Kent, throws not a few curious lights upon the beliefs and manners of
the sixteenth century. She was born in or about the year 1506, and when
about nineteen years old was living in the service of Thomas Cobb, who
was steward to an estate of Archbishop Warham at Aldington, which lies
four miles south-east of Ashford, commanding an extensive prospect over
Romney Marsh. The living here, St Martin’s, was presented by Warham to
Erasmus in 1511, but he held it for only a few months.
She was afflicted with some form of nervous complaint, which exhibited
itself in the form of trances or fits; for days together she would lie
half conscious, giving vent to wondrous sayings, telling of events in
other places of which apparently she could have no knowledge, and
holding forth in marvellous words in the rebuke of sin. It can scarce be
wondered at that the ignorant and superstitious neighbours were amazed
and that they began to talk of her, some saying that she was inspired of
the Holy Spirit, others that a devil possessed her. Her master consulted
the village priest, Richard Masters, and together they watched the girl,
coming to the conclusion that it was a good and not an evil spirit that
was speaking through the mouth of the Maid. The affair was brought to
the notice of the archbishop by the priest, and a gracious message of
encouragement was sent to the girl. But as the months passed by her
illness left her, and she missed the notoriety which she had gained,
although she was still held in pious reverence by friends and
neighbours. She was unable to resist the temptation to feign a
continuance of her trances and inspired utterances.
Her renown spread abroad and Warham decided that the matter should be
inquired into, sending down two monks of Christ Church, Edward Bocking
and William Hadley. Bocking is believed to have been educated at
Canterbury College, Oxford, now Christ Church, and to have been warden
there. He left there for Christ Church, Canterbury, probably in 1526,
the fatal year in which he was despatched upon this mission of inquiry.
We know not what manner of man he was, save for these dealings of his
with the Maid; could we gain the details of his story, it would add
another and striking chapter to the history of villainy. He saw in
Elizabeth a tool, which would be useful to him if he could but temper
it. He instructed her in the Catholic legendary lore, and taught her to
argue with and to refute heretics. Strype includes Masters in the plot,
as thus: “And to serve himself of this woman and her fits, for his own
benefit, he, with one Dr Bocking, a monk of Canterbury, directed her to
say in one of her trances, that she should never be well till she
visited the image of Our Lady in a certain chapel in the said Masters’
parish, called the chapel in Court-at-Street; and that Our Lady had
appeared to her, and told her so; and that if she came on a certain day
thither, she should be restored to health by miracle. This story, and
the day of her resort unto the chapel, was studiously given out by the
said parson and monk; so that at the appointed day there met two
thousand persons to see this maid, and the miracle to be wrought on her.
Thither at the set time she came, and there, before them all, disfigured
herself, and pretended her ecstasies.... In her trance in this chapel
she gave out, that Our Lady bade her become a nun, and that Dr Bocking
should be her ghostly father.” Also the “spirit” moved her further: “It
spake also many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals,
hearing of masses and confessions, and many other such things.” “And one
Thwaites, a gentleman, wrote a great book of her feigned miracles, for a
copy to the printer, to be printed off,” which was called _A Miraculous
Work of late done at Court-of-Strete in Kent, published to the Devoute
People of this Tyme for their Spiritual Consolation_. Soon after this
exhibition she was admitted to the priory of St Sepulchre at Canterbury,
and became known as the Nun of Kent. She was wise enough to stifle
rivalry, for “there was one Hellen, a maid dwelling about Totnam, that
had visions and trances also. She came to this holy Maid and told her of
them. But she assured her (it may be because she had a mind to have the
sole glory of such visions herself) that hers were but delusions of the
Devil; and advised her from henceforth not to entertain them, but to
cast them out of her mind.” Other monks assisted Bocking in the
deception.
“Archbishop Warham having a roll of many sayings which she spake in her
pretended trances, some whereof were in very rude rhymes, sent them up
to the King; which, however revered by others, he made but light of, and
showed them to More, bidding him show his thoughts thereof. Which after
he had perused, he told the King, that in good faith (for that oath he
used) he found nothing in them that he could either esteem or regard:
for a simple woman, in his mind, of her own wit might have spoken them.”
