Of this minster, however, nought remains, and its successor, the Gothic cathedral, was destroyed after the Reformation. The legend of its foundress has been more enduring. Vulgarised by later associations, the narrative, in its early forms, has a grandeur which still impresses the imagination. The story was a favourite one with Landor from his boyhood, though his _Imaginary Conversation_, and Drayton's brief lines are less popularly known than the poem of Tennyson. There is no contemporary evidence to guide us, for Roger of Wendover, whose account of the famous ride is probably the earliest we possess, died in 1237,[22] some hundred and fifty years after the noble lady herself. The chroniclers differ as to the motive which prompted the undertaking, some asserting that the Coventry folk were to be freed thereby from a grievous incident of villeinage; others again[23] connecting it with the local immunity from the payment of toll--except for horses, a special feature of the market of Coventry.[24] It is in the latter connection that the story has impressed itself on the local mind. "I Lueriche for the love of thee Doe make Coventre Tol-free," was written under a window placed in Trinity Church in Richard II.'s time in commemoration of the deed.[25] "This cite shulde be free, and now is bonde, Dame goode Eve made hit free," wrote a discontented burger poet of the fifteenth century, when a custom for wool had been laid on the people of the town.[26] Roger of Wendover tells us how the countess besought her husband continually, with many prayers to free the people from the toll; and though he refused and forbade her to approach him with this petition, "led by her womanly pertinacity," she repeated the request, until he gave answer: "Ride naked through the length of the market, when the people are gathered together, and when thou returnest, thy petition shall be fulfilled.... Then the countess, beloved of God, loosened her hair thus veiling her body, and then, mounting her horse and attended by two knights, she rode through the market seen of none, her white legs nevertheless appearing; and having completed her journey, returned to her husband rejoicing, and ... obtained from him what she had asked," for he forthwith gave the townsfolk a charter emancipating them from the aforesaid service.[27]