Coventry

Coventry lies on the little River Sherbourne in the Midlands. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva founded a Benedictine monastery here in 1043, and the legend of Godiva's naked ride through the streets to protest at unjust taxes grew up around the town. By the thirteenth century it was a centre of the cloth trade, famous for Coventry blue, wool dyed with woad. Edward III granted the town a charter of incorporation and a coat of arms in 1345. In the early fifteenth century it may have held up to 10,000 people, the most important city in the Midlands and possibly the fourth largest in England, after London, York and Bristol.

The guilds performed the Corpus Christi mystery plays of the Coventry Cycle, including the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, from which the Coventry Carol comes. The Carthusian priory of St Anne was built between 1381 and 1410. Henry IV summoned a parliament to Coventry in 1404 because the rich city would lend him money, and during the Wars of the Roses Margaret of Anjou moved the royal court here. In 1451 Coventry became a county in its own right. The monasteries were dissolved in 1539–42 and the cathedral priory was lost. In August 1642 Charles I attacked the city, which held out behind its walls, and in 1662 Charles II had them slighted as punishment.