The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris
Birch.
[13] Privilege of administering justice.
[14] Obscure. Birch says privilege of vouching to warranty.
[15] Power to punish for forcible entry.
[16] Power to inflict punishment for waylaying.
[17] Power to punish assault with bloodshed.
[18] Power to punish assault.
[19] Power to maintain watch.
[20] Power to punish for breach of peace.
[21] Add. MSS. Ch. 28657. Birch, Edward the Confessor's Charter to Coventry. "A most elegant specimen of eleventh century native palæography" (Birch).
[22] On events which occur before 1154 (or 1188) the chronicler is dependent on some earlier unknown writer (Dict. Nat. Biography, s.v. "Godiva").
[23] They follow Higden, author of the Polychronicon, who was the first to mention the ride in this connection. As a monk of S. Werburgh's, Chester, a city which held frequent intercourse with Coventry, he may have had opportunities of hearing the tale from local sources.
[24] In Coventry market the burgesses were free from toll, except for horses, in the time of Edward I. (Dugdale, Warw. i. 162).
[25] Dugdale, Warw. i. 135. Some tiny fragments of this window yet remain in the Archdeacon's Chapel of Trinity Church. See also Gent. Mag. (1829), pt. i. 120–1, for another account of the fragment.
[26] Leet Book (E.E.T.S.), 567.
[27] Rog. Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i. 497.
[28] So an old sexton told Sharp, the antiquary. See also Gent. Mag. Topography, xiii. 53.
[29] Science of Fairy Tales.
[30] Chambers, Mediæval Stage, i. 119.
[31] Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, 110 (festival of the Pòtraj).
[32] Hartland, op. cit., 77.
[33] As a tyro in folk-lore I venture with some diffidence to put forward the theory that it may be by research in custom and belief as regards the horse that we may arrive at an explanation of some of the problems of this mysterious legend. See Grimm, Teut. Myth. (trans. Stallybrass), 47, 392; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 24, 64; Gomme, Ethnology and Folk-lore, 35; Chambers, op. cit., i. 131.
[34] Rudder, Gloucestershire, 307 (quoted Hartland).
[35] Camden, Britannia (Gibson), 67. I am indebted to Mr. Addy for this reference; cf. the story of the Tichbourne dole, Chambers, Book of Days, i. 167.
[36] Coventry Standard, Jan. 15–16, 1909. The MS. (1684–1833) has passed into private hands, and I have never been able to see it.
[37] Sir Lawrence Gomme explains the black Godiva by a reference to Pliny's account of the woad-stained British women, but see Chambers, Mediæval Stage, i. 125.
[38] Science of Fairy Tales, 71–92. Mr. Hartland was the first folklorist to submit the story to scientific investigation. He gained his local knowledge of the Southam black Godiva from the late W.E. Fretton of Coventry.
[39] See Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. "Godiva."
[40] Hartland, op. cit., 77.
[41] See Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. "Godiva."
CHAPTER II
The Benedictine Monastery
The Benedictine house was built in part upon the northern slope of a low hill, in part in the hollow through which the river Sherbourne flows. This was a situation well adapted for the building of a monastery; there was rich soil in the neighbourhood, good roads—both the Watling Street and the Foss Way ran within a few miles from the spot—and running water. The Sherbourne is but a small stream nowadays, but it was a more important watercourse in earlier times, and in the fifteenth century many precautions had to be taken "in eschewing peril of floods." The monks could stock Swanswell Pool[42] with fish, and plant their orchards or vineyards in or near the hollow in which the monastery lay.
CATHEDRAL RUINS
Little remains of the minster save the bases of a few clustered pillars of the thirteenth century, the remains of the west end by the Blue Coat School at the north end of S. Michael's Churchyard, and the fragment of the north-west tower, now incorporated in a dwelling-house in New Buildings. Under the gardens and pleasant red brick eighteenth and nineteenth century houses of Priory Row, which give the churchyard the look of a cathedral close, diggers often come upon fragments of ancient masonry, showing how the cathedral stretched down the slope of the hill. Between the cathedral and the southern bank of the Sherbourne were the Priory buildings, with the cloister garth, locutorium or parlour, synodal chamber and grammar school,[43] which last had an endowed existence as early as 1303.
CARVED MISERERE SEAT, S. MICHAEL'S CHURCH
Another relic of the monastery, a beautiful old timbered hostry or guest house in Ironmonger Row, was only cleared away in 1820. The inn known as the "Palmers' Rest" now occupies a portion