THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. LXXVI. — CENTRAL ENGLAND: NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

AND WARWICKSHIRE.—THE TOWNS (CONTINUED).

WARWICK, the early capital of the Hwiccas, is situated chiefly on the right bank of the river Avon, in nearly the centre of the county of Warwick. In Saxon records, as we have seen, it appears as Waeringawic. It was destroyed in the wars with the Northmen, and restored by the Lady Ethelfieda, who, as we have seen, is believed to have built a fort here (in 913). At the time of the Domesday Surrey "the King had 113 houses in Warwick, and his barons 112, of which the King had the geld or tax. The residue of the mansures in the town belonged to as many burgesses, who enjoyed them with sac and soc and all customs as they had done in the time of King Edward the Confessor. In the time of the Confessor the sbrievalty of Warwick, with the burgh and royal manors, paid 65/. and 36 sectaries of honey, or 24/. 8s. in lieu of the honey. But in the time of the Survey in the farm of the Royal manors they paid yearly one hundred and forty-five pounds in weight, 23/. for the custom of dogs, 20s. for a sumpter-horse, 10/. for a hawk, and 100s. to the Queen as a fine or gift. Besides this, they paid 24 sectaries of honey of the greater measure, and the burgh six sectaries, viz., 15d. a sectary and 5s. The custom of Warwick was that whenever the King went in person on any expedition by land, 10 of the burgesses went for all the rest. Whoever was summoned to give his attendance and did not go paid 1008. to the King. If the King went against his enemies by sea, the burgesses provided four 'satsumas' (i.e.), boatmen or sailors, or paid four pounds in money." Turchill, who held Warwick at the time of the Conquest, was ordered by ‘Villiam to surround the town with a ditch and to strengthen it with gates. Then came the rule of the Newburghs, Earls of Warwick, whose heiress, Margaret, married John de Plessilis, or Jean du Plessis. This baron (who became Earl of Warwick in right of his wife) granted to the burgesses of Warwick in the 45th of Henry III. a fair for three days. The disaffected barons in this reign intended to hold jousts here as a rendezvous for their party, but the King forbade them. He himself made the town the general rendezvous of his army previous to the siege of Kenilworth Castle. In Edward I.'s reign the town was in a flourishing condition. In the seventh year of that reign, William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, held there a yearly fair lasting sixteen days, and a weekly market on the Wednes- day. In the 18th year the Earl obtained the King's charter for another fair, to last last fifteen days. Towards the latter end of the reign the paving of the town was commenced, and the walls were likewise begun, being both defrayed by a toll on valuable commodities. There was a second toll for the same purpose (for three years) in the 8th of Edward II., and a third in the 6th of Edward III., for seven years. There was a charter of incorporation for the town granted in the 1st of Philip and Mary, and Queen Elizabeth visited it in 1572. In the Civil War of Charles I., Warwick and its castle became a stronghold of the Parliament under the auspices of the energetic and enthusiastic Robert Grevile, Lord Brooke. In the great hall of the castle he addressed the townsmen and freeholders of the neighbourhood, and exhorted them, if they were earnest in the cause, to rally round him. The castle underwent a siege during the war, and several skirmishes occurred near it ; but the place was successfully held for the Parliament. In 1694 the greater part of the town and nearly the whole of St. Mary's Church were consumed in a great fire. To meet this calamity 11,0001. was collected, to which Queen Anne added 1,000/. Some curious old buildings, however, have escaped this fire, and the magnificent castle, an unequalled com- bination of feudal strength and palatial grandeur with domestic comfort, and the Chapel of Our Lady, commonly called the Beauchamp Chapel, are most interesting relies of the past life of England. One of the towers of the castle, and the oldest, Cmsar's Tower, is 147 feet high ; Guy's Tower, of the latter part of the fourteenth century, is 128 feet high. The suite of apartments altogether are 333 feet in length, and the great hall of the castle is 62 feet by 37 feet. The chief employment of the town is now afforded by an extensive hat manufactory and some large flour mills. But the chief interest and, we may say, the history of the place is centred in the castle ; and this, again, is chiefly bound up with the fortunes of the successive earls and barons who have held it, and many of whom have left striking memorials in the national history. The population decreased between the years 1851 and 1861 from 10,973 to 10,570, and in general the town is a very qpiet one. It is excelled, however, in that respect by the little market town of Aleester, the ALAITN.E- CASTRA of the Romans, one of the sleepiest towns in England, where St. Ecgwin might now preach one of his longest sermons without fear of interruption from the rude sounds of workmen, so effectually has worked the curse then laid on the town that no ironsmith should thenceforward flourish in Alcester.

