PEGWELL BAY--EBBSFLEET--THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST.
AUGUSTINE--RICHBOROUGH
But to have done with Ramsgate. We may perhaps explore to the very end
of the West Cliff, where rows of great ugly houses look out seaward
from that height, and where the bastioned cliffs crumble and are
cobbled horribly with brick and plaster. But one gets no joy of those
grim grey buttresses that front the waves.
Passing, instead, up the main street, to the surviving Norman church of
St. Lawrence, we note there the brasses to Nicholas Manston, wearing
the Collar of SS.; and his daughter and wife. Then, down the lengthy
Nethercourt Hill, we come to Pegwell Bay.
When the Tuggs family made holiday at Ramsgate they went, of course, to
Pegwell Bay: famous then, as now, for its shrimps and for the various
places where shrimp-teas, chiefly in little earwiggy arbours, might
be obtained: “Mr. and Mrs. Tuggs and the Captain ordered lunch in the
little garden--small saucers of large shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty
loaves, and bottled ale.” That is the ritual to be observed by all
who, coming to Pegwell Bay, want to do their duty by the place.
“I know a shore where white cliffs face the sea,
Along the margin of a noble bay;
Whose air resounds with nigger minstrelsy--
And motor-cars are tuppence all the way.
“Ah! there the sky is of an azure hue,
And aureate glow the yellow sands;
The ocean darkens to a deeper blue--
And everywhere are German bands.
“I know an arbour where the jasmines twine,
Where creepers hang in folds and tresses limp,
Where gay convolvuli and eglantine
Dispute the odour of the fragrant shrimp.
“There, where the spider weaves his silken net,
And earwigs crawl, and caterpillars creep,
Will you and I together hie, my pet,
For there they furnish teas extremely cheap.”
Pegwell Bay, as you will clearly perceive on maps, is a very
considerable inlet. It marks, indeed, that nook in the coast-line where
the old Wantsum Channel and the river Stour flowed along past Minster
and Sarre, and emerged at Reculver, thus forming the Isle of Thanet.
Tracking round from Pegwell and its shrimpy arbours, along the low
shores, we come at Cliff’s End to the “Sportsman” inn and Ebbsfleet,
and, turning to the right, will presently find St. Augustine’s Cross.
Ebbsfleet is a place of the greatest historic interest; a spot where
many landings that contributed largely to the long story of England
have taken place. Where these fruitful fields now spread there ebbed
and flowed, until well within the period of established history, those
waters of the Wantsum which received the Stour and other streams,
as shown in old maps, and divided Thanet from the mainland by a
navigable channel with numerous creeks, or “fleets.” An enormous mass
of archæological writing has been expended upon the discussion of the
exact site of Ebbsfleet. It has been sought to place it at Stonar,
nearer Sandwich, among other places; but popular tradition has always
pointed to the site occupied by the modern memorial cross. The channel
of the Wantsum, affording quiet anchorage from stormy seas and safe
landing-places would obviously be the place to be made for by both
friends and hostile visitors. Here, accordingly, tradition places the
landing of the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa in A.D. 449, thirty-nine
years after the departure of the Roman garrison, coming in reply to
Vortigern’s appeal to them to help him against the Picts and Scots.
Following that first coming of those fierce men of the sæxe and the
battleaxe were many other landings, few specifically mentioned in
history. They came then, not as allies, but as enemies of the enfeebled
Britons who had originally hired them to do their fighting. Thus we
read that in A.D. 465 “Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh at
Wippidsfleet, and there slew twelve Welsh Ealdormen, and one of their
own Thanes was slain whose name was Wipped.”
For the original name of Ebbsfleet we have a fair choice. It was
written “Wippidsfleet,” “Hypwine’s fleet,” and “Ippedeflete”; but the
essential name has survived through all the centuries.
It was 148 years after the first landing of the pagan Saxons that
Augustine came ashore here, A.D. 596.
“Augustine’s arrival was, it is more or less historically certain,”
says Sir F. C. Burnand, who will have his joke, even if ill-timed and
painfully hammering it out, “in the last of the summer months, since he
is invariably alluded to in ancient records as ‘our august visitor.’”
This is really lamentable.
