the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates
the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads
below, at an understanding of how this great Minster _was_ Canterbury, and
how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A
vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is
the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and
sunk back into retirement. Canterbury is far larger than ever before, and
its modern pavements, that ring with soldiers' tread, or with the speedy
walk of busy citizens, are raised many feet above the street level of old
Durovernum. Where the old Roman Watling Street left the city by what is
now called the Riding Gate, the original paving of that military way was
discovered some few years ago at a depth of fourteen feet below the level
of the present road. Everywhere, when foundations for new houses have been
dug, are discovered Roman pavements and the walls of forgotten buildings,
and thus does Canterbury progress through the ages, rearing itself upon
itself until its beginnings are hidden deep below the light of day.
Strangely do modern ways here jostle with the old. A newly fronted house,
proclaiming nothing of its antiquity, will yet often be found to contain
much of interest. The ugly fronted Guildhall is an instance. Without, it
is of the plainest and most uninteresting type; within, it has panelling
and portraits and old arms to show the curious. At its door, too, stands
all day and every day, or walks about the streets, a gorgeous creature
clad in black knee-breeches and silk stockings; with buckled shoes and
cocked-hat; with coat and waistcoat of a courtly type, trimmed and faced
with gold lace. It is nothing less than startling to see such an uniform
in daily use; and, still more amazing is it, when you ask the wearer of it
who he is, to hear him reply, with a grave politeness, that he is the City
Sergeant. Old institutions live long here, and old people, too. At
Canterbury died, in 1891, aged ninety-one, William Clements, one of the
last, if not _the_ last, of the old stage-coach drivers, who had driven
the "Tally-ho" coach between this and London long before the railway was
thought of; and in July, 1901, aged 89, died Stephen Philpott, who was
coachman of the Dover Mail, until the railway ran him off. He was
transferred to a route between London and Herne Bay, and afterwards became
proprietor of the "Royal Oak," Dover, since demolished for street
improvements.
[Illustration: "A GORGEOUS CREATURE."]
XXXIX
The Dover Road, after leaving Canterbury, loses very much of that
religious character, picturesquely varied with robbery and murder, which
is its chiefest feature between Southwark and the Shrine of Saint Thomas;
for, although many foreign pilgrims landed at Dover to proceed to the
place where the martyr lay, encased in gold and jewels, their number was
nothing to be compared with that of the crowds who came into Canterbury
from London, or along the Pilgrims' Road from the West Country; and
consequently the wayside shrines and oratories were fewer. The greater
part of the sixteen miles between Canterbury and Dover is bare and exposed
downs, with here and there a little village nestling, sheltered from the
bleak winds, in deep valleys; but the first two miles, between the city
and the coast, are now becoming gay with the geranium-beds, the lawns and
gardens of Canterbury villadom.
[Illustration: WILLIAM CLEMENTS.]
At the first milestone is Gutteridge Gate, where the old toll-house
remains beside the "Gate" inn, and where bacchanalian countrymen gather on
Sunday evenings in summer, drinking pots of ale as the sun goes down, and
recalling to the artistic passer-by Teniers' pictures of boors, as they
shout and bang the wooden tables and benches with their pewter pots.
Looking back at such a time down the long, straight road ascending from
Canterbury, there come many jingling sons of Mars, each man with his
adoring young woman, and sometimes one on either arm, for there is great
competition for these gallant Hussars, Lancers, and Dragoons among the
Canterbury fair ones; and "unappropriated blessings" of a rank in life
that does not permit of "walking out" with mere troopers sit at windows
commanding the road, sighing for that the conventions of the age do not
permit them to "stoop to conquer" the conquerors of their fluttering
hearts. "I could worship that man," says the Fairy Queen in _Iolanthe_,
gazing admiringly upon "Private Willis of the Grenadier Guards"; and how
much more worshipful than a foot-soldier are the "cavalry chaps" of the
Canterbury depot!
[Sidenote: GUTTERIDGE GATE]
It was a hundred yards or so along the road from Gutteridge Gate that two
Dragoons figured in a highway robbery upon His Majesty's Mails in 1789.
