Mr. Coventry

“ Here I saw Sir W. Coventry's kind letter to him concerning my paper, and among others of his letters, which I saw all, and that is a strange thing, that whatever is writ to this Duke of Albemarle, all the world may see; for this very night he did give me Mr. Coventry's letter to read, soon as it come to his hand, before he had read it himself, and bid me take out of it what concerned the Navy, and many things there was in it, which I should not have thought fit for him to have let any body so suddenly see ”

“ A momentary glisten shone in Jean Muir’s steel-blue eyes as the last words left the young man’s lips; but it was gone instantly, and her voice was full of reproach, as she said, steadily, impulsively, “If the ‘romantic boy’ had been allowed to lead the life of a man, as he longed to do, he would have had no time to lose his heart to the first sorrowful girl whom he pitied. Mr. Coventry, the fault is yours. Do not blame your brother, but generously own your mistake and retrieve it in the speediest, kindest manner.”
For an instant Gerald sat dumb. ”

“ Coventry desiring my coming to him to-morrow morning, which troubled me to think what the business should be, fearing it must be some bad news in Tom Hater's business.
15th Up betimes and walked to St. James's, where Mr. Coventry being in bed I walked in the Park, discoursing with the keeper of the Pell Mell, who was sweeping of it; who told me of what the earth is mixed that do floor the Mall, and that over all there is cockle-shells powdered, and spread to keep it fast; which, however, in dry weather, turns to dust and deads the ball. Thence to Mr. Coventry ”

“ So to the 'Change, and thence I by water to the Duke of Albemarle's, and there much company, but I staid and dined, and he makes mighty much of me; and here he tells us the Dutch are gone, and have lost above 160 cables and anchors, through the last foule weather. Here he proposed to me from Mr. Coventry, as I had desired of Mr. Coventry, that I should be Surveyor-Generall of the Victualling business, which I accepted. But, indeed, the terms in which Mr. Coventry proposes it for me are the most obliging that ever I could expect from any man, and more ”

“ He was a man who could not conceal his aversions, and seldom attempted to do so; and the mere sight of Mr. Kennard at his table, sleek and urbane, and indifferent to his dislike, incensed him and rendered him glum and ungracious. He talked, when he talked at all, [pg 56] only to Mrs. Greaves, who, with her husband and Mr. Munro, made up the party of six. Mrs. Greaves saw with foreboding the look in George Coventry's eyes as he watched his wife and Mr. Kennard conversing with intimate ease, and she felt as if they were eating their dinner with an explosive beneath the table. ”

“ Coventry down to his chamber, where among other discourse he did tell me how he did make it not only his desire, but as his greatest pleasure, to make himself an interest by doing business truly and justly, though he thwarts others greater than himself, not striving to make himself friends by addresses; and by this he thinks and observes he do live as contentedly (now he finds himself secured from fear of want) , and, take one time with another, as void of fear or cares, or more, than they that (as his own termes were) have quicker pleasures and sharper agonies than he. Thence walking with Mr. ”

“ Gone, too, is the splendid conduit in the Cross Cheaping, S. Nicholas' Hall in the West Orchard, meeting-place of the Corpus Christi guild; and S. Nicholas' Church, out to the north beyond Bishop Street, which fell to ruin soon after the Reformation. But the "proud pyramidès," the "three spires," remain yet, and give greeting to all who approach Coventry, dominating the flat midland country for many a mile, changing their relative position as the spectator moves, and their colour in the shifting lights. ”

“ No doubt the side where the guild-master took his seat was sawn off, cast aside as useless on the suppression of this "superstitious" society at the Reformation. The chair bears on one side a figure of the Madonna, "the arms of Coventry surmount the back on the one side, and on the other (which was the centre in its complete state) are two lions rampant supporting a crown." [742] Several portraits line the room, those of John Hales, founder of the Free Grammar School, of Christopher Davenport, mayor of the city, and Sir Thomas White, are of great local interest ”

