PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS
Inns, or guest-houses for the proper lodging and entertainment of
travellers bent on pilgrimage, were among the earliest forms of
hostelries; and those great bournes of religious pilgrimage in mediæval
times--the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, the tomb of Edward
the Second in Gloucester Cathedral, the relics of St. Dunstan at
Glastonbury, and the more or less holy objects of superstitious reverence
at Walsingham, St. Albans, and indeed, in most of our great abbeys,
attracting thousands of sinners anxious to clear off old scores and begin
afresh--were full of inns for the entertainment of every class of
itinerating sinner; from the Abbot’s guest-house, at the service of the
great, to the hostels for the middle classes, and the barns and outhouses
where the common folk appropriately herded.
The Abbots and other dignified ecclesiastics were thus among the earliest
innkeepers, but they conducted their business on lines that would be
impossible to the modern hotel-keeper, for they commonly boarded and
lodged their guests free of charge, confident, in the religious spirit of
the time, that the offerings to be made at the shrines, which were the
objects of those old-time painful journeys, would amply repay the costs
and charges of their entertaining, and leave a very handsome surplus for
the good of the Abbey.
Chaucer’s description of pilgrimages made to Canterbury gives us a very
good idea of the varied character of the crowds setting forth upon their
journey to that most popular of shrines; and we learn from him and from
many other contemporary sources that the bearing of these crowds was
scarce what we should expect of miserable sinners, not only conscious of
their sins, but humbly seeking that spiritual spring-clean--absolution.
They were gay and light-hearted, reckless, and exceedingly improper, and
rarely failed to deeply scandalise the innkeepers along the roads.
The “Tabard,” whence Chaucer’s pilgrims set out on that April morning in
1383, has long been a thing of the past. It was in 1307, one hundred and
thirty-seven years after Becket’s martyrdom, that the Abbot of Hyde, at
Winchester, built the first house, which seems to have been in two
portions: one a guest-house for the brethren of Hyde and other clergy
coming to London to wait upon that mighty political and religious
personage, my Lord Bishop of Winchester, whose London palace stood close
by, on Bankside; the other a more or less commercially conducted inn. When
Chaucer conferred immortality upon the “Tabard,” in 1383, the lessee of
that hostelry was the “Harry Bailly” of _The Canterbury Tales_, a real
person, and probably an intimate friend whom Chaucer thus delighted to
honour.
This was no mere red-nosed and fat-paunched purveyor of sack and other
quaint liquors of that time, but one who had been Member of Parliament for
Southwark in 1376 and again in 1379,[12] and was a person not only of
considerable property, but a dignified and well-mannered
man--better-mannered and of cleaner speech, we may suspect, than Chaucer’s
pilgrims themselves:
A seemly man our hostè was withal
For to have been a marshal in a hall.
A largè man was he, with eyen steep,
A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe;
Bold of his speech, and wise, and well ytaught;
And of manhóod lackèd righte nought,
Eke thereto he was right a merry man.
Such a host, and no less a person, could have sat at supper with his
guests, even with such gentles as the Knight and his son, the Squire, and
the Lady Abbess; and thus only is he able to take charge of, and to assume
leadership over, the party of twenty-nine on the long four days’
pilgrimage to Canterbury, and to reprove or praise each and all, according
to his mind.
The “Tabard” derived its name from the sleeveless ceremonial heraldic
coat, tricked out with gold and colours, worn by heralds. At a
comparatively early date, however, the “science of fools,” as heraldry has
severely been called, grew neglected, and “tabards” became little
understood by common people. The sign of the house was accordingly changed
to the “Talbot” about 1599; but even that has grown mysterious, and only
folk with very special knowledge now know what a “talbot” was. In those
days the meaning was well understood, and especially at inns, for it was
the name of a fierce breed of dog--the old English hound, something
between a mastiff and a bull-dog--kept chiefly by packmen to mount guard
over their pack-horses and goods.
Both “Tabard” and “Talbot” are now nothing more substantial than memories.
Little could have been left of the historic house in 1676, when the great
fire of Southwark swept away many of the old inns. A newer “Talbot” then
arose on the site, and stood until 1870: itself of so venerable an
appearance that it was not difficult to persuade people of its being the
veritable house whence Chaucer’s pilgrims set forth those many centuries
ago.
