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 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 E. L. TTichols 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DA 690.C3B86 1899 
 
 Handbook to the city of Canterbury . 
 
 3 1924 028 079 295 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028079295 
 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT 
 OF SCIENCE. 
 
 DOVER MEETING, 
 1899. 
 
 HANDBOOK 
 
 TO THE 
 
 CITY OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 fiantcibuiit t^e jjtab citie of all ibat tonntrif. — 
 
 Lambarde. 
 
 Edited by — 
 SEBASTIAN EVANS, LL.D, 
 
 AND 
 
 FRANK BENNETT GOLDNEY, 
 
 Hon. Curator of the Royal Museum. 
 
 Printed at the ''Observer" Office, 144, Snargate Street, Dover. 
 
Of the Papers included in this Handbook, those on the 
 Cathedral and its Chronological History are by 
 
 Thp: Very Reverend 
 
 F. W. FARRAR, D.D., 
 Dean of Canterbur)-. 
 
 That on St. Augustine's Abbey, by 
 
 W. H. ST. JOHN HOPE, E.sQ., M.A., 
 
 And those on St Pancras and St. Martin by 
 
 The Reverend Canon 
 C. F. ROUT LEDGE, M.A. 
 
 The rest are by 
 
 THE EDITORS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This Handbook has been specially prepared for the use of 
 those Members of the British Association who may visit 
 Canterbury during the Dover Meeting. 
 
 The names of the Dean of Canterbury, Canon 
 RouTLEDGE, and Mr. St. John Hope, are a sufficient 
 guarantee that a great portion of the work will be found 
 of permanent value. In cordially thanking these gentle- 
 men for their kind assistance, the Editors desire to add 
 that their collaboration in the present volume in no way 
 implies their concurrence or acquiescence in any of the 
 opinions expressed by the Editors themselves, many of 
 which are at variance with those more generally accepted. 
 
 15, Waterloo Crescent, 
 Dover. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pagb 
 
 Early History ... ..." ... 5- 
 
 Kent and C/V.sar ... ... ... ... 9 
 
 The Saxon Invasion ... ... 19 
 
 The Cathedral .. ... ... .. aS' 
 
 Chronological History .. ... ... ... 4°' 
 
 St. Augustink's Abbey ... ... ... 4S 
 
 St. Pancras ... .. ... .. 48 
 
 St. Martin's ... ... .. ... SO' 
 
 Other Churches ... ... ... 54 
 
 Friaries, etc. ... ... ... 58' 
 
 Medi.«val History, King Ethet.bkki ... ... 6o- 
 
 Hengist and Horsa ... ... ... 62 
 
 The Bretwalda ... ... ... ... 62 
 
 Canterbury and Constantinople ... 63- 
 
 Early English Christianity ... ... 65 
 
 The Mint ... ... ... ... 67- 
 
 The Laws of Kent ... ... ... 6g> 
 
 Gavelkind ... ... ... .. ... 71 
 
 The Mayor and Commonalty ... ... 74 
 
 Pilgrimages .. ... ... 77- 
 
 The River Stour ... ... ... 79^ 
 
 The City Walls ... ... ... fo. 
 
 The City Gates ... ... ... . . 80 
 
 The Castle ... ... 82 
 
 The Dane John ... ... 82 
 
 The Martyrs' Fif.ld ... ... 84 
 
 The Hospitals .. ... ... 86. 
 
 The Jewry ... .. ... 88 
 
 Christchurch Gate ... ... ... 92-. 
 
 The Archbishops' Palace ... 92 
 
 The Guildhall ... ... ... ... 93-. 
 
 Markets and Fairs ... ... 94 
 
 94- 
 95 
 
 Inns 
 
 Trades 
 
 The King's School ... ... ... 96, 
 
 The Royal Museum ... ... 96. 
 
 The Free Library . ... ... 99, 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 EARLY HISTORY. 
 
 AVE, MATER ANGLIC! Of right may Canter- 
 bury claim the august and venerable title. 
 Whether we accept the usually accredited 
 account of the so-called " Saxon invasion " in 
 the fifth century, or the soberer facts of more 
 scientific history, we cannot refuse to regard Kent as 
 the cradle of our race, and Canterbury — the Cant-wara- 
 byrig — as the Mother-city of the English Empire. It 
 was here that the English race first founded a settled 
 home on Enghsh soil, here that English commerce 
 estabhshed its first permanent centre, here that the 
 " common speech " of a people, mainly Belgic, but min- 
 gled with many other elements, first became a mercantile 
 lingua franca, intelligible to the traders of many lands, 
 in due time to be shaped into the noblest engine of human 
 thought, the English language. 
 
 I do not propose to enter into any discussion with 
 regard to the succession of palaeolithic, neolithic, or bronze- 
 age peoples who inhabited this part of our island in 
 pre-historic days. Here it will be enough to point out that 
 after Britain became an island the movements of the 
 successive peoples that occupied it must have been 
 determined by two dominant factors. The first is, that 
 populations on the move, like other bodies, follow the line 
 of least resistance, and consequently, that the races which 
 came from the Continent to Britain crossed the Channel 
 where it is easiest to cross. Incursions there may have 
 been, and doubtless were, of small bodies of foreigners 
 from other shores than those of Gaul to accessible parts of 
 
our coast other than those of Kent. But any immigration 
 on a large scale and extending over a long period — any 
 invasion, not of an army but of a people with their wives, 
 children, and belongings, must of necessity have landed on 
 our south-east coast, and must equally of necessity, have 
 pushed the tribes formerly in possession away from the 
 centre of dispersion at the spot where they landed. The 
 second factor is equally simple. At every step forward in 
 civilisation, the individual requires a less amount of territory 
 on which to find subsistence. In other words, the same 
 amount of land will support a larger population. As he 
 advances towards civilisation, man is first a hunter, then a 
 herdsman, then a ploughman, then a merchant. More 
 herdsmen than hunters can subsist on a equal area, more 
 ploughmen than herdsmen, more merchants than plough- 
 men. Wherever tribes belonging to tlie several stages are 
 in contact, therefore, the mere relative increase of popula- 
 tion sooner or later compels the herdsman to encroach 
 upon the territory of the hunter, the ploughman upon that 
 of herdsman and hunter, and the merchant upon that of all 
 three others. In the Britain that Caesar found were four 
 peoples, roughly corresponding to these four stages of 
 civilization. The first of these — though very far from being 
 the first inhabitants of these islands — belonged probably to 
 a race which has been called Iberic. Their ancestors were 
 hunters, unacquainted with the use of metals, and must 
 have crossed the Channel at a period of incalculable 
 antiquity. Upon the heels of these a second race, mainly 
 herdsmen, had followed across the narrow seas, upon both 
 sides of which they were then settled. These were Celts of 
 the earlier Gaelic branch of that ubiquitous folk, the fore- 
 fathers of the Gael and the Irish. After them, the later 
 Celt, the ploughman ancestor of the Cornish, Welsh, and 
 mediaeval Cumbrian followed, driving his predecessors away 
 before him inland and westward from the south-east shore. 
 The Welshman, if the name may be given by anticipation, 
 had, in his turn, been supplanted on the south-east coast by 
 the Belgic merchant probably more than two centuries 
 before the days of Caesar, during which time the newcomer 
 had contrived to make himself master of a huge tract of 
 
territory, stretching, possibly, even at this early time, in an 
 irregular line from the Wash on the east coast to Studland 
 Bay on the south. 
 
 Assuming, then, as we are entitled to assume, that the 
 various peoples which successively immigrated into our 
 island crossed from the Continent by the Straits of Dover, 
 it follows that at the time they crossed they must have 
 occupied the territory on both sides of the Straits, and that 
 each in turn must have been thrust away from their " straits 
 settlements " on the Continental side before the people that 
 followed them could make any successful incursion on 
 British soil. Professor Boyd Dawkins has shown good 
 reason for believing that in some far distant period of past 
 ages some of the inhabitants of these islands found a refuge 
 from the encroachments of more advanced populations by 
 retreating northward and eastward. Long before the dawn 
 of history this way of escape was practically closed. In some- 
 what later days, the thrust of advancing populations drove the 
 less civilised before them along the seashore to the west 
 and south. It is not without significance that we find the 
 descendant of the Iberian in the Spanish Peninsula, of the 
 Gaelic Celt in Aquitania, of the Welsh Celt in Brittany, and 
 the Belgic tribes in north-west Gaul, along the Continental 
 side of the Manche as well as on the British coast before 
 the days of Csesar. 
 
 It is with the immigration of these Belgic tribes into 
 Britain that the history of England, Kent and Canterbury 
 really begins, and he who first placed our earliest history on 
 record was happily not only the first of Roman Emperors, 
 but the greatest and most authoritative of early historians, 
 an eye-witness of much that he relates, a careful observer, 
 and a diligent enquirer, to whom it was always a matter of 
 primary personal importance to know the truth, and often 
 of hardly less importance to tell it. Csesar, it is true, makes 
 no mention of England or Canterbury by name, as he 
 does make mention of Kent, but I hope to show that both 
 the one and the other are distinctly recognisable in his 
 narrative. Indeed, had he mentioned Canterbury by name 
 at all, it would probably have been by the name of 
 Durovernum, by which it was known at the time when the 
 
8 
 
 Antonine Itinerary was compiled some three centuries and 
 a half later. As was the case with many another city 
 throughout what gradually became the Roman Empire, the 
 old local name was supplanted by that of the " state " whose 
 capital it was. In the list given by the geographer of 
 Ravenna, it still appears as " Duroaverno Cantiacoruiii," 
 while in contemporary native records it is simply 
 "Cantwarabyrig." But, let it be noted, the name of the 
 people who gave the later name to the city was unchanged 
 from the first. Caesar calls the territory itself " Cantium," 
 or Kent, the people were " Cantiaci," the men of Kent, as 
 the Ravenna geographer calls them, or as Ptolemy — about 
 A.D. loo calls them in Greek, " Kantioi." In fact, ever 
 since the Belgic settlers found a home in Britain, some two 
 and twenty centuries ago, Kent has been Kent, the " cant," 
 or corner, or angle of the island. Philologists have discussed 
 the question in what languages the word " cant " means a 
 corner. It certainly meant it in the language of the Belgic 
 folk, even if it was not confined to their tongue. To this, 
 day, the charts of the English shore show a little to the 
 north-east of Sheppey Island, "the Cant," or corner, where 
 vessels from the Thames begin to " cant " toward the south- 
 east. That the "Cant," or corner of Britain, would be 
 translated by the Romans as " angulus," or angle, was. 
 inevitable, and, indeed, Cssar himself calls Kent an 
 "angulus" of Britain. However fanciful and absurd may 
 be some of the philological speculations of Bede and others,, 
 certainly the belief that the Angul Saxons — for this seems 
 to be the earliest form of the word — derived their name 
 from their being at the time the name was first given settled 
 in the " Angulus " of England, or Kent, is apparently well- 
 founded. Nor need it disturb this conclusion to find that 
 there are other Angles over sea from whom our English 
 Angles on wholly untrustworthy authority are supposed tO' 
 have derived their ancestry. " Angul " is a word — one out 
 of very many — borrowed from the Romans by the " Angul- 
 Saxons," and means a " hook." To " fish with an angle " 
 still means to fish with a hook," and if we find " Angles "' 
 long settled about the modern " Hook of Holland," or 
 other localities where the coast-line forms an " angle" of the 
 
same kind, and where the language of the people is closely 
 allied to our own, we need feel no qualms in believing that 
 analogous circumstances may have given rise to a similarly 
 analogous national name. That by the time of Bede the 
 "Angles" are located beyond the limits of Kent simply proves 
 what is known on other grounds to be true, that the original 
 " Angles " of Kent were pushed away from their first home 
 by the arrival of other immigrants from the Continent. The 
 case, indeed, is very much the same as that of Northumber- 
 land in later days. Yorkshire and Durham now lie between 
 the county and the Humber to the banks of which it 
 formerly extended That " Kent " meant an angle or 
 corner, and that the " Angul-Saxons " were originally settled 
 in Kent are facts which it would be difficult indeed to 
 dispute. The word " Durovernum " itself is almost as 
 certainly Celtic, signifying "the Stronghold in the Marsh,'' 
 an accurately descriptive name for such a place as it must 
 have been in the days already immemorial before the 
 coming of C»sar, when Kent, then in all probability known 
 by another name, itself was Celtic. 
 
 KENT AND C^SAR. 
 
 Caesar's consummate strategy throughout his Gaulish and 
 British campaigns has somewhat overshadowed his equally 
 consummate policy. Barbaric and brutal as his methods 
 vrere on only too many occasions, they were never adopted 
 from mere lust of conquest or bloodshed. His main 
 object, no doubt, was the extension of the Roman Empire, 
 but none knew better than he that the strength and per- 
 manence of the Roman Empire depended ultimately on the 
 extent and freedom of Roman commerce. His hunger tor 
 trade was a deeper instinct than his hunger for territory, and 
 his descents on Britain, almost always ascribed to mere desire 
 of conquest and glory, were, as a matter of fact, conducted 
 with a keen eye to business. The old trade route between 
 Cornwall and Marseille, and, indeed, between Britain 
 generally and the Mediterranean markets, was probably by 
 way of Thanet and southeast Kent to the Gironde, and 
 
lO 
 
 thence by the Garonne to Narbonne on the Mediterranean 
 shore. At a somewhat later date, the Loire became the 
 great highway, as far as it was navigable. From the highest 
 point of the Loire accessible by the merchant vessels of the 
 time, the traffic passed by land across apart of the Lyonnais 
 to Macon or Lyon, and thence down the Rhone. This later 
 route gave a waterway almost the whole distance, and passed 
 through the very heart of Gaul. Both routes avoided the 
 dangers of the Bay of Biscay and the tedious voyage round 
 the Spanish Peninsula, but the great difficulty of both was 
 the perilous coasting passage round the treacherous iron- 
 bound shores of Brittany. By the time that the Gallic 
 " Province '' became part of the Roman Empire, Marseille 
 no longer monopolised the trade with the north and west. 
 An overland journey, moreover, was no longer so risky an 
 enterprise as it had been for many ages previously. The 
 shortest line of traffic between Rome and Britain would be 
 by Genoa and Turin, and thence south of the lake of Geneva, 
 by Dijon, Troyes, Soissons, Amiens, and Boulogne. 
 
 This fact must have been strongly impressed on 
 Caesar's mind in the course of his early Gallic campaigns, 
 and his policy of safeguarding the passes to the south of the 
 lake of Geneva was probably dictated as much by his 
 appreciation of the value of the direct line to Britain as by 
 the more immediate expediency of securing an overland 
 route between Rome and Gaul generally, For it must be 
 remembered that in his day an exaggerated importance was 
 attached to the value of the commerce with Britain. To 
 the Roman world it was still a terra incognita, and it was 
 believed to be an island Eldorado. 
 
 The great practical difficulty, however, in establishing 
 a safe and satisfactory overland route between Britain and 
 Italy was the existence of an effective commercial cordon all 
 along the Continental shores from the embouchure of the 
 Loire to that of the Rhine. The Veneti of Brittany were 
 the power that maintained this cordon. They still held by 
 far the greatest portion of the carrying trade with Britain in 
 their own hands, aad they levied a heavy toll on the com- 
 paratively small proportion that remained in the hands of 
 other "states." The Belgas who had pushed the Veneti 
 
westward from the Straits of Dover were more powerful on 
 land but less powerful on the sea, and were content to pay 
 tribute to the Veneti for the right to carry merchandise 
 between their own ports and Britain It is perfectly intelli- 
 gible, therefore, on the one hand, why Caesar should be bent 
 on establishing a direct highway between Rome and Britain, 
 and on the other, why the Veneti should resist so serious 
 an encroachment on their national monopoly. The 
 confederation organised by the Veneti, the Armorican league, 
 was perhaps the most formidable than even Caesar ever 
 encounteied. But he knew how to meet it. The sailing- 
 ships of the Veneti were the best afloat, and it incidentally 
 appears that they made use of iron bolts and chain-cables 
 while the Romans still employed bronze fittings and hempen 
 ropes. Caesar built galleys and requisitioned slaves to row 
 them from among the Belgic and other "states " which were 
 at his mercy. The result answered his expectations The 
 great naval encounter took place in a dead calm, when the 
 220 vesse.ls of the Veneti fell a helpless prey to " the steam- 
 ships of antiquity," the Roman galleys. Completely worsted, 
 the Veneti and their allies surrendered themselves and their 
 possessions to Cjesar. He put all their senate to death, and 
 sold the rest of the people as slaves. Of the terrible 
 Venetic league, only the Morini in the neighbourhood of 
 Boulogne, and the Menapii, still nearer the mouth of the 
 Rhine, remained in arms. 
 
 The next year was the memorable B.C. 55 The new 
 highway to Britain was practically open, and the next great 
 enterprise was the subjugation of Britain itself. But an 
 unexpected hindrance occurred. Two German tribes on the 
 right bank of the Rhine had been forced to cross the river 
 by the incursionstof the Suevi, the strongest of the German 
 " states." These two tribes, after defeating the Menapii, 
 had wintered in their country, and sundry of the Belgic 
 " states," among whom probably were the Morini, had 
 sent them urgent messages to come to their assistance 
 against the Roman armies. Other German tribes were 
 hastening in the same direction. A battle ensued under 
 circumstances which Cato in the Roman senate afterwards 
 denounced as treacherous on the part of Csesar, but which 
 
the conqueror himself details with much complacency. The 
 number of the slain, including women and children, he 
 estimates at 430,000, some killed by soldiers, the rest 
 drowned near the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine. 
 It was still necessary to prevent the possibility of a German 
 advance along the shores of Belgic Gaul, which might 
 intercept his return, and perhaps cut off his retreat from 
 Britain. Caesar bridged the Rhine, and spent eighteen days 
 on the German side. 
 
 The road to Britain was now clear, but the eventful 
 voyage was not to be undertaken without full enquiry as to 
 what reception might be expected on the British side of 
 the Channel. Nearly all that Caesar knew of our Island up 
 to this time was that many of those he defeated in Gaul 
 found a refuge in Britain, and that in almost every war with 
 the Gauls, contingents from Britain had fought against him. 
 He catechised the merchants who traded to our shores. 
 He might as well have catechised the codfish of the Channel. 
 They were unanimous in their determination to know 
 nothing even about their own business. Failing to elicit 
 any information from the British commercial traveller, he 
 despatched the trusty Caius Volusenus in a ship of war to 
 reconnoitre and report at the earliest possible day. He 
 himself advanced to " the Morini," probably Boulogne, 
 with all his forces, among which the Roman legionaries 
 were only a small minority All the ships from all the ports 
 along the Belgic and Armoric shore were summoned for the 
 transport of his armies, and the maritime population that 
 survived the extinction of the Veneti and had been sold into 
 slavery, supplied able-bodied seamen, willing or unwilling, 
 in abundance. 
 
 Meanwhile, the commercial gentlemen whom Caesar had 
 found so reticent had contrived to convey to Britain full 
 information as to what was going forward. In a few days, 
 envoys arrived from several of the British " states," 
 announcing the willingness of their chiefs to submit to 
 Caesar and Rome, and to give hostages for their good 
 behaviour. Caesar received them courteously, and sent 
 them back to Britain with much good advice and a 
 distinguished escort. After his victory over the alliance of 
 
'3 
 
 Belgic "states" in Gaul, among which the Attrebates, or 
 people of Arras, were the most influential, he had created 
 Commius, one of their own chiefs. King over the survivors 
 of the tribe. Commius, whose army now formed part of 
 the assembled auxiliary forces, was known to possess great 
 influence with the Belgic " states " of Britain, as well as 
 with those of Gaul. He was accordingly told off to accom- 
 pany the envoys on their return, with orders to visit as 
 many of the British "States" as he could, and induce them 
 to accept the " protection " of Rome. A guard of thirty 
 horse and probably a small force of infantry accompanied 
 the royal envoy. 
 
