Connections
By the fifteenth century, Coventry had become one of the most important cities in England outside London, a status owed to its thriving cloth industry, powerful guilds, and the enduring presence of St Mary’s Priory-Cathedral. Its wealth, loyalty to the Crown, and central location made it a natural venue for great councils and parliaments. Twice in the fifteenth century, St Mary’s played host to pivotal assemblies, the 1404 “Unlearned Parliament” and the 1459 “Parliament of Devils.” These parliaments show how the priory continued to serve as both a spiritual centre and a stage for national politics during the Wars of the Roses.
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The Parliament of 1404
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The first parliament held in Coventry was summoned by Henry IV in October 1404, meeting within the precincts of St Mary’s Cathedral Priory.[i] In this parliament, the Commons was composed of seventy-one knights - delegates of the shires - and twelve burgesses representing the towns. It was later dubbed the Parliamentum Indoctorum, or the “Unlearned Parliament,” because lawyers were deliberately excluded from election.[ii] Henry, needing to raise funds for his wars in Wales and France, sought a parliament less likely to be hindered by lawyers who could challenge new financial measures.[iii]
Coventry was chosen for its loyalist reputation; the cathedral city had remained staunchly Lancastrian during Henry’s seizure of the throne. The assembly took place in the chapter house of St Mary’s Priory, underscoring the way in which ecclesiastical architecture could be repurposed as a site of secular deliberation. The exclusion of lawyers symbolised royal suspicion of professional elites, and the setting of a monastic cathedral lent the parliament an aura of moral and religious legitimacy. After a month, parliament was forced to end because Coventry could not sustain the crowds; provisions were running out and lodgings were insufficient.[iv]
Although little legislation was enacted beyond grants of taxation, the 1404 parliament reveals how the Crown utilised Coventry’s cathedral spaces as neutral ground - outside Westminster but still within a sacred precinct that implied authority and order.
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The Parliament of 1459
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Far more notorious was the second parliament to meet at Coventry, the Parliament of 1459, later dubbed by hostile Yorkist chroniclers the “Parliament of Devils.” This assembly, called by Henry VI and Queen Margaret of Anjou, convened in the chapter house of St Mary’s Priory in November 1459 following the Yorkist defeat at Ludford Bridge.[v]
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It was in this parliament that the first recorded bills of attainder were issued against prominent Yorkist lords, including Richard, Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, and the Earl of Warwick, declaring them traitors and confiscating their estates.[vi] Coventry’s role as host city reflected both its geographical centrality, lying near the routes from London to the north and from the Welsh Marches to East Anglia, and its reputation as a stronghold of Lancastrian loyalty.[vii]
St Mary’s Priory-Cathedral was more than a backdrop; its chapter house provided the physical space in which some of the most draconian legislation of the late medieval English monarchy was passed. The symbolic weight of meeting within a monastic precinct lent the attainders an air of divine sanction, even as Yorkist propaganda later branded the parliament as a travesty of justice.[viii]
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Coventry, the Cathedral, and the Wars of the Roses
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Coventry’s role in these parliaments was not incidental. The city was by the fifteenth century a major urban centre, governed by the Holy Trinity Guild and its corporation, and closely tied to the Crown through loans, hospitality, and military levies.[x] Hosting Parliaments at St Mary’s strengthened ties between Coventry’s guilds, the cathedral, and the Crown.
During the Wars of the Roses, Coventry became a Lancastrian bastion. Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou stayed in the city several times, and Margaret established her council there in the 1450s.[xi] The cathedral’s resources and spaces - its chapter house for councils, its precincts for assemblies, its clerical staff for record-keeping - were directly employed in the machinery of royal government.
Yet Coventry’s Lancastrian alignment came at a cost. When the Yorkists triumphed under Edward IV, the city’s fortunes declined. Yorkist propaganda continued to vilify the 1459 Parliament, associating Coventry and its cathedral with treachery and tyranny.[xi] Although St Mary’s remained a diocesan cathedral until the Reformation, its political moment in national affairs had passed by the late fifteenth century.​
[1] Record Commission. (1767–1777). Rotuli parliamentorum (Vol. 3, pp. 514–518). London.
[1] McGrory, D. (2022). A history of Coventry (p. 59). The History Press.
[1] Given-Wilson, C. (1996). Henry IV (pp. 185–187). Yale University Press.
[1] McGrory, D. (2022). A history of Coventry (p. 60). The History Press.
[1] Storey, R. L. (1966). The end of the House of Lancaster (2nd ed., pp. 140–145). Sutton.
[1] Record Commission. (1767–1777). Rotuli parliamentorum (Vol. 5, pp. 349-360). London.
[1] Hicks, M. (2010). The wars of the Roses (2nd ed., pp. 98–101). Yale University Press.
[1] Thomas, A. H., & Thornley, I. D. (Eds.). (1938). The great chronicle of London. George W. Jones.
Chronicles of the White Rose of York: A series of historical fragments. (1845). James Bohn.
[1] Phythian-Adams, C. (1979). Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (pp. 124–131). Cambridge University Press.
[1] Grummitt, D. (2013). A short history of the Wars of the Roses (p. 87). I. B. Tauris.
[1] Hicks, M. (2010). The wars of the Roses (2nd ed., pp. 100–101). Yale University Press.
Chronicles of the White Rose of York: A series of historical fragments (pp. 67–70). (1845). James Bohn.