opened it was found to contain ingots of silver, treasure brought perhaps from over the Spanish main. The servant, not knowing of whom he bought them, Mr Wheatley--honest man--kept them for a time, but as no inquiry was ever made, he gave the profits, amounting with contributions from the city to £96 a year, to the maintenance of twenty-one boys at a school at Bablake, an institution which exists and thrives even to this day. This benefactor, the "Dick Whittington" of Coventry, is a person of whom we would gladly learn more. The real Sir Richard, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," was, as historians tells us, not the poor friendless wanderer of legend, but the hopeful son of a well-to-do family of the country gentry, and was apprenticed to a wealthy London merchant by his kinsfolk after the orthodox fashion.[582] But as yet no historian has deemed it necessary to investigate Mr Wheatley's early career, and we still believe that he came to Coventry as a nameless adventurer, "a poor boy in a white coat," as Dugdale says. He died a bachelor, and bequeathed his fortune to charity.[583]

But Mr Wheatley was not the only benefactor the city knew. Wealthy merchants were generous givers, and the education of youth and provision for the sick and needy were not matters held to be solely within the Church's province. The names of Richard Whittington and John Carpenter[584] of London, and of Cannynges of Bristol, deserve ever to be held in remembrance, and there are hundreds of other half-forgotten donors entitled to an equal fame. Thomas Bond, merchant of the Staple, founded at Bablake a hospital for ten men "and one woman to look after them," the candidates to be chosen on a general day of the Trinity guild, and, as bedesmen of this omnipotent fraternity, to repeat three times a day Our Lady's Psalter for the brethren of the guild. Both Bond's almshouse and that erected by William Ford, merchant, and William Pisford, at Greyfriars, still remain, and are among the few perfect specimens of domestic architecture of the sixteenth century that we possess. The latter, first enriched by Ford's will in 1509, contained six men and their wives, the nominees of the Trinity guild, each couple receiving 7-1/2d. a week for their maintenance.[585]

But it was not the welfare of the aged alone which absorbed the charity of these merchants. To John Haddon, draper, is due the honour of initiating the system of granting loans to young freemen to aid them in beginning commercial life. By his will (1518) he bequeathed £100 to be distributed among men of the drapers' fellowship--poor clothmakers the _Leet Book_ calls them--in loans of £5 each, to enable them to buy wool or cloth, for the cloth trade at that time was undergoing a period of great depression in Coventry, and £100 to be similarly divided in £4 loans among young freemen of all occupations; all loans, free of interest, to be repaid at the end of first year.[586] His example had numerous imitators;[587] but undoubtedly the gifts of Sir Thomas White, mayor of London and founder of S. John's College, Oxford, whom Mary knighted for his loyalty at the time of Wyatt's rebellion, surpassed the rest. At the time of their greatest need, in 1543, he lent the corporation £1400, wherewith they purchased certain lands and tenements confiscated at the Reformation, and they agreed to distribute £40 arising from the rents of the tenements in loans to apprentices of the city for nine years' use.[588] From some cause or other, probably by reason of his great and numerous acts of benevolence, and the backwardness of the corporation in paying a promised annuity, Sir Thomas fell into poverty in his later years, and seems to have been utterly cast down by the thought that his wife would be left without provision. "Whereas I have gently written unto you heretofore," he writes in 1566 to the mayor and corporation, "to let my wife have her annuity of £46 for part of her jointure, I require you as you shall answer before God at the day of judgment that you lett my wife have £24 assured to her during her life." Two days after another letter betrays his unbearable anxiety on this subject. If the mayor and corporation are not able to perform the undertaking with regard to the jointure, "I shall even," he says desperately, "cast my colledge for ever ... so am I utterly shamed in this world and the world to come."[589] Happily for the cause of "true religion and sound learning," the college was not abandoned, and we will hope the Coventry folk fulfilled their contract.

