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Enclosures and de-sacralization in Tudor Coventry, and the foundations of modern urban space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2021
Abstract
The Reformation exacted considerable changes on towns across Britain, occurring at the same time as the shift away from broadcloths to other economies. Part of the process of change was the de-sacralization of former monastic spaces. The parallel process of increased commons enclosures alongside acquisitions of church lands produced a secularized and privatized landscape which transitioned the medieval city to the modern. The active enclosures by Coventry corporation in the 1530s and 1540s, and local documents rationalizing such actions under the concept of benefiting the common weal, provide a clear example of the process.
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References
1 Clark, P. and Slack, P., English Towns in Transition, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar; A. Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400–1640 (Cambridge, 1991); P. Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. II (Cambridge, 2000).
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11 For example, Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. II, has only three brief references to commons enclosures for the sixteenth century.
12 A. Dyer, ‘Midlands’, in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. II, 107.
13 Hulton, Coventry and Its People, 29.
14 P. Berger, The Most Necessary Luxuries: The Mercers Company of Coventry, 1550–1680 (University Park, 1993), 2–7 and 72.
15 Berger, Most Necessary Luxuries, 8 and 93–9.
16 Dyer, ‘Midlands’, 107.
17 The 1377 Poll Tax numbers, using a commonly accepted multiplier, give us the 9,000 estimate. The 1520 census merely gives ward totals and a sum of 6,601. The 1523 census counts 5,670 people, and a remarkable number of ‘vacant’ houses. However, it was evidently a quick preliminary survey taken in one day, and was not followed up. It simply became buried among miscellaneous records (see Hulton, Coventry and Its People, 17–18, and Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 291–3). Finally, it is almost impossible to gauge with any precision what percentage of the population the 1522 Muster and the 1525 Subsidy covered. Given that even the 1520 census is likely not a full count, I would suggest a reasonable population estimate would be around 7,000 people.
18 Slack, ‘Great and good towns 1540–1700’, 352.
19 Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 7–8.
20 Ibid., 47–50.
21 For wide variations among towns, see P. Collinson and J. Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640 (New York, 1998).
22 M. Dormer-Harris (ed.), The Coventry Leet Book (London, 1913) (henceforth Leet Book), 692.
23 D. Leech, ‘By the evidence of the city: enclosing land and memory in fifteenth-century Coventry’, Medieval History Journal, 15 (2012), 171–96.
24 M. Dormer-Harris, ‘Laurence Saunders, citizen of Coventry’, English Historical Review, 9 (1894), 633–51.
25 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. IV, 1568 and 1743. Coventry Archives (henceforth CA), Chamberlains’ Accounts (BA/A/1/1/26/1), 79–85. This section of accounts covered 1525–26 where the chamberlains not only found themselves making the usual repairs to the city wall and streets, but also paying for posting bills about the commons, and making many repairs of existing stocks and pillories as well as setting up some new ones. At one point, they performed the grisly task of ‘taking down the heeds and the partes from the gates’. Also see royal demands for punishing the rioters in CA BA/H/17/A79/28 and 59c.
26 The commons around Coventry were very extensive (still over 3,000 acres in 1860, Award under Coventry Inclosure, 1860 (Coventry: Inclosure Commission for England and Wales, 1860)), and provided essential resources and suplemental income for the citizens. Access was also a bellweather of the liberties for citizens.
27 J.S. Leadam, The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517–1518 (London, 1897), tracks the multiple attempts by the crown to control enclosures since 1488. Also see M. Beresford, The Lost Villages of England (London, 1954), 102–33.
28 Beresford, Lost Villages, 112 and 118.
29 J. Thirsk, ‘Tudor enclosures’, in J. Hurstfield (ed.), The Tudors (New York, 1973), 123–4.
30 The Gregory–Hood collection is catalogued as DR10. Much of Thomas Gregory's Coventry material is found in the range DR10/1843–1870. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is hereafter SBT.
31 Chamberlains’ Accounts (CA BA/A/1/1/26/1), which actually begin in 1499, and Council Book (CA BA/H/3/17/1) from the council book's inception in 1555 to 1572.
32 Leet Book, Bailiffs’ Accounts (CA BA/G/1/25/1) which begin in 1542, Letter Book (CA BA/H/17/79). The Coventry Archive has an extensive collection of property deeds dating from the thirteenth century onwards. The most significant record missing from this period is the Apprentices’ Register.
