Chapter III: Part 3

Then, unfortunately for herself, Elizabeth embarked on the dangerous sea of politics, especially unsafe in those days when the axe or the rope put a stop to any unfavourable comment. As when the divorce of Catherine came upon the tapis, and Elizabeth indulged herself in expressing such opinions as these, embodied in a fantastic tale “of an angel that appeared, and bade ‘her’ go unto the King, that infidel Prince of England, and say, that I command him to amend his life; and that he leave three things which he loveth, and purposeth upon; that is, that he take off the Pope’s right and patrimony from him. The second, that he destroy all these new folks of opinion, and the works of their _new learning_. The third, that if he married and took Anne to wife, the vengeance of God plague him.” But Henry was not moved, unless it was to anger; Warham was convinced of the Maid’s holiness, and withdrew his promise to marry Henry; further, he persuaded Wolsey to see her, with exactly what result is not definitely known. She gained vast popularity as Catherine’s champion, and many noble persons became her patrons. She even went to the extreme length of forcing herself into the King’s presence when he visited Canterbury. Anne did not die within a month of her marriage, as the Maid had predicted, so she added to her offences by declaring that Henry was before God no longer King. Cranmer, who had succeeded Warham, ordered the Maid to be subjected to a strict examination. Eventually, in September 1533, she confessed her fraud: “she never had visions in all her life, but all that she ever said was feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of those which resorted to her, and to obtain worldly praise.” Her counsellors, including Bocking, Hadley, Masters, and Thwaites, were committed to the Tower, brought before the Star Chamber, and they too confessed. So the plot exploded. A scaffold was erected near to Paul’s Cross, from which the Nun and her chief aiders and abettors read their confessions; this function was repeated at Canterbury in the churchyard of the monastery of Holy Trinity. We need not here go into the political capital which Cromwell made out of the intimacy of various enemies of the King with the Maid.

On the 20th April 1534, the unhappy girl and others were done to death at Tyburn; and these were her last words: “Hither I am come to die; and I have not been only the cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved, but also I am the cause of the death of all those persons, which at this time here suffer. And yet, to say the truth, I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known to these learned men that I was a poor wench, without learning; and therefore they might easily have perceived, that the things that were done by me could not proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well judge from whence they proceeded, and that they were altogether feigned: but because the thing which I feigned was profitable to them, therefore they much praised me; and bore me in hand, that it was the Holy Ghost, and not I, that did them; and then I, being puffed up with their praises, fell into a certain pride and foolish fantasy with myself, and thought I might feign what I would; which thing hath brought me to this case; and for other which now I cry God and the King’s highness most heartily mercy, and desire you all, good people, to pray to God to have mercy on me, and on all them that here suffer with me.”

There is tragedy lurking there, and light upon those days. But can we laugh--we who are without superstition and too often without respect?

OTHER SHRINES

There is an old house outside the West Gate, built about 1563 on the site of an hostel, where, when the city gates were shut of a night time, belated pilgrims were wont to seek refreshment and rest. But as we stand and look at the ancient gables, and think of those still more ancient which these replaced, does any Canterbury Pilgrim come forth to greet us? No; but we have “stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long, low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that,” we fancied, “the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.”

We have never seen Uriah Heep peeping slyly out of those quaint little windows, for somehow Uriah has never quite lived for us; but we have seen Agnes there, to whom David eventually lost his heart--which has always seemed to us an unwise proceeding, for men do not like taking a permanent second place by marrying their

guardian angels; there have looked out at us old Mr Wickfield and young David, Miss Betsy Trotwood and Mr Dick--all very much alive. Then it is delightful on a frosty morning to see Doctor Strong bestowing his gaiters “on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally recognised, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral.” But who would wish to meet the Old Soldier? And was it not Mr Micawber who came to “see the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing.... And secondly, on account of the great probability of something turning up in a cathedral town”? Then we may sit, if we list, with little David in the Cathedral any Sunday morning, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black-and-white arched galleries and aisles affecting us as they did him, being as wings that take us back to childish days.

A giant of a man meets us in these city streets, a long-legged, white-haired, bespectacled man, one who signed a letter “W. M. T.,” in which he wrote: “I passed an hour in the Cathedral, which seemed all beautiful to me; the fifteenth century part, the thirteenth century part, and the crypt above all, which they say is older than the Conquest.... Fancy the church quite full; the altar lined with pontifical gentlemen bobbing up and down; the dear little boys in white and red flinging about the incense pots; the music roaring out from the organs; all the monks and the clergy in their stalls, and the archbishop on his throne--oh, how fine! And then think of the ✠ of our Lord speaking quite simply to simple Syrian people, a child or two maybe at his knees, as he taught them that love was the truth.” Thus spake Thackeray the cynic.