Long before the Reformation and Mr Wheatley's gift the sons of the Coventry burghers attended school, for it is an error to suppose that the education of the laity began with the grammar schools founded by Edward VI. Indeed these foundations were but the "fresh and very inadequate supply of that which had been so suddenly and disastrously extinguished"[590] at the Reformation. Nor was the occupation of teaching confined to the monasteries. The trading-class in or before the fifteenth century threw themselves heartily into the work of providing schools for the coming generations. In most cases the support of these institutions was committed to the leading local guild. In London alone nine grammar schools were set up in the reign of Henry VI.,[591] and in many other places the bounty of some well-to-do bishop or merchant enriched country towns with the endowment of a grammar school. At Coventry there was, it is true, a school at the priory for the "children of the aumbry,"[592] but it appears that there were other "teachers of grammar" in the city, whose well-being was a source of anxiety to the leet, and to these, perhaps, the citizens preferred to send their children to be instructed in the Latin tongue. In 1426 it was enacted by leet that "John Barton shall come to the city of Coventry, if he will, to keep a grammar school there."[593] Barton, however, if he came at all, probably soon made way for a successor, for in 1429 we find an order of leet to the effect that "Mayster John Pynshard, skolemayster of grammer, shall have the place that he dwellethe inne for xls. (40s.) be yere, whyles that he dwellethe in hit, and holdyth gramer skole hym self ther inne."[594] The prior appears to have looked upon these teachers as the rivals of the conventual schoolmasters, but the corporation did their best to soothe his jealousy, and in 1439 the mayor and six of the council, at the request of the leet, went to the prior to "commune" with him concerning this matter, "wylling hym to occupye a skole of gramer, yffe he lyke to teche hys brederen and childerun off the aumbry, and that he wolnot gruche ne move the contrari, but that every man of this cite be at hys fre chosse (choice) to sette his chylde to skole at what techer of gramer that he likyth, as reson askyth."[595] No doubt the town school continued to prosper, for we find at the time of the suppression of the chantries of 1543 that the Trinity guild paid £6, 13s. 4d. as a yearly salary to the schoolmaster. All this general activity in education goes to prove that the men of the later Middle Ages were not the illiterate boors historians have loved to imagine. The knowledge of reading, writing and Latin, or, as they called it, grammar, was surely very widely diffused, when not only a multitude of scribes, but farm bailiffs could make, audit and balance accounts in that language.[596]

Not only were the citizens called on to support by their charity almshouses and schools, and to furnish loans for youthful enterprise, but the poor made a constant demand on their bounty, and in the sixteenth century poverty was greatly on the increase. The town rulers were confronted with a problem which, then and subsequently, has been found incapable of solution--the problem of the "unemployed." In the reign of Henry VIII. a terrible influx of vagabonds from the country set in, well-nigh driving the local rulers to distraction. Here we first gain some glimpses of a surplus population of shiftless, landless, moneyless folk, driven by the decay of tillage to seek work in the towns. These families, together with the whole labouring class, were later reduced to unspeakable poverty by the debasement of the coinage and depreciation of silver, circumstances which, while affecting wages but little, greatly increased the price of food. This difficulty was at first unfamiliar to men's minds. Society had been hitherto somewhat stationary. Individuals lived and worked where their fathers had lived and worked before them, or at least remained in a town where they had been able by a seven years' appenticeship or by purchase to obtain civic rights. But townspeople were jealous of granting freedom to any but the well-to-do, who would be able to share the burden of taxation, and the wanderer, who by quitting home had dropped out of the framework of local society, became one of a herd of vagabonds liable to be punished according to the utmost rigour of the law.

The town rulers did not attempt to solve this question, they shelved it. This wretched population was perpetually ordered to "pass on." "And those bygge beggers," says an order of leet passed in 1518, "that wilnot worke well to gete their levyng, but lye in the felds and breke hedges and stele mannys fruyte ... let theym be banysshed the town, or els punysshe theym so without favor, that they shalbe wery to byde therin."[597] And again and again aldermen were exhorted to cause "lusty beggars and vagabonds" to "voyde out of their ward" upon pain of imprisonment.[598] Only such impotent and needy beggars as were licensed, and had the city seal, the sign of the elephant, on their bags, were allowed to remain and demand charity.[599] But the worthy men of the leet did not refuse to aid those who suffered undeservedly from the acutest misery. "If any by infirmity or multitude of children be not able by his labour to sustain his family," the aldermen were ordered to provide for their sustenance out of the town chest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 506: Rough stones were used for paving (Riley, _Liber Albus_, xliv.). The _Chamberlain's Accounts_ (Corp. MS. A. 7) contain frequent allusions to paving: "Item, paid for paving within the Bablake gate, iii_s._" "Item, ii lods pebuls for the same, xviii_d._"]

[Footnote 507: Built 1812 (Poole, _Coventry_, 345).]

