Coventry was described in 1642 by Jeremiah Wharton, an officer
under the Earl of Essex in the Parliamentary Army, as "a City environed
with a wall, co-equal with, if not exceeding, that of London, for
breadth and height, and with gates and battlements, and magnificent
churches and stately streets, and abundant fountains of water,
altogether a place very sweetly situated, and where there was no lack of
venison." The walls of Coventry, begun in the year 1355, were very
formidable, being six yards high and three yards thick, and having
thirty-two towers and twelve principal gates. They defied both Edward IV
and Charles I when with their armies they appeared before them and
demanded admission, but they were demolished after the Civil War by
order of Charles II, because the people of Coventry had refused
admission to his father, King Charles I. Coventry possessed a greater
number of archives than almost any other town in England, covering eight
centuries and numbering over eleven thousand. My brother was delighted
to find that one of them related to a very old man named Thomas Parr,
recording the fact that he passed through the town on his way to London
in 1635, at the age of 152 years.
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