The Dover Road Part 15

Thus did Henry repay the magnificent hospitality extended him years before at Canterbury. The city saw but little of Royalty for many years afterwards; and, indeed, it was not until Charles the First came here to be married in the Cathedral that any great State function revived its past glories. Then the display made was worthy of local traditions. Feasting and general jollity prevailed while the newly-wed King and Queen remained in the city. A few years later, when loyalty was the pa.s.sion of only a minority and the King was warring with the Parliament, the Dover Road and Canterbury witnessed a strange journey. None knew of it, for the matter was secret. It was, in fact, the smuggling out of the country of the little Princess Henrietta, away from the custody of the King's enemies.

The French tutor of the Princess afterwards told the story of this escape.

The Countess of Dalkeith was in charge of the little girl at Oatlands, and resolved at all hazards to restore her to her mother in France. Disguising herself, this tall and elegant body, one of the handsome Villiers family, acted the part of a poor French servant, little better than a beggar. She even fitted herself with a hump, and, carrying a bundle of linen, and with the Princess dressed in rags, set out by road for Dover, with the girl on her back, in the character of her little boy Pierre.

On the road, we are told, the Princess indignantly tried to tell everyone she was not "Pierre," but the Princess. Fortunately, no one understood, and these strange travellers arrived safely at Dover and crossed to Calais.

The adventure seems incredible when we consider that the Princess Henrietta Maria was born June 16, 1644, and that this journey to Dover is stated to have taken place towards the end of July, 1646. We have to ask ourselves, "Could a child of two years and a little over one month, understand and talk like that?" But the source of the story has been noted; and we are to recollect, as to the authentic date of the adventure, that Edmund Waller, the courtly poet, on New Year's Day, 1647, presented the Queen, then in Paris, with a poem on the subject, in which the Countess of Dalkeith's exploit is referred to:--

The faultless nymph, changing her faultless shape Becomes unhandsome, handsomely to 'scape.

Canterbury's rejoicings were not renewed until after the Commonwealth had come and run its course, and the Stuarts were free once more to show their curious facility for rendering their House unpopular.

And after the romantic times of that unfortunate family come the stolid annals of Dutch William, Anne, and the unimaginative Georges--a line of sovereigns for whom enthusiasm was impossible. Mean in their vices and contemptible in their virtues, they lived their lives and reigned over England, and posted along the Dover Road on their way to or from beloved Hanover; and no man's heart beat the faster for their coming, and none sorrowed overmuch for their going. All the Georges, and William the Fourth, too, were here, I believe, and in their train came the lean Keilmanseggs, the fleshly Schwellenbergs, and a variety of greasy Germans, fresh from the terrible voyage over sea; but no one cares in the least either where they went or whither they did not go.

[Sidenote: OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS]

But they all travelled with what we must now consider a snail's pace. The wealthiest, the most powerful, could go no faster than horses managed to drag them. When Sir Robert Peel was summoned in haste from Rome by William the Fourth to form a Ministry in 1834, he travelled full speed to London, and the journey took him just within a fortnight. He noted in his journal that he accomplished it in exactly the same time as the Emperor Hadrian had done seventeen hundred years before him. The means of travel at the disposal of both statesmen were identical--post horses.

Another Royal visitor (of a much later date indeed) discovered the "chops of the Channel" to be no respectors of personages. In fact, His Serene Highness Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was come across the water to wed his Cousin, Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland ("Empress of India" was yet in the loom of the future), found his serenity as much disturbed by the roughness of his pa.s.sage as falls to the lot of most bad sailors, of whatever social stratum. He was, in short, very ill, and unable to proceed any farther that day. On the morrow, Friday, February 7, 1840, he resumed his journey to London, by road, of course, for the railways that serve Dover (and serve it badly, too!) had not as yet been built.

Starting about midday, the father of our future kings reached Canterbury at two o'clock. The inevitable Address was, it is surely scarcely necessary to add, immediately forthcoming, to which the Prince as inevitably "replied graciously"; afterwards attending service in the Cathedral, where, as he could have understood but little of the service, he must have been supremely bored. The Cathedral was thronged with crowds who came not so much in order to pray as to peep at the Princeling whom the young Queen had delighted to honour.

The Prince slept at Canterbury that night, and left, with his suite, _en route_ for Chatham at half-past nine the next morning, pursued by a body of clergymen with an Address. Alarmed at this appalling eagerness on the part of servile Britons to read lengthy orations of which he understood not a word, the Prince gave directions for the cavalcade to drive faster, and so they swept on through Chatham and Rochester, without stopping to hear what the Mayors and Corporations of those places had to say. Those deadly Addresses were, in fact, "taken as read," and the Mayors, Aldermen and others returned home with their ridiculous parchments, wiser, and, it is to be feared, not only sadder, but less loyal men.