The pilgrims only made Dartford the first night, a fifteen-miles’ journey
that would by no means satisfy those inclined nowadays to follow their
trail. We are not, however, vouchsafed any definite information as to
Dartford, and the oldest portions of the existing “Bull” inn there are
not, by perhaps two hundred years, old enough to have housed that
miscellaneous party. But there was an inn, frequented by pilgrims, at that
time upon the same site, and the “Bull” claims to be one of the oldest
licensed houses in Kent--as well it may, for it is known to date back to
1450. In Chaucer’s time the landlord was, we are told, one Urban Baldock,
himself a friend of the poet, and the source whence a great deal of
information respecting pilgrims and their ways was gathered by him for
_The Canterbury Tales_.
The oldest part of the “Bull” is the courtyard, galleried after the
ancient style, but in these practical and in many ways unsentimental times
roofed in with glass and used as a corn-market. Behind the carved wooden
balusters of the gallery are the bedrooms, until late years largely given
up to dust and cobwebs, but now rebuilt and again in use. Those who care
for things that have had their day will think it fortunate that merely
alteration, and not destruction, has been suffered here.
For the rest, the “Bull” at Dartford is Georgian, and its long brick
front, with nine windows in a row, bears a strong family likeness to that
of its namesake at Rochester. The bull himself, in great black effigy,
occupies a monumental position among the chimney-pots, whence he looks
down, like Nelson in Trafalgar Square, upon busy streets.
There have been happenings at the “Bull” in times much later than those of
pilgrimage. On August 17th, 1775, a room off the gallery was the scene of
an affray that led to Joseph Stacpoole, William Gapper, and James Lagier
being indicted for shooting “John Parker, Esq.,” described as an Irish
gentleman of fortune.
It seems that Joseph Stacpoole had lent John Parker and his brother
Francis various sums of money, amounting in all to £3,000, and had very
seriously embarrassed himself in doing so. He could not succeed in getting
payment, and as he had good reason to suspect that the Parkers intended to
abscond over sea, he followed them to Dartford, with his attorney and a
bailiff. Hearing that they were staying with some friends at the “Bull,”
Stacpoole sent Lagier, the bailiff, with a writ into the room they
occupied, himself and Gapper following.
No sooner did the hot-headed Parker see the bailiff than he cried out,
“Zounds! where are my pistols?” and one of his friends dashed out a candle
with his hand and upset the only other. In this dim and dangerous
situation the bailiff, mortally afraid for himself, cried out for help,
and Stacpoole and Gapper came rushing in. Parker’s friends then seized
Stacpoole by the collar, and seem to have shaken him so violently that
they shook off the contents of a carbine he was carrying, with the result
that Parker himself was shot through the body with three bullets. When
that happened Parker’s brother fled to London, a Mr. Masterson ran
downstairs, and a Mr. Bull, who had taken a prominent part in the
collaring, was in so great a hurry that he jumped over the gallery into
the yard.
The trial of Stacpoole and his two co-defendants did not take place until
March 20th, 1777, when all were acquitted.
The last picturesque incident in the history of the “Bull” took place in
1822, when George the Fourth came posting along the road and the post-boy
stopped here to change horses. He had just asked Essenhigh, the landlord,
who that “damned pretty woman” was whom he saw at one of the windows, and
mine host had only just replied that it was his wife, when a hostile
crowd, in sympathy with “the persecuted” Queen Caroline, who had died the
year before, began to “boo” and howl at the King. “When gentlemen meet,
compliments pass,” says the adage, and one Callaghan, a journeyman
currier, thrust forward and roared out, in the face of the “First
Gentleman in Europe,” “You are a murderer!” a remark which possesses the
recommendation neither of truth nor politeness, and resulted, in this
instance, in the outrageous Callaghan being punched on the head and felled
to the ground by one of the King’s faction. The King himself drove off in
such a hurry that the postboy fell off his horse on leaving the town.
The pilgrims’ hostels that once existed at Rochester are things of the
past, but it seems not unlikely that the “George,” in the High Street,
almost opposite the Pickwickian “Bull,” was once something in this nature,
for although the modern frontage is absolutely uninteresting, not to say
distressingly ugly, and although it is now nothing more than a
public-house, the very large and very fine Early English crypt, now used
as a beer-cellar, shows that a building of semi-ecclesiastical nature
once stood on the site. The “George” is an old sign, the present house
being built on the ruins of one destroyed by fire a hundred and twenty
years ago.
The crypt, built of chalk, with ribs and bosses of Caen stone, is roofed
with four-part vaulting, and is in four bays, the whole 54 ft. in length,
by nearly 17 ft. wide, and 11 ft. high.
[Illustration: CRYPT AT THE “GEORGE,” ROCHESTER.]
