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 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 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 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 the waggoner who drives his team along the
road, still talk of the famous battle that was fought here two thousand
years ago.
After this the path crosses the valley and runs through the hop-gardens
to join Watling Street--the road by which Chaucer's pilgrims came to
Canterbury--at Harbledown. This is the little village on the edge of the
forest of Blean, which has been immortalised by Chaucer's lines--
"Wist ye not where standeth a little toun
Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-down,
Under the Blee in Canterbury way."
[Illustration: 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 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 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 Coeur 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," 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-WEST]
[Illustration: ST. NICHOLAS', HARBLEDOWN.]