The cathedral cities of England are among the chief glories of our
land, and the charm of these ancient places is only felt to the full
when the splendid church dominates absolutely over the city clustered
around it. A cathedral in a place which has swelled to a big modern
town may be interesting, but it lacks the appropriate setting: it
should stand in the midst of a small, old city, whose streets are
narrow and winding; whose houses are gabled, lattice-paned, and with
overhanging storeys; whose medieval walls may still be traced, and the
mouldering keep of whose ruined castle may still be climbed.
First of all English cathedral cities stands Canterbury, with its
splendid church, raised upon the spot where first Christianity
flourished in Britain. Kent was the cradle of the English race in
England, and to Kent came St. Augustine, preaching the Christian faith
to Ethelbert, Saxon king, who listened and believed.
There was already a ruined church, it is believed, in Canterbury--a
church built by Roman or British Christians--and this was restored and
reconsecrated by the missionary bishop. In time this church grew into
a great cathedral, but in 1011 the Danes attacked the city, plundered,
slaughtered, and burned and destroyed the place. Again and again fire
wrought much harm, until in 1174 the cathedral suffered utter ruin by a
tremendous outbreak, and was reduced to ashes. But without delay the
builders set to work, and the present glorious edifice began to rise
from the ruins of the destroyed building. More than 200 years passed
before the great church was completed by the building of the
magnificent central tower, the famous Bell Harry Tower.
"As we stand upon the summit of Bell Harry Tower--more happily called
the Angel Steeple--of Canterbury Cathedral, looking down upon city and
countryside, much of the history of England lies spread beneath our
feet: the Britons were at work here before the Romans came marching
with their stolid legions; here to Ethelbert St. Augustine preached the
Gospel of Christ; in the church below, Becket was murdered and the
Black Prince buried; to this city, to the shrine of St. Thomas, came
innumerable pilgrims, one of them our first great English poet....
Away to the east and south are the narrow seas, crossed by conquering
Romans and Normans, crossed for centuries by a constant stream of
travellers from all ends of the earth, citizens of every clime, to some
of whom the sight of the English coast was the first glimpse of home,
to others the first view of a strange land; away to the north and west
are the Medway and the Thames, Rochester and London. From no other
tower, perhaps, can so wide a bird's-eye view of our history be
obtained; Canterbury is so situated that ever since England has been,
and as long as England shall be, this city has been and will be a
centre of the nation's life."
Round the cathedral lies its close, and a cathedral close is one of the
quietest, quaintest, pleasantest places in the world. Clustered in
shadow of the great building lie the houses of the clergy who serve in
the cathedral--the bishop, the dean, the canons--and their dwellings
are fenced off from the streets without, and kept private from all
noise and traffic. The cathedral close is entered by a low grey
gateway in an ancient wall, and within we find quaint old houses with
oriel and bay windows, each kept in the trimmest order, with its
neatly-railed grass plot in front, and its garden behind, where peaches
and nectarines ripen on sunny walls.
[Illustration: TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL]
From this haunt of ancient peace we will go into the great building and
visit the Martyrdom, the place where stood the shrine of Thomas Becket,
St. Thomas of Canterbury, whom the four knights of Henry II. slew in
1170.
For hundreds of years the people of England looked upon Becket as a
martyr and a saint, and went on pilgrimage to visit his tomb. One
company of pilgrims lives for ever in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer,
the great fourteenth-century poet; they ride from London to Canterbury
in a right merry fellowship, and tell tales to pass the time on the
way--the ever-famous "Canterbury Pilgrims." But throngs without number
of wayfarers who have found no such splendid chronicler marched to the
city where the bones of the martyr lay under Bell Harry Tower, and
their offerings made the shrine glorious with gold and gems.
A Venetian who saw the shrine about the year 1500 says: "The tomb of
St. Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury, exceeds all belief.
Notwithstanding its great size, it is wholly covered with plates of
pure gold; yet the gold is scarcely seen because it is covered with
various precious stones, as sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds;
and wherever the eye turns something more beautiful than the rest is
observed."
This shrine blazed with gold and jewels until the Reformation, when it
was destroyed and its treasures seized by Henry VIII.; to-day nothing
of it remains.
The second greatest memory of the cathedral is that of the Black
Prince; his tomb stands in the chapel where once stood the shrine of
Becket. "A splendid figure of romance he was--a great fighter, and, as
such, beloved of his race; the boy victor of Cressy; the conqueror at
Poitiers, where the French King became his captive; in his life the
glory of his country, by his untimely death leaving it to anarchy and
civil war. We stand by his tomb, looking upon his effigy, which is
life-like in its strength. 'There he lies: no other memorial of him
exists in the world so authentic. There he lies, as he had directed,
in full armour, his head resting on his helmet, his feet with the
likeness of "the spurs he won" at Cressy, his hands joined as in that
last prayer which he had offered up on his death-bed.' Above the
canopy hang his gauntlets, his helm, his velvet coat that once blazed
with the arms of England and of France, and the empty scabbard of his
sword."
But when we have looked upon all the solemn beauties of the great
church; when we have seen the quaintly beautiful old houses of the city
about it; when we have visited St. Martin's, the oldest church in
England; when we have walked round Dune John, that mysterious mound
which no one can explain, still we must not leave without seeing the
oldest by far of all the old things of this old city.
What is it? A small lane, no more, no less--a narrow trackway which
one would pass without noticing, if he did not know it was the famous
Pilgrims Way, the Old Road, the ancient trackway which ran westwards
from Kent to Cornwall, and existed in days when no such names were
known in the land. In the history of this lane, the name of the
Pilgrims' Way is a modern title; it existed long before pilgrims were
known, and it was used in the dim, far-off dawn of civilization when
skin-clothed Britons carried their loads of metal eastwards to send
them across the narrow seas. How old it is no man can say, but it runs
along ridge and height, showing that it was marked out in times when
the lower-lying country was impassable owing to marsh and woodland.