In the days of Elizabeth--to be exact, in the year 1561, on May 22nd--John Marlowe was married to Catherine Arthur in the church of St George the Martyr, the said John being a man of some standing and a member later of the Guild of Shoemakers and Tanners. Then in the same church, in the year 1564, on February 26th was christened Christopher, the eldest son of the above. The boy when fourteen years of age won a scholarship in the King’s School, of which the master then was Nicholas Goldsborough. When Kit left the school we know not; he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; he went to London; he wrote _Faustus_, _Tamburlaine the Great_, _The Rich Jew of Malta_, _Edward II._, _Hero and Leander_; sang

“Come live with me and be my love.”

And there is a foolish monument to him, where once stood the butter-market, outside Christ Church gate. Of the man’s manner and appearance we know not anything; his works live, but the man is dead even to our mind’s eye. Yet there are some of us who would rather meet his shadow here than even those of Chaucer and of Dickens; perchance because we know him not.

Canterbury is yet in many ways a mediæval city, despite railways and electric lights. We can enter it by the fourteenth century West Gate, built by Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, the one gateway mercifully spared to us out of six; then we can walk down an old-world High Street, overlooked by beetle-browed, gabled houses. Is not the King’s Bridge and the old home of the Canterbury Weavers quaintly beautiful? This old house dates back possibly to the fifteenth century, of course having been pulled about more or less by rude restorers; at any rate it is old, at any rate it is quaint. Stand thereby on a moonlit night, drink in the picturesqueness of the dark masses of black shadow and reflection, the bright masses of cold light; there is no corner more charming in Nuremberg or Rothenberg; the sluggish waters of the many-branched Stour flow beneath, and the air is tremulous with the chiming of bells from many a steeple. The passers-by of to-day are not those whom we should see, for we should bend our mind’s eye on monk, priest and pilgrim, on knight, dame and squire, or king, queen and prince; it needs no vivid imagination to call up these shades of the past. But above all and through all the pageantry of old days looms the church; Canterbury is a city of churches, of priories, monasteries, hospitals. There is St Dunstan’s, where in the Roper vault they say is the head of Sir Thomas More; St Alphege, with a curious epitaph referring to dancing in the churchyard; St Margaret’s, where sleeps Somner, antiquary and loyalist; St Peter’s, once used by a French congregation; and many another. The Black Friars, the Grey Friars, the White Friars, all had houses in Canterbury. On the banks of the river, hard by St Peter’s, the Black Friars in the reign of Henry III. founded one of their first homes, and now their ancient refectory is a Unitarian Baptist Chapel! Therein Daniel Defoe was wont

to preach. A portion of the house of the Grey Friars still stands on arches above the waters of the river; but as we look on it of no friar do we think, but of the gay cavalier, Richard Lovelace, gallant and poet, who sang--

“When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crown’d,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free--
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.”

But he wrote other and more pleasing verses, though none more curious. The Brethren of St Francis, the Franciscans or Grey Friars, came to this country in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, and their first habitation was this in Canterbury. They numbered but nine, these first comers, of whom only one was a priest, a man of Norfolk, by name Richard Ingworth. The monks of Christ Church were hospitable to them; they acquired a small piece of land and built thereon a wooden chapel. But it was felt to be incumbent on this begging fraternity not to become owners of land, so the donors of this plot handed it over to the city to be held for the friars. They did not, however, remain on their original site, but moved in 1270 to a tiny island in the Stour called Bynnewith. Henry Beale, mayor in 1478, was buried in their church. Then in bad time came Henry VIII., and the brotherhood was turned out of house and home. In the days of Good Queen Bess the house was in the possession of the Lovelaces; so here dwelt Colonel Richard, cavalier and poet, who wrote this immortal lyric:--

“Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

“True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

“Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.”

Then there are the East Bridge Hospital, possibly founded by Becket for “wayfaring and hurt men,” now an almshouse, and St John’s Hospital, with its charming half-timber gateway, and others. And what should such a city do without a castle? Yet the good citizens are content with a neglected ruin, the remnants of a fortress first built in the twelfth century, and full of historic memory. But castles have no living faith to keep them whole and sound; they have no usefulness, and this is a utilitarian age. Indeed, it is solely due to accident that any part of the fine old keep remains, for in the early years of last century the city fathers decided to utilise it as a quarry. But modern picks found ancient cement too strong for them, and the undertaking, not proving remunerative, was abandoned. It would have been a gross blunder to leave Canterbury unfortified, standing as it did upon the most important coast road in the kingdom. The keep was completed about 1125, and the castle further strengthened by Henry II. At one period it was the principal county prison. Here it stands amid the prosaic modernity of to-day, a hoar and unhonoured relic of the wild past.

