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194 YORK.
Eishopthorpe on that bright June day. Signs and
portents were not unnaturally supposed to follow.
crop of barley was growing upon five ridges of the
common field adjoining the spot where the execution
took place. This was utterly trodden down and apparently
destroyed by the trampling of the assembled
crowd, but it sprang up again and yielded in the
autumn an unusual increase. The king was said to
have been struck with leprosy the night after the
Archbishop's execution. A story is also told by
Clement Maydeston that when Henry died, and his
body was brought down the river from Westminster
on its way to Canterbury for interment, a fearful
storm arose. Eight small vessels containing the nobles
who followed in the train of the royal corpse were
dispersed and almost lost. The vessel which carried
the corpse was in so much danger that, in a paroxysm
of superstitious fear, the sailors took it out of the
coffin and flung it into the sea between Barking and
Gravesend, when a great calm immediately ensued.
The coffin, covered with a pall of cloth of gold, was
taken on to Canterbury and honourably interred ; and
Maydeston avers that the monks there always told
people that they had the sepulchre of Henry IV.
with them but not the body.
The remains of the Archbishop were laid in the
chapel of St. Stephen in the Minster of York. His
tomb was regarded with peculiar veneration. Thousands
flocked thither to make their prayers and offerings
as at the shrine of a saint and martyr. " The
offerings which they made were devoted to the fabric,
and thus, ,even in his death, the ill-fated prelate
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