Beside the Dover Road, which is of course the pilgrims’ road from London
to Canterbury, one mile short of Faversham town, stands the village of
Ospringe, identified by some antiquaries as the site of the Roman station
of _Durolevum_. Time was when those who made pilgrimage to Canterbury came
to Ospringe through a water-splash, a little stream that flowed across
the highway and no one thought worth while bridging. And so it remained,
through the coaching age, until modern times. Now it is covered over, and
Ospringe is at this day a quite remarkably dusty place.
There remain, built into the “Red Lion” inn beside the way, fragments of a
“maison Dieu,” or God’s House, that stood here so early as the time of
Henry the Second: a hostel established for the reception of travellers,
and maintained for many years by the Knights Templars and Brethren of the
Holy Ghost. Here travellers of all classes found a lavish hospitality
awaiting them, and, so sparsely settled was the country in those
centuries, that even kings were glad of this rest-house--and of others
like it elsewhere. King John, who was for ever spoiling the Church, and
bringing upon himself, and the country with him, Papal excommunications
major and minor, and yet was always sponging upon abbots and their kind
for board and lodging, had what is described as a _camera regis_ here,
which seems to modern ears to indicate that he practised photography,
centuries before the invention of it. The _camera_ in this case is,
however, only the mediæval chronicler’s Latin way of saying that a room
was kept for the King’s use.
A landed gentleman of the neighbouring Preston-by-Faversham, one Macknade
by name, who died in 1407, left, among many other bequests, £1 to the
“Domus Dei” of Ospringe, together with £10 for the repair of the highway
between that point and Boughton-under-Blean. In this manner he hoped to be
remembered in the prayers of travellers; and to the same end of bidding
for Aves and paternosters for the repose of his soul, he bequeathed 20
pence to all prisoners in Kentish gaols, 12 pence to all debtors similarly
situated, £23 to the minor religious houses of the county, and a larger
sum to the principal abbeys. In addition to these items we find one of 10
cows, left to Preston church, for the purpose of maintaining a lighted
taper at the Easter Sepulchre there. Let us hope his solicitude for his
soul has not been without its due results.
The “maison Dieu” of Ospringe was disestablished long before the general
ruin of such institutions was ordained, in the time of Henry the Eighth.
In 1479 we find the place inhabited by two brethren, survivors of the
eight who once welcomed and made good cheer for pilgrims; but they forsook
it the next year, and in 1480-81 it was, as a derelict religious house,
escheated to the Crown.
Canterbury itself was, of course, once full of such travellers’ rests.
Chief among these was the inn called “The Chequers of the Hope,” at the
corner of Mercery Lane, leading to the Cathedral; but, although the lower
part of the walls and the mediæval crypt remain, the present aspect of the
building is modern and commonplace. It is, in point of fact, a “Ladies’
Outfitting” shop.
Travellers in those centuries seem to have been in many ways well cared
for. The hospitality of the “houses of God” and pilgrims’ halts, however,
does but show the bright side of the medal, and implies a very dark
reverse.
Good, charitable folks, as we have seen, were rightly sorry for wayfarers,
and gave or bequeathed money for lightening the trials and tribulations of
their lot. The Church itself regarded the succouring of all such as one of
its first duties, and so granted all manner of ghostly privileges to such
persons as would build causeways, improve roads, or establish hostels. The
bargain seemed in those times a fair one, and induced many to give who
would not otherwise have given. To buy absolution for gold, or a few days
less purgatory by charitable bequest was good business; but we may wonder
if those who thus purchased remission of sins or an “early door” into
Paradise sometimes spared a pitying thought for those poor devils who had
not the needful for such indulgences.
[Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, AND THE “FALSTAFF” INN.]
Day after day travellers--whose very name comes from “travail” = toil or
trouble--journeyed amid dangers, and, when by mischance they were
benighted, suffered agonies of apprehension. They intended only to
“journey”--to travel by day, as the original sense of that word
indicated--and were afflicted with the liveliest apprehensions when night
came and found them still on the road. Toiling in the hollow roads, deep
in ruts and mud, with terror they saw the sun go down while yet the
friendly town was far away, and came at last, in fear and darkness, to the
walled city, only to find its gates closed for the night. Every
fortified town closed its gates at sunset; else, in those dangerous times,
what use your gates and walls? As reasonably might the modern citizen
leave his street door wide open all night, as the mediæval town not close
its gates when the hours of darkness were come; and so those travellers
and pilgrims who, from much story-telling, praying, or feasting along the
road, arrived late at Canterbury, found the portals of Westgate sternly
closed against them. Originally they were obliged to lie outside, under
the walls or in the fields, instead of being made welcome at the
comfortable hostels within, where a man might find jolly company in the
rush-strewn hall, and for food and drink be free of the best; but, for the
accommodation of such laggards, the suburb of St. Dunstan, without the
walls of Canterbury, sprang up at a very early date, and to the custom
they thus brought we owe the existence of the “Falstaff” inn, itself
containing some fine “linen-pattern” panelling of the time of Henry the
Seventh; but not, of course, the original house that, under some other
name than the “Falstaff,” was early established for the entertainment of
late-comers.
