The Dover Road Part 14

Wist ye not where standeth a little toun, Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun, Under the Blee in Canterbury way.

Here the weary pilgrims made their last halt. The levity; the fun and frolic; the sound of songs and bagpipes ceased, and the seekers of Saint Thomas fell down upon their knees in the dusty road when they caught sight of the golden angel that then crowned the Bell Harry tower. Tears running down the cheeks of all, the pious and the indifferent alike resigned themselves to a religious ecstasy; and when they at length resumed their journey, Chaucer's company of pilgrims rode slowly into the Holy City, listening to a sermon in place of the curious tales with which they had hitherto beguiled the way.

Harbledown stood then on the borders of the great "Bosco de Blean." The "little town," now a mile-long stretch of disconnected cottages, was much smaller, cl.u.s.tering round the parish church on one side of the road, and the Hospital for Lepers, with its chapel and rows of cottages, on the other. Down the road, the houses of Canterbury were to be seen nestling for protection against the Castle and Cathedral, while on the other hand stretched the dark forest, with the Archbishop's gallows standing on a clearing in front. For not only did the dignified clergy point the way to the after life; they not infrequently helped their sheep on the way by means of rope or stake.

As the pilgrims pa.s.sed that old Lepers' Hospital, founded by Lanfranc in 1084, on this breezy and healthful hillside, whence rose the sweet smell of the herbs for which Harbledown (== Herbal down) has derived its name, one of the brethren of this charitable foundation would come out and sprinkle them with holy water, presenting the shoe of Saint Thomas to be kissed, and praying them for the love of G.o.d and the Blessed Martyr to give something towards the support of the poor lepers of Saint Nicholas.

Rarely did the pilgrims fail to do so, and this inst.i.tution must, in the course of years, have become very wealthy. Henry the Second; Richard Lion Heart, come home again from captivity; Edward the First, with Eleanor of Castile, on his return from Palestine; the Black Prince, with his captives, those trophies of Poictiers--King John of France and his son Philip--and many another must have enriched the place. John of France, on his way home, gave ten gold crowns "pour les nonnains de Harbledown," and never, surely, before nor since, has an old shoe brought so much luck as Becket's brought here. For centuries the devout came and pressed their lips to it, dropping coins into the wooden alms-box that is still shown, together with a mazer inscribed with the deeds of Guy of Warwick, and containing the great crystal with which the shoe was decorated. But times change and habits of thought with them, and although the scenery remains as of old, little else is left of the days of pilgrimage. How like the present aspect of the place is to the appearance it presented three hundred and eighty years ago may be seen from the writings of Disiderius Erasmus.

[Sidenote: ERASMUS AND COLET]

When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning in 1512 from their unconventional pilgrimage to Canterbury, they came, two miles from the city, to a steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high banks on either side. The scenery is the same as then. The selfsame banks of an equal abruptness still rise above the road; the rough and crazy flight of steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc's old Hospital for Lepers, the Hospital of Harbledown. The immemorial yews are here even now; one still flourishing, the other decayed. But the Hospital has been rebuilt, and only the grey old Church of Saint Nicholas remains. Modern pilgrims, too, may pa.s.s without the attentions at one time bestowed on all who pa.s.sed this way; attentions which disgusted the stern and matter-of-fact Colet, and amused his somewhat cynically-humorous companion. When they came to the gateway of the Hospital, there tottered down the steps an aged bedesman, and, sprinkling plentifully with holy water both themselves and their horses, he stepped forward, presenting the upper-leather of an old shoe, bound in bra.s.s and ornamented with a great crystal, to be kissed.

This was the remnant of the Holy Shoe of Thomas a Becket, one of the most revered and valued possessions of the Hospital, kissed reverently by many thousands of pilgrims of every degree, and a great aid to the flow of alms. But Colet, who had already seen too much of this combined hero- and relic-worship, could no longer restrain the wrath which had been rising ever since he had left the shrine down below, with its old bones and dirty rags. He was covered, too, with the holy water which the old man had so recklessly showered on them. "What!" he shouted to Erasmus, "Do these a.s.ses expect us to kiss the shoes of all good men that have ever lived?

