Although the text above begins with the decisions of the February leet, it in fact records a sequence of actions and decisions taking place between that time and the next leet in May. This programme of renovating and enhancing Coventry's defences is reminiscent in some regards of that undertaken at Norwich a century earlier. Although at Coventry the city authorities relied primarily on communal resources, albeit including (as at Norwich) special levies on the residents; and at Coventry the motivation for the work was not the fear of foreign invasion so much as fears aroused by civil war, or the threat of it.

The popular rising in 1450, named after its leader Jack Cade, was the most serious of a number of expressions of discontent around that time, prompted partly by the restrictive employment conditions imposed by the Statute of Labourers, by heavy taxation and other oppressive measures which exacerbated economic woes, and above all by corruption in the national administration and the related national power struggle. There had been previous disorders aimed against the Duke of Suffolk, Henry VI's chief advisor, and leading to the Duke's arrest in January. Propaganda by the king's supporters tried to associate Cade's rebellion with the Duke of York's dynastic challenge. February saw riots in Canterbury, and April a commission to investigate an uprising in Surrey. In May 1450 the main insurrection began in Kent, its ranks made up of people from various levels in society, from peasants to small landowners, and including urban craftsmen and a number of former soldiers, including Cade himself. Support came from Surrey and Sussex – several of the Cinque Ports expressed their support and Hastings even contributed a small armed contingent. They marched on London, defeating a government force that tried to stop them, and received some sympathetic support in the city. They made a failed attempt to take the Tower, and killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and other high-ranking officials. The king and queen had already left the capital, seeking safety at Coventry. Although by the close of July things had gone sour, with the rebel force dispersed and Cade dead, the situation in Kent remained tense. The whole affair must have caused considerable consternation throughout England.

This was the context for the Coventry authorities' concerns about the adequacy of city defences. Early in 1450 there was an effort to ensure that a armed force could be called up from among the citizenry. Based on the number of padded jackets to be maintained by the citizens listed after the 1460 ordinance (above), it would seem that the city expected to be able to equip a city militia of around 700 soldiers, although this was perhaps optimistic, and certainly far smaller contingents were raised to send to join national armies.

On 18 April 1450 they revised arrangements for the night-watch to guard the town between the time that the city gates were shut and the ringing of the bell to mark daybreak; 40 men, chosen for their good character and physical strength, and supplied with arms and the same type of armour identified in January, were to make up the watch. At the same time it was ordered that 4 persons from each ward be chosen to take responsibility for the town gates and to appoint for each gate a salaried official to have custody of its keys and undertake the securing of the gate in the evening and its unlocking in the morning. It seems questionable whether these provisions outlasted the crisis. The authorities' concern, however, continued into 1451, as reflected in the above provisions to improve the physical defences, and by commissioning at Bristol the manufacture of several small cannon, for mounting on the tower of one of the city gates.

When the rebel force in London had got beyond Cade's control and posed a threat to the citizenry, the city aldermen led a force to repulse it. This may help explain the inclusion in the petition to the second leet of a request to appoint aldermen for each ward; that part of the petition seems not to have been acted on at the time, although by 1481 there were ward aldermen in place, and their power gradually superseded that of the leet court.

As a centre of Lancastrian support during the early phase of the conflict that eventually erupted into the Wars of the Roses, Coventry perhaps felt particularly alarmed by Cade's rebellion, which had Yorkist undertones. It's commitment to Henry VI is reflected in the warm welcome the city gave him in September 1451. Henry, who must have had occasion during his visit to observe parts of the defensive perimeter, responded in kind by complimenting the good government of the city, and promising to elevate the city to county status (which was done in November), commanding the mayor and his colleagues "not to allow within the city any riots, rallies, or gatherings of scoundrels" [Coventry Leet Book, 265].

The construction of a defensive wall around Coventry took place rather later than at most English towns of comparable size. It was delayed and hampered by the division of the town into two separately administered parts by the opening of the twelfth century. The rivalry that this engendered between the residents of the Earl's Half, the southern section of town, and those of the Prior's Half, the northern section, is likely to have inhibited cooperation on any ambitious projects to protect the settlement as a whole.

