Strange figures might be seen in the streets or the road neighbouring the city, such as the hermits, whose dwellings--the one by Bablake church,[517] the other at Gosford Green--stood at either end of the highway leading through Coventry. Times had changed; it was now customary for hermits to build by the highway, and no longer withdraw into solitary places, and spend their lives in prayer and meditation. They rather preferred to dwell in "boroughs among brewers," seeking society and good cheer. Nor did the pilgrims, who might be seen flocking to the shrine of S. Osburg[518] or to the image of Our Lady in the Lady Tower on the London Road hard by the Whitefriars' to pay their devotions, invariably set about their task in a religious spirit. Many who travelled to the far-famed shrines of S. Thomas of Canterbury, S. Edmund of Bury, S. Cuthbert of Durham, or to "Our Lady" of Walsingham, to the Roods of Chester and Bronholme, or the Holy Blood of Hales, looked on their journey as a holiday jaunt rather than as an act of devotion. The author of _Piers Plowman_ thought little spiritual good came from this gadabout religion. The Lollards were wont to condemn pilgrimages, and one John Blomstone of Coventry, a heretic, examined in 1485 declared:-- "That it was foolishness to go on a pilgrimage to the image of Our Lady of Doncaster, Walsingham, or the Tower of Coventry, for a man might as well worship by the fireside in the kitchen as in the aforesaid places, and as well might a man worship the Blessed Virgin when he seeth his mother or sister, as in visiting the images, because they be no more but dead stocks and stones." [Illustration: Whitefriar's Lane]