parish churches
with the everyday life of the people, though commonly on a narrower
stage, is more intimate than is that of a cathedral or an abbey
church, but it is to be remembered that without its Monastery Coventry
might never have been more than a village or small market town.

We cannot expect the records of a parish church to be as full and
complete as those of a cathedral, always in touch through its bishops
with the political life of the country and enjoying the services of
numerous officials; or as those of a monastery, with its leisured
chroniclers ever patiently recording the annals of their house, the
doings of its abbots, the dealings of their house with mother church
and the outside world, and all its internal life and affairs. In the
case of Coventry, the unusual fulness of its city archives, the
accounts and records of its guilds and companies, and the close
connection of these with the church supplies us with a larger body of
information than is often at the disposal of the historian of a parish
church. As therefore, in narrating the story of a cathedral some
account of the Diocese and its Bishops has been given, so, before
describing the churches of Coventry, we shall give in outline the
history of the city which for 700 years gave its name to a bishop and
of the great monastery whose church was for 400 years his seat.

Though Dugdale says that it is remarkable for antiquity, Coventry as
a city has no early history comparable with that of such places as
York, Canterbury, Exeter, or Colchester, while its modern history is
mainly a record of fluctuating trade and the rise and decline of new
industries. But through all its Mediaeval period, from the eleventh
century down to the Reformation, with an expiring flicker of energy in
the seventeenth, there is no lack of life and colour, and its story
touches every side of the national life, political, religious, and
domestic. The only evidence of extreme antiquity produced by Dugdale
is the suffix of its name, for "_tre_ is British, and signifieth the
same that _villa_ in Latin doth;" while the first part may be derived
from the convent or from a supposed ancient name, Cune, for the
Sherborne brook.

The first date we have is 1016, when Canute invaded Mercia, burning
and laying waste its towns and settlements, including a house of nuns
at Coventry founded by the Virgin St. Osburg in 670, and ruled over by
her.[1]

But there is no sure starting-point unti