THE CITY OF ST THOMAS
When a man, alone or in a company, entered Canterbury at last by the
long road from London, in the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth
century, he came into a city as famous as Jerusalem, as lovely as
anything even in England, and as certainly alive and in possession of a
soul as he was himself.
When a man comes into Canterbury to-day he comes into a dead city.
I say Canterbury is dead, for when the soul has departed from the body,
that is death. Canterbury has lost its soul.
Go into the Cathedral, it is like a tomb, but a tomb that has been
rifled, a whited sepulchre so void and cold that even the last trump
will make there no stir. It was once the altar, the shrine, and as it
were the mother of England, one of the tremendous places of Europe into
which every year flocked thousands upon thousands upon thousands of
men. The altar is thrown down, the shrine is gone and forgotten, in all
that vast church the martyred Saint who made it what it was is not so
much as remembered even in an inscription or a stone; and the
enthusiasm and devotion of centuries have given place to a silence so
icy that nothing can break it. The place is dead.
I remember very well the first time I came to Canterbury. I was a boy,
and full of enthusiasm for St Thomas, I would have knelt where he
fell, I would have prayed, yes with all my fathers, there where he was
laid at last on high above the altar. But there was nothing. I was
shown, as is the custom, all that the four centuries of ice have
preserved of the work of my forefathers; the glorious tombs of King
and Bishop, the storied glass of the thirteenth century, unique in
England, the litter and the footsteps of thirteen hundred years. I was
led up past the choir into that lofty and once famous place where for
centuries the greatest and holiest shrine in England stood. All about
were still grouped the tombs of Princes; Edward, the Black Prince, the
hero of Crecy, Henry IV., the usurper, Cardinal Chatillon; but of the
shrine itself, of the body it held up to love and honour and worship
there was nothing, no word even, no sign at all to tell that ever such
a thing had been, only an emptiness and a space and a silence that
could be felt.
Later I was led down into that north-west transept, once known as the
Martyrdom, where St Thomas laid down his life; and left alone there, I
remember I tried in all that dumbness and silence to recollect myself,
to pray, at least to recall, something of that great sacrifice which
had so moved Christendom that for centuries men flocked here to
worship--where now no man kneels any more for ever.
I remember very well how it came to me in that tingling and icy silence
that St Thomas died for the liberty of the Church, that here in England
she might not become the king's chattel or anyway at all the creature
of the civil power. I was too young to smile when I remembered that in
the very place where St Thomas laid down his life in that cause, there
sits to-day in his usurped place one who eagerly acknowledges the king
as the "Supreme Governor of the Church within these realms." Yet in my
heart I heard again those tremendous words, "Were all the swords of
England hanging over my head you could not terrify me from my obedience
to God and my Lord the Pope." They who slew him fled away, and their
title, shouted in the winter darkness that filled the church, was heard
above the thunder and has echoed down the ages since: Reaux! Reaux!
King's men! King's men! Is it not they who now sit in Becket's place?
But to-day I am content with a judgment less bitter and less logical.
Who may know what is in the heart of God? Perhaps after all, after this
age of ice, Canterbury will rise again and my little son even may hear
them singing in the streets, gay once more and alive with endless
processions that noble old song:
Laureata novo Thoma,
Sicut suo Petro Roma,
Gaude Cantuaria!
[Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM CHRISTCHURCH GATE]
For though St Thomas be forgot in Canterbury, he is on high and
valiant, and one day maybe he will return from exile as before, to
accomplish wonderful things.
And indeed dead as she is and silent, Canterbury is worthy of
resurrection if only because she is as it were a part of him and a
part, too, of our origins, the well, though not the source from which
the Faith was given us. For some thirteen hundred years when men have
spoken of Canterbury, they have had in mind the metropolitan church
of England, the great cathedral which still stands so finely there in
the rather gloomy close behind Christ Church gate, rightly upon the
foundations of its predecessors, Roman, Saxon, and Norman buildings.