Augustine was by merest chance the missioner to England. Gregory the
Great, the Pope who sent him on the mission, had himself, when Deacon,
intended to convert the heathen in our island. Gregory was not of the
sour religious type, but something of a humorist, and a punster and
torturer of words after Burnand’s own fancy, only he did it better. The
story is well known, how, seeing slaves from England sold in Rome, he
asked from what country they came.
“They are Angles,” replied the dealer.
“Not Angles, but angels, with faces so angel-like,” said Gregory; “but
from what country come they?”
“From Deira,” was the answer.
“Deira,” rejoined Gregory; “well said, indeed. _De ira_, plucked from
God’s ire and called to Christ’s mercy. But what is the name of their
King?”
“Ælla,” the slave-dealer told him; and the Deacon was again equal to
the occasion. “Alleluia,” he said, “shall be sung in Ælla’s land.”
At once he sought permission of the Pope to travel to that country
whence those engaging pagans had come, to reconvert their land; and,
having obtained it, set forth with a small following. He had not been
gone more than the third day’s journey when, as the company rested at
noon, a locust sprang upon the book he was reading. He saw an omen in
it. “Rightly is it called Locusta,” said Gregory, “because it seems to
say to us ‘Loco sta’; that is, ‘stay in your place.’ I see we shall not
be able to finish our journey. But,” he added, strangely disregarding
the omen his fancy had created, “rise, load the mules, and let us get
on as far as we can.”
Before they had set out again came messengers who had ridden hastily
from Rome to recall him: the people having missed their kindly Deacon.
He returned, and never visited Britain. Years afterwards, when elected
Pope, he was mindful of his old project, but was then compelled to send
another on the mission that had lain so near his heart. That other was
Augustine, and a most unwilling missioner he proved. He had not at any
time wished to go, and departed from Rome with his forty companions
only in obedience to his Sovereign Pontiff’s commands. Arrived midway
in France, the expedition heard tales so dreadful of the distant land
to which they were bound that they sent Augustine back, by no means
unwilling, to beg of Gregory that the project might be abandoned. Bede,
in his “Ecclesiastical History,” tells us “they were seized with craven
terror, and began to think of returning home, rather than proceed to a
barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, to whose very language they
were strangers.” But it was precisely because they were unbelieving
that Augustine was sent to them. Gregory would not hear of the mission
being abandoned; and so Augustine was obliged, after all, to fulfil it.
Britain was not, however, so terrible a country, nor was Christianity
unknown there. Ethelbert, the powerful King of Kent, was a pagan, but
his French wife, Bertha, was a Christian, and her chaplain, Luidhard,
who was a Bishop in France, officiated in a chapel identified with the
early church of St. Martin at Canterbury. And, while the Saxon kingdoms
were pagan, away in the westward recesses of Britain, in the land we
now know as Wales, unconquered by the Saxon, the British remained true
to the early Church of the fourth century.
Gregory sent Augustine back, reluctant still, upon that business
himself would so joyfully have gone, had it been possible. The mission
at length landed here, at Ebbsfleet, and advanced into the centre of
Thanet, where Ethelbert, doubtful of them, but not unkindly, met them
in the open air; some say under an oak-tree, while others deny that
oaks ever grew in the island. Painters have selected the striking
incident of this meeting of the Saxon King and his soldiers with
Augustine and his monks; and that historic event lends itself admirably
to the sense of drama, and to form and colour. A great silver cross was
borne aloft before Augustine, and in company with it went an image of
the Saviour done in paint and gilding on a board, much after the usage
of the icons in the Greek Church to-day. Bringing the solemn chant
that accompanied their march to an “Amen,” the monks sat down to the
conference between their leader and the King; a conference conducted
of necessity through interpreters, as neither understood the other’s
language.
In conclusion, the King gave leave for the missioners to establish
themselves at Canterbury. The words in which he is said to have done so
are at once dignified and hospitable, even although we must make a good
deal of allowance for the literary English in which the chroniclers
have cast them: “Your words are fair, and your promises--but because
they are new and doubtful, I cannot give my assent to them and leave
the customs I have so long observed, with the whole Anglo-Saxon race.
But because you have come hither as strangers from a long distance,
and as I seem to myself to have seen clearly that what you yourselves
believed to be true and good you wish to impart to us, we do not wish
to molest you; nay, rather, we are anxious to receive you hospitably
and give you all that is needed for your support; nor do we hinder you
from joining all whom you can to the faith of your religion.”
