The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris
which involved them in endless quarrels, caused them to play a notable part in municipal history. As a body they were opposed to the growth of free institutions among the townsfolk. They never rightly understood their tenants' desire for increase of municipal liberty, and feared by giving way to their demands to forego the rights of the Church, and bring their souls in peril thereby.[59]
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Guy of Warwick also freed Coventry from a fabulous monster. In the last century there was still shown there "a great shield-bone of a bore (sic) which "he" slew in Hunting, when he (i.e. the boar) had turned with his Snout a great Put or Pond which is now called Swanswell, but Swineswell in times past." Gough, Collect. Warw. (Bodleian Library).
[43] Vic. Count. Hist. Warw., ii. 319.
[44] For a popular account of a monastery v. Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, 113–165.
[45] Leet Book, 448–9.
[46] The chronicler, whose name—Walter of Coventry—seems to attest some local connection, was not a monk of this house. Stubbs, Pref. to Walter of Coventry (Rolls), I. xxii.-xxxiii.
[47] Jessopp, 138.
[48] Luard, Annales Monastici, iii. 90; i. 89–90.
[49] Dugdale, Monasticon (1846), iii. 178.
[50] Beresford, Diocesan Hist. Lichfield, 54.
[51] Beresford, Diocesan Hist. Lichfield, 78.
[52] Dugdale. Warw., i. 161. Rather an improbable story. More likely after Nunant's fall the monks found some one to plead their cause with the King.
[53] Beresford, 69.
[54] Which may be paraphrased: "I have but one diocese, and must I have but one cathedral?" (Beresford, 76).
[55] Cott. MS, quoted Dugdale, Monasticon, VI. iii. 1242.
[56] Ibid. 1242–3.
[57] Luard, op cit., iii 104.
[58] Vict. County Hist., ii. 55.
[59] For the disputes between ecclesiastics and their tenants see Mrs. Green, Town Life, i. 333–383; Thompson, Municipal History, passim. This feature is not confined to England. For the disputes between the men of Rouen and the chapter see Giry, Établissements de Rouen, 34.
CHAPTER III
The Chester Lordship
The place where the monks settled was probably little better than a village. We may picture it as a couple of straggling streets intersecting one another, with small wooden houses on either side of the highway, which was comparatively empty of people except on market days when country folk would come in to sell their wares in the "Cheaping" at the monastery gates. Domesday records that there were only sixty-nine heads of families living in Godiva's estate at Coventry in 1086,[60] though Leicester and Warwick were fair-sized towns, as towns were accounted then. Of the two parish churches, existing probably at the Conquest, S. Michael's served maybe for the tenants of the lay lord, and Trinity for those of the ecclesiastical estate. For from the beginnings of its history the town had been divided into two lordships, whereof the convent held the northern part or Prior's-half, not mentioned in Domesday, as the gift of their founder, Earl Leofric; while the southern portion, the Earl's-half, which Leofric retained, became a part of the Earl of Chester's vast inheritance.
After the Conquest the convent retained their estate, receiving a gracious charter of confirmation from William, who, no doubt, was willing to link his name with that of his kinsman, the Confessor, as patron of this famed foundation.[61] The Earl's-half, however, passed to other masters. Probably Godiva held it during her lifetime; but at her death the Conqueror took it, as the lady's grandchildren and direct heirs were, as rebels, naturally shut out from the inheritance. How it was that the estate passed into the hands of Ranulf Meschines, Earl of Chester, we can only conjecture. He had probably deserved well at the King's hand and had his reward. Though not, it is true, so disturbing an element in the burghers' lives as his continental brethren, an English feudal lord had much power for good or evil over his dependents. His castle—with its fortifications, often breaking into the line of the city wall, as Rougement did at Exeter, or the Tower, built by the Conqueror to overawe the men of London—was a perpetual menace to the citizens. His officers or deputies could annoy and terrify the tenants in various ways. Thus one Simon le Maudit, who held in farm the reeveship of Leicester, went on to collect gravel-pennies, which he said were due to the lord from the townsfolk, long after these payments had been remitted by charter. But this document having been destroyed by fire, the burghers had no evidence wherewith to support their claim, and Simon "the Accursed" had his will.[62] Instances of feudal oppression seem, however, to have been comparatively rare, though warlike lords by involving their tenants in their quarrels frequently brought trouble upon them.
CHEYLESMORE MANOR HOUSE
Earl Ranulf came of a strong race. The founder of the family—whom the Welsh called Hugh "the Fat" by reason of his great girth, but the Normans "the Wolf" by reason of his fierceness—held manors of the Conqueror in twenty shires of England. Lord of the county palatine of Chester, the special privileges granted to him for the purpose of strengthening his hand against the Welsh made him almost independent of royal authority.[63] Meschines himself is an obscure figure, but the fame of his successor, Ranulf Gernons, whose doings were accounted terrible even in Stephen's time, when every man's hand was against his fellow, spread far and wide. In 1143 Coventry became the battle-ground of this earl and Marmion of Tamworth, King Stephen's ally. That was an evil time for the monks, as Marmion seized and fortified the priory, and for the townsfolk, as they were between Marmion and Ranulf, the hammer and the anvil. The Tamworth lord died early in the struggle, for falling into one of the trenches he had made to enclose the monastery, he was killed by a common soldier. No doubt the monks reminded one another that their sacrilegious oppressor, who so justly came to this evil end, was of an