Then, unfortunately for herself, Elizabeth embarked on the dangerous sea
of politics, especially unsafe in those days when the axe or the rope
put a stop to any unfavourable comment. As when the divorce of Catherine
came upon the tapis, and Elizabeth indulged herself in expressing such
opinions as these, embodied in a fantastic tale “of an angel that
appeared, and bade ‘her’ go unto the King, that infidel Prince of
England, and say, that I command him to amend his life; and that he
leave three things which he loveth, and purposeth upon; that is, that he
take off the Pope’s right and patrimony from him. The second, that he
destroy all these new folks of opinion, and the works of their _new
learning_. The third, that if he married and took Anne to wife, the
vengeance of God plague him.” But Henry was not moved, unless it was to
anger; Warham was convinced of the Maid’s holiness, and withdrew his
promise to marry Henry; further, he persuaded Wolsey to see her, with
exactly what result is not definitely known. She gained vast popularity
as Catherine’s champion, and many noble persons became her patrons. She
even went to the extreme length of forcing herself into the King’s
presence when he visited Canterbury. Anne did not die within a month of
her marriage, as the Maid had predicted, so she added to her offences by
declaring that Henry was before God no longer King. Cranmer, who had
succeeded Warham, ordered the Maid to be subjected to a strict
examination. Eventually, in September 1533, she confessed her fraud:
“she never had visions in all her life, but all that she ever said was
feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of those which
resorted to her, and to obtain worldly praise.” Her counsellors,
including Bocking, Hadley, Masters, and Thwaites, were committed to the
Tower, brought before the Star Chamber, and they too confessed. So the
plot exploded. A scaffold was erected near to Paul’s Cross, from which
the Nun and her chief aiders and abettors read their confessions; this
function was repeated at Canterbury in the churchyard of the monastery
of Holy Trinity. We need not here go into the political capital which
Cromwell made out of the intimacy of various enemies of the King with
the Maid.
On the 20th April 1534, the unhappy girl and others were done to death
at Tyburn; and these were her last words: “Hither I am come to die; and
I have not been only the cause of mine own death, which most justly I
have deserved, but also I am the cause of the death of all those
persons, which at this time here suffer. And yet, to say the truth, I am
not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known to these
learned men that I was a poor wench, without learning; and therefore
they might easily have perceived, that the things that were done by me
could not proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning
could right well judge from whence they proceeded, and that they were
altogether feigned: but because the thing which I feigned was profitable
to them, therefore they much praised me; and bore me in hand, that it
was the Holy Ghost, and not I, that did them; and then I, being puffed
up with their praises, fell into a certain pride and foolish fantasy
with myself, and thought I might feign what I would; which thing hath
brought me to this case; and for other which now I cry God and the
King’s highness most heartily mercy, and desire you all, good people, to
pray to God to have mercy on me, and on all them that here suffer with
me.”
There is tragedy lurking there, and light upon those days. But can we
laugh--we who are without superstition and too often without respect?
OTHER SHRINES
There is an old house outside the West Gate, built about 1563 on the
site of an hostel, where, when the city gates were shut of a night time,
belated pilgrims were wont to seek refreshment and rest. But as we stand
and look at the ancient gables, and think of those still more ancient
which these replaced, does any Canterbury Pilgrim come forth to greet
us? No; but we have “stopped before a very old house bulging out over
the road; a house with long, low lattice-windows bulging out still
farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so
that,” we fancied, “the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see
who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in
its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door,
ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a
star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if
they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners,
and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and
quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any
snow that ever fell upon the hills.”
We have never seen Uriah Heep peeping slyly out of those quaint little
windows, for somehow Uriah has never quite lived for us; but we have
seen Agnes there, to whom David eventually lost his heart--which has
always seemed to us an unwise proceeding, for men do not like taking a
permanent second place by marrying their
[Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY]
guardian angels; there have looked out at us old Mr Wickfield and young
David, Miss Betsy Trotwood and Mr Dick--all very much alive. Then it is
delightful on a frosty morning to see Doctor Strong bestowing his
gaiters “on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scandal in the
neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant from door to door, wrapped in
those garments, which were universally recognised, being as well known
in the vicinity as the Cathedral.” But who would wish to meet the Old
Soldier? And was it not Mr Micawber who came to “see the Cathedral.
Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing.... And secondly,
on account of the great probability of something turning up in a
cathedral town”? Then we may sit, if we list, with little David in the
Cathedral any Sunday morning, the sunless air, the sensation of the
world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the
black-and-white arched galleries and aisles affecting us as they did
him, being as wings that take us back to childish days.