Why, they might as well bring us their spittle to be kissed, or other bodily excrements!" The ancient bedesman was hurt, and possibly, had he been a younger man, he would have hurt this scoffer in return. However, he said nothing, and the cynical Erasmus (for cynicism _always_ goes with a really kind heart) gave him a small coin, less from piety, you may be sure, than as a salve to his wounded feelings. And then they went away.

The shoe has vanished, but the crystal is still a valued, if not valuable, possession of the inst.i.tution, and may be handled by the curious who can reflect upon its having also been touched by those two pilgrims, Erasmus the learned writer, and Colet the founder of Saint Paul's School.

x.x.xIV

[Sidenote: CANTERBURY]

The entrance to Canterbury from London is one of the most impressive approaches to a city to be found in all England. The traveller pa.s.ses through the suburb of Saint Dunstan, by the old parish church that holds the severed head of Sir Thomas More, coming into the city through a street of ancient houses and under the postern arch of West Gate. The great drum towers of West Gate mark the ancient limits of the mediaeval city, and guard an opening in the city wall which stood on the further side of the little river Stour. A drawbridge effectually prevented the entrance of an enemy, and when the strongly-guarded gate was closed at nightfall, belated citizens had to stay outside and put up with the inconvenience as best they could, in company with such travellers and pilgrims as arrived late from too much storytelling, feasting, or praying, on the road. For the accommodation of these travellers the suburbs of Saint Dunstan and West Gate arose early without the walls of the city, and several inns--the "Star" and the "Falstaff" among them--remain to show how considerable was the belated company entertained here.

West Gate, as we now see it, is the successor of a much earlier gate, and was built by the ill-fated Simon of Sudbury. It is the only one remaining of all the seven gates of the city, and owes its preservation rather to its convenience as a prison for poor debtors, than to any love our eighteenth-century barbarians had for mediaeval architecture. It is to-day a police-station, and thus carries on the frugal and utilitarian traditions which originally spared it in the destruction of much else of beauty and interest.

Ancient buildings are carefully preserved nowadays. Why? Can we flatter ourselves that the provincial mind is more enlightened? I am afraid not, and must sorrowfully come to the conclusion that the ignorant authorities of our country towns would be as ready as ever to demolish their old monuments, did not their natural shrewdness teach them that, as strangers come from all quarters of the world to view their historical remains, they must be regarded in the light of a valuable a.s.set. So far, they are undoubtedly right. Let them "restore" and tear down the remaining gates and towers and castles in the provincial towns of England, and they will prove, in the scarcity of visitors that will follow on their Vandalism, how valuable, in more senses than one, are the ancient ways.

Canterbury has seen a great deal of this senseless disregard for antiquity. Six gates, as I have said, were wantonly destroyed, but the pa.s.sion for destruction did not stop here. The remains of the Norman castle were years ago converted into a coal-hole of the local gasworks, and are still put to that degradation; great stretches of the city walls, with their watchtowers, were taken down for corn-mills to be built with their materials; and, worse than all, stupidity of this kind ran riot among the Dean and Chapter in the thirties. For seven hundred and fifty years had Lanfranc's north-western tower of the Cathedral stood, while the south-western had been rebuilt nearly three hundred years before. This dissimilarity vexed those a.s.sembled holders of fat prebends and deca.n.a.l loaves and fishes, who drank port and read _The Times_, and had not a single sensible idea in their meagre brainpans, beyond a notion that one thing ought to match with another, and that as every Jack should have his Jill, so also should everything else possess a pendant. How truly British!

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY.]