 The story of Caesar's first landing in Britain has been 
 told a thousand times, and need not here be repeated. The 
 difficulty of approaching the shore, the heroism of the 
 Romans, the resistance and ultimate flight of the Britons 
 are detailed in every history, and the controversy as to the 
 place where the landing was effected has created an extensive 
 literature of its own. For the present, it need only be noted 
 that after this first victory, which, for all that Csssar says, may 
 have been absolutely bloodless, a number of envoys were 
 hurriedly despatched to Cassar to discuss terms of peace. 
 With them came Commius of Arras He had been seized, 
 he said, on his arrival in Britain, and thrown into chains. 
 Just at this juncture Commius was indispensable to Caesar. 
 If Csesar knew he was lying, he could not do otherwise than 
 accept his excuse for not having fulfilled his commission. 
 We shall meet Commius again in Kent in later days, but I 
 need not linger over the details of this first " invasion " of 
 Britain. 
 
 ']'he real invasion took place the following year, B.C. 54. 
 On this second occasion, by the time Csesar arrived on the 
 Gallic side of the Channel, 600 new transport vessels had 
 been built after designs of his own, and were nearly ready to 
 be launched, besides 28 warships. The entire fleet were 
 commanded to assemble at Portus Itius, now probably 
 Wissant or Boulogne, while Csesar himself marched towards 
 Treves, where a quarrel between two native chiefs demanded 
 his interposition. 
 
f4 
 
 On his return to the seaboard, he found that 40 ships 
 had been hindered by contrary winds, but that all the rest 
 were ready and waiting to set sail. Four thousand cavalry 
 troops were there, and also the chief persons of all the 
 states. " He decided," the narrative continues, " to leave 
 in Gaul only a very few of them, whose loyalty towards 
 himself he had fully tested, and to take the rest with him 
 as hostages." No doubt the fear of commotions in Gaul 
 was one of his motives. Another, more powerful, he leaves 
 to be inferied. The new transport ships were doubtless 
 capable of carrying at least as many men as the old ones 
 ' of the year before. Two of these we are incidentally told 
 carried 300 men, so we may fairly conclude that each of 
 the new build would carry 150. Fifty of the new vessels 
 may have been required for carrying over the 2,000 cavalry. 
 He had, therefore, in his 600 new vessels alone, transport 
 for 84,500 troops. Besides these, however, he had 28 new 
 warships, and he reckons that, including the vessels employed 
 in the preceding year, and the ships fitted out by private 
 individuals for their own convenience, his fleet amounted 
 to no less than 800 sail. The most moderate estimate of 
 the force with which he landed in Britain can therefore 
 hardly be less than 100,000, and was probably largely in 
 excess of that number. 
 
 Now the actual Roman army that Caesar took with 
 him amounted only to five legions of foot and two thousand 
 horse. The normal legion of Casar's time was 5,000. The 
 entire Roman force therefore was about 25,000 men 
 and 2,000 horses. Cssar, therefore, had carefully provided 
 transport for some 73,000 men at least who were not 
 Roman. He himself tells us that he took with him all 
 the chief men of "all the tribes" of Gaul as hostages for 
 their own fidelity, and that of all the tribes thus 
 summarily deprived of all their native leaders. But upon 
 what conditions was this high-handed proceeding physically 
 possible ? Some, perhaps many, of these hostages were 
 unwilling companions, and felt the compulsory voyage into 
 Britain a hardship and an indignity. But they cannot have 
 been prisoners. On the one hand, Caesar would never 
 dream of carting about many hundreds, if not some 
 
IS 
 
 thousands, of Gallic state-prisoners and telling off a still 
 larger number of his own men to keep watch and ward over 
 them when starting on a campaign in an unknown country. 
 On the other hand, to have carried off into captivity, or 
 even to have treated in a manner unbecoming their dignity 
 the native royalties and nobilities of Gaul, would have 
 provoked rebellion in Gaul before the fleet had reached the 
 shores of Britain, for large as was the number of hostages, 
 there must have been many nobles left behind who would 
 have been only too glad to become the leaders of the 
 national movement. It is, in- fact, nothing less than a 
 necessary inference that these chiefs held an honourable 
 position, that they were led to expect some advantage to 
 themselves as a result of the expedition, that no national 
 insult to the tribes was implied in taking them. But if this 
 be so, the further inference is unavoidable, that they were 
 really the leaders and captains of the auxiliary forces which 
 accompanied the expedition. The Gallic "states," it is 
 abundantly clear, were in the habit — some of them under 
 the necessity — of hiring out their armies to any power 
 willing and able to pay them. When Caesar tells us that 
 he took with him the native chiefs and nobility of " all the 
 tribes," is it credible that he would leave all their armies in 
 full strength behind while he took five legions of his Romans 
 into Britain ? On the other hand, in Britain there was an 
 alluring prospect of unlimited loot for any number of 
 mercenaries, and if the prospective plunder should fall 
 short, there were plenty of tribes who could be sold into 
 slavery to supply the deficiency. Csesar almost invariably 
 ignores his employment of mercenaries and their services 
 to his army, but in this case, when he tells us that he took 
 the chiefs of the several mercenary armies with him, there 
 was really no need to announce that the armies accompanied 
 the chiefs. It was an inference he gave his readers credit 
 for being able to draw for themselves. 
 
 The method adopted comes out clearly enough in the 
 narrative of what took place immediately before the start. 
 Among the hostage chieftains was Dumnorix the JFAusin. 
 When Caesar first insisted on Dumnorix accompanying him, 
 the Jiduan petitioned to be left in Gaul. He was not a 
 
i6 
 
 good sailor, he said, and was afraid of the passage across 
 the Channel. Besides, he had presentiments of bad luck, 
 and entertained conscientious objections to taking the 
 voyage. When he found that Caesar disregarded equally 
 his liver and his conscience, he changed his tactics, and 
 began to intrigue with others of the hostages to induce 
 them to stay behind with him. It is significant that he 
 failed to find a single one to agree with him. All but 
 himself regarded it as better business to go than to stay. 
 Twenty-five days passed and the order was given to embark. 
 Just at the critical moment it was discovered that Dumnorix 
 and his cavalry had disappeared. The mention of the 
 ^duan cavalry in this connexion is decisive as to their 
 forming part of the auxiliary army. Cffisar sent "a great 
 part " of his own cavalry to bring back the fugitive, or, if he 
 still refused, to slay him. He refused and was slain, " but 
 the ^duan cavalry all return to Csssar.'' 
 
 At last the mighty fleet got under way. The vessels 
 started at sunset, probably from Boulogne and the 
 immediate neighbourhood, with a gentle breeze from the 
 south-west. About midnight the wind dropped, and the 
 tide carried them so far up channel that when the sun 
 rose they saw that they had passed Britain on the left. 
 In other words, they found themselves a little to the north- 
 east of the North Foreland. After the tide had turned, 
 and the current began to bear them down channel, the 
 rowers were set to work to take the ships in shore at 
 the point where Caesar landed the year before. This 
 clearly indicates some part of the shore between Ramsgate 
 and Dover as the point of debarkation, and the coast 
 near Deal seems that which best suits with the particulars 
 recorded. In fact, " all in the Downs the fleet was 
 moored.'' 
 
 The sight of 800 vessels bearing down on the coast 
 at once produced its natural effect. Not an enemy was to 
 be seen, and the vast army disembarked undisturbed. 
 At nightfall, Caesar " moved forward a distance of about 
 12 miles, when the troops of the enemy appeared in 
 sight. They advanced with their cavalry and war 
 chariots to the river and began to check our men, engaging 
 
17 
 
 with them from the higher ground. When they were 
 repulsed by our cavalry, they hid themselves in the forest, 
 where they held a position admirably fortified both by 
 nature and art. This, it appeared, had lately been set in 
 order on account of a tribal war, for all the entrances to it 
 were barricaded with a number of felled trees. They 
 themselves sallied out of the woods in small detachments, 
 and prevented our men entering the fortifications. The 
 soldiers of the seventh legion, however, formed a testudo, 
 threw up a bank against the fortifications and took the 
 place, driving the enemy out of the woods, only a few of 
 our men being wounded. Caesar, however, forbade his 
 men to pursue their flight to any great distance, as he- 
 was unacquainted with the nature of the ground, and also 
 because the day was already far spent, and he wished tO' 
 allow time for fortifying the camp.'' 
 
 There can be little doubt that this "position, 
 admirably fortified both by nature and art,'' is none other' 
 than Bigbury Camp in Bigbury Wood, and as little that 
 in those days Bigbury was the oppidum of Canterbury then/ 
 known as Durovernum. Happily, Caesar defines exactly 
 what he means when he speaks of an oppidum. What the 
 Britons call an oppidum, he says, is " a thickly-wooded 
 position fortified by a vallum and an entrenchment within 
 which they are wont to congregate in order to avoid an 
 incursion of their enemies." Before the days of stone walls- 
 and fortifications, indeed, an oppidum in the near 
 neighbourhood of a town or city exposed to easy attack and 
 consisting of highly inflammable huts and houses, was an. 
 institution of the highest practical utility. On occasions of 
 threatened attack, the inhabitants could betake themselves- 
 with their flocks and herds to their stronghold, which was 
 far more easily defensible than their own dwelling-places to- 
 which they could return when the danger was overpast 
 Obviously, Canterbury, even if surrounded by a vallum of 
 earth,' would be far more difficult to defend than Bigbury, 
 which, although taken at once by a Caesar, might probably 
 have defied the attack of a Cassivellaunus. 
 
 " Canterbury," says Professor Boyd-Dawkins, in a letter 
 he kindly sent me, " at the head of the navigation of the' 
 
i8 
 
 Stour, stands, in my opinion, on a pre-historic site sub- 
 sequently occupied by the Romans, the line of its former 
 earthworks being preserved in the irregular shape of Roman 
 Canterbury. That the city is approximately of the same 
 date as the entrenchment known as Bigbury Camp seems 
 to be proved by the fact that the Pilgrim's Road leading to 
 Canterbury strikes right through the entrenchment. This is 
 an oppidum, and obviously belongs to the same date as the 
 road. That it dates from the Pre-historic Iron Age is 
 proved by the iron implements and pottery which I 
 obtained in it in 1893. The oppidum is one of many in 
 Kent, and the Pilgrim's Road itself is merely a portion of 
 the network of roads traversing England in the Pre-historic 
 Iron Age. I would remark that the old road passed into 
 the oppidum to the north of the place where it is marked on 
 the six-inch map. It leaves the camp on the west as 
 represented on the map." 
 
 Here, at Canterbury, I leave the " divine Julius" and 
 his history, which for Britain, Snally closes the Pre-historic 
 Iron Age. Tacitus tells us that Caesar's expedition was a 
 survey of Britain rather than a conquest. Not a single 
 Roman legion, not a single Roman officer, is recorded 
 by Csesar to have been left behind when he returned to 
 Rome in triumph. But the task he had undertaken on 
 both sides the Channel was none the less accomplished. 
 He had opened and secured the pathways alike of conquest 
 and commerce between Rome and Britain, and had made 
 the princes of south-eastern Britain tributaries of Rome. 
 But what of the 73,000 Belgic auxiliaries who accompanied 
 the expedition ? Their casualties, no doubt, would be 
 heavier than those among the legionaries, but after making 
 all allowances, an army would still be left larger than 
 that which effected the Norman conquest. What became 
 of them ? There is no hint of their returning to their 
 homes, and the natural inference is that they stayed where 
 they were, in Britain. To me it seems that to leave them 
 behind was the only rational policy that Caesar could adopt. 
 In Gaul, the Belgic chiefs and their armies were a standing 
 menace to Roman predominance. In Britain, if only they 
 were allowed a free hand to subjugate and plunder native 
 
'9 
 
 princes and territories outside the dominions of those who 
 had already accepted Roman "protection," they would 
 not only cease from troubling in Gaul, but would also be 
 a security for the payment of the tribute imposed on the 
 British princes as the price of " protection." Their obvious 
 interests would lie in the payment of a tribute when the 
 means of payment were placed in their hands without any 
 burden to themselves, and when the payment of it left 
 them free to pursue^ their own schemes of avarice or 
 ambition. That some bargain of the kind was made by 
 Caesar with the Belgic auxiliaries he left behind him in 
 Britain is almost certain. I entertain as little doubt that 
 the conquests effected by these Belgic warriors formed a 
 most momentous episode in the "Saxonizing" of Britain, 
 a process which, according to nearly all our historians, did 
 not even commence until five centuries later. 
 
 THE SAXON INVASION. 
 
 If I have dwelt at 'what may seem undue length 
 on the expeditions of Caesar to Britain, it is because I find 
 it impossible not to believe that the Belgic tribes with 
 which he came into such close contact were in reality our 
 own forefathers, the true " Saxons " who transformed 
 Celtic Britain into modern England, the Durovernum of 
 the Pre-historic Iron Age into the Canterbury of to-day. 
 The folk that constructed the earthworks at Bigbury, if a 
 Belgic folk they were, seem to me the fathers and 
 founders of the English people and the English language. 
 Both race and tongue are products of our Kentish soil. 
 The elements of both, no doubt, must be sought for 
 beyond our shores, but both are none the less indigenous. 
 Our daily bread is English, though the wheat may have 
 grown at the Antipodes and the yeast been made in 
 Germany. By the time that Britain emerges into real 
 history in the pages of Csesar, Kent and the surrounding 
 districts are already English. Largely as the race has been 
 modified by admixture with the immigrants and invaders of 
 more than two milenniums, immensely as it has been 
 
developed, and widely as it has been differentiated, it has 
 never been dispossessed or denationalized. The hypothesis 
 which assumes that English history begins with the 
 incursion of certain peoples called Jutes, Angles, and 
 Saxons in the fifth century, seems to me decisively 
 negatived by all the evidence now available by the 
 phenomena of our ancient institutions, our systems of 
 agriculture, our local nomenclature, our arts and industries, 
 our methods of government, our manners and customs, 
 our laws and language. 
 
 The theory, indeed, can boast of a long and 
 illustrious line of authorities in its favour, from the days 
 of the Venerable Bede down to those of the late J. R. 
 Green. But high as are the authorities, facts are higher 
 still, and in this case, to my own mind, the facts are in 
 direct contradiction to the authorities. When the story of 
 the so-called Saxon invasion is traced back to its source, it 
 is found to rest on the authority of two writers, one called 
 Gildas or Gildus, and the other Nennius, or, perhaps, Mark. 
 Gildas is said to have written about the year 560, but the 
 latest researches seem to render it probable that this is 
 about 50 years too early. He is said to have been a 
 British writer by many authorities, by others to have been 
 an Abbot in Brittany, but the internal evidence seems to 
 indicate that he was a brother in the monastery of St. 
 Andrew's at Rome. As to Nennius, the evidence is even 
 more conflicting. He may have written in the seventh 
 century or in the tenth. All that is really known about the 
 person so called is that his name, whatever it may have 
 been, was not Nennius. These, be it observed, are the 
 earliest known " authorities " on the subject. 
 
 The story they tell is worthy of historians so 
 distinguished. The incoherent preachments of Gildas 
 contain not a single definite statement, but he is of some 
 value as evidence that some tradition in its main features 
 similar to that recorded by Nennius was current in his day, 
 7'he narrative of Nennius, so far as it relates to the invasion 
 and Canterbury, runs thus : " Gorthigern was King in 
 Britain, and while he reigned was sore troubled by dread 
 of the Picts and Scots, by the Romanish attack and eke 
 
21 
 
 by fear of Arabrosius. In the mean season came three 
 chiules from Germany driven forth into exile, wherein were 
 
 Hors and Hengist that were own brothers But 
 
 Gorthigern received them kindly, and delivered unto them 
 the island that in their tongue is called Taneth, but in 
 British speech, Ruithin. Martian the Second was reigning 
 when the Saxons were received by Gorthigern in the year 
 447, after the passion of Christ. [The year apparently 
 indicated by Nennius would therefore be A.D. 480.] 
 
 Now it came to pass after the Saxons had pitched 
 
 their camp in the aforesaid Isle of Taneth, the King 
 aforesaid promised that victual and clothing should be 
 given them without fail, and it pleased them, and they 
 promised to fight against his enemies bravely. But those 
 barbarians, when they were multiplied in number, the 
 Britons were not able to feed them. When they asked for 
 food and clothing, according as it had been promised them, 
 the Britons said : ' We cannot give you food nor clothing, 
 for that your number hath multiplied ; but go forth from 
 among us ; your help we need not' But they took counsel 
 with their chief men to break the peace. 
 
 But Hengist, for that he was a learned man and keen 
 of wit and crafty, when he had perceived as concerning the 
 king that he was a sluggard, and as concerning his country- 
 men that they were wont to go about their business 
 unarmed, forthwith began to hatch a politic scheme, and 
 said to the British king ; ' We be few. If thou wilt, we will 
 send to our country that we may invite soldiers from 
 among the soldiers of our land, and so shall the num.ber be 
 the greater to fight for thee and for thy people.' And the 
 King granted him this same. They sent straightway, and 
 the envoys voyaged athwart the Scythic "Valley, returning 
 with seventeen chiules. The chosen soldiers came in 
 them, and in one chiule came a damsel exceeding fair and 
 comely. This was the daughter of Hengist. After the 
 chiules had come, Hengist made a feast to Gorthrigern, the 
 King and his soldiers, and to his interpreter who was called 
 
 Cerdicselmet Hengist, therefore, bade the damsel 
 
 serve the wine and strong drink to them, and very drunken 
 were they and full of liquor. And while they were 
 
drinking, Satan entered into Gorthrigern's heart, so that he 
 greatly loved the damsel and asked her of her father 
 through his interpreter, and said : ' Everything that thou 
 dost ask of me thou shalt obtain, even though it be the haif 
 of my kingdom.' And Hengist, taking counsel with his 
 elders that had come with him from the island of Oghgul 
 as to what they should ask of the King for the damsel, they 
 all were of one counsel that they should ask for the tract of 
 land that in their tongue is called Canthguaraland, but in 
 our tongue, Ghent. And he gave it to them what time 
 King Gnoirangon was reigning in Kent, and he did not 
 know that his kingdom was made over to the Pagans, and 
 that he himself was secretly given into their power. And 
 on this wise was the damsel given to him in marriage, and 
 he slept with her and loved her much. 
 
 Hengist, therefore, said to the King : ' I am thy father, 
 and I will be a counsellor unto thee, and take heed that 
 thou overpass not my counsel ever, for thou shalt not 
 fear to be overcome of one man nor of any people, for this 
 people of mine is strong. I will, therefore, invite hither 
 my son and his cousin, that is my brother's son, for that 
 they be men of war that they may fight against the Scots, 
 and do thou give them the lands that are in the north nigh 
 the wall that is called Gual.' And he bade him that he 
 should invite them, and he invited them, Ochta and Abisa 
 with 40 chiules. But they, when they had voyaged around 
 the Picts, wasted the Orchades Islands, and came and 
 occupied very many regions on the further side of the 
 Fresic sea, to wit, the sea that is between us and the Scots 
 as far as the marshes of the Picts. And evermore Hengist 
 invited chiules unto him little by little, so that they left 
 the islands from whence they had come without an 
 inhabitant. And when his people had waxed great as well 
 in courage as in number, they came to the aforesaid 
 Canterbury. 
 
 In the meanwhile Guorthemir, the son of 
 
 Gortigern, fought mightily against Hengist and Horsus and 
 their people, and drove them out as far as the island that 
 
 is called Taneth They, therefore, sent messengers 
 
 over sea as far as into Germany, and called out the chiules 
 
23 
 
 with a mighty number of warriors and strong men. And 
 thereafter they fought against the Kings of our people, and 
 at our time they conquered and made broad their marches, 
 and at another they were conquered and driven out. And 
 Guorthemir waged war against them eagerly four 
 
 times But it came to pass after the death of 
 
 Guorthemir, the son of King Gortigern, and after the 
 return of Hengist with his armed hosts, that they counselled 
 a crafty device, to wit, that they should practice a deceit 
 on Gortigern with his army. Wherefore they sent envoys 
 to ask for peace, and that a lasting friendship should be 
 made between them. And Gortigern held counsel with 
 his elders, and they took thought what they would do, and 
 at the last it was the counsel of all that they should make 
 peace. And the envoys of the Saxons returned and 
 afterwards called a meeting together, and it was resolved 
 that on each side the Britons and Saxons should hold 
 conference together without arms, and that peace should be 
 firmly established between them. 
 
