CHAPTER VI

_The Seigniory of the Prior and Queen Isabella_

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 utterly broken in spirit. After a hard fight lasting from the days of Henry III., they obtained in 1327 a charter, conferring on them the control over the local courts and the privileges of a free and independent borough. And yet they were powerless. Five years later they voluntarily surrendered their charter into the abbot's hands. They gave up the perambulation of their borough. They took their handmills--the initial cause of the contention--and left them in the churchyard in token of renunciation. They presented to the abbot the town chest with the keys belonging thereto, thus relinquishing all their rights as a free and independent community. Nor did better success attend the Bury S. Edmund's men, who had the same high hopes as the S. Alban's folk, and who in the same year compelled their abbot to concede to them a guild merchant, a community, a common seal, and the custody of their gates. Five years later they too were forced to abandon these claims, and, after a fruitless effort at the time of the Peasant Revolt in 1381,[115] both towns sank into apathy, each under the rule of the great local religious house.

But alone among convent towns, a piece of supreme good fortune awaited Coventry. The townsmen, just at a critical time, gained a powerful champion. In 1327, by some bargain between Isabella, widow of Edward II. and the representatives of the Chester family, the rents coming from the Earl's-half passed into the Queen's hands, to become after her death parcel of the duchy of Cornwall, heritage of the princes of Wales. We have nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the quarrel which raged for twenty years between the Queen and the prior of S. Mary's convent. The undoubted gainers in this conflict were the men of Coventry; for, helpless under Isabella's repeated attacks, the monks conceded to their tenants those rights of self-government whereof they had stood in need so long.

Soon after the Queen's entry into possession of the De Montalt estate, the prior had many bitter complaints to make of the treatment he received at her hands and at the hands of his "mortal enemies," the men of Coventry. His courts were deserted by the men of the Earl's-half, the profits of his franchise finding their way, no doubt, into the Queen's coffers, as her steward held a court at Cheylesmore. His dues, waifs, heriots, the mournful enumeration proceeds, were withheld, and certain tenements belonging to him seized into "my lady's hand" in spite of charters shown to prove his ample right to the same. Great destruction had been wrought in his woods at Whitmore under colour of the Queen's claim to gather her "estovers," or fuel, therein. And the boundaries about these woods had been violently thrown down, and if "they be not now enclosed to prevent cattle from pasturing therein, they will be ruined for ever past recovery." The men of the Earl's-half lived in the prior's tenements in the Earl's Orchard, detaining the rent, twenty marks a year, "by tort and force." But this was not the worst. By cover "of the Seigneurie of my said lady," the prior continued, a great part of the rents in Coventry were treacherously withheld, and the monks dared not take distress and force the defaulters to pay "for peril of death." For when their bailiff, Simon Pakeman, went to demand the aforesaid rents without making any distraint for the same, "up came Peter de Stoke and other mad folk ... and assaulted the said Simon with force of arms, and beat and maltreated him, saying ... that if the said prior and convent ever made any demand of the kind in the Earl's-half they would make their heads fly" (_ferryent voler les testes_).[116] Again and again the prior and convent poured forth their monotonous complaint. Now they "prayed restitution" for the rent of two messuages, "which for two years last past my lady had given to a demoiselle of her chamber."[117] Now they averred that she had put the bailiff of the Earl's-half out of his office, whereby they had lost all profits arising from their franchises. Still the spoliation continued; they fixed the damage the convent had sustained at £20,000,[118] and, turning from the deaf ears of Queen Isabel, besought the King to see justice done for God's sake, "and for love of our Lady, his dear Mother, in whose honour the priory" had been founded, lest the convent should be compelled to disperse.[119]

Meanwhile the men of Coventry were gaining every year important graces from Edward III. Now that the power of the prior was thus diminished, there was no one to prevent the acquisition of fresh liberties, and their money circulated freely at Westminster, the messengers bringing back in return the precious slips of parchment sealed with the King's seal, the testimony of new rights to be enjoyed by the townsfolk. In 1334 their merchandise was freed from toll in all places throughout the King's dominions.[120] Six years later licence was given them to form a merchant guild,[121] while other kindred societies sprang up, and received licence to hold land in mortmain.[122] In 1341 the King granted a charter to the effect that any inquisition of lands or tenements within the city should be taken by the townsmen, and not by strangers, an important provision at a time when there were frequent lawsuits between the Queen and the prior.[123]

The convent give a graphic description of the effect of such an inquisition upon their holding, and of the plot between the Queen and the Earl's-men which caused the inquiry to be made.[124] "There came the Men of the Earl's-half of Coventry amongst others ... Conspiring and Compassing the undoing of the said prior and of his monks, and the Disinheritance and Destruction of their Church, and making show of their Intent unto my said Lady that her Seigniorie was more largely than she had occupied.... Whereupon the Stewards and some of the officers of my said Lady, without having any Power or Commission from the Court of our Lord the King, took an Inquisition of the said Men, Adversarys to the said Prior and Convent, what were the Bounds in Ancient times of the Seigniorye of the Earl Rondulph ... which men quickly and Maliciously gave up the said false verdict to the Damnation of their Souls, Saying that all the Prior's-half, which is of foundation of the Church, is two little leys (meadows), whereon the profits by year are not above 50s.... and did fasten stakes of Division to Separate the Seigniory of my said Lady from the Seigniory of the said Prior." What made this action so particularly galling was that it was the "Seigniory of the ffoundation" of their "Church" Isabel called in question, though they had held it, they declared, long time before the coming of the Conqueror, and before the Earls of Chester, whose representative the Queen was, had been heard of in England.

