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 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.
[Illustration: 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 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 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 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.
"At Chekers of the Hope that every man doth know."
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 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.
The religious houses were open to all comers, and while royal visitors
were lodged in St. Augustine's Abbey, the convents of the Mendicant
orders were largely frequented by the poorer classes. There was also the
house of the Whitefriars or Augustinians in the eastern part of the
town, close to St. George's Gate, and the hospital of St. John in the
populous Northgate, "that faire and large house of stone," built and
endowed by Lanfranc in the eleventh century, besides that of Eastbridge,
which has been already mentioned, and many other smaller foundations.
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, 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
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.
[Illustration: MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY.]