The Dover Road Part 13

"Naw, I don't hexpeck nothin'."

"Then why do you grow it?"

"Bekause I suppose I'm a fool; that's about the size of it. Good day t'ye, mister."

x.x.xI

The history of Faversham town is extremely long and interesting, but as it does not lie on the direct road to Dover, it will not be necessary to go into a very detailed account of it. It is a curious, half-maritime borough whose Mayor wears a chain of office decorated with badges of oars and rudders; a town whose records include such events as the burial of King Stephen, his Queen, and his son Eustace; and at a very much later date, the attempted escape of James the Second. Faversham fishermen recognized the fugitive King as he crouched, shivering in the hoy at Sh.e.l.lness on that bitter December morning of 1688, and, robbing him of his watch and chain and his money, they brought him a prisoner to the Mayor's house, where he was detained two days, guarded by a mob of countrymen, on whom his terror-stricken appeals to be allowed to escape had no effect.

[Sidenote: FAVERSHAM]

"He who is not with me is against me," exclaimed the frantic bigot. "My blood will be upon your heads if I fall a martyr." But the dignity of a martyr was not to be his. A troop of Life-guards was sent to effect his release from the ignorant mob, who only refrained from stealing his diamond shoe-buckles because they thought them to be pieces of gla.s.s.

James's terror of the Faversham fishers is reflected in his manifesto issued years afterwards, in which he offers an amnesty to his "rebel subjects," but expressly excepts such arch-traitors as Churchill, Danby, and the poor oyster-dredgers of Faversham.

Saints Crispin and Crispia.n.u.s, who have a public-house dedicated to them at Strood, had an altar here in the Abbey Church, and were supposed to have lived a while at Preston, earning their living as cobblers in a cottage that stood where the "Swan" inn is now. Long after the Reformation had done sway with the shrine of Saint Thomas, pious bootmakers made pilgrimages to the place; and St. Crispin's Day was for centuries the princ.i.p.al holiday in Faversham. I would rather make pilgrimage to the place where they earned their living than to the shrines of all the sanctified humbugs who contended for pride of place in this world, and becoming worsted in the struggle for supremacy, received their Canonization as a matter of course.

Faversham in the fifteenth century was not less well-furnished with religious cranks than the holy road to Canterbury. There was an anchorite in one corner of Faversham churchyard, and an anch.o.r.ess in another, and in their cells they sat and sulked their lives away, and never did any work.

William Thornbury was rector here for twenty-two years, when he resigned his living especially to become an _inclusus_; and for eight years he occupied a damp and most uncomfortable cell amid the tombs, until he died, most likely of rheumatic fever, in 1481. There is a most beautiful bra.s.s to him in the church, with a long Latin verse, recounting how he was one of the elect, and how for long years he sat lonely in his cell. Why he should have lived such a life is a question which we, who are so far removed from that age, both by lapse of time and in change of thought, cannot readily answer. That he was a man of good birth, good position, and considerable wealth, would appear from his will, and these circ.u.mstances make his reclusion only the more extraordinary. He probably suffered either from religious mania, or else from a guilty conscience which led him thus to compound with Heaven for some undiscovered crime that made his life a misery.

But the traveller who keeps strictly to his Dover Road only pa.s.ses through Faversham suburbs. Preston is the oldest of them, and lies directly on the road. To the left rises Faversham's fantastic spire, conspicuous above the flats; immediately in front goes the railway in a cutting underneath the road; and straight ahead, in the far distance, rises up a long thin white line amid hillsides clothed heavily with forests. It is long before the stranger discovers what is that singular white streak upon the dark trees, but it reveals itself, as he goes, as the famous Boughton Hill, and the woodlands as the extensive remains of Blean Forest.

It was at "Boughton-under-the-Blee" that Chaucer's Canon and Yeoman overtook the pilgrims. The Canon's hat hung down his back by a lace, for he had ridden as though he were mad. Under his hood he had placed a burdock-leaf to cool his head, but yet his forehead dropped like a still that was full of plantain and wallflower. The Canon's Yeoman tells the pilgrims how pleased his master would be of their company as far as Canterbury; and the Host makes him welcome, asking if his master can please the party with a merry story. "A story?" asks the Yeoman; "that is nothing to what the Canon can do. He is an Alchemist, and so clever that--

"all this ground on which we be riding, Till that we come to Canterbury town, He could all cleane turnen up so down, And pave it all of silver and of gold."