From this desecration we turn to the leafy walks that surround the Dane John, that mysterious mound whose principal use has been to afford sport for etymological antiquaries. Donjon, we are told it may be rightly; may be also wrongly. Best had we mount the steps to the summit of the city wall, hereabouts in a wonderfully good state of preservation, and walk along it toward the cattle-market and so on to St Augustine’s College. Here we touch fingers with pagan days, for on this spot, so it is related, Ethelbert worshipped the gods of his fathers. To St Augustine he gave this temple, though such a high-sounding name misfits what was doubtless a modest erection, and it was consecrated as a Christian church in the name of St Pancras. Between it and the city rose the Benedictine monastery of St Peter and St Paul, afterward dedicated also to Augustine himself and by his name thenceforth generally known. In July 1538 came the downfall with the arrival of Henry VIII.’s commissioners; there was a demonstration of resistance on the part of the monks, but cannon provided a conclusive argument; and then the end, the glory departed. Here were buried not only Augustine, but King Ethelbert and many of the archbishops. The saint who came as an apostle of Christianity to Kent founded this great monastery; now it is a missionary college of the Church of England, whence preachers of Christ’s teaching go forth to the ends of the earth. On the saint’s tomb could once be read a brief epitome of the events of his stirring life: “Here resteth the Lord Augustine, first

Archbishop of Canterbury, who erewhile was sent hither by Blessed Gregory, Bishop of the City of Rome, and being helped by God to work miracles, drew over King Ethelbert and his race from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ. Having ended in peace the days of his ministry, he departed hence seven days before the Kalends of June in the reign of the same king, A.D. 605.”

To King Ethelbert, a heathen, and to Bertha, his queen, a Christian, came Augustine to preach the gospel; and Christian worship he found carried on by Lindhard, the queen’s French chaplain, in a small chapel standing outside the city walls, the present church of St Martin, altered in aspect, but the “mother church of England.” Through the mists of centuries we cannot clearly see; we know not how far well or ill disposed toward Christianity the King may have been; at any rate, as he permitted his queen to follow her creed, his disposition cannot have been actively evil. The King met the band of missionaries in the Isle of Thanet, promised not to molest them, and to give them all that was needed for their support, with permission to make all the converts they could. From the island Augustine and his comrades crossed to Richborough, the old Roman fortress of Rutupiæ, and so on by the Roman road toward Canterbury. On the slope of St Martin’s Hill the welcome sight of a Christian place of worship met their eyes, light amid darkness. As Augustine stood on the height, looking over the rude city on the islands of the Stour, did any prophetic vision come to him? His heart was doubtless high with hope, but he dared not have dreamed that the future was to be so glorious as we know it to have been. Then came the baptism of Ethelbert on Whitsunday in the year 597, in St Martin’s Church, and as usual, even in later days, the example of a king soon set a fashion. Of St Pancras’ Church we already know the story. Of the first cathedral in Canterbury no stone remains. When the saint died he was buried not far from the roadside, the Kent and Canterbury Hospital occupying the ground where his bones rested--until they were translated to the church of the monastery he had founded but had not lived to see completed. It is told of a stern soldier that he desired to be buried by the roadside, so that he might hear the tramp of the troops as they marched by to war; is it too far-fetched to think of the missionary Augustine lying asleep somewhere near by the college that has succeeded to his monastery, comforted by the sound of voices that like his are to preach the gospel to the heathen? Indeed, Canterbury is a city of great memories.

Augustine was, of course, the monastery’s chief treasure, and next came the body of St Mildred which was given to the house by Canute. It must never be forgotten by those who would look at things mediæval with mediæval eyes, that in those days the dead were more powerful than the living; even kings humbled themselves before the bones of dead saints. This relic worship became almost a madness, and the rage seized upon monks and their rulers, who stooped to the meanest thefts in order to possess themselves of such valuables. It is related that the monks of St Augustine’s Abbey offered to make Roger, the keeper of the altar of the Martyrdom, their abbot, if only he would steal for them the fragment of Becket’s skull which was entrusted to his charge. He fell to the temptation, and rose to be ruler of the rival house. For many a long year indeed St Augustine’s dominated and domineered over Christ Church; and for more than one reason. The former was an abbey, the latter but a mere priory; in the precincts of the former was buried England’s apostle Augustine, and Ethelbert, Augustine’s successor Lawrence--indeed, the first eight occupants of the archiepiscopal throne. How could a poor cathedral with never an archbishop’s bones hope to contend with such favoured rivalry? So St Cuthbert, the ninth archbishop, came to the rescue, preferring to lay his bones in his own cathedral rather than in the church of the rival establishment. He foresaw the difficulties that would arise; provided against them by procuring from the King of Kent and from the Pope an authorisation to be buried within the city walls, which he handed to the sorrowing monks as he lay adying, bidding them also to bury him first and toll the bell afterward. So it came to pass that when Abbot Aldhelm and the monks of St Augustine’s came to claim their lawful prey, they were defeated and retired in dismay. They struggled once more over the body of the succeeding Archbishop Bregwin, and then succumbed to the inevitable. The glory of the Cathedral waxed; it covered the graves of St Dunstan, St Alphege, and St Anselm; then came St Thomas and eclipse to St Augustine.