Nonetheless, there is evidence of earlier defensive elements. The Earl of Chester had a castle in Coventry during the uncertain times of the twelfth century (it was besieged in the 1140s), but thereafter transferred his seat to Cheylesmore manor house. The location of the castle is uncertain, but of course within the part of the town over which he had lordship, with the main east-west route through the settlement running along the southern edge of the castle bailey: Smithford Street/Earl Street/Gosford Street. The lateral extent of the site was remembered in the names of Bayley Lane and Broadgate (the latter referring to the main entrance into the castle grounds).

A little south of that east-west route there is evidence, both archaeological and documentary, of a twelfth-century ditch running parallel, occasionally referred to from the 1240s as the town ditch, and once (earlier) as the earl's ditch. This looks as if it would have stretched as far as the Sherbourne to the west, and less certainly to the same river in the east; it may also have linked in to the ditch around the castle, to channel water into it. It is likely that this ditch, along with the rampart formed from the earth excavated from the ditch, was intended as a protection, in conjunction with the semi-encircling river, around the settlement before (or even after) it was administratively divided, and before settlement intensified along the roads leading south from the high street to Cheylesmore Park. Other stretches of ditch north of the river are also known, perhaps dating from mid-thirteenth century; but what we know is too sketchy to be certain if these were also part of a defensive circuit, linking up to brooks that ran into the Sherbourne. Again, it may have been the civil wars of the twelfth century that prompted the digging of this ditch.

In addition we have references, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, to some kind of barriers across various streets entering the city. A number of these seem associated with the line of the ditches and so may have been part of the same twelfth-century initiative to protect the settlement. Others were in suburban areas. Called "bars", they were probably a little more substantial than the iron chains put up in 1451, but not as substantial as the later stone gateways. The placement of the chains, although we do not know these exactly, seems to have been intended to keep mobs from getting easily into the city centre. The high street and the marketplace would have been natural magnets for a rioting populace. It would have been important to keep the high street, as the central section of the main route through the city, under control of the authorities if possible.

The struggle for control over Coventry at first favoured the priory's lordship, but during the reign of Edward III this reversed and by a settlement of 1355 the Prior ceded much of his jurisdiction to a more-or-less united community whose existence had been recognized by the king in a charter of 1345. The Prior or his tenants had already shown interest in upgrading the city's defences, requesting and obtaining from the king a six-year murage grant in 1329. But there is no evidence that any work was undertaken with the proceeds from this murage, and a two-year extension may indicate concern that the money raised was insufficient for the task envisaged; which it doubtless was, as evident from the experience of other towns in building walled circuits. The extension had been championed b y the king's brother, the Earl of Cornwall, but for no better reason, apparently, than that he was in line to inherit the manor of Cheylesmore and wanted to ensure that no financial responsibility fell on his shoulders for providing the town with fortifications.

Copies of annals of city history attribute the initiation of wall-building at Coventry, at the New Gate (originally called the London Gate), to the mayoralty of Richard de Stoke in 1355. While this is just tradition, recorded by post-medieval documents, it has some credibility, given its coincidence with the Prior's recognition of the powers of a consolidated borough government, and the new and optimistic era of self-determination this might be expected to usher in. The constitutional settlement would have been just the impetus needed for a wall-building project, beginning on that side of the city lacking protection from the river. There remained the matter of funding. In 1363 a royal licence for the townsmen to build a stone wall around Coventry must have been assumed to include the right to raise money for the task, although no murage was explicitly mentioned. But by this period many other towns (as well as religious houses and other groups) had obtained exemptions from such tolls, diminishing their returns; and so in the following year the king gave permission for residents to be taxed towards the costs of wall-building, although in 1365 he clarified that he had not intended the clergy to be included among those taxable.

