Throughout the later and the darker part of Henry's reign the clergy took care to inculcate, and the people were prone enough to believe, that all his disasters and calamities, the rebellion of his wife and of his sons, were judgments of God for the persecution if not the murder of the Martyr Thomas. The strong mind of Henry himself, depressed by misfortune and by the estrangement of his children, acknowledged with superstitious awe the justice of their conclusions. Heaven, the Martyr in Heaven, must be appeased by a public humiliating penance. The deeper the degradation the more valuable the atonement. In less than three years after his death the King visited the tomb of Becket, by this time a canonized saint, renowned not only throughout England for his wonder-working powers, but to the limits of Christendom. [SN: Penance at Canterbury. Friday, July 12, 1174.] As soon as he came near enough to see the towers of Canterbury, the King dismounted from his horse, and for three miles walked with bare and bleeding feet along the flinty road. The tomb of the Saint was then in the crypt beneath the church. The King threw himself prostrate before it. The Bishop of London (Foliot) preached; he declared to the wondering multitude that on his solemn oath the King was entirely guiltless of the murder of the Saint: but as his hasty words had been the innocent cause of the crime, he submitted in lowly obedience to the penance of the Church. The haughty monarch then prayed to be scourged by the willing monks. From the one end of the church to the other each ecclesiastic present gratified his pride, and thought that he performed his duty, by giving a few stripes.[220] The King passed calmly through this rude discipline, and then spent a night and a day in prayers and tears, imploring the intercession in Heaven of him whom, he thought not now on how just grounds, he had pursued with relentless animosity on earth.[221]