Editing Coventry (section)

===Tudor period===
[[File:Fords Hospital Almshouse - Coventry.jpg|thumb|Ford's Hospital Almshouse.]]
In 1506 the draper Thomas Bond founded [[Bond's Hospital]], an [[almshouse]] in Hill Street, to provide for 10 poor men and women.<ref>{{cite web |title=History {{!}} Bond's and Ford's Hospital |url=https://bondshospital.org/history/ |access-date=7 September 2024 |website=bondshospital.org}}</ref><ref>[https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol2/pp109-112#h3-0004 "Hospitals: Coventry Pages 109–112 A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 2".] ''British History Online''. Victoria County History. Retrieved 7 September 2024.</ref> This was followed in 1509 with the founding of another almshouse, when the wool merchant William Ford founded [[Ford's Hospital|Ford's Hospital and Chantry]] on Greyfriars' Lane, to provide for 5 poor men and their wives.<ref>Cleary, J. & Orton, M. (1991) ''So long as the world shall endure: the 500 year History of Ford's and Bond's Hospitals''. Coventry Church Charities.</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Culver |first=Ralph |title=Ford's Hospital Coventry |url=https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/fords-hospital-coventry |access-date=7 September 2024 |website=Our Warwickshire }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Broster |first=Nicole |title=Ford's Hospital – Historic buildings |url=https://www.coventry.gov.uk/directory-record/49568/ford-s-hospital |access-date=7 September 2024 |website=Coventry City Council }}</ref>

Throughout the Middle Ages Coventry had been home to several [[monastery|monastic]] orders and the city was badly hit by [[Henry VIII]]'s [[dissolution of the monasteries]]. Between 1539 and 1542, monasteries, priories and other properties belonging to the [[Whitefriars, Coventry|Carmelites]], [[Greyfriars, Coventry|Greyfriars]], [[Benedictine]]s and [[Carthusian]]s, were either sold off or dismantled. The greatest loss to the city was of Coventry's first Cathedral, [[St Mary's Priory and Cathedral]] which was mostly demolished, leaving only ruins, making it the only English Cathedral to be destroyed during the dissolution. Coventry would not have another Cathedral until 1918, when the parish [[Coventry Cathedral|church of St Michael]] was elevated to Cathedral status, and it was itself destroyed by enemy bombing in 1940. Coventry therefore has had the misfortune of losing its Cathedral twice in its history.{{sfn|Walters|2019|pp=82–85, 160}}

[[William Shakespeare]], from nearby [[Stratford-upon-Avon]], may have witnessed plays in Coventry during his boyhood or 'teens', and these may have influenced how his plays, such as ''Hamlet'', came about.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Nicoll|editor-first1=Allardyce|title=Shakespeare in his own age|date=1976|publisher=Cambridge university press|location=Cambridge [etc.]|isbn=9780521291293|edition=Repr.|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/shakespeareinhis0000unse}}</ref>