[Footnote 508: Poole, 345.]

[Footnote 509: "Daily hurt" comes from having goats at large (_Leet Book_, 361). In London only the swine of S. Antony's hospital were allowed to be at large in the streets, and "chiens gentilz," _i.e._ dogs belonging to the gentry (Riley, _Liber Albus_, xlii.).]

[Footnote 510: _Leet Book_, 306.]

[Footnote 511: In London the length of inn-signs was limited to seven feet (_Liber Albus_, lxv.). Signs were also affixed to shops to attract the eye; of this custom the barber's pole is a relic. Merchandise was usually kept in cellars partly underground beneath the solar or front dwelling-room. In great thoroughfares goods were displayed in covered sheds projecting in front of the dwelling-place (Turner, _Dom. Arch._ i. 96; iv. 34). Shops were usually open rooms on the ground floor, with wide windows closed with shutters (_Liber Albus_, xxxviii.).]

[Footnote 512: _Leet Book_, 272, 100.]

[Footnote 513: We hear of the "daybell" rung probably at dawn, and the curfew rung by the clerks of S. Michael's and Trinity churches (_Ib._, 338). A "larum bell" was rung on the occasion of the quarrel between Somerset's servants and the watch (_Paston Letters_, i. 408). Probably there was a recognised "change" in the ringing for each of the various summonses. The ringing of changes is said to have been peculiar to this country. Bells, before they were hung up, were baptized and anointed with holy oil, blessed and exorcised. Their uses were expressed in the Latin lines:

"Laudo Deum verum--plebem voco--congrego clerum Defunctos ploro--pestum fugo--festa decoro."

(Strutt, _Sports and Pastimes_, 291, 292.)]

[Footnote 514: _Leet Book_, 234.]

[Footnote 515: In 1450 the chamberlains requested that four men should be appointed out of each ward to guard the gates, and these four were to choose one man to keep the keys and close them every night at nine (_ib._, 254).]

[Footnote 516: Jusserand, _Wayfaring Life_, 169.]

[Footnote 517: Sharp, _Antiq._ 131. In 1362 licence was given to a recluse, Robert de Worthin, to inhabit a dwelling adjoining the church.]

[Footnote 518: Miracles were worked at S. Osburg's shrine, and her birthday was a local holiday. Palmer Lane and the Pilgrim's Rest preserve in their names token of ancient customs. For the wooden image of our Lady of the Tower see Fretton, _Memorials of the Whitefriars' Monastery_, Harris, _Troughton Sketched_, 6.]

[Footnote 519: _Leet Book_, 422.]

[Footnote 520: There is a specimen at Berkswell, near Coventry, and at Malvern.]

[Footnote 521: _Leet Book_, 643. The prisoners paid the gaoler 1d. a week for their lodging when they had their own bed, 3d. a week if the gaoler provided them with one; over and above, debtors paid the gaoler 5d. for fee, if the debt for which they were liable exceeded 40d.]

[Footnote 522: _Ib._, 192. See also for punishment of immorality, _Ib._, 219]

[Footnote 523: Harl. MS. 6388, f. 22. The other lists have Eliphane. I have no doubt that the right reading is Clapham. This man was an ally of Warwick, and led the rabble of Northampton to the battle of Edgecote in 1469. He was beheaded next year.]

[Footnote 524: _Ib._, f. 25.]

[Footnote 525: Harl. MS. 6388, f. 8. A slight exaggeration, no doubt.]

[Footnote 526: _Ib._, f 23.]

[Footnote 527: _Leet Book_, 775.]