The bells were chiming three o'clock in the morning of July 31 in that
year when Daniel Goldup, the mounted postman, came up the hill from Bridge
with the French mails slung across his horse's back. As he eased his pace
in ascending the hill, three men called upon him to stop. One of them he
recognized as a villager from Elham named Hills, and the two others he
perceived to be Dragoons disguised in smock-frocks. Telling Hills he had
no letters for him, Goldup proceeded on his way. Hills fired but missed,
and the three then ran after him; one laying hold of the horse's bridle
while the other two seized the mail-bags and rifled them. They detained
him an hour while they examined the letters, and then, tying up the
mail-bags again, let him go.
The village of Bridge, down below, takes its name from the small bridge
that carries the road over the Lesser Stour. It is a pretty and peaceful
place to-day, with quaint boarded houses; a Norman and Early English
church, containing some curious and grotesque carvings of Adam and Eve;
and encircled by woods, the remote descendants of the almost
impenetrable forests that once surrounded Canterbury, leaving only Barham
Downs and their neighbouring chalk hills bare and islanded amid a sea of
greenery.
[Illustration: BRIDGE.]
Barham Downs commence immediately beyond Bridge. They have been the scene
of many remarkable gatherings, from the time of Julius Caesar to the waning
years of the last century, when the Downs were alive with soldiers camping
here in readiness for that inglorious Armada that never left
port--Napoleon's flotilla of Boulogne.
To go back to the year 55 B.C., when Caesar first landed at Deal, may seem
to the readers of evening newspapers something of an effort in
retrogression--and so indeed, it is--but when you once succeed in getting
there, the history and details of that time are a great deal more
interesting than perhaps the reader of special editions, hot and hot,
would imagine. We _can_ succeed in picturing the detailed events of that
remote time, because Caesar, who was as mighty with the pen as with the
sword, has left full and singularly lucid accounts of his wars here and on
the Continent--lucid, that is to say, when one penetrates the veil of
Latin behind which his exploits and the doings of his legionaries are hid;
but darkly understood by the stumbling schoolboy, to whom the _Bello
Gallico_ is as full of linguistic ambushes as the Kentish valleys were of
lurking Britons in Caesar's time.
It was in the year 55 B.C. that Caesar, having overrun, if not having
entirely conquered, Gaul, came to its northern coast and gazed eagerly
across that unknown sea, beyond which had come strange warriors,
extraordinarily strong and equally fearless, to aid those troublesome
Gaulish fighting-men who had already given him four years of campaigning,
and were still to prove themselves unsubdued. He had already felt the
prowess of these "Britons," as they were called, and fighting having
slackened somewhat, he conceived the idea of voyaging across the Channel
in quest of glory and adventure in the dim and semi-fabled land of these
mysterious strangers. "Caesar," he says, speaking of himself always in the
third person, "determined to proceed into Britain because he understood
that in almost all the Gallic wars succour had been supplied thence to our
enemies." So much for his written reasons, but other things must have
weighed with him. The lust of conquest would alone have impelled him
forward beyond this very outer edge of the known world, even had he not
desired to crush these allies of Gaul; but when wild tales reached him of
the richness of the land that lay beyond this strait, whose cliffs he
could dimly see, the impulse to invade it was irresistible. But Caesar
was a cautious general, and rarely moved without having reconnoitred, and
so he sent over a certain Volusenus to spy out that wonderful land whence
came tin and skins, oysters, pearls, hunting dogs, gold, slaves, and
terrible warriors. Volusenus sailed across the straits, and returned with
quite as much information as could have been expected from one who had
never left his ship. That sarcasm is Caesar's own, and no doubt he was in a
peculiarly savage and sarcastic humour at the time, for although this
Britain was so frequented by merchants, yet he could not find any one who
would acknowledge having been there; and so his information as to the
population, the shores and harbours of the country, remained vague and
uncertain. And to add to the disappointments he had experienced from those
crafty traders who wished to keep all knowledge of the island to
themselves, this over-cautious Volusenus returned after four days with
just such a hazy and indefinite story as he had been told before; the
hearsay evidence of one who was too timorous to land!
