THE PILGRIMS' ROAD
ROCHESTER TO FAVERSHAM
The old road leaves Rochester to pass through Chatham, and is by no
means delightful until it has left what Camden called "the best
appointed arsenal the world ever saw." Chatham, indeed, is little else
but a huge dockyard and a long and dirty street, once the Pilgrim's
Way. There is, however, very little to detain us; only the Chapel of
St Bartholomew to the south of the High Street is worth a visit for
Bishop Gundulph's sake, for he founded it. Even here, however, only
the eastern end is ancient. The parish church of Our Lady was for the
most part rebuilt in 1788, but it still keeps a good Norman door to
the south of the nave. It was here that Our Lady had in Chaucer's day
a very famous shrine concerning which the following rather gruesome
legend is told. The body of a man, no doubt a criminal or suicide,
having been cast upon the beach in this parish, was buried here in
the churchyard. Our Lady of Chatham, however, was offended thereby,
and by night went Herself to the house of the clerk and awakened him.
And when he would all trembling know wherefor She was come. She
answered that near to Her shrine an unshriven and sinful person had
been laid, which thing offended Her, for he did naught but grin in
ghastly fashion. Therefore unless he were removed She Herself must
withdraw from that place. The Clerk arose hurriedly we may be sure,
and, going with Our Lady along towards the church, it happened that
She grew weary and rested in a bush or tree by the wayside, and ever
after this bush was green all the winter through. But the Clerk, going
on, dug up the body and flung it back into the water from which it
had so lately been drawn.
Now, as to this story, all I have to say of it is that I do not
believe a word of it. Not because I am blinded by any sentimentalism
of to-day, which, as in a child's story, brings all right for everyone
in the end; but for this very cogent reason that of all created beings
Our Lady is the most merciful, loving and tender--Refugium
Peccatorum.
Also I know a better story. For it is said that one day Our Lord was
walking with Sampietro in Paradise, as the Padrone may do with his
Fattore, when after a while He said, not as complaining exactly but
as stating a fact, "Sampietro, this place is going down!"
Here Sampietro, who is always impetuous and knew very well what He
meant, dared to interrupt, "Il Santissimo can't blame me," said he
huffily. "Il Santissimo does not suppose they all come in by the gate?
_Che Che!_"
"Not come in by the gate, Sampietro. What do you mean?" said Our Lord.
"If Il Santissimo will but step this way, round by these bushes," said
Sampietro, "He shall see." And there sure enough He saw; for there was
Our Lady drawing us all up helter-skelter, pell-mell, willy-nilly into
Heaven in a great bucket, to our great gain and undeserved good. O
clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.
The road between Chatham and Sittingbourne might seem to be
unquestionably that by which the pilgrims rode, and as certainly the
Roman highway. It is, however, rather barren of mediaeval interest,
little being left to us older than the change of religion. At Rainham
we have a church, however, dedicated in honour of St Margaret, parts
of which date from the thirteenth century, though in the main it is a
Perpendicular building. Within are two ornaments of the late
seventeenth century, and two brasses, one to William Bloor, who died
in 1529, and the other to John Norden, who died in 1580, and to his
four wives. As for William Bloor, there is a local story of some
relation of his, Christopher Bloor by name, and of a nightly journey
on a coach driven by a headless coachman beside whom sits a headless
footman, and all drawn by headless horses, Christopher himself sitting
within, his head in his hands. So much I heard, but I could not find
out what it portended or referred to.
But it is not till we come into Newington that we find any sign or
memory of St Thomas or the Pilgrimage. This village, however, became
famous as a station for the pilgrims, because on his last journey from
London to Canterbury, the great Archbishop here administered the rite
of Confirmation. A cross was erected to commemorate this event, and
there the pilgrims knelt to pray. But Newington in St Thomas's day was
better known on account of a great scandal involving the name of the
convent there. This convent was held of the king, of his manor of
Middleton. We read that divers of the nuns, "being warped with a
malicious desire of revenge, took advantage of the night and strangled
the lady abbess, who was the object of their fury and passionate
animosities, in her bed; and after, to conceal so execrable an
assassination, threw her body into a pit, which afterwards contracted
the traditional appellation of Nun-pit." [Footnote: Philipotts,
"Villare Cantianum," quoted by Littlehales, _op. cit._ p. 27.] Now
whether this tale be true or an invention to explain the queer name
"Nun-pit" we shall never know, but as it happens we do know that the
nuns were removed to the Isle of Sheppey and that St Thomas persuaded
King Henry II. to establish at Newington a small house of seven
secular canons to whom was given the whole manor. But curiously
enough, one of these canons was presently found murdered at the hands
of four of his brethren. Exactly where this convent was situated
would seem to be doubtful. What evidence there is points to Nunfield
Farm at Chesley, about a mile to the south of the high road.
