The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris
boss a carving which represents the coronation of the Virgin; another of the porch carvings—now weather-worn—recalled the Annunciation, and a scene on the famous tapestry within the hall, the Assumption,[150] so that the guild brethren, could be everywhere reminded of the scenes in the life of their chief patroness. No church, however, recalls the Virgin's name, though materials from an unfinished building, which should have borne that dedication, were transported from Cheylesmore to Bablake, where the stately, early Perpendicular church of S. John the Baptist was rising on ground granted by Queen Isabel in 1342 to the fraternity called after that saint.[151] Both S. John the Baptist's guild and S. Catherine's—the latter connected with S. Catherine's chapel in S. John's Hospital,[152] coalesced between 1364–5 with the guild merchant, to be absorbed later by the all-embracing Trinity fraternity. This fusion of the guilds, which had certainly taken place informally before 1384,[153] was ratified by patent in 1392,[154] when the united revenues were increased to the amount of £86, 13s. 4d. a year. The completion of S. John's church became the especial care of the Trinity guild, and the dues taken at the Drapery, where cloth was sold, were devoted to that purpose, while a college of priests, whose number was in 1393 increased to nine, officiated at this church, and lived on the bounty of the brotherhood.[155]
SMITHFORD STREET
The priests of the merchant guild, as was meet, occupied from the beginning the most honourable place of all. They sang their "solemn antiphonies" in the lady-chapel of S. Michael's, the great parish church of the Earl's-half, a practice which was still continued after the title of the guild became merged in the society of the Trinity;[156] while the guild of the Corpus Christi, composed, it would seem, of the prior's tenants, occupied the corresponding chapel in the parish church of the Trinity.[157]
One guild, that of the fullers and tailors, called after the Nativity, carried on an obscure existence in connection with the since demolished chapel of S. George outside the Gosford gate. The formation of this society was violently opposed by the powers that were in 1384 on the ground that the purpose of its members—"labourers and artificers of the middling sort" and strangers—was to withstand the mayor and officers of the city, and not to promote the welfare of souls.[158] After 1400, further guild-making had come to have little favour with the ruling men of the city. Three several times did the mayor and bailiffs obtain patents forbidding the formation of guilds other than those already existing within Coventry.[159] While the close alliance of the older fraternities and the corporation is shown in the fact that the meetings of the guilds of S. Anne and S. George, formed by journeymen tailors in the first quarter of the century, were suppressed by royal command under the pretext that their meetings were to the manifest destruction of the ancient foundations, the guilds of Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi.[160]
FOOTNOTES:
[128] See above, page 70.
[129] Cf. the expression "queen's-chamber" as applied to Bristol, where the ferm was paid to the queen-consort.
[130] The "Casteldich" is mentioned Corp. MSS. C. 61.
[131] On the belfry as continental symbol of independence, see Round, Commune of London, 244.
[132] For instance, one of the twelve whose names are handed down in the mayor-lists as winners of the freedom of the city was Walter Whitweb. He was master of the guild merchant in 1353 (Corp. MS. C. 148). Four of the twelve served afterwards as mayor, some others as bailiffs of the city. We may note that the leading families under the prior still continue to take the foremost place after the incorporation. Thus to Lawrence de Shepey, member of Edward I.'s assembly of merchants (Parl. Writs, i. 135), and in 1300 member for the borough (Ib., I. lii.), succeeded Jordan de Shepey whose name is yet commemorated in Jordan Well, second mayor of the city and first master of the guild merchant (Gross, ii. 49). A parallel case is shown in the Kelle family. Robert was burgess in 1298 (Parl. Writs, I. lii.), and Henry one of the founders of the Trinity guild in 1364, and four times mayor of the city.
[133] On the solemn consultations thus involved in the case of Ipswich, see Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 23.
[134] On the troubles attending the grant of a charter to Norwich in 1380, where the commonalty were "very contrarious," see Hudson, op. cit., I. liv. sqq.
[135] Bateson, op. cit., II, lxvi.
[136] Charter 17 Jas. I. On the corruption of the Coventry corporation, see Munic. Corp. Report (Coventry, 1835) 12; Webb, Local Government.
[137] Coventry Leet Book, 1420–1555, edited for the Early English Text Society by the present writer; part i. 1907, part ii. 1908, part iii. 1909, part iv. in progress.
[138] The mayor, recorder, and four lawful men of the city are allowed to exercise all that appertains to the office of justice of the peace for labourers and artificers in the county of Warwick, i.e. fix the rate of wages (Charter 22 Rich. II. Burton MS. f. 253). For a trial of felons by the justices of the peace, see Sharp, Antiq., 212.
[139] Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, passim.
[140] Leet Book, 420.
[141] Leet Book, 59.
[142] Ib., 681.
[143] We learn in 1384 that the annual ferm of £10, due to the prior according to the terms of the Tripartite, was drawn from the coffers of the guild (Leet Book, 2–6). Directly the guild lands were confiscated in 1545 the corporation made a great outcry concerning their poverty. They had, they declared, no lands whence they might derive an income to meet the yearly ferm of £50, and in trying to discharge it one or two of the citizens were yearly ruined (Vol. of Correspondence, f. 63, Corp. MS. A. 79).
[144] Leet Book, 295.