What connection there was between the Saint, whose nunnery the Danes destroyed, and this pool, we know not. At her shrine in the priory were miracles wrought, and her head seems to have appeared among the relics treasured by the religious house at the Dissolution.
Another non-parochial church comes very prominently into view when the approach is made from the south-west, Canley and Hearsall, though I imagine that few enter by those by-lanes save the ruddy, brown-gaitered farmers on their way to the Friday market. This is the guild-church of S. John the Baptist at Bablake, whereof the tower, that has a fortress-like touch, rises high above the roofs of the town. Even the sea-element is not lacking in the history of this inland city, since the guild brethren declared that they wished to raise this church in part as a memorial "for the good success the king had upon the sea" upon S. John's day—probably at the battle of Sluys, June 24, 1340.[3] Hard by this church and the collegiate buildings clustered behind it stood Bablake Gate, and all who came by the great highway leading from the north-west—now called the Holyhead Road—made their entrance there. Before coming to Bablake, however, wayfarers would cross the Sherbourne at Spon, close by the chapel of S. James and S. Christopher, now incorporated in a modern dwelling-place. Here they would, belike, pay their devotions just as other travellers coming from London and Daventry paid theirs at the Lady Tower, wherein was a wooden image of our Lady, hard by Newgate and Whitefriars.
SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST
COVENTRY
Smithford Street, which reminds us of the early activity of the workers in iron, leads to Bablake, and by the bridge there tradition says that there grew a great tree "that from the strangeness of the fruit was called Quient" (quaint), an imaginary etymology of the name Coventry. Modern scholars are, however, agreed that it was from some memorable (and possibly sacred) tree that the earliest form of the word "Cofantreo" is derived.
Gosford Green
To those who look on the spires from Gosford and the eastern side the tall ones appear in their relatively close proximity. This is the entrance to Coventry where most historical associations abound. "Two dukes should 'a fought on Gosford Green," succinctly say the city annals in 1397, but, as all the world knows, Richard II. forbade Bolingbroke and Mowbray to fight. Sinister memories for the House of York are connected with the Green, for here in 1469 Queen Elizabeth, Woodville's father, Lord Rivers, and her brother, John, were beheaded by Warwick's orders. It is said that it was on this side of the city that Edward IV. advanced in 1471, what time the King-maker held the city against him. Further west, beyond Far Gosford Street, is Dover Bridge, whereon once stood S. George's Chapel, meeting-place of the tailors and shearmen's guild, demolished in 1821. Outside this chapel once hung the blade-bone of the dun-cow, slain, says the legend, by Guy of Warwick of famous memory.