Toutieorth—the Tameworde of Domesday Book—half of which town, with the church, is situated in Staffordshire, will be referred to again when we come to that county,—to which, from parochial considerations, it is now considered as belonging. We have already spoken of the castle on the Warwickshire side of the Tame. Ten burgesses are enumerated in the Survey as belonging to the 1Var- wickshire part of the town, and twelve to the Staffordshire. Atherstone—near which is believed to have been the site of the Roman station MANDUESEDUM, a name preserved in the parish and village of Maucester, was a place of small consideration at the time of the Conquest, and was bestowed by Earl Hugh d'Avranclies, on whose land it stood, on the monks of Bee, in Normandy. In 1216 these monks procured for the town from Henry III, a weekly market and a yearly fair, and to their patronage it was indebted for its first step towards prosperity, the market rapidly augmenting in traffic. The town was the head-quarters of Henry, Earl of Richmond, two days before the battle of Bosworth Field (which " Field" is distant about nine miles), and here the secret meeting took place between henry and the two Stanleys. Mr. Dugdale's park, adjacent to Atherstone, contains some of the tallest and finest oaks in England. Its chief manufacture is now that of hats, but ribbons and shalloons are also made. The popu- lation, which in 1851 was 3,819, in 1861 was 3,857.

Coventry is situated on a gentle eminence rising in the middle of a valley which runs east and west. The river Sherbourne and the Radford Brook unite within the town. In early writings it is called Conventsia—the town of assembly—which may have been its name in Roman times, for on excavating the spot termed Broad Gate in the year 1792 there was found, at a depth of five or six feet front the surface, a regular pavement, and on it a coin of Nero in " middle brass"; and on digging for the foundation of a house on the site of the old town, a marble figure was discovered about ten inches in height, the right hand leaning on a shield, the head bound with a fillet resembling wheat. The old town of Coventry is believed to have stood on the north of the present city, as extensive foundations have been traced in that direction, near the spot termed St. Nicholas' Churchyard. Coventry seems to have been occasionally a capital for one of the earldoms into which the old kingdom and the subsequent earldom of the Mer- cians were occasionally subdivided. In the reign of the Danish Princes and the early part of that of Edward the Confessor it was under the rule and, seemingly, often the residence of Earl Leofric, whose wife, the Lady Godeva, or Godiva, was sister of Thorold, Sheriff of Lincolnshire. We have already referred to the popular legend respecting her. Matthew of Westminster, who wrote in 1307, is said to be the first writer who mentions this story. Godeva and her husband founded in 1044, at Coventry, a magni- ficent Benedictine monastery. "The capacious cellar of the monks still exists, measuring seventy-five yards in length by five yards in breadth." After the Conquest the lordship came to Hugh d'Avranches and his successors, the Earls of Chester. Leland (in the Tudor period) and other antiquaries speak of the walls, gates, and towers by which the city was defended, and of its streets, which were well built of timber. The foundation of the monastery was the great cause, seemingly, of the increasing prosperity of Coventry ; and the wealth of this house was, per- haps, the reason why Robert de Limesie in 1102 removed to Coventry the seat of the old bishopric of the Mercians, which had once been at Lichfield, and afterwards at Cheater. In 1188 that see was restored to Lichfield by the bishop, Hugh Novant, who also much injured the monastery. From this time there were great disputes between the two Chapters

of Coventry and Lichfield, till a compromise was effected in the reign of Henry III., by which there was to be a joint election of Bishop, and the see was to be styled Coventry and Lick&Id. Henry VIII. on dissolving the abbey (or priory, as it had been styled since it became the seat of an episcopal see) transferred the sole power of election to the Chapter of Lichfield, and Bishop Hacket after the restoration of the Stuarts gave Lichfield the precedence in the designation of the see. During the Middle Ages Coventry had a large and beautiful cathedral, but in the reign

of Henry VIII, it was levelled to the ground.