Ever since there was a civilisation in England, there has been a
church in this place; it is our duty, then, as well as our pleasure to
approach it to-day with reverence.
Canterbury began as we began in the swamps and the forests, a little
lake village in the marshes of the Stour, holding the lowest ford, not
beyond the influence of the sea nor out of reach of fresh water. When
great Rome broke into England lost in mist, here certainly she
established a city that was as it were the focus of all the ports of
the Straits whence most easily a man might come into England from the
continent. Canterbury grew because she was almost equally near to the
ports we know as Lympne, Dover, Richborough and Reculvers, so that a
man setting out from the continent and doubtful in which port he would
land, wholly at the mercy of wind and tide as he was, would name
Canterbury to his correspondent in England as a place of meeting. Thus
Canterbury increased. There in the Roman times doubtless a church
arose which, doubtless, too, perished in the Diocletian persecution.
That it re-arose we know, for Venerable Bede describes it as still
existing when, nearly two hundred years after the departure of the
Roman legions, St Augustine came into England, sent by St Gregory to
make us Christians. He came, as we know, first into Kent to find
Canterbury the royal capital of King Ethelbert, and when, says Bede,
"an episcopal see had been given to Augustine in the king's own city
he _regained possession (re_cuperavit) with the king's help, _of a
church there which he was informed had been built in the city long
before by Roman believers_. This he consecrated in the name of the
Holy Saviour Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, and fixed there a home
for himself and all his successors." [Footnote: Bede, _Hist. Eccl._, I.
xxviii.] This church, rudely repaired, added to and rebuilt, stood
until Lanfranc's day, when it was pulled down and destroyed to make
way for the great Norman building out of which the church we have has
grown.
The little church which Lanfranc destroyed and which had seen so many
vicissitudes, was probably a work of the end of the fourth century, at
any rate in its foundations. Eadmer indeed who tells us all we know of
it says that it was built on the plan of St Peter's in Rome. "This
was that very church," he writes, "which had been built by Romans as
Bede witnesses in his history, and which was duly arranged in some
parts in imitation of the church of the blessed Prince of the Apostles,
Peter, in which his holy relics are exalted by the veneration of the
whole world." We shall never know much more than Eadmer tells us, for
if the foundations still exist they lie within the present church. It
is recorded, however, that in the time of St Elphege the church was
badly damaged by the Danes, the archbishop himself being martyred at
Greenwich. No doubt as often before, the church was patched up, only to
perish by fire in 1067, the year after the Battle of Hastings.
When Lanfranc then entered Canterbury, he found his Cathedral a mere
ruin, but with his usual energy, though already a man of sixty-five, he
set to work to re-establish not only his Cathedral but also the
monastery attached to it. He did this on a great scale, providing
accommodation for three times the number of monks that had served the
Cathedral in the decadent days of the Saxon monarchy, and when this was
done he first "destroyed utterly" the Romano-Saxon church and then "set
about erecting a more noble one, and in the space of seven years, 1070-
1077, he raised this from the foundations and brought it near to
perfection." That he worked in great haste and too quickly seems
certain. In fact it must be confessed that Lanfranc's church in
Canterbury was a more or less exact copy of his church of St Stephen at
Caen, but, built much more quickly, was too mean for its purpose. It
soon became necessary to rebuild the choir and sanctuary; the nave,
however, was allowed to stand until the end of the fourteenth century;
but even then its design so hampered the builders of the present nave,
for it had been decided to preserve one of Lanfranc's western towers,
that to this day the nave of Canterbury is too short, consisting of
but eight bays.
Lanfranc's choir was of but two bays and an apse. This was too
obviously inadequate to be tolerated by the monks. In 1096 it was
pulled down and a great apsidal choir of ten bays was built over a
lofty crypt, with a tower on either side the apse and an eastern
transept having four apsidal chapels in the eastern walls, two in the
north arm and two in the south. All this was done in the time of St
Anselm and finished in 1115, when Conrad was Prior of Christ Church.