But Caesar's desire to see Britain was only whetted by the deceits which
those artful traders had practised upon him, and by the vague reports of
his envoy. He lay at Portus Itius, identified either as Boulogne or some
place in the immediate vicinity, and, collecting a flotilla of over eighty
vessels, with an additional eighteen for his cavalry, he sailed from under
the shelter of Grey Nose Point at midnight, August 24, B.C. 55. The
following morning about six o'clock, this armada arrived under Dover
cliffs. The cavalry, however, which had sailed from a different harbour,
had been driven back by adverse winds, and did not arrive until four days
later. His force, then, consisted of two legions of foot soldiers, equal
to about 10,000 men. No sooner had the transports anchored in Dover
harbour than the cliff-tops became alive with Britons, armed, and
determined to resist a landing. Seeing this, Caesar decided to select some
less dangerous landing-place, and, weighing anchor, sailed seven miles
onward to Deal. The British, however, were ready for him when he reached
the site of that town, and it was only after a stubborn fight on the
beach, and half in the waves, that the Roman legionaries effected a
landing. The decks of Caesar's triremes were crowded with men who slung
stones, threw javelins, and worked great catapults against the Britons, in
order to cover the advance of the heavily armoured soldiers as they waded
through the shallow water. When once these men, led by the intrepid
standard-bearer of Caesar's favourite Tenth Legion, had gained the beach,
their discipline, their helmets, armour, shields, and short swords
speedily prevailed against the ill-protected and undisciplined hordes of
the brave islanders. The day was won, and the Romans, having put the
Britons to flight, encamped by the shore. Three weeks of battles,
ambushes, skirmishes, and negotiations for peace followed this landing,
and then Caesar left Britain. The equinox was at hand, and storms raged.
Half his fleet was destroyed by a tempest, and he was anxious to be away.
So, accepting any terms that he might with honour, he patched up his
vessels and sailed for Gaul; and thus ended the first attempt of the
Romans to conquer Britain.
The following year Caesar determined to invade the island on a larger
scale. His first expedition had been obliged to remain ingloriously within
sight and sound of the waves; but this time the general resolved to push
into the heart of the country. Sailing from his former harbour, his force
numbered five legions and two thousand horse, roughly 27,000 men, and with
this army, considerable as times went, he landed, unopposed, at Deal on
the morning of July 22. Caesar tells us that the Britons were frightened by
the great number of his ships seen sailing across the Channel, but the
truth seems to be that he had been sowing jealousies and dissensions among
the petty chiefs and kinglets of Kent, and that a secret understanding was
arrived at between himself and a discreditable son of King Lud by which
his landing should not be contested. However that may be, Caesar left a
guard over his vessels, and started immediately on a twelve miles' night
march inland, in force.
When morning dawned, he found himself on a high table-land with a river
flowing along a valley below him, and here he first descried the Britons.
The place at which Caesar had arrived was Barham Downs, and the river he
saw was the Lesser Stour, that even now, although a much smaller stream
than then, flows through the valley to the right of the Dover Road. A road
of some sort existed even at that time, although it perhaps might be more
correctly described as a "track." Down it went the exports of that far
distant age; the undressed skins of wild animals; the dogs and the gold;
and up this way from the primitive Dover came the beads and the trinkets;
the manufactures of pottery and glass, which our very remote fathers loved
as much as the uncivilized races of to-day delight in the selfsame kind of
thing.
Caesar deployed his forces along the ridge of the Downs facing the road,
the river, and the enemy, who had entrenchments on the further side of the
river immediately fronting him and others advancing diagonally toward the
road which they crossed on the northern hill-top at Bridge, ending at a
point slightly to the north-east of the place where Bekesbourne Station
stands now. Caesar's first object was to reach the water in the valley,
there to refresh his horses, and a forward cavalry movement was made with
this object.
[Illustration: "OLD ENGLAND'S HOLE."]
[Sidenote: "OLD ENGLAND'S HOLE."]
But this advance precipitated the battle that was imminent, for the
Britons, who held the opposite ridge in force, rushed down the slope to
the waterside, and furiously attacked the Roman horse. Exhausted though
they were by a waterless night march, the Roman cavalry met the assault,
and, repelling it, drove the enemy back into the woods. This cavalry
charge was followed by a general advance into the dense thickets, into
which, excellently suited, both by nature and by art, for defence, the
Britons had retired. Here they fought in small bands, protected by mounds
and trenches and by felled trees cunningly interlaced. One of these
_oppida_ remains in Bourne Park, on the summit of Bridge Hill and beside
the Watling Street which, until 1829, was identical with the Dover Road.
