In Coventry we now enter upon a period where the townsmen not only sought to make good the privileges they had already won, but strove to gain, either by fair means or foul, such fresh concessions as they deemed necessary for their comfort and prosperity. The story of the struggle for liberty in English towns, though little known, is one of great interest. Though the whole thing is on a small scale, yet the narrative of events is no less stirring than the account of the revolt of a great nation. There was as fierce a conflict at S. Alban's among a score or two of men in 1327 as among tens of thousands in Paris at the Revolution. Few leaders of forlorn hopes have shown more desperate courage than the good folk of Dunstable, who were ready to brave not only the terrors of punishment in this world, but in the world to come, for, being cursed with bell, book, and candle by the bishop and their prior, they said that they recked nothing of this excommunication, but were resolved rather "to descend into hell altogether" than submit to the prior's extortions. And conceiving that they were likely to be worsted in the quarrel, they covenanted with a neighbouring lord for forty acres of land, preparing to leave their houses and live in tents ere they would pay the arbitrary tolls and taxes the prior had laid upon them.[95] It is true there were no philosophic fervour about the mediæval burgher, no enthusiasm about liberty in the abstract. What he wanted was some small practical advantage his masters denied him.[96] All the townsman of S. Alban's asked at the beginning of the quarrel was, that he should be allowed to grind his corn at home instead of at the abbot's mill. But wanting this strongly and sorely, and seeing a chance of victory, he was willing to fight for it perhaps to the death.