Newington itself in its cherry-orchards is a pretty place enough to-
day, with an interesting, if restored, church of Our Lady in part of
the thirteenth, but mainly of the fourteenth century. It is a fine
building with charming carved details and at least four brasses, one of
the end of the fifteenth century (1488) to William Monde, two of the
sixteenth century (1510 and 1581) and one of the year 1600. There is
nothing, however, in the place to delay anyone for long, and the
modern pilgrim will soon find himself once more on the great road.
On coming out of Newington such an one will find himself in about a
mile at Key Street, where is the Fourwent Way, in other words the
cross roads, where the highway from the Isle of Sheppey to Maidstone
crosses the Pilgrims Way. Here of old stood a chapel of St
Christopher or another, at which the pilgrims prayed, and remembering
this, I too, at the cross roads, though there was no chapel, prayed in
the words of the prayer which begins:
St Christopher who bore Our Lord
Across the flood--O precious Load....
So I prayed, "er I come to Sidingborne," as Chaucer says.
The author of "Sittingbourne in the Middle Ages" tells us that,
"Mediaeval Sittingbourne consisted of three distinct portions. The
chief centre of population was near the church, but there was an
important little hamlet called Schamel at the western extremity of the
parish on the London Road ... as any traveller from London approached
Sittingbourne in the Middle Ages, the first thing to attract his
attention was a chapel and hermitage standing on the south side of the
road, about three parts of the way up that little hill which rises
from Waterlanehead towards the east; this was Schamel Hermitage and
the Chapel of St Thomas Becket, to which were attached houses for the
shelter of pilgrims and travellers. A small Inn called "The
Volunteers" now stands upon or close to the site of this ancient
chapel and this hermitage." The chapel and hermitage it seems were
first built at Schamel in the time of King John, when they were
occupied by a priest named Samuel. He said Mass daily in the chapel
and gave such accommodation as he had to wayfarers, by whose alms he
lived. After his death the chapel fell into disrepair, but in the time
of Henry III. it was rebuilt on a larger scale. A hermit named
Silvester, of the "Order of St Austin," was appointed to the house
which had now attached to it four lodgings for pilgrims on the road to
Canterbury. But on Silvester's death it was realised that the chapel
interfered so much with the parish church that before the end of the
thirteenth century it was suppressed. It re-arose, and in Chaucer's
day would seem to have been in a flourishing condition; at any rate it
continued till the spoliation.
If indeed Chaucer and his pilgrims slept in Sittingbourne, as one may
well believe, it is probable that they slept either at this chapel at
Schamel or at the Lion Inn in the town. This Inn was certainly in
existence in his time, and there in 1415 King Henry V. was entertained
on his return from Agincourt by the Squire of Milton. There, too, in
all likelihood, Cardinal Wolsey rested in the autumn of 1514, and
there Henry VIII., who spoiled the face of England and changed her
heart, "paied the wife of the Lyon in Sittingbourne by way of rewarde
iiiis. viiid." for the accommodation given. This famous Inn stands in
the centre of the town, the road passing to the south of it. Unhappily
the church is less interesting, having been almost entirely rebuilt in
1762; but close by it were some old houses which apparently once
formed part of another old Inn called the White Hart. Certainly much
of the town must have been devoted to the entertainment of travellers.
From Sittingbourne I wandered out to Borden, lovely in itself and in
its situation upon the rising ground under the North Downs. It
possesses a very fine church with a low Norman tower and western door
of the same date. Within is a very nobly carved Norman arch under the
belfry.
If Schamel was, as it were, the western part of Sittingbourne with its
chapel and hermitage, Swanstree was the eastern part, and it, too, had
its chapel of St Cross and its hospital of St Leonard. There is,
however, this difference, that, whereas the priest and people of
Sittingbourne did all they could to suppress the chapel and hermitage
of Schamel, they on the contrary did all they could to encourage the
chapel and hospital of Swanstree. Why? Because pilgrims coming from
London or the north with full pockets towards Canterbury, would reach
Schamel _before_ passing through Sittingbourne, but Swanstree only
_after_ passing through the town!
Following the Pilgrim's Road out of Sittingbourne one soon comes to
Bapchild, where at the exit from the village on the north side of the
road of old stood an oratory, and a Leper's Hospital, of which nothing
seems really to be known save that it was founded about the year 1200.