At Dartford, the bridegroom-elect was met by one of the Queen's carriages, and he thereupon changed from his travelling chariot to enter London in some degree of State. At New Cross an escort of the 14th Dragoons was waiting, and, instead of proceeding along the cla.s.sic Old Kent Road, and so to the traditional entrance to London by London Bridge, he went to town by way of romantic Peckham and idyllic Camberwell, ending his journey at that dream of architectural beauty, Buckingham Palace. What followed: How the _Times_ waxed violent and denunciatory of Lord Melbourne and the frivolous _entourage_ with which he had surrounded the Queen: how that paper preached homilies, and how all the others, nearly without exception, gushed fulsome nonsense, it is not the business of the present historian to set forth. All he has to do is to remark that with this event closes the history of Royal processions along the Dover Road.

The hilly road to Dover is not remarkable for sporting events, but two may here be noted. On April 1st, 1903, Mr. Walter de Creux-Hutchinson walked from Dover to London Bridge in 14 hrs., 19 mins., 40 secs.; and on September 18th, 1909, A. G. Norman cycled from London to Dover and back in 8 hrs., 8 mins.

x.x.xVI

[Sidenote: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL]

The chief point of interest in Canterbury is, of course, the Cathedral, the bourne to which countless pilgrims came from all parts of the civilized world to gain the goodwill and intercedence of that thrice sacred and potent Saint Thomas whose peculiar sanct.i.ty over-topped by far that of any other English martyr, and whose shrine possessed scarce less efficacy than that of the most renowned Continental resorts of the pious.

But long before Becket's day the Metropolitan Cathedral of Canterbury had arisen. The establishment of the See dates from the time when Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in A.D. 596, and, marching at the head of his forty Benedictine monks, held a conference with Ethelbert, King of Kent, by whose favour he was allowed to preach Christianity to the Saxons. Thus was the Cross of Christ re-introduced to these islands where it had flourished centuries before among the Romans and the Romanized British.

Saint Augustine, however, does not deserve quite all the honour that has been paid him for his work. He undertook his mission against his will and only by the peremptory orders of Pope Gregory the First; orders which he feared to disobey even more than he had dreaded coming over the sea from sunny Italy to convert the pagan Saxons. As first Archbishop of Canterbury he died in A.D. 605; and when he died he left the first Cathedral already built on the site of an ancient Romano-British Church where the present great Minster stands. But that was not by any means the first Christian Church in England. To the little village church of Saint Martin belongs that honour, and to this day the h.o.a.ry walls of that building show the traveller unmistakable Roman tiles which, having been originally built into a pagan temple, remain to prove the humble beginnings of the Word that has spread throughout the world.

Saint Augustine's Cathedral was small, but, patched and tinkered by generation after generation, it lasted nearly five hundred years; until, in fact, the troubles of the Conquest practically ruined it. Lanfranc, the first Norman Archbishop, rebuilt the Cathedral Church, and now one rebuilding speedily followed another, each one growing more elaborate than before. Lanfranc's work was superseded in 1130 by a magnificent building approaching the present bulk of the Cathedral. Henry the First was present at its consecration, with David, King of Scotland; and all the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the realm, together with a great concourse of n.o.bles, a.s.sisted. Conrad and Ernulf, Priors of Christ Church, were the architects of the work, and so grand was it, and so great was the occasion, that an old chronicler described the ceremony of consecration as "the most famous that had ever been heard of on earth since that of the temple of Solomon."

But, four years later, the "glorious choir of Conrad" was burned down, and all the pious fervour and exaltation that had raised these sculptured stones and tall towers was wasted. People and clergy alike "were astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and, maddened with grief and perplexity, they tore their hair and beat the walls and pavement of the church with their heads and hands, blaspheming the Lord and His saints, the patrons of the church."

This fury of rage and perplexity overpast, however, the strenuous folk of those times began the work of rebuilding the church almost before the blackened stones and charred timbers of the ruined building were cold.

They employed a French architect, William of Sens, and for four years he laboured in designing and superintending the construction of choir, retro-choir, and the easternmost chapels, incorporating with his work the old Norman towers and chapels which had, in part, survived the great fire.