Well, if these western towers did not match, they must be made to; and so to find an excuse for pulling down the older one. There is always some graceless modern architect, with palm itching for five-per-cent.

commissions, who would undertake or advise anything to procure a job, and the Dean and Chapter found such a man, who conceived Lanfranc's work to have gone beyond repair. To this creature, Charles Austin, their own diocesan architect, who should have been earnest to preserve, rather than to destroy, they gave instructions for the pulling down of the Norman work and for its replacement by an exact copy of the Perpendicular tower. The thing was done in 1832. So little beyond repair and so st.u.r.dily strong was that Norman tower, that it was necessary to blow it up with gunpowder. A German invading Goth and malignant destroyer could do no more.

The work of demolition and the building of the new tower was done at a cost of 25,000. The architect pocketed 1,250 as commission, and all who care for architecture have lost one of the very few Norman Cathedral towers known in England. But then, how exactly those towers match, and how satisfied must be all good people who would sacrifice everything for the sake of uniformity!

The main thoroughfare of Canterbury, to which the old West Gate gives access, has undergone no little rebuilding since the days of gables and timber fronts, and yet it retains in the aggregate much of that old-world air for which we reasonably look in a Cathedral city. Long and narrow the street remains; quaint are many of the buildings that line it. Across it, under narrow bridges, flow two branches of the little river Stour.

An amusing incident belonged to the "Red Lion."

[Sidenote: THE DUC DE NIVERNAIS]

One of the most outstanding historical figures upon the Dover Road is that no less kindly than courtly Amba.s.sador, the Duc de Nivernais. That cultured Frenchman was employed by his sovereign, Louis the Fifteenth, in negotiating a Treaty of Peace which should conclude that disastrous contest to France, the Seven Years' War. An exchange of Amba.s.sadors was effected between Great Britain and France; the Duke of Bedford crossing the Channel to Calais in the early part of September, 1762, the Duc de Nivernais voyaging to Dover, and landing there on the morning of September 11. The elements had been unkind to him, and his pa.s.sage occupied no less than five hours; but Nivernais handed over to Captain Ray, the commander of the _Princess Augusta_ yacht (the vessel in which he had voyaged and suffered the most horrible pangs of sea-sickness), the sum of one hundred guineas, to be divided among the crew. Perhaps the unbounded grat.i.tude with which he found himself again upon the sh.o.r.e--even though it were not his native land--accounted for the magnitude of this largesse.

The country was not eager for the peace which exhausted France desired, and looked upon Nivernais' commission rather as an attempt to curtail the glory which England and Englishmen were reaping on land and achieving by sea; but the French Amba.s.sador was received with a show of enthusiasm and the discharge of cannon as he landed at Dover, and a crowd of shouting countrymen cheered him as, bowing his acknowledgments of this reception, he bowled away in a coach and six horses, accompanied by a retinue of twelve persons.

Bowled, did I say? Nay: the motion of the ill-hung equipages of that day, tumbling along over the wretched roads of those times, resembled little the smooth career of bowls gliding over trimly shaven bowling-greens.

Rather should the motion be described as a series of hesitating lurches and unexpected jolts; and this in the comparative excellence of the highways in September!

The Amba.s.sador had started upon his journey from Dover to London as soon as possible after the early hour of the morning when he had landed from the "Chops of the Channel"; but he arrived at Canterbury too late for further progress to be made that day. Therefore he put up in the Cathedral city, after having had the empty satisfaction, to a traveller in his exhausted condition, of being received _en grande tenue_ by the garrison.

The "Red Lion" inn was at that time the proper place for a personage of his quality to lie, and so the Duke with his party stayed there the night.

