how is it that this wonderful master of yours wears such a threadbare
coat?" To this query, the Yeoman is bound to answer that his master is too
clever by half, or not clever enough, and that he has, for all his
alchemy, only wasted his substance and that of many more. The Canon hears
something of this, and bidding his servant hold his tongue, makes off for
very shame, while the Yeoman tells the story that brings the party to
Harbledown.
XXXII
[Sidenote: BOUGHTON]
Boughton-under-Blean is perhaps the neatest, quietest, longest, and most
cheerfully picturesque village on the Dover Road. It lies near the foot of
the hill. Half-way up is the church.
In the churchyard of Boughton there is a great yew-tree whose girth at
three feet from the ground was taken by the vicar in 1894. It was then 9
ft. 9 in. The age of this tree is exactly known, for a seventeenth century
vicar, the Reverend John Johnson, recorded, "the little yew-tree by the
south doer was sett in 1695." The yew, therefore, expands one foot in
sixty-one years.
One or two country houses with large gardens and trimly cut hedges occupy
the crest of the hill; and just beyond, on the level plateau of Dunkirk,
is the church, built in 1840, as some means toward civilizing the
untutored savages the villagers of this beautiful county had become under
the neglect of that Christian Church whose Metropolitan Cathedral rises
proudly beyond the hillside village of Harbledown, less than three miles
away. God in His goodness has blessed with a boundless fertility the fair
land of Kent, so that old Michael Drayton merely expressed facts when he
wrote that rapturous eulogy--
O famous Kent!
What county hath this isle that can compare with thee?
That hath within thyself as much as thou canst wish;
Thy rabbits, venison, fruits, thy sorts of fowl and fish;
As what with strength compares, thy hay, thy corn,
Nor anything doth want that anywhere is good.
But, long after the first quarter of the nineteenth century had passed,
this part of Kent was peopled with a peasantry compared with whom the
Hindoos and the Chinese, who were even then receiving the warm attention
of missionary zealots, were highly civilized and enlightened. The very
county in which Augustine had landed and reintroduced Christianity
thirteen hundred years before was neglected and ignored by the
port-drinking parsons and prebendal wine-butts who drew fat incomes from
the Church and starved the souls of dwellers under its very shadow; and
the kindly fruits of this fertile land, with its furred and feathered
game, brought no prosperity to the people. "The earth is the Squire's and
the fulness thereof" was an emendation of Holy Writ scored deeply in every
yokel's brain; and here, whither a fervent piety had brought uncounted
thousands of pilgrims in the by-past centuries, the country-folk lived
from youth to age, Godless and unlettered. The Era of Reform had dawned on
England, sweeping away much, both good and evil, but these dark districts
of Kent remained the same, save for a slowly growing feeling of
discontent. The New Poor Law naturally fostered this feeling in a country
where every other peasant lived in old age upon Outdoor Relief--and
thought it the most reasonable way of ending a life of toil. By this new
dispensation it became necessary for a poor man to break up his home and
go into the "Union" before relief could be afforded him; and thus the
Poors' Rates were raised and the feelings of ratepayers and peasantry
embittered simultaneously. A man who felt no shame in receiving his
half-crown or five shillings a week from the parish, experienced bitter
degradation in becoming an inmate of what is now generally known as "the
House," then hateful under the current name of "the Bastille," or
"Bastyle," as the English peasant pronounced the word.
