CHAPTER XI

CHARING TO GODMERSHAM

FROM Lenham the Pilgrims’ Road threads its lonely way along the hill-side, past one or two decayed farmhouses still bearing the name of the great families who once owned these manors—the Selves and the Cobhams; and the view over the level country grows wider, and extends farther to the south and east, until we reach{168} Charing Hill, one of the highest points along this range of downs. The windmill, a few hundred yards above the track, commands a far-spreading view over the valley, stretching from the foot of the ridge to the Quarry Hills, where the towers of Egerton Church stand out on its steep mound above the hazy plains of the Weald. We look down upon Calehill, the home of the Darells for the last five centuries, and across the woods and park of Surrenden Dering, which has been held by the Dering family ever since the days of Earl Godwin, to the churches and villages of the Weald. Beyond a foreground of swelling hill and dale we see the flat expanse of Romney Marsh and Dungeness; and then for the first time we catch a glimpse of a pale blue line of sea—that sea across which Roman and Saxon and Norman all sailed in turn to land upon the Kentish shore. On clear days you can see the Sussex downs in the far horizon beyond the Weald, and near Hastings, the hill of Fairlight rising sharply from the sea. Down in the valley below, the tall tower of Charing Church lifts its head out of a confused mass of red roofs{169} and green trees, with the ivy-grown ruins of the old palace at its feet.

CHARING
CHARING

Long before the Conqueror’s time, the Archbishops had a house here. In Domesday Book, Charing is styled “proprium manorium archiepiscopi,” being reserved by those prelates for their private use, and from those days until{170} the manor was surrendered by Cranmer to Henry VIII. it remained a favourite residence of the Archbishops. In the thirteenth century the Franciscan Archbishop John Peckham dates many letters from his house at Charing, and Stratford, as Dean Hook tells us, was often there, and found consolation in this quiet retreat for the troubles of those stormy days. Chichele, Kemp, and Bourchier were also frequently here. Stratford first obtained the grant of a three days’ fair to be held at Charing twice a year, on the festivals of St. George and St. Luke. Leland tells us that Cardinal Morton made great buildings at Charing, and the red and black brickwork still to be seen under the ivy of the farmhouse walls may be ascribed to him, but the great gateway with the chamber and hooded fireplace above, belongs to an earlier period, and was probably the work of Stratford in the fourteenth century. Some of the older stonework is to be found in the stables and cottages now occupying the site of the offices on the west of the court. The chapel, with its pointed arches and large windows, which in Hasted’s time stood behind{171} the modern dwelling-house, was taken down eighty years ago, but the great dining-hall, with its massive walls and fine decorated window, still remains standing. This hall, where archbishops sat in state, and kingly guests were feasted; where Henry VII. was royally entertained by Archbishop Warham, on the 24th of March, 1507, and where Henry VIII. stayed with all his train on his way to the Field of Cloth of Gold, is now used as a barn. But in its decay, it must be owned, the old palace is singularly picturesque. The wallflowers grow in golden clusters high up the roofless gables and along the arches of the central gateway; masses of apple-blossom hang over the grey stone walls, and ring-necked doves bask in the sunshine on the richly coloured tiles of the old banqueting-hall.

Close by is the church of Charing, famous in the eyes of mediæval pilgrims for the possession of one hallowed relic, the block on which St. John the Baptist was beheaded, brought back, an old tradition says, by Richard Cœur de Lion from the Holy Land, and given by him to Archbishop{172} Baldwin, when the King paid his devotions at the shrine of St. Thomas. This precious relic went the way of all relics in the sixteenth century, and is not mentioned in the long list of costly vestments and frontals recorded in an inventory of Church property taken at Charing in 1552. But Charing Church is still, in the words of the old chronicler, “a goodly pile.” It is cruciform in shape, and contains some traces of Early English work, but it is mostly of later date. The windows are interesting on account of their great variety. There are three narrow lancets, several of Transitional and Perpendicular style, and one large and very remarkable square-headed Decorated window. The chapel of Our Lady, on the south side of the chancel, was built, towards the close of the fifteenth century, by Amy Brent, whose family owned the charming old manor-house of Wickens in this parish. The porch and fine tower, which forms so marked a feature in the landscape, was also chiefly built by the Brents, whose crest, a wyvern, is carved on the doorway, together with a rose encircled with sun-rays, the badge{173} of Edward IV., in whose reign the work was completed. Through this handsome doorway the Archbishop, attended by his cross-bearers and chaplains, would enter from the palace-gate hard by, and many must have been the stately processions which passed under the western arch and wound up the long nave in the days of Morton and of Warham. A hundred years later Charing Church narrowly escaped entire destruction. On the 4th of August, 1590, a farmer, one Mr. Dios, discharged a birding-piece at a pigeon roosting, as the pigeons do to this day, in the church tower, and “the day being extreme hot and the shingle very dry,” a fire broke out in the night, and by morning nothing was left but the bare walls of the church, even the bells being melted by the heat of the fire. Happily the parishioners applied themselves with patriotic zeal to the restoration, and within two years the fine timber roof of the nave was completed. The date 1592, E.R. 34, is inscribed on the rafter above the chancel arch, while that of the chancel roof Ann. Dom. 1622, Anno Regni Jacobi xviii., appears on the beam immediately over the altar.{174}

