In this year the rivers Seine and Marne were swollen so prodigiously, that in one night’s time the Marne rose above six feet high about St. Maur des-Fossez, and did a great deal of damage in several places; but among the rest, the river came up so high in a village called Claye, in which there was a palace belonging to the Bishop of Meaux, that it washed away all the brick-work of the front of it, where there were two stately towers newly erected, in which there were fine and large apartments richly furnished and adorned with tapestry, pictures, &c., but the river swept all away. About that time also it happened, that the body of the church of Fecamp in Normandy was burnt down to the ground by a fiery exhalation that came from the sea towards the Marches of Cornwall; and caught hold of the steeple of the said abbey which was quite consumed, and all the bells melted down, to the great loss and detriment of the abbot and his whole fraternity. At the same time there was a great noise and discourse all over the kingdom of France, and other places, of a young girl of about eighteen years of age, who lived in the city of Mans, and played several ridiculous pranks and follies; such as foaming at the mouth, leaping into the air, screaming out aloud, putting her body into a thousand convulsive motions, and pretending to be tormented by the devil; by which antic tricks, and several others too tedious to mention here, she imposed upon and cheated abundance of people that came to see her. But at last she was discovered to be an idle hussy, and that she played all her devilish pranks by the instigation and contrivance of some of the officers belonging to the Bishop of Mans, who maintained her for that purpose; and had so far brought her to their beck, that she would do anything they bid her, and they had trained her up from her infancy to play these pranks. About the same time it happened in England, some time after the Earl of Warwick’s seizing upon the person of King Henry, that the Duke of Somerset the king’s cousin, in conjunction with several young noblemen, relations and heirs to those who were slain at the taking of King Henry, having got together a considerable body of men, took the field, and marched directly against the Duke of York, found him encamped in the plains of St. Albans[518], where they gave him battle, and cut him and his whole army to pieces. In this battle the Duke of York was slain himself, and when his body was found they cut off his head, and by way of derision, because he pretended to the crown of England, they fixed it upon the point of a lance, and put a crown of straw in the form of a royal crown upon it. With him there fell in the battle six and twenty barons, knights, esquires, and persons of note in the kingdom; besides a great number of common soldiers, amounting in all to above eight or nine thousand men.