Register of the wiredrawers' indenture, the volume whereof we may trace the inception in the order of 1421, a supposition all the more credible at the outset since no other MS. of this character survives. It is, however, impossible that any portion of the Leet Book in the handwriting of Scribe A, which appears consistently in all entries from 1421-5 and intermittently among later ones until 1445, should be identical with the Mayor's Register, though there is every probability that the former MS. contains a copy of the latter within its pages; indeed, it is possible that parts of the actual MS. of the Register not in the handwriting of Scribe A may have been incorporated in the Leet Book at the "newe" making of the manuscript mentioned in 1520.1 We may imagine that at this redaction-the redaction of Scribe A-a great portion of the original volume, called indifferently the Mayor's Register or the Black Book, written on thick and glossy Italian paper and watermarked with the M and cross, was preserved, being here and there interleaved with crescentmarked Genoa paper, while on additional leaves of this latter make at the book's front Scribe A copied afresh the 1421-5 entries from the old MS.-adding also entries on the interleaved portions-and that his originals were thereafter destroyed. Additions of this paper at the book's end were left blank, to be filled as the years went on by a succession of later scribes. It is clear that besides Scribe A another redactor has worked over the highly composite material, wherein characteristic hands disappear and reappear in somewhat bewildering fashion. Scribe B also shows commendable zeal in recovering for transcription documents of a bygone generation, and entering the copies in due place on blank spaces and back leaves, a practice making for completeness, but also confusion of calligraphy. This scribe's recension, which is earlier and more important than the new making of 1520, dates from the town-clerkship (14802-1507) of John Boteler, beyond doubt, since a signed letter of his occurs elsewhere, the scribe in question. Evidence of handwriting is notoriously untrustworthy, and we can only hazard what Botelerno mean chronicler-found ready to hand in the Leet Book, and what he added with his own pen. 3 1 See below, p. 645, for the order (1515) that craft by-laws are to be "registred in the Meyres boke." 2 Ib. 474, but the writing begins in 1474. 3 Letter-book A. 79, f. 52, back. Apparently before his day the Leet Book records consisted of entries of orders of leet up to the year 1425, with divers other municipal matters, but that after 1425 the orders of leet were omitted,1 though a set of scribes with slightly differing characteristics, whom I have called-somewhat inadequately 2-types of B, and others called D and E continued to enter a chronicle of events, official elections, lists of names of collectors of fifteenths, and of the king's creditors within the city, with the method of procedure at royal visits.3 This had continued until about 1475. Boteler's contribution to our historical knowledge consists not only in his very full and interesting continuation of the chronicle and official record during the years of his town-clerkship, but in his recovery and transcription of the back orders of leet from 1425, an addition of immense importance to the historical value of the volume before us. In this latter task he appears to have been assisted by Scribe C,5 an illiterate writer, of curious orthography, with whose handwriting his own mingles oddly, C sometimes entering the names of the leet jury, and B the orders of leet. Considerations of space often drove Boteler to practise a minute hand, especially in enlarging D's record; for that careless and illiterate scribe bequeathed a most ungenerous legacy of space to his successor. 4 Additions falling outside the ordinary character of the Leet Book are those made at its beginning and end by Scribe Z, otherwise Thomas Banester, town clerk in 1581, who sometimes concluded his entries with a flourishing monogram T.B., and there are subsequent entries by even later scribes.6 1 See, however, pp. 117-19, leaf 47, for an exception to this rule, a leaf of leet entries, without names of the jury in the hand of a B type (chronicle) scribe. 2 They differ from B and should have been put in a letter class apart. 3 See below, pp. 262-3. See especially the Saunders and Prior Deram affairs in 1480, pp. 430 sqq. 5 It is, of course, possible that C's entries took place before Boteler's time. See pp. 1-2, 7-19, 815-41. There is more definite information about the scribes in Appendix A. This reconstruction of the compilation of the Leet Book can only be of the most tentative character. CHAPTER II THE LEET AND COUNCILS Earliest use of the word "leet"-The three Coventry courts-Early history of the Coventry manors-The Tripartite-Business of leets-PresentmentsFraming of by-laws -Bills-The Twenty-four Jurats-Electoral jury of Twenty-four-The Forty-eight-The Common Council. = In the earliest instances discoverable of the use of the word "leta" leet, it denotes an area; "leta de Stanlei" or "de Brinkelow" appear as divisions of Knightlow Hundred1; later the term came to be applied to a court of justice administering the affairs of a certain district; "the Court-leet," says Prof. Vinogradoff, "is at bottom a portion of the Hundred Court in private hands.” 2 Three of these courts are mentioned in these pages: the leet of the city, that of the prior of Coventry, and that of the tenants of the royal manor of Cheylesmore. Of the affairs of the first-named court the Leet Book was designed to furnish an enduring record; with the second, relic of the manorial jurisdiction of the Earls of Chester, the city officials came into conflict in 14643; to the third, allusion is made in 1480 when Prior Deram accused the citizens of laying their filth and builders' rubbish by his orchard wall, an accusation the mayor countered by attributing the offence to the prior's tenants, who as such were amenable to Deram's jurisdiction and not to that of the leet of the city. "The seid offence," he said, ". . . is don be . . . the inhabitantez on that partie of the seid Priour, calde the Priours-parte, wherein he hath his Court of lete3 and poiar to enquer 1 Dugdale, Warw. (1656), 2. This occurs in a taxation roll of 1335. 2 Eng. Soc. in the Eleventh Century, 97. See Dr. Bradley's explanation of the word, Part I. x. The Danish word lægd may be defined as a "division of the country for military conscription" (Round, Feudal England, 101). 