The prior's complaints availed nothing; the men of Coventry were in a sure way of victory, and in 1345 the city was incorporated by charter. Three years later one John Ward took his seat as first mayor of the city. The mayor, bailiffs, and community were henceforth to be responsible for the fee-ferm;[125] and power to hear and adjudge certains pleas, hitherto treated of in the county court, was given to the city officers. The prior and his brethren looked upon this as a last indignity. "They are become lords of the said prior, all whome beforetime were his tenants," and in consequence of the inquisition above mentioned, he and his brethren were now "entirely involved within the danger of the mayor and his bailiffs, for they had not a foot of land of their Seigniory" beyond the priory gates.[126]

Wearied of a struggle which had lasted for twenty years, the litigants, the Queen, the prior, and the newly-made corporation allowed the dispute to be set at rest once and for all in 1355, and the "Indenture Tripartite" made between them took the form of a compromise. Each of the three parties agreed to restore or forego the exercise of certain rights, or at least to accept an equivalent. The prior gave up all claim to jurisdiction over the Earl's-men, and the Queen forgave him £10 of the yearly ferm owing to her, while the franchises he thus relinquished--the right of holding view of frankpledge or leet and other courts with the exercise of the coronership--Isabel bestowed on the mayor, bailiffs, and community. These in their turn agreed to indemnify the convent by a payment of £10 a year.

Other matter of contention was laid at rest. The prior's tenants were to be taxable with the Earl's-men, and to serve as mayors and bailiffs with their fellow-citizens. The restrictions on buying and selling, which had given rise to the lawsuit in the former reign, were wholly laid aside. "Any persons of whatsoever condition they be, [may] sell any manner of wares" in the Earl's part, "or buy at what day or time it shall please them, and they shall not be disturbed by the said prior and convent." And although the market was to continue to be held as of old in the Prior's-half, no toll was to be taken according to the ancient custom, except for horses, while all the regulations concerning sale and merchandise should henceforth "be at the ordinance of the mayor and community." The assize of bread, ale, and victuals was to be kept by the mayor; and though the prior was to have all the profits arising from the fines of offenders against the assize, the officers of the corporation could enter the convent half, and, in case the prior's officers neglected to punish fraudulent brewers and bakers, could levy fines upon these evil-doers and see justice done.

Various restitutions were made on the Queen's part, showing that she and her advisers were really intent on a peaceful solution of the difficulty. The advowson of chapels, chantries, and the like, which she had appropriated, were restored to the prior, who, in his turn, forgave all the delinquencies of the Earl's-men against himself.[127] The "Tripartite" was drawn up so clearly, and in so fair a spirit, that in essentials it was never afterwards called in question. Disputes arose between the convent and the townsmen in later days, it is true, but not concerning the all-important matters of trade and jurisdiction. Nevertheless, this compact put an end, once and for all, to the prior's dominion in Coventry. Henceforth in recounting the history of the place, we have little concern with the convent; our subject touches only upon the rule and fortunes of the mayor, bailiffs, and community of the city.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 115: Thompson, _Municipal History_, 22 _sqq._ Green, _Town Life_, i. 298.]

[Footnote 116: Burton MS. f. 88. This appears to be the sense, but this portion of the document is missing from Burton's folio. I found it on a loose leaf in the _Leet Book_, copied in Norman French in a modern and rather illegible hand from the deeds which were in the Stanton collection of papers destroyed in the Birmingham library fire. [It is now in Burton's Book Corp. MS. A. 34.]]

[Footnote 117: _Ib._, f. 110_a_.]

[Footnote 118: Burton MS. f. 63_a_. An incredible sum.]

[Footnote 119: _Ib._, ff. 109-12.]

[Footnote 120: Corp. MS. B. 7.]

[Footnote 121: _Ib._, 6.]

[Footnote 122: These were S. John the Baptist, S. Catherine, the Corpus Christi, and the Trinity guilds, founded respectively in 1342, 1343, and 1364.]

[Footnote 123: _Inspeximus_, 15 Ed. III. (Corp. MS. B. 7). This would be highly important in a trial taking place at the county court, where the sheriff might impanel a jury, not of townsmen, but of those in the country round, who would not be acquainted with the "metes and bounds" dividing the two estates. The Prior of Dunstable was accused by the burgesses of introducing foreign jurors into the town (_Cornh. Mag._, vi. 837).]

[Footnote 124: Burton MS. f. 110_a_.]

[Footnote 125: The fee-ferm rent, representing the King's rights over the fines, forfeitures, etc, taken from criminals, was fixed at £50 a year. The liberties granted to be summed up thus: (1) The townsmen may duly elect their own mayor and bailiffs. (2) They have cognizance of pleas, of trespasses, contracts, covenants, and all other business amongst themselves. (3) There is to be a seal for the recognition of debts. (4) Mayor and bailiffs to have profits of view of frankpledge with the court, to have control over the gaol, fair, market, etc., and in return a ferm of £50 to be paid to the Queen and her heirs (Corp. MS. B. 11).]

[Footnote 126: Burton MS. f. 111_a_.]

[Footnote 127: Burton, MS. ff. 98-103.]