 Hengist, most traitorous as he was, bade each of his 
 household set his knife under his foot along the midst of 
 his shoe-sole, ' and when I shall cry out to you and say, 
 ' Nimed cure saxes,' draw forth your daggers from your 
 shoe-soles, and run in upon them and stand up against 
 them bravely. But take heed ye slay not their king, for 
 the sake of my daughter that I have given him in marriage, 
 but hold him fast, for it is the better for us he should be 
 ransomed out of our hands. And they gathered their 
 company, and all came together to the conference in one. 
 Howbeit, the Saxons spake friendly for all that they were 
 acting fox-like in their heart, and they sate in fellowship 
 man by man. And Hengist, as he had said, cried out, and 
 all the 300 elders of King Gortigern were slain, and he 
 alone was seized and set in chains, and yielded them very 
 many lands for the ransom of his soul, to wit, Essex, 
 Sussex, and Middlesex. ..." (Nennius, Hist. XXVHI- 
 XXXVIII.) 
 
 This is the story as told by the original authority. 
 There is nothing in it, say later authorities, so obviously 
 false that we need doubt its substantial accuracy. Things may 
 
24 
 
 not have happened quite as they are here related, but it is 
 only fair to assume that the record has some foundation in 
 truth. No doubt much is to be said in favour of accepting 
 a story of the kind when no better story can be substituted 
 for it, and much more may be said in favour of recording 
 an ancient national myth such as this undoubtedly is. But 
 it may be well before accepting it either as history or myth, 
 to make sure that it really belongs to Britain at all. Let 
 the narrative of Nennius in reference to Hengist and 
 Horsus be compared with the following story told by a 
 classic author. 
 
 "In the days of King Tarquin" [i.e., Tarquinius 
 Priscus, c. B.C. 532], "the younger men of the Phocseans set 
 sail from Asia to the mouth of the Tiber and entered into a 
 league of friendship with the Romans. Starting again from 
 thence, they made their way in their ships as far as the 
 furthest gulfs of Gaul, and founded Massilia between the 
 Ligurians and the savage tribes of the Galli, Great things 
 they here achieved, at one time defending themselves 
 against the attacks of the barbarous Galli ; at another, 
 beginning the attack and harrassing those who had before 
 been the aggressors. For the Phocasans owing to the 
 narrow limits and the barrenness of their country, are 
 compelled to make more diligent use of the sea than of the 
 land, and eke out a livelihood by fishing or trading, or even 
 by piracy on the high seas. Accordingly, after venturing to 
 explore the furthest coasts of the ocean, they found them- 
 selves in the Gallic gulf at the mouth of the Rhone river. 
 Here they were so taken with the pleasantness of the place 
 that they were minded to return home to tell what they had 
 seen, and to induce a larger number of adventurers to join 
 them. On this second expedition, the leaders of the fleet 
 were Simos and Protis. They held a conference accordingly 
 with the King of the Segobrigii, Nannus by name, in whose 
 territories they were anxious to found the city, and solicited 
 his friendship. 
 
 It so happened that on that day the King was busy 
 making preparations for the wedding of his daughter 
 Gyptis, whom, according to the custom of the country, he 
 was ready to give in marriage then and there to a son-in-law 
 
25 
 
 who was to be chosen as the feast. So, as all the suitors 
 had been bidden to the wedding, the Greek visitors were 
 also invited to the feast. The damsel was then brought 
 in, and her father bade her offer water to the one she would 
 best like for her husband. Passing by all the others, she 
 turned to the Greeks and offered the water to Protis, who 
 was thus transformed from a guest into a son-in law, and 
 received from his father-in-law a site whereon to found a 
 city. Massilia was accordingly founded in a remote bay 
 near the mouths of the river Rhone, as it were, in a corner 
 of the sea. 
 
 From these Greeks, therefore, it was that the GalJi 
 learnt the ways of a more civilised life, and laid aside their 
 barbaric customs in favour of others more gentle, the 
 cultivation of their fields and the girdling their cities with 
 walls. They began to live by law and not by arms, to 
 prune the vine and plant the olive ; and men and things 
 were wrought to such a polish that it seemed not so much 
 that Greece had migrated into Gaul as that Gaul had been 
 transmuted into Greece. 
 
 After the death of Nannus, the King of the Segobrigii, 
 from whom the site for founding the city had been 
 received, his son, Comanus, succeeded to the kingdom. 
 After his accession, a certain Ligurian declared that some 
 day Massilia would be the destruction of the neighbouring 
 tribes, and advised that it should be suppressed at the 
 outset, lest, presently, it should wax stronger and over- 
 whelm the kingdom He added also this fable : Once 
 upon a time, a bitch heavy with young, earnestly petitioned 
 a shepherd for a place where she might bring forth her 
 puppies. After she had obtained so much, she further 
 petitioned to be allowed to suckle them in the same place. 
 At last, when the puppies were full grown, she was able to 
 rely on the assistance of her family in asserting herself to 
 be rightful owner of the place. ' And not otherwise,' says 
 he, 'will these Massaliotes, who already seem to be 
 denizens of the land, hereafter be its lords.' Acting on 
 this instigation, the King devised a plot against the 
 Massaliotes. When the day arrived for the yearly celebra- 
 tion of the Floralia, he sent a number of stout active men 
 
26 
 
 into the city under the protection of its hospitahty. Others 
 in addition he orders to be brought into the city in carts, 
 concealed in wicker baskets, covered over with leaves. 
 He himself with an army lies in ambush in the 
 nearest mountains, so that when the gates should be 
 opened at night by the men of whom I have already 
 spoken, he might present himself opportunity for carrying 
 out the treachery and capturing the city already overcome 
 by sleep and wine. 
 
 These plots, however, were revealed by a certain 
 kinswoman of the King, who was in love with one of the 
 young Greeks. Moved to compassion by his comeliness 
 as she lay in the youth's arms, she made known the 
 treachery and bade him beware of the peril. He at once 
 reported the matter to the magistrates, and the plot being 
 thus detected, all the Ligurians were seized, and those 
 that were in the baskets dragged from their hiding places. 
 After all of these were killed, a crafty deceit was practised 
 on the deceiving King, which cost him his own life and 
 that of 7,000 of the enemy beside." (Justin, from Trogus 
 Pompeius XLIH. 3, etc.) 
 
 The historian then goes on to describe the many 
 victories won by the Massaliotes over the Gauls, the 
 Ligurians, and the Carthaginians. The same story is told 
 with variations by another classic writer, who, it will be 
 seen, cites high authority for its accuracy. 
 
 "Aristotle, in his 'polity of the Massaliotes,' writes 
 thus : The Phocseans that were in Ionia founded 
 Massilia, in order to make use of it as an emporium. Now 
 Euxenos the Phocaean was the guest of Nanos the king, 
 for such was his name. This Nanos had on hand the 
 marriage of his daughter, and as Euxenos happened to be 
 there at the time, he invited him to the feast. Now the 
 wedding took place on this wise. After the supper, the 
 damsel was to come in and give a cup ready mixed 
 to whichever one of the suitors present she would, and he 
 to whom she should give it was to be the bridegroom. The 
 maiden accordingly came in, and, as luck would have it, or, 
 may be, as the fancy took her, gave it to Euxenos. The 
 damsel's name was Petta. When the matter thus fell out, 
 
27 
 
 her father, regarding the gift as a token of the will of God, 
 accepted him as worthy to have her. Euxenos accordingly 
 took the lady and lived with her as his wife, changing her 
 name into Aristoxene. And to this day, the man's family 
 is still living at Massilia called the Protiadae, because a son 
 that was born to Euxenos and Aristoxene was named 
 Protis." [Athenaeus Deipn. XIII, 5, p. 576.] 
 
 Now, no reader, I think, of these three narratives can 
 fail to be struck with their extraordinary similarity in 
 substance, in spite of certain differences in detail. They 
 are all, obviously and unquestionably, variants of one and 
 the same original myth. The scene, indeed, is transferred 
 from Gaul and Marseille to Britain and Canterbury, but 
 the characters and the drama remain practically the same. 
 The differences between the two classic versions, which 
 refer with absolute certainty to the same legendary event, 
 are in fact more widely marked than those between the 
 version of Nenniusand that of Justin, although the former 
 locates his story at Canterbury and the latter at Marseille. 
 
 But, if this be true — and it is hard, indeed, to see how 
 it can be denied — what becomes of the first chapter of 
 English history as written by our "standard historians?" 
 The original authority on which they have all relied, is not 
 merely questioned or impugned, it is annihilated. If the 
 first and best authority for the story of Hengist and Horsa 
 and the Saxon invasion of the fifth century is shown, as I 
 submit it is now shown, to be not merely mythic and 
 legendary, but to refer to Marseille and not to Britain, no 
 later authorities, be their names never so great and 
 venerable, are entitled to claim credibility for any narrative 
 based upon that of Nennius. In simple fact, the early 
 history of England and of Canterbury alike still remains 
 to be written. When it is written, the historian will have 
 no difficulty in accounting for the transference of a 
 Massoliote tradition to the shores of Kent, and hardly 
 greater difficulty in identifying the Belgic tribes of Csesar's 
 day with the real fathers of the English people. 
 
28 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL, 
 
 It IS of course impossible in the brief space of a few 
 pages to attempt anything like a complete description of 
 the history of the Premier Cathedral of England, which in 
 various ways has been connected with the main events of 
 our national hfe. All members of the British Association 
 who visit Canterbury during the Dover meeting will have 
 facilities' given them for seeing the Cathedral under 
 competent guidance. The object of this paper is only to 
 supply them with a few preliminary facts. 
 
 The year 1897 concluded a very memorable epoch in 
 the History of the Church of England ; for June 2nd, 1897, 
 was the Thirteen Hundredth Anniversary of the 
 baptism of King Ethelbert, the first Christian English 
 king, by St. Augustine of Canterbury. 
 
 Since that day a Christian Church has always stood 
 on the present site of Canterbury Cathedral ; and through 
 that Cathedral and its precincts have flowed those thirteen 
 centuries of English Christianity. 
 
 1. — In its close connexion with the great secular events 
 of our national history, Canterbury Cathedral stands almost 
 unrivalled. It contains the royal tombs of Henry IV. and 
 Queen Joan of Navarre ; of Edward the Black Prince, and 
 others of Royal lineage. It has been visited in State, and on 
 great occasions, by nearly all our sovereigns. 
 
 In 1023 King Knut presented to the Cathedral his 
 golden crown. On May 4th, 1130, Henry I. came here 
 with King David of Scotland and all the English Bishops. 
 Here on July 12th, T174, Henry II, performed his 
 memorable penance before the tomb of Becket. On 
 August 23rd, J 1 79, the Cathedral was visited by Louis VII. 
 of France, the first French King who ever set foot on 
 English shores. In December 1189, Richard Cceur de 
 Lion came here, with William, King of Scotland, and again 
 in 1194, on his return from the Crusades. Here Kigg 
 John and Isabella were crowned by Archbishop Hubert 
 Walter at Easter, 1201. Henry III. was present, as a boy, 
 
20 
 
 with Archbishop Langton and Pandulph, the I'apal Legate, 
 on July 7ih, 1220, at the translation of Backet's remains ; 
 and he was here re-crowned by St. Edmund in 1 236. Here 
 on September loth, 1299, Edward I. was married to 
 Margaret of France ; and he presented the golden crown 
 of Scotland to the Cathedral in the same year. In 1357 
 it was visited by the Black Prince with his prisoner, the 
 King of France, after the battle of Poictiers; and in 1363 
 he built his Chantry after his marriage with the Fair Maid 
 of Kent. Henry V. visited the Cathedral on his way home 
 after the battle of Agincourt. In 1400 it was visited by 
 Emmanuel, Emperor of the East: and in 141 7 by 
 Sigismund, Emperor of the West. In 1465 Edward IV. 
 and Queen Elizabeth Woodville visited it and presented 
 the grand north window of the Martyrdom. Henry VII. 
 came almost every year of his reign. In 1520 Henry VIII. 
 worshipped here in great state with the Emperor Charles V.* 
 The late Prince Consort stopped at Canterbury, and 
 attended the Cathedral Service, in 1840, just before his 
 marriage with Queen Victoria. The Queen had gone over 
 the Cathedral with the Duchess of Kent, on September 28th, 
 1835, previous to Her Majesty's accession, and visited 
 Cantesbury again in 1842. 
 
 2. — The Cathedral is still more closely connected 
 with the entire stream of events in the history of 
 our Church. Here the great Archbishop Theodore 
 (+690) founded the first great English School, and here 
 he placed the first Organ that was ever heard in 
 England. All the Old English Archbishops, with only 
 one exception, from Cuthbert (+759) to Robert (11052), 
 including St. Dunstan, St. Odo, and St. Alphege, lie 
 buried under its roof; as also do the great majority of 
 
 * It has also been visited, among other sovereigns, by King 
 Stephen ; Philip, Earl of Flanders (1184) ; King Philip of Spain 
 (1555); Queen Mary (1558); Queen Elizabeth (1573); Charles I. ' 
 and Henrietta Maria, immediately after their marriage (1625) ; 
 Charles II. (1660) ; William and Mary (1689) ; George I. (1720) ; 
 George II. (1728) ; George Prince Regent (1798). Richard II. pre- 
 sented the Cathedral with ;^IOOO. Queen Mary gave some magnificent 
 hangings. 
 
3° 
 
 the later Archbishops, from Lanfranc (fioSg) to Cardinal 
 Pole (ti5S8), including St. Anselm, St. Thomas Becket, 
 Hubert Walter, Stephen Langton, Archbishops Peckham, 
 Winchelsey, Bradwardine, Islip, Simon de Sudbury, 
 Courtenay, Arundel, Chicheley, Bourchier, Morton, 
 Warham, and other Saints and Statesmen famous in 
 history for their high services to Church and Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 3. — The Cathedral itself is one of the most uniquely 
 beautiful in England. It exhibits the first traces of 
 Early English style, and besides the ancient Roman work 
 recognised by archKologians in the Crypt, it contains 
 specimens of the Prae-Norman, Norman, Transition, 
 Early English, Decorated, Perpendicular, and Modern 
 styles. Its Cloisters are described by Prof. Willis as 
 "a perfect museum of Mediaeval architecture." 
 
 4. — The stateliness and beauty of Canterbury 
 Cathedral is a matter of more than national concern. 
 It is yearly visited by hundreds of Americans, and, with 
 Westminster Abbey, is one of their chief points of 
 attraction in the old Country. They, no less than we, 
 have a profound interest in a structure so intimately 
 connected with the history of our Church. It is aJso- 
 visited by multitudes from every part of our Colonial 
 Empire, and in the summer months there are sometimes 
 as many as a thousand visitors in a day. 
 
 It is asserted by tradition that a Christian church stood 
 on the site of the cathedral from the very earliest days. 
 It is said by Bede to have been built by Roman Christians ; 
 but when the Romans abandoned England, in the decadent 
 days of the Emperor Honorius, the building was utilised by 
 the Saxons for pagan worship. Queen Bertha, daughter of 
 Charibert, king of Paris, the first Christian queen of 
 England, had stipulated on her marriage with King 
 Ethelbert that she should be allowed to continue her 
 Christian worship. Accordingly the little adjacent church 
 of St. Martin's was assigned to her use, and was placed 
 under the pastoral charge of Bishop Liudhard, who 
 accompanied her to England. The Queen made her short 
 cut to her little church from Ethelbert's palace through 
 
31 
 
 a postern-gate in the city wall, which is still shown, and 
 which gives its name to the famous old " Queningate 
 Lane," between the walls of the city and the convent. 
 
 But in A.D. 597 Ethelbert was converted by St. 
 Augustine of Canterbury. The King assigned him the 
 old Roman temple of Canterbury as his cathedral, and, 
 retiring to Reculver, gave up to his own palace for the 
 residence of Augustine and his monks. The church was 
 even then not of wood but of stone or brick, and parts of 
 this ancient pre-Norman work, which may be nearly fifteen 
 •centuries old, are still visible in the west wall of the crypt. 
 This Saxon cathedral was entered at the east, and had 
 its apse at the west, and is said to have been remodelled 
 after the design of the old basilica of St. Peter at Rome. 
 It was dedicated to the Saviour, and known as Christ 
 Church. 
 
 Cuthbert, the eleventh Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 powerfully affected the fortunes of the cathedral by 
 obtaining permission from Pope Gregory (a.d. 740) that 
 henceforth all the archbishops might be buried within the 
 walls of their own cathedral. Accordingly from Cuthbert 
 (1758) to Cardinal Pole (tiS59) the earthly remains of 
 all the archbishops lie there at rest, including those of 
 St. Odo (t9S8), St. Dunstan (t988), St. Alphege (+1017), 
 St. Anselm (fiiog), and St. Thomas Becket {fi'-To). It 
 is a singular fact that since the Reformation no Protestant 
 Archbishop of Canterbury has been buried in his own 
 metropolitan cathedral, until leave was obtained for the 
 interment of Archbishop Benson in 1895. 
 
 The popular reverence paid to cathedrals depended 
 mainly, for many centuries, upon the estimated preciousness 
 of the relics which they enshrined. 
 
 In 891, Archbishop Plegmund brought to the cathedral 
 the relics of St. Blaise, to whom a chapel was dedicated. 
 Odo (22nd archbishop) repaired the structure, added to 
 its height, and brought to it the remains of St. Wilfrid ; and 
 about the same time four clerks brought hither the remains 
 of St. Audoen. 
 
 In ion Canterbury was sacked and burned by the 
 barbarous Danes, who took captive the saintly Archbishop 
 
32 
 
 Alphege, whom they afterwards martyred at Greenwich. 
 In 1023 King Knut had the martyr's body restored to the 
 cathedral. In 1067 the cathedral was again consumed by 
 a disastrous fire. In 1070 Lanfranc was consecrated 
 archbishop, and gazed with grief on the scathed ruins of his 
 minster. He rebuilt it during seven years and raised the 
 number of the monks to 150. Lanfranc was succeeded 
 by St. Anselm in 1093, and he appointed Ernulf to be 
 prior. But Lanfranc's choir was not sufficiently magnificent 
 for the ambition of Ernulf. " He pulled it down and 
 re-erected it so much more splendidly," says William of 
 Malmesbury, " that nothing like it could be seen in 
 England for the lustre of its glass windows, the brightness 
 of its marble pavements, and its many-coloured frescoes 
 which attract the wondering eyes to the summits of the 
 vaulting." As Ernulf died before the work was finished, 
 it was continued by his successor with decorations so 
 sumptuous that it was known henceforth as " Conrad's 
 glorious choir." The finished church was dedicated on 
 May 4th, 1 1 30, by Archbishop William Corboil in a festival 
 at which were present King Henry I., King David of 
 Scotland, and all the bishops of England. Gervase 
 enthusiastically remarks that " so famous a ceremony has 
 never been heard of since the dedication of the Temple of 
 Solomon." 
 
 But alas ! before fifty years were over, between three 
 and four o'clock on September 5th, 1174, a fire broke out 
 in three cottages near the monastery, and the sparks and 
 flames were carried to the cathedral by a violent gale from 
 the south. The fire in the cottages was easily extinguished, 
 but the people went home without being aware of the 
 mischief which was smouldering about the roofs of their 
 beloved church. When the flames burst out of the roof, 
 and melted the sheets of lead, a wild cry arose, " See ! see t 
 the church is on fire." The young monk Gervase was 
 present during this thrilling scene, and furnishes us with a 
 lively description of it. He says : " Then the people and 
 the monks assemble in haste; they draw water, they 
 brandish their hatchets, they run up the stairs full of 
 eagerness, to save the church, already alas ! beyond their 
 
33 
 
 help. But when they reach the roof and perceive the 
 black smoke and scorching flames that pervade it through- 
 out, they abandon the attempt in despair, and thinking 
 only of their own safety, make all haste to descend."* 
 
 The blazing beams fell' crashing upon the sedilia of the 
 monks, which caught fire in their turn, and the whole choir 
 was soon in a blaze. The people ran to tear down and 
 save (or some of them, alas ! to steal) the pallia and 
 curtains, while the monks were intent on rescuing the 
 reliquaries. " In this manner the House of God, hitherto 
 ■delightful as a paradise of pleasures, was now made a 
 despicable heap of ashes, reduced to a dreary wilderness, 
 and laid open to all the injuries of the weather." 
 
 The paragraph which follows furnishes a most curious 
 historic proof of the far more passionate pride in their 
 cathedral felt by the people in those days ; of the more 
 vehement intensity and unrestrained exhibition of their 
 emotions ; and of the strange intermingling of superstition 
 and blasphemy, which seemed to them the most natural 
 thing in the world. 
 