Of the church but a few fragments remain, though at the beginning of last century Ethelbert’s Tower, built about 1047, was still standing. South of the church are the remains of St Pancras’ Church, where excavations have revealed much of interest.

After the heavy hand of Henry VIII. had fallen on it, the abbey served him as a palace, afterward coming into the possession of many owners, and at length reaching a deep depth of degradation and ruin. From this it was rescued by Mr A. J. Beresford Hope in 1844, and was eventually incorporated as a college to provide “an education to qualify young men for the service of the Church in the distant dependencies of the British Empire, with such strict regard to economy and frugality of habit as may fit them for the special duties to be discharged, the difficulties to be encountered, and the hardships to be endured.” The college buildings were designed by Mr Butterfield, and opened in 1848 on St Peter’s Day. Of the old abbey, several buildings have been “worked into” the new college; one of the most important is the fourteenth century gateway, which is the main entrance, and above the archway of which is the State bedchamber, in which Elizabeth and other monarchs have rested their royal bones. The College Hall is the old Guesten Hall, and retains the ancient open-work roof.

But somehow there does not shimmer round St Augustine’s the romance of history; it is too closely in touch with to-day to allow us to dream of its yesterday. We meet no shadowy figures there of abbot or monk, of prince or soldier, hear no echoes of the clash of arms or of the voices of singers. It is as dead to us as the Cathedral and the quaint streets near by are alive.

From the city the Longport Road leads up a gentle ascent to St Martin’s. To whom this church was first dedicated is uncertain. Of the Roman building only some of the bricks remain; it was to some extent restored by the Normans, and to a great extent rebuilt in the thirteenth century.

The first feeling as we enter the churchyard and look upon this famous House of God is one of disappointment; there is something rough and homely about the clumsy walls of stones, flint, and Roman tiles, and the squat tower, creeper clad. But the associations of the little building render it lovely to us. No matter what the faith may be of him who stands in this seemly God’s-acre, he cannot but be profoundly impressed by the view as he turns first to the spot where Augustine baptised the heathen king, and then toward the soaring Cathedral tower, beneath whose shadow lie buried so many Christian kings and rulers. The very building “has had a remarkable history, surviving

disuse and decay, surviving the savage destructiveness of Jutes, the devastation of Danish invaders, the innovating rigour of Norman architects, and the apathy of succeeding centuries.” Setting our backs to the older we turn to later days and to-day, as we walk home to the city. The sun is setting; the sky panoplied in gold; lights shine out here and there from homely windows; workmen tramp to their rest; there is a gentle melancholy reigning over all things, as there ever is in ancient cities; above all broods the Cathedral, its splendid tower, steeped in the rays of the departing day, looking down as though it were no handiwork of mortal man, but some creation of Nature, immutable, inscrutable, full of majesty, of power, of everlasting dignity.

A CANTERBURY ROUNDABOUT

There are many delightful places round about Canterbury, beautiful to look on and historically of the greatest interest. We set out of a morning along Northgate, passing the fine half-timbered gateway of St John’s Hospital, which was founded by Lanfranc, in the year 1084, for the comfort of the aged who were poor and infirm. The entrance is a most beautiful piece of fifteenth century timber-work, one of the most delightful “bits” in Canterbury, and the enclosure within is a veritable harbour of refuge from the noise and the turmoil without. The west door of the chapel is Norman, and there are other fragments which will interest the architect. In the hall is preserved a sixteenth century account-book, from which we quote this curious item: “Note that Laurence Wryght was admonished the xxviij daye of Maye the fyrst yere of Kyng Edwarde the vjth for sclanderyng of the prior Christofer Sprott and the pryors syster Margaret Forster for dwellyng yn to tenements under on rofe. Wyttnesses brother Wyllyam Pendleton, brother Wyllyam Kytson”; one more sad proof that brethren do not always dwell together in unity or amity.

On, past the depressing range of barracks and along the straight, level road to Sturry. Esturei, the island in the Stour, is a pleasing, old-fashioned village, with ample accommodation for the refreshment of man and beast. The church of St Nicholas stands guarded by a grove of chestnut-trees, and hard by are the remains, including the gate, of Sturry Court, dating from the reign of James I. Turning to the right just beyond the Welsh Harp Inn--how does such a sign come here?--we reach in a few minutes Fordwich bridge, beneath which flows the narrow waters of the Stour; once on a time the scene of busy traffic, for we are looking on the ancient port of Canterbury. How changed the scene, now so quiet and out-of-the-world, since the days when this was a tidal water, since an arm of the sea covered the valley of the Stour as far up as Chilham, beyond Canterbury. Up to Fordwich--possibly Fiord Wich--in olden days large vessels could be navigated, hence the importance of the place for trading purposes. Domesday Book records that there were seven fisheries and ten mills here--a busy, thriving place, now the home of memories. The Abbey of St Augustine owned the manor here, by gift from Edward the Confessor and others, and the monks and the townspeople do not appear to have lived upon the best of terms. The monks of Christ Church also traded here, and their presence does not appear to have made for peace. Fordwich was a “limb” of the Sandwich Cinque Port, on the same river but fourteen miles farther down the stream, sharing with that ancient and once glorious town the ship service, so valuable to the kings of England. Until 1861 Fordwich possessed a corporation, the first mayor in 1292 being one John Maynard. The government consisted of the mayor, twelve jurats, the freemen, and various officers, whose powers included those of life and death. The works of Nature and of man have combined to destroy the commercial prosperity of the erstwhile port; the Wantsum--which cut off Thanet from the mainland--has ceased to be; the Stour has silted up, to the detriment also of decayed Sandwich; and Canterbury is connected with the sea by railways to Whitstable, Faversham, and Dover.