[Sidenote: "COURTENAY"]
To this neglected corner of England came a romantic and mysterious
stranger in 1832. No one knew whence or how had come to Canterbury the
picturesquely dressed man of commanding height and handsome face who,
staying at the "Rose Hotel" in the High Street, soon attracted attention
by his manner and the Eastern style of dress he affected. That he was
fabulously rich, and that his name was Baron Rothschild were the common
reports of the then somewhat dull Cathedral city, eager to dwell upon any
subject that made for gossip; but it presently appeared, by his own
accounts, that he was "Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay," Knight of
Malta and King of Jerusalem. This extraordinary man, besides possessing
the advantages of a handsome face and a fine presence, was gifted with a
singularly persuasive eloquence; and professing himself to be the friend
of the people, oppressed by a selfish aristocracy and a stupid Government,
he aroused the wildest enthusiasm in a political campaign upon which he
presently embarked, with the object of standing as Parliamentary candidate
for the City of Canterbury. His charm of manner; the affability with which
he would converse with the meanest peasant; and the really clever
political discourses he wrote for a periodical leaflet called the _Lion_
which he had printed and published, created a number of partisans who
flocked round him as he rode through Canterbury and the surrounding
villages; or crowded the High Street in a state of the wildest enthusiasm
when he harangued them from the balcony of the "Rose." He polled over nine
hundred votes in the Conservative interest at the election, and thus came
within an easy distance of becoming a member of Parliament. His indiscreet
championship of some fishermen, who were being prosecuted by the Revenue
officials for smuggling, gave political and social enemies the looked-for
opportunity to injure a man who was so dangerous to the squires of Kent.
He was prosecuted in turn, on a charge of perjury, and sentenced to a term
of imprisonment. From the County Gaol he was transferred to a lunatic
asylum, and only liberated in the spring of 1838, on the assurances of
friends in the vicinity of Canterbury that they would take charge of him.
Religious mania seems to have attacked the weak brain of this excitable
enthusiast while in confinement, and his conduct presently became more
eccentric than before. Roaming in the country villages, preaching
religious and political salvation to the small farmers, the cottagers, and
poor agricultural labourers of Kent, he aroused greater enthusiasm and
personal love than before. He had always represented himself to be a
member of the Courtenay family, whose head, the Earl of Devon, claims
descent from Palaeologus, King of Jerusalem in early Crusading times; and,
in addition, he announced himself as the rightful heir to a number of
important estates in Kent and neighbouring counties. He let it be known
that he, the noble Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta, and rightful
King of Jerusalem, was not too proud to partake of food and shelter at the
board and under the roof of the poorest. When he came in power, and
claimed his rights, the oppressed should live freely on the land; the
cruel New Poor Law that shut unfortunate men and women out from the world
in "Bastilles," as though Poverty were a crime, and separated man and
wife, whom God had declared by his handmaid, the Church, man should not
put asunder, should be abrogated; and the workers should have a share in
the products of their toil. The people largely responded to these
advances; and poor folk, together with a number of the class who had
earned themselves a small competency, and a few moneyed people, believed
thoroughly in Courtenay. He was now a man whom many held to have been
persecuted and imprisoned for his championship of the people, and they
loved him for it, many of them with a whole-souled devotion that
culminated in worship. Courtenay's extraordinary facial resemblance to the
traditional appearance of the Saviour, and, finally, his ultimate
assumption of the character of the Messiah, led many people to believe
that Christ was actually come on earth to commence His promised reign; and
entertainment, encouragement, and monetary contributions attended on
their belief.
[Illustration: "SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY." _From an old print._]
Matters came to a crisis toward the end of May. Courtenay had marched the
country round with agricultural labourers and others who had left their
work in the fields to follow the Lord, and the farmers who thus saw their
fields remaining untilled grew anxious. One, bolder than the rest, applied
to the magistrate for the detention of his men who had thus left their
employment; and, with a local constable named Mears and two others, he
came up with Courtenay's band on the morning of May 31st.
[Sidenote: BATTLE OF BOSSENDEN]
Ever since the 28th of that month, Courtenay had been tramping the roads
and lanes with a band of about one hundred rustics. Starting from Boughton
on that day, they had bought bread, and, placing half a loaf on a pole,
above a blue-and-white flag bearing a lion rampant, had marched through
Goodnestone, Hernhill, and Dargate Common, where they all fell down on
their knees while Courtenay prayed. Then they proceeded to Bossenden Farm,
where they supped and slept in a barn. Leaving Bossenden at three o'clock
the next morning, their leader took them to Sittingbourne, where he
procured breakfast for the whole party at a cost of 25s. The rest of the
day was spent in parading the country round Boughton, and the next evening
was spent again at Bossenden Farm. The following morning, Mears the
constable, with his party of three, came up with them in a meadow, and
demanded the surrender of the farmers' men. The men refused to leave, and
Courtenay shot the constable dead on the spot. Alarmed at this, the others
rode off hastily to Canterbury for military assistance, while Courtenay
administered the sacrament to his men in bread-and-water. All knelt down
and worshipped him, and a farmer, one Alexander Foad, kneeling, asked
"should he follow him in body or in heart?" "In the body," replied
Courtenay; whereupon Foad sprang up, exclaiming, "Oh! be joyful, be
joyful! The Saviour has accepted me. Go on, go on, I'll follow thee till
I drop!"
