It is 26th April, 1726 - a busy day for Coventry City Council. Three of the aldermen (senior members for their wards, and justices of the peace (ex officio) and three of the other members are deputed to view a place by Spon Tower where one James Adcock intends to build an oven, and to report back whether he should be allowed to do so; aldermen Owen and Copson meanwhile will inspect ground in Palmer Lane where William Smith junior proposes to build. The same five aldermen, together with the Town Clerk, are formed into a committee to consider making St. John's, Fleet Street, a parish church, which took local and national secular and ecclesiastical government another eight years to effect. Some boys' names are approved for admission to Bablake School. Loans of from £10 to £50 are made to young city tradesmen, though others who have not repaid theirs will be sued. Members pass the sealing of a grant to a citizen of Cheylesmore manor land. Exceptionally, all seventeen corporation men are present, varying from the septuagenarian Jonah Crines, who had been mayor back in 1702, to John Kilsby, a recent mayor but on the council until he died in c.1748. How these men, and others like them, ran the city, how they were related, what their trades were, and what else they did, form the subject of this study.