The “Falstaff” is a prominent feature of the entrance to Canterbury, and
forms, with the stern drum towers of Westgate, built about 1380, as fine
an entrance to a city as anything to be found in England. The present sign
of the house derives from the instant and extraordinary popularity that
Shakespeare’s Fat Knight obtained, from his first appearance upon the
Elizabethan stage. The present “Falstaff” is a very spirited rendering,
showing the Fat Knight with sword and buckler and an air of determination,
apparently “just about to begin” on those numerous “men in buckram”
conjured up by his ready imagination on Gad’s Hill. There is an air about
this representation of him irresistibly reminiscent of that song which
gave British patriots in 1878 the name of “Jingoes.” There are no patriots
now: only partisans and placemen--but that is another tale. This Falstaff
evidently “don’t want to fight; but by Jingo”--well, you know the rest of
it.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE “FALSTAFF,” CANTERBURY.]
Not only pilgrims and travellers from London to Canterbury were thus
looked after, but those also coming the other way, and thus we find a
Maison Dieu established at Dover in the reign of King John by that great
man, Hubert de Burgh, Chief Justiciary of England. A master and a staff of
brethren and sisters were placed there to attend upon the poor priests
and the pilgrims and strangers of both sexes, who applied for food and
lodging. Kings cannot be classed in any of these categories; but they also
are found not infrequently making use of the institution, on their way to
or from France--and departing without a “thank ye.” The only one who seems
to have benefited the Maison Dieu very much was Henry the Third, who
endowed it with the tithe of the passage fare and £10 a year from the port
dues.
It is scarce necessary to say who it was that disestablished the Maison
Dieu. The heavy hand of Henry the Eighth squelched it, in common with
hundreds of other religious and semi-religious institutions. At the time
of its suppression the annual income was £231 16_s._ 7_d._, representing
some £2,500 in our day. The master, John Thompson, who had only been
appointed the year before, was an exceptionally fortunate man, being
granted a pension of £53 6_s._ 8_d._ a year. The buildings were then
converted into a victualling office for the Navy.
At last, in 1831, the Corporation of Dover purchased them, and the ancient
refectory then became the Town Hall and the sacristy the Sessions House,
and so remained until 1883, when a new Town Hall was built.
Similar institutions existed at others of the chief ports. At Portsmouth
was the Hospital of St. Nicholas, or “God’s House,” founded in the reign
of Henry the Third by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester. It is now
the Garrison Church. At Southampton the “Domus Dei” was dedicated to St.
Julian, patron of travellers, and now, as St. Julian’s Hospital and
Church, is in part an almshouse, sheltering eight poor persons, and partly
a French Huguenot place of worship.
The Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury from Southampton and Winchester was never
a road for wheeled traffic, and remained in all those centuries when
pilgrimage was popular, as a track for pedestrians, along the hillsides.
It avoided all towns, and thus precisely what those pilgrims who
wearifully hoofed it all the way did for shelter remains a little obscure:
although it seems probable that wayside shelters, with or without
oratories attached to them, were established at intervals. Such,
traditionally, was the origin of the picturesque timbered house at
Compton, now locally known as “Noah’s Ark.”
Colchester was a place of import to pilgrims in old wayfaring times, for
it lay along the line of the pilgrims’ trail to Walsingham. Among the inns
of this town, and older than any of its fellows, but coyly hiding its
antiquarian virtues of chamfered oaken beams and quaint galleries from
sight, behind modern alterations, is the “Angel” in West Stockwell Street,
whose origin as a pilgrims’ inn is vouched for. Weary suppliants, on the
way to, or returning from, the road of Our Lady of Walsingham, far away on
the road through and past Norwich, housed here, and misbehaved themselves
in their mediæval way. It would, as already hinted, be the gravest
mistake to assume pilgrims to have been, _quâ_ pilgrims, necessarily
decorous; and, indeed, modern Bank Holiday folks, compared with them,
would shine as true examples of monkish austerity.