 "They were astonished," says our monkish chronicler,. 
 " that the Almighty should suffer such things, and, 
 maddened with excess of grief and perplexity, they tore their 
 hair, and beat the walls and pavements of the church with 
 their heads and Jiands, blaspheming the Lord and the saints, 
 ■the patrons of the church : and many, both of the laity and 
 monks, would have rather laid down their lives than that the 
 ■church should so miserably have perished. Bethink thee 
 now what mighty grief oppresses the hearts of the sons of 
 the Church under this great tribulation. I verily believe 
 the afflictions of Canterbury were no less than those of 
 Jerusalem of old, and their waitings were as the wailings 
 of Jeremiah ; neither can mind conceive, or words express, or 
 writing teach, their grief and anguish.'" Their patron 
 saints " had their resting place in that wilderness, and had 
 the monks in their deep dejection put up an altar in the 
 
 * I borrow the admirable translation of Professor Willis, whose 
 book on " The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral " (1845) 
 is invaluable. 
 
34 
 
 nave, they might wail and howl rather than sing the diurnal 
 and nocturnal services." 
 
 For five years the monks remained in grief and sought 
 various counsellors, finally agreeing to employ a skilled 
 workman named William of Sens, "on account of his 
 lively genius and good reputation." The Cathedral of 
 Sens (1143-1168) has several peculiarities in common with 
 the work of Canterbury, e.g., the double piers, the foliated 
 capitals, the square abacus, the rings upon some of the 
 slender shafts, the system of vaulting of sexpartite ciboria 
 
 so that six vaulting-cells meet in the keystone " 
 
 (Willis, p. 96). For five years William laboured with 
 admirable skill, completing five pillars on each side of the 
 choir with the triforia and clerestory windows above them ; 
 and then he unhappily fell down fifty feet from a 
 scaffolding, and was terribly injured. He made a brave 
 attempt to continue the superintendence of the work from 
 his pallet, but, finding it impossible to resist " this 
 vengeance of God or spite of the devil," resigned his task 
 to William the Englishman, " small in body, but in work- 
 manship of many kinds acute and honest." He it was 
 who continued the cathedral to Trinity Chapel and Becket's 
 crown. In order to save the existing beautiful chapels of 
 St. Andrew and St. Anselm, English William with great 
 skill first contracted and then expanded the line of pillars 
 in a way which added to the appearance of the building 
 instead of imparing it. The whole choir and east end of 
 the cathedral, as now it stands, and the upper portion of 
 the exterior walls, is mainly the work of William of Sens 
 (11 75-1 178), and William the Englishman (11 79-1 184)., 
 The style of their architecture is Transitional. Of previous 
 work, besides the fragments of pre-Norman architecture in 
 the crypt, we have Lanfranc's plinth and small blocks of 
 Caen stone (1070-1077) worked into the walls in the nave 
 and Western Transept ; the foundation piers of the Central 
 Tower in the crypt ; a door in the East Cloister, and above 
 it three windows of the old dormitory. Of Prior Ernulf s 
 and Conrad's work (i 096-1 106) we have the round-arched 
 masonry of the crypt, parts of the outer walls, of the Dark 
 Entry (famous for the ghost of Nell Cook), and of the 
 
35 
 
 monastic kitchen. Of later Norman work (1135-1145) we 
 have sculptures on the piers and capitals of the crypt, very 
 quaint and beautiful. The treasury furnishes the earliest: 
 specimen of diagonal ribbed vaulting. The so-called 
 Baptistery, the Transept Towers, and the Green Court 
 Gate, all belong to the epoch of Later Norman. 
 
 The cathedral and its buildings are "a perfect 
 museum of medieval architecture." From the Transitional 
 style we pass to the First Pointed or Early English Style 
 (1226-1236), as exhibited in the North Wall of the 
 Cloisters and the South Alley of the Infirmary Cloister. 
 To this period belongs the far-famed "Archbishop's. 
 Chair," usually called the " Chair of St. Augustine," on 
 which the Archbishops of Canterbury are enthroned. It is 
 made of three pieces of Purbeck marble, and, from the 
 style of its decoration, is believed to have been first 
 placed in the cathedral on July 7, 1220, at the superb 
 ceremony of the translation of Backet's remains from the 
 crypt to his priceless shrine. On that occasion the young 
 King Henry III. was present, and the chest of Becket's 
 remains was carried up the steps of Trinity Chapel by 
 Archbishop Stephen Langton ; Pandulf, the Papal legate, 
 " of fair Milan Cardinal " ; the Grand Justiciary, Hubert de 
 Burgh ; and the Archbishop of Rheims. The expenses of 
 the patriot archbishop, to whom we owe Magna Charta,. 
 were so immense on this occasion — for he entertained 
 crowds of bishops, priors, abbots, earls, barons, knights, 
 squires, and priests — as to hamper his see for many years. 
 
 The next famous builder among the priors was. 
 Henry of Eastry (a.d. 1300), who "decorated the choir 
 of the church with most beautiful stone-work delicately 
 carved." This remains in excellent order. The north 
 door of this screen is famed for its great beauty and 
 singularity. Originally the stone-work of the whole choir 
 was painted with rich and glowing colours — crimson and 
 blue, with gold stars — the traces of which are still visible 
 in places. It all resembled Archbishop Chicheley's 
 tomb, of which the colouring is renewed at the expense 
 of New College, which he founded. It is a singular fact 
 that the greatest architects of all ages — Hindoo, Greek,. 
 
36 
 
 Roman, Mohammedan, Medixval — recognised the glory 
 and sanctity of colour. The Parthenon was originally a 
 mass of crimson and blue, and like the Indian temples 
 and the Moslem mosques glowed with mosaics and many 
 hues. The tombs of Westminster Abbey were once a 
 blaze of marble and lustrous enamel, and over one arch 
 in the north transept can still be traced broad diapered 
 bands of colouring, blue and red. Modern architects as 
 •a rule utterly neglect this element of charm and beauty, 
 though the remains of the original colours of Henry of 
 Eastry are still very plain behind the oak screen of the 
 Dean's and Canon's stalls. No one, I suppose, will 
 'ever have the courage to make the choir look as richly 
 sumptuous as it originally did. The stone-work was all 
 ■covered with a most incongruous oaken Corinthian 
 screen in 1663 ; the arms of Archbishop Sheldon, who 
 became Primate in that year, are still to be seen over 
 the Dean's stall. In early days, too, there were many 
 frescoes of matchless interest on the walls and roofs, 
 nearly all of which have totally disappeared, and some 
 were ruthlessly whitewashed at the period when English 
 taste was at its lowest ebb of decadence and common- 
 place. An additional element of glory was derived from 
 the gilding of the bosses of the vaults, and from 
 hundreds of heraldic blazonries of coats of arms, which 
 now possess a high historic as well as archaeological value. 
 
 Henry of Eastry's work belongs to the Second 
 Pointed or Decorated style, of which one very fine 
 specimen is the Decorated window inserted in 1330 in 
 the South Wall of the Norman Chapel of St. Anselm. 
 
 The screen at the east end of the choir, which was 
 of "tabernacle-work richly overlaid with gold," seems 
 to have been destroyed by the Puritans. The present 
 east screen is a modern imitation of work of Henry of 
 Eastry, which is found in the screen of our Lady of the 
 Undercroft in the crypt. 
 
 We next come to the Third Pointed, or 
 Perpendicular style (1370-1570). The nave and transept 
 of Lanfranc had remained untouched till 1378. In that 
 year, seeing that it was in a ruinous condition, the great 
 
37 
 
 Archbishop Simon Sudbury issued a mandate to al' 
 " ecclesiastical persons " to beg subscriptions for re- 
 building the nave. Contributors were to be rewarded 
 by the insertion of their names and coats of arms on the 
 vaulting bosses ; and also — a means no longer open to 
 us — by forty days' indulgence. The old nave was taken 
 down at the Archbishop's expense, and as his cognisance — 
 a talbot sejant — is to be seen on the west corbel of the 
 hood of the north-west door into the nave, he probably 
 got so far in its reconstruction. But on June 15th, 
 1 38 1, he was barbarously seized and beheaded by Wat 
 Tyler and his mob on Tower Hill. His headless remains 
 lie in a tomb on the south side of the presbytery, with a 
 lump of lead where the dissevered head should be. 
 The work which he had munificently begun was continued 
 by Prior Chillenden (a.d. i 390-1411), assisted by Arch- 
 bishop Courtenay, who subscribed more than 1,000 marks ; 
 and Archbishop Arundell, who also gave 1,000 marks, 
 and the " Arundell ryng " of bells The coat of arms of 
 these two archbishops and of Archbishop Chicheley — who 
 built (1440-1450) the Chicheley, Oxford, or Dunstan 
 steeple — are constantly repeated in the nave and cloisters. 
 The two north west towers were once known as the 
 Arundell and Chicheley Towers. The great Central 
 Tower, also called the Angel Steeple and Bell Harry 
 Tower, was built (1495-1503) under the auspices of Arch- 
 bishops Morton and Warham, and Priors Sellynge and 
 Goldstone. The magnificent Christ Church Gateway 
 which forms the entrance to the precincts, and is a most 
 interesting specimen of rich and Late Perpendicular 
 architecture, was mainly built by Prior Goldstone the 
 Second (15 17) ; and his rebus — three goldstones — is visible 
 above the postern entrance. 
 
 Such is the external history of the fabric of the 
 premier Cathedral of England, and it has witnessed many 
 memorable scenes in the Ufe of our people. 
 
 The crypt, of which I have not yet spoken, is the 
 largest and loveliest in England. It is replete with every 
 form of historic interest. Besides the fragments which it 
 contains of Roman and Saxon work, much of it dates 
 
38 
 
 from the days of Prior Ernulf and 'St. Anselm (1096-1100). 
 The lovely chantry was built by the Black Prince in 1363 
 as a reward for the dispensation which allowed him to 
 marry his cousin, the fair Maid of Kent. Her likeness 
 is carved on one of the bosses; on others the scene of 
 Samson slaying the Philistines with the jawbone of an 
 ass, and the British lion with his tongue protruded, are 
 supposed to be allusions to his great victory at Poictiers. 
 The original Norman vault of this chantry has been 
 replaced by a Heme vault — i.e., with a vault on which 
 Hemes or transverse ribs are mixed with the ribs which 
 branch from the vaulting capitals (Willis, p. 115). In 
 St. Gabriel's Chapel the ancient and deeply interesting 
 mural paintings of the twelfth century are still in admirable 
 preservation. Here are the tombs of Lady Mohun, and 
 of Archbishop Morton (1500), marked by his rebus of a 
 hawk (mort) and a ton. It was here that the remains of 
 Becket lay from 1170 to 1220, and here that Henry II., 
 fasting and discrowned, with naked feet, bared back, and 
 streaming tears, performed on July 12th, 11 74, the 
 memorable penance for his share in the murder of Becket. 
 With his head partly thrust into one of the openings 
 through which the actual coffin was visible, he knelt and 
 received five strokes from every bishop and abbot who 
 was present, and three strokes from each of the eighty 
 monks. As they beat him he urged them to strike harder, 
 so as to make the penance very real, and each of them 
 as the stroke descended, said : " Even as Christ was 
 scourged for the sin of men, so be thou scourged for 
 thine own sins." 
 
 The remains discovered near the site of Becket's 
 tomb in January, 1888, are, in my opinion, beyond all 
 doubt, the remains of Becket himself; but it would require 
 an entire paper to set forth the argument, and to tell the 
 story of their discovery and recognition with all the 
 inferences which it involves. 
 
 Since the days of Queen Elizabeth the crypt has been 
 assigned to a congregation of refugee Walloons and 
 Huguenots, driven out of the Netherlands by the brutal 
 and bloody persecutions of Alva (1567), and out of France 
 
39 
 
 just after the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 24th, 
 1572), and then after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 
 (1685). One of the houses in the precincts, known as 
 \Teist Omers, was assigned by the Tudor Queen to Odo, 
 Cardinal of Chatillon, brother of the great Admiral Coligny, 
 who was driven out of France because of his Huguenot 
 proclivities. In this house he died in 1571, murdered, 
 according to tradition, by his valet with a poisoned pear. 
 The singular meanness of the great Cardinal's tomb in 
 Trinity Chapel is accounted for by the surmise that it was 
 only meant to be his temporary resting-place, till his mortal 
 remains could be removed and laid with those of his famous 
 ancestors. But this honour has never been paid him. 
 
 The cloisters are exquisitely beautiful and full of 
 historic reminiscences. They contain some eight hundred, 
 now nearly obliterated, coats of arms — once gorgeous with 
 their proper blazonry — of princely and noble contributors 
 in the early part of the fifteenth century. These cloisters, 
 originally Norman, were restored in Archbishop Langton's 
 time (about 1236), in the Early English style. They were 
 finally rebuilt in their present Perpendicular style by Prior 
 Chillenden about 1400 Those who wish to recall the 
 scene they presented in the memorable winter twilight of 
 December 29th. 11 70, just before Becket's murder, must 
 read the thrilling story in Dean Stanley's Memorials of 
 Canterbury. The archbishop entered them by the north- 
 west door, through the cellarer's lodgings, hurried along 
 the north walk, turned with wavering and uncertain steps 
 into the chapter-house in the east walk, and finally entered 
 the cathedral by the door — which shows three separate styles 
 of architecture — opening on the part of the cathedral now 
 called "the Martyrdom," from the scene of his murder. 
 The four armed knights who were in pursuit of him entered 
 the cloisters by the south-west door from the precincts of the 
 , archbishop's palace. To the veneration felt for the " holy 
 blissful martyr," and the belief in the mighty miracles 
 wrought by his relics, the cathedral owed five centuries of 
 prosperity and enrichment from the gifts poured into 
 Becket's shrine by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. 
 
40 
 
 I have thus briefly touched on the main outlines of 
 the history of the material structure ; it would take many 
 pages to describe the famous events which have occurred 
 under these ancient roofs, and to reproduce these scenes 
 the visitor must exercise his own imagination. 
 
 The following Summary will perhaps be found useful : — 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF CANTERBURY 
 
 CATHEDRAL. FROM THE WORKS OF EDMER 
 
 THE SINGER, AND OTHERS. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 602. — Sf. Augustine (the first Archbishop) recovered a 
 church which he was told had been constructed by 
 Roman believers. This church he consecrated as 
 " Christ Church," where he established a habitation for 
 himself, and for all his successors. 
 
 740 to 758. — Cuthberl (the eleventh Archbishop) built a 
 church to the east of the great church, and almost 
 touching it, which he dedicated to St. John the Baptist. 
 He built this for baptisms, judicial trials, and as a 
 burial place for the archbishops, instead of, as till then, 
 beyond the walls of the city ; and he was accordingly 
 buried in the church of St. John. 
 
 940 to 960. — St. Odo (the twenty-second Archbishop) 
 finding the roof of Christ Church decayed through age, 
 removed it ; heightened the walls, and built a new 
 roof. 
 
 ion. — In the primacy of St. Elphege (the twenty -eighth 
 Archbishop) the sack of Canterbury by the Danes took 
 place. Barrels were piled against the church and 
 lighted. The lead of the roof melted and ran down 
 inside, driving out the monks, who were then, all but 
 four, slaughtered. The Archbishop was led away, 
 imprisoned for seven months, and killed. His body 
 was ransomed by the Londoners and buried in St. 
 Paul's. The roof was not burnt, though the ornaments 
 of the church were plundered. 
 
41 
 
 1023- — King Canute ordered the body of St. Elphege to be 
 restored from St. Paul's, and assisted Archbishop 
 Egelnorth to restore the cathedral to its former dignity. 
 
 1067. — The city was accidently set on fire, and the 
 conflagration destroyed Christ Church, the church of 
 St. John the Baptist, and nearly all the monastic 
 ofi&ces. 
 
 1070. — Archbishop Lanfranc (the first Archbishop after the 
 Norman Conquest), pulled down the remains of the 
 cathedral and monastic buildings, and began the 
 re-construction of the whole. 
 
 1077. — Lanfrand s Q!a\xx(^ completed. 
 
 1093. — Kis successor, Archbishop St. Amselm appointed 
 Ernulflo be Prior, who began taking down Lanfrands 
 choir and rebuilding it much more magnificently. 
 
 1 107. — He left his work unfinished in 1107, when he 
 became Abbot of Peterborough. 
 
 1 107 to 1130. — Conrad, who succeeded Ernulf d& Prior, 
 continued the latter's work on a scale of even greater 
 magnificence under Archbishops Radulph and William 
 Corboil, who dedicated it with great splendour on the 
 4th of May, 1 130 
 
 1 170. — Archbishop St. Thomas a Becketviz.^ murdered in the 
 North Transept on Tuesday, the 29th of December, 
 1 1 70. 
 
 1 1 74. — Memorable penance of Henry II m the crypt. 
 
 1 1 74. — On he sth of September, 1174, between three and 
 four p.m., during an extraordinarily violent south wind, 
 a fire broke out before the gate of the church and 
 outside the walls of the monastery, by which three 
 cottages were half destroyed. While the fire was being 
 subdued, sparks had been driven by the high wind 
 between the joints of the lead covering of the roof of 
 the church, and had ignited its timbering without 
 being perceived, owing to the leaden coveriflg above 
 and the well-painted ceiling below. Everybody there- 
 fore went home, and later on, when the flames begatj 
 to shew themselves, aery arose, " See ! see ! the church 
 is on fire." 
 
42 
 
 1175-1178- — The rebuilding of the cathedral was magnifi- 
 cently carried out by William of Sens, until he was 
 disabled by a fall of fifty feet from a scaffolding. 
 
 1 1 79. — Visit of Louis VII of France. 
 
 1 1 79-1 184. — The Work of William of Sens was ably con- 
 tinued by William the Englishman, who introduced 
 more of the Early English style of Architecture. 
 
 1 1 89. — Visit of King Richard I and William of Scotland 
 
 1201.— Coronation in the Cathedral of King John and 
 Queen Isabella. 
 
 1220. — Removal of Archbishop Becket's remains from his 
 tomb in the crypt to the gorgeous shrine in Trinity 
 Chapel, by Archbishop Stephen Langton. 
 
 1236. — Henry III re crowned by Archbishop St. Edmund 
 Rich. 
 
 1279. — Marriage of Edward I and Margaret of France. 
 
 1300. — Choir Screen erected, in the Decorated Style, by 
 Prior Henry of Eastry. 
 
 1357. — Visit of Black Prince with the captive King John 
 of France. 
 
 1 374-1 396. — The Cloisters rebuilt by Archbishops Arundel 
 and Courtenay. 
 
 1378. — Rebuilding of the Nave, in the Perpendicular Style, 
 begun by Archbishop London, of Sudbury. 
 
 1400. — The Chapter House completed by Prior Chillenden. 
 
 1413. — ^Visit of King Henry V. 
 
 1500. — The Great Bell Harry Tower, built by Archbishop 
 Morton and Prior Goldstone. 
 
 1561-1571. — Walloons and Huguenots permitted to use the 
 Crypt. 
 
 1572. — Visit of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 1642. — The Cathedral terribly damaged by the Puritans. 
 
 1835. — Visit of the Princess Victoria. 
 
43 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE'S ABBEY. 
 
 The ruins of the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury 
 have a special interest for Enghshmen, inasmuch as they 
 mark the site of the first church built for Augustine and 
 his companions after their favourable reception by 
 Ethelbert, King of the West Saxons, in 597. 
 
 The earliest church on the site was that of St. Pancras, 
 the remains of which still exist, partly within the grounds of 
 the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, partly on the adjoining 
 land, in the eastern part of the old monastic precinct. The 
 story that it was once the idol temple where Ethelbert was 
 wont to worship before he became a Christian, and a 
 modern theory that the building belongs to the Roman 
 period, may alike be dismissed as improbable. The church 
 was, undoubtedly, built of Roman materials, but its plan 
 clearly belongs to the earliest Saxon type, and we have 
 evidence of its having been hallowed and used by Austin 
 himself. 
 