The Pilgrims’ Way winds on through Charing past the noble church tower and the ancient palace wall, with its thick clusters of ivy and trailing wreaths of travellers’ joy, through the lovely woods of Pett Place, the home of Honywoods and Sayers for some hundreds of years. The track crosses the long avenue of stately limes which leads up to its gates, and through the meeting boughs we see the red gables and tall chimneys of the old Tudor house. In the fourteenth century the owners of Pett had a chapel of their own, served by a priest whose name appears in the Lambeth Register and other records as holding the living of Pette-juxta-Charing; and Geoffery de Newcourt, who owned this manor, together with the adjoining one of Newcourt, paid the king an aid on his lands of Pett, when the Black Prince was knighted. A pleasant part of the track this is dear to botanists for the wealth of ferns, flowers, and rare orchises which grow along the shady path; pleasant alike in May, when cowslips and violets grow thick in the grass and the nightingales are in full song, and in June, when the ripe red fruit of the{175} wild strawberries peep out from under the moss and the hawthorns are in bloom, but perhaps best of all in autumn, when the beeches are crimson and the maples in the hedges are one fire of gold.

For the next three miles, the way lies through the lower part of the great woods of Long Beech, which stretch all over these hills, and which from very early times belonged to the see of Canterbury. It brings us out at Westwell, close to another extremely interesting church, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, and almost entirely of one period. The graceful steeple, nave, chancel, and aisles, are all Early English, but the most striking feature is the high open colonnade which forms the rood-screen. The effect of the chancel, with its side arcade, its groined roof, and beautiful lancet window filled with richly-coloured old glass, seen through these three lofty arches, is very imposing. There is another curious fragment of stained glass, bearing the arms of Queen Anne of Bohemia and of Edward the Confessor and his wife, in the north aisle, and the chancel contains six stone walls{176} and a stone seat with a pointed arch, which were formerly used by the monks and prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. For the manor of Westwell, like so many others in this neighbourhood, belonged to the see of Canterbury before the Conquest, and at the division of property effected by Lanfranc was retained by the Priory. Its revenues were allotted to the supply of the monks’ refectory, ad cibum eorum, just as the tithes of Lenham were used to provide meals for St. Augustine’s Abbey.

OLD YEWS AND OAK IN EASTWELL PARK.
OLD YEWS AND OAK IN EASTWELL PARK.

Half a mile above Westwell Church the Pilgrims’ Way reaches the gates of Eastwell. Here the track disappears for a time, but old maps show the line which it took across the southern slopes of the park, which extends for many miles, and is famous for the wild beauty of its scenery. The hills we have followed so long run through the upper part of the park, and magnificent are the views of the sea and Sussex downs which meet us in these forest glades, where stately avenues of beech and oak and chestnut throw long shadows over the grass, and antlered deer start up from the bracken at{177} our feet. But the lower slopes are pleasant too, with the venerable yews and thorns and hornbeams dotted over the hill-side, and the heights above clad with a wealth of mingled foliage which is reflected in the bright waters of the still, clear lake. The old ivy-grown church stands close to the water’s edge, and contains some fine tombs of the Earls of Winchelsea, and of their ancestors, the Finches. But the traveller will look with more interest on the sepulchral arch which is said to cover the ashes of the last of the Plantagenets. The burial registers indeed record that Richard Plantagenet, the illegitimate son of Richard III., died at Eastwell on the 22nd of December, 1550, and a well, which goes by the name of Plantagenet’s Well, marks the site of the cottage where he lived in confinement after the defeat of his father on Bosworth Field. Eastwell House, for some years the residence of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, was originally built by Sir Thomas Moyle, Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry VIII., but has been completely altered and modernised since it passed into the Winchelsea family. Leaving it on our left, we{178} come out of the Park at Boughton Lees, a group of houses on a three-cornered green, and follow in the steps of the old track to Boughton Aluph church, a large cruciform building with a spacious north aisle and massive central tower, standing in a very lonely situation.

