| Description | Seal. (Dorso) Witn. to sealing, Sam Brownell.
Gravenor (DR0429/135) is still, I see, a Coventry name, and so was Eburne, I hear, some fifty or sixty years ago, and may be still; it is wonderful how names persist in certain districts. A `selion' is a strip of arable land, and is represented in modern French by sillon - a furrow. S. Nicholas churchyard occupied the ground now the garden of old Trinity Vicarage, and I remember Canon Beaumont saying that it was no unusual thing for the gardener to find bones there when he was digging; indeed, once he found a human body in an extraordinary state of preservation, only it almost immediately crumbled to dust. S. Nicholas' Church was never parochial, but was supported by the Corpus Christi and St. Nicholas' Guild, just as St. John's was by the Trinity Guild; and the Guild, too, called their meeting place S. Nicholas' Hall. This Saint, one of the most popular of the whole calendar, was the guardian of sailors, virgins, and children, while thieves were called `S. Nicholas' clerks.' John Hales (DR0429/132), of Whitefriars- now the Workhouse - came of a famous stock, and was nephew of the founder of the Grammar School. The family had land in Snitteffield, too, the native place of John Shakespeare, father of the poet. Henry Breeres, alderman (DR0429/134), several times represented the city in Parliament.
Dated: 1 May, 8 Jas.I (1610) |