“ In the tracery is the Ark, Kings Solomon and Hiram, and Hiram Abiif.
The label at foot of this window reads—
"The gift of Henry William | Eaton esqre | Member | of Parliament to the | City of Coventry MDCCCLXIX."
To the initiated this window will be of special interest, the donor being a Past Warden of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England.
H. W. Eaton, Esqre., was first elected, in the Conservative interest, as Member of Parliament for this City, in June, 1865, upon the death of Sir Joseph Paxton; in July, same year, upon a dissolution, he was returned with Mr. Morgan Treherne ”

“ It is true that the citizens, with their old supreme indifference to political party, also supplied bread and ale "to the feld of Kyng Richard," [328] and one of their number fought, we know not on which side, at Bosworth, for the accounts record that 2s. 6d. was paid by the Corpus Christi guild "towards the hurt that Thomas Maideford had in the fylde." Two years after Henry kept S. George's feast at Coventry, and also, like his predecessor, saw on S. Peter's day later on in the year (June 29) a performance of the famous mystery plays. ”

“ A thoroughly corrupt borough in the worst days of municipal corruption, rigidly Puritan under the Stuarts, loyal under Elizabeth, steady for hereditary right at Mary's accession—but Protestant, as witness its martyrs—Lollard in the hey-day of Lollardry, patriotic and Talbot-worshipping in the Hundred Years' War—as England was, so was Coventry. In art and letters, also, the city recalls what is most characteristic in the achievements of the English people. ”

“ Henry V. seems to have been much beloved in Coventry, if we may judge by the hearty welcome given to him on his coming thither on March 21, 1421. The mayor and council ordered that £100 and a gold cup worth £10 should be presented to the King, and the same to the Queen "in suo adventu a Francia in Coventre," for those times a truly magnificent gift. The citizens never thereafter beheld the King. ”

“ He thus assured the support of the people of the place, and on the terrible field of Towton, where "the dead hindered the living from coming to close quarters," the men of Coventry fought under the standard of the Black Ram in the Yorkist ranks. The Leet Book tells us that £80 was collected throughout the wards for the 100 men "which went with oure soverayn liege lord kyng Edward the IIIIthe to the felde yn the north." ”

“ The tourist will show his wisdom by not going too far afield in his sight-seeing; the three churches and S. Mary's Hall will, with a passing look at many a picturesque narrow street, carved gable, or interesting relic of old Coventry, furnish him with some hours' occupation. Those, of course, who possess indomitable physical and mental energy may ascend S. Michael's spire for the view's sake, or brave a walk through the somewhat dreary environs of Coventry to the historic but commonplace-looking strip of land known as Gosford Green. ”

“ Young Coventry was a cool, indolent man, seldom conscious of any emotion, any passion, pleasurable or otherwise; but at the look, the tone of the governess, he experienced a new sensation, indefinable, yet strong. He colored and, for the first time in his life, looked abashed. Lucia saw it, and hated Miss Muir with a sudden hatred; for, in all the years she had passed with her cousin, no look or word of hers had possessed such power. ”

“ It is fitting that the chief literary interest of Coventry should centre in a woman's name. George Eliot went to school at a house in the south-west end of Warwick Row, 1832-5. Coventry is said to be the original of Middlemarch, and S. Mary's Hall is described in the trial scene in Adam Bede.
In coming from the station down Warwick Row, as you pass the angle of Greyfriars' Green, look at the modern statue of Sir Thomas White, merchant, Lord Mayor of London in 1555, founder of S. John's College, Oxford, and benefactor of the city of Coventry. ”

“ The matter of the merchant guild was only the forerunner of more serious trouble. The townspeople were rapidly growing rich, whether by soap-making, [103] or the manufacture of woollen cloth, or the entertainment of travellers, or a happy combination of all three sources of wealth. Under Edward I. they were able to pave their city, [104] which had now risen to a sufficiently important position to be accounted a borough, and to return two members to the Parliament of 1295. [105] Its prosperity attracted the notice of Edward I., who in 1303 summoned two Coventry merchants to attend a council ”

