The most memorable sojourn of this vain, beautiful, decadent king, Richard II., within the city took place in 1397 when Coventry witnessed the preparations for the duel between Henry Bolingbroke and Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. The splendour of royal and knightly accoutrements at this meeting must have dazzled the sober townsfolk, and perhaps they shared in the bewilderment of the Court at the strange vacillation of the King, who, when all preparations were made, forbade the duel to take place. Holinshed[212] tells of the "sumptuous theater" on Gosford Green wherein the lists were made ready for the combat; and wherein too, after the combat had been stayed, the two adversaries sat two long hours waiting until the King's pleasure should be known. When sentence of banishment was pronounced and leave-takings over, "the duke of Norfolk departed sorrowfullie into Almanie, and at the last came to Venice, where he for thought and melancholie deceased"; for Harry Bolingbroke, however, whose sentence was not like his adversary's, for life, but for ten years, many active days remained. Gosford Green, where this scene was enacted, is still a green, and as yet unbuilt on. The ruins of Caludon Castle, where Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, passed the night before the meditated encounter with Bolingbroke, are still visible from the highway leading from Stoke to Leicester, but of Baginton Castle, where his adversary slept, scarcely more than the foundations remain. Richard was lodged in a tower belonging to Sir William Bagot, about a quarter of a mile without the town. Sir William, who with Bushy and Greene acquired such unenviable notoriety as creatures of Richard II., lies buried in Baginton church, where a monumental brass of rare workmanship, now placed immediately under the rafters of the chancel roof, once marked the place where he was laid. It is likely that Richard saw Coventry once again when, badly horsed and in unkingly array, in 1399 they brought him, a prisoner, on the way from Flint on the last journey to London.