The pageants and welcome entertainments cost the citizens not a little, we may suppose, in time and treasure. They made the king a present of a tun of wine costing £8, 0s. 4d.; while by the "advice of his council" the mayor distributed 20s. among "divers persons of the king's house."[256] Lord Rivers too had a glass of rose-water at the mayor's expense, whereof the cost was 2s.; thirteen years later his lordship had a very bitter drink at Coventry.[257] Still the coming of the Court no doubt brought trade to the city; had it brought also peace, all would have been well. The council met on October 7, and a blow was aimed at the Duke of York in the dismissal of the Bourchiers.[258] It was even said that the duke's life was in danger, but that his kinsman, the Duke of Buckingham, assisted him to escape. Margaret required the presence of Somerset to lend strength to her party, and with him there came, it seems, a company of turbulent retainers. These men fell out with the city-watch and slew three or four of the townsmen; whereat, says a writer in the Paston series, "the larum belle was ronge and the toun arose and would have jouperdit to have distressed the men of the duke of Somerset, ne had the duke of Buks taken direccion therin."[259] Coventry was already ceasing to be the well-ordered and peaceful place whereon the mind of King Henry loved to dwell. Next year we hear that the civic finances were disorganised, that the officers of the city were negligent in the performance of their duty, and that the citizens, being "of froward dispositions," were inclined to appeal to "mighty men in strange shires" for their support in carrying on lawsuits against their neighbours in courts without the city.