Boughton, called Bocton or Boltune in former times, belonged to Earl Godwin and his son Harold, before the Conquest, after which it was given to Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, and formed part of Juliana de Leybourne’s vast inheritance. It took the name of Aluph from a Norman knight, Aluphus de Bocton, who held the manor in the reign of King John, and became thus distinguished from the other parishes of Boughton in the neighbourhood. From the church a grassy lane, shaded by trees, ascends the hill to Challock on the borders of Eastwell Park, and is probably the old track of the Pilgrims’ Way which passed between these woods and the park of Godmersham. This was formerly the property of Jane Austen’s brother, who took the name of Knight on succeeding to the estate, but it has now passed into the hands of another family.{179} Until the Dissolution the manor and church of Godmersham belonged to Christ Church, and here, in mediæval days, the priors of the convent had a fine manor-house, where they frequently resided during the summer months. The hall was pulled down in 1810, and nothing of the old house is now left except a gable and doorway, adorned with a figure of a Prior wearing his mitre and holding his crozier in his hand, probably intended for Henry de Estria, the Prior who rebuilt the manor-house in 1290. The church of Godmersham is remarkable for its early tower and curious semicircular apse with small Norman lights, which are evidently remains of an older building, and in the churchyard are some very ancient yews, one of which is said to have been planted before the Conquest.

Under the shadow of these venerable trees there sleeps a remarkable woman, Mary Sybilla Holland, whose father was at one time Vicar of Godmersham, and afterwards moved to Harbledown, a larger parish near Canterbury, a few miles further along the Pilgrims’ Way. Both Mrs.{180} Holland and her distinguished brother, the lamented Sir Alfred Lyall, retained a lifelong affection for this corner of East Kent. When Lyall was far away in India, ruling over millions of British subjects, in the north-west provinces, his verses tell us how passionately he yearned for his old Kentish home.

Sir Alfred died on the 10th of April, 1911, at Lord Tennyson’s house at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Michael’s, Harbledown. Now brother and sister are both sleeping under the grassy sod of the Kentish land which they loved so well, “where the nightingales sing{181} heart-piercing notes in the silence of the early summer night.”

THE PLACE, WROTHAM.
THE PLACE, WROTHAM.

{182}

CHILHAM.
CHILHAM.