It was this church with Lanfranc's short Norman nave, western façade
and towers, and Conrad's glorious great choir high up over the crypt,
a choir broader than the nave and longer too, and with two transepts,
the western of Lanfranc's time, the eastern of St Anselm's, that St
Thomas knew and that saw his martyrdom in 1170.
Materials for the life of St Thomas are so plentiful that his modern
biographers are able to compose a life fuller perhaps in detail and
fact than would be possible in the case of any other man of his time.
But no account ever written of his martyrdom is at once so simple and
so touching as that to be found in the Golden Legend. It was this
account which the man of the Middle Age knew by heart, and which
brought him in his thousands on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and
therefore I give it here.
"When the King of France had made accord between St Thomas and King
Henry, the Archbishop," Voragine tells us, "came home to Canterbury,
where he was received worshipfully, and sent for them that had
trespassed against him, and by the authority of the Pope's Bull openly
denounced them accursed, unto the time they came to amendment. And
when they heard this they came to him and would have made him assoil
them by force; and sent word over to the King how he had done, whereof
the King was much wroth and said: If he had men in his land that loved
him they would not suffer such a traitor in his land alive.
"And forthwith four knights took their counsel together and thought
they would do to the King a pleasure and emprised to slay St Thomas
and suddenly departed and took their shipping toward England. And when
the King knew of their departing he was sorry and sent after them,
but they were in the sea and departed ere the messenger came,
wherefore the King was heavy and sorry.
"These be the names of the four knights: Sir Reginald Fitzurse, Sir
Hugh de Morville, Sir William de Tracy and Sir Richard le Breton.
"On Christmas Day St Thomas made a sermon at Canterbury in his own
church and, weeping, prayed the people to pray for him, for he knew
well his time was nigh, and there executed the sentence on them that
were against the right of Holy Church. And that same day as the King
sat at meat all the bread that he handled waxed anon mouldy and hoar
that no man might eat of it, and the bread that they touched not was
fair and good for to eat.
"And these four knights aforesaid came to Canterbury on the Tuesday in
Christmas week, about evensong time and came to St Thomas and said that
the King commanded him to make amends for the wrongs he had done and
also that he should assoil all them that he had accursed anon or else
they should slay him. Then said Thomas: All that I ought to do by
right, that will I with a good will do, but as to the sentence that is
executed I may not undo, but that they will submit them to the
correction of Holy Church, for it was done by our holy father the Pope
and not by me. Then said Sir Reginald: But if thou assoil not the King
and all other standing in the curse it shall cost thee thy life. And St
Thomas said: Thou knowest well enough that the King and I were accorded
on Mary Magdalene day and that this curse should go forth on them that
had offended the Church.
"Then one of the knights smote him as he kneeled before the altar, on
the head. And one Sir Edward Grim, that was his crossier, put forth his
arm with the cross to bear off the stroke, and the stroke smote the
cross asunder and his arm almost off, wherefore he fled for fear and so
did all the monks that were that time at Compline. And then each smote
at him, that they smote off a great piece of the skull of his head,
that his brain fell on the pavement. And so they slew and martyred him,
and were so cruel that one of them brake the point of his sword against
the pavement. And thus this holy and blessed archbishop St Thomas
suffered death in his own church for the right of all Holy Church. And
when he was dead they stirred his brain, and after went in to his
chamber and took away his goods and his horse out of his stable, and
took away his Bulls and writings and delivered them to Sir Robert
Broke to bear into France to the King. And as they searched his
chambers they found in a chest two shirts of hair made full of great
knots, and then they said: Certainly he was a good man; and coming
down into the churchyard they began to dread and fear that the ground
would not have borne them, and were marvellously aghast, but they
supposed that the earth would have swallowed them all quick. And then
they knew that they had done amiss. And soon it was known all about,
how that he was martyred, and anon after they took his holy body and
unclothed him and found bishop's clothing above and the habit of a
monk under. And next his flesh he wore hard hair, full of knots, which
was his shirt, and his breech was of the same, and the knots sticked
fast within his skin, and all his body full of worms; he suffered
great pain. And he was thus martyred the year of Our Lord one thousand
one hundred and seventy-one, and was fifty-three years old. And soon
after tidings came to the King how he was slain, wherefore the King
took great sorrow, and sent to Rome for his absolution...."