In that year a slight deviation was made to the left over the hilltop for
about two hundred yards' length of roadway, and in the course of cutting
through the hill a number of Roman urns and skulls were discovered at a
depth of five feet. The circular earthwork of the redoubt still remains in
very good preservation, surrounded with trees, the successors of those
which covered the hill when the Britons and Romans contended together
here. The place is known locally as "Old England's Hole," and tradition
has it that here the Britons made their last stand. Tradition is not
lightly to be put aside at any time, but when it is supported by Caesar's
own words it deserves all respect. "Being repulsed," he writes, "they
withdrew themselves into the woods, and reached a place which they had
prepared before, having closed all approaches to it by felled timber." The
soldiers of the Seventh Legion, however, soon captured this stronghold.
Throwing up a mound against it, they advanced, holding their shields over
their heads in the formation known as "the tortoise," and drove out the
defenders at the sword's point. This was the last place to hold out that
day. Everywhere the Britons were dislodged, and numbers of them slain. The
survivors withdrew further into the woodlands that surrounded Caer Caint,
and Caesar, suspecting ambuscades in those unknown forests, forbade
pursuit.
[Sidenote: BATTLE OF BARHAM DOWNS]
It was evening before the last fighting was done. The battle had raged on
a front extending for three miles, from Bekesbourne to Kingston, and it
now remained to camp for the night, and to fortify against a possible
surprise the ridge which Caesar held. And so, before the exhausted soldiery
could lie down to rest after the incessant labours of two days and nights,
they threw up the lines of entrenchments that still, after a lapse of more
than nineteen hundred years, remain distinct upon Barham Downs.
The next day the Romans buried their dead, and Caesar had just despatched
three columns in a forward movement towards Caer Caint, when hasty news
arrived from Deal that a storm had shattered his fleet. The rear-guard of
the hindmost column was just disappearing from his gaze as he stood on
Patrixbourne Hill, and hurriedly sending messengers to bring the
expedition back, he at once prepared to return to the coast, taking with
him artificers for the repair of his vessels, and an escort sufficient to
secure his own safety. Caesar had no certain means of knowing how long a
time his absence would extend, but, bidding his legions to remain in camp
until his return, and meanwhile to increase the strength of their
defences, he set out. He was absent ten days. In the meanwhile the courage
of the Britons had revived. They perceived from their woody lairs the
Roman soldiery busily throwing up mounds and long lines of earthworks on
the level summit of the downs, and they judged that the invaders were
compelled, either by fear, or from lack of numbers, to remain on the
defensive. Their numbers increased as the days went by and the Romans made
no advance, and they were now commanded by a general of great ability,
none less than the celebrated Cassivelaunus. Caesar, on his return, was
harassed by them, and found his camp seriously threatened when he arrived.
Leaving 10,000 men in camp, he advanced with the remainder, and made a
determined stand on a spot that may be identified on the hills half a mile
to the north-west of Bridge. Here a desperate and bloody day's fighting
took place, the Britons returning again and again after repeated repulses.
Many of the foremost legionaries who had pursued them into the woods were
surrounded and slain there; many more of the Britons fell in that glorious
fight. One of the Roman tribunes, Quintus Laberius Durus, was killed that
day, and Nennius, one of the foremost British leaders, was slain in the
last onset, when he burst at the head of a chosen few on the Roman
soldiery engaged in the formation of a camp. Both sides claimed the
victory, and, indeed, Caesar had, so far, little reason to boast, for when
night came he had only advanced three miles beyond the stream upon which
his first camp on Barham Downs had looked, and, even then, he had only
been enabled to hold his own by the aid of reinforcements drawn from his
camp-guard. The next day, however, put a different aspect upon his
campaign. He had probably intended to rest his troops, and sent out a
strong force only in order to perform the necessary foraging; but the
Britons attacked them with such fierceness that another battle was
fought, resulting in a decisive victory for the Romans, who pursued the
vanquished and cut them down for miles. The Britons were now thoroughly
disheartened, and retreated towards London along their track-way, followed
by Caesar. Desultory fighting occurred on the way, and one ineffectual
stand was made at some unidentified place, conjectured to have been at Key
Coll Hill, near Newington. But, thenceforward, the accounts left by Caesar
and by early British writers grow confused. Whether the victorious
general, in pursuit of Cassivelaunus, crossed the Thames at London, or
whether "Coway Stakes," near Weybridge, mark the scene, will never be
known. But when he had penetrated into Hertfordshire, and had humbled the
British king to the point of asking for peace, Caesar found it was time to
return to Gaul. Exacting hostages, he commenced his retreat. Harassed by
flying bands of natives, who cut off stragglers and placed obstacles in
his line of march, he reached Deal in September, sailing thence on the
26th of that month. Thus ended Caesar's second and last invasion of
Britain. He had been six weeks in the island; had marched a hundred miles
into its dense forests, and had humbled the native princes. But winter was
approaching, and it was dangerous to delay. He returned to the Continent,
a victor, with hostages, prisoners, and promises of tribute; but he left
many of his expedition, dead, behind him. And it is significant of how
hazardous these invasions were, that not until another ninety-six years
had passed did another Roman so much as land on these shores.