"Ah!" says Harry Bailly, the Host, "that's all very well, you know, but how is it that this wonderful master of yours wears such a threadbare coat?" To this query, the Yeoman is bound to answer that his master is too clever by half, or not clever enough, and that he has, for all his alchemy, only wasted his substance and that of many more. The Canon hears something of this, and bidding his servant hold his tongue, makes off for very shame, while the Yeoman tells the story that brings the party to Harbledown.

x.x.xII

[Sidenote: BOUGHTON]

Boughton-under-Blean is perhaps the neatest, quietest, longest, and most cheerfully picturesque village on the Dover Road. It lies near the foot of the hill. Half-way up is the church.

In the churchyard of Boughton there is a great yew-tree whose girth at three feet from the ground was taken by the vicar in 1894. It was then 9 ft. 9 in. The age of this tree is exactly known, for a seventeenth century vicar, the Reverend John Johnson, recorded, "the little yew-tree by the south doer was sett in 1695." The yew, therefore, expands one foot in sixty-one years.

One or two country houses with large gardens and trimly cut hedges occupy the crest of the hill; and just beyond, on the level plateau of Dunkirk, is the church, built in 1840, as some means toward civilizing the untutored savages the villagers of this beautiful county had become under the neglect of that Christian Church whose Metropolitan Cathedral rises proudly beyond the hillside village of Harbledown, less than three miles away. G.o.d in His goodness has blessed with a boundless fertility the fair land of Kent, so that old Michael Drayton merely expressed facts when he wrote that rapturous eulogy--

O famous Kent!

What county hath this isle that can compare with thee?

That hath within thyself as much as thou canst wish; Thy rabbits, venison, fruits, thy sorts of fowl and fish; As what with strength compares, thy hay, thy corn, Nor anything doth want that anywhere is good.

But, long after the first quarter of the nineteenth century had pa.s.sed, this part of Kent was peopled with a peasantry compared with whom the Hindoos and the Chinese, who were even then receiving the warm attention of missionary zealots, were highly civilized and enlightened. The very county in which Augustine had landed and reintroduced Christianity thirteen hundred years before was neglected and ignored by the port-drinking parsons and prebendal wine-b.u.t.ts who drew fat incomes from the Church and starved the souls of dwellers under its very shadow; and the kindly fruits of this fertile land, with its furred and feathered game, brought no prosperity to the people. "The earth is the Squire's and the fulness thereof" was an emendation of Holy Writ scored deeply in every yokel's brain; and here, whither a fervent piety had brought uncounted thousands of pilgrims in the by-past centuries, the country-folk lived from youth to age, G.o.dless and unlettered. The Era of Reform had dawned on England, sweeping away much, both good and evil, but these dark districts of Kent remained the same, save for a slowly growing feeling of discontent. The New Poor Law naturally fostered this feeling in a country where every other peasant lived in old age upon Outdoor Relief--and thought it the most reasonable way of ending a life of toil. By this new dispensation it became necessary for a poor man to break up his home and go into the "Union" before relief could be afforded him; and thus the Poors' Rates were raised and the feelings of ratepayers and peasantry embittered simultaneously. A man who felt no shame in receiving his half-crown or five shillings a week from the parish, experienced bitter degradation in becoming an inmate of what is now generally known as "the House," then hateful under the current name of "the Bastille," or "Bastyle," as the English peasant p.r.o.nounced the word.

[Sidenote: "COURTENAY"]

To this neglected corner of England came a romantic and mysterious stranger in 1832. No one knew whence or how had come to Canterbury the picturesquely dressed man of commanding height and handsome face who, staying at the "Rose Hotel" in the High Street, soon attracted attention by his manner and the Eastern style of dress he affected. That he was fabulously rich, and that his name was Baron Rothschild were the common reports of the then somewhat dull Cathedral city, eager to dwell upon any subject that made for gossip; but it presently appeared, by his own accounts, that he was "Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay," Knight of Malta and King of Jerusalem. This extraordinary man, besides possessing the advantages of a handsome face and a fine presence, was gifted with a singularly persuasive eloquence; and professing himself to be the friend of the people, oppressed by a selfish aristocracy and a stupid Government, he aroused the wildest enthusiasm in a political campaign upon which he presently embarked, with the object of standing as Parliamentary candidate for the City of Canterbury. His charm of manner; the affability with which he would converse with the meanest peasant; and the really clever political discourses he wrote for a periodical leaflet called the _Lion_ which he had printed and published, created a number of partisans who flocked round him as he rode through Canterbury and the surrounding villages; or crowded the High Street in a state of the wildest enthusiasm when he harangued them from the balcony of the "Rose." He polled over nine hundred votes in the Conservative interest at the election, and thus came within an easy distance of becoming a member of Parliament. His indiscreet championship of some fishermen, who were being prosecuted by the Revenue officials for smuggling, gave political and social enemies the looked-for opportunity to injure a man who was so dangerous to the squires of Kent.

