17 
King retired on his repulse before Coventry, had been an ancient 
Cistercian Abbey, one of the three great Cistercian abbeys founded in 
Warwickshire in the middle of the twelfth century. On the suppression 
it had been converted into a mansion house. It had suffered little, 
save in the demolition of the greater portion of the church, the south 
aisle of the nave and south transept alone having been preserved: 
These, with the other conventual buildings, were ranged round an 
inner court. At a little distance to the northwest of the Abbey, a 
usual position in monastic arrangement, stood the gatehouse, a 
_ picturesque and venerable structure of the fourteenth century, flanked 
with offices which in former times had probably been occupied as the 
Hospitiwm, where guests were received and hospitality dispensed, and 
where the poor were also relieved. Passing through this gateway the 
entrance to the Abbey would be on the west side, under the dormitory, 
or common sleeping apartment of the monks. This would afford 
accommodation to no few of the guard who attended the King. On the 
south side of the court stood a spacious apartment, the ancient 
refectory or dining hall, built by one of the abbots who died in the 
middle of the thirteenth century, and of whom it is quaintly recorded 
by his biographer, a subsequent abbot, that though he was in truth 
a worldy wiseman, gui quidem sagax erat in secularibus, this was 
reported to be the only good work he did during his abbacy. Sub quo 
tum constructum est novum refectorium. Sed cum multis esset odiosus. 
Dicebatur quod illud solum fecit bonwm, videlicet quod refectoriwm 
edificavit. So it is stated in the valuable and most interesting Liege, 
Book of the fourteenth century, still preserved in this ancient pile- 
The north side of the court was bounded by the south isle of the 
church. The east side by the south transept of the church, the 
chapter house, and the abbot’s lodgings, or apartments placed over 
a vaulted substructure. It was to these apartments, then probably 
the chief in the mansion, that the King was in all likelihood con- 
ducted for the night, mortified with his repulse before Coventry, felt 
the more for its not having been regularly garrisoned. This repulse 
was not forgotten, and twenty years later was avenged in the demoli- 
tion, by royal mandate, of the once goodly walls of Coventry, so as to 
render it no longer tenable as a defensive city. But to return to this 
interesting mansion. 