Under the Earls of Chester, who held a castle here, the

inhabitants of Coventry held all their possessions in free burgage. Earl Ranulph, the last of that name, granted them a portmote or town court of their own, in which they might freely hold plea of all things to him or themselves belonging. He also, in the second of Henry III., obtained for them a yearly

fair, to continue eight days. In the beginning of the reign of Edward III. Coventry became annexed by bequest to the Earldom of Cornwall. Edward I. had already given the inhabitants power to take toll for a term of years for the paving of the city, and in the second of Edward III. they were allowed to levy another toll for enclosing the city. The reign of Edward III. was one of great prosperity for Coventry. It was then incorporated, and was distinguished for the wealth of its merchants, whose numerous guilds or fraternities, with their halls and privileges, pageants and feastings, occupy no small part of the chronicle history of the Middle Ages. At this time, too, its cloth and other manufactures began to attain great importance. Its cloth caps and bonnets were noted at the commencement of the fifteenth century, and woollen and broad-cloths remained its staple manufacture until the war of 1694 between England and France, when the Turkey trade was destroyed. In the early part of the sixteenth century it became famous for a manufacture of blue thread, but the art became extinct before the year 1581. The manufacture of striped and mixed tatnmies, and camblets, shalloons, and calitnancoes flourished through the greater part of the eighteenth century, but is now almost entirely lost. The principal manufactures at present are those of ribbons and watches. Coventry was the seat of a Parliament of Henry IV. in 1404, and of another of Henry VI. in 1459. It was also the scene of the meeting, rendered fatuous by Shakespeare, between Mowbray Duke of Norfolk and Henry Duke of Hereford (afterwards Henry IV.), in the reign of Richard II.

From an early period Coventry was renowned for the exhibition of pageants and processions, and for its magnificent and costly

• performances of the religious dramas called Mysteries ; and many Kings of England attended to see these performances. Coventry

was also a favourite residence of Edward the Black Prince. Queen Elizabeth viewed some of these pageants and performances on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575, when the Mayor is said to have addressed her in the following lines, which we are afraid have rather a more modern ring :—

"The men of Coventry Are very glad to see Your Gracious Majesty,—

good Lord! how fair yo be!"

To which the Queen is said to have replied, on the spur of the moment :—

"Her Gracious Majesty Is very glad to see

The men of Coventry,—

Good Lord! what fools ye be !"

What is called the "Coventry Procession" began as early as the reign of Charles II. The town took a very decided part in favour of the Parliament in the Civil War of the reign of Charles I.,

and Charles II. is said to have demolished the walls of the city as a mark of his displeasure at this conduct. The Charities of Coventry have kept pace with its taste for pageantry, and the extent to which this eleemosynary provision for the citizens has been carried is said to have seriously injured the industry of the place and the tone of the inhabitants. They are literally pampered with charitable provisions, and protective duties have been only

too much relied on for fostering their manufactures.

They inherit, however, a rich architectural legacy from their ancestors. The three ancient Churches, of which St. Michael's (dating in origin from the reign of Henry I.) is the finest, with its spire (of the time of Edward III.) rising to an elevation of 303 feet from the ground ; and St. Mary's Hall, erected in the reign of Henry VI., and the Hospital in Gray Friars' Lane, are the most remarkable specimens. The population of the municipal borough of Coventry was, in 1861 40,936, an increase from that of 1851, which was 86,208.