The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris
in towns is a matter of much debate. How early the few in Coventry engrossed the governing power of which the whole community was—in theory at least—the source, it is impossible in our present state of knowledge to determine. We have testimony as early as 1450 of the great influence of the leading crafts, mercers, and drapers. The evidence—though not always so clear as we could wish—points to a gradual absorption of the conduct of affairs during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a small official class. In the end this clique succeeded so effectually in freeing itself from every device framed to ensure some regard for the popular will, that the charter of 1621 vested all power—and incidentally considerable official emolument—in a close select body "entirely independent of the rest of the community."[136] How early the citizens became aware of the trend of affairs we know not, but it is, maybe, significant that that popular discontent began to manifest itself within a generation after the incorporation of the city. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the commonalty set order at defiance, reviled the mayor in the guild hall, and sought occasion to break out in riot and tumult, while under the veil of religious societies, industrial combinations—akin to the modern strike—formed again and again, and were with difficulty suppressed.
After 1420, when the graphic chronicle contained in the Leet Book[137] begins to be available for our researches, a glimpse is given of a fully evolved constitution in working order. On January 25, the feast of the Conversion of S. Paul, the mayor, chamberlains, and wardens were annually elected, the permanent officials, the recorder, legal adviser of the corporation, and the coroner re-appointed, the justices of the peace selected, while the bailiffs, according to ancient custom, received nomination at the Michaelmas assembly of the court leet. The justices of the peace—with the exception of the recorder—served also as key-keepers of the chest containing the common treasure. The court of portmanmote, mentioned in Ranulf's charter, still survived under various names, and in it pleas for debt were tried by the presiding officers, the mayor, and bailiffs. At quarter sessions the mayor, recorder, and three other late mayors, justices of the peace, dealt with criminal offences, and it was, probably, the activity of these comparatively recently created officials,[138]that brought about the degeneration of the leet or view of frankpledge, normally a court of justice for the trial of minor criminal offences, particularly evasions of the assize of bread and beer.[139] By the fifteenth century, the Coventry leet had retained little or nothing of its judicial functions, and merely survived as a court wherein by-laws, binding on the whole community, and grounded on petitions of grievances, received the sanction of the jurats of the leet. Another body, which also possessed legislative functions, was the mayor's council of forty-eight, later known as the common council. While it is from a small select body called the council-house, of which the mayor and aldermen appear to have been ex-officio members, that there sprang the close, corrupt corporation of later times.
COURTYARD, ST MARY'S HALL, COVENTRY
There are certain officials whose elections or appointments are not entered in the regular municipal records, but who, nevertheless, had great weight in the councils of the city. Such were the aldermen, who first appear in 1477.[140] These officials discharged certain police duties in their respective wards and were of the inner council of the mayor. Under the charter of James I. they became permanent justices of the peace, and members of the corporation. While as justice of the peace, key-keeper, head of the electoral jury and jury of the leet, the master of the Trinity guild was one of the foremost figures among the municipal rulers. His connection, and that of his fellow, the master of the Corpus Christi guild, with the mayoralty was very close. Two years before entering office each mayor was master of the Corpus Christi, and two years after quitting it, master of the Trinity guild. The control they exercised over the revenues of the guilds, which were often put to municipal uses, gave these masters much power and authority with the magnates of the city. The guilds joined their funds with those of the wardens to pension deserving townsfolk[141] and pay the salary of the recorder.[142] Before 1384 the Trinity guild discharged the ferm of £10 due to the prior, receiving a share of common land to be held in severalty[143]—that is separate from the lands of the community—as compensation. Indeed, the guild officers were so clearly considered as officers of the corporation that when they, together with the city wardens and chamberlains, neglected to present their accounts at the annual audit[144] they were one and all brought to book by the leet, and ordered to remedy their neglect under pain of punishment.
The origin of societies known as guilds is involved in controversy, but they were common throughout all Europe in the Middle Ages, bearing eloquent testimony to the fortifying power of combination. They afforded mutual protection to their members, frequently making good any loss sustained from an insurance fund to which all were contributory, and devoting other portions of their revenues to feasts, almsgiving, and public works. Guilds are best remembered, however, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as monopolist organisations, and a third of all the towns in England, with the possible exception of London, had their merchant guild, or body of traders and handicraftsmen, engrossing the local commerce to the exclusion of all men without their ranks. The craft guild was a century behind the merchant guild in its rise and development. Its members met together to make rules, by which all who practised a particular calling in the locality were to be directed in all affairs connected with their trade or handicraft. They devoted some of their revenue to religious uses, the members frequently supporting some church or chapel, or providing candles for altar or processional lights. Other local guilds not definitely commercial, but rather social, in character, often called after some saint, were active in the performance of all good works; they clad the poor in their livery, supported churches, colleges of priests and grammar schools, and pensioned decayed and deserving members. At Coventry, in the later fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries, guilds rose rapidly, and as rapidly coalesced, or, in the case of those "yeomen" or journeymen fraternities, which served to focus the prevailing industrial discontent, failed to maintain themselves in face of the hostility of other powerful previously existing associations. Two fraternities survived to play a great part in the city's mediæval history, the Corpus Christi guild, founded in 1348, and the better-known society of the Holy Trinity, S. Mary, S. John the Baptist, and S. Catherine, properly a fusion of four different fraternities, founded between 1340 and 1364, and known for brevity's sake as the Trinity guild.
MINSTREL GALLERY ST MARY'S HALL
It is possible that it was to the foundation of the merchant guild of S. Mary[145] in 1340, the kindred associations which sprang up around it, and to the gifts of their members in lands and money that the townsfolk owed the purchase of the incorporation charter.[146] It is frequently found that the same man serves in different years as mayor and master of the merchant fraternity.[147]
The town hall of S. Mary, in which not only the guild feasts were held, but municipal business[148] was transacted, and the town chest, as well as the guild plate,[149] stored, tells by its name of its connection with S. Mary's brotherhood. The vaulting of the entrance porch of this building still bears