Thus favourably began the work Augustine was sent to do. The place at
Ebbsfleet where he set foot ashore was long held sacred and a myth
speedily grew about it; no less wild a story than that his foot had
miraculously impressed itself upon the rock. If for “rock” we read
“mud,” which is much more likely to have been a feature of this shore,
we shall have less difficulty in believing the story. A chapel was
built over that wonderful footprint--which no doubt the monks in
after-years had provided; but, more wonderful still, it afterwards
became known as the footprint of St. Mildred, who had landed at
Ebbsfleet about a century later. I do not pretend to be able to
reconcile the footprint of a man well over six feet high, as Augustine
was represented to be, with that of a woman; but who would seriously
criticise the statements in fairy tales? Not I, for one. The chapel
disappeared at some unspecified time, and the marvellous footprint is
said to have been broken up by roadmenders for road-metal in the first
decade of the nineteenth century. This seems, for many reasons, a sad
pity. One would joyfully barter the modern St. Augustine’s Cross that
stands hereby for such. This memorial, a very fine one, was set up
in 1884, on the supposed site of the landing, where an ancient oak
formerly stood. It rises eighteen feet and is elaborately sculptured on
the model of the famous crosses at Sandbach, Cheshire. Close at hand (a
very modern touch this) is “Ebbsfleet, Cliff’s End, and St. Augustine’s
Cross” railway station: which rather discounts the romance of the spot.
[Illustration: THANET AS AN ISLAND, SHOWING THE WANTSUM, FROM AN
ANCIENT MAP.]
The four miles onward to Sandwich are a dead level. In the dawn of
history, when Thanet was still an island, and when ships bound to and
from London sailed round the Wantsum channel, by Minster and Sarre,
the sea rolled where now this road runs. It is an impressive thought,
and renders this scenery more than a little romantic. As you proceed,
with the reedy dykes on the right, towards the red, clustered roofs
of Sandwich, ahead, there rise away across the marshes to the right
the grey, solitary walls of Richborough, the place that was once
the Roman port and fortress of _Rutupiæ_, guarding this entrance of
that ancient channel, just as _Regulbium_ kept watch and ward at the
other. The river Stour, which here flows in an extraordinary looped
course, prevents access to Richborough this way, and one must come
to it through Sandwich. No one, once arrived on that spot, can be
insensible to its peculiar charm; the hoary walls, still in places
some thirty feet high and ten feet eighteen inches thick, displaying
the Roman construction of rubble and stone, alternating with courses
of red brick. The walls form three sides of a square, the fourth side
originally giving upon the water in those days when the Roman vessels
anchored here at the quays. The area enclosed by these walls is ten
acres, now under corn. A singular puzzle for archæologists, who have
not yet explained the meaning of it, is the extraordinary subterranean
passage, discovered in 1866, which runs beneath this enclosed area and
is, in effect, a tunnel some five feet high, made of flints embedded in
concrete. It has a right-hand elbow and ends abruptly. There is usually
some one at hand with candle and matches, who is prepared, for a modest
consideration, to conduct the visitor along this passage. Above this,
in the centre of the station, is a concrete platform in the form of
a cross. This, also, is a prime enigma to the inquiring mind. Some
archæologists consider it to have been the base on which was built a
pharos, or lighthouse.
The mind of the contemplative visitor to this solitary spot dwells upon
the contrast between the busy Roman port of sixteen hundred years ago
and the remoteness of life from it now. Ivy of great age mantles the
walls, and wheat grows ripe to harvest in the great field that was once
a populous camp. All is changed, except the cliffs of Thanet, shining
whitely in the distance; and they, too, bear the burden of Ramsgate’s
sprawling streets, dimly made out against the skyline.
Hundreds of thousands of Roman coins have been dug up here, turned
up by the plough, or just picked up from the wet earth, after rain.
They were for the most part common copper _denarii_, but a great many
silver coins, and some gold, have been found, not a few among them of
great rarity. I have been fired by the story of these finds to seek
for myself. Even a _denarius_ would be something to have retrieved by
one’s own personal efforts from this site of an ancient civilisation.
But nothing rewarded half a day’s grubbing among the clods. ’Twas
ever thus--yesterday, to-morrow, some one else, not to-day--not to
ourselves. Oh the hard luck of it!