A giant of a man meets us in these city streets, a long-legged,
white-haired, bespectacled man, one who signed a letter “W. M. T.,” in
which he wrote: “I passed an hour in the Cathedral, which seemed all
beautiful to me; the fifteenth century part, the thirteenth century
part, and the crypt above all, which they say is older than the
Conquest.... Fancy the church quite full; the altar lined with
pontifical gentlemen bobbing up and down; the dear little boys in white
and red flinging about the incense pots; the music roaring out from the
organs; all the monks and the clergy in their stalls, and the archbishop
on his throne--oh, how fine! And then think of the ✠ of our Lord
speaking quite simply to simple Syrian people, a child or two maybe at
his knees, as he taught them that love was the truth.” Thus spake
Thackeray the cynic.
In the days of Elizabeth--to be exact, in the year 1561, on May
22nd--John Marlowe was married to Catherine Arthur in the church of St
George the Martyr, the said John being a man of some standing and a
member later of the Guild of Shoemakers and Tanners. Then in the same
church, in the year 1564, on February 26th was christened Christopher,
the eldest son of the above. The boy when fourteen years of age won a
scholarship in the King’s School, of which the master then was Nicholas
Goldsborough. When Kit left the school we know not; he went to Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge; he went to London; he wrote _Faustus_,
_Tamburlaine the Great_, _The Rich Jew of Malta_, _Edward II._, _Hero
and Leander_; sang
“Come live with me and be my love.”
And there is a foolish monument to him, where once stood the
butter-market, outside Christ Church gate. Of the man’s manner and
appearance we know not anything; his works live, but the man is dead
even to our mind’s eye. Yet there are some of us who would rather meet
his shadow here than even those of Chaucer and of Dickens; perchance
because we know him not.
Canterbury is yet in many ways a mediæval city, despite railways and
electric lights. We can enter it by the fourteenth century West Gate,
built by Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, the one gateway mercifully spared
to us out of six; then we can walk down an old-world High Street,
overlooked by beetle-browed, gabled houses. Is not the King’s Bridge and
the old home of the Canterbury Weavers quaintly beautiful? This old
house dates back possibly to the fifteenth century, of course having
been pulled about more or less by rude restorers; at any rate it is old,
at any rate it is quaint. Stand thereby on a moonlit night, drink in
the picturesqueness of the dark masses of black shadow and reflection,
the bright masses of cold light; there is no corner more charming in
Nuremberg or Rothenberg; the sluggish waters of the many-branched Stour
flow beneath, and the air is tremulous with the chiming of bells from
many a steeple. The passers-by of to-day are not those whom we should
see, for we should bend our mind’s eye on monk, priest and pilgrim, on
knight, dame and squire, or king, queen and prince; it needs no vivid
imagination to call up these shades of the past. But above all and
through all the pageantry of old days looms the church; Canterbury is a
city of churches, of priories, monasteries, hospitals. There is St
Dunstan’s, where in the Roper vault they say is the head of Sir Thomas
More; St Alphege, with a curious epitaph referring to dancing in the
churchyard; St Margaret’s, where sleeps Somner, antiquary and loyalist;
St Peter’s, once used by a French congregation; and many another. The
Black Friars, the Grey Friars, the White Friars, all had houses in
Canterbury. On the banks of the river, hard by St Peter’s, the Black
Friars in the reign of Henry III. founded one of their first homes, and
now their ancient refectory is a Unitarian Baptist Chapel! Therein
Daniel Defoe was wont
[Illustration: THE CANTERBURY WEAVERS]
to preach. A portion of the house of the Grey Friars still stands on
arches above the waters of the river; but as we look on it of no friar
do we think, but of the gay cavalier, Richard Lovelace, gallant and
poet, who sang--
“When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crown’d,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free--
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.”
But he wrote other and more pleasing verses, though none more curious.
The Brethren of St Francis, the Franciscans or Grey Friars, came to this
country in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, and their first
habitation was this in Canterbury. They numbered but nine, these first
comers, of whom only one was a priest, a man of Norfolk, by name Richard
Ingworth. The monks of Christ Church were hospitable to them; they
acquired a small piece of land and built thereon a wooden chapel. But it
was felt to be incumbent on this begging fraternity not to become owners
of land, so the donors of this plot handed it over to the city to be
held for the friars. They did not, however, remain on their original
site, but moved in 1270 to a tiny island in the Stour called Bynnewith.
Henry Beale, mayor in 1478, was buried in their church. Then in bad time
came Henry VIII., and the brotherhood was turned out of house and home.
In the days of Good Queen Bess the house was in the possession of the
Lovelaces; so here dwelt Colonel Richard, cavalier and poet, who wrote
this immortal lyric:--
“Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.
“True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
“Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.”
Then there are the East Bridge Hospital, possibly founded by Becket for
“wayfaring and hurt men,” now an almshouse, and St John’s Hospital, with
its charming half-timber gateway, and others. And what should such a
city do without a castle? Yet the good citizens are content with a
neglected ruin, the remnants of a fortress first built in the twelfth
century, and full of historic memory. But castles have no living faith
to keep them whole and sound; they have no usefulness, and this is a
utilitarian age. Indeed, it is solely due to accident that any part of
the fine old keep remains, for in the early years of last century the
city fathers decided to utilise it as a quarry. But modern picks found
ancient cement too strong for them, and the undertaking, not proving
remunerative, was abandoned. It would have been a gross blunder to leave
Canterbury unfortified, standing as it did upon the most important coast
road in the kingdom. The keep was completed about 1125, and the castle
further strengthened by Henry II. At one period it was the principal
county prison. Here it stands amid the prosaic modernity of to-day, a
hoar and unhonoured relic of the wild past.
From this desecration we turn to the leafy walks that surround the Dane
John, that mysterious mound whose principal use has been to afford sport
for etymological antiquaries. Donjon, we are told it may be rightly; may
be also wrongly. Best had we mount the steps to the summit of the city
wall, hereabouts in a wonderfully good state of preservation, and walk
along it toward the cattle-market and so on to St Augustine’s College.
Here we touch fingers with pagan days, for on this spot, so it is
related, Ethelbert worshipped the gods of his fathers. To St Augustine
he gave this temple, though such a high-sounding name misfits what was
doubtless a modest erection, and it was consecrated as a Christian
church in the name of St Pancras. Between it and the city rose the
Benedictine monastery of St Peter and St Paul, afterward dedicated also
to Augustine himself and by his name thenceforth generally known. In
July 1538 came the downfall with the arrival of Henry VIII.’s
commissioners; there was a demonstration of resistance on the part of
the monks, but cannon provided a conclusive argument; and then the end,
the glory departed. Here were buried not only Augustine, but King
Ethelbert and many of the archbishops. The saint who came as an apostle
of Christianity to Kent founded this great monastery; now it is a
missionary college of the Church of England, whence preachers of
Christ’s teaching go forth to the ends of the earth. On the saint’s tomb
could once be read a brief epitome of the events of his stirring life:
“Here resteth the Lord Augustine, first
[Illustration: IN THE QUADRANGLE, ST AUGUSTINE’S COLLEGE, CANTERBURY]
Archbishop of Canterbury, who erewhile was sent hither by Blessed
Gregory, Bishop of the City of Rome, and being helped by God to work
miracles, drew over King Ethelbert and his race from the worship of
idols to the faith of Christ. Having ended in peace the days of his
ministry, he departed hence seven days before the Kalends of June in the
reign of the same king, A.D. 605.”
To King Ethelbert, a heathen, and to Bertha, his queen, a Christian,
came Augustine to preach the gospel; and Christian worship he found
carried on by Lindhard, the queen’s French chaplain, in a small chapel
standing outside the city walls, the present church of St Martin,
altered in aspect, but the “mother church of England.” Through the mists
of centuries we cannot clearly see; we know not how far well or ill
disposed toward Christianity the King may have been; at any rate, as he
permitted his queen to follow her creed, his disposition cannot have
been actively evil. The King met the band of missionaries in the Isle of
Thanet, promised not to molest them, and to give them all that was
needed for their support, with permission to make all the converts they
could. From the island Augustine and his comrades crossed to
Richborough, the old Roman fortress of Rutupiæ, and so on by the Roman
road toward Canterbury. On the slope of St Martin’s Hill the welcome
sight of a Christian place of worship met their eyes, light amid
darkness. As Augustine stood on the height, looking over the rude city
on the islands of the Stour, did any prophetic vision come to him? His
heart was doubtless high with hope, but he dared not have dreamed that
the future was to be so glorious as we know it to have been. Then came
the baptism of Ethelbert on Whitsunday in the year 597, in St Martin’s
Church, and as usual, even in later days, the example of a king soon set
a fashion. Of St Pancras’ Church we already know the story. Of the first
cathedral in Canterbury no stone remains. When the saint died he was
buried not far from the roadside, the Kent and Canterbury Hospital
occupying the ground where his bones rested--until they were translated
to the church of the monastery he had founded but had not lived to see
completed. It is told of a stern soldier that he desired to be buried by
the roadside, so that he might hear the tramp of the troops as they
marched by to war; is it too far-fetched to think of the missionary
Augustine lying asleep somewhere near by the college that has succeeded
to his monastery, comforted by the sound of voices that like his are to
preach the gospel to the heathen? Indeed, Canterbury is a city of great
memories.