William of Sens did not live to see his task completed; for, one day, as he was on the lofty scaffolding, directing the work of turning the choir vault, he fell and was disabled for life. His successor, who brought the rebuilding to a close, was "William the Englishman," identified by some with that William de Hoo, the architect-Bishop of Rochester.

[Sidenote: THE CHOIR]

The present choir, then, shows the work of these two Williams; nearly all, in fact, to the eastward of the crossing, from choir-screen to Becket's Crown, is their handiwork. Meanwhile, Lanfranc's heavy Norman nave was left uninjured by fire and untouched by those mighty builders, and it was not until the fourteenth century that it was reconstructed in the Perpendicular style by Prior Chillenden. "It had grown ruinous," so say the records, but the greater probability is that it was not so crazy but that effectual renovation without rebuilding would have been possible. But the spirit of the age was altogether opposed to the ponderous character of Norman architecture. Men began to build so lightly and loftily that walls soon a.s.sumed the appearance of mere framings to the huge windows that characterize this ultimate phase of Gothic architecture.

The constructional aspect was gone altogether, and most of the artistic interest too. Vulgar ostentation of skill--engineering knowledge that led architects to pile up slender alleys of stone to the last point of endurance--was the note of the age. Unfortunately, the age which witnessed the growth and development of the Perpendicular style was one of the greatest wealth and activity. A ceaseless and untiring energy pervaded the land, tearing down the Norman, the Early English, and the Decorated churches, and rearing upon their sites buildings immeasurably larger, loftier, and lighter, but less individual and less interesting in every way than the work of the builders who had gone before.

Frankly, then, the great soaring nave of Canterbury, with its long alleys of cl.u.s.tered pillars, its great windows and broad, unornamented wall-s.p.a.ces, is disappointing. No details tempt the amateur of architecture to linger, and the sole ornamentation which the builder has allowed himself in this long-drawn-out vista is seen on the sparely sculptured bosses of the groining. The times which witnessed the piling up of this great nave were days when this church was rich beyond compare with the offerings of pilgrims; and, given riches, ostentation is sure to follow, but art is not to be bought at a price.

A long array of altar-tombs of kings, princes, warriors, and archbishops adds to the historical interest of Canterbury Cathedral. Easily first, both for historic and artistic value, are the tomb and effigy of Edward the Black Prince, who, dying of a wasting disease in 1376, was entombed in the Cathedral as near as might be to the Martyr's shrine. There is not a statue in all England to rival the beautifully-wrought bronze effigy of the Black Prince which lies on an altar-tomb decorated with the Prince of Wales's feathers he was the first to a.s.sume, surrounded by the _Ich Dien_ that so admirably expresses the chivalry of his character.

The shields bearing his arms and badge are interesting. The arms, those with the leopards (or lions) of England, quartered with the lilies of France, are ensigned with the mark of cadency, indicating the heir, or eldest son, and bear above them the word "Houmout." This is a Flemish word meaning "Chivalry," literally "high mood." The Dutch language has "hoog moed," with the same sense.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BLACK PRINCE'S ARMS AND BADGE.]

[Sidenote: "ICH DIENE"]

The shield with the badge of three ostrich feathers standing upright on their quills, bears the words "Ich diene." In his will the Prince especially directed that these should appear. These "Prince of Wales"

feathers, said to derive from the ostrich plumes of John, King of Bohemia, slain in the Battle of Crecy, give antiquaries a good deal to consider, for it is by no means certain that this is all the story. The Prince's mother, Queen Philippa, used the badge; which, furthermore, seems to have been not unknown as a royal device. "Ich Dien" == "I serve," is an expression of the heir's loyalty and submission to the sovereign; and is perhaps a reading of Galatians IV, i, "The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all." The modern drawing of the Prince of Wales' feathers originated in Tudor times.

Here, then, he lies, in full armour, as he had enjoined in his will, the likeness of the spurs he won at Crecy on his heels, his head resting on his helmet, and his hands joined in prayer. The face and head are clearly an excellent portraiture of him, so masterly is the work, and so like the features to those of his father in Westminster Abbey and his grandfather at Gloucester! Traces remain of the gilding with which the effigy was covered; the shields of arms and the curious Norman-French inscription are uninjured, and every little detail of his magnificent memorial is as perfect now as when it was finished five hundred years ago. The wooden canopy suspended over his tomb has survived the march of time and the fury of revolution; his wooden shield; his blazoned tabard, colourless now and in the semblance of a dirty rag, but once a truly royal adornment of velvet, glowing with the red and blue and golden quarterings of England and France,--all these things are left to speak of the grief with which the nation saw its most perfect gentle knight borne to his grave. His gauntlets, too, and his tilting helmet are here, and only one thing is missing from its place. The sword wielded at Crecy and Poictiers, and at many another fight, has vanished from its scabbard. If, as tradition says, Cromwell stole that weapon, how much more impressive it is to think of the hero-worship thus felt by one great captain for another.