Despite that further incentive, progress was slow and piecemeal. A project of this magnitude was too expensive for most borough authorities, with limited resources at their disposal, to undertake except over an extended period. Coventry's government also had to overcome obstacles of property rights along the potential line of the walls. This we can infer from the fact that no other urban defensive circuit in England has as irregular a line as that at Coventry, suggesting it had to navigate around various property boundaries. The line of the walls may also have been influenced in part by the location of the previous defensive ditch, as well of course by the route of streets and the nuclei of settlement. (for an animation showing the course of the wall and the progress of building the circuit, see the Historic Coventry Web site).

One instance, perhaps extreme, of the type of negotiations necessary is seen in 1365, when Richard de Stoke, presumably acting as an agent of local government, was party to an agreement with the Carmelites, whose friary lay off Mill Lane, close to New Gate. The friars were to provide land for a stretch of wall and the ditch outside it, along the route of the lane as far as their mill on the river, and a further stretch north from there to Gosford Gate, the eastern entrance (across the river) into the town. The friars and the other residents of the lane were to share in the expense of building and maintaining these sections of the wall; the friars were to pay the wages for two years of a quarryman, a carter, and two masons, as well as costs of a cart and stone-hauling equipment, and were to supply the stone and half the lime for the section of wall between New Gate and the mill. Stoke and the residents would contribute £10 towards the costs, and Stoke undertook to fund the work of six masons during the same period, while other costs would be paid by the residents. The city authorities agreed that a postern gate be incorporated in the wall, presumably to provide access between friary and mill, and that they would not intrude upon the friary land within the walls, unless there was a clear and present danger. They also agreed to incorporate in a tower of the wall, at the city's expense, an existing chapel on the southern side of the friary grounds dedicated to the Virgin Mary – intended to serve travellers and bring the friary a source of income in the form of offerings by those travellers – as well as to allow a bridge across the ditch to give access to the chapel.

The initiative to construct a wall east of the New Gate was paralleled by efforts to build on the west side too. A renewal of the murage grant had been obtained in 1366 for five years. But by 1370 the popular discontent over the economic impact of these tolls had become strong enough that there was some kind of uprising, and the king cancelled the murage grant and allowed instead for a tax to be assessed on the wealthier townsmen to help pay for wall-building.

In 1385 Richard II renewed the grant of 1364 that all laymen who resided or owned land in Coventry could be taxed for purposes of completing the construction of the walls. He imposed the condition that the Cheylesmore manor house and its grounds (now held directly by the king) be incorporated in the defensive perimeter, but offset this by giving the citizens permission to quarry stone in the manor grounds for the needs of the additional wall and a gateway through it into the park. The grant was again renewed in 1391, for five years, along with a grant of a subsidy from revenues due the king each year from duties on the sale of cloth. Progress on the wall, however, remained slow, and in 1399 further aid was given, in the form of a grant to the Corporation of the gates and towers of the wall, bridges and wastelands of the city (which likely included at least some of the land adjacent to the wall), with the right to exploit them to earn revenue. Eileen Gooder [Coventry's Town Wall, Coventry and North Warwickshire History Pamphlets, no.4, rev. ed. (1971), 16] believed this transfer marked the completion of that part of the circuit around the section of town formerly under the earl's jurisdiction.

Work on the walls continued to be documented in the city records of the fifteenth century. This work took the form both of construction – the authorities apparently striving to build one or two perches a year – and of repairing or strengthening the existing wall and towers. The opening years of Henry VI's reign saw a particular flurry of activity, perhaps prompted in part by royal licences (1417-18) for the city to acquire lands and rents in mortmain to furnish new revenues supporting work on the walls, rather than resorting constantly to unpopular taxations. Orders were issued to the city chamberlains in 1423 to see that all gates still lacking were built, that one of the existing gates be rebuilt, and that all gates be provided with doors; and with the stretch of wall by the Carmelite friary finally completed, some 65 years after the agreement between citizens and friars. A new agreement between the parties included the requirement that the friars make an earth bank to buttress the inside of the wall; such a bank may have been provided for much or all of the city wall.

