Royal visits to the church have been noticed in the history of the priory and city, especially that in 1450 which was apparently intended to mark the completion of the church. Reference has also been made to the plays and pageants with which such visitors were entertained. The site for the performance of the cycle of Corpus Christi plays was the churchyard on the north of St. Michael's. Queen Margaret, whose visits were so frequent that the city acquired the fanciful title of "the Queen's Bower" came over from Kenilworth on the Eve of the Feast in 1456, "at which time she would not be met, but privily to see the play there on the morrow and she saw then all the pageants played save Doomsday, which might not be played for lack of day and she was lodged at Richard Wood's the Grocer." There is evident reference to the dedication of the church in the pageant of the "Nine Orders of Angels" shown before Henry VIII and Queen Catherine in 1510 (p. 47). The history of the church since the Reformation has been not unlike that of a vast number of others. Fanatic destruction, followed by tasteless and incongruous innovations, and these again by "restorations" sometimes as destructive, sometimes as tasteless, and nearly always feeble; such is their common history. In 1569 even the Register books were destroyed because they contained marks of popery, while from 1576 onward a want of repair is plainly suggested by frequent items of expenditure for catching the stares (starlings) in the church, at one time for a net, at another for "a bowe and bolts and lyme." In 1611 James I addressed a strongly worded letter to the Mayor and Corporation and the Vicar requiring them to reform the practice of receiving the Holy Sacrament standing or sitting instead of kneeling, "As we our Self in our person do carefully perform it." Whereupon the Bishop wrote that he "felt persuaded that there were not above seven of any note who did not conform themselves" to the church ordinances; while the Vicar said he "did not know of _half seven_ of any note but do the like."