CHAPTER III

_The Chester Lordship_

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 houses on either side of the highway, which was comparatively empty of people except on market days when country folk would come in to sell their wares in the "Cheaping" at the monastery gates. Domesday records that there were only sixty-nine heads of families living in Godiva's estate at Coventry in 1086,[60] though Leicester and Warwick were fair-sized towns, as towns were accounted then. Of the two parish churches, existing probably at the Conquest, S. Michael's served maybe for the tenants of the lay lord, and Trinity for those of the ecclesiastical estate. For from the beginnings of its history the town had been divided into two lordships, whereof the convent held the northern part or Prior's-half, not mentioned in Domesday, as the gift of their founder, Earl Leofric; while the southern portion, the Earl's-half, which Leofric retained, became a part of the Earl of Chester's vast inheritance.

After the Conquest the convent retained their estate, receiving a gracious charter of confirmation from William, who, no doubt, was willing to link his name with that of his kinsman, the Confessor, as patron of this famed foundation.[61] The Earl's-half, however, passed to other masters. Probably Godiva held it during her lifetime; but at her death the Conqueror took it, as the lady's grandchildren and direct heirs were, as rebels, naturally shut out from the inheritance. How it was that the estate passed into the hands of Ranulf Meschines, Earl of Chester, we can only conjecture. He had probably deserved well at the King's hand and had his reward. Though not, it is true, so disturbing an element in the burghers' lives as his continental brethren, an English feudal lord had much power for good or evil over his dependents. His castle--with its fortifications, often breaking into the line of the city wall, as Rougement did at Exeter, or the Tower, built by the Conqueror to overawe the men of London--was a perpetual menace to the citizens. His officers or deputies could annoy and terrify the tenants in various ways. Thus one Simon le Maudit, who held in farm the reeveship of Leicester, went on to collect gravel-pennies, which he said were due to the lord from the townsfolk, long after these payments had been remitted by charter. But this document having been destroyed by fire, the burghers had no evidence wherewith to support their claim, and Simon "the Accursed" had his will.[62] Instances of feudal oppression seem, however, to have been comparatively rare, though warlike lords by involving their tenants in their quarrels frequently brought trouble upon them.

Earl Ranulf came of a strong race. The founder of the family--whom the Welsh called Hugh "the Fat" by reason of his great girth, but the Normans "the Wolf" by reason of his fierceness--held manors of the Conqueror in twenty shires of England. Lord of the county palatine of Chester, the special privileges granted to him for the purpose of strengthening his hand against the Welsh made him almost independent of royal authority.[63] Meschines himself is an obscure figure, but the fame of his successor, Ranulf Gernons, whose doings were accounted terrible even in Stephen's time, when every man's hand was against his fellow, spread far and wide. In 1143 Coventry became the battle-ground of this earl and Marmion of Tamworth, King Stephen's ally. That was an evil time for the monks, as Marmion seized and fortified the priory, and for the townsfolk, as they were between Marmion and Ranulf, the hammer and the anvil. The Tamworth lord died early in the struggle, for falling into one of the trenches he had made to enclose the monastery, he was killed by a common soldier. No doubt the monks reminded one another that their sacrilegious oppressor, who so justly came to this evil end, was of an impious stock. Did not his ancestor, one Robert Marmion, expel the nuns of Polesworth from their dwelling, until, warned in a vision by S. Edith, their foundress, and sorely smitten by the staff of the saint, he repented and caused the sisterhood to return?[64]

Ranulf lived on to find a reverse of fortune at Coventry. Four years after the fight with Marmion, the earl, finding the King's forces were possessed of the castle there, laid siege to the stronghold, but Stephen appearing, Ranulf's army was put to flight. It was a fitting end to this lawless life that he should die by poison and excommunicate; and his widow gave to Walter, Bishop of Coventry, under whose curse her husband lay, the hamlet of Stivichall, so that his soul might have peace.[65]

There was trouble also in the days of Earl Hugh, Ranulf's successor. He joined in the great feudal rising of 1173, when all England was a scene of strange confusion, and only the energy and promptitude of Henry II. and a few faithful followers saved the King's throne. Henry's sons were arrayed against him, supported by the arch-enemy, the King of France, the Scotch, the Flemings, and many nobles both in England and Normandy, whose power and lawless ways the King had sought continually to restrain. Such were the Earls Ferrars, Bigod of Norfolk, Robert of Leicester, and Hugh. The men of Coventry lent the Earl of Chester aid in this rebellion, as the men of Leicester did to their lord, Robert Blanchmains, for those tenants who held land by military service were bound to follow their feudal superior to battle. But one by one the King's enemies were defeated. Earl Hugh was taken prisoner at the siege of Dol in Britanny quite early in the struggle, and suffered a short imprisonment in the Castle of Falaise.[66] Swift destruction--siege and fire--came upon Leicester for the share the townsfolk had taken in this rebellion, and the inhabitants for a time forsook the place.[67] Coventry, as a place of less note, suffered less; but what liberties the townsmen possessed were confiscated, not to be redeemed until after Hugh's death, eight years later, by a payment of twenty marks. The men of Norwich had also cause to regret the part they took in the celebrated rising, but it was Bigod who dealt them their punishment, burning the city out of revenge because his men had declared for the King's party.