[Illustration: HOUSE FORMERLY A PILGRIMS’ HOSTEL, COMPTON.]
The shrine at Walsingham, very highly esteemed in East Anglia, drew crowds
from every class, from king to beggar. The great Benedictine Abbey of St.
John of Colchester sheltered some of the greatest of them, while others
inned at such hostelries as the “Angel,” and the vulgar, or the merely
impecunious, if the weather were propitious, lay in the woods.
Pilgrims would boggle at nothing, as was well known at the time. That they
could not be trusted is evident enough in the custom of horse-masters, who
let out horses on hire to such travellers, at the rate of twelvepence from
Southwark to Rochester, and a further twelvepence from Rochester to
Canterbury. They knew, those early keepers of livery-stables, that little
chance existed of ever seeing their horses again unless they took
sufficient precautions. They therefore branded their animals in a
prominent and unmistakeable way, so that all should know such, found in
strange parts of the country, to be stolen.
Ill fared the unsuspecting burgess who met any of these sinners on the way
to plenary indulgence, for they would, not unlikely, murder him for the
sake of anything valuable he carried; or, out of high spirits and the
sheer fun of the thing, cudgel him into a jelly; arguing, doubtless, that
as they were presently to turn over a new leaf, it mattered little how
soiled was the old one. Drunkenness and crime, immorality, obscenity, and
licence of the grossest kind were, in fact, the inevitable accompaniments
of pilgrimage.
[Illustration: THE “STAR,” ALFRISTON.]
Although East Anglia was in the old days more plentifully supplied with
great monastic houses than any other district in England, the destruction
wrought in later centuries has left all that part singularly poor in the
architectural remains of them: and even the once-necessary guest-houses
and hostels have shared the common fate. That charming miniature little
house, the “Green Dragon” at Wymondham, in Norfolk, may, however, as
tradition asserts, have once been a pilgrims’ inn dependent upon the great
Benedictine Abbey, whose gaunt towers, now a portion of the parish church,
rise behind its peaked roofs.
[Illustration: CARVING AT THE “STAR,” ALFRISTON.]
The beautiful little Sussex village of Alfriston--whose name, by the way,
in the local shibboleth, is “Arlston”--a rustic gem not so well known as
it deserves, possesses a very fine pilgrims’ inn, the “Star,” a relic of
old days when the bones of St. Richard of Chichester led many a foot-sore
penitent across the downs to Chichester, in quest of a clean spiritual
bill of health. Finely carved woodwork is a distinguishing feature of this
inn, whose roof, too, has character of its own, in the heavy slabs of
stone that do duty for slates, and bear witness to the exceptional
strength of the roof-tree that has sustained them all these centuries. The
demoniac-looking figure seen on the left-hand of the illustration is not,
as might perhaps at first sight be supposed, a mediæval effigy of Old
Nick, or an imported South Sea Islander’s god, but the figure-head of some
forgotten ship of the seventeenth century, wrecked on the neighbouring
coast, off Cuckmere Haven. Ancient carvings still ornament the wood-work
of the three upper projecting windows, the one particularly noticeable
specimen being a variant of the George and Dragon legend, where the saint,
with a mouth like a potato, no nose to speak of, and a chignon, is seen
unexpectedly on foot, thrusting his lance into the mouth of the dragon,
who appears to be receiving it with every mark of enjoyment, which the
additional face he is furnished with, in his tail, does not seem to share.
The left foot of the saint has been chipped off. All the exterior woodwork
has been very highly varnished and painted in glaring colours, from the
groups under the windows to the green monkey and green bear contending on
the angle-post for the possession of a green trident.
[Illustration: THE “GREEN DRAGON,” WYMONDHAM.]
[Illustration: THE PILGRIMS’ HOSTEL, BATTLE.]
The old pilgrims’ hospice of Battle Abbey still remains outside the great
gateway, and now offers refreshments to those modern pilgrims who flock in
thousands, by chars-à-banc, on cycles, or afoot, to Battle in search of
the picturesque; or merely, in many cases, to complete the conventional
round of sight-seeing prescribed for visitors to Hastings. It is a
typically Sussexian building of domestic appearance, framed in stout oak
timbering, and filled with plaster and rubble, and was probably built
early in the fifteenth century.
