Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/404

390 honoured with more stately pageants than the memory of this Saxon lady, "the woman of a thousand summers back." The most splendid of them all was probably the last, which took place in June, 1866. Indeed, no city ever impressed the existence of one human being upon its own more vividly than Coventry has done that of Lady Godiva.

With such a koh-i-noor of legend to wear in its crown. Coventry might well dispense with all other historical regalia. But this is only the beginning of her wealth of fame. Shakespeare has wreathed for her another reputation of almost equal lustre, in the character of Falstaff. What reading man has ever walked her streets, or heard of them, without thinking of that doughty coward's horror at "marching through Coventry with such a jail delivery" as his awkward squad presented? These fictions of romance or of genius give the town a reputation and a place in the world's mind for which all the incontestable and proven facts of its history hardly serve as a setting. Still real, written history is full of these facts, which would stand out with considerable distinctiveness if they were not eclipsed by these more brilliant legends and fictions. Two Parliaments have been held here; the last by Henry VI, in 1458, called "Parliamentum Diabolicum," in which Richard Duke of York, and the Earls of Warwick, March,