Therefore as we stand upon this little bridge of stone, though the prospect has many charms it is tinged with the sadness of decay and death. There is the ancient crane of wood, now usually idle; and the river-banks once so busy are now deserted save by occasional merry-makers and water parties. Much water has flowed beneath this bridge since Fordwich was a thriving sea-port, but less and less year by year--the tide of prosperity has ebbed with the tides of the sea; all that is left is but a memory and a few pieces of wreckage on the shore of time.

Passing over the bridge we walk through the deserted village, for such it appears to be at this hour of noon, until we come to the sign of the Fordwich Arms, where we may rest and restore. Opposite the inn is the Town Hall, of which we have heard so much that its diminutive size is somewhat startling. It is a square building with high-pitched, tiled roof; the upper story is half timbered, overhanging the lower of mingled stone and brick. Ascending a steep, short flight of modern wooden stairs, we enter the quaint Council Chamber--quaint in its tininess as compared with the matters of import once enacted therein; it is little more than thirty feet long by twenty-three broad, and is lighted by three windows of lattice. The wall opposite to the entrance is wainscoted, in the centre being the mayor’s seat, with those of the jurats on either hand; and, above, the royal arms and those of the Cinque Ports, with the legend below--“1660. Love and Honour the Truth”; and we will trust that the mayor and jurats did so, for their powers were great. Across the room runs a heavy black beam, on either end of which stand two gaudy drums, once beaten by the heavy hands of the pressgang; and in the centre the village cucking-stool, the use of which is deemed no longer necessary. It is said--with what want of truth who shall decide?--that a sort of cupboard high up in the wall, was used as a drying loft for the unfortunate ladies after they had been immersed. Women had more wrongs than rights in those forceful days. On the ground floor is the lock-up, a chilly place, now a mere curiosity; once a very stern reality to debtors, poachers and greater malefactors.

Turning back from the river, we proceed to the church, surrounded by a grassy graveyard; there is not much to detain us here, the building being chiefly interesting for its old-world air. There is the pew once used by the mayor and another for the singers and players, who aforetime sat aloft in the gallery beneath the tower; a Norman font and a fine tomb, which possibly was that of the founder of the church. In the woodwork of the gallery at the west end are two shelves, upon which were placed the loaves of bread to be distributed on a Sunday to the poor, under the bequest of Thomas Bigge.

We can return to Canterbury by another and more pleasant route than that by which we came. Following the road uphill, past the pretty cottage where we obtained the keys of the church, we turn to the right, so gaining a cleanly field path. Before us rise low grassy knolls; behind us, screened by trees, the spire of Fordwich church and the gables of its houses and cottages; on our right hand the broad, flat valley of the Stour, the Sturry Road marked by the straight line of trees. Bobbing up and down goes the path, so that we scarcely note that we are gradually ascending, until suddenly we find ourselves high up, looking down on the outskirts of Canterbury; beneath us the trumpets ring out from the barracks notes of modernity and echoes of old fighting days; before us soars the tower of the Cathedral, shrouded--when we saw it--in mists and wisps of falling rain; on our left the level ground where the cavalry exercise. Along this track for sure, when in old days the valley was a swamp, many a weary traveller has toiled from the coast unto the old city; how their hearts must have leaped within them as they saw rising there the Angel Steeple, perhaps bathed in the rays of the setting sun, perchance veiled in sorrowful clouds. As did we, so must they have passed on down the slope to St Martin’s Church, and so to the city gate, now vanished. It is but a short walk this which we have taken, short in the distance we traverse, but it takes us back to dim, far gone ages; now the train, with its pennant of white, thunders along the valley, where of old coracles have floated, and we return from our visit to a village that may be called a mile-stone on the road of history, to a great cathedral city, where Britons shivered in mud and wicker hovels on the reedy islets of the Stour.

