But the fair words of royalty often bore a most unwelcome meaning, and the yoke of the Yorkists was not light. Edward, in 1474, applied to "his feythful subgetts" in the city of their "benevolence" to aid him with a substantial sum of money for various undertakings incident to a war with France.[323] The king found "benevolences" or forced loans more convenient than subsidies granted by parliament, and in the wars a treaty better served his purpose than a battle, when the French king was willing to pay for peace. The frequent interference of the Prince of Wales's council in city disputes at first ruffled the tempers of the great folk at Coventry not a little. "We, your humble and true servants here," the corporation wrote to the Prince of Wales in 1480, "know of no variance ... here but that we among ourselves, be the grace of God shall amicably and righteously settle." But all thoughts of resistance had been abandoned, when the next year a commotion, raised by the common folk at the enclosure of the Lammas pastures, put the franchises in danger of confiscation a second time, and the corporation earnestly entreated the Prince of Wales by intercession to avert his father's wrath. Richard III., in his brief reign, did all that in him lay to conciliate the Coventry folk; in 1485 he kept Whitsuntide at Kenilworth,[324] and paid a visit to the city to witness the Corpus Christi pageants, but we hear of no joyous welcome given him by the citizens. Perhaps--though there was little sentiment in contemporary politics--they could not lightly forget the faces of the two little boys, who had visited the city during their father's lifetime, and had since mysteriously disappeared, men knew not by what means, in the Tower of London. In an interesting letter written probably in the previous year, the King charges the authorities of this thoroughfare city to provide horses for the royal messengers.