Catalogue description Feoffment by Tho. Potter, dyer, and Fr. Chambers, baker, one of the chw. to Nic. Rowney....

Feoffment by Tho. Potter, dyer, and Fr. Chambers, baker, one of the chw. to Nic. Rowney. mayor, Chr. Davenport. Hum. Burton and others, parishioners, of a tenement, etc., with a selion (strip) of arable land in Coundon in Urchenfield in tenure of Joh. Carr, which they (the grantors) enjoyed with others, now dead, of the grant of Chr. Davenport, late pewterer, Hen. Smyth, late vintner, and others (Apr. 1, 10 Jas.I.) for the fulfilment of the will of Jas. Tomson. Attorneys, Nic. Rue and Will. Aspinwall.

Sign. and mark of Th. Potter and Fr. Chambers. Seals. Witn. to sealing (Potter), Hump. Webb, Will. Rowney, Will. Aspinwall. Witn. to sealing (Chambers) Joh. Tompson and others. To delivery of seizin, Nic. Rewe and others.

In this set of deeds the names of Simon Norton, Will. Basnet (DR429/184) and others familiar from their association with the Civil War time appear. Morton, who died in 1641, represented Coventry in the "Short Parliament" of 1640. The necessity for the strengthening of the fortifications at this time is brought home by the proviso which attaches to the lease of a little croft (185) in Dog Lane (Leicester Street) that there should be free ingress for making the trench for the down ditch for the better defence of the city. In Nic. Rowney's Mayoralty (DR429/181) the citizens garrisoned for the Parliament; houses were pulled down outside the gates; cannon planted in all the towers, while the gallant women of that day "went by Companyes to fill up the Quarries in the great Park that they might not harbour an enemy." Tho. Pidgeon's name (DR429/184) recalls the prophecy, attributed to the famous Mother Shipton, that a pigeon should pull down the walls of Coventry, which was supposed to be fulfilled at the dismantling of the fortifications and destruction of the walls in 1662, this man's mayoral year. The name "Le Strype" (DR429/182) shows the age of some of the endowments of the church, since in 1519 Nic. Burwey, fishmonber, bequeathed towards the expenses of his annual obit "some land known as the 'Stripe' on the north side of S. Nicholas' Church," which, on his wife's death, was to descend to the Trinity Gild (Sharp, Antiquities, DR429/93). We must always remember that Coventry received preferential treatment at the Suppression of the Gilds and Chantries, and that there must have been ways of evading the confiscation of land devoted to "superstitious uses," in the well-known phrase of the Reformers.