The men of Coventry had, it is true, one reason to dwell with gratitude on the memory of Earl Hugh. Dugdale tells us that among this lord's following was a leper. And it may have been for the sake of this man that Hugh built the lazar-house and chapel of S. Mary Magdelene at Spon in the fields on the western side of the city.[68] All traces of this chapel have now disappeared, but the name Chapel Fields still serves to commemorate the place, with which the chapel of S. James and S. Christopher,[69] whereof there are remains in Spon Street, is sometimes--but quite erroneously--identified. Leprosy, brought from the East by the Crusades, took terrible hold on the people of western Europe, and few towns of any note in those days were without their lazar-houses or hospitals for these sorely afflicted folk. The chief of these leper hospitals was at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire, but the one that is best remembered nowadays is that of S. Giles, once "in the Fields," now in the heart of London.

The most famous among the Earls of Chester was Ranulf, surnamed Blondvil, who succeeded to the earldom on Hugh's death. This befell in 1181. Ranulf was the last of the old order, the race of the feudal barons of the Conquest, who, by reason of their vast estates and almost princely power, were a constant source of anxiety to the kings of England. Men sang songs of Earl Ranulf,[70] either of his loyalty to his master John, or of his feats in warring with the Welsh at home or the heathen abroad, for he joined the Crusades, and was present in 1219 at the siege of Damietta. He was as much of a popular hero as Robin Hood during the fourteenth century. The Church knew him as the benefactor of the monastic house of Pulton, whence he removed the monks, its inhabitants, to Dieulacres in Staffordshire. And his pious deeds availed to save him after death, people said, in spite of many offences. For at the time of his dying, a solitary man at Wallingford saw a company of demons hurrying past, and learnt from one of them that they were hastening to the earl's death-bed to accuse him of his sins. Adjured to return within thirty days, the demon came back and told the hermit what had befallen. "We brought it about," he said, "that Ranulf for his ill deeds was adjudged to the pains of infernal fire; but the mastiffs of Dieulacres, and many others with them, without stinting barked so that they filled our habitation with a loud clamour whilst he was with us; wherefore our prince, disgusted, ordered to be expelled from our territories him who now proved so grievous an enemy to us."[71] In this manner was the earl's soul delivered from the evil place. In 1232 he died childless, and his vast lands were divided among his sisters and their issue. The Earl's-half of Coventry fell to the lot of Hugh of Albany, and then passed to his daughter Cicily, wife of Roger de Montalt. This family continued to hold it until the days of Edward III., when by some arrangement with Queen Isabel, the King's mother, it was vested in the royal line, ultimately becoming part of the duchy of Cornwall, heritage of successive princes of Wales.

The only relic of the associations of the earls of Chester's family with Coventry lie in the Cheylesmore manor house, to the south-east of the city. The house itself is mostly modern, but there are fragments of ancient buildings--a chimney-shaft--incorporated with it. It is most likely that the Black Prince, who gave--say the annals--the ostrich feathers to Coventry, and prince Henry, afterwards Henry V., sojourned in the ancient dwelling at Cheylesmore.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: Reader, _Domesday for Warwickshire_, 9: "The countess held Coventry. There are 5 hides. The arable employs 20 ploughs, 3 are in the demesne, and 7 bondmen. There are 50 villeins, and 12 bordars, with 20 ploughs. A mill pays 3s. A wood 2 miles long and the same broad. In King Edward's time and afterwards it was worth 12 pounds, now 11 pounds by weight. These lands of the countess Godiva Nicholas holds to ferm of the king." See also _Vict. County Hist._, i. 310.]

[Footnote 61: Add MS. Ch. 11,205. Leofric's gifts of lands, etc., with "sac and soc, toll and team," are therein confirmed to Leofwine, the abbot, and the brethren "sicut ... Edwardus, cognatus meus, melius et plenius eisdem concessit."]

[Footnote 62: Bateson, _Rec. Leicester_, 42.]

[Footnote 63: Ormerod, _Cheshire_, i. 10.]

[Footnote 64: Dugdale, _Warw._, ii. 1107. The incident is commemorated in a modern window in Tamworth church.]

[Footnote 65: Ormerod, i. 20-6. Dugdale, _Warw._, i. 137.]

[Footnote 66: Ormerod, i. 26.]

[Footnote 67: Thompson, _Hist. Leicester_, 42.]

[Footnote 68: Dugdale, _Warw._, i. 197.]

[Footnote 69: See Dormer Harris, _Troughton Sketches_, 24.]

[Footnote 70: _Piers Ploughman_, Passus v. l. 402. Sloth (a personification of one of the Seven Deadly Sins) says:--

"I can nought perfitly my pater-noster ... But I can rymes of Robyn hood, and Randolf, erle of Chestre."

It is more likely this earl is meant than his grandfather Gernons.]

[Footnote 71: Hales, _Percy Folio_, i. 264-73.]