CHAPTER XII

CHILHAM TO HARBLEDOWN

THE Pilgrims’ Way skirted the wooded slopes of Godmersham Park for about a mile, and then entered Chilham Park. The park is now closed, but the old track lay right across the park, and in front of Chilham Castle. The position of this fortress, overlooking the valley of the Stour, has made it memorable in English history. Chilham has been in turn a Roman camp, a Saxon castle, and a Norman keep, and has played an eventful{183} part in some of the fiercest struggles of those days. According to a generally received tradition recorded by Camden, Chilham was the scene of the battle on the river in Cæsar’s second expedition; and the British barrow near the Stour, popularly known as Julaber’s Grave, was believed to be the tomb of the Roman tribune, Julius Laberius, although, as a matter of fact, it contains no sepulchral remains. In the second century Chilham is said to have been the home of that traditional personage, the Christian King Lucius, and in Saxon days of the chief Cilla. The castle was strongly fortified to resist the invasion of the Danes, by whom it was repeatedly attacked. After the Norman Conquest it belonged to Fulbert de Dover, whose last descendant, Isabel, Countess of Atholl, died here in 1292, and is buried in the under-croft at Canterbury. Then it passed into the hands of the great Lord Badlesmere, of Leeds, who on one occasion gave Queen Isabel, the wife of Edward II., a splendid reception here, and afterwards astonished the peaceful citizens and monks of Canterbury by appearing at their gates, followed by nineteen armed knights, each with a{184} drawn sword in his hand, to pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Thomas. As late as the sixteenth century Leland describes Chilham Castle as beautiful for pleasure, commodious for use, and strong for defence; but soon after he wrote these words, the greater part of the old house was pulled down by its owner, Sir Thomas Cheney, Warden of the Cinque Ports under Edward VI., to complete his new mansion in the Isle of Sheppey. The Norman keep, an octagonal fortress three stories high, is the only part of the mediæval structure that now remains, and can still be seen in the gardens of the new house built in 1616 by Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolls in the reign of James I. This fine Jacobean manor-house stands well on the rising ground above the river, and both the garden terrace and the top of the old keep afford beautiful views of the vale of Ashford and the downs beyond the Wye. Still more picturesque is the market-place of Chilham itself. On one side we have the red brick walls and white stone doorway of the castle, seen at the end of its short avenue of tall lime trees on the other the quaint red roofs and timbered houses{185} of the charming old square, with the grey church tower surrounded by the brilliant green of sycamores and beeches. On a bright spring morning, when the leaves are young and the meadows along the river-side are golden with buttercups, there can be no prettier picture than this of the old market square of Cilla’s home.

From the heights of Chilham the Pilgrims’ Way descends into the valley of the Stour, and after following the course of the river for a short time, climbs the opposite hill and strikes into Bigberry Wood. Here we come suddenly upon the most ancient earthwork along the whole line of the road, an entrenchment which Professor Boyd Dawkins, who explored it thoroughly some years ago, has ascribed to the prehistoric Iron Age. For most of us, perhaps, Bigberry Camp has a still greater interest as the fort which the Britons held against the assault of the Roman invaders, and which was stormed and carried by Cæsar’s legions. The memory of that desperate fight, which sealed the fate of Britain and her conquest by the great Proconsul, still lingers in the popular mind, and the shepherd who follows his flock and{186} the waggoner who drives his team along the road, still talk of the famous battle that was fought here two thousand years ago.

ON THE VILLAGE GREEN, CHARTHAM
ON THE VILLAGE GREEN, CHARTHAM

And Bob-up-and-down is to this day a true and characteristic description of the rolling ground by which we approach Harbledown. Here the Pilgrims’ Road, along which we have journeyed over hill and dale, fails to rise again. We climb the last hill, and on the summit of the rising ground we find ourselves close to the lazar-house founded at Harbledown by Lanfranc in 1084. The wooden houses built by the Norman Archbishop for the reception of ten brothers and seven sisters have been replaced by a row of modern{187} almshouses; but the chapel still preserves its old Norman doorway, and the round arches and pillars of an arcade to the north of the nave, which formed part of the hospital church dedicated by Lanfranc to St. Nicholas. The devout pilgrim to St. Thomas’s shrine never failed to visit this ancient leper-house. Not only did the antiquity of the charitable foundation and its nearness to the road attract him, but in the common hall of the hospital a precious relic was preserved in the shape of a crystal which had once adorned{188} the leather of St. Thomas’s shoe. Many were the royal personages and distinguished strangers who paused before these old walls and dropped their alms into the poor leper’s outstretched hand. Here, we read in contemporary records, Henry II. came on his first memorable pilgrimage to the tomb of the martyred Archbishop, and Richard Cœur de Lion after his release from his long captivity. Edward I. stopped at Harbledown with his brave Queen, Eleanor of Castille, on their return from the Holy Land, and the Black Prince, accompanied by his royal captive, King John of France, and that monarch’s young son Philip, also visited the leper-house. And when the French king visited Canterbury for the second time, on his return to his own kingdom, he did not forget to stop at Lanfranc’s old lazar-house and leave ten gold crowns “pour les nonnains de Harbledoun.” But it is a later and more sceptical traveller, Erasmus, who has left us the most vivid description of Harbledown and of the feelings which the sight of the relic aroused in the heart of his companion, Dean Colet. “Not far from Canterbury, at the left-hand side of the road,”{189} he writes, in the record of his pilgrimage, “there is a small almshouse for old people, one of whom ran out, seeming to hear the steps of the horses. He first sprinkled us with holy water, and then offered us the upper leather of a shoe bound in a brass rim, with a crystal set in its centre like a jewel. Gration (Dean Colet) rode on my left hand, nearer to the beggar man, and was duly sprinkled, bearing it with a tolerable amount of equanimity. But when the shoe was handed up, he asked the old man what he wanted. ‘It is the shoe of St. Thomas,’ was the answer. Upon this he fired up, and turning to me, exclaimed indignantly, ‘What! do these cattle mean we should kiss the shoes of every good man?’” Erasmus, sorry for the old man’s feelings, dropped a small coin into his hand, which made him quite happy, and the two pilgrims rode on to London, discussing the question of the worship of relics as they went. To this day a maple bowl, bound with a brass rim, containing a piece of crystal, is preserved in the hospital at Harbledown, the self-same relic, it may be, which was shown to Erasmus and Colet, and{190} which Lambarde, writing half a century later, describes as “faire set in copper and chrystall”; while an old wooden box, with a slit in the lid for money, and a chain attached to it, is said to be the one into which Erasmus dropped his coin.

