for deceased members and so (6 Edward VI) they were suppressed along
with the chantries, and their property confiscated, "the very meanest
and most inexcusable of the plunderings which threw discredit on the
Reformation."

Here, the city bought back everything which had belonged to the
Trinity and Corpus Christi Gilds, with various almshouses and the
possessions of the majority of the Chantries; while previously at the
Dissolution it had bought the abbey-orchard, and mill, and the house
and church of the Grey Friars.

In 1340 Edward III granted Licence to the Coventry men to form a
Merchants' Gild with leave "to make chantries, bestow alms, do other
works of piety and constitute ordinances touching the same." This was
St. Mary's Gild. Two years later that of St. John Baptist was formed
and a year later that of St. Katherine, the three being united into
the Trinity Gild before 1359. Of the chapel (now St. John's church)
begun in 1344 by the St. John's Gild and the "fair and stately
structure for their feasts and meetings called St Mary Hall" built in
1394 by the united Gilds more will be said later (p. 81 and p. 97).
The end of the fourteenth century and the fifteenth brought to
Coventry a full share in the events and movements of the time. In 1396
the duel between Hereford and Norfolk was to have taken place on
Gosford Green (adjoining the city) and Richard II made the fatal
mistake of banishing both combatants. At the Priory in 1404 Henry IV
held his Parliament known, from the fact that no lawyers were summoned
to it, as the "Parliamentum Indoctorum." Setting itself in opposition
to ecclesiastics, it proposed to supply the King's needs by taxing
church-property. As in the matter of the city walls, the church
contrived to avoid bearing its share of the public burdens and the
chronicler ends thus: "Much ado there was; but to conclude, the worthy
Archbishop (viz. Tho. Arundell) standing stoutly for the good of the
Church, preserved it at that time from the storm impending." One
branch of his argument is noteworthy, that as the confiscation of the
alien priories had not enriched the King by half a mark (courtiers
having extorted or begged them out of his hands), so it would be were
he to confiscate the temporalities of the monasteries. Henry VIII had
reason to acknowledge the fulfilment of the prophecy.

Soon after this, in 1423, Coventry showed its sympathy for Lollardry
when John Grace an anchorite friar came out of