On a fresh and breezy morning, the sky washed clean by the rain and flecked with thin white clouds, we walked out by the West Gate on our way to Harbledown, by many held to be Chaucer’s “little town” which “y-cleped is Bob-up-and-down, Under

From the Priory Garden, Canterbury]

the Blee in Canterbury way.” Turning along the London Road to the left, the road to Whitstable running right ahead, we soon found ourselves leaving the main road by a small lane, the Canterbury end of the famous Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester. How ancient this track may be no man knows; but it was in existence long before pilgrimages were dreamed of, before Christianity had come to the country, being utilised probably for the conveyance of metals and merchandise from the west to the east. Soon we have clambered through the mud to the summit of a little hill, from which we gain a wide view of the surrounding country. Before us stands out Bigberry Wood, with its ancient camp; turning to the left, on either side the mill, whose sails are at rest, we see Canterbury spread out in the broad valley, which to the eyes of the earliest wayfarers by this route presented a desolate scene of marsh and woodland. Turning to our right there are the hop fields, with gaunt bare poles; the red roofs of Sidney Cooper’s home; and, farther round, Harbledown and the Hospital of St Nicholas. We go on down the slippery descent, until we reach a brawling stream, spanned by a small wooden bridge; keeping to our right, through the hop field, we soon find a path clambering up toward the hospital, and suddenly before us the stone archway covering the well known by the name of the Black Prince. Primroses are peeping forth out of the abundant winter foliage; but for some reason we cannot call up much interest in this well, ancient though it be, perhaps because of the falsity of the story that connects it with the Black Prince. A few yards higher and we find ourselves behind the long, low building of the hospital, and then we stand within what we may call the precincts. This lazar house was founded by the busy Lanfranc, and the west door of the church is Norman work. The interior of this edifice is well worth visiting; there is about it--though restored--a savour of old-world days and a pathos of suffering, as we think of the leprous men and women who have worshipped here long days ago. The Norman carving on some of the pillars is good, and the roof a fine example of the strength of old work. In the chancel are some old seats, and some benches older still in the body of the church. Old--how old! echoes through our mind as we stand here, and again as we lay our hands on the ancient gnarled tree in the churchyard; how old it all is, this church set high upon the hill, overlooking a vast stretch of valleys and uplands. What sights has this old tree looked down upon, what sounds heard--troops marching by to the war, pilgrims marching by to the shrine of St Thomas (for we are looking down on the road to London). How the coaches toiled up these hills a century ago. And even as we listen, we hear the rush and trumpeting of a motor-car.

The other buildings are of modern years; in the centre of the neat dwelling-houses stands the hall, where various relics are preserved and made into a raree-show, the only one that touched home to us being the old collecting box, which was formerly hung up outside the gate so that passers-by might drop in such coins as they cared to spare. Into this box it is possible that Erasmus dropped his “consolation,” of which he tells us in his description of his walk toward London with Colet, a passage oft quoted but worth quoting again. “....those who journey to London, not long after leaving Canterbury, find themselves in a road at once very hollow and narrow, and moreover the banks on either side are so steep and abrupt, that there is no possibility of escape; nor can the journey be made by any other way. On the left hand of this road is a hospital of a few old men, and as soon as they perceive any horsemen approaching, one of them runs out, sprinkles him with holy water, and presently offers the upper part of a shoe, bound with a brazen rim, and set with a piece of glass resembling a jewel. People kiss this relic, and give some small coin in acknowledgment.... As Cratian[7] rode on my left hand, next to the hospital, he had his sprinkling of water; this he put up with; but, when the shoe was held out, he asked the man what he wanted. He said, that it was the shoe of St Thomas. On that my friend was irritated, and turning to me he said, ‘What, do these brutes imagine that we must kiss every good man’s shoe? Why, by the same rule, they might offer his spittle to be kissed, or what else.’ For my part I pitied the old man, and gave him a small piece of money by way of consolation.... From such matters as cannot be at once corrected I am accustomed to gather whatever good can be found in them.”[8]

The foundation consists of a Master, nine Brethren (one of whom is Prior and another sub-Prior), seven Sisters, and various Pensioners.

We turn back as we go out of the picturesque gate and across the road to the high footpath, and see that still the banks on either side are steep and abrupt. We pass the parish church of St Mildred, and then, descending the hill, there bursts upon us another grand view of Canterbury, the Cathedral domineering over the city. “There are two vast towers that seem to salute the visitor from afar, and make the surrounding country far and wide resound with the wonderful booming of their brazen bells,” so says Erasmus. The towers have changed since his day, but to his eyesight as to ours the view must have been wonderfully impressive; the more so in that as he stood there in this roadway, he could realise as we never can what the sight of those towers meant to the pilgrims who passed him by. He had been to that shrine, and his broad mind, while contemplating some folly which he could not praise, understood that beneath all this to which his companion so strongly objected there lay much of good, and that a ruthless destruction of the tares might prove disastrous also to the wheat.

