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EDITOR'S PREFACE

Now that my laborious task is ended I have only to thank those who made its accomplishment possible by so generously giving their time to inform my ignorance, correct my faulty Latin and AngloFrench, and suggest textual emendations. Mr. W. H. Stevenson supervised the proofs of vols. i, ii, and the early portion of vol. iii; the late Mr. R. E. G. Kirk also overlooked the greater part of the proofs, and after his death Mr. E. F. Kirk most kindly continued his father's work, and also supplied me with several notes and transcripts from the Record Office. In addition to giving important help by overlooking the Glossary, Dr. H. Bradley supplied most valuable notes on the derivation of the words "Leet" and "Coventry," and Mr. G. J. Turner and others on "Forest Iron" and "Grand Warrant." Mr. William Page kindly allowed me to use in the Notes and Introduction some material to which I had access while working on Warwickshire for the Victoria County Histories, and in various ways I am greatly indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. O. Addy, Mr. Geo. Buchannan, and the late Miss Toulmin Smith, while thanks are no less due to several correspondents who put their knowledge at my disposal. Dr. Furnivall, who first encouraged me to undertake the transcription, and readily gave all the help in his power, is now, like some others I have named, beyond the reach of any expression of gratitude, but I am glad that before his death he personally as well as the Early English Text Society received the thanks of the Coventry Corporation for the publication of this valuable historical and literary document. I ought to add that the full and careful name-index of this volume is the work of Miss Jessie Hayllar.

a

[NOTE ON THE DERIVATION OF COVENTRY KINDLY SUPPLIED BY DR. HENRY BRADLEY.]

THE form Cofantrèo, though of late occurrence (Chronicle C., an. 1053), is, there can be little doubt, genuinely old, so that the ending = tree. In most of the place-names ending in treo-, the first element is the genitive of a personal name-the name of the man by whom, or in commemoration of whom, the tree was planted. I should feel sure that this was so in the present instance, but I find no example of Cofa as a personal name. There were several persons named Cufa, and if the u was short this might be a variant of Cofa.

The word cofa (genitive cofan) in Old English meant chamber, cell, cave. It may have had other specific senses that we do not know of; but one would expect Coftreo and not Cofantrèo if this word were the first element of the name. The word-stem, not the genitive, is normally used in place-name compounds, except before a noun denoting either a possession or an essential part or appurtenance of something. If cofa denoted some kind of building or establishment that had a "tree" as a regular appurtenance-e. g. as a sort of sign-post to show its whereabouts-a "genitival compound" might be possible.

On the whole, I think that the hypothesis of origin from a personal name, Cofa, is, in the present state of our knowledge, more probable than any other.

There are one or two instances in which names in -treō apparently contain the name of a river or stream, but I do not know Cofa or Cofe as a river-name.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE MANUSCRIPT

Previous workers at the Leet Book-Sharp, Reader, Wright-Paper of the
MS.-"Black Book, "-" Mayor's Register" - Redactions of Scribes
A and B-Other Scribes

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 -Presentments-Framing of by-laws-Bills-The Twenty-four jurats-Electoral jury of Twenty-four-The Forty-eight-The Common Council

CHAPTER III

ORDERS OF LEET

The leet at Coventry-The nucleus of municipal activity-By-laws on sanitation-Morality-Treatment of the poor-The School-Relations with the Church-The holy cake-Resistance of the crafts-The gild of the Nativity-Proceedings in courts Christian-The barbers -The dyers-The victualling crafts and foreign competition-The position of women

CHAPTER IV

PAGE

ix

xvii

xxvii

THE LEET BOOK AS CHRONICLE

Localization of the crafts-The commons-Laurence Saunders-Sixteenth-
century enclosures-Finance-Military service and fortifications-
Historical Allusions, Henry V and Hornby-Gloucester and the
Lollards-The pageants-Edward IV and Edward Prince of Wales-
Elizabeth-James I-Shakespeare and the Leet Book

TEXT

APPENDIX A

GLOSSARY

ADDITIONAL NOTES

ERRATA

NAME INDEX

PLACE INDEX

SUBJECT INDEX

xlii

1

845

847

853

859

861

917

924

а. г. г.

b.

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS, ETC.

anno regni regis, the year of the king's reign.
bailiff.

Burton MS. = Humphrey Burton's MS., Free Library, Coventry.

ch.

cor.

Corp. MSS.

E. D. D.

m.

mace

= chamberlains.

= coroner.

= MSS. in possession of the Coventry Corporation. Catalogued by

J. C. Jeaffresson for Hist. MSS. Comm. 1896.

= English Dialect Dictionary (Clarendon Press).

mayor.

= sergeant-at-mace, sub-bailiff.

= Middle English.

Μ. Ε.

M. G. C. C. = Magister Gilde Corporis Christi, master of the Corpus Christi

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Gild.

= Magister Gilde Sancte Trinitatis, master of the Trinity Gild.

= New English Dictionary (Clarendon Press).

= Visum franci plegii, view of frankpledge, or leet.

= wardens.

in the margin denotes marginal annotations in MS.

in the text denotes the omission from the transcription of some oftrepeated formula, e. g. maior (etc.) = maior civitatis Coventrie, the mayor of the city of Coventry, etc., without brackets, however, is a copy of the MS.

in the English text denotes an abbreviated rendering of a customary formula, e. g. [Ordained] = Hit was ordeyned by auctorite of this present lete.

also denotes a translation from the Latin. MS. abbreviations and contractions are represented in the transcript by italics.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE MANUSCRIPT

Previous workers at the Leet Book-Sharp, Reader, Wright-Paper of the MS." Black Book," "Mayor's Register" - Redactions of Scribes A and B-Other scribes.

THE Coventry Leet Book, though unnoticed by Dugdale, has on occasion furnished material from the seventeenth century onwards to both lawyer and antiquary, the former regarding it as a valuable authority in matters of ancient custom and prescriptive right,1 and the latter as a storehouse of information concerning the local religious drama and ancient buildings of the city. Never before has the volume been copied in its entirety, though in the seventeenth century Humphrey Burton, town clerk, grandfather of Humphrey Wanley of Harleian fame, made some extracts from it,2 and his example was followed in the early nineteenth century by William Reader. Both these fragmentary transcripts, however, remain in MS. The researches of Thomas Sharp, a contemporary of Reader, crystallized into book form. His Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry (1825), together with the Presentation in the Temple, a Pageant, represented by the Weavers in Coventry (1836), remained until

...

1 See below. p. xiii, for Sewell's request in 1611 for the "Black Book." A note on the flyleaf of the MS. shows that it was also consulted in the case of the Mayor of Coventry v. Lythall and others in 1842. See for particulars of case, Poole, Coventry, pp. 99 sqq.

* Burton was interested in collecting material bearing upon the claim of the Princes of Wales, as lords of the Manor of Cheylesmore, to an annual rent for the Earl's-Half of Coventry, payable by the corporation, as successors of the Prior and Convent after the Dissolution, see below, pp. 751-2. The extracts from the Leet Book are few. Of Burton's Book (Corp. MSS. A 34) two transcripts are in the Free Library.

3 Reader MSS. Free Library, Coventry. A collection of extraordinary value and width of range.

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