[Illustration: BARHAM DOWNS.]
The camp which Caesar constructed along Barham Downs is still to be seen.
On this wild and worthless tract of land which has never known
cultivation, the marks of the spade will exist for many centuries if left
undisturbed by new-comers. And although many historic gatherings have
taken place here, no entrenchments have been made since the defeat of the
Britons in B.C. 54. King John's army of sixty thousand men encamped here
in 1213, to withstand the French invasion, and Simon de Montfort, somewhat
later, at the head of disaffected Barons; Henrietta Maria held her first
Drawing Room here in a tent, while on her way to be married to Charles the
First at Canterbury; and, centuries afterwards, a great army encamped on
Barham Downs in readiness for Napoleon's projected invasion. But on none
of these occasions were any earthworks thrown up, and the fosses and
ditches that still remain to be explored are of undoubted Roman
construction.
[Sidenote: COLDHARBOURS]
Here, amid these long lines of Roman entrenchments, occurs again the
mysterious name of "Coldharbour," a perplexing place-name that is found no
less than 170 times in England, in situations the most diverse and in
districts widely scattered. At least twenty-six of these Coldharbours are
to be found on the ordnance maps of Kent, and six of them on, or closely
adjoining, the Dover Road. Their situation, scattered thus along the old
military _via_ of Watling Street, adds greatly to the force of the
argument that this singular name has some connection with Roman times, but
what connection, and what is the real meaning of the name, not all the
acumen and ingenuity of archaeologists has ever been able to satisfactorily
explain. The fact of the great majority of Coldharbours lying by the site
of Roman roads or camps has led to the ingenious theory that they first
acquired their name in Saxon times when, the country being wasted with
ruthless and decimating wars, the Roman villas still remaining were
destroyed, and great desolate tracts of country created. Travellers (this
theory goes on to say) could find no other shelter on their journeys save
the ruined walls of the once magnificent palaces that the Romans had left;
and as they crouched, shivering, to leeward of these ruinated and roofless
remains of a decayed civilization, and tried to warm themselves at fires
painfully and laboriously made of leaves and sticks, they called them
"cold harbours." Unhappily for this theory, the places called
"Coldharbour" are by no means always situated in exposed situations, and
no remains of buildings have been discovered on their actual site,
although their neighbourhood is frequently found to be rich in Roman
remains. A suggestion has been made that "cold" is a variant of "cool,"
and that, far from being the miserable refugees of forlorn travellers, the
Coldharbours were really the "Mount Pleasants" and "Belle Vues" of ancient
times, to which our remote forbears resorted for "a breath of air." We
should probably be within our rights in deriding this suggestion as a
theory made to fit a fertile imagination, but it is not safe, in the
presence of such an apparently insoluble problem, to do more than present
a few of the derivations advanced. It would be equally rash to assume that
the stations of the "colubris arbor," the Roman serpent-standard, gave
their name to these places, although the idea is plausible enough.
Many Coldharbours are in exceedingly exposed places, as indeed here, on
Barham Downs,[8] and many more are in quite sheltered situations, in
places where dense woodlands once spread, giving work and shelter to
charcoal-burners. This fact has led to the formulation of another theory,
one which holds that these strangely named places were, prosaically
enough, "coal-harbours," or storage-places for charcoal. It is much to be
desired that some leisured antiquary would devote himself to the
elucidation of the name and the rescuing of the purpose of these
Coldharbours from the mists of a remote and romantic antiquity. The other
Kentish Coldharbours to be found near the Watling Street are at
Bishopsbourne, Bridge, Newington, Northfleet, Sittingbourne, and Woolwich,
and all--so close is the connection between the name and ancient
dwellings--near the site of undoubted Roman stations or villas. Alike with
the equally mysterious name of "Mockbeggar," which also occurs with great
frequency, the meaning of "Coldharbour" will probably never be
discovered.[9]