The foundation-stone of the church of this very monastery had been laid in 1385, by that champion of orthodoxy, Richard, King of England, who, in the hearing of the mayor and other notables promised to be the founder thereof and bring the work to completion.[208] After the Dissolution this house passed into the hands of the Lincoln family; the arms of Edward Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, are painted in one of the rooms of the still existing house. Part of the Prior's lodging remains, and in one room a portion of a large fresco of the Crucifixion reveals the figure of Christ from the knees downwards sprinkled with fleur-de-lys. Two years later Richard again visited the city what time Chief-Justice Tressilian, the "hanging judge" of the Peasants' Revolt, and the court of King's Bench,[209] sat therein, and bestowed on the mayor the right to have the civic sword borne before him by an officer. The MS. Annals say that in 1384 the mayor, John Deister, had forfeited this right, and that the sword was borne behind him, "because he did not justice." The _Leet Book_, however, makes John Marton mayor in this year,[210] and indeed the Annals have come down to us in a state of sad corruption. Maybe these frequent royal visits were not always welcome. A court of justice accompanied the King wherever he went, for the steward and marshal of the household had jurisdiction, superseding other authority of shire or borough, over an area of twelve miles to be counted from the King's lodging.[211] Before setting forth the steward gave notice to the sheriff of the place wherein the King proposed to sojourn, so that prisoners might be brought thither for trial at the household officers' court, a practice so little popular that rich and powerful towns purchased the chartered privilege, whereby the mayor became steward and marshal of the household. This right Coventry obtained in 1451. Kings, when they came to the city, were usually lodged at the Priory, though there was a quasi-royal residence, first occupied by the Mohauts, at Cheylesmore; but the vast retinue found shelter within the town. At the command of the marshal the doors of the principal folk of the place were marked with chalk, and the dwellers there found they had to accommodate some member of the royal party. There was a certain price to be paid for the advantages of situation as a great thoroughfare town between London and the north-west, and a manorial relationship to the Princes of Wales.