For that night's lodging for twelve persons, with a frugal supper in which oysters, fowls, boiled mutton, poached eggs, and fried whiting figure, the landlord of the "Red Lion" presented an account of over 44. This truly grand bill has been preserved, not, let us hope, for the emulation of other hotel-keepers, but by way of a "terrible example." Here it is:--

_s._ _d._ Tea, coffee, and chocolate 1 4 0 Supper for self and servants 15 10 0 Bread and beer 3 0 0 Fruit 2 15 0 Wine and punch 10 8 8 Wax candles and charcoal 3 0 0 Broken gla.s.s and china 2 10 0 Lodging 1 7 0 Tea, coffee, and chocolate 2 0 0 Chaise and horses for the next stage 2 16 0 ------------ 44 10 8

The Duke paid his account without a murmur, only remarking that innkeepers at this rate should soon grow rich; but it was, doubtless, with great relief that he left Canterbury for Rochester, where he dined the next day for three guineas.

News of this extraordinary bill was soon spread all over England. It was printed in the newspapers amid other marvels, disasters, and atrocities, and mine host of the "Red Lion," like Byron, woke up one morning to find himself famous. He would probably have preferred his native obscurity to the fierce light of publicity that beat upon him; for the country gentlemen, scandalized at his rapacity, boycotted his inn, and his brother innkeepers of Canterbury disowned him. The unfortunate man wrote to the _St. James's Chronicle_, endeavouring to justify himself, and complaining bitterly of the harm that had been wrought to his business by the constant billeting of soldiers upon him. But it was in vain to protest, and so bitter was the feeling against him that his trade fell off, and he was ruined in six months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DUC DE NIVERNAIS.]

Meanwhile, the Duc de Nivernais was negotiating for peace at the Court of Saint James's; and, what with the difficulties of diplomacy and the rigours of the climate, he pa.s.sed but a miserable time. "This country," he wrote, "is a cruel country for negotiation; one needs to have a body and a spirit of iron," and how little like iron was his frame may perhaps be judged from this portraiture of him, which shows a wistful-looking, hollow-cheeked elderly man, with nose and chin and eyes unnaturally prominent. The caricaturists took a mean advantage of his phenomenal leanness, and called him the "Duke of Barebones," and a Court witling made the cruel jest that "the French had sent over the preliminaries of an amba.s.sador to conclude the preliminaries of a peace." He eventually _did_ conclude a peace, and, returning to Dover, left (how thankfully!) for France on May 22, 1763. Let us hope that, after all his trials with the English hotel-keepers and the English climate, he experienced a better pa.s.sage across the Channel than when he first crossed it.

x.x.xV

[Sidenote: HENRY THE EIGHTH]

Not all visitors to Canterbury were so evilly entreated as the Duc de Nivernais. Indeed, the city has been remarkable rather for its lavish and abounding hospitality than for any attempted over-reaching of the stranger. But since those strangers were chiefly Kings and Emperors, and great personages of that kind, perhaps it is little to be wondered at that the citizens, to say nothing of those greedy time-servers, the Priors and monks of Christ Church Priory and the Priory of Saint Augustine, rendered to those great ones of the earth the most abject suit and service. Almost every English sovereign has been here at some time or another, and many a foreign potentate besides. Henry the Second, it is true, walked into the city, barefoot, from Harbledown, and so to the Cathedral, doing abject penance for the murder of Becket, four years previously, and it seems to be equally true that as he proceeded to Becket's shrine he was scourged by the monks on his bare back and shoulders with knotted cords; but I think they would have laid on harder and with a better will had the penitent not been of so exalted a station. In short, I have little faith in the reported rigours of that punishment. A few years later came Henry's son, Richard Lion Heart, enlarged from his foreign prison. He landed at the port of Sandwich, and walked barefoot into Canterbury--so inimical was Saint Thomas to shoe-leather. Edward the First was pious enough to lay the Crown of Scotland before the Saint's shrine, and another Edward--the Black Prince--came here, in all humility, with the captive King of France.