We soon pass by the opening--or rather the close--of the Pilgrims’ Way, and stopping at the sexton’s house in London Road, obtain his guidance to the church of St Dunstan, where there is much to see of interest. Immediately inside the western porch, a door admits us to the ancient lepers’ chapel, now used as a vestry, where those outcast folk could join in the worship of the congregation by using the squint, now blocked up with a cupboard. Here is an ancient chest, once on a time used for the collection of Peter’s Pence; and the table, a fine piece of cabinet work, is the old sounding-board. At the east end of the church is the Roper Chapel, in the vault beneath lying buried Margaret Roper and the head of Sir Thomas More, her father. To this chapel pilgrims still come, and another form of reverence has been paid to the “martyr” by the offers more than once made to purchase this unpleasant relic. When the vault was opened in 1879, during the restoration of the church, the head was found to be in a state of perfect preservation.

On the opposite side of the roadway, a short distance farther on toward the city, built into a brewery, is the red brick gateway of Roper House--or Rooper, as it is spelled on the monument in the church--where Margaret preserved the sad relic, which had first been exhibited on London Bridge.

And so back again to Canterbury.

ENVOI

Back again to Canterbury, where it is to be hoped our leisure will permit us to loiter, or which our good fortune may allow us to visit again and yet again.

Canterbury sits between History and Romance, the chief city of one of the most delightful and most interesting of English counties. Her streets are thronged with memories, crowded with historic figures. Romance and History mingle inextricably--Chaucer, Marlowe, Dickens; Augustine, Becket, Cranmer. In these pages an endeavour has been made to depict Canterbury and some of the surrounding country not with the pen of the historian or of the archæologist, but to set forth rather the personal impressions of a lover of old times, old ways and old books. Christ Church Cathedral is to him no mere record in cold stone of a dead past, but a living memorial of a living past. It is meant to be a book for those who share with the writer his delight in calling up to the mind’s eye ghosts of men and women dead and gone.

At first, as has been said, Canterbury strikes disappointingly on those who go thither thinking to step back straightway from the present into the past. But gradually and surely the past overpowers the present as we linger in its narrow streets and loiter in its ancient buildings. It is no city of the dead. The life of to-day throbs in its veins; but its to-day is dull, dim and uneventful compared with its stirring, many-coloured past.

These pages have touched upon many matters concerning which many volumes have been, and will be, written; but no attempt has been made at completeness. This book is not a guide, but rather aims at being a sign-post--pointing to the past. For many years yet pilgrims will come to Canterbury, and if this little work helps any of them to see and to hear there what has been so vivid and so clear to the writer of it, the object with which it is set forth will have been gained.

INDEX

The Illustrations are printed in italics.

PAGE

Aldhelm, Abbot, 100

Aldon, Thomas of, 29

Alford, Dean, 19, 37

Alfroin, 11

Alphege, 9

Angel Tower, 1

Anselm, 12

Arthur, Catherine, 90

Arundel, 43

Arundel, Archbishop, 17

Athol, Countess of, 40

Augustine, 97

Austin Canons’ priory of St Gregory, 68

Auxerre, Henry of, 47

Baptistry, 45

Barton, Elizabeth, 80

Beale, Henry, 94

Beaufort, John, 38

Becket’s Murder, 46

Bell Harry Tower, 1

Bertha, 97

Bigberry Wood, 111

Bigge, Thomas, 109

Bocking, 86

Boehm, Sir Edgar, 37

Bourchier, Archbishop, 32

Boys, Sir John, 22

Bregwin, Archbishop, 100

Bret, 49

Broc, Robert de, 46

Butterfield, Mr, 101

Canterbury College, Oxford, 68

Canterbury Pilgrims, 54

Canterbury, St Thomas of, 51

_Canterbury Weavers, The_, _92_

Canute, 99

Cathedral, The--
_Baptistry, The_, _46_
_Chapel of “Our Lady” in the Undercroft, The_, _18_
_Christ Church Gate_, _4_
_Edward the Black Prince’s Tomb_, _38_
_Infirmary, The Ruins of_, _44_
_Nave, The_, _22_
_North Side, The_, _Frontispiece_
_St Martin’s Church Tower and Harbledown_, _110_
_Warrior’s Chapel, The_, _38_
_West Towers and South-West Entrance, The_, _42_
Exterior of, 41
Interior of, 18
The Story of, 7