According to Canon Scott-Robertson, it was dedicated in honour of St
James, which is a curious dedication for a Leper House, but common
enough in a Hospital for pilgrims. Oratory and Hospital have alike
disappeared, but close by the place where they stood there still
remains St Thomas's Well, now known as Spring Head or Spring.
So I went on through Radfield, where of old was a wayside chapel, and
Green Street to the Inn at Ospringe, passing, half a mile away to the
north, Stone Farm, and, nearer the road, the ruins of Stone Chapel,
another of those little wayside oratories still so common in Italy
and France but which nowadays in England we lack altogether.
Ospringe itself is an interesting place. To begin with, the very
ancient inn by the roadside, together with the equally old house
opposite were once, according to Hasted, the historian of Kent, a
Hospital founded by Henry II., for the benefit especially of pilgrims.
This hospital, he tells us, "was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and
was under the management of a master, three brethren and two clerks
existed till the time of Edward IV." Henry VIII., having seized by
force all such property as this in England, gave this Hospital to St
John's College in Cambridge, which still owns it to the loss of us poor
travellers. No doubt what money comes to the college from this poor
place goes to the support and bolstering up of the Great Tudor Myth
upon the general acceptance of which most of the vested interests in
England largely depend. But let us poor men lift up our hearts. The
Great Tudor Myth is passing, and every day it is becoming more evident
that it can be supported very little longer. Let us determine,
however, that we will not be taken in again, and under the pretence of
a reformation of religion fix upon our necks a new political despotism
worse than the Whig and Protestant aristocracy that the sixteenth
century brought into being, to the irreparable damage of the Crown
and the unspeakable loss of us the commonalty. May St Thomas avert an
evil only too likely to befall us. As for Ospringe, however, it was
after all in some sort royal property, the Crown having anciently a
Camera Regis there for the King's use when he was on his way to
Canterbury or to France.
At Ospringe I left the great road to visit Davington and to sleep at
Faversham. The long spring day was already drawing in when I came into
Davington, as delightful and charming a little place as is to be found
anywhere along the great road. Upon a hill-top there perhaps the
Romans had a temple or a villa, at any rate they called the place
Durolevum, and so it stands in the Antonine _Itinerary_. There is
evidence, too, that the site was not abandoned when with the failure
of their administration and the final departure of the Legions, there
went down the long roads, our youth and hope. Where the present church
stands, in part a Norman building, there was probably a Saxon Chapel.
Then in 1153 came Fulke de Newenham and founded here and built a
Benedictine nunnery in honour of St Mary Magdalen. That the house was
never richly endowed nor large at all, we may know from that name it
had--the house of the poor nuns of Davington. We know, however, very
little about them or it, but its poverty did not save it of course at
the dissolution. The Priory was then turned into a manor house, and
this in part remains so that we find there a part of the cloisters of
the time of Edward I., and other remains of Edward III.'s time. Then
in Elizabeth's day the house seems to have been practically rebuilt.
As for the little church, it owes all it is to-day to its late owner
and historian, Mr Willement, and though it is not in itself of very
great interest it serves as a memorial of his enthusiasm and love.
Davington is less than a mile out of the town of Faversham, and
therefore it was not quite dark when I made my way into that famous
place. Faversham must always have been an important place from its
position with regard to the great road. We have seen how the source
of the greatness of Rochester lay in its position upon the Watling
Street where that great highway crossed the Medway. Faversham has half
Rochester's fortune, for it stands where the road touches an arm or
creek of the Swale, that important navigable waterway, an arm of the
sea which separates Sheppey from the mainland.
The Swale there served the road and made of Faversham a port, but the
road did not cross it and therefore the Swale, unlike the Medway, was
never an obstacle or a defence. Thus Faversham never became a great
fortress like Rochester; it was a port, and as it happened a Royal
Villa, where so long ago as 930 Athelstan held his witan. Its fate,
however, after the Conquest, was to be more glorious. In 1147 Stephen
and his wife, Matilda, founded an abbey of Benedictine monks here at
Faversham in honour of Our Lord, and known as St Saviours, upon land
she had obtained from William of Ypres, Stephen's favourite captain,
in exchange for her manor of Littlechurch in this county. At the end
of April 1152 she fell sick at Hedingham Castle in Essex, and dying
there three days later, was buried in the abbey church at Faversham.
In August of the following year her eldest son, Eustace, was laid
beside her, and in 1154 Stephen, the King, was also buried here. The
abbey was, as I have said, dedicated to Our Saviour, and this because
it possessed a famous relic of the True Cross which had been the gift
of Eustace of Boulogne; the abbey was thus founded "In worship of the
Croys," and one might have expected some such dedication as "Holy
Cross." As founder, the King, for he and his Queen had been equally
concerned in the foundation, claimed after the death of the abbot
certain toll such as the abbot's ring, drinking cup, horse and hound.
The abbot was a very great noble, held his house "in chief" and sat in
Parliament. At the Suppression Henry VIII. granted the place to Sir
Thomas Cheynay. Now mark the almost inevitable end. The Cheynays were
living on Church property obtained by theft; at the least they were
receivers of stolen goods. Do you think they could endure? They
presently sold to a certain Thomas Arden, sometime Mayor of
Faversham. Upon Sunday, 15 February 1551, this man was foully murdered
in the abbey house he called his own, by a certain Thomas Mosby, a
London tailor, the lover of Alice Arden, Thomas Arden's wife. This
tragic affair so touched the imagination of the time that not only
did Holinshed relate it in detail, but some unknown writer who, by not
a few, has been taken for Shakespeare himself, used the story as the
plot for a play. Arden of Faversham, according to the dramatist, was a
noble character, modest, forgiving, and affectionate. His wife Alecia
in her sleep by chance reveals to him her adulterous love for Mosby;
but Arden forgives her on her promising never again to see her
seducer. From that moment she plots with her lover to murder her
husband, and succeeds at last, after many failures, by killing him in
the abbey house by the hands of two hired assassins, while he is
playing a game of draughts with Mosby. All concerned in the affair
were brought to justice, but the abbey of Faversham was no longer
coveted as a place of abode.
Almost every stone has disappeared of the abbey church in which lay
Stephen, his Queen, and their son. It stood on the northern side of
the town, where indeed the Abbey Farm still remains. It is to the
parish church of Our Lady of Charity that we must turn for any memory
of the conventual house where many a pilgrim must often have knelt to
venerate the relic of the Holy Cross.
The great church which remains to us is said to have been used by the
monks, and if not part of the abbey itself which would seem to have
stood at some distance from it, more than one thing that remains in it
would seem to endorse such a theory. To begin with, the church is
very spacious, and cruciform in plan, though the tower is at the west
end. This, however, is a very ugly affair, dating from 1797. In the
main the great church, which has been tampered with at very various
times, if not rebuilt, must have been Early English in style. As we
see it we have a building divided into three aisles, in nave, chancel
and transepts. The nave as it is at present may be neglected, but in
the north transept we have a curious hagioscope or other opening in
the shape of a cross and there used to be some remains of paintings;
the Nativity, the Virgin and Child, the Gloria in Excelsis, the
Crucifixion and the holy women at the Sepulchre of Our Lord. In the
chancel were other remains of paintings. There still remain the very
noble stalls which seem to assure us of the monastic use of the
church, and a fine altar tomb of the fifteenth century; this on the
north side. On the south are very fine sedilia and piscina. Close by
is a brass to William Thanbury, the vicar here, dating from 1448. The
inscription considering the use of the church to-day, is pathetic; for
there we read CREDO IN SANCT. ECCLES. CATH., a pleasing misreading of
the true text which every one, though for different reasons, will
rejoice to read.
We are told by local tradition or gossip that the tomb at the end of
the south aisle is that of King Stephen. This, however, could only be
true if this were indeed the church of the monastery. The tomb is
Decorated in style and has a canopy, but is without inscription.
Our Lady of Charity was, however, chiefly famous for its chapel of St
Thomas of Canterbury on the north side of the chancel, and for its
altars of SS. Crispin and Crispian and of St Erasmus. Many pilgrims
turned aside from the road to visit Faversham which was not a station
on the pilgrimage, for the sake of these shrines and altars and
especially to pray in the chapel of St Thomas.
It is said, indeed, that "no one died who had anything to leave
without giving something to St Erasmus light." As for SS. Crispin and
Crispian they were the patrons of the town and leapt into great fame
after the victory of Agincourt upon their feast day, October 25, when
the King had invoked them upon the field.
This day is called the feast of Crispian;
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we on it shall be remembered.
The two saints, Crispin and Crispian, are not less famous in France
than in England. They were indeed Rome's missionaries in Gaul about
the middle of the third century. They seem to have settled at
Soissons, where now a great church stands in their honour. There they
practiced the craft of cobblers and of all cobblers they are the
patrons. After some years the Emperor Maximian Hercules coming into
Gaul, a complaint concerning them was brought to him. They were tried
by that most inhuman judge Rictius Varno, the Governor, whom,
however, they contrived to escape by fleeing to England and to
Faversham, where, as some say they lived, but as others assert they
were shipwrecked. For us at any rate their names are secure from
oblivion, not so much by reason of the famous victory won upon their
day as because Shakespeare has gloriously recorded their names with
those familiar in our mouths as household words:
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick, and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester....