The Silk Ribbon-Weaving Trade in Hillfields and Coventry Region

Abstract

In 1451 Henry VI raised Coventry and the villages neighbouring it to the status of a county, (see Maps 11.1 and 11.2). For centuries the city and adjacent villages had formed a cohesive and largely self-sufficient economic unit. A cohesive unit, but not a homogeneous one. The villagers were far less prosperous than the inhabitants of Coventry city. Politically the villagers were barred from the corporate privileges of the city and in parliamentary elections they were unable to vote either in the city, where the franchise was confined to freemen, or in the northern division of the county of Warwickshire because of Henry VI’s decree.