Of the King's penance Voragine says nothing, but indeed it must have
reverberated through Europe, though not perhaps with so enormous a
rumour as the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV. before Pope Gregory
VII. at Canossa scarce a hundred years before had done. The first and
the most famous of Canterbury pilgrims came to St Dunstan's church upon
the Watling Street, outside the great West Gate of Canterbury, as we
may believe in July 1174. There he stripped him of his robes and,
barefoot in a woollen shirt, entered the city and walked barefoot
through the streets to the door of the Cathedral. There he knelt, and
being received into the great church, was led to the place of Martyrdom
where he knelt again and kissed the stones where St Thomas had fallen.
In the crypt where the body of the martyr was preserved, the King laid
aside his cloak and received five strokes with a rod from every Bishop
and Abbot there present, and three from every one of the eighty monks.
In that place he remained through the whole night fasting and weeping
to be absolved on the following day.
[Illustration: WEST GATE, CANTERBURY]
The martyrdom of St Thomas, the penance of the King, these world-
shaking and amazing events might in themselves, we may think, have
been enough to transform the church in which they took place, if as
was thought at the time, heaven itself had not intervened and
destroyed Conrad's glorious choir by fire. This disaster fell upon
the city and the country like a final judgment, less than two months
after the penance of the King in 1174, and within four years of St
Thomas's murder.
Something of the great masterpiece that then perished is left to us
especially without, and it is perhaps the most charming work remaining
in the city, the tower of St Anselm, for instance, and much of the
transept beside it.
For the rest the choir of Canterbury, as we know it, the choir began
in 1174 by William of Sens, is as French as its predecessor, but in
all else very different. In order perhaps to provide a great space for
the shrine of the newly canonised St Thomas of Canterbury, to whose
tomb already half Europe was flocking, the choir was built even longer
than its predecessor. The great space provided for the shrine in the
Trinity Chapel behind the choir and high altar opened on the east into
a circular chapel known, perhaps on account of the relic it held, as
Becket's Crown. Till 1220 when all was ready, the body of St Thomas lay
in an iron coffin in the crypt, and the great feast and day of
pilgrimage in his honour was the day of his martyrdom, December 29, so
incredibly honourable as being within the octave of the Nativity of Our
Lord. But in 1220 it was decided to translate the body from the crypt
to the new shrine in the Trinity Chapel in July, for the winter
pilgrimage was irksome. From that year a new feast was established, the
feast of the Translation of St Thomas upon July 7th, and thus in
England down to our own day, St Thomas has two feasts, that of his
Martyrdom on December 29, when still his relics are exposed in the
great Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, and in the little church of St
Thomas, the Catholic sanctuary in Canterbury, and that of his
Translation upon July 7th.
Of that first summer pilgrimage to the new shrine of St Thomas we have
very full accounts. It was the most glorious and the most extraordinary
assemblage that had perhaps ever been seen in England. The Archbishop
had given two years' notice of the event, and this had been circulated
not only in all England, but throughout Europe. "Orders had been issued
for maintenance to be provided for the vast multitude not only in the
city of Canterbury itself, but on the various roads by which the
pilgrims would approach. During the whole celebration along the whole
way from London to Canterbury, hay and provender were given to all who
asked, and at each gate of Canterbury in the four quarters of the city
and in the four licensed cellars, were placed tuns of wine to be
distributed gratis, and on the day of the festival, wine ran freely
through the gutters of the streets." In the presence of the young
Henry III., too young himself to bear a part, the coffin in which lay
the relics of St Thomas was borne on the shoulders of the Papal
Legate, the Archbishop Stephen Langton, the Grand Justiciary Hubert de
Burgh, and the Archbishop of Rheims, from the crypt up to the Trinity
Chapel in the presence of every Bishop and Abbot of England, of the
great officials of the kingdom and of the special ambassadors of every
state in Europe.