Behind the ivy-mantled tower of Lanfranc’s chapel is a clear spring which was supposed to possess healing virtues, and is still believed by the country folks to be of great benefit to the eyes. This spring still goes by the name of the Black Prince’s Well, from an old tradition that the warrior of Crecy and Poitiers drank of its waters when he visited the hospital at Harbledown in 1357. Many, we know, are the memorials of this popular hero at Canterbury. Only three days after he landed at Sandwich he came, accompanied by his royal captive, to return thanks at St. Thomas’s shrine for his victories, and six years afterwards he founded and decorated the beautiful chantry in the Cathedral crypt, which still bears his name, on the occasion of his marriage with his cousin Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. The old legend of the Black Prince’s{191} Well goes on to tell how, when he lay dying of the wasting disease which carried him off in the flower of his life, he thought of the wonder-working spring near Canterbury, and sent to Harbledown for a draught of its pure waters. But even that could not save him, and on the 29th of September, 1376, a stately funeral procession wound its way down the hill-side at Harbledown, bearing the Black Prince to the grave which he had chosen for himself in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft at Canterbury.

At Harbledown the pilgrims caught their first sight of the Cathedral; here they fell on their knees when they saw the golden angel on the top of the central tower, and knew that the goal of their pilgrimage was almost reached. Here Chaucer’s goodly company made their last halt, and for the moment the noise of singing and piping and jingling of bells gave place to a graver and more solemn mood as the motley crowd of pilgrims pressed around, to hear this time not a Canterbury tale, but a sermon. Deep was the impression which that first sight of{192} Canterbury made upon Erasmus. The cold, critical scholar becomes eloquent as he describes the great church of St. Thomas rearing itself up into the sky with a majesty that strikes awe into every heart, and the clanging of bells which, thrilling through the air, salute the pilgrims from afar. To-day the great cross is gone from the Westgate, the shining archangel no longer blesses the kneeling pilgrim from the topmost steeple, but the same glorious vision of the great Cathedral rising with all its towers into the sky meets the eyes of the traveller who looks down on Canterbury from the hill of Harbledown.{193}

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-WEST
CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-WEST

ST. NICHOLAS’, HARBLEDOWN.
ST. NICHOLAS’, HARBLEDOWN.

CHAPTER XIII

HARBLEDOWN TO CANTERBURY

FROM Harbledown it is all downhill to Canterbury, and a short mile brings us to the massive round tower of Simon of Sudbury’s noble Westgate, the only one remaining of the seven fortified gateways which once guarded the ancient city. Many are the pilgrims who have entered Canterbury by this gate: kings and queens of all ages, foreign emperors and princes, armed knights{194} and humble scholars, good Queen Philippa and Edward Plantagenet, Henry of Agincourt, Margaret of Anjou, Chaucer and Erasmus. Many, too, are the long processions which have wound down this hill-side: newly created archbishops followed by a brilliant train of bishops and courtiers on their way to be enthroned in the chair of St. Augustine; solemn funerals, attended with all the pomp and circumstance, the funeral plumes and sable trappings, with which men honour the mighty dead. Through the Westgate went forth that gay company of monks and friars, of merchants and citizens crowned with garlands of flowers, and making joyous minstrelsy, as they rode out to welcome Archbishop Winchelsea, who, once a poor student in the school at Canterbury, now came to be enthroned in state in the presence of King Edward I. and all his court. And this way, too, they bore him with much state and pomp, eighteen years later, from the manor-house at Otford, where he died, to sleep in his own Cathedral after all the labours and struggles, the storms and changes of his troublous reign.{195}

THE WEST GATE, CANTERBURY.
THE WEST GATE, CANTERBURY.