He was prosecuted in turn, on a charge of perjury, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. From the County Gaol he was transferred to a lunatic asylum, and only liberated in the spring of 1838, on the a.s.surances of friends in the vicinity of Canterbury that they would take charge of him.

Religious mania seems to have attacked the weak brain of this excitable enthusiast while in confinement, and his conduct presently became more eccentric than before. Roaming in the country villages, preaching religious and political salvation to the small farmers, the cottagers, and poor agricultural labourers of Kent, he aroused greater enthusiasm and personal love than before. He had always represented himself to be a member of the Courtenay family, whose head, the Earl of Devon, claims descent from Palaeologus, King of Jerusalem in early Crusading times; and, in addition, he announced himself as the rightful heir to a number of important estates in Kent and neighbouring counties. He let it be known that he, the n.o.ble Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta, and rightful King of Jerusalem, was not too proud to partake of food and shelter at the board and under the roof of the poorest. When he came in power, and claimed his rights, the oppressed should live freely on the land; the cruel New Poor Law that shut unfortunate men and women out from the world in "Bastilles," as though Poverty were a crime, and separated man and wife, whom G.o.d had declared by his handmaid, the Church, man should not put asunder, should be abrogated; and the workers should have a share in the products of their toil. The people largely responded to these advances; and poor folk, together with a number of the cla.s.s who had earned themselves a small competency, and a few moneyed people, believed thoroughly in Courtenay. He was now a man whom many held to have been persecuted and imprisoned for his championship of the people, and they loved him for it, many of them with a whole-souled devotion that culminated in worship. Courtenay's extraordinary facial resemblance to the traditional appearance of the Saviour, and, finally, his ultimate a.s.sumption of the character of the Messiah, led many people to believe that Christ was actually come on earth to commence His promised reign; and entertainment, encouragement, and monetary contributions attended on their belief.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY." _From an old print._]

Matters came to a crisis toward the end of May. Courtenay had marched the country round with agricultural labourers and others who had left their work in the fields to follow the Lord, and the farmers who thus saw their fields remaining untilled grew anxious. One, bolder than the rest, applied to the magistrate for the detention of his men who had thus left their employment; and, with a local constable named Mears and two others, he came up with Courtenay's band on the morning of May 31st.

[Sidenote: BATTLE OF BOSSENDEN]

Ever since the 28th of that month, Courtenay had been tramping the roads and lanes with a band of about one hundred rustics. Starting from Boughton on that day, they had bought bread, and, placing half a loaf on a pole, above a blue-and-white flag bearing a lion rampant, had marched through Goodnestone, Hernhill, and Dargate Common, where they all fell down on their knees while Courtenay prayed. Then they proceeded to Bossenden Farm, where they supped and slept in a barn. Leaving Bossenden at three o'clock the next morning, their leader took them to Sittingbourne, where he procured breakfast for the whole party at a cost of 25s. The rest of the day was spent in parading the country round Boughton, and the next evening was spent again at Bossenden Farm. The following morning, Mears the constable, with his party of three, came up with them in a meadow, and demanded the surrender of the farmers' men. The men refused to leave, and Courtenay shot the constable dead on the spot. Alarmed at this, the others rode off hastily to Canterbury for military a.s.sistance, while Courtenay administered the sacrament to his men in bread-and-water. All knelt down and worshipped him, and a farmer, one Alexander Foad, kneeling, asked "should he follow him in body or in heart?" "In the body," replied Courtenay; whereupon Foad sprang up, exclaiming, "Oh! be joyful, be joyful! The Saviour has accepted me. Go on, go on, I'll follow thee till I drop!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "COURTENAY." _From an old print._]

When the terrified three reached Canterbury, they secured the aid of a company of the Forty-fifth Regiment. A young officer, Lieutenant Bennett, staying with friends in the city, volunteered to go with them. Coming to Bossenden, they found Courtenay and his hundred followers strongly posted amid alder-bushes in a deep and sequestered part of Bossenden Wood.

Courtenay exhorted his people to behave like men. "G.o.d," he said, "would protect him and them. Should he fall, he would infallibly rise again in greater glory than now; and wounds for his sake would be accounted for righteousness."

[Sidenote: DEATH OF "COURTENAY"]

Lieutenant Bennett advanced and called upon them to surrender, but Courtenay, raising his pistol, shot him dead, and his men leapt out from the woods furiously, armed only with cudgels and fanaticism, to attack the soldiers. One volley, however, stretched many dying, or bleeding from severe wounds, upon the ground, and Courtenay himself fell mortally wounded, exclaiming, "I have Jesus in my heart."

Thirteen people in all were killed in this affray: Mears the constable, Lieutenant Bennett, and Courtenay; eight "rioters" dying on the spot, and two others afterwards succ.u.mbing to their wounds. Many more were crippled for life. Twenty-three were committed to gaol: some transported across the seas, and others sentenced to short terms of imprisonment at home. Some of the men were buried in Boughton Churchyard, others at Hernhill, three miles away, overlooking the rich land that slopes towards the sea. Here Courtenay was buried, but the graves of himself and his men are unmarked by stone or mound. The fanaticism of the peasantry was not altogether extinguished by this dreadful ending, and the tale is told, on excellent authority, of a woman drawing water from a well and walking half a mile with it to moisten the lips of the dead leader, who had said that, should he fall, a drop of water applied to his mouth would restore him from death to life. The barbarous expedients of keeping his body in a shed of the "Red Lion" at Dunkirk until corruption had set in, and of omitting the resurrection clause from the Burial Service were resorted to, lest the country folk should persist in their belief of his divinity.

Thus ended the so-called "Courtenay Rebellion" of 1838. When he was dead, it became generally known that "Sir William Courtenay" was really but John Nichols Thom, the son of a Cornish innkeeper and farmer. Always a clever and handsome lad, he had grown up still more handsome, but with a religious enthusiasm and a romantic imagination inherited from his mother. He was for a time employed at Truro, but disappeared for some years until his strange descent upon Canterbury in 1832.

The "Red Lion," where the bodies of the dead were laid out, stands by the roadside at Dunkirk, and a cart-road on the hither side of it, to the left hand, made long after this extraordinary affair, and called "Courtenay Road," leads down to the still wild and thickly grown woods of hazel, alder, and miscellaneous scrub in which Bossenden Woods are situated. A gate--"Courtenay Gate"--stands by the scene of the struggle, but the trees marked at the time by the rustics in memory of Courtenay and his men, are not now to be discovered. The villagers still bear him in memory, and truly he deserves to be kept in mind, for though as "Sir William Courtenay" he was an impostor, yet he truly loved the people, and his naturally highly-strung mental organization, completely unstrung by an unnecessary imprisonment, was responsible for his religious pretensions and his blasphemous impersonation towards the end. Worse men than he are honoured in history and in public monuments, and it seems a pity that a childish spite should have hidden his grave and the graves of the poor fellows who fell that day. The pilgrim who takes an interest in these strange events, happening in this century, and in the reign of Queen Victoria, and who happens to visit the secluded village of Hernhill, may look for the site of "Sir William Courtenay's" resting-place beside the path where a yew-tree spreads a shade over the west entrance to the village church.

His death did good. The Government ordered a Commission to sit and inquire into the state of things that produced these events, and it appeared that the district was G.o.dless and ignorant, a fit ground for fanaticism to spring up in and flourish. Schools were built, and the church of Dunkirk owes its existence to Courtenay's Rebellion. The superst.i.tious countrymen who say the foundations of the building gave way several times before the walls could be commenced properly, declare that his ghost haunted the place. But, whatever else these doings teach, they teach us that a spirit of selfishness, of neglect, both on the part of Church and State, brings its inevitable retribution. The punishment fell then on these ignorant hinds; what should be the punishment in the hereafter of those who were morally responsible for the shedding of their blood?

x.x.xIII

[Sidenote: DUNKIRK]

Dunkirk was anciently a common in the Forest of Blean, and was a veritable Alsatia, the resort of lawless men who squatted here because it was not within any known jurisdiction. Hasted, in his _History of Kent_, says houses were built here and "inhabited by low persons of suspicious character, this being a place exempt from the jurisdiction of either hundred or parish, as in a free port, which receives all who enter it, without distinction. The whole district from hence gained the name of 'Dunkirk.'" This part of the road, being in neither hundred or parish, was neglected and left in a ruinous state until nearly the close of the eighteenth century.

At Dunkirk, on pa.s.sing the "Gate" inn, with its sign of a five-barred field-gate hanging over the road, the traveller obtains his first glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral, the Bell Harry tower rising grey above the green valley of the Stour. Now the road goes downwards towards Harbledown in a succession of switchback ups and downs that, noticeable enough for remark even at this lapse of time, must have been much more marked in Chaucer's day. Here the pilgrims would see the Cathedral faintly from the crest of a hillock, losing it for a few minutes as they rode or tramped down the succeeding declivity, and regaining it on the next hill; until, coming to Harbledown, its majesty burst upon them in an uninterrupted view. The striking characteristics of the road here were noted by Chaucer himself, who, indeed, does not mention Harbledown by name; the description is alone sufficient to identify the place:--