The so-called “New” Inn, at Gloucester, when actually new, the matter of
four hundred and fifty years ago, was erected especially for the
accommodation of pilgrims flocking to the tomb of the murdered King Edward
the Second, who, by no means a saintly character in life, was in death
raised by popular sentiment to the status of something very like a holy
martyr. He had been weak and vicious, but those who on September 21st,
1327, put him to a dreadful death in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle acted
on behalf of others worse than he, and the horror and the injustice of it
had the not unnatural effect of almost canonising the slain monarch.
The Abbot of St. Peter’s at Gloucester, John Thokey, when all others,
fearing the vengeance of the murderers, dared not give the King’s body
burial, begged it and buried it, with much reverence, within the Abbey
walls. His Abbey, now the Cathedral of Gloucester, reaped unexpected
benefits from the humane instincts of that good and pitiful man, for
“miracles” were wrought at the “martyr’s” tomb, and abundant
thank-offerings continued to flow in, and at last enabled the great Abbey
to be rebuilt.
[Illustration: THE “NEW INN,” GLOUCESTER.]
It became eventually a pressing need to provide housing outside the
Abbot’s lodgings for the stream of pilgrims, and accordingly the New
Inn was built in the middle of the fifteenth century (1450-1457) by
John Twynning, a monk of that establishment, of whom we know little or
nothing else than that he was, according to the records of his time, a
“laudable man.” It remained until quite recent years the property of the
Dean and Chapter of Gloucester.
The inn is reached through an archway in Northgate Street, and is
arranged, as usual in mediæval inns, around a courtyard. Still the old
gables look down upon the yard and, as of yore, the ancient galleries,
rescued from the decay and neglect of some seventy years ago, run partly
around first and second floors. Existing side by side with those antique
features, the quaint windowed bar of the coaching era is now itself a
curiosity. In short, mediæval picturesqueness, Jacobean carved oak,
commercial and coffee-rooms of the coaching age, and modern comforts
conjoin at the New Inn, so that neither a wayworn pilgrim, were such an
one likely to appear, nor a seventeenth century horseman, nor even a
Georgian coachman, redolent of the rum-punch that was the favourite drink
in coaching days, would seem out of place.
Summer and autumn transfigure the courtyard into the likeness of a rustic
bower, for it is plentifully hung with virginia-creepers, from amidst
whose leaves the plaster lion who mounts guard on the roof of the bar
looks as though he were gazing forth from his native jungle.
I do not know in what way John Twynning--or Twining, as we should no
doubt in modern times call him--was to be reckoned laudable, but if he
were thought praiseworthy for anything outside his religious duties it was
probably by reason of the skill with which he built this pilgrims’ hostel.
You perceive little of his work from the street, for at that extraordinary
period when stucco was fashionable and plaster all the rage, the timbered
front of the building was covered up in that manner, and so remains. But
the great building is still constructionally the house that
fifteenth-century monk left, and how well and truly he built it, let its
sound and stable condition, after four centuries and a half of constant
use, tell.
Such modern touches as there are about this quaintly named “New” inn are
the merest light clothing upon its ancient body, and the sitting-rooms and
forty or so bedrooms, cosy and comfortable to us moderns, are but modern
in their carpets and fittings, and in the paper that decorates their
walls, in between the stout dark timber framing.
The house is built chiefly of chestnut, traditionally obtained from
Highnam, some three miles from the city; and everywhere the enormous
beams, in some places polished, in others rough, are to be seen. In their
roughest, most timeworn condition, they overhang the narrow passage now
called New Inn (formerly Pilgrims’) Lane, where, at the angle, a most
ornately carved corner-post, very much injured, exhibits a mutilated angel
holding a scroll, in the midst of fifteenth-century tabernacle-work.
[Illustration: COURTYARD, “NEW INN,” GLOUCESTER.]
As usual in these ancient inns with courtyards and galleries, plays and
interludes were formerly acted here, and it is said that the accession of
Queen Elizabeth was proclaimed on these flagstones.
That galleries open to the air, with the bedrooms and others giving upon
them, were not so inconvenient as generally nowadays supposed is evident
enough here, where they are still in use, as they were centuries ago. The
only difference is that they are carpeted nowadays, instead of being bare
floors.
A staircase from the courtyard leads up to the first-floor gallery, still
screened off by the old open-lattice gates reaching from floor to ceiling,
originally intended to prevent stray dogs entering.
Portions of the “New Inn” let off in the days of its declining prosperity
have in modern times been taken back again: among them the large
dining-hall overlooking the lane, for many years used as a Sunday school
for the children of St. Nicholas parish, and other rooms looking upon
Northgate Street.
In short, the old “New” inn impresses the beholder with a very insistent
sense of being a live institution, a “going concern.” Most ancient inns of
this character are merely poor survivals; archæologically interesting, but
wan veterans tottering to decay and long deserted by custom. Here,
however, there is heavy traffic down in the yard: the ostler is busy in
his “Ostry” (the name is painted over the door), bells are ringing, people
and luggage coming and going; the big railway parcel-office is as full of
parcels as it could have been when it was a coach-office; appetising
scents come from glowing kitchens, and to and from private rooms are
carried trays of as good things as ever pilgrims feasted upon, at the end
of their pilgrimage.
There existed, until about 1859, another very notable “New” inn, probably
the work of the Abbots of Sherborne, and intended for the reception of
visitors to that beautiful Dorsetshire abbey. That splendid old hostelry,
with a noble front of yellow sandstone, built in the Perpendicular style
of architecture, probably about 1420, was the finest example of an inn of
its period in England, but it was ruthlessly, and with incredible
stupidity, demolished, and the only pictorial record of it appears to be
an entirely inadequate, severe, and unsympathetic little wood-cut in
Parker’s _Domestic Architecture_.[13] It figures in Mr. Thomas Hardy’s
story of _The Woodlanders_ as the “Earl of Wessex” inn at “Sherton Abbas.”
It was in those “good old days” that are so interesting to read about, and
were so ill to live in, that the ancient hospice flourished most bravely.
When ways were not merely rough and lonely, but were also infested by
“sturdye beggaris,” “maysterless men,” and others who would not hesitate
to do the solitary traveller a hurt, the good abbots or monks who
established wayside houses of entertainment where no secular innkeeper
dared were truly benefactors to their species. The relic of just such a
place, on a road once extremely lonely and dangerous, is to be found along
the present highway between Brecon and Llandovery, in South Wales, some
two miles westward of the town of Brecon. The road runs terraced above the
southern bank of the river Usk, through a rugged country where, in ancient
times, Welsh chieftains and outlaws, alike lawless and beggarly, knocked
the solitary traveller on the head and went over his pockets amid the
appropriately dramatic scenery of beetling crag and splashing waterfall.
At the gate of this lurk of bandits the holy monks of Malvern Priory
founded an hospitium, on the spot where stand to-day the ancient and
picturesque church and the few houses of the village of Llanspyddid: whose
Welsh name, indeed, means the Hospice Church.
Nothing, unfortunately, is left of that “spythy,” or hospice, they so
piously built and maintained, for, its usefulness long overpast, it was
left to decay: but the church they built, in which travellers returned
thanks for the succour vouchsafed them, remains by the roadside. It is a
romantic-looking church, placed in an appropriate setting of extremely
ancient and funereal-looking yews that lead up darkly to the heavy north
porch, beautifully decorated with carved woodwork.
The “George” at Glastonbury presents the finest exterior of all these
pilgrims’ inns, for it stands to-day very much as it did in the time of
Edward the Sixth, when it was built (1475) by Abbot John Selwood for the
accommodation of such pilgrims as were not personages. There has ever been
a subtle distinction between a personage and a mere person. The great
ones, the high and mighty of the land, on pilgrimage were made much of,
and entertained by my lord Abbot in appropriately princely fashion, in the
Abbot’s lodgings: the middle-class pilgrims were lodged at the Abbot’s
inn, and the residue lay where best they might: perhaps in some
guesten-hall, or possibly in the open air.
Pilgrimages to Glastonbury were less numerous and popular than those to
the pre-eminent Shrine of the Blessed St. Thomas at Canterbury, but they
were not few, for the story of this great mitred Somersetshire Abbey is
one of the marvels and legendary wonders that, however greatly they may
stagger the twentieth-century capacity for belief, were of old implicitly
relied upon. Few were those who in mediæval times questioned their
genuineness, and those who did so kept their doubts prudently to
themselves.
This marvellous lore narrates how it was to St. Joseph of Arimathea that
the Abbey owed its origin. In A.D. 63 he came, with eleven companions,
wandering among the bogs and morasses of this western land, and discovered
this elevated ground rising above the marshes, further topped by the
commanding peak of Glastonbury Tor. “Weary all!” they exclaimed, as they
sank down, exhausted, on the spot called Weary All Hill to this day,
although its name is properly “Wirrall.” Here St. Joseph thrust his staff
into the ground, and, taking root and blossoming every Christmas Day for
over fourteen hundred years, it was known in all Christendom as the Holy
Thorn.
[Illustration: THE “GEORGE,” GLASTONBURY.]