Since these mediæval days Canterbury has seen many changes. The splendours of which Camden and Leland wrote have passed away, the countless number of its churches has been reduced, and their magnificence no longer strikes the eye of the stranger. The lofty walls and their twenty-one watch-towers, which encircled the city in a complete ring when Chaucer’s knight, after paying his devotion at the shrine of St. Thomas, went out to see their strength, and “pointed to his son both the perill and the doubt,” are all gone, and the Conqueror’s mighty castle is turned into a coal-pit. But the old city is still full of quaint corners and picturesque buildings, timbered houses with carved corbels and oriel windows, hostelries with overhanging eaves and fantastic sign-boards of wrought-iron work, hospitals whose charters date from Norman times, and whose records give us many a curious peep into the byways of mediæval life.

As we draw near the Martyr’s shrine, memories of St. Thomas crowd upon us. The hill outside the Westgate, now occupied by the Clergy Orphan School, is still called St. Thomas’s Hill, and was{196} formerly the site of a chapel founded by Becket himself. A little way up the High Street we reach a bridge over the Stour, which winds its way through the heart of the city, and a low pointed doorway on our right leads into St. Thomas’s Hospital. This ancient Spittle of East Bridge was founded, as a fourteenth-century charter records, by the “glorious St. Thomas the Martyr, to receive poor wayfaring men.” Archbishop Hubert Walter increased its endowments in the twelfth century, and Stratford repaired the walls in the fourteenth, and drew up statutes for its government. From that time it was especially devoted to the use of poor pilgrims, for whom twelve beds were provided, and whose wants were supplied at the rate of fourpence a day. During those days, when the enthusiasm for St. Thomas was at its height, alms and legacies were lavished upon Eastbridge Hospital, and Edward III. bequeathed money to support a chaplain, whose duty it was to say daily masses for the founders of the hospital. After the days of pilgrimages were over, this hospital was applied to various uses until Archbishop Whitgift recovered{197} the property and drew up fresh statutes for its management. Ten poor brothers and sisters still enjoy the fruit of St. Thomas’s benevolence, and dwell in the old house built on arches across the bed of the river. The low level of the floor, which has sunk far below that of the street, and the vaulted roof and time-worn pillars, bear witness to its great antiquity. There can be little doubt that the round arches of the Norman crypt belong to St. Thomas’s original foundation, while the pointed windows of the chapel and Early English arches of the refectory form part of Archbishop Stratford’s improvements. In this hall some portions of frescoes, representing on the one hand the Last Supper, on the other the Martyrdom of the Saint, the penance of Henry II. at his tomb, with the central figure of Christ in Glory, have been lately recovered from under the coat of whitewash which had concealed them for more than two centuries.

Twice a year, we know, at the summer festival of the Translation of St. Thomas, on the 7th of July, and at the winter festival of the Martyrdom, on the 29th of December, Canterbury was crowded{198} with pilgrims, and a notice was placed in the High Street ordering the due provision of beds and entertainment for strangers. The concourse was still greater on the jubilees of the Translation, when indulgences were showered freely on all who visited the shrine, and the festival lasted for a whole fortnight. At the jubilee of the year 1420, just after the victory of Agincourt, no less than a hundred thousand pilgrims are said to have been present. On such occasions every available corner was occupied; the inns, which were exceedingly numerous, the hospitals, and, above all, the religious houses, were thronged with strangers. The most favourite, the most renowned, of all the hostelries was the Chequers of the Hope, the inn where Chaucer’s twenty-nine pilgrims took up their quarters.