Of bishops and abbots, prior and parsons,
Of earls and of barons and of many knights thereto,
Of sergeants and of squires and of his husbandmen enow,
And of simple men eke of the land--so thick hither drew.
So was St Thomas vindicated and God avenged. And St Thomas reigned as
was thought for ever on high, in the new sanctuary of his Cathedral
Church.
I say he reigned on high. The choir and sanctuary of Canterbury had
even in St Anselm's time as we have seen, been high above the nave.
William of Sens designed the new choir, as high as the old, but very
nobly raised still higher, the great altar, and higher yet the Chapel
of the Trinity in which stood the shrine. St Thomas had an especial
devotion to the Holy Trinity. It was in a former Trinity Chapel that
he had said his first Mass, and whether on this account or another,
his devotion was such that it was he who first established that Feast,
till then merely the octave of Whitsunday. His shrine then was well
placed in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity.
In examining the church to-day one can well understand the beauty of
William of Sens' idea, and see, too, where, and perhaps understand
why, it really fails or at least comes short of perfection.
William of Sens trained in Latin traditions had, and rightly, little
respect, we may think, for the work of the past. He would have had all
new. But by 1174, unlike Anselm in 1096, and still more unlike
Lanfranc in 1070, he had in all probability a genuine English and
national prejudice to meet, an English dislike of destruction and an
English hatred of anything new.
It has been said that the failure of William of Sens' design was due
to the meanness of the monks of Christ Church. But meanness is not an
English failing; on the contrary, our great fault is the very
opposite, extravagance. It was surely not meanness and at such a time
and in such a cause that forced the monastery to deny William of Sens
the free hand he desired; it was prejudice and a fear, almost
barbaric; of destruction. The monks forced their builder to
accommodate the new choir to what remained of the old work. They
refused to sacrifice St Anselm's tower on the south or the tower of
St Andrew on the north, therefore the wide choir of Canterbury,
already wider than the nave and growing wider still as it went
eastward, had to be strangled between them, and to open again as well
as it could into the Trinity Chapel and the Corona. All that was old,
too, and that they loved they used; the old piers of the crypt were to
remain and still to support the pillars of the choir, which were thus,
no doubt to William's disgust, unequally placed so that here the
arches are pointed but there round. In many ways William must have
considered his employers barbarians, and in the true sense of that
much abused term, he was right. No man brought up in the Greek and
Latin traditions would have hesitated to destroy in order to build
anew. The English cannot do that; they patch and make do, and what
must be new they cannot love until it is old; their buildings are not
so much works of art as growths, and there is much to be said for
them. Only here at Canterbury their prejudice has been a misfortune.
Not even the most convinced Englishman can look upon the twisted and
constricted choir of Canterbury and rejoice.
William of Sens, however, hampered though he was, is responsible for
the work we see. It is true he died after some four years of work at
Canterbury, falling one day from a scaffold, but William the
Englishman who followed him only completed what was really already
finished. The design, the idea, and the genius of Canterbury choir are
French, spoiled by English prejudice, but undoubtedly French for all
that.
As it appeared when that great Transitional choir was finished,
Canterbury Cathedral remained till 1379. It is true that the north
wall of the cloister and the lovely doorway in the north-east corner
were built in the Early English time. It is equally true that the
lower part of the Chapter House and the screens north and south of the
choir and a glorious window in St Anselm's Chapel are Decorated work,
but the Cathedral itself knows nothing of the Early English or of the
Decorated styles. It stood till 1379 with a low and short Norman nave
and transept to the west, and a great Transitional choir and transept
to the east. In 1379 Lanfranc's nave and transept were destroyed.