The Black Prince was the darling of England. He had won a glory for this country the like of which had never before been known, and he was the flower of chivalry. But do those who gather round his tomb, and feel themselves the greater for being countrymen of his, ever think how little his chivalry would have spared them? His humble and dutiful bearing towards his father, and even to his captive, the King of France, shows that his reverence was for rank and t.i.tles; the cruelty he exhibited when, the city of Limoges having revolted, he ordered a general ma.s.sacre of the inhabitants and was carried through the streets in a litter, to see his bidding done, dims the glory of his arms. Men, women, and children were alike butchered in those streets, and when, crying for mercy, they were hewed in pieces before his eyes, their fate left him unmoved. It was only when he saw three French knights fighting valiantly in the market-place against overwhelming odds, that the chivalry of the Black Prince was touched. That hundreds or thousands of the citizens should be slain was nothing to him, for _they_ were nothing, but to see gentlemen of rank and birth fighting a hopeless fight was too much. He ordered the ma.s.sacre to be stayed.

x.x.xVII

[Sidenote: THOMAS a BECKET]

When in the last days of 1170 Becket was murdered in his own Cathedral, no one could have foreseen how fertilizing would be the blood of the martyr to religious faith; and not only to faith but also to English thought, trades, and professions. No sinner could be considered safe for Paradise unless he had made pilgrimage to Canterbury, and this pilgrimage became one of the chief features of English life during four hundred years. We owe directly to it the inspiration which has given Chaucer, our earliest poet, an immortal fame; from it comes the verb "to canter"--originally describing the ambling pace at which the pilgrims urged their horses on this road, and now common in modern English speech; while the great bulk of the Cathedral would never have loomed so largely across the Stour meads to-day had it not been for the fervent piety that, centuries ago, heaped gold and jewels here for the expiation of sins. Pilgrimage was a blessed thing indeed for the keepers of inns and for a mult.i.tude of other trades; and mendicants had but to take staff and scrip, and tramp in guise of palmers through the country to be liberally helped on their way. The Palmer was, indeed, the ancestor of the modern tramp. He had but to go unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn, and he could live his life without toil or work of any kind. If he were taxed with filthy habits, he could reply that a vow to remain unwashed until he had reached this shrine or another forbade him to remove the grime that covered him as a garment; and his claim to be dirty would be allowed. Eventually the number of these palmers at home and from over sea became a nuisance and a danger to Church and State, and no less objectionable were the hermits who squatted down at every likely corner of the roads and solicited alms. Human nature in the fourteenth century was not appreciably different from that of the present era, when many would rather beg a livelihood than earn it; and not only the laziness and the number of these palmers and hermits, but also their shocking immorality, became a scandal, until many laws and Archiepiscopal edicts were levelled against them. Pilgrimage, Saint Thomas, and religion itself became discredited by these creatures, and even as early as the year 1370, the fame of Becket was resented by some, and the efficacy of pilgrimages doubted. That year was the fourth jubilee of Saint Thomas, when pilgrims were crowding in many hundreds of thousands to Canterbury from all parts of the civilized world to receive the free indulgences, the free quarters, and the free food and drink, alike for themselves and their horses, that were accorded to all who came to the jubilee festival that was held, once in every fifty years, for a fortnight. As these mult.i.tudes of pilgrims were proceeding along the road to Canterbury during the Festival fortnight of 1370, Simon of Sudbury, the then Archbishop, overtook them. This Prelate had a hatred for superst.i.tion somewhat in advance of his time. He did not believe at all in pilgrimages and but little in Thomas a Becket, and he told the crowds he pa.s.sed on the road that the plenary indulgence which they were pressing forward to gain would be of no avail to purge their sins. The people who heard this heretical and previously unheard-of doctrine issuing from the mouth of an Archbishop, turned upon him in fear and rage, and cursed him as he went. A Kentish squire among the throng rode up and indignantly said, "My Lord Bishop, for this act of yours, stirring the people to sedition against St.

Thomas, I stake the salvation of my soul that you will close your life by a most terrible death." To this all the people replied with a fervent Amen!