This ancient inn, which Prior Chillenden rebuilt about 1400, stood at the corner of High Street and Mercery Lane, the old Merceria, which was formerly lined with rows of booths and stalls for the sale of pilgrimage tokens, such as are to be{199} found in the neighbourhood of all famous shrines. Both ampullas, small leaden bottles containing a drop of the martyr’s blood, which flowed perennially from a well in the precincts, and Caput Thomæ, or brooches bearing the saint’s mitred head, were eagerly sought after by all Canterbury pilgrims. So too were the small metal bells which are said to have given their name to the favourite Kentish flower, the Canterbury bell. And we read that the French king, John, stopped at the Mercery stalls to buy a knife for the Count of Auxerre. The position of the inn close to the great gate of Christ Church naturally attracted many visitors, and the spacious cellars with vaulted roofs, which once belonged to the inn, may still be seen, although the inner courtyard and the great chamber upstairs occupied by the pilgrims, and known as the Dormitory of Hundred Beds, were burnt down forty years ago. But the old street front, with its broad eaves overhanging the narrow lane leading up to the great gateway at the other end, still remains, and renders Mercery Lane the most picturesque and interesting corner of the Cathedral city.{200}

But it was in the great Priory of Christ Church that by far the largest number of pilgrims found hospitable welcome. A considerable part of the convent buildings was set aside for their reception. The Prior himself entertained distinguished strangers, and lodged them in the splendid suite of rooms overlooking the convent garden, known as the Omers or Homers—Les Ormeaux—from a neighbouring grove of elms. This range of buildings, including the banqueting-hall, generally known as “Meister Omers,” was broken up into prebendal houses after the Dissolution,{201} and supplied three separate residences for members of the new Chapter, which gives us some idea of the size of these lodgings. For ordinary strangers there was the Guest Hall, near the kitchen, on the west side of the Prior’s Court, which was under the especial charge of a cellarer appointed to provide for the needs of the guests. Prior Chillenden, whom Leland describes as “the greatest builder of a Prior that ever was in Christ Church,” repaired and enlarged this Strangers’ Hall early in the fifteenth century, and added a new chamber for hospitality, which bore the name of Chillenden’s Guest Chamber, and now forms part of the Bishop of Dover’s house. Finally, without the convent precincts, close to the court gateway, where the beautiful Norman stairway leads up to the Great Hall, or Aula Nova, was the Almonry. Here the statutes of Archbishop Winchelsea—he who had known what it was to hunger and thirst in his boyhood, and who remained all through his greatness the friend of the poor—provided that poor pilgrims and beggars should be fed daily with the fragments of bread and meat, “which were many and great,” left on{202} the monks’ tables, and brought here by the wooden pentise or covered passage leading from the kitchen. This Almonry became richly endowed by wealthy pilgrims in course of years, and early in the fourteenth century Prior Henry of Estria built a chapel close by, which was dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr, and much frequented by pilgrims. The Almony was turned into a mint-yard at the Dissolution, and the chapel and priests’ lodgings attached to it, now belong to the King’s School. Another privilege freely conceded by the prior and monks of this great community to pilgrims of all ranks and nationality who might die at Canterbury, was that of burial within the precincts of Christ Church, close to the blessed martyr’s shrine, and under the shadow of the Cathedral walls.{203}

MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY.
MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MARTYR’S SHRINE

ERASMUS has described the imposing effect of the great Cathedral church on the stranger who entered its doors for the first time, and saw the nave “in all its spacious majesty.” The vision which broke upon the eyes of those pilgrims who, like himself and Dean Colet, visited Canterbury in the early years of the sixteenth century, may well have filled all hearts with wonder. For then the work was well-nigh perfected. The long roll of master-builders, from Prior Wibert and De Estria to Chillenden and Sellyng, had faithfully accomplished their task. Prior Goldstone, the last but one who reigned before the Dissolution, had just completed the central tower, the great labour of his predecessor Prior Sellyng’s life, and was in the act of building the noble Perpendicular{204} gateway which forms a fitting entrance to the precincts.

And now the great church stood complete. Without, “a very goodly, strong, and beautiful structure”: the traceries and mouldings of the windows, the stone canopies and sculptured images of the portal, all perfect; the glorious towers in their might; Bell Harry Steeple, as we see it to-day, matchless in its strength and beauty; and beside it, rivalling its grace and majesty, the ancient Norman tower, which bore the name of Ethelbert, crowned with the Arundel spire. Within, a richness and splendour to which our eyes are wholly unaccustomed: chapels and chantries lining the great nave, fresh from Prior Chillenden’s work; altars glittering with lighted tapers and gold and silver ornaments; roof and walls bright with painting and gilding, or decked with silken tapestry hangings; carved images covered with pearls and gems; stained windows throwing their hues of ruby and sapphire across the floor, and lighting up the clouds of incense as they rose heavenward. All this, and much more, met the pilgrims’ wondering eyes. No{205} wonder they stood “half amazed,” as the Supplementary Tale to Chaucer’s Pilgrimage describes “the gardener and the miller and the other lewd sets,” gazing up at the painted windows, and forgetting to move on with the crowd.