It may be thought that at last a great and noble nave would be built
north of the Frenchman's choir. Not at all. Again the English prejudice
against destruction--a lack of intellectual daring in us perhaps--
prevented this. One of the western towers of Lanfranc was to remain,
and therefore the new nave though loftier than the old, was no longer,
and it remains a glory certainly without, but within a hopeless
disappointment saved from utter ineffectiveness only by the noble
height of the great choir above it. It remains without life or zest,
not an experiment but a task honestly and thoroughly done in the
Perpendicular style.
To the same period belong the great western screen of the choir, the
Chapel of St Michael and the Warrior's Chapel in the south transept,
the Lady Chapel in the north transept, the Chantry and the tomb of
Henry IV. in the Trinity Chapel, the Black Prince's Chantry and the
screens of the Lady Chapel in the Crypt, the upper part of the Chapter
House, now lost to us by restoration, and the south-west Tower.
There remained at the end of the fifteenth century but one thing
needed--the central Tower. This, as it happened, was to be the last
great Gothic work undertaken in this country, and in every way it is
one of the most impressive and successful. Begun in 1475 and finished
in 1503, the Angel Steeple is the last of Catholicism in England, and
I like to think of it towering as it does over that dead city, and the
low hills of Kent, over all that was once so sacred and is now
nothing, as a kind of beacon, a sign of hope until it shall ring the
Angelus again and once more the sons of St Benedict shall chant the
Mass of St Thomas before the shrine new made: _Gaudeamus omnes in
Domino, diem festum celebrantes, sub honore beati Thomae Martyris, de
cujus passione gaudent angeli et collaudant filium Dei_.
For the great shrine, which for so long had been the loftiest beacon
in England of the Christian Faith, was destroyed. It was the first
work of the last Henry to avenge his namesake, and having made another
Thomas martyr in the same cause, to wipe out for ever all memory of
the first who had steadfastly withstood his predecessor. It is strange
that the severed head of Blessed Thomas More should lie in the very
church whence Henry II. set forth to do penance for the murder of the
first Thomas.
We have no authentic record of the final catastrophe, such deeds are
usually done in darkness. All we really know is that in 1538 "the
bones, by command of the Lord (Thomas) Cromwell, were there and then
burnt ... the spoile of the shrine in golde and precious stones filled
two greate chests such as six or seven strong men could doe no more
than convey one of them out of the church." That the shrine was of
unsurpassed magnificence we have many witnesses. "The tomb of St Thomas
the Martyr," writes a Venetian traveller who had seen it, "surpasses
all belief. Notwithstanding its great size it is wholly covered with
plates of pure gold; yet the gold is scarce seen because it is covered
with various precious stones as sapphires, balasses, diamonds, rubies
and emeralds; and wherever the eye turns something more beautiful than
the rest is observed; nor in addition to these natural beauties is the
skill of art wanting, for in the midst of the gold are the most
beautiful sculptured gems, both small and large as well as such as are
in relief, as agates, onyxes, cornelians and cameos; and some cameos
are of such size that I am afraid to name it; but everything is far
surpassed by a ruby, not larger than a thumb-nail, which is fixed at
the right of the altar. The church is somewhat dark and particularly in
the spot where the shrine is placed, and when we went to see it the sun
was near setting and the weather cloudy; nevertheless I saw the ruby as
if I had it in my hand. They say it was given by a king of France."
To carry out the theft with impunity it was first of all necessary to
degrade the great national hero and saint and expose his memory to
ridicule. In November 1538 St Thomas was declared a traitor, every
representation of him was ordered to be destroyed, and his name was
erased from all service books, antiphones, collects and prayers under
pain of his Majesty's indignation, and imprisonment at his Grace's
pleasure. The saint indeed is said to have been cited to appear at
Westminster for treason, and there to have been tried and condemned.
That seems, too superstitiously insolent even for such a thing as
Henry. But we may believe Marillac, the French Ambassador, when he
tells us "St Thomas is declared a traitor _because_ his relics and
bones were adorned with gold and stones."
