Soon after the Queen's entry into possession of the De Montalt estate, the prior had many bitter complaints to make of the treatment he received at her hands and at the hands of his "mortal enemies," the men of Coventry. His courts were deserted by the men of the Earl's-half, the profits of his franchise finding their way, no doubt, into the Queen's coffers, as her steward held a court at Cheylesmore. His dues, waifs, heriots, the mournful enumeration proceeds, were withheld, and certain tenements belonging to him seized into "my lady's hand" in spite of charters shown to prove his ample right to the same. Great destruction had been wrought in his woods at Whitmore under colour of the Queen's claim to gather her "estovers," or fuel, therein. And the boundaries about these woods had been violently thrown down, and if "they be not now enclosed to prevent cattle from pasturing therein, they will be ruined for ever past recovery." The men of the Earl's-half lived in the prior's tenements in the Earl's Orchard, detaining the rent, twenty marks a year, "by tort and force." But this was not the worst. By cover "of the Seigneurie of my said lady," the prior continued, a great part of the rents in Coventry were treacherously withheld, and the monks dared not take distress and force the defaulters to pay "for peril of death." For when their bailiff, Simon Pakeman, went to demand the aforesaid rents without making any distraint for the same, "up came Peter de Stoke and other mad folk ... and assaulted the said Simon with force of arms, and beat and maltreated him, saying ... that if the said prior and convent ever made any demand of the kind in the Earl's-half they would make their heads fly" (_ferryent voler les testes_).[116] Again and again the prior and convent poured forth their monotonous complaint. Now they "prayed restitution" for the rent of two messuages, "which for two years last past my lady had given to a demoiselle of her chamber."[117] Now they averred that she had put the bailiff of the Earl's-half out of his office, whereby they had lost all profits arising from their franchises. Still the spoliation continued; they fixed the damage the convent had sustained at £20,000,[118] and, turning from the deaf ears of Queen Isabel, besought the King to see justice done for God's sake, "and for love of our Lady, his dear Mother, in whose honour the priory" had been founded, lest the convent should be compelled to disperse.[119]