Catherine, 84

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 54

“Chequers of the Hope”, 56

Chichele, Archbishop, 31

Chichele Tower, 43

Chillenden, Prior, 17, 18, 20, 38, 45

Christ Church, 8
Gateway, 4
Priory of, 57

Colet, 113

Coligny, Odo, 34

Conrad, 12

Cooper, Sidney, 111

Courtenay, Archbishop, 34

Cranmer, 84

Dark Entry, 44

Denys of Burgundy, 71

Dunster, Lady Mohun of, 40

Durham, Rites of, 72

East Bridge Hospital, 94

Edmer, 10

Edward III., 30

Edward the Black Prince, 32, 33

Elizabeth, 90

Emperor Charles V., 53

Envoi, 117

Erasmus, 19, 64, 113

Ernulf, 12, 35, 36, 39

Estria, Prior Henry de, 25

Ethelbert, King, 97

First View of Canterbury, 1

Fitzstephen, William, 47

Fordwich, 106

Gasquet, Abbot, 72

Gerard, 71

Gervase, 12, 26

Gibbons, Orlando, 22

Goldstone, Prior, 39, 42

Grandison, Bishop of Exeter, 36

Green Court, 45

_Greyfriars’ House, The_, _64_

Grim Edward, 46

Guest House Hostry, The, 72

Hadley, 86

Harbledown, 110

Hasted, 63, 78

Henry IV., 34

Henry V., 31, 52

Henry VIII., 25, 35, 44, 52

Holland, Lady Margaret, 38

Holy Maid of Kent, 80

“Hope, Chequers of the”, 56

Hope, Mr A. J. Beresford, 101

Hospital, East Bridge, 94
St John’s, 94

Howley, William, 31

“Inglesant, John”, 74

Ingworth, Richard, 93

Kemp, Cardinal, 31

Kent, Holy Maid of, 80

King’s School, 45

Lanfranc, 10, 43, 104

Langton, Archbishop Stephen, 38

Lavatory Tower, 45

Lawrence, 99

Lindhard, 97

Louis VII., 51

Magdalen College, Oxford, 70

Marlowe, Christopher, 4, 90
John, 90

_Martyrdom, The_, _50_
_Doorway from Cloisters into Westgate Towers_, _70_, _88_

Masters, 86

Maynard, John, 106

Mepham, Archbishop Simon de, 36

Molash, Prior, 42

Montreuil, Madame de, 62

More, Sir Thomas, 116

Morton, Cardinal, 40

Navarre, Joan of, 34

_Norman Staircase, King’s School, Canterbury_, 48

Odo, Archbishop, 8

Oxford Tower, 43

Peckham, Archbishop, 39

Peter II., 32

Peter’s Pence, 116

Pole, Cardinal Archbishop, 35

Prince Consort, 32

Priory of Christ Church, 57

Queen Mary, 35

Queen Victoria, 32

Religious, The, 66

Richard Cœur de Lion, 52

Roger, 99

Roper, Margaret, 116

Roundabout, A Canterbury, 104

Ruskin, 42

St Anselm, 36, 79

St Augustine, 43

St Augustine’s College, 96

_St Augustine’s College, In the Quadrangle_, 96

St Cuthbert, 100

St Dunstan, 27

St Ethelbert, 35

St Gregory, Austin Canons’ priory of, 68

St John’s Hospital, 94, 104

St Martin, 97, 102

_St Martin’s Church_, _102_

St Martin at Dover, 68

St Mildred, 99

St Pancras, 96

St Sepulchre, 79

St Thomas of Canterbury, 51

St Wilfrid, 11

Salisbury, John of, 47

Sens, William of, 16

Shrines, Other, 87

Simon, Archbishop of Sudbury, 17, 28, 91

Somerset, Earl of, 38

_South-West Transept and St George’s Tower_, _56_

Stanley, Dean, 22, 29, 58

Stratford, Archbishop, 30

Sturry, 105

Sudbury, Archbishop Simon of, 17, 28, 91

Summer, Archbishop, 22

Tait, Archbishop, 37

Thackeray, 90

Thomas, Duke of Clarence, 38

Thwaites, 86

Tyler, Wat, 30

Walter, Prior, 79

Warham, Archbishop, 27, 39

Warrior’s Chapel, 38

West Gate, 87

Wiclif, 34

William, Archbishop, 12

William of Sens, 16, 23

William, “English”, 16, 23, 32

Willis, 24

Winchelsea, Archbishop, 37, 80

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Edmer, who was a boy in the monastic school in the time of Lanfranc, in _The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral_, by Professor R. Willis, M.A., F.R.S., a work to which all subsequent writers about Canterbury Cathedral owe a deep debt.

[2] Willis, as quoted _supra_.

[3] The curious in this affair should read Dr Edwin A. Abbot’s learned _St Thomas of Canterbury: His Death and Miracles_ (A. & C. Black, 1898), to which work the writer desires to express a deep debt of gratitude. The account of the murder here given closely follows the translation in the work mentioned.

[4] The King of France’s jewel.

[5] The _Canterbury Tales_ of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Thomas Wright for the Percy Society, 1851. Vol. iii., “The Supplementary Tale.”

[6] _Canterbury in the Olden Time_, John Brent, 1879.

[7] Colet.

[8] Erasmus, _Peregrinatio Religionis ergo_; trans. J. G. Nicholls.

Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:

shryne as Sainct Thomas’s bed=> shryne as Sainct Thomas’s hed {pg 63}