THE MARTYRDOM, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
THE MARTYRDOM, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.

Then the show began. First of all the pilgrims were led up a vaulted passage and “many steps” to the Transept of the Martyrdom, where the wooden altar, at the foot of which the saint fell, remained to show the actual place of the murder, and its guardian priest—the Custos Martyrum—displayed the rusty sword of Richard le Breton. Next, descending the flight of steps on the right, they were led into the dark crypt, where more priests received them, and presented the saint’s skull, encased in silver, to be kissed, and other relics, including the famous girdle and hair-shirt. This Caput Thomæ was one of the chief stations at which offerings were made, and the altar on which it lay, mentioned in the Black Prince’s will as “the altar where the head is,” marked the site of the original grave where the saint was buried by the frightened monks on the day after the murder. The tomb stood in the{206} eastern chapel of Ernulf’s crypt, under the beautiful Pointed arches afterwards raised by that great architect, William the Englishman, whom Gervase describes as “small in body, but in workmanship skilled and honest.” Soon it acquired a miraculous virtue, and the fame of the cures and wonders wrought there rang throughout the world. It was the scene of Henry II.’s penance, and during the next fifty years it remained the central object of interest to the crowds of pilgrims who came from all parts of Christendom. Cœur de Lion, accompanied by William, King of Scotland, knelt here on his way to the Crusades, to implore the martyr’s blessing on his arms. Many were the Crusaders from all parts of France and England who came thither on the same errand. King John and his wife Isabella, who were crowned at Canterbury Cathedral by Archbishop Hubert Walter, at Easter, 1201, offered their coronation canopies at this tomb and vast sums of money were yearly offered here until 1220, when the body of St. Thomas was translated, in the presence of the young King Henry III., to the new Shrine in Trinity Chapel, immediately{207} above the tomb in the crypt. In that year the offerings at the tomb, at the Altar of the Sword’s Point, and at the new Shrine, reached the enormous amount of £1,071, a sum equal to more than £20,000 of money at the present time. After this, the offerings at the original tomb in the crypt diminished in number and value, but the altar and relics of the Caput Thomæ remained an object of deep reverence until the Reformation.

From the dark vaults of the subterranean church the pilgrims were led up the steps to the north aisle of the choir. Here the great mass of relics, including St. George’s arm and no less than four hundred skulls, jaws, teeth, hands, and other bones, were displayed in gold, silver, or ivory caskets, and pilgrims were allowed a glimpse of the magnificent vessels and ornaments stored up under the high altar. “All the gold of Midas and Crœsus,” exclaims Erasmus, “would have been nothing by the side of these treasures!” and he confesses that he sighed to think he kept no such relics at home, and had to beg the saint’s pardon for this very unholy emotion. The golden {208}candlesticks and silken vestments of the sacristy in St. Andrew’s tower, and the saint’s pallium, which no ordinary pilgrims might see, were also shown to Erasmus and Colet, who brought with them a letter of introduction from Archbishop Warham.

SITE OF THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
SITE OF THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.

The Shrine itself, covered by a painted canopy of wood, rested on stone arches in the centre of the floor, exactly under the gilded crescent which is still to be seen in the Cathedral roof. On the right was the richly carved and canopied monument of Henry IV. and his Queen, Joan of Navarre, with its elaborate effigies of the royal{209} pair wearing their crowns and robes of state; on the left the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. He had willed to sleep before the altar of Our Lady of the Under-croft, in the chapel adorned by his own gifts, but the people who had loved him so well would not allow their hero to remain buried out of sight in the dark crypt. So they brought him to rest by the great saint’s Shrine, where all men could see his effigy of gilded bronze as he lay there, clad in armour, his sword by his side, his hands clasped in prayer, and read the pathetic lines which tell of his departed glories, and bid the passing stranger pray for his soul: