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The Churches of Coventry. Frederic W. Woodhouse
Читать онлайн.Название The Churches of Coventry
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066180911
Автор произведения Frederic W. Woodhouse
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
After the king's landing at Holderness in 1471 the king-maker, declining a contest, occupied the town for the Lancastrians, and Edward passing on to London soon after turned and defeated the earl at Barnet. After Tewkesbury Edward paid the city another visit, and in return for its disloyalty seized its liberties and franchises, and only restored them for a fine of 500 marks. Royal visits still continued. Richard III came in 1483 to see the plays at the Feast of Corpus Christi; in 1485 Henry VII stayed at the mayor's house after his victory at Bosworth Field; and in 1487 kept St. George's Day at the Monastery, when the Prior at the service cursed, by "bell, book, and candle," all who should question the king's right to the throne. The importance of the Gilds is shown by the king and queen being made a brother and sister of the Trinity Gild; and the part that pageantry played in the lives of all men is seen in the many occasions on which kings and princes came hither to be entertained, not only with the plays "acted by the Grey Friars" but those in which the "hard-handed men" of, for instance, the Gild of the Sheremen and Tailors, "toil'd their unbreathed memories" in setting forth such subjects as the Birth of Christ and the Murder of the Innocents. But although Henry VIII himself was received in 1511 with pageantry and stayed at the Priory, royal favours and monastic hospitality availed neither men nor buildings when the Dissolution came. On 15th January, 1539, Thomas Camswell, the last Prior of St. Mary's, surrendered. "The Prior," reported Dr. London, the king's commissioner, "is a sad, honest priest as his neighbours do report him, and is a Bachelor of Divinity. He gave his house unto the king's grace willingly and so in like manner did all his brethren." The Doctor asks for good pensions for the dispossessed, not on the plea of justice but so that "others perceiving that these men be liberally handled will with better will not only surrender their houses, but also leave the same in the better state to the King's use."
The yearly revenue had been certified in the valuation at £731 19s. 5d. Deducting a Fee-Ferme rent to the Crown, reserved by Roger de Montalt, and other annual payments, the clear remainder was £499 7s. 4d. Bishop Rowland Lee, writing to "my singular good Lord Cromwell," implies that he had a promise from him to spare the church. "My good Lord," he says, "help me and the City both in this and that the church may stand, whereby I may keep my name, and the City have commodity and ease to their desire, which shall follow if by your goodness it might be brought to a collegiate church, as Lichfield, and so that fair City shall have a perpetual comfort of the same, as knoweth the Holy Trinity, who preserve your Lordship in honour to your heart's comfort."
But his entreaties, and those of the mayor and corporation, were all in vain, the church and monastic buildings were dismantled and destroyed piecemeal, and like so many other magnificent structures became a mere quarry for mean buildings and the mending of roads.
The site having been granted by Henry VIII to two gentlemen named Combes and Stansfield, passed soon into the hands of John Hales, the founder of the Free School, and in Elizabeth's reign was purchased by the Corporation.
The changes in religious opinion of the successive sovereigns were felt here by many poor victims. Seven persons were burnt in 1519 for having in their possession the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed in English, and for refusing to obey the Pope or his agents, opinions and acts that would have been counted meritorious twenty years later. In 1555 Queen Mary burnt three Protestants in the old quarry in Little Park—Laurence Saunders, a well-known preacher, Robert Glover, M.A., and Cornelius Bongey.
Ten years after this Queen Elizabeth's visit was the occasion of much pageantry and performing of plays by the Tanners', Drapers', Smiths', and Weavers' Companies, and in 1575 the men of Coventry gave their play of "Hock Tuesday" before her at Kenilworth Castle. In 1566 Queen Mary of Scots was in ward here, in the mayoress' parlour, and in 1569 at the Bull Inn.
Coming down to the opening of the Civil War we find that a few days before the raising of his standard at Nottingham Charles summoned the city to admit him with three hundred cavaliers, and received for answer that it was quite ready to receive his Majesty with no more than two hundred. Whereupon he retired in displeasure, and reappeared some days later with the threat to lay the city in ruins if it should persist in its disloyalty. The townsfolk being in no mind to receive a garrison, the King planted cannon against Newgate and broke down the gates but was met with a fierce musquetry fire from the walls, followed up by a vigorous sally, in which the citizens did much execution and took two cannon.
To prevent the like happening again, the walls were in 1662 breached in many places and made incapable of defence. Just one hundred years later New-gate was taken down, and others followed from time to time, until now there are left only the remains of two of the lesser ones—Cook Street Gate, a crumbling shell (p. 7), and the adjacent Swanswell or Priory Gate, blocked up and used as a dwelling.
In 1771 was finally destroyed the famous Cross which had been built, 1541–3, by Sir William Hollis, once Lord Mayor of London, who came of a Coventry family. It was described by Dugdale as "one of the chief things wherein this City most glories, which for workmanship and beauty is inferior to none in England." A few relics of it exist in St. Mary Hall, a statue of Henry VI, and, in the oriel, two smaller figures. So too does the very interesting contract for its building, which shows how much was left to the craftsman's pride in his work and how little he was trammelled by conditions, save that the work was to be "finished in all points, as well in imagery work, pictures, and finials, according to the due form and proportion of the Cross at Abingdon."
Another building, which was destroyed in 1820, was the Pilgrims' Rest, a fine timbered house of three storeys, "supposed," as the inscription upon it records, "to have been the hostel or inn for the maintenance and entertainment of the palmers and other visitors to the Priory." Some pieces of carved work were patched together in the windows of the inn built on its site and there remain.
The modern history of Coventry, consisting of the ordinary events and vicissitudes of civic life and the changes and fluctuations in its trades, apart from that of its parish churches which is elsewhere given, does not come within the scope of this handbook.
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