33 SBT DR10/1849.
34 Leet Book, 45–53.
35 Ibid., 719–20.
36 For the dearth, see Leet Book, 679–80.
37 See Leech, ‘By the evidence of the city’, for the process of the city council's involvement in enclosures disputes to obtain greater authority and control over the commons at the cost of freemen's traditional participation. The freemen had fought hard to retain their rights, and indeed certainly still maintained an important role in civic governance after 1525. See Liddy, C., ‘Urban enclosure riots: risings of the commons in English towns, 1480–1525’, Past & Present, 226 (2015), 41–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XIII:2, 503, 539, vol. XIV, 69, 73.
39 Carpenters’ Guild Accounts (CA PA3/1); CA PA54/285/7; I. Soden, Coventry: The Hidden History (Stroud, 2005), 65–73, 82–3. Father Bredon, one of the Franciscans, had been a popular and controversial preacher in Coventry in the fifteenth century, Leet Book, 35–6.
40 For example, Chamberlains’ Accounts (CA BA/A/1/1/26/1), 86.
41 J. Luxford, ‘The Charterhouse of St. Anne, Coventry’, in L. Monckton and R. Morris (eds.), Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archeology in the City and its Vicinity (Leeds, 2011), 240–66.
42 N. Holder, The Friaries of Medieval London (Woodbridge, 2017), 254–5 and 268–9.
43 J.J. Scarisbrick, ‘The dissolution of St. Mary's priory Coventry’, in G. Demidowicz (ed.), Coventry's First Cathedral (Stamford, 1994), 158–68. See The National Archives (TNA) C1/60/154 and TNA C1/434/8 for examples of enclosures issues involving the priory.
44 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XIII:2, 394, 650, vol. XIV:1, 34.
45 Ibid., vol. XIV:1, 150.
46 Archeological Survey Map M4919 (Coventry City Library).
47 Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 9; Withington, Politics of Commonwealth, 10.
48 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XIII:1, 254.
49 Leet Book, 729–38.
50 P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), 7.
51 Essentially, this is a core theme in ibid.; Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns; Withington, Politics of Commonwealth.
52 The common box and 10 overseers first occurs in 1502 with the obligation to collect gifts and apprentices’ fees, Leet Book, 600. The 10 were first assigned to oversee leased commons in 1522 during the dearth, but the role seems to have been eliminated in 1525 when all leased commons were supposedly returned to open commons, Leet Book, 679–80.
53 J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993), 15–52; Beresford, Lost Villages, 178; Thirsk, ‘Tudor enclosures’, 124.
54 Leet Book, 760–4.
55 Bailiffs’ Accounts (CA BA/G/1/25/1), 23, 25, 32, 33, 36; Leet Book, 732 and 761.
56 The extensive conflicts before 1530 in which citizens fought hard for liberties are well covered in C. Liddy, Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns (Oxford, 2017). For conflicts over enclosures of space within the city, see 57–66, for conflicts over commons enclosures, see 73–9.
57 Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 89–90; Withington, Politics of Commonwealth, 18–19.
58 Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 90–1; Withington, Politics of Commonwealth, 28.
59 Financial activity involving Thomas White first appears in the city accounts beginning at the time of his donation in 1542, Bailiffs’ Accounts (CA BA/G/1/25/1), 10–13. Mentions of accounting with his money reoccur in multiple documents for many years afterwards.
60 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XVII, 556(21), vol. XXI:1, 1383(89).
61 Ibid., vol. XVII, 556(21). For an example of renting Greyfriars, see Bailiffs’ Accounts (CA BA/G/1/25/1), 34 (23s 4d income for a year's rental of the property in 1546).
62 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XIX:2, 164(61).
63 Ibid., vol. XIX:2, 690(28), 800(36), vol. XX:1, 1335(51).
64 S.T. Bindoff, The House of Commons, 1509–1558, vol. I (London, 1982), 176.
65 A brief summary of Hale's acquisitions is in Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 117–18.
66 For example, see R. Tittler, ‘Browne, towne, and crown: John Browne and the quest for town lands in Boston’, in R. Tittler, Townspeople and Nation: English Urban Experiences, 1540–1640 (Stanford, CA, 2001).
67 M. Rylatt and P. Mason (eds.), The Archeology of the Medieval Cathedral and Priory of St Mary, Coventry (Coventry, 2003), 25–8.
68 CA PA56/99/1 and 2.
69 Chamberlains’ Accounts (CA BA/A/1/1/26/1), 168, 171, 177.
70 Holder, Friaries of London, 307–9.
71 King, ‘Interpretation of urban buildings’, 480; Perring, ‘Reformation of the English cathedral landscape’, 192–7.
72 R. Bearman, The Gregorys of Stivichall in the Sixteenth Century (Coventry and Warwickshire Historical Pamphlets: No. 8), 15–17.