[Sidenote: SIMON OF SUDBURY]

Saint Thomas was indeed avenged upon the Archbishop. Eleven years later, when Wat Tyler's rebels pillaged London, and forced themselves into the Tower, they found Simon of Sudbury there, among others. Dragging him out, they beheaded him with revolting barbarity, and here he lies in the Choir, where his headless body was seen, years ago, the place of the missing head supplied with a leaden ball.

The spirit of irreverence grew fast. In 1512 Erasmus made, with Dean Colet, a pilgrimage to Canterbury, not so much from piety as from curiosity. Descending the hill of Harbledown, they came into the city, wondering at the majesty of the Cathedral tower and at the booming of the bells resounding through the surrounding country. They entered the south porch, discussing the stone statues of Becket's murderers, then to be seen there; they entered the great nave, where Erasmus noted satirically the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus chained to a pillar; and, armed with a letter of introduction from Archbishop Warham, they were shown many things not usually exhibited to the crowd. Pa.s.sing through the iron gates which then as now divided the nave from the more holy portion of the building, they were taken to the Chapel of the Martyrdom, where they kissed the sacred rust that remained on the broken point of Brito's sword. From here they descended into the Crypt, which had its own priests in charge of the martyr's perforated skull, which was shown, with four of his bones, on a kind of altar. The forehead was left bare to be kissed, while the rest was covered with silver. Here hung in the dark the hair-shirts, the girdles and bandages, and the cat-o'-nine-tails or more with which Becket had subdued the flesh; striking horror with their very appearance, reproaching the pilgrims for their luxuries and self-indulgence, and perhaps, as Erasmus remarks, even reproaching the monks. From the Crypt they returned to the Choir, where the vast stores of relics were unlocked for their admiration and worship.

To read of the relics shown by the monks of Canterbury Cathedral fills one with amazement, both at the impertinence of those disgusting humbugs, and at the illimitable credulity that accepted the exhibition as genuine.

Besides the pre-eminently holy (and really genuine) relics of the Blessed Thomas were heaps of bones, hair, teeth, and dust of a vast concourse of miscellaneous saints, with portions of their attire and articles connected with their domestic history. How genuine they were likely to be may be judged from a short list of the most venerated among them. The bed of the Virgin, with the wool she wove, and a garment of her making, occupied the foremost place, and the rock on which the Cross of Christ stood; His sepulchre; the manger; the table used at the Last Supper; the column to which He was bound when He was flagellated by the cursed Jews; and the rock whereon He had stood on ascending into Heaven, were prime favourites.

More wonderful still, the monks possessed Aaron's Rod; a portion of the oak on which Abraham mounted that he might see the Lord; and--more stupendously blasphemous than anything else--a specimen of the clay with which G.o.d moulded Adam!

[Sidenote: THE NEW PILGRIMS]

Colet was wearied with all this, and when an arm was brought forward to be kissed which had still the b.l.o.o.d.y flesh of the martyr clinging to it, he drew back in disgust. The priest then shut up, locked, and double-locked his treasures, and showed them the sumptuous articles, the great wealth of gold and silver ornaments, kept under the altar. Erasmus thought that in the presence of this vast a.s.semblage of precious things even Midas and Croesus would be only beggars, and he sighed that he had nothing like them at home, devoutly praying the Saint for pardon of his impious thought before he moved a step from the Cathedral. However, they had not yet seen all. They were led into the Sacristy, and "Good G.o.d!" exclaims Erasmus, "what a display was there of silken vestments, what an array of golden candlesticks!" Saint Thomas's pastoral staff was there, a quite plain stick of pear-wood, with a crook of black horn, covered with silver plate, and no longer than a walking-stick. Here, too, was a coa.r.s.e silken pall, quite unadorned, and a sudary, dirty from wear, and retaining manifest stains of blood. These things, relics of a more simple age, they willingly kissed, and were then conducted to the Corona, where they saw an effigy of Saint Thomas, "that excellent man," gilt and adorned with many jewels. But here Colet's anger broke forth, and he addressed the priest in this wise.

"Good father, is it true what I hear, that Saint Thomas while alive was exceedingly kind to the poor?" "Most true," said he, and he then began to relate many of his acts of benevolence towards the dest.i.tute. "I do not imagine," said Colet, "that such disposition of his is changed, but perhaps increased." The priest a.s.sented. "Then," rejoined the Dean, "since that holy man was so liberal towards the poor when he was poor himself and required the aid of all his money for his bodily necessities, do you not think that now, when he is very wealthy, nor lacks anything, he would take it very contentedly if any poor woman having starving children at home should (first praying for pardon) take from these so great riches some small portion for the relief of her family?"