To those who look on the spires from Gosford and the eastern side the tall ones appear in their relatively close proximity. This is the entrance to Coventry where most historical associations abound. "Two dukes should 'a fought on Gosford Green," succinctly say the city annals in 1397, but, as all the world knows, Richard II. forbade Bolingbroke and Mowbray to fight. Sinister memories for the House of York are connected with the Green, for here in 1469 Queen Elizabeth, Woodville's father, Lord Rivers, and her brother, John, were beheaded by Warwick's orders. It is said that it was on this side of the city that Edward IV. advanced in 1471, what time the King-maker held the city against him. Further west, beyond Far Gosford Street, is Dover Bridge, whereon once stood S. George's Chapel, meeting-place of the tailors and shearmen's guild, demolished in 1821. Outside this chapel once hung the blade-bone of the dun-cow, slain, says the legend, by Guy of Warwick of famous memory. [Illustration: 24 Gosford ST] In Gosford Street, long, ancient and grimy, was formerly the first station for the performances of the pageants; and in Cox Street, anciently Mill Lane, which runs to the north of Gosford, were the pageant-houses or places for storage of theatrical paraphernalia owned by the crafts. From Gosford the long thoroughfare street passes into Jordan Well--commemorating the well sunk by Jordan Shepey, mayor of Coventry, who died 1349, the year of the Black Death--and thence into Earl Street, where, it may be, a castle of the Earls of Chester once stood with an entrance at Broadgate. [Illustration: 130 FAR Gosford ST] To see the spire of S. Michael's alone it is best to leave this long thoroughfare and turn to the right by a half-timbered Tudor house down the narrowness of Pepper Lane where the immense steeple almost seems to blot out the sky. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Northall, _Eng. Folk Rhymes_, 403.] [Footnote 2: Mayor-list or MS. Annals (eighteenth century) in the possession of Mr Eynon of Leamington.] [Footnote 3: Morris, _S. John's Church_.] CHAPTER I _Leofric and Godiva_ It was ever the boast of Coventry men that their city was of "much fame and antiquity,"[4] being "remembered," so John Throgmorton, the recorder, assured Queen Elizabeth, "by Polydore Vergil to be of ... small account in the time of King Arviragus (which was forty-four years after our Saviour) in the Emperor Claudius' time."[5] And Shakespeare's contemporary, Michael Drayton, had a pretty fancy of his own concerning the place,[6] whereby its antiquity is made manifest. He tells us how, when Coventry was but "a poor thatched village," the saint of Cologne brought thither "That goodly virgin-band Th' eleven thousand maids chaste Ursula's command," who at departing, "Each by her just bequest, Some special virtue gave, ordaining it to rest With one of her own sex";