73 For Gregory, see SBT D10/409–417. For Over, see CA PA14/1/21, and Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XVII, 443(39) and vol. XIX:2, 164(61).
74 Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol. II, 193–5; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI, vol. IV, 337–43. It is these groups of properties from both 1538 and 1547 which form the basis for the large collection of corporation deeds in the Coventry Archive. They receive the accession number BA.
75 CA BA/A/A79/61c.
76 This process happening in Coventry and elsewhere is discussed in Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns, 82–118.
77 G. Templeman (ed.), The Records of the Guild of Holy Trinity, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist, and St. Katherine of Coventry (London, 1935), xviii–xx.
78 Ibid., 81 (Holy Trinity Rental 1485–86), 93 (Holy Trinity Rental 1528–29). The drapery and its shops and stalls are listed on 135–6.
79 Soden, Coventry, 118.
80 Ibid., 109–12.
81 For St John's Hospital, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. XX:1, 1535(38, 39); for St John's College, Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI, vol. II, 81. The Henry VIII school was initially founded in 1545 with the expectation it would be located in Whitefriars. However, sufficient funding was not made available until it was relocated to St John's, see CA PA12/1.
82 From Holy Trinity 13 chantry priests, from St Michael's 26, from St Mary's 24 monks, and about a dozen each from Greyfriars, Whitefriars, Charterhouse and St John's College. Soden, Coventry, 75, 81–2; Luxford, ‘The Charterhouse of St. Anne’, 246; R.N. Swanson, ‘The priory in the late Middle Ages’, in Demidowicz (ed.), First Cathedral, 140.
83 Orme, N., Medieval Schools (New Haven, 2006), 312–24Google Scholar.
84 CA BA/H/17/A79/29.
85 Leet Book, 771.
86 Slack, From Reformation to Improvement, 11.
87 Leet Book, 771–2, 781, 785.
88 Ibid., 786–7.
89 Ibid., 432–6.
90 Bindoff, House of Commons, 176–7.
91 Leadam, Domesday of Inclosures, 1517–1518, 5–12; Beresford, Lost Villages, 102–33. Acts against enclosures were enacted in 1489, 1515 and 1536. Commissions of inquiry were sent out to the counties in 1517–18 and in 1548.
92 Beresford, Lost Villages, 118.
93 Hales submitted several bills to parliament in 1548 and 1549 to place restrictions on sheep farming, limit regrating and provide protections from enclosures. All three failed in a divided parliament. Coventry enacted its ordinance returning the land to commons while the bills were in progress.
94 Leet Book, 788–9. The stint is the limit on the number of animals allowed on a common.
95 Bindoff, House of Commons, 277.
96 SBT DR10/1858.
97 Withington, Politics of Commonwealth, 26–33.
98 Ibid., 54–6.
99 Ibid., 51.
100 If the book, A Discourse of the Commonwealth of this Realm of England, is correctly attributed to John Hales, then it is of interest to note that he complains about merchants wasting their money on frivolities despite Edward VI's restrictions. See Lamont, E. (ed.), A Discourse of the Commonwealth of this Realm of England (Cambridge, 1893), 16Google Scholar.
101 Arthur is recorded as owning a Geneva Bible, while Christopher went on to a successful career in the Anglican church. Bearman, Gregorys of Stivichall, 23 and 41.
102 He also included Whitefriars as for a number of years the corporation tried unsuccessfully to convert the part in which Hales did not reside into either a third parish church or a school. For example, see Bailiffs’ Accounts (BA/G/1/25/1), 18, 26, 41, 72. Also CA BA/B/13/3/1 and /2.
103 Ingram, R.W., Records of Early English Drama: Coventry (Toronto, 1981), xixGoogle Scholar.
104 CA PA17/66/1 is the 1568 Letter Patent confirming and extending the 1549 grant from the earl of Warwick.
105 Lamont (ed.), Discourse, xli.
106 Beresford, Lost Villages, 118.
107 Council Book (CA BA/H/3/17/1), 12r, 12v, 15v, 16r, 24r and 48r; Payments-In Book (CA BH/H/3/20/1), 11–13. They continue into the Second Leet Book, 1588–1834 (CA BA/E/6/37/2), in the 1590s, see 17–19.
108 Slack, From Reformation to Improvement, 23.