[Footnote 528: _Ib._, 447]

[Footnote 529: _Ib._, f. 11. The filth and street sweepings were ordered to be carried "beyond the stake set in the dyke beyond the Friars' Gate," or to pits without the gates (_ib._, 30).]

[Footnote 530: _Leet Book_, 455. The worthy men of the leet besought the mayor that there might be certain citizens appointed to have oversight of the river, each in their several district, and that the rules for cleaning it should be duly kept (_ib._, 108).]

[Footnote 531: Such as timber frames for houses, trunks of trees, etc. (Green, ii. 29, 30).]

[Footnote 532: In London the bedels of each ward had a hook to tear down burning houses (Riley, _Liber Albus_, xxxiv.).]

[Footnote 533: _Leet Book_, 389.]

[Footnote 534: The spring was called Cunduit Head (Corp. MS. C. 227).]

[Footnote 535: There is still a yard called Cunduit Yard close to Bablake church.]

[Footnote 536: _Leet Book_, 208, 338.]

[Footnote 537: _Ib._, 157.]

[Footnote 538: Rogers, _Six Cent._ 140.]

[Footnote 539: Green, _Town Life_, ii. 36. Profits on wine were in some cases 2d., in others 4d. a gallon.]

[Footnote 540: _Leet Book_, 33.]

[Footnote 541: _Leet Book_, 23. The three most common kinds of bread were _wastel_,--bread of the finest quality; _coket_ (seconds); and _simnel_, twice-baked bread, used in Lent (Green, ii. 35).]

[Footnote 542: _Leet Book_, 24.]

[Footnote 543: _Ib._, 25.]

[Footnote 544: _Ib._]

[Footnote 545: _Ib._, 518-9.]

[Footnote 546: _Leet Book_, 771.]

[Footnote 547: Wright, _Domestic Manners_, 337.]

[Footnote 548: _Leet Book_, 306. Probably carts made for town use were always narrow; see illustration in Wright's _Domestic Manners_, 344. Compare the trollies made for the "Rows" at Yarmouth.]

[Footnote 549: The old name for the thoroughfare between Trinity church and Butcher Row. A spicer is equivalent to the modern grocer.]

[Footnote 550: Cf. Milk Street, Fish Street and S. Margaret Pattens in the city of London; Bridlesmith Gate and Fletcher Gate (fletcher = an arrow maker) in Nottingham. See on this subject Mr Addy's _Evolution of the House_. It was customary for the members of each calling to live close together.]

[Footnote 551: Poole, 396.]

[Footnote 552: _Leet Book_, 233]

[Footnote 553: _Ib._, 798.]

[Footnote 554: See Corp. MS. B. 75 for description of the Trinity guild lands, of which the Drapery was a parcel. The annual rent payable to the Trinity guild of a half bay in the Great Drapery was 6s. 8d. (C. 194).]

[Footnote 555: _Leet Book_, 666. All people dwelling outside the town liberties were called "foreign."]

[Footnote 556: For regulations concerning "foreign" bakers, _ib._, 717, 799.]

[Footnote 557: _Leet Book_, 646.]

[Footnote 558: Rogers, _Six Cent._, 340.]

[Footnote 559: Rogers, _op. cit._ 152. In Leicester there were no pleas held when the great merchants were absent at fairs (Green, ii. 25).]

[Footnote 560: Merchants from Dublin, Drogheda, London, and Kingston-on-Hull, were members of the Corpus Christi guild; so were many local country gentlemen and yeomen.]

[Footnote 561: Devon and Ireland supplied coarse cloth sold in the Drapery (Burton MS. f. 98-103).]

[Footnote 562: Gasquet, _Monasteries_, ii. 285. This took place shortly before the dissolution.]

[Footnote 563: The "Marprelate" printing press was for some time at Coventry (Morley, _Sketch of Literature_, 431). Rogers thinks unlicensed books were sold at fairs. "I cannot conceive how the writings of such an author as Prynne could have been disposed of except at the places which were at once so open and so secret" (_Six Cent._, 149).]