So perished the shrine and memory of St Thomas, and with it the
thousand year old religion of England to be replaced by one knows not
what.
With the destruction of religion went the destruction of the religious
houses. Of these the chief was the Benedictine monastery of Christ
Church which lay to the north of the Cathedral and whose monks from St
Augustine's time had always served it. Almost nothing remains of this,
save the Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the
Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior's
Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior's
lodging, the Porter's gate, the Norman staircase of the King's school
and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including
the remains of the Archbishop's Palace in Palace Street.
Not less venerable than the Benedictine House of Christ Church was the
other Benedictine monastery, also founded by St Augustine in honour of
SS. Peter and Paul, to which dedication St Dunstan added the name of
St Augustine himself. This stood outside the city to the east. It is
said to have been founded by St Augustine outside the walls with a
view to his own interment there since it was not the Roman custom, as
we know, to bury the dead within the walls of a city. So honourable a
place in the Order did this great house hold that we are told the
abbot of St Augustine's Canterbury sat next to the abbot of Monte
Cassino, the mother house, in the councils of the Order, and none but
the archbishop himself consecrated the abbot of St Augustine's, and
that in the Abbey Church. This also Henry stole away, seizing it for
his own use. But by 1844 what was left of the place had become a
brewery, and to-day there remains scarcely more than a great
fourteenth century gateway and hall, the work of Abbot Fyndon in 1300.
Of the church there is left a few fragments of walling, of St
Augustine's tomb, nothing whatsoever.
Less still remains to us of the smaller religious houses that abounded
in Canterbury. Of the Austin Canons, the Priory of St Gregory founded
by Lanfranc in 1084 near St John's Hospital, also a foundation of
Lanfranc, in Northgate Street, really nothing, a fragment of old
wall; of the Nunnery of St Sepulchre, a Benedictine house, nothing at
all. As for the Friars' houses scarcely more remains. Of the earliest,
the Dominican house, only the scantiest ruins of the convent, the
refectory, however, once in the hands of the Anabaptists, is now a
Unitarian chapel. Of the White Friars, nothing. Of the Franciscan
house, the charming thirteenth century ruin that stands over the river
to the south of St Peter's Street. That is all.
The Canterbury of St Thomas is no more, it perished with his shrine
and his religion. Even the hospital he is said to have founded, which
at any rate was dedicated in his honour, was suppressed by Edward VI.;
it is, however, still worth a visit, if only for the sake of the wall
painting recovered in 1879, in which we see the Martyrdom, and the
penance of the King.
But in Canterbury to-day St Thomas is really a stranger, no relic,
scarcely a remembrance of him remains; yet he was the soul of the
city, he is named in the calendar of his Church St Thomas of
Canterbury.
No relic do I say? I am wrong. Let all the pilgrims of the past come
in at the four gates in their thousands and their thousands; let the
great processions form as though this were a year of jubilee, they
shall not be disappointed. Yet it is not to the Cathedral they shall
go, but to an ugly little church (alas!), in a back street, where over
the last altar upon the Epistle side there is a shrine and in the
shrine a relic--the Soutan of St Thomas. The place is humble and meek
enough to escape the notice of all but the pilgrims who sought and
seek Canterbury only for St Thomas.
Musing there in the late spring sunshine, for the church is open and
quiet, and within there is always a Guest, I fell asleep; and in my
sleep that Guest came to me and I spoke with Him. It seemed to me that
I was walking in early morning--all in the England of my heart--across
meadows through which flowed a clear translucent stream, and the
meadows were a mass of flowers, narcissus, jonquil, violet, for it was
spring. And beyond the meadows was a fair wood all newly dressed, and
out of the wood there came towards me a man, and I knew it was the
Lord Christ. And I went on to meet Him. And when I was come to Him I
said: "I shall never understand what You mean ... I shall never
understand what You mean. For You say the meek shall inherit the
earth.... I shall never understand what You mean."
And He looked at me and smiled, and stretching forth His hands and
looking all about He answered: "But I spoke of the flowers."