[Illustration: "COURTENAY." _From an old print._]
When the terrified three reached Canterbury, they secured the aid of a
company of the Forty-fifth Regiment. A young officer, Lieutenant Bennett,
staying with friends in the city, volunteered to go with them. Coming to
Bossenden, they found Courtenay and his hundred followers strongly posted
amid alder-bushes in a deep and sequestered part of Bossenden Wood.
Courtenay exhorted his people to behave like men. "God," he said, "would
protect him and them. Should he fall, he would infallibly rise again in
greater glory than now; and wounds for his sake would be accounted for
righteousness."
[Sidenote: DEATH OF "COURTENAY"]
Lieutenant Bennett advanced and called upon them to surrender, but
Courtenay, raising his pistol, shot him dead, and his men leapt out from
the woods furiously, armed only with cudgels and fanaticism, to attack the
soldiers. One volley, however, stretched many dying, or bleeding from
severe wounds, upon the ground, and Courtenay himself fell mortally
wounded, exclaiming, "I have Jesus in my heart."
Thirteen people in all were killed in this affray: Mears the constable,
Lieutenant Bennett, and Courtenay; eight "rioters" dying on the spot, and
two others afterwards succumbing to their wounds. Many more were crippled
for life. Twenty-three were committed to gaol: some transported across the
seas, and others sentenced to short terms of imprisonment at home. Some of
the men were buried in Boughton Churchyard, others at Hernhill, three
miles away, overlooking the rich land that slopes towards the sea. Here
Courtenay was buried, but the graves of himself and his men are unmarked
by stone or mound. The fanaticism of the peasantry was not altogether
extinguished by this dreadful ending, and the tale is told, on excellent
authority, of a woman drawing water from a well and walking half a mile
with it to moisten the lips of the dead leader, who had said that, should
he fall, a drop of water applied to his mouth would restore him from death
to life. The barbarous expedients of keeping his body in a shed of the
"Red Lion" at Dunkirk until corruption had set in, and of omitting the
resurrection clause from the Burial Service were resorted to, lest the
country folk should persist in their belief of his divinity.
Thus ended the so-called "Courtenay Rebellion" of 1838. When he was dead,
it became generally known that "Sir William Courtenay" was really but John
Nichols Thom, the son of a Cornish innkeeper and farmer. Always a clever
and handsome lad, he had grown up still more handsome, but with a
religious enthusiasm and a romantic imagination inherited from his
mother. He was for a time employed at Truro, but disappeared for some
years until his strange descent upon Canterbury in 1832.
The "Red Lion," where the bodies of the dead were laid out, stands by the
roadside at Dunkirk, and a cart-road on the hither side of it, to the left
hand, made long after this extraordinary affair, and called "Courtenay
Road," leads down to the still wild and thickly grown woods of hazel,
alder, and miscellaneous scrub in which Bossenden Woods are situated. A
gate--"Courtenay Gate"--stands by the scene of the struggle, but the trees
marked at the time by the rustics in memory of Courtenay and his men, are
not now to be discovered. The villagers still bear him in memory, and
truly he deserves to be kept in mind, for though as "Sir William
Courtenay" he was an impostor, yet he truly loved the people, and his
naturally highly-strung mental organization, completely unstrung by an
unnecessary imprisonment, was responsible for his religious pretensions
and his blasphemous impersonation towards the end. Worse men than he are
honoured in history and in public monuments, and it seems a pity that a
childish spite should have hidden his grave and the graves of the poor
fellows who fell that day. The pilgrim who takes an interest in these
strange events, happening in this century, and in the reign of Queen
Victoria, and who happens to visit the secluded village of Hernhill, may
look for the site of "Sir William Courtenay's" resting-place beside the
path where a yew-tree spreads a shade over the west entrance to the
village church.
His death did good. The Government ordered a Commission to sit and inquire
into the state of things that produced these events, and it appeared that
the district was Godless and ignorant, a fit ground for fanaticism to
spring up in and flourish. Schools were built, and the church of Dunkirk
owes its existence to Courtenay's Rebellion. The superstitious countrymen
who say the foundations of the building gave way several times before the
walls could be commenced properly, declare that his ghost haunted the
place. But, whatever else these doings teach, they teach us that a spirit
of selfishness, of neglect, both on the part of Church and State, brings
its inevitable retribution. The punishment fell then on these ignorant
hinds; what should be the punishment in the hereafter of those who were
morally responsible for the shedding of their blood?
XXXIII
[Sidenote: DUNKIRK]
Dunkirk was anciently a common in the Forest of Blean, and was a veritable
Alsatia, the resort of lawless men who squatted here because it was not
within any known jurisdiction. Hasted, in his _History of Kent_, says
houses were built here and "inhabited by low persons of suspicious
character, this being a place exempt from the jurisdiction of either
hundred or parish, as in a free port, which receives all who enter it,
without distinction. The whole district from hence gained the name of
'Dunkirk.'" This part of the road, being in neither hundred or parish, was
neglected and left in a ruinous state until nearly the close of the
eighteenth century.
At Dunkirk, on passing the "Gate" inn, with its sign of a five-barred
field-gate hanging over the road, the traveller obtains his first glimpse
of Canterbury Cathedral, the Bell Harry tower rising grey above the green
valley of the Stour. Now the road goes downwards towards Harbledown in a
succession of switchback ups and downs that, noticeable enough for remark
even at this lapse of time, must have been much more marked in Chaucer's
day. Here the pilgrims would see the Cathedral faintly from the crest of a
hillock, losing it for a few minutes as they rode or tramped down the
succeeding declivity, and regaining it on the next hill; until, coming to
Harbledown, its majesty burst upon them in an uninterrupted view. The
striking characteristics of the road here were noted by Chaucer himself,
who, indeed, does not mention Harbledown by name; the description is alone
sufficient to identify the place:--
Wist ye not where standeth a little toun,
Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun,
Under the Blee in Canterbury way.
Here the weary pilgrims made their last halt. The levity; the fun and
frolic; the sound of songs and bagpipes ceased, and the seekers of Saint
Thomas fell down upon their knees in the dusty road when they caught sight
of the golden angel that then crowned the Bell Harry tower. Tears running
down the cheeks of all, the pious and the indifferent alike resigned
themselves to a religious ecstasy; and when they at length resumed their
journey, Chaucer's company of pilgrims rode slowly into the Holy City,
listening to a sermon in place of the curious tales with which they had
hitherto beguiled the way.
Harbledown stood then on the borders of the great "Bosco de Blean." The
"little town," now a mile-long stretch of disconnected cottages, was much
smaller, clustering round the parish church on one side of the road, and
the Hospital for Lepers, with its chapel and rows of cottages, on the
other. Down the road, the houses of Canterbury were to be seen nestling
for protection against the Castle and Cathedral, while on the other hand
stretched the dark forest, with the Archbishop's gallows standing on a
clearing in front. For not only did the dignified clergy point the way to
the after life; they not infrequently helped their sheep on the way by
means of rope or stake.
As the pilgrims passed that old Lepers' Hospital, founded by Lanfranc in
1084, on this breezy and healthful hillside, whence rose the sweet smell
of the herbs for which Harbledown (== Herbal down) has derived its name,
one of the brethren of this charitable foundation would come out and
sprinkle them with holy water, presenting the shoe of Saint Thomas to be
kissed, and praying them for the love of God and the Blessed Martyr to
give something towards the support of the poor lepers of Saint Nicholas.
Rarely did the pilgrims fail to do so, and this institution must, in the
course of years, have become very wealthy. Henry the Second; Richard Lion
Heart, come home again from captivity; Edward the First, with Eleanor of
Castile, on his return from Palestine; the Black Prince, with his
captives, those trophies of Poictiers--King John of France and his son
Philip--and many another must have enriched the place. John of France, on
his way home, gave ten gold crowns "pour les nonnains de Harbledown," and
never, surely, before nor since, has an old shoe brought so much luck as
Becket's brought here. For centuries the devout came and pressed their
lips to it, dropping coins into the wooden alms-box that is still shown,
together with a mazer inscribed with the deeds of Guy of Warwick, and
containing the great crystal with which the shoe was decorated. But times
change and habits of thought with them, and although the scenery remains
as of old, little else is left of the days of pilgrimage. How like the
present aspect of the place is to the appearance it presented three
hundred and eighty years ago may be seen from the writings of Disiderius
Erasmus.
[Sidenote: ERASMUS AND COLET]
When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning in 1512 from their
unconventional pilgrimage to Canterbury, they came, two miles from the
city, to a steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high banks on
either side. The scenery is the same as then. The selfsame banks of an
equal abruptness still rise above the road; the rough and crazy flight of
steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc's old Hospital for Lepers,
the Hospital of Harbledown. The immemorial yews are here even now; one
still flourishing, the other decayed. But the Hospital has been rebuilt,
and only the grey old Church of Saint Nicholas remains. Modern pilgrims,
too, may pass without the attentions at one time bestowed on all who
passed this way; attentions which disgusted the stern and matter-of-fact
Colet, and amused his somewhat cynically-humorous companion. When they
came to the gateway of the Hospital, there tottered down the steps an aged
bedesman, and, sprinkling plentifully with holy water both themselves and
their horses, he stepped forward, presenting the upper-leather of an old
shoe, bound in brass and ornamented with a great crystal, to be kissed.
This was the remnant of the Holy Shoe of Thomas a Becket, one of the most
revered and valued possessions of the Hospital, kissed reverently by many
thousands of pilgrims of every degree, and a great aid to the flow of
alms. But Colet, who had already seen too much of this combined hero- and
relic-worship, could no longer restrain the wrath which had been rising
ever since he had left the shrine down below, with its old bones and dirty
rags. He was covered, too, with the holy water which the old man had so
recklessly showered on them. "What!" he shouted to Erasmus, "Do these
asses expect us to kiss the shoes of all good men that have ever lived?
Why, they might as well bring us their spittle to be kissed, or other
bodily excrements!" The ancient bedesman was hurt, and possibly, had he
been a younger man, he would have hurt this scoffer in return. However, he
said nothing, and the cynical Erasmus (for cynicism _always_ goes with a
really kind heart) gave him a small coin, less from piety, you may be
sure, than as a salve to his wounded feelings. And then they went away.
The shoe has vanished, but the crystal is still a valued, if not valuable,
possession of the institution, and may be handled by the curious who can
reflect upon its having also been touched by those two pilgrims, Erasmus
the learned writer, and Colet the founder of Saint Paul's School.
XXXIV
[Sidenote: CANTERBURY]
The entrance to Canterbury from London is one of the most impressive
approaches to a city to be found in all England. The traveller passes
through the suburb of Saint Dunstan, by the old parish church that holds
the severed head of Sir Thomas More, coming into the city through a street
of ancient houses and under the postern arch of West Gate. The great drum
towers of West Gate mark the ancient limits of the mediaeval city, and
guard an opening in the city wall which stood on the further side of the
little river Stour. A drawbridge effectually prevented the entrance of an
enemy, and when the strongly-guarded gate was closed at nightfall, belated
citizens had to stay outside and put up with the inconvenience as best
they could, in company with such travellers and pilgrims as arrived late
from too much storytelling, feasting, or praying, on the road. For the
accommodation of these travellers the suburbs of Saint Dunstan and West
Gate arose early without the walls of the city, and several inns--the
"Star" and the "Falstaff" among them--remain to show how considerable was
the belated company entertained here.
West Gate, as we now see it, is the successor of a much earlier gate, and
was built by the ill-fated Simon of Sudbury. It is the only one remaining
of all the seven gates of the city, and owes its preservation rather to
its convenience as a prison for poor debtors, than to any love our
eighteenth-century barbarians had for mediaeval architecture. It is to-day
a police-station, and thus carries on the frugal and utilitarian
traditions which originally spared it in the destruction of much else of
beauty and interest.