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the tale the guide told us. A troop of Cromwell's Roundhead cavalry had entered the Minster determined on the destruction of all 'popish monuments,' but St John of Beverley, the local saint, canonised in 1037 had been so incensed at the desecration of the Minster by the Roundheads riding their horses into the building, that he had "caused" the leading horse to stumble, and its rider in falling off had struck his head on the flagstone floor and been killed, whereupon the rest of the troop had left vowing not to incur further wrath and disaster by destroying the Minster's interior.

How true these two tales are I could not say as both came from oral traditions which do not seem to have been recorded, but I found it quite curious that two such similar tales of divine intervention could occur in two small and relatively unknown places at opposite ends of the world.

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