 Both the church and the adjoining land were given to 
 Augustine, by Ethelbert, who, in 598, began another andlarger 
 church in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul, as a place 
 of burial (it being outside the city) for himself and his 
 successors. In it, too, Augustine appointed that he and his 
 successors should be buried. In 605 the place was ready 
 for the establishment of a monastery of the Order of St. 
 Benedict, but the church was neither finished nor hallowed 
 when Augustine died the same year, and he was laid to 
 rest in a temporary grave at its door. In 613 the church 
 was hallowed by Archbishop Laurence, and the body of 
 Augustine translated to his appointed burial place in the 
 north porch or transept. Here were also buried the five 
 archbishops who succeeded Augustine, but the " porch " then 
 being full, Theodore (668-690) and the next three arch- 
 bishops were interred elsewhere in the church. Cuthbert 
 (741-758J and his successors, excepting Janbert (763-790), 
 who was buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 received sepulture, by dispensation from Pope Gregory, 
 in their Cathedral Church of Christ. King Ethelbert died 
 
44 
 
 in 6 1 6, and was buried within the church of St. Peter and 
 St. Paul, which he had founded, in the porch or transept of 
 St. Martin, where Queen Bertha and Liuthard had already 
 been laid to rest. Ethelbert's successor, his son Edbald, 
 was a man of evil life and a pagan, but in 6i8 he became a 
 Christian, and in expiation of his former sins began another 
 church to the east of the monastery, in honour of the 
 Blessed Virgin Mary. Between it and the monastery lay 
 the monk's cemetery. There were, therefore, three Saxon 
 churches on this spot, that of St Pancras, Ethelbert's Abbey 
 Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Church of Our 
 Lady founded by Edbald. A reconstruction or enlargement 
 of the abbey church must have taken place some time before 
 978, for in that year it was hallowed anew by Archbishop 
 Dunstan in honour of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Augustine. 
 Further works of reconstruction were in progress in the 
 following century, and in 1047 Archbishop Eadsin gave 100 
 marks towards a tower then in building. In 1055 or 
 1058 Wlfric, the 40th Abbot, was minded to enlarge the 
 church. He accordingly pulled down the east end of it, 
 and also destroyed the west end of Edbald's church of Our 
 Lady. He then appropriated the ground between the two 
 buildings, having purged the cemetery which lay there, but 
 died in 1059, before anything could be done to connect the 
 two churches. The work remained in this state until the 
 time of Abbot Scotland (1070-1087), who, after some hesita- 
 tion, began on the site of Edbald's church a new presbytery 
 with the crypt of Our Lady beneath, and the shrine of St. 
 Augustine above. Abbot Wydo completed the new work, and 
 in 1091 translated into it St. Augustine's body from the north 
 transept, wherein it had lain for five centuries. 
 
 This third church is that of which the ruins have come 
 , down to us. It appears to have consisted of a presbytery 
 or eastern arm of three bays, with an apse and an encircling 
 aisle, out of which opened three circular chapels, probably 
 all built over a crypt, as at Christchurch, a central tower, 
 north and south transepts, probably each with an eastern 
 apse ; and a nave and aisles of ten or eleven bays with two 
 western towers. The quire occupied the crossing and 
 easternmost bays of the nave, and in the north aisle, as at 
 
45 
 
 Christchurch, was a chapel of Our Lady, recorded to. 
 occupy the site of the north transept of Ethelbert's churchy 
 and the burial place of Augustine and his near successors. 
 Sundry minor alterations were made in the church between 
 the 1 2th century and the Suppression in 1538, but so far 
 as is known, these did not affect the plan, which seems to 
 have remained unaltered to the end. A portion of the 
 north aisle wall, and the base of the north-western or 
 "Ethelbert's" tower alone remain to attest the former 
 magnificence of this famous church, the site of which is now 
 occupied in part by a field and in part by the Hospital 
 gardens. 
 
 The cloister and monastic buildings, asat Christchurch^ 
 were on the north side of the church. The eastern range, 
 containing the chapter house and the monks' dormitory or 
 dorter, was rebuilt by Abbot Flory (1021-1124), but a new 
 chapter-house was built between 1325 and 1333. The 
 monks' dining hall or frater, which formed the northern 
 range, was begun to be rebuilt in 1260, and finished six 
 years later. Some remains of it, and of the lavatory (made 
 1272) in the cloister beside its entrance exist in the garden 
 north of the ruins of the church. The kitchen was rebuilt 
 12S7-91. The western range, as at Westminster, and 
 originally at Gloucester, perhaps formed the abbot's 
 lodging, which was largely re-constructed during the closing 
 years of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth 
 centufy. To the east of the buildings was the infirmary, 
 and to the west lay the outer or base court, containing 
 guesthouses and other accommodation for pilgrims and 
 visitors of different grades. The existing great gate of the 
 monastery, which opened into it, was rebuilt temp. Abbot 
 Thomas of Finedon (1283-1309.) On the south of the 
 church, as at Christchurch, was the layfolk's cemetery, 
 which had a separate gatehouse facing Burgate, built before 
 1391. The monks' cemetery adjoined it on the east, and 
 between them was the charnel chapel dedicated in 1298. 
 On the south side of the precinct stood the campanile or 
 bell tower, on the lofty mound still visible within the 
 grounds of the Hospital. 
 
46 
 
 The abbey was surrendered by the abbot and thirty 
 monks on July 30, Henry VIII. (1538). So much of the 
 church and other buildings as was deemed " superfluous " 
 ■was pulled down, but the rest was retained in the King's 
 hands and converted into a palace for his reception. This 
 seems to have been formed out of the abbot's lodgings on 
 the west side of the cloister, and though all the palace itself 
 has gone, some traces of it may be seen in the brick 
 buttresses and windows in what is left of the church wall, 
 which owes its preservation to its forming one side of the 
 palace. By 1655, if we may judge by old views, the 
 church and claustral buildings had been reduced almost to 
 their present fragmentary condition. The buildings in the 
 outer court adjoining the great gate had been converted 
 into a house, and was for some time the residence of the 
 Wottons. But the whole site gradually became more and 
 more degraded, and Hasted in his History of Kent, 
 published 1799, says (iv. 662) : "So little is the veneration 
 paid at this time to the remains of this once sacred habita- 
 tion, that the principal apartments adjoining the gateway, 
 are converted into an alehouse ; the gateway itself into a 
 brew-house, the steam of which has defaced the beautiful 
 paintings over it ; the great courtyard is turned into a 
 bowling green ; the chapel and aisle of the church on the 
 north side into a jives-court ; and the great room over the 
 gate into a cock-pit." Much the same state of things 
 existed down to 1845, when the property happened to 
 come to the landowner, and was bought by the late Mr. 
 A. J. B. Beresford Hope, M.P., who gave it for the site of 
 a Missionary College for the behoof of the Colonial 
 Church. The new College of St. Augustine was 
 incorporated by Royal Charter on 28th June, 1848, and the 
 remaining buildings having been meanwhile prepared for use, 
 the chapel was consecrated on the following day. The old 
 guesten hall, which stands over an undercroft, has been 
 converted into a dining hall for the students, with the 
 kitchen beneath. Upon the ruined undercroft of the 
 abbot's hall has been raised the library, and other new 
 buildings added for the accommodation of the students. 
 On entering by the great gate, it will be seen that the 
 
47 
 
 college occupies the old outer court of the monastery. A 
 kitchen garden is laid out within the area of the cloister, 
 and extends northward over the sites of the frater and 
 kitchen. The site of the nave of the abbey church and of 
 the lay folks' cemetery are now within the grounds of the 
 Hospital. The remains of the transepts and eastern area 
 of the church of the eastern range of buildings, and of the 
 infirmary, lie buried in the field east of the College. 
 
 It is a thousand pities that a site, fraught with so many 
 historical associations and bound up so intimately with the 
 early history of the English Church, should be dis- 
 membered as it is, instead of being once more and as a 
 ■whole under the control of the Church of England. 
 
48 
 
 ST. PANCRAS. 
 
 The ruins of St. Pancras, in the grounds of the Kent 
 and Canterbury Hospital, are at first sight somewhat 
 confusing, because the Roman or Saxon foundations are 
 mixed up with, and intersected by, the walls of the 
 Mediseval Church and modern masonry. The original 
 building consisted of a short wide nave and a large 
 round-ended presbytery separated from the nave by an 
 arcade 6f three arches. There are also visible a porch 
 to the west, and one to the south, with some indications 
 of a porch to the north. The walls are built of Roman 
 bricks, one foot ten inches thick, and there are manifest 
 traces of a floor of opus signinum. The western porch is 
 ten feet six inches long and nine feet three inches wide, 
 with an opening in the west end of the width of six feet 
 six inches. At a depth of 15 inches below the pavement 
 were discovered tombs covered with large chamfered slabs 
 of Portland oolite. On the east side of this porch, leading 
 into the nave, is a doorway of Norman workmanship, 
 two feet eight inches wide. In the southern porch are the 
 remains of an altar, four feet four inches by two feet 
 two inches, which is probably built on the same founda- 
 tions as the altar mentioned by Thorn, a monk of St. 
 Augustine's monastery, who says that " when Augustine 
 was celebrating mass at the altar erected on the spot where 
 formerly stood the idol of King Ethelbert, the devil, seeing 
 himself driven out from the nave which he had inherited 
 for long ages, tried to overturn the Church from its 
 foundations, and that the marks of this were still apparent 
 on the exterior eastern wall of the above-mentioned porch." 
 These so-called " devil's marks " are shown on an engraving 
 bearing the date 1784, but have since disappeared. "There 
 are sonae traces of a staircase leading down into this porch, 
 and it is not impossible that it may have, been once used 
 as a Baptistery. 
 
 We may notice a massive circular Roman pillar at 
 the S.E. corner of the nave, and at its base was found 
 a portion of a Roman phial. 
 
49 
 
 The tradition reproduced by Thorn at the end of the 
 14th century is that there was, midWay between the 
 Church of St. Martin and the walls of the city, the temple 
 or idol house of King Ethelbert, which temple Augustine 
 purged from, the pollutions and filth of the Gentiles, and 
 changed it into a church, which he dedicated to the 
 martyr, St. Pancras, who was a Roman boy of noble 
 family, martyred under Diocletian, and whose name would 
 have been well known to Augustine, of the St. Andrew's 
 Monastery on the Coelian Hill, from which Augustine came, 
 was built on the very property which had belonged to the 
 family of St. Pancras. 
 
 The date of these ruins is still a matter of controversy. 
 That some Roman building stood once upon the spot is 
 tolerably certain from various indications, but we cannot 
 positively say that the ground floor of the existing founda- 
 tions is Roman. Mr. Micklethwaite considers that St. 
 Pancras is one of a group of small churches without aisles, 
 built under the Italian influence in Saxon times, though he 
 does not deny that it was used by Augustine himself, and 
 therefore must date at any rate from the end of the sixth 
 century. It is much to be regretted that the complete 
 ground plan of the original church cannot be laid bare, as 
 a portion of it stands in an adjoining property, and cannot 
 at present be explored. The standing arch at the east end, 
 though built to a large extent of Roman bricks, is a portion 
 of the Mediaeval Church. 
 
5° 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH. 
 
 The interest attached to St. Martin's Church arises both 
 from its associations and its structure. The date of the 
 existing building is a source of never-ending controversy, as 
 it contains many features attributable either to Roman or 
 Saxon architecture, while, whatever may be thought of its 
 possible connection with Christian soldiers of the Roman 
 army or with St. Martin of Tours, there can be no doubt 
 that it was the oratory of Queen Bertha and her chaplain. 
 Bishop Liudhard, as well as the scene of St. Augustine's 
 preaching and the baptism of Ethelbert, King of Kent. 
 Within the walls of this cradle of English Christianity, 
 Divine Service has been celebrated for at least 13 centuries 
 without any apparent interruption. 
 
 In a short sketch of this kind it would be at once 
 irrelevant and impossible to enter into controversial details, 
 or to attempt to reconcile the positive assertions of many 
 modern antiquaries with the well-founded traditions of 
 history — antiquaries are not of necessity historians, nor are 
 historians of necessity antiquaries. We must supplement 
 or balance the researches and explorations of the one by 
 the written records of the other. 
 
 The Venerable Bede, writing within 100 years after the 
 death of St. Augustine, states that there was (in 597) in 
 Canterbury, a church " dedicated to the honour of St. 
 Martin, and built of old while the Romans still occupied 
 Britain." This is strong testimony, especially when we 
 remember that Bede derived his information with regard to 
 the history of Christianity in Kent from Albinus, Abbot of 
 St. Augustine's, who was himself a pupil of Archbishop 
 Theodore ; and we are told that Albinus referred to the 
 records in his keeping, and sent Nothelm, a priest of 
 London, to search the papal archives at Rome. After the 
 departure of the Romans from Britain (in about 409) it is 
 not improbable that the church was still used by a small band 
 of Christian worshippers till (at any rate) the landing of the 
 heathen Jutes in the Isle of Thanet in 449. But the 
 curtain of Christian history on this island is not again lifted 
 
51 
 
 till the mission of St. Augustine in the year 597. He and 
 his companions are expressly said to have performed all 
 religious functions in St. Martin's Church, which had been 
 restored a few years previously for the use of Queen 
 Bertha ; and the first fruits of their mission soon appeared 
 in the conversion and Baptism of King Ethelbert. 
 Subsequently to the death of St. Augustine, Ethelbert, and 
 Bertha, St. Martin relapses into a state of comparative- 
 obscurity, but it is alluded to in a Saxon charter of 867, 
 attested by Ethelred, " King of the West Saxons and 
 Kentishmen," — possibly suffered some injury at the hands, 
 of the Danes in ion, and gave its name to at least two 
 suffragan "Bishops of St. Martin's "shortly before the Norman 
 Conquest. The church was partially restored by the Normans,, 
 as well as at the beginning of the 13th century, and in the 
 14th century there was attached to it a grammar school, 
 probably one of the earliest grammar schools in England. 
 The fact of the Church being exempt from the jurisdiction 
 of the Archdeacons of Canterbury deprives us of much 
 information, which, in the case of other parishes, is. 
 contained in the Archidiaconal Registers. We find, how- 
 ever, some entries concerning it in Archbishop Warham's 
 Visitation of 1511 ; and an inventory of the "ornaments 
 of the church " in 1552. From the latter date down to the 
 present time it has had little, or no, history. The general 
 aspect of the structure from outside, though suggestive of 
 antiquity, is lacking in uniformity of treatment. The walls, 
 have been patched and repaired in successive ages, and are 
 cemented together with hard " seashore " mortar, com- 
 posed of pebbles, small shells, etc. The brick courses in 
 the nave are at irregular intervals, varying from 9 to 20- 
 inches apart, filled up between with roughly-hewn Kentish 
 ragstone and occasional blocks of chalk, five or six courses- 
 of stone intervening in some portions of the wall between 
 the courses of brick. The masonry of the early 
 chancel, extending 18 or 20 feet east of the chancel arch, is. 
 composed of Roman bricks, laid evenly upon one another 
 with narrow joints, averaging four bricks to a foot. This. 
 chancel was lengthened at the beginning of the 13th 
 century, a still further addition being made at a subsequent 
 
52 
 
 ■date, so that the chancel as it now appears may be assigned 
 to at least three distinct periods. Outside the Church may 
 be seen five flat pilaster buttresses and one semi-circular 
 one (all of uncertain date), a square-headed Roman door- 
 way at the S.W. of the chancel, with a Saxon doorway 4 
 feet east of it, two early English porches on the N, and 
 S.W. of the nave, and a doorway in a curious position at 
 the S.E. corner of the nave, concerning the use and origin 
 ■of which there has been much controversy, though it is 
 ■undoubtedly a later insertion in the adjoining wall. We 
 may notice also a nearly circular panel on the S. side of the 
 ■nave, incorrectly represented as a door in old prints of the 
 church, and a Norman hagioscope at the W. end of the 
 nave. 
 
 The ground floor of the church has been altered more 
 than once. If, as is thought by many antiquaries, the 
 chancel is the earliest portion of the building, the original 
 ■church must have been much smaller than the present one, 
 ■consisting (perhaps) of a chancel 10 feet long, terminating 
 in an eastern apse, and separated from a nave of about 
 equal length by a cross wall carrying a single chancel arch. 
 It is disputed whether the present nave was added about 
 the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, or built 
 during the mission of St. Augustine. The west wall is 
 specially noticeable for an arch or opening above the 
 -existing doorway, flanked on either side by two splayed 
 windows built more Romano, having their jambs of chalk 
 blocks filled in with white mortar, while the arches were 
 •turned in Roman bricks and rough voussoirs of Kentish 
 irag-stone with interstices of pink mortar, the variation of the 
 mortar from white to. pink being exactly paralleled in the 
 Roman Pharos at Dover. Near these windows, and at 
 various parts of the nave behind the woodwork, are portions 
 of pink plaster still adhering to the wall, similar in colour 
 ^nd texture to that found in many Roman villas. The 
 best known feature of interest in the church is the Font, 
 which is tub-shaped, consisting of a rim, three tiers, and a 
 base. The lower tier is embelUshed with a continuous 
 pattern of scroll-work, the second tier with groups of circles 
 intertwining one another, the third tier with intersecting 
 
S3 
 
 arches. The composition of the font is most unusual, 
 instead of being, as might have been expected, scooped out 
 of a single block of Caen stone, it is made up of 22 separate 
 stones. The character of the carving points to a late 
 Norman period : but it is not improbable that the Font dates 
 from Saxon times, and was afterwards decorated in a some- 
 what rough manner, to do honour to an historical monu- 
 ment. We need only allude briefly (i) to the door in the 
 North wall of the nave with jambs of Caen stones of 
 irregular size, and having to the east of it an ancient 
 stoup for Holy Water ; (2) to the Norman piscina, of much 
 gracefulness and beauty j (3) to the door or window, 
 opening from the west wall into the tower, which is of 
 the Decorated period, and connected with a tower-chamber, 
 used either as a sleeping-room or study by the priest, or 
 by watchers who guarded the shrines and relics of the 
 Church; (4) to thesedile in the chancel, built of Roman 
 bricks from the demolished eastern apse ; (5) the so-called 
 " leper's window " behind the reading desk ; (6) to the 
 tomb of the restorer of the Church in the r3th century, 
 which used to be shown as the tomb of Queen Bertha ; 
 (7) the linen-pattern aumbry, dating from the time of 
 Henry VII. ; and (8) to the two Elizabethan brasses. The 
 cumbrous monument inside the altar rails is interesting 
 historically as being the monument of Sir John Finch 
 (afterwards Baron Fordwich) who was Speaker of the 
 House of Commons in the reign of Charles I., and was 
 held down in his chair by Hobbes and others, in order 
 that the protest might be passed against the infraction of 
 the Petition of Right. 
 
 There are no very old engravings of St. Martin's 
 Church, and the aspect of the building in pre-Reformation ' 
 times can only be gathered from bequests and allusions 
 in the wills of parishioners. There was a wood- beam (the 
 holes for the ends of which may still be seen) ; the 
 Kigh altar, dedicated to St. Martin ; an altar on N.E. of 
 the nave, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and another 
 on the S.E. of the nave to St. Nicholas ; also images of 
 St. Christopher and St. Erasmus. 
 
54 
 
 One of the most interesting relics of Mediaeval times 
 preserved in the Church is the Chrismatory, dating from 
 the 14th century. It is a brass box containing three 
 pewter pots. The necessity of keeping the three oils 
 [(i) the Holy Chrism, (2) the oil for anointing the sick, 
 (3) the oil for catechumens] in distinct compartments is 
 insisted upon by Archbishop Alfric, "Ye ought to have 
 three flasks ready for the three oils, for we dare not put 
 them together in one oil vessel, because each of them is 
 hallowed apart for a particular service." 
 
 Whatever may finally be determined to be the date 
 of the Church's foundation, it can never lose its unique 
 association with St. Augustine, Ethelbert, and Bertha, 
 nor its undisputed claim to be the oldest existing Church 
 in England. From it flowed the tiny spring of English 
 Christianity which has since widened out into a mighty 
 river, and penetrated the remotest parts of the civilized 
 and uncivilized world. 
 
 OTHER CHURCHES. 
 
 Of the other churches in Canterbury, though nearly all 
 are interesting and many are famous, only the briefest 
 notice is possible in the present handbook. 
 
 ST. ALPHEGE 
 
 Situated in Palace Street, and dedicated to the 
 'Archbishop martyred by the Danes in ion, was rebuilt 
 about the middle of the fifteenth century. It contains 
 many notable monuments and epitaphs. 
 
 ST. ANDREW'S. 
 
 " The old church being situate in the middle of the 
 High Street of the city, and the passage thereof being 
 rendered thereby incommodious and unsafe," was pulled 
 
55 
 
 down in 1763, the present substitute being built some 
 distance back. It contains a monument to Thomas, 
 Swift, Rector in 1592, great grandfather of the far more 
 celebrated Jonathan Swift. 
 
 HOLY CROSS, WESTGATE. 
 
 Originally over the west gate itself, this church was 
 moved to its present site by Archbishop Sudbury in 1480. 
 The perpendicular tracery in some of the windows is 
 fairly perfect, and in spite of early Victorian restoration, 
 this church still retains much of its ancient character. It 
 contains some good wood carving. In the tower is a peal 
 of five bells, one of which, cast in the latter half of the 
 fourteenth century, bears the inscription in Lombardic 
 capitals, " Stephanus Nortone me fecit." 
 
 ST. DUNSTAN'S 
 
 Founded by Archbishop Lanfranc towards the end of 
 the eleventh century, was formerly one of the most 
 important of the Canterbury churches. It has an unusual 
 semi-circular tower adjoining the square Western tower on 
 the Southern side, and contains some notable monuments 
 of the Roper family. In the Roper vault is still preserved 
 the head of Sir Thomas More, whose daughter Margaret 
 married one of the Ropers. Hither to St. Dunstan's in 
 1 1 74 come Henry II., King of England, on his famed 
 pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas ^ of Canterbury. 
 Having entered the church and partly stripped, he donned 
 the hair shirt and cloak of a pilgrim, and walked barefoot to 
 the cathedral. The wealth of the Canterbury churches in 
 pre-Reformation days may be gathered from an inventory 
 still existing of the treasures belonging to St. Dunstan's in 
 1500. These include angels of ivory and of burnished 
 gold, chalices and other vessels of silver, precious stones 
 and vestments, books, banners, bells, and other 
 ecclesiastical garniture of enormous value. 
 
 ST. GEORGE'S. 
 In the continuation of High Street, though containing 
 a few monuments of interest, has lost its ancient character. 
 
56 
 
 ST. GREGORY'S. 
 A modem church, built by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1852. 
 It stands near the site of the Norman church founded by- 
 Archbishop Lanfranc. 
 
 ST. MARGARET'S. 
 
 In the street of the same name, renovated, mutilated, 
 and partially rebuilt. This church, with the exception of a 
 monument to Sir George Newman, erected in 1627,. 
 contains little of general interest. 
 
 ST. MARY BREDIN. 
 
 Erected in 1867, on the site of an old Norman 
 church. It contains several monuments of the Hales and 
 Chiche families of the Donjon Manor. 
 
 ST. MARY BREDMAN. 
 
 So-called from the bread market formerly held close 
 by. A modern church on the site of an older one. This- 
 church, now pronounced unsafe, is shortly to be demolished,, 
 a fate, perhaps, not undeserved. 
 
 ST. MARY MAGDALENE. 
 
 In Burgate Street. The body of this church was taken 
 down some ' years ago when the Norman font and its- 
 16th century brasses disappeared. Only the square tower 
 built in 1503 now remains. The Rev. R. H. Barham, 
 the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, was born in this- 
 parish. 
 
 ST. MARY NORTHGATE. 
 All but the north side of the old Norman church 
 was pulled down at the time the more modern church 
 was built. .In its early days this church formed the 
 northern gate of the city; and here the Mayor and 
 Corporation used to receive the King on his journeys to 
 and from the Isle of Thanet, and present him with the 
 keys of the City. 
 
57 
 
 ST. MILDRED'S. 
 
 Situated in Stone Street near the city walls. This 
 church is certainly one of the most ancient in Canterbury. 
 Not only do Roman tiles abound in the walls, but the 
 massive blocks of oolite, built into the quoins of the south 
 wall of the nave, were probably taken from a Roman 
 building. Stow mentions that this church was burnt in 
 the year 1 246, but how much of it was then destroyed is 
 not recorded. The tower was demolished in 1832, and 
 the materials and bells sold. In 1626 Izaak Walton was 
 wedded here to Rachel Floud. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 In Church Street, without the walls, built in the 13th 
 ■century and restored in recent times. This church 
 contains the moraument of Sir William Rooke. His son, 
 Admiral Sir George Rooke, the hero of Gibraltar, is buried 
 here. 
 
 ST. PETER'S. 
 
 This interesting little church, at the corner of St. 
 Peter's Lane, contains a few traces of 13th century work, 
 and in the small square tower may be seen fragments of 
 Roman tiles and wrought stone, similar to those found 
 in St. Mildred's. 
 
 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 The existing church, now closed, built on the site of 
 an older one, has never been celebrated except for its bad 
 taste and monumental ugliness. 
 
 ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY. 
 In Burgate Street is a modern church with a rich 
 interior. It was opened in 1875 by Cardinal Manning. 
 Of other once -celebrated churches in the city now existing 
 only in name, St. Edmund Ridingate, St. John's, St. Mary 
 de Castro, St. Mary of Queeningate, and St. Michael of 
 Burgate, not one stone remains above another. 
 
58 
 FRIARIES, Etc. . 
 
 THE BLACK FRIARS' 
 
 first reached Canterbury in 1221, and were established in 
 the Parish of St. Alphege on the banks of the river a Httle 
 below St. Peter's Church in 1236. This was the first house 
 of the Dominicans in England. The entrance to the friary 
 and the church have almost disappeared, but a picturesque 
 view of the ruins may be obtained from Mount's Nursery 
 (Entrance in St. Peter's Street). The ancient refectory, 
 with its windows high up in the walls, still stands, and is 
 now used as a chapel. The friary was disestabhshed at the 
 Reformation, and subsequently passed into the hands of the 
 Anabaptists, who used the Refectory as a place of worship. 
 Daniel Defoe is said to have frequently preached here. 
 
 THE GREY FRIARS, 
 
 or Franciscans, had a house assigned to them on the banks 
 of the river on the south side of St. Peter's Street almost 
 immediately after their first arrival in England in the early 
 years of the 13th century. The small remains of the old 
 Minorite establishment are hidden from view by the houses 
 in St. Peter's Street and Stour Street, but parts of ^ the 
 old boundary walls remain, as does an old building resting 
 on pointed arches over the river. This, in far later days, 
 became the home of the Lovelaces, and belonged to the 
 grandfather of the unfortunate Cavalier-Poet, Richard 
 Lovelace. 
 
 THE WHITE FRIARS. 
 
 In addition to the Dominicans and Franciscans, the 
 Agustinians, or White Friars, were also settled in Canterbury 
 in the Parish of St. George's, as early as 1325. All traces 
 of their house and church have, however, unfortunately 
 disappeared. The site of the friary is now occupied by the 
 Simon Langton Schools, so called since they have been 
 endowed with the estate of the Poor Priests' Hospital, 
 founded by Simon Langton, the brother of Stephen, in 
 the 13th century. 
 
S9 
 
 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR. 
 
 One of the principal Preceptories of the Knight's 
 Templar in England formerly stoo3 near the North Gate 
 under the City walls. When the Order was suppressed in 
 1308, and the following years, Canterbury became the 
 scene of some of the most hideous secret and pubhc 
 atrocities perpetrated by the feeble Edward H, at the 
 instigation of the Holy Inquisition and the French Pope, 
 Clement V. No vestige of the house remains at the 
 present day. 
 
 THE PRIORY OF ST. GREGORY, 
 
 an establishment mentioned in Domesday, and considered 
 to be the first house of regular canons in the Kingdom, was 
 founded by Archbishop Lanfranc It was converted into a 
 Priory in the reign of Henry I, and was burnt in the year 
 1 145. At the beginning of this century, when a part of the 
 Priory and the belfry was still standing, a pottery and 
 tobacco pipe manufactory was established among the ruins, 
 all traces of which have now disappeared. The precincts 
 were for many years used as market gardens. 
 
 ST. SEPULCRE'S NUNNERY, 
 
 Founded by St. Anselm, about the year iioo, for a 
 Prioress and five nuns, occupied a site to the south of St. 
 Augustine's, and was dissolved at the Reformation. The 
 few ruins left standing at the beginning of the century were 
 used to build the walls of some houses erected on the site. 
 Elizabeth Barton, The Holy Maid of Kent, was a sister in 
 this Nunnery. 
 
6o 
 
 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 
 
 King Etheleert. 
 
 The mediaeval history of Canterbury begins with the 
 mission of S. Augustine by S. Gregory. At that time 
 Ethelbert, whose long reign lasted from 568 to 616, was 
 King of Kent. "This Ethelbert," says Bede, ' was the son 
 of Irminric, the son of Octa, the son of Oeric surnamed 
 Oisc, from whom the Kings of Kent are called Oiscings. Oisc 
 was the son of Hengist, who, being invited by Vortigern, 
 first came into Britain with his son Oisc, as I have said 
 above." This last paragraph, as we have seen, may safely 
 be dismissed as unhistoric, but the former part of the 
 pedigree may possibly have some foundation in truth. As in 
 all early genealogies, the immediate ancestry is in all 
 probability accurately traced, but in the earlier generations 
 a great number of names are omitted, only those names 
 being recorded which were still preserved by tradition as 
 those of monarchs from whom the reigning dynasty either 
 were descended or wished it to be believed that they were 
 descended. It is merely a surmise, but I believe that it is 
 possible to identify the Oeric or Oisc, or as other chroniclers 
 spell the word, yEsc, with some approach to probabihty if 
 not to certainty. I have elsewhere mentioned Commius 
 who was made King of Arras by Csesar, and subsequently 
 appears to have been king of a considerable portion of south- 
 east Britain, including Kent. Commius seems to have left 
 three sons, Tincommius, Eppillus, and Vtrica, among whom, 
 as is proved by the coins they struck, his dominions were 
 divided. The coins struck by Verica on this side the 
 Channel have been mostly found in Sussex, but other coins 
 apparently bearing his name have been found in the north 
 of France, which seem to indicate that he not only succeeded 
 to part of his father's kingdom in Britain, but also to the 
 sovereignty held by his father over the Attrebates or people 
 of Arras on the Continent as well, if this conjecture 
 
6i 
 
 originated by my brother in the Supplement to his work on 
 British coins be correct, Verica must have been a monarch 
 of very considerable importance and distinction, whom a 
 King of Kent even six centuries later might well be proud 
 to number among his ancestors. 
 
 It would be rash to assume that the Oeric who figures 
 in Ethelbert's genealogy is identical with the King Verica 
 whose coins are found on both sides of the Channel, but 
 the similarity of name is at least remarkable, and the long 
 interval of Roman domination in Britain may well account 
 for the disappearance of the intermediate stages of descent. 
 The first independent King of Kent after that secular 
 subjection of his forefathers might well wish to revive the 
 remembrance of the independence of his country before the 
 Roman invasion became a reality. The surname of Oisc or 
 .^sc, which gave a patronymic to the Kings of Kent, seems 
 to me to be equally significant in another direction. A vast 
 proportion of the names to be found in our early chronicles 
 are simply those of places transformed into persons. Thus 
 Cissanceaster or Chichester supplied the chroniclers with a 
 king Cissa, Natanleod, or Netley, near Southampton with a 
 prince Natanleod, Ebbsfleet, close by Sandwich, with a 
 Wipped and so on. Now, I cannot avoid a strong suspicion 
 that Ash-next-Sandwich is the locality which here 
 appears personified as Oisc or .^sc, one of 
 the mythic kings of Kent. At Guiltoh, close 
 by, was a cemetery where the remains which have been 
 found bear witness to the high rank of those that were 
 interred there, and other cemeteries in the immediate 
 neighbourhood, show how densely populated was the 
 district during the "Early Saxon" period The local 
 tradition referred to by Mr. Planche, of a golden idol still 
 believed to have been buried there points in the same 
 direction. There is also a singular reference in the 
 chronicles to the existence of a '■ King's Hall," an aula 
 regia at Eastry, in the seventh century, which shows a 
 continued connection between the ^scings and this 
 particular district of the former kingdom, a connection 
 •which may well have dated from the days of the real Verica. 
 
62 
 
 Hengist and Horsa. 
 
 Nor, perhaps, is the fact that Oeric is represented as 
 the son of Hengist without significance. The earliest 
 British coinage, struck in imitation of the gold siaiei- of 
 Philip II of Macedon, shows on its reverse, like the 
 original from which it was copied, a two-horse chariot with 
 its driver. As the design gradually degenerated in the 
 hands of copyist after copyist, the chariot and driver became 
 more and more indistinguishable. Two horses alone were 
 all that caught the eye upon the coin. A little later only 
 one horse was visible, and finally it was hard to make out 
 even the figure of a horse in the strange dots and lines that 
 made up the unintelligible jumble stamped by the Belgic 
 moneyer on his coins. The existence, however, of the 
 coinage itself is a monument of the immigration of the 
 people among whom the coinage was current. On every 
 piece of the money they used, both invaders and invaded 
 had continually under their eyes a symbol and token of the 
 invasion. Is it merely fanciful to believe that the two 
 horses, the most conspicuous features of the earlier coinage 
 were regarded as having effected the conquest of the land ? 
 The metaphor is natural enough. Hengist and Horsa, the 
 " horse and mare " figured upon the coins, had in simple 
 fact won the sovereignty of south-eastern Britain, and this 
 true metaphor of Belgic domination may well have originated 
 the mythic names given to the first conquerors in later ages. 
 The " White Horse of Kent '' also may well have had the 
 same origin, and the " White Horses " cut in the turf of 
 Berkshire and Wiltshire hill sides, were in all probability 
 originally landmarks designed to show how far to the west the 
 frontiers of England had advanced against the British Celt 
 at the time they were first defiantly designed upon the 
 greensward of the downs. 
 
 THE BRETWALDA. 
 
 Returning to the narrative of Bede, it is to be observed 
 that S. Gregory, in addressing Ethelbert, styles him not 
 King of Kent, but " King of the English." This, I take it, 
 is due to the fact that Ethelbert in addition to being King 
 
63 
 
 of Kent, was also the third of the " Angul-Saxon " monarchs 
 who held the title of " Bretwalda," or sovereign of all the 
 English kingdoms south of the Humber. This title has 
 been the subject of much controversy. That in some way 
 it is a survival of the Roman system of government in 
 Britain seems to be partially admitted even by those who 
 uphold the theory of a cataclysmal Saxon invasion in the 
 fifth century, and, indeed, the word itself, which is merely a 
 translation of the Roman Dux Briiannta. seems to be 
 conclusive on this point. The Roman Comes Britannice 
 seems in the Notitia Imperii in which these officials are 
 mentioned to be the higher in rank of the two, but 
 " Bretwalda " is a nearer translation of the Dux, and the 
 functions of the Roman dux or " duke " were probably more 
 nearly allied to those exercised in Saxon times by the 
 Bretwalda. After the transfer of the Roman empire from 
 Rome to Byzantium, Britain, like the other provinces, was 
 ruled from Constantinople. The distance of our island 
 from the seat of government naturally threw a greater power 
 into the hands of the provincial officials, while the Roman 
 garrisons were depleted by the continually increasing 
 demand for soldiers required for other services. A time 
 finally arrived when the great majority of Roman legionaries 
 were withdrawn from Britain, but it must be remembered 
 that Constantinople never formally recognised the 
 independence of Britain, and there can be no doubt that 
 Byzantine officialdom regarded the island as part of the 
 Roman Empire long after anything like efficient occupation 
 by the Roman garrison had ceased. 
 
 CANTERBURY AND CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 S. Gregory, as may be seen in the pages of Bede, dates 
 his letters to Ethelred and others by the year of the reign of 
 the great and unhappy Emperor Maurice. It is probable 
 that even at this time both Ethelred, " King of the English," 
 and Ethelred's father-in-law, Charibert, " King of the 
 Franks" at Paris would still acknowledge themselves, 
 independent kings as they were in reality, the nominal 
 
64 
 
 vassals of the same Emperor. But if this be so, the 
 Bretwaldaship ceases to be an enigma. It is, in fact, the 
 office of the old Dux Britannia conferred by the Emperor 
 at Constantinople on one or other of the independent kings 
 of Britain, who was thereby invested with certain temporary 
 sovereign rights over his fellow-kings The Bretwalda for 
 the time being was, in fact, the representative of the 
 Byzantine Emperor in Britain. Without a military force in 
 the country, it was impossible for the Emperor to appoint 
 an officer of his own to a post of the kind, but obviously it 
 would be to the interest of a powerful British prince to pay 
 highly for a title and an office which could not but increase 
 his prestige and power, and equally obviously it was to the 
 interest of the Emperor to retain the right and custom of 
 conferring the dignity long after he had ceased to exercise 
 any real power in this island, both as a record of former 
 claims not yet definitely abandoned, and as a source of 
 revenue. However i shadowy the claims might have become, 
 it was well worth while on both sides to maintain it. In 
 this view, it is easy to understand why Byzantine policy 
 should systematically refuse to confer the office of Brit- 
 waldaship on the same native dynasty twice in succession. 
 The policy of the empire was to prevent the union of 
 all Britain under one ruler and to profit by its internal 
 dissensions. It was not likely to allow the office of 
 Bretwalda to descend from father to son, and thus per- 
 manently strengthen one dynasty at the expense of all the 
 others. This, as I read our early history, is the reason why 
 after the King of Sussex had held the office he was 
 succeeded by a King of Wessex, and the King of Wessex 
 by Ethelbert of Kent, Kent in turn resigning it to East 
 Anglia, and East Anglia to Northumbria. To the_ main- 
 tenance of this connexion between Constantinople and 
 Britain may probably also be attributed the distinctively 
 Byzantine style assumed by so many of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Kings in their charters, although Ethelbert himself seems to 
 have been content with the simple title " King of the 
 English." 
 
65 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ' The late Mr. Freeman and others have pointed out 
 that there must have been more Christians among the 
 EngHsh population at the time of the advent of St. Augus- 
 tine than is compatible with the utter heathendom 
 generally ascribed to them. The Church of S. Martin, 
 Bede tells us, was " built while the Romans were still in the 
 island," and he goes on to say that when the King was 
 converted to the faith, he allowed the missionaries " to 
 build or repair churches in all places," which at least 
 implies that there were not a few Christian churches in 
 Ethelbert's dominions, however sorely they may have 
 needed repair. The fact appears to be that such Christianity 
 as did exist among the English was mainly of the same 
 Roman type as that which was preached by Augustine and his 
 fellow missionaries with whom the English Christians would 
 be only too glad to fraternize. Their adherence to the new 
 preachers was simply a matter of course, and would attract 
 but little attention in comparison with the wide and, indeed, 
 insurmountable differences existing between the Christianity 
 preached by Augustine, and that inculcated by the leaders 
 of the Celtic churches in Britain. It has lately been suggested 
 by Mr. F. C. Conybeare that the early Christianity of Britain 
 was of an " Adoptionist " type — the Christianity, if such it 
 can be called, of Paul of Samosata, from whom it derived 
 the name of " Paulician." If this surmise be correct — and 
 it is countenanced by many passages in Bede, as well as by 
 the conduct pf S. Augustine in his dealings with the Welsh 
 Christians — it certainly affords a simple and satisfactory 
 explanation of the bitter hostility which obviously existed 
 between the Latin and Welsh churches. It further 
 vindicates the character of S. Augustine from the charges of 
 intolerance and want of Christian charity which have been 
 brought against him, and palliates, if it does not justify, the 
 exultation of Bede over the slaughter of the monks of Bangor 
 Iscoed. The doctrine, indeed, that Christ was not Christ 
 until he was made so by baptism lay then, as now, beyond 
 the pale of toleration by Roman or general Christianity. It 
 had even been proscribed by the empire before the empir* 
 
66 
 
 became Christian. Twice condemned by a Council of the 
 Church, Paul had retained the bishopric of Antioch under 
 Zenobia, Empress of Palmyra, until her capture and the 
 defeat of her armies by Aurelian in 272, The Church of 
 Antioch then appealed to Aurelian to confirm their decision. 
 Aurehan referred the matter to the Bishops of Italy, who 
 held that Antioch should conform to the doctrine of Rome. 
 The first dogmatic triumph of Roman Christianity thus owed 
 its validity to the decree of a still pagan emperor. From 
 this date, therefore, at the latest, any Christian teaching 
 which found its way into Britain from a Roman source 
 would be of a distinctively Roman type, and as such, 
 fundamentally opposed to that of the Welsh portion of the 
 population. It was on the marches of Wales that 
 Augustine met the representatives of Welsh Christianity. 
 The journey from Canterbury must have been difficult as 
 well as long, and even the Bretwaldaship of Ethelbert, under 
 whose protection the missionaries travelled, would have 
 been insufficient to ensure their safety had their journey 
 lain through a purely heathen population absolutely hostile 
 to a new creed. The whole narrative, indeed, reads as if 
 the Roman soldiers of Christ had marched through a 
 perfectly friendly country until they encountered their first 
 real enemies in the Nonconformist Christians of the Celtic 
 border. Feeble and dispirited, unorganised or disorganised, 
 such Christianity as may have existed among the English 
 may have been, it is hard to believe that it was entirely non- 
 existent, although no distinct record exists of its re- 
 animation and organisation by Augustine and his companions. 
 There is some evidence, indeed, that the earhest English as 
 well as Celtic Christianity was " Adoptionist." Had baptism 
 been a new thing in England in the days of Augustine, 
 there can be little doubt that the Romanised Greek word 
 would have been adopted by the earliest converts. The 
 first English documents, however, always translate what 
 was afterwards called " baptism " by the yiordfulluht, which 
 means "perfection." This was also the name by which the 
 sacrament was known among the followers of Paul of 
 Samosata, and in later days became a " note " of the heresy 
 of those who employed it. 
 