The Holy Thorn itself was a sight to see, for, whatever its origin, it did
actually blossom on or about Christmas, as descendants from the parent
stock do to this day. The original hawthorn--or what was looked upon in
the time of Queen Elizabeth as the original--was fanatically attacked by
an early Puritan who succeeded in felling one of its two trunks, and was
proceeding to destroy the other, when he struck his leg instead, and had
an eye gouged out by a flying chip: an incident that would have pleased
the old monks, had they not been dead and gone a generation earlier. This
capacity in the Holy Thorn for taking its own part did not avail when a
Cromwellian soldier-saint, a half-century or so later, cut it down.
Nothing in the tragical way appears to have happened to him.
An object of even greater veneration than the Holy Thorn was the body of
St. Dunstan, stolen by the monks of Glastonbury from Canterbury, and for
long centuries a source of great revenue, in the shape of offerings from
the faithful, eager for his spiritual good offices or for the healing
touch of his relics.
That which was too staggering for the belief of old-time pilgrims was
never discovered. At Glastonbury they were shown a part of Moses’ rod,
some milk and some hair of the Virgin, part of the hem of the Saviour’s
garment, a nail from the Cross, and a thorn from the Crown of Thorns. No
one ever questioned those blasphemous mediæval Barnums, who showed a
sample of the manna that fed the children of Israel, and the incredible
item of “the dust of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three children
sacrificed in the burning fiery furnace, with the bone of one of them”;
and so they humbugged the devout for centuries.
Pilgrims of all kinds, bringing offerings, each one according to his
means, were clearly to be encouraged, and there was from a very early
period an “Abbot’s Inn” at Glastonbury. This stood on the site of the
present “White Hart” until about 1755, when, to prevent it falling, it was
pulled down. It had, however, ceased to be the Abbot’s Inn about 1489, the
newly built “George” then taking its place. How dilapidated was the more
ancient building may be understood from the story which tells of an
auction being held on an upper floor, just before its demolition. “Going,
going!” exclaimed the auctioneer, and then, as he accepted a bid, “Gone!”:
whereupon the entire flooring of the room gave way, and every one and
everything were, with a tremendous crash, precipitated down to the ground
floor.
Abbot Selwood, who ruled from 1456 to 1493, built the “George” for
middle-class pilgrims, and gave them board and lodging free for two days.
He did so from a strictly business point of view; and we may even suspect
that, if his guests made a longer stay, he recompensed himself by
overcharging.
Although a room is shown in which King Henry the Eighth is said to have
slept--heavens! did they treat _him_ as a middle-class pilgrim?--and a
room with oaken beams is termed the “Abbot’s Room,” there is little to be
seen within, save the original stone newel staircase leading upstairs and
a stone bench in the cellar now christened the Penitents’ Seat, on which,
if you please, sinners under conviction sat, with water up to their knees.
For my part, although the perennial spring is there, I remain sceptical of
aught but beer-barrels and hogsheads of wine ever having occupied that
Penitents’ Form. Penitents frequenting the cellars where the booze is kept
are suspect.
The exterior, however, is a very fine example of the late Perpendicular
phase of Gothic architecture, as applied to domestic or semi-domestic
uses. The battlements formerly had stone figures peering from each
embrasure, figures traditionally said to have represented the Twelve
Cæsars, or the Twelve Apostles. Exactly _how_ this was managed can hardly
be seen, for there are but seven openings. Only one figure now remains,
and he looks little like a Cæsar, and very much less like an Apostle.
At the present time the “George” is a “family and commercial” hotel. Its
notepaper would seem to indicate that it is not the house for Dissenters,
for it displays, beneath a mitre and crossed croziers, an aspiration in
Latin to the effect that “May the Anglican Church Flourish.” Our withers
are wrung: we are galled, and wince.
The “Red Lion,” opposite the “George,” with fine stone-embayed window and
frontage dated 1659, was formerly the Porter’s Lodge and gateway of the
Abbey.
A very spirited view of Glastonbury, including the “George,” in the
eighteenth century was executed, as an etching, by Rowlandson, and shows
us, in his inimitable manner, the life and bustle of an old English
country town on market-day. There you see a post-chaise and four being
driven at top speed through the town, bringing disaster to a woman dealer
in crockery, whose donkey, lashing out with his hind-legs, is upsetting
the contents of his panniers; and there at the town-pump, in those days
before house-to-house water-supply, are the gossipping servants, very
beefy about the ankles, filling their pitchers and pipkins.
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, GLASTONBURY, IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. _From
the etching by Rowlandson._]