“ The mode of God with his elect
Their hopes exactly to fulfil,
In times and ways they least expect.
THE QUEEN’S ROOM. 1 There’s nothing happier than the days
In which young Love makes every thought
Pure as a bride’s blush, when she says
‘I will’ unto she knows not what;
And lovers, on the love-lit globe,
For love’s sweet sake, walk yet aloof,
And hear Time weave the marriage-robe,
Attraction warp and reverence woof.
2 My Housekeeper, my Nurse of yore,
Cried, as the latest carriage went,
‘Well, Mr, Felix, Sir, I’m sure
The morning’s gone off excellent! ”

“ To school and college? Mr. Vaughan,
When John was old enough, could give
Preferment to her relative;
And she should be so pleased.—I said
I felt quite sure that dearest Fred
Would be most thankful. Would we come,
And make ourselves, she ask’d, at home,
Next month, at High-Hurst? ”

“ There were frequent consultations in the chapter-house, and on Sundays, before Prime or Tierce, the abbot sat in the cloisters to hear the monks' confessions, and appointed to each the penance due for his fault. Now and then the coming of an important stranger—a royal guest, perhaps, such as William the Conqueror, who passed, it is supposed, through Coventry on his way from Warwick to Nottingham in 1068—would furnish the brethren with a topic for many weeks' conversation.
Sometimes the brethren were suffered to have a glimpse of the great world without the convent with their own eyes. ”

“ The trees make the way through Stoneleigh a lovely one, and the village church, redolent of eighteenth century peace, with a magnificent Norman chancel arch, furnishes a fine excuse for delay. Nearer to Coventry the way winds on over Finham Bridge, shadowed by poplars, and through Stivichall, a hamlet the widow of Earl Ranulf of Chester gave to the Bishop of Lichfield for the welfare of her husband's soul. Allotment gardens and newly-built [Pg 5] streets occupy the land to the south-east of the city, formerly known as the Little Park, once part of a royal estate. ”

“ PULPIT, HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
Bear-baiting was highly popular likewise, and frequent gifts to Sir Fulk Greville's bearward [618] form a feature in the chamberlains' accounts in the early days of Elizabeth. Like all the great Queen's subjects the men of Coventry delighted in theatrical representations, and now that the local religious drama was dead, their [Pg 279] appreciation of the strolling players' art caused constant inroads to be made on the public purse. ”

“ The ancient city of Coventry—situated amidst sylvan scenery of great beauty, should if possible be approached by the wayfarer from Kenilworth along the unrivalled avenue which is also the high road—is of great antiquity and of very considerable interest to the archæologist. Seen from a distance, on account of its many church spires, it presents a wonderfully picturesque appearance; and with its old–world survivals in the shape of timbered houses and the exquisite architecture of its churches, is one of the most interesting towns of the Midlands. ”

“ Fabulous may be that beautiful legend of the Lady Godiva, but the men of Coventry believe it still: and still, on every Friday in the week of Holy Trinity, its annual fair is opened with a commemorative procession, in which a fair boy, dressed in well-knit hosiery, but apparently naked, rides through the ancient streets, with long and golden hair flowing from head to foot, and covering his body, as the representative of the sweet bride of Earl Leofric, who made the burghers of Coventry toll-free, and “gained herself an everlasting name.” ”

“ The city turns its most prosperous side southwards, and the common view of the spires is the one from the south, where the tree-bordered road from Kenilworth, whereon so many kings and queens have travelled, slips into Coventry, past a fringe of ample, comfortable houses, that the well-to-do have raised in our own time. This was Tennyson's view of the spires, and George Eliot must have seen it daily in her school-life, which she passed in the house that is farthest from the town in Warwick Row. ”

“ Mean streets cover the site, and of the cathedral nought remains but a few bases of clustered shafts in Priory Row and a portion of the North-West tower converted into a dwelling-place. But the outline of S. Michael's spire [131] built by the people is still the wonder of Coventry, and the guild-hall of S. Mary with its glorious roof and window has behind it five hundred years of continuous civic life.
Coventry was now a free and independent corporate borough. ”