3 See below, p. 325. The steward of Cheylesmore is accused of "arting," i. e. inciting inhabitants of the city without the purview of this manor to sue in this court. 4 Ib. 462. 5 This franchise, which included "a great quarter of the city," passed to the Hales family after the Dissolution, and by 1573 the corporation had bought it, together with the Priory site, water-mill and dye-house, for £400 Fretton, Bened. Mon. (Trans. B'ham. and Midl. Lust. 1876), 14. The Coventry court of the Priory estate seems to have been held in the church, see Corp. MSS. C 20. There are two membranes of a frankpledge roll (ib. E 5) of the prior's various manors giving transactions of his court in Oct. 1380; Wasperton court includes also Honington; Southam includes Caldecote, Radbourne; Pakington includes C. LEET BK, b J of all maner annusauncez ther don and hadd, and so of right the offenders owe to be punysshed there, and nott be the lete on the parte of the Maire and Cominalte." This passage strikes the keynote of the city's early history, the two-fold manorial and parochial division of Coventry dating from the foundation of the monastery in the eleventh century. Elsewhere I have told of the rivalry between the lay manor, the Earl'shalf or Chester fee, and the clerical manor, the Prior's-half1; of the prior's purchase of manorial rights over the Earl's-half in 1249, and the consequent subordination to clerical masters of the tenants of the lay estate; of the aid given to the Earl's-men by Isabella, widow of Edward II; of their rebellion and withdrawal from the prior's courts; and of their ultimate triumph in 1345 with the incorporation of the city. One result of this ancient quarrel between the queen, representative of the Cheylesmore-or Chester-interest and the Earl's-men on one side and the prior on the other persisted down to the days of the Leet Book record. A fruitful source of commotion in 13842 and at subsequent dates was the enclosure of certain common pastures by the Trinity gild. The gild avowed that the several rights of these fields were granted in compensation for the annual payment of £10 to the prior, due by the terms of the Tripartite from the whole community but discharged by the brotherhood. The promised payment of this sum, a feature of the threefold composition drawn up in 1355 between Isabella, the prior, and lastly the Earl's-men in their corporate capacity of mayor, bailiffs and community, was an acknowledgment of the prior's surrender of leet and other franchises in the Earl's-half to the queen, who in her turn conveyed them to the corporation. By the Tripartite also the queen surrendered-with certain reservations. Snypston (Leicester); Potter's Marston includes Grauborough, Southam; Scraptoft (Leic.); Sowe includes Stivichall, Sowe, Binley; Packwood; Coventry (Oct. 27); Coundon (same day); a court (date missing) includes Marston, Napton, Shuckborough, Hardwick. The offences punished are the ordinary ones of nuisances, obstructions, effusions of blood and infractions of the assizes of bread and ale. In the Wasperton-Honington court a fine of 5s. "leyrwite" is marked over against the name of a "nativa." 1 M. D. Harris, Life in an Old English Town, 59 sqq., Story of Coventry (Medieval Town Series), 56 sqq. See below, pp. 2-4, and for similar contracts cf. Tawney, Agrar. Problem in Sixteenth Century, p. 181. 3 See pp. 2, 444, 454, also Burton MSS. ff. 98-103. In the Tripartite the prior claimed view of frankpledge or leet, portmanmote, fair, sherrif's tourn, gallows, assize of bread and ale, infangthief, waif, stray, free warren, pillory, tumbril, cuck-stool, and all that appertained to a leet or view of frank pledge. -the exercise of leet jurisdiction within her manor of Cheylesmore, an area including several villages and townships, later! co-extensive with the shire of the city. In this manner did the corporation become possessed not only of the city leet franchises, but also of those within the surrounding villages, for which with other benefits they covenanted to pay £50 a year to the queen, a payment they thereafter continued to the queen's successors, Dukes of Cornwall and Princes of Wales. The fact that Isabella retained her suit of court from divers Cheylesmore tenants accounts for the separate existence of the courts leets and baron of the royal manor, and the rivalry which in 1464 sprang up between these and the courts of the city. A court leet is primarily a court of justice. As such it appeared at Norwich in the thirteenth, at Manchester and Southampton in the sixteenth century; it had well-defined powers; it could execute summary criminal justice on the hand-having, back-bearing thief; it could punish those who baked or brewed contrary to the assize of bread or the assize of ale 2; it received from the capital pledges 3 presentments of minor offences such as assaults with effusion of blood, and of nuisances redounding to the injury of the king's liege subjects. No witnesses were called; the criminal need not even be present; the presentment was enough; and the verdict could not be traversed, unless, through a writ of Certiorari,4 the matter was transferred to a higher court. Payment of fines inflicted were enforced by actions of debt or levy of distress. The court usually met at Easter and Michaelmas," the lord's steward or-in this case where the lord's place was filled by an urban corporation-the mayor and bailiffs occupying the position of president. Like the 1 On the transformation of certain neighbouring villages and the city itself リ into a county, see pp. 748-9. It was a natural development of the Tripartite. On the similar grant to Norwich, which involved that city in lawsuits, see Hudson, Rec. Norwich, I. lxxx-i. 2 A certain definite price was laid down by authorities varying with the price of grain. Heads of tithings wherein all males were enrolled in bodies of nominally twelve persons. See p. 684 and note. 5 Ib. 296, 804; Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, 139. The bailiffs of Coventry were elected at the Michaelmas leet, whereas the new officials under the corporation, the mayor, chamberlains, and others were elected on St. Paul's day (Jan. 25). Thus it appears that the holding of the leet is older than the incorporation. Constables were also chosen at the leet. 7 Curiously on one occasion the justices of the peace are associated with the mayor as presiding officials; see below, p. 36. |