As far as we can tell, Saunders' hour of triumph never came, for there was no rising at Lammas; but soon after the scandal at the sessions came a letter from the King, giving the mayor and council full permission to deal with the rebel "after the good and laudable custom of the city." This permission must have afforded them untold relief. As Laurence refused to give any pledge as to his future conduct, they committed him to prison. But he never rested, nor did his friends give up the battle. They interceded at Court, this time with Thomas Savage, the Bishop of Rochester,[444] and it seemed that their intercession was likely to bear fruit, for letters arrived to the effect that Laurence should be set free to plead his cause before the King at Woodstock. But the mayor and council would not let him go, for he offered, to their thinking, insufficient surety, letting fall also many seditious words, which are recorded in the Book of Council, and saying, "he wold fynd no other what so ever fell theruppon." Wherefore, the _Leet Book_ says, he remained in prison. [Illustration: BABLAKE AND S. JOHN'S CHURCH] Two "seditious bills"--one nailed on the minster door on S. Anne's Day--show how strained the situation was becoming. If ever, during a century and a half, the rule of the Coventry guilds had been as thoroughly detested as now, the feeling had never been put in words that have come down to us with such unmistakable force. Of these attacks, the second has a much loftier tone. After a passing reference to Laurence, lying in prison-- "You have hunted the hare, You hold him in a snare"-- there come, in the first set of verses, a warning to all the great folk that have forgotten to rule justly:-- "Ye that be of myght, Se that ye do right, Thynk on your othe; For wher that ye do wrong, Ye shall mend hit among, Though ye be never so loth." The poet and his friends--he says in the second set of verses--show outward respect to their rulers, but their minds are full of bitterness:-- "This cyte is bond thad shuld be fre, The right is holden fro the Cominalte; Our Comiens that at lamas open shuld be cast They be closed in & hegged full fast, And he that speketh for our right is in the hall,[445] And that is shame for yewe & for us all; You can not denygh hit but he is your brother; & to bothe Gilds he hath paid as moch as another." As for the "commonalty," they have no more to lose, the verse goes on to say:-- "For eny favour or frenship the comins with yowe fynde, But pyke awey our thryfte & make us all blynde; And ever ye have nede to the Cominalte, Such favour as ye shewe us, such shall ye see. We may speke feir & bid you goode morowe, But luff with our herts shull ye hav non. Cherish the Cominalte & se that they have ther right, For drede of a worse chaunce be day or be nyght, The best of you all litell worth shuld be, And ye had not help of the Cominalte."[446]