taken and kept within this city for the welfare of the same," and forbidden under the penalty of £40 ever to ride out with the chamberlains on Lammas day.[440] It was an old custom in Coventry to nail up all announcements, which for obvious reasons no crier would consent to proclaim, on the church door, where all might read them. It was in this manner that friar John Bredon, on the occasion of a dispute between his order and the monks, some forty years back, appealed to the citizens to throw off the dominion of the prior, as "the thraldom of Pharaoh." So within eight days after Lammas, 1495, some unknown rhymester of the "commonalty" nailed up some verses of his making on the north door of S. Michael's church; forgetting in them neither the oppressive acts which had been lately passed nor the punishment visited on Laurence for the tumult of the preceding year.[441] "Be it knowen & understand, This Cite shuld be free & nowe is bonde, Dame goode Eve made hit free, & now the custome for woll & the draperie. Also hit is made that no prentes shalbe But xiii penyes pay shuld he; That act did Robert Grene, Therfor he had many a Curse, I wene. And nowe a nother rule ye do make That none shall ride at Lammas but they that ye take When our ale is Tunned ye shall have drynk to your cake." The final lines recall the heavy fine to be paid by Saunders:-- "Ye have put on man like a Scot to raunsome, That wol be remembered when ye have all forgoten 'Caviat.'"[442] It may be that, in the face of this wrathful discontent--it was just at this time that the ill-behaviour of John Smith and John Duddesbury to "men of worship" caused the offenders to be watched so closely--the corporation felt some anxiety. At least they thought it prudent to relieve Laurence of the payment of half of the fine they had laid upon him. Of the remaining sum half was paid by the sureties, but £10 was yet due, and in 1496 Saunders appealed to the King. The fruit of his solicitings was a privy seal, addressed to the mayor and sheriffs asking them in charity to take £10 and remit the rest of the fine, as Laurence was now old and fallen into poverty.[443] There was one sentence in the letter very little to the recipients' liking. The King ordered the mayor "to do right" in a variance concerning a common pasture which Laurence had informed his grace to be in the city; "where," as the "men of worship" declared with righteous anger, "no such variance was." It would be folly indeed to smooth the lot of Laurence Saunders or release his friends from their bond. So the great culprit having paid £10 and his sureties a like sum, matters must be set right at Court, and the appeals of Laurence and his party made of no effect. So a "writing of the great and many offences of the said Laurence" was sent to Master Richard Empson, who was then in London, to be laid before the King. The mayor and his fellows awaited meanwhile the issue of the recorder's mediation.