Another warrior, as brave and as ill-fated--Henry the Fifth--paid his devoirs to Becket as he came up the road, fresh from his glorious French campaigns. Another Henry, the Eighth and last of his name, bowed before the shrine in 1520, in company with the Emperor Charles the Fifth. On that occasion he was as fervent a worshipper as could well be desired, and as sincere as it is possible for a man to be who is at the same time a King and half a Welshman. No thoughts of spoliation of the Church then pa.s.sed his mind. Indeed, the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the time made much of his visit, which seems to have been celebrated in a more than royal manner, if we may trust the chroniclers.

From Dover the two monarchs rode into Canterbury, preceded by Wolsey, and followed by a long procession of knights and esquires, men-at-arms and archers. The clergy, dressed in all the splendour of which the Romish Church is capable, thronged the streets to welcome the King, and knew as little about the calamities presently to befall them as fat geese suspect the significance of Michaelmas Day. Archbishop Warham welcomed the sovereigns to the Cathedral, and probably thought with a secret joy upon the ways of Providence which had removed Prince Arthur from this world to place his younger brother, Henry, upon the throne. For, had Prince Arthur lived to be King of England, the man whom we know as Henry the Eighth would have been Archbishop of Canterbury. That was the career designed for him, and, had Prince Arthur not died, how very differently things might have been fashioned!

Archbishop Warham could, as it happened, afford to look upon the ways of Providence with approval, for these events had made him Primate, and he celebrated his accession to the Primacy with a banquet whose details seem to belong to the _Arabian Nights_ rather than to sober history. Courses innumerable (and nasty, too, according to modern ideas) graced the festive board on this occasion, and the guests who partook of them made pigs of themselves over what the contemporary historian of these things calls the "subtylties" that bulked so largely at the feast. To the Duke of Buckingham, the high steward, fell the honour, or the duty, of serving the Archbishop with his own hands; and, partly in recognition of his services, and partly, no doubt, in consideration of his being so great a gourmand, he was accorded the privilege of staying three days at the new Archbishop's nearest manor, in order that he might be bled. That seems to have been the necessary performance after partaking of too many "subtylties."

But all this while I have been keeping His Most Christian Majesty, Henry the Eighth, waiting; and, having done so, it is well for me I am not his contemporary, for men did things so derogatory to his dignity only at the peril of losing their heads.

Well, eighteen years later, the King, who had knelt before Becket's bones, was engaged in uprooting the ancient faith, and his fury was naturally felt more acutely here, on this the most sacred spot of English soil.

Becket was proclaimed a traitor, and in April, 1538, the martyr, dead three hundred and sixty-eight years, was summoned to appear in Court to show reason why his shrine should not be destroyed and his name blotted out from the records of the English Church. Thirty days were allowed "Thomas Becket" (thus the Royal Proclamation styled him, without t.i.tle or handle of any sort to his name) to appear, and when he failed to present himself, sentence was p.r.o.nounced against him by default. The sentence was that his bones should be burnt and scattered to the winds; a poor and inadequate kind of revenge. More to the point, perhaps, was the spoliation of the shrine of the Blessed Thomas; for the Royal Commissioners sent to strip it, loaded twenty-six carts with the valuables that had acc.u.mulated here during all those centuries, in addition to two coffers of jewels and gold containing the ransom of kings.

[Sidenote: THE "REGALE" RUBY]

The King kept some of the jewels for his own personal use. Louis the Seventh of France had, a few years after the murder of Becket, visited the Shrine of St. Thomas, and had left there a magnificent ruby. Not merely had he left it; for the ruby--the "Regale of France," it was called--left itself, so to speak. In point of fact, it had been suggested to the French king that he should present that magnificent stone to the Shrine, and he was objecting to do so, when the great ruby leapt from the ring he was wearing and affixed itself to the Saint's reliquary, where it remained "shining so brightly that it was impossible to look steadily at it."

So the visitor went away without that gorgeous stone, marvelling greatly, as we do, some seven hundred and fifty years after the event.

The ruby, indifferently described as being "as large as a hen's egg," and "as large as a man's thumb-nail," was appropriated by Henry the Eighth.