[Footnote 564: Corp. MS. E. 6. This court was kept in accordance with the Statute of Merchants of 1283. A merchant had the power of bringing a debtor before the mayor, when the debtor bound himself to pay the debt by a certain day; if he failed to do so, the mayor caused all his movables to be seized to the amount of the debt and sold. If, however, he had no movables within the mayor's jurisdiction, application was made to the chancellor, who caused a writ to be sent to the sheriff within whose county the debtor had movables, ordering these to be seized. If the debtor had no movables, he was detained in prison until terms were made, the creditor meanwhile providing him with bread and water, the cost of which was added to the amount of the debt (Ashley, _Econ. Hist._ pt. I. 204).]

[Footnote 565: Rogers thinks that rebellions were often planned at fair time.]

[Footnote 566: Rogers _Six Cent._ 136-7; Ashley, _Econ. Hist._ pt. I. 98.]

[Footnote 567: Gasquet, _Monasteries_, ii. 96. It seems that the amount of assistance rendered to wayfarers by monasteries has been much exaggerated.]

[Footnote 568: Wright, _Domestic Manners_, 333-4. Larwood and Hotten assign another reason for this practice. Great men's town houses were frequently let during their absences from home (_History of Signboards_, 4).]

[Footnote 569: Corp. MS. C. 202; _Leet Book_, 386.]

[Footnote 570: Fretton, _Mayors of Coventry_, 10.]

[Footnote 571: _Ib._, 12; Poole 403.]

[Footnote 572: _Paston Letters_ (ed. Gairdner), I. cxiii. Worcester often preferred to call himself by his mother's maiden name.]

[Footnote 573: _Rot. Parl._, v. 569.]

[Footnote 574: _Leet Book_, 550.]

[Footnote 575: Sharp, _Antiq._, 61. It seems an incredible sum, and the statement should be received with caution.]

[Footnote 576: _Leet Book_, 302.]

[Footnote 577: Harl. MS. 6388, f. 13. Onley is said to have been the first Englishman born in Calais after it was taken by Edward III.; his father was a standard-bearer in the English army.]

[Footnote 578: _Proceedings Privy Council_, i. 355.]

[Footnote 579: Rogers, _Six Cent._, 99.]

[Footnote 580: _Archæological Journal_, iv. 69.]

[Footnote 581: Sheppard, _Litteræ Cantuarienses_ (Rolls Series, 85), iii. 81.]

[Footnote 582: Besant and Rice, _Sir Richard Whittington_.]

[Footnote 583: Dugdale, i. 194.]

[Footnote 584: The City of London school was founded on Carpenter's devise.]

[Footnote 585: Poole, 292-301.]

[Footnote 586: _Leet Book_, 658; Fretton, _Mayors_, 14.]

[Footnote 587: Thomas White, alderman and vintner, of Coventry, Henry Over, and others.]

[Footnote 588: Poole, 303]

[Footnote 589: Corp. MS. A. 79, f. 63.]

[Footnote 590: Rogers, _Six Cent._, 165. Leach in his _Schools of the Reformation_ gives this theory substantial support.]

[Footnote 591: Green, ii. 13-16. The drapers had a school at Shrewsbury, the merchant-tailors in London. The guild of S. Laurence of Ashburton had charge of the grammar school, founded by Bishop Stapeledon in 1314. Other schools--as far as we know--not immediately connected with guilds were at Hull, Rotherham, Ewelme, Canterbury, Reading, Appleby, Preston, Liverpool, Cambridge.]

[Footnote 592: _Leet Book_, 190; _Vict. Coun. Hist. Warw._ ii., 318.]

[Footnote 593: _Ib._, 101.]

[Footnote 594: _Leet Book_, 118.]

[Footnote 595: _Ib._, 190.]

[Footnote 596: Rogers, _Six Cent._, 165; _Agric. and Prices_, iv. 502. Even artizans could draw up accounts.]

[Footnote 597: _Leet Book_, 658.]

[Footnote 598: _Ib._, 652.]

[Footnote 599: _Ib._, 677. "A token of ther bagge of the signe of the Olyfaunt."]