The expense of these new initiatives remained higher than existing revenues and for a few years at least the authorities tried to bolster the latter by allocating certain types of court fines towards the work.

This maintenance work proved a sufficient drain on resources to slow the completion of the walled circuit. Looming dangers, such as that in 1450, spurred things on, as the measures documented above indicate, but only temporarily. In 1452 the authorities scaled back wall-building for that year, in order to free up money to reimburse past chamberlains for costs they had personally incurred in the construction effort, and a few years later there are intimations that residents were compromising the defences by removing earth from the buttressing bank, or planting gardens there.

By this time wall construction was focused on the section of town formerly under the jurisdiction of the Priory. But not, it appears, with the latter's willing cooperation, for in 1480 the Prior made public a number of complaints related in part to the wall construction, but more fundamentally to claimed infringements of priory jurisdictions and rights and related loss of revenues. The former included reference to damage resulting from the construction process as the wall was extended onto lands belonging to the Priory, and bad habits engendered in priory tenants and other citizens once the wall was up. Yet at the same time the Prior complained that wall-building was not proceeding as fast as the city authorities had promised, because they were spending too much money in repairs to existing sections of wall. This despite the fact that, although the priory was officially exempt from paying murage, the Prior had agreed on a voluntary contribution of £10 annually. The mayor's reply to these complaints, made some points which reflected on the principles underlying the creation of defences; he pointed out that the Priory and its tenants benefited from defences like other residents of the city and past Priors had been fully consulted about the course the wall would take, just as other citizens had agreed on it crossing their lands. Furthermore, from a strategic perspective, keeping existing sections of wall in repair ought to take priority over building new sections, since it reduced the number of vulnerable points in the event of an assault on the city. Since the mayor showed no inclination to give satisfaction to any of the Prior's complaints, the Priory began to withhold its annual voluntary financial contribution, until 1498, when the mayor complained to Henry VII's son, and an episcopal arbitration ruled that the Priory should revert to paying its annual contribution and pay up some of the arrears.

Work on the walls thereafter resumed, again with the target of completing one or two perches a year. But it was not until 1534 that the circuit was completed (see map) , and work on enhancements continued through that century and into the next.

With the wall having been built over such a long period, construction methods and quality varied from section to section. Archaeological investigations in 1970 evidenced this. They showed that the technique used in one section was to excavate a 3-metre wide construction trench, then fill it with rubble held in place by sandstone blocks, atop which was put a layer of mortar and roof tile, as a level base on which to place a one-metre wide wall, comprising two sides of ashlar blocks infilled with mortared rubble. An adjacent section, however, believed to be of earlier date, showed better workmanship, such as the use of a solid foundation of sandstone blocks and of cut sandstone blocks between the two ashlar facings. The excavations also revealed many cess-pits in the wall's interior, an indication of abuses that led to its deterioration. Although it was restored to serve in the civil war of the early seventeenth century, most of the wall was demolished in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with only remains of two towers and two of the dozen medieval gates still standing today.

The disordered conditions of the mid-fifteenth century prompted other towns than Coventry to look to their defences. The with France was going badly, English coastal towns were once more targets for French raids, some of the disbanded troops brought back from lost French territories turned to marauding in the south-eastern counties, and resentment over defeats fostered a taste for rebellion, while factionalism in national politics had edged into civil war. In this enviroment the south coast port of Sandwich sought, like Coventry, to bolster its fortifications and better arm its defenders. Even before the town suffered an attack by the French (1457) and was raided from the sea by Yorkists (1460) aiming to pre-empt a Lancastrian naval assault on Calais, the local authorities had augmented the existing defensive circuit with a bastion at one corner of the circuit, to help defend the quayside. This subsidiary enclosure was progressively built up, in a style more reinforced than the older ramparts, during the 1450s and '60s; it was used not only to mount small cannon, but also as an arsenal for storing conventional weapons and armour, together with hand-guns and gunpowder. Between 1467 and 1483 an existing gateway at the other end of the quayside was rebuilt and strengthened, including equipping it with cannon.