67 
 
 THE MINT. 
 
 The fact that no coins of Eppillus, the son of Coramius, 
 have been discovered beyond the limits of Kent, seems to 
 point to the existence of a Mint at Canterbury in the earliest 
 years of the Christian era. It is probable, indeed, that the 
 very earliest of British coins were struck here, and that the 
 first Canterbury Mint may have been at work some two 
 centuries before Christ. After the Claudian conquest of 
 Britain, however, the Roman coinage rapidly displaced the 
 native British, and continued to be practically the only 
 currency in Britain for the next four hundred years. Some 
 of the innumerable coins found in Britain bearing the image 
 and superscription of the Roman Caesars were probably 
 struck in the island, but there is no direct evidence of the 
 issue of any money from a British Mint during the Roman 
 occupation. That many of the coins called sceattas, which 
 form the link between the Roman and the Saxon coinage, 
 and show the influence of the continued connection between 
 Britain and Constantinople, were struck in Canterbury is 
 almost certain, but the absence of any inscription upon 
 them prevents their identification. 
 
 A unique gold triens, dating from about the year 600, 
 in the Bibliothfeque National at Paris, bears the inscription 
 DoROYERNis CiviTAS, with the name of Eusebius as that of 
 the moneyer. There is no cross upon it, and it is supposed 
 to have been struck by Ethelbert, at Canterbury, before his 
 conversion. The evidence is scanty, but the Prankish 
 character of the coin itself, and the fact that Ethelbert's wife 
 was a Prankish princess, seem to show that at this time 
 Frankish influence was predominant at the court and capital 
 of Ethelbert. No coin now known bears the name of any 
 Monarch of the ^scing dynasty, and this is the only one 
 that bears the name of Canterbury until after the kingdom 
 of Kent had passed into the hands of Offa of Mercia. 
 
 It was in the days of Offa that the silver " penny " 
 superseded the sceatta as the national currency, and the 
 inscriptions on the coins first began to give definite informa- 
 tion as to the moneyer who minted it, the place where it 
 originated, and the authority under which it was issued. 
 
68 
 
 The first Canterbury pennies form two distinct series, those 
 issued by the kings and those issued by the archbishops. 
 Both commence nearly at the same time, the earhest of the 
 royal issue being those of an Egbert, unknown to the 
 chroniclers, but who seems by his charters to have reigned in 
 Kent from 765 to about 791, and the earliest of the 
 archiepiscopal issue being those of Jaenbert, archbishop 
 from 766 to 790. Both Jaenbert and his successor 
 ^thelheard inscribed the name of Ofifa on their coins 
 without the name of any moneyer, the coins of ^thelheard 
 struck after 796 bearing the name of Coenwulf, Oifa's 
 successor on the throne of Mercia, The Egbert, therefore, 
 who appears as king of Kent at this time, was clearly a 
 vassal of the kings of Mercia. 
 
 Offa seems to have felt that the existence of the 
 Archbishopric at Canterbury conferred a somewhat undue 
 pre-eminence on the kingdom of Kent, and after the synod 
 of Cealchythe (Chelsea), Lichfield was erected into an 
 archbishopric. The Midland primacy, however, did not 
 survive its first Archbishop, who died in 802. Some of the 
 coins of ^thelheard gave him the title of PoNT [Foniifex, 
 or Bishop), and are supposed to have been struck during 
 the interval between his election in 791 and his consecration 
 in 793. It is possible, however, that Offa contemplated a 
 complete transference of the primacy from Canterbury to 
 Lichfield, and the reduction of Canterbury to a suffragan 
 see. If this were the case, he would probably insist on 
 .iEthelheard employing the humbler title. 
 
 The four succeeding Archbishops, Wulfred, Ceolnoth, 
 ^thelred, and Plegmund, also all struck pennies of their 
 own, but the name of any king, whether of Kent or Mercia, 
 is absent, and the name of the city, or more frequently 
 that of the moneyer, is substituted. Plegmund, the last of 
 the six Archbishops whose heads appear on their coins, had 
 been " Bishop of Wiltshire," whatever that title may imply. 
 He was invited to the court of King Alfred, consecrated 
 Archbishop in 890, and died in 914. "A learned and 
 venerable man, who faithfully and gloriously governed the 
 Church," he is entitled to the grateful remembrance of all 
 Englishmen as one of the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon 
 
69 
 
 Chfonicle. The Archbishops continued to strike coins at 
 Clanterbury till the .slj^teenth century, when the Archie- 
 piscopal coinage came to an end with the second issue of 
 King Henry VIII. The distinction between it and the 
 royal coinage was indicated orjly by a special mark or letter. 
 In the royal series of Canterbury, the unknown Egbert 
 is followed by Eadberht II, generally distinguished by the 
 surname Pren.Praen, or Praenn. This unintelligible surname, 
 absent from all his coins and unexplained by any chronicler, 
 represents, I believe, nothing more than the blunder of a 
 medieval scribe. Some chronicler, as I surmise, finding the 
 ,name of Eadberht mentioned a second time in the list of 
 Kentish Kings, and wrongly inferring that the same person 
 was intended in both cases, added to the second entry the 
 abbreviation ''pren," or ''preen," to signiiy p7-cs?iommahis, or, 
 in English, " aforesaid." A subsequent scribe, finding the 
 note '' pmn," mistook it for a surname, and thus dis- 
 tinguished the second Eadberht by tacking on to his name 
 the blunder of the earlier scribe. However this may be, 
 Eadberht II obtained the throne of Kent in 796, was 
 captured and blinded by Coenwulf of Mercia in 798, and 
 finally released at Winchelcombe with the consent of 
 Cuthred, whom Coenwulf raised to the throne of Kent. 
 After Cuthred's death, Baldred became king, presumably 
 still as vassal to Mercia. Baldred was driven across the 
 Thames by the army of Egbert of Wessex in 825, and 
 thenceforward the Mint at Canterbury was no longer the 
 Mint of the Kings of Kent, whether sovereigns or vassals, 
 but one of the many Mints of the Kings of England, the 
 last coins that issued from it being the silver ones of 
 Edward VI in the sixteenth century. 
 
 THE LAWS OF KENT. 
 
 One direction in which the influence of Constantinople 
 made itself felt in Britain is that of jurisprudence. The 
 mighty work then lately achieved by Justinian in the 
 codification of the Roman law seems to have nspired 
 Ethelbert with the idea of reducing into a written form the 
 laws of Kent. Those laws originally, it may be assumed, 
 
70 
 
 of the type common to ■ all the Belgic folk, had been 
 profoundly modified by the Roman law imposed and 
 enforced by the Roman conqueror during many centuries. 
 In fact, long before the final departure of the Roman 
 legions from Britain, the main features of Kentish law were, 
 as they continued to be, of a Roman type, although the 
 influence of its Belgic origin was sti'l far from being 
 obliterated. When Kent, however, at length recovered its 
 independence, a new influence came into play. The 
 Germanic races who had made themselves masters of the 
 Western Empire introduced a new system and new 
 institutions into the domain formerly subject to 
 Roman law alone, and while the conquered population 
 in the provinces were permitted, and, indeed, en- 
 couraged to retain the Lex Romana, the conquerors 
 themselves insisted on being governed only in accordance 
 with their own Germanic laws and institutions. The system of 
 personal and class laws thus introduced naturally gave rise to 
 continual difficulties, many of them absolutely insoluble ex- 
 cept upon the broad but unsatisfactory principle that migbt 
 is right. These difficulties soon became so urgent that the 
 two great branches of the Gothic race, the East and the 
 West Goths, almost simultaneously, about the year 500, 
 found it necessary to codify their laws in such a manner as 
 to make them applicable alike to the conquerors and the 
 conquered by incorporating into the Germanic system all 
 that great portion of the Roman law which were not directly 
 in conflict with their own. The West Goths in Spain and 
 Gaul adopted the code known as the Breviary of Alaric II, 
 the East Goths in Italy that of Theodoric the Great. Some 
 thirty years later, 528-533, the Emperor Justinian achieved 
 the great task of codifying the laws of the Eastern Empire. 
 In both East and West examples had thus been set of 
 systematizing the law, and Ethelbert, to the lasting honour 
 of himself and his kingdom of Kent, was the first English 
 prince to recognize the political and social importance of 
 following the example. What strikes the reader as the 
 most salient feature in the laws of Ethelbert is the singular 
 and apparently arbitrary system of appraising penal offences, 
 including murder, at a fixed tariff of money fines. This, 
 
71 
 
 ■indeed, is a characteristic of all ornearly all the many codes 
 adopted by the Belgic and Teutonic peoples approximately 
 ■contemporary with this of Ethelbert's. The singular 
 prominence of the characteristic is, however, deceptive. In 
 any system of class and personal legislation, it was of 
 primary importance to institute a fixed assessment of fines 
 i'or common criminal offences. It was the inequality riot 
 the amount of the fine inflicted that constituted a dangerous 
 popular grievance, and in fixing a uniform standard, the 
 ruler of the people, if he did not establish the equality of all 
 •classes, established at least the equality of all members of 
 The class to which the offender belonged, in the eyes of the 
 law. But to suppose that the laws of Ethelbert represent the 
 whole, or even any large part of the laws in force in Kent 
 at the time is a mistake. They represent only the Statute 
 law of the time. The common law, the lex Hon scripia, 
 then as now, was the real basis of the jurisprudence. That 
 common law was in fact the Roman law already in force for 
 ■centuries, modified by the influences to which I have 
 referred. The only real novelty in Ethelbert's code is the 
 provision contained in the first clause for regulating the 
 legal status of the new Christian priesthood. At a 
 considerably later period, 673-685, Hlothere and Eadric in- 
 troduced several changes in the criminal and civil laws of 
 Kent, and a little later still, about the beginning of the 8th 
 ■century, Wihtrsed found it necessary to add a number of 
 provisions in reference to matters ecclesiastical. The laws 
 of Ine of Wessex, it may be observed, were issued nearly a 
 century, and those of Offa of Mercia more than a century 
 and a half later than those of Ethelbert of Kent. 
 
 GAVELKIND. 
 
 " Gavelkind '' is a " word of fear '• to the Kentish legal 
 practitioner who has learnt to distrust the general impression 
 that all land in Kent which has not been " disgavelled" has 
 -always been and still is "gavelkind." From a very early 
 ^ate, the lands under cultivation in Kent were broadly 
 ■divisible into allodial lands,, those held by the king, nobles 
 
72 
 
 and " landed gentry,'' and socage lands, held by the farmers, 
 and husbandmen. Broadly speaking, it was only the latter 
 which was originally gavelkind. The land of the Earl from 
 the first descended to the eldest son ; the land of the churl 
 was portioned among his children. The allodium, or in 
 later phrase, the demesne of the lord of the land was. 
 inherited on a principle inapplicable to the socage oxgavelkind' 
 of the tenant, which, roughly speaking, covered an extent 
 about twice that of the allodial land. 
 
 The following extracts from the "Custumal of Kent," 
 drawn up in 1293, may serve to show some of the principal 
 peculiarities of Gavelkmd tenure as understood at the time. 
 The "Custumal " begins with a declaration gratifying to all 
 men of Kent : — " All the bodies of Kentishmen are as free 
 as the other free bodies of England." In other words, 
 although there might be men in a servile condition in other 
 parts of England, every Kentishman was a freeman. The 
 gavelkind tenure of the churl might not be as the allodial 
 tenure of the earl, but it was a free tenure. The " Gavelkind 
 men " . . . " may give and sell their lands and tenements, 
 without licence asked of their lords, saving to their lords the 
 rents and services due from the same holdings. And all 
 and each of them by writ of the king or by plaint may plead 
 for obtaining their right of their lords as well as of other 
 persons." . ..." If any lenant in gavelkind be 
 attainted of felony whereby he suifereth judgment of death, 
 let the king have all his chattels, and let his heir forthwith, 
 after his death be herited of all his lands and tenements, 
 that he holds in gavelkind in fee and in inheritance, and 
 he shall hold them by the same services and customs as- 
 his ancestors held them ; whereof it is said in Kentish : — 
 
 ' The fader to the boughe, 
 And the son to the plogh.'" 
 
 "If any tenant in gavelkind die and be herited 
 of lands and tenements of gavelkind, that all his sons 
 partake that heritage in equal portions. And if none heir 
 male there be, let the partition be made among the females, 
 even as betvreen brothers. And in like manner let the 
 messuage be departed between them, but let the hearth- 
 
73 
 
 place remain to the youngest son or daughter, and let the 
 value thereof be delivered to each of the parceners in that 
 "heritage to forty feet from that hearth-place if the tenement 
 may allow thereof. And then let the eldest brofher have 
 the first choice and the others after, according to degree. In 
 like manner of houses that shall be found in such messuages, 
 let them be departed among the heirs in equal portions, 
 that is to say, by the foot if need be, save only the covert " 
 (or, perhaps, court) " of the hearth-place that remains to the 
 youngest son or daughter as aforesaid, but so nevertheless 
 that the youngest make reasonable amends to his parceners 
 •for the part that belongeth unto them by the award of good 
 men." 
 
 . . , "In like manner let the chattels of gavelkinders 
 be departed into three parts after the funeral and the debts 
 Tje paid, if there be lawful issue living, in such sort that 
 death have one part and the lawful sons and daughters the 
 other part, and the wife the third part, and if there be no 
 lawful issue living, let death have one half and the living 
 wife the other half." 
 
 . . . "And hereby let it be known that from such 
 time as these gavelkind heirs be or have passed the age of 
 fifteen years, it is allowed to them t6 give and sell their 
 lands and tenements at their will, saving the services to the 
 •chief lords as aforesaid." .... 
 
 " These be the usages of gavelkind and of gavelkinders 
 in Kent, that were before the Conquest and at the Conquest 
 and at all times until now." 
 
 " Death " (la mort) in the paragraph relating to the 
 ■disposal of the estate of a gavelkinder defunct, is equivalent 
 to "the deceased," and the meaning of the passage is that 
 the gavelkind tenant had a right to dispose by will of one- 
 third of his holding. 
 
 The fact that gavelkind, the immemorial socage tenure, 
 in Kent, is a survival from Saxon into Norman and modern 
 ■days is universally admitted, but the fact, equally certam, 
 that it is a survival of Roman law into Saxon times is almost 
 as universally ignored. Its existence today is perhaps one 
 •of the most striking demonstrations that can be adduced of 
 the real continuity of English history during the fifth and 
 
74 
 
 sixth centuries, which the professed champions of the con- 
 tinuity of history have se- strenuously endeavoured to deny. 
 Until 1234, that part of Canterbury which was withim 
 the royal demesne, was governed by the two kings' bailiffs, the 
 successors of the duumviii who had ruled the city under 
 the Roman system. In that year, however, Henry III 
 granted the city to the citizens in fee-farm at an annual fixed 
 rent of sixty pounds, and thenceforward the tenure in the 
 former royal demesne was "free burgage " Up to that time, 
 the six aldermanries of the city had been held at freeholds, 
 of inheritance by sergeanty of the crown. When the tenure 
 became burgage, they were held by the "commonalty of" 
 Canterbury," until they were bought up by the city. It is 
 clear, however, that a great part of Canterbury was never 
 held by gavelicind or any other socage tenure. Domesday 
 Book tells how Ranulf de Columbels holds thirty-three acres 
 of arable, which the burgesses held in their guild of the 
 king, and fourscore acres which the burgesses hold of the king' 
 in allodium. Somner also quotes a charter granting a 
 parcel of land without the walls between Queningate and 
 Burgate, to the monks of Christ Church, in which the 
 grantor says, " And I will that the monks hold that land 
 altogether free, as I and my ancestors have done, and 
 answer for it to no lord.'' In the 12th century also the- 
 hereditary Alderman of Ridingate Ward grants two- 
 messuages to St. Laurence's Hospital, " which are situated 
 in that book-land for which I answer to no lord." In 
 these cases, and others might be cited, the land was- 
 obviously not held by gavelkind. One privilege of the 
 citizens and their wives in Canterbury, London, and a few, 
 other boroughs was the right by custom of devising their 
 freeholds within the liberties of the city. 
 
 THE MAYOR AND COMMONALTY. 
 
 The duumviri already referred to were annually 
 appointed by the imperial authority, presumably by the Count 
 of the Saxon shore, and although in later days, Saxon and 
 Norman, they were appointed by the king, and were called 
 bailiffs, their succession in all probability remained unbroken^ 
 
75 
 
 The first great change in their status was made in 1234, 
 when Htenry III granted the city in fee-farm to the citizens. 
 The charter by which this privilege is granted also confers 
 on the citizens the right of electing their own baiUffs " among 
 themselves." This resignation of the royal right to appoint, 
 the bailiffs into the hands of the citizens really represents a 
 longer step towards free self-government than the substitution 
 of a mayor in the place of the two bailiffs by Henry VI in 
 1448. The franchises of Canterbury had long been far in 
 advance of those enjoyed by most English cities. In 1194, 
 Henry II had granted the citizens the right of not being 
 compelled to plead without the walls of the city, and free- 
 dom from tolls throughout all England, besides a number 
 of other valuable privileges, in addition to " all other 
 liberties and customs that they had in the time of King 
 Henry, my grandfather (Henry I), and whensoever they 
 had them more freely and better." 
 
 Four years after the election of the first mayor in 1448, 
 John Lynde, who had been one of the bailiffs the year 
 before, the Mayor was empowered to appoint a " bailiff," 
 who in fact was the sheriff, a reduction was made in the 
 amount of the rent of the fee-farm of the city, and the city 
 was made a county by itself. Henry VII, in 1497, intro- 
 duced an important alteration in the constitution of the 
 " commonalty " by reducing the number of common council 
 men to 24 instead of 36 as formerly, and on the other hand 
 increasing the number of aldermen from 6 to 12. He 
 further fixed the salary of the Mayor at twenty pounds 
 annually, "and no more." The first Recorder of Canterbury, 
 Sic John Boys, was appointed under a charter granted by 
 James I in 1609. A fair in " Le Dane John Field" on 
 March 1 was granted by Charles II in 1684. The charter, 
 however, granting the fair and other privileges, has a 
 sinister history of its own. In 1682, Charles had issued a 
 proclamation declaring his intention of resuming all 
 chartered immunities throughout the kingdom. The 
 citizens of Canterbury declined to surrender their charter, 
 and were accordingly served with a writ of Quo warranto to 
 compel them to do so. A meeting was held December 13, 
 1683, to consider what return was to be made to the writ, 
 
76 
 
 and in January, 1684, the House of Burghmote announced 
 that they were neither willing nor able to contest the writ. On 
 April 1 1 , accordingly, the surrender of the franchises and 
 liberties of the city " to the use of the King's majesty" was 
 duly sealed, and in August the charter of James I was 
 actually surrendered. In November the charter referred to was 
 granted by Charles, but among the provisions it contains for 
 securing that the city " from henceforth for ever may be and 
 remain a city of peace and quietness," are certam clauses 
 displacing several of the aldermen and common-councilmen 
 and substituting others,' and appointing Sir William Rooke 
 to be Mayor. 
 
 Charles died on February 6, 1685, but the troubles of 
 Canterbury were far from being at an end. In the first 
 place, there was a little bill of ;^306 9s. 6d. to be paid for the 
 expenses of the Quo wai-ranto, and when James II had 
 time to attend to Canterbury, in January, 1687, he seized 
 the charter granted by his brother and remodelled it, 
 bundled out Mr. Henry Lee, who had been duly elected 
 Mayor, and appointed Mr. John Kingsford to succeed him, 
 taking care to supply him with a substantial majority by 
 ejecting several obnoxious aldermen and replacing them by 
 others more obsequious. Kingsford was again appointed 
 Mayor the next year, but the news that William of Orange 
 had set sail for England disturbed His Majesty's arrange- 
 ments. At the latter end of October he revoked Charles's 
 charter and restored that of James I. On December 11 he 
 abdicated the throne of England, and the commonalty 
 elected Mr. Henry Gibbs as Mayor for the remainder of 
 the term. 
 
 With the election of the first Mayor in 1448, the two 
 Bailiffs, High and Low, ceased to exist. A fairly complete 
 list of these ofScials from 1215, the year of the Magna 
 Charta, onwards is still preserved, but before that date the 
 records of any city ofificials are extremely scanty. There is, 
 however, occasional mention of another officer, whose func-. 
 tions in early days were more important even than those of 
 the Bailiffs. This is the Portreeve, who appears as late as, 
 1199, some years after the election of the Bailiffs had been-, 
 transferred into the hands of the citizens. The name of 
 
77 
 
 the Portreeve in that year is Winulphus Dives, or Rich, 
 possibly the father of St. Wilham Rich, who became Arch- 
 bishop in 1234. In all probability, too, Alfward, who is 
 mentioned as Frxpositus Regis in loii, when Canterbury 
 was sacked and St. Alphege martyred by the Danes, was the 
 King's Portreeve rather than one of the King's Bailiffs of 
 ihe city. In 956, Hlothewig is recorded as Portreeve, and 
 as early as 780, one Aldhune signs his name to a charter as 
 Prcefectus civitatis, which is probably only the old Roman 
 name of the same office. In the later days of the Roman 
 Empire a municipal officer was appointed in the cities and 
 boroughs, whose principal function was the assessment and 
 ■collection of taxes, fines, and other imposts, for which he 
 had to account to the treasury. He also had charge of the 
 .gaol, and was generally responsible in matters of pohce. 
 He was remunerated for his services by being allowed to 
 keep the " third penny,'' or one-third of the sum he collec- 
 ted as taxes. The office, the functions, and the method of 
 payment remained practically unchanged from Roman into 
 Saxon and Norman times. The only difference was that the 
 Romans generally called him principalis, or, as at Canter- 
 hury, Frcefectus civitatis, while the " Angul-Saxons " called 
 .him the Portreeve, and the later English the " Sheriff." 
 
 PILGRIMAGES. 
 
 The shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury possessed 
 
 at one time a greater attraction for pilgrims than any other 
 
 in Christendom. For years it eclipsed even that of St. 
 
 James of Composteila in Galicia, the apostle "baron" who, 
 
 ■on his milk-white charger, overthrew the Moors of Spain. 
 
 Other English " hallows," such as Our Lady of Walsingham, 
 
 ■enjoyed their day of popularity and fashion, but none of 
 
 them had so strong and abiding an interest for the pilgrim. 
 
 Canterbury lay on the high road between the capital and 
 
 the Continent, and a powerful political sentiment \yas 
 
 •enlisted in favour of the murdered Archbishop in addition 
 
 .to the many other motives which influenced the choice of 
 
 the mediaeval Palmer. The pilgrim of the later middle 
 
 -ages, indeed, may be regarded as the lineal ancestor of 
 
 -the tourist, tripper, and excursionist of to-day. The 
 
78 
 
 treasuries of the religious houses, their vestments and! 
 appointments, their jewellery and their holy relics, were- 
 the museums and picture galleries he went to see. A. 
 knuckle-bone of St. Mary Magdalene was to him as 
 interesting as the Venus of Milo to his descendant, and the 
 Three Kings of Cologne as the marbles of the Parthenon. 
 The religious motive for going on the pilgrimage was 
 certainly more general, perhaps more powerful, than to-day, 
 but after all it was not the prevailing motive of the 
 majority of pilgrims. The "Canterbury Pilgrimage'' of 
 Chaucer and his continuator resembles nothing in moderni 
 life so closely as a travelling party pCTSonally conducted by 
 a Cook or a Gaze. 
 
 In the case of St. Thomas of Canterbury the political 
 element of attraction was for many years kept well to the 
 front by the events of at least two generations'following 
 the martyrdom. The Archbishop was murdered on 
 December 29th, 11 70. He was the champion of the- 
 Church against the King, and the cause of the Church 
 was regarded as the cause of the people. When Stephen 1 
 Langton was consecrated Archbishop by Innocent III. in 
 1207, the secular feud between Church and King, which 
 had smouldered on through the intervening years again 
 blazed out with redoubled fury. The cause of Langton 
 and the crusaders who wrung the Great Charter from John, 
 was naturally identified with that of Beclcet against Henry 
 II, and not a few, both of clerics and layfolk, undertook a 
 pilgrimage to the shrine of the dead champion in order tO' 
 testify their sympathy with the hving one. 
 
 Langton is often styled the " patriot Archbishop,'' and 
 the part he played in obtaining the Great Charter entitles, 
 him to the epithet. But it should not be forgotten that he 
 was also mainly instrumental in the eminently unpatriotic 
 attempt to set Lewis, the son of the French King Philip- 
 " Augustus " on the throne of England, and that in con- 
 tinuing the Crusade against John, after John had submitted 
 to Pandulf, he was acting as treacherously towards the- 
 Pope who consecrated him as towards the King against 
 whom he was in rebellion in order to supplant him by a 
 foreign prince. 
 
79 
 
 It was this political aspect of the martyrdom of St.. 
 Thomas, insisted on for political reasons by Langton, ibat 
 first invested the martyr's tomb with its special and peculiar 
 interest. It was the rallying point of the adherents of the 
 Church as distinguished from the friends of the King. In 
 later days both the religious and the political motives for 
 undertaking the pilgrimage gradually dwindled into a 
 sentiment, itself a sufficient motive to induce many to join 
 in what was practically a pleasure party in the days of.' 
 Geoffry Chaucer. 
 
 THE RIVER STOUR 
 
 Rises at Kingswonh, near Ashford, and flows by Wye- 
 and Chartham to Canterbury, where it divides into twO' 
 streams. One of these, formerly called the King's River, 
 runs through the city under the King's Bridge, While the 
 other continues its course outside the walls by the Westgate 
 till it again joins the King's River at Abbot's Hill. Thence 
 the river flows on to Fordwich, the ancient port of Canter- 
 bury, and so on to Sandwich, where it reaches the sea some 
 two miles from the old Haven. As late as the beginning 
 of the 17th century the Stour was navigable as far as. 
 Fordwich for vessels of 12 tons, and the prosperity and 
 decay of this interesting old suburb of Canterbury may be- 
 exactly measured by the condition of the Stour and. 
 Wantsum, which formerly separated Thanet from the East 
 of Kent. As the estuary silted up and the broad river 
 became a narrow one, so flowed away the sea from. 
 Fordwich and the profits from the Canterbury trade. 
 Gradually this ancient limb of the Cinque Ports sank, as 
 Stonor had sunk a little earlier, into a petty town, of which 
 there now exist but the scantiest remnants. The Stour,." 
 though no longer navigable, is still famed for the size and 
 flavour of its trout. In the i6th century the Corporation 
 owned the swans on the river, and kept a swanherd to tend 
 them. There was formerly a "cucking stool," used to- 
 punish scolding and brawling women at the Abbot's Hill,, 
 and another similar stool is still preserved at Fordwich. 
 
8o 
 
 THE CITY WALLS. 
 
 That Canterbury must have afforded some means 
 ■of protection to its earliest inhabitants is indisputable, and 
 the finding of the remains of stakes and wattles several 
 feet below the level of the old city ditch, points to the fact 
 that even in the earliest times Canterbury must have been, 
 <is its Celtic name implies, a " stronghold in the marsh." 
 In Roman limes there is no doubt that the city was 
 surrounded by an earthern wall and ditch, and though no 
 Roman work has been traced in recent times, except where 
 Roman bricks have been found embedded in the existing 
 wall, it is recorded by Bunce that in his time there still 
 stood in the Castle yard " a most perfect Roman arch built 
 altogether of Roman bricks, and supposed to be the old 
 Worthgate." This arch was removed about 1791. That 
 •the walls were still standing in the time of Ethelbert is more 
 than probable, and that Canterbury was a walled city at the 
 •time of the Danish invasion in loii may be gathered from 
 the account of the seige given by Richard of Howden, who 
 tells us that " the Danes cast the EngHsh people from the 
 walls." How far these early walls were left standing is 
 uncertain^ but they must have been very thoroughly restored 
 or rebuilt by the Normans, for as early as 1142 it was the 
 boast of the citizens of Canterbury that their walls were 
 ■''whole and undecayed." Until well into the last century 
 there was probably no city in England which could show 
 "its walls in a more perfect state than Canterbury, and in 
 Somner's time there were upwards of 21 watching towers 
 and six gates still standing. To-day, partly owing to the 
 fact that the Corporation of the period was short of 
 building materials, only six or seven turrets and one gate, 
 "Westgate, remain. 
 
 THE CITY GATES. 
 
 Westgate, at the entrance of the great London Road, 
 said to have been the largest and best built of any gate in 
 ;the City, was erected by Archbishop Sudbury. It is 
 ■embattled, portcullised, and machicolated, and till the 
 
middle of the present century was used as the City prison. 
 A few instruments of torture, fetters, and other relics are 
 still to be seen in the rooms of the -towers, and a great 
 number of the City records are stored in the curious 
 wooden strong rooms built at one end of the great Chamber 
 over the Gateway. Westgate owes its preservation to one 
 of the Mayors of the City, who used his casting vote against 
 a petition from Mr. W. Wombwell, the owner of the 
 celebrated travelling menagerie, to have the Gate removed 
 to allow more room for his procession. The best idea of 
 the traces of the other old City Gates is to be obtained by 
 starting from the entrance to the Dane John Gardens, near 
 the East station, and walking upon the city walls past the 
 Dane John itself, over the Watling Street at Riding Gate, 
 then on past the sites of St. George's Gate and Burgate, to 
 Queningate, opposite St. Augustine's, and so on to North- 
 gate, and by St. Radigund's Lane to Westgate, The sites, 
 of the Roman Worthgate and Wincbeap Gate will hardly 
 repay a visit. 
 
 STABLEGATE. 
 
 Close to the Northgate was the site of the Black 
 Prince's Chantry in the Parish of St. Alphege is the ancient 
 district, still known as Stablegate, given by King Ethelbert 
 to St. Augustine and his monks when they first arrived in 
 Canterbury, bearing before them their silver cross, and 
 singing, " We beseech Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, that 
 Thy wrath and Thine anger may be removed from this City 
 and from thy Holy House, Allelujah ! " St. Radigund's. 
 bath, with its natural spring of "sweet" water, supposed 
 from remains found there, to have been a Roman bath, is 
 also near the Northgate, outside the walls. 
 
82 
 
 THE CASTLE. 
 
 Canterbury Castle, mentioned in Domesday as having 
 •been received by the King in exchange from the Arch- 
 bishop and Abbot of St. Augustine's, was undoubtedly in 
 •existence long before the Conquest. The fortifications 
 were considerably increased by Henry H, and as a fortress 
 guarding the main roads from the coast to London, it 
 played an important part with the Castle at Dover in the 
 protection of the Country. Its walls enclosed an area of 
 about five acres, and a prison was kept within them as early 
 as the reign of Edward H, it being for a considerable 
 period the principal gaol in the County. Towards the end 
 of the sixteenth century, the entire Castle fell into disuse 
 and neglect, and at the present day nothing remains of the 
 once famous castle which counted Hubert de Burgh 
 •amongst its Governors, except the massive walls of the 
 Keep. This, the third largest Norman Keep in England, 
 much resembles the smaller Keeps of Rochester and l3over. 
 The lower floors were provided only with loopholes, being 
 kept for store rooms and guard-chambers, while the second 
 floor, with its great arched windows, contained the state 
 rooms and the principal entrance. The walls, more than 
 eleven feet in thickness, enclose an area of about 88 feet by 
 80 feet. Unliappily, Canterbury Castle, one of the most 
 interesting historic monuments of the country, is slill, at the 
 close of the nineteenth century, allowed to remain in the 
 hands of the local Gas Company, who have turned it into a 
 coal-bunk. May we without offence suggest to the citizens 
 and wealthy neighbours of Canterbury, the Corporation of 
 the City, and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient 
 Monuments, that this is not quite as it should be in the 
 Mother City of England ? 
 
 THE DANE JOHN. 
 
 Known at different times as Danzil, Dau/Mn, 
 Daungron, Dungeon, and Dane John, and not infrequently, 
 though wrongly associated with the Danish Invasion, in all 
 probability dates back to pre-historic times. That the 
 
83 
 
 mound at some period of its existence was used for the 
 -defence of the City in conjunction with the two other 
 mounds, one apparently larger and one smaller, which were 
 formerly to be seen in the Martyr's Field now partially 
 -covered by the present Railway Station, seems equally 
 probable. The only fact about the earliest history of the 
 Dane John which seems certain is, that it was in existence 
 before the City walls were planned, as they curve outwards 
 in order to enclose it within their circuit. The mound was 
 made into its present shape at the end of the last century, 
 by cutting away a part of its base and carrying it to the top, 
 a process which added 17 feet to its height. During the 
 repair of the City walls near the Dane John in 1883, some 
 bones, flint implements, and sling stones, as well as some 
 Roman pottery and ornaments, were discovered, while some 
 fragments of Roman mosaic pavement were found 
 -embedded in the walls. The Gardens of the Dane John 
 which seem to have belonged to the Citizens from time 
 immemorial, were one time used for the practice of archery. 
 They were laid out for the benefit of the public in 1790, and 
 -are much frequented in the summer months. The view of 
 the City and surrounding country from the top of the 
 mound, though somewhat marred by the ridiculous pillar 
 -erected in 1803, amply repays the trouble of getting there. 
 •Close by, in former days, stood the ancient Dane John 
 Mansion now destroyed to make room for the East Railway 
 Station. It belonged at one time to the Chiche family, one 
 ■of whom was Bailiff of the City in i 259 and again in 1271. 
 Jt subsequently passed to the Brents, Butlers, and Hales. 
 It is on record that a certain William Pennington, to whom 
 ^:he Manor had been leased in the 15th century, cut a deep 
 idyke between the mound and the Ridingate to prevent 
 the ingress of the citizens to their favourite recreation 
 ,-ground. While the Lancastrians remained in power, Penning- 
 ton set the Commonalty at defiance, but no sooner had 
 the King's true liegemen of Kent won the battle of North- 
 .ampton. than "the said William Pennington was sum- 
 marily iseheaded nigh unto the same ground, because of 
 the grudge which the City had against him." 
 
84 
 
 It is recorded that in the Reign of Edward I, a gibbet 
 50 feet high was erected opposite the Rushmarket, upon 
 which the Earl of Athol, for taking part with Baliol against 
 the English King in the Scottish wars, was hanged, but cut 
 down before he was strangled, in order to have his head 
 hewn off and his body burnt. There was also a second 
 gibbet at the Bullstake, upon which Nicholas Faunt, at one 
 time Mayor of the City, was executed in 147 1, for taking 
 part with the insurgent " bastard " Faulcon bridge. A third 
 was at Oaten Hills, and a fourth at Well Land, while the 
 Monks of Christchurch erected a fifth for malefactors 
 within their own especial jurisdiction at Holling- 
 bourne. There was a pillory at Butchery Lane, a City 
 stocks, and numerous whipping posts, and in the 
 Burghmote Records are numerous entries for new cucking 
 stools. 
 
 THE MARTYRS' FIELD. 
 
 The martyrs who gave the name to the Martyrs' 
 Field were, the 41 Protestant victims of the Marian 
 persecution in Canterbury, the last five of whom, three 
 men and two women, were burnt on the loth of 
 November, 1558. Just a week later Queen Mary herself 
 died with the fateful word ' Calais ' written on her heart. 
 The first to suffer under the reactionary policy adopted 
 by Mary and her advisers was John Rogers, burnt at 
 Smithfield, February 4th, 1555, and it is calculated that 
 between that date and the end of her reign no less than 
 288 Protestants expiated at the stake the crime of 
 constancy to their religious convictions. The larger 
 humanity, which owns St. Thomas of Canterbury as a 
 martyr, recognizes also his successor in name and in 
 office, Thomas Cranmer, and his fellow-sufferers, as worthy 
 of the same title. Something, perhaps, of the bitterness 
 with which this ghastly period of our history is regarded 
 by the majority of Englishmen is due to the habit of 
 looking at the history of our island from a purely insular 
 point of view, and shutting out all considerations of 
 contemporary Continental history by which our own, from 
 time to time, has been so profoundly modified. With 
 regard to the days of Qiieen Mary, certainly no just 
 
8s 
 
 estimate can be found of the influences at work in England 
 without taking into account the momentous events that 
 were then taking place over sea. 
 
 Philip, heir-apparent to the Emperor Charles V., 
 married Mary on July 2Sth, 1554, his father at that time 
 having made him King of Milan and Duke of Naples,, 
 in order that his technical rank might not be lower than 
 that of his sovereign English bride. On October 2Sth, 
 1555, the Emperor retired from the empire to the cloister, 
 and Philip became King of Spain and the Netherlands, 
 practically at that time the most powerful of European 
 monarchs. In the meanwhile, Pope Julius III died 
 March 23rd, 1555, and, after the 22 days' papacy of 
 Marcellus II, was succeeded on May 26th, 1555, by 
 Pope Paul IV. Paul (Caraffa) was a Neapolitan, and his 
 deadly hatred of Spain and the empire, Charles V and 
 Philip II, was, perhaps, his nearest approach to religion. 
 
 Now, in the feud between Philip II and the Pope 
 it was of primary importance to both to secure the adhesion 
 of England. For a time it seemed evident to both that 
 which ever of the tvvo could make sure of England would 
 be successful in the great struggle. But the England 
 which both hoped to enlist was not a Protestant England. 
 The first object of both was to bring back England into 
 the fold of Rome, and both, in apparent agreement, but 
 in reality, in the bitterest hostility, strained every nerve 
 to bring about this consummation before entering on what 
 each regarded as the final Armageddon. Of the statesmen 
 surrounding Mary, the majority were on the side of Philip, 
 but an influential minority were on the side of Paul, while, 
 politically, for the time being, the Protestants were only 
 just strong enough to invite the persecution of both th& 
 predominant parties. It would be out of place here tO' 
 enter into the history of the times, but the visitor to the 
 Martyrs' field, to whatever church he may belong, may 
 perhaps be glad to be reminded that the ghastly persecu- 
 tion, of which it now possesses a memorial in the 
 appropriate form of a Canterbury Cross, was the outcome 
 of political complications abroad quite as much as of 
 religious intolerance at home. 
 
86 
 
 THE HOSPITALS, 
 
 Once far more celebrated and numerous, still exist in many 
 cases to the present day as Almshouses. Among the more 
 important may be mentioned 
 
 THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN 
 
 In Northgate Street, originally founded by Archbishop 
 Lanfranc in 1084, for the lame, weak, and infirm, still 
 provides a home for 12 brothers and 13 sisters. This 
 ancient hospital, one of the most picturesque buildings in 
 Canterbury, with its half-timbered gateway and room over, 
 and its i6th century kitchen and dining hall, will well 
 repay a visit. Here can still be seen the old open fire- 
 place with its ancient spits exactly as it was three centuries 
 ago, and in the dining hall sets of old pewter, dishes, 
 plates, and flagons, wooden mazers and platters, and rich 
 old Tudor carving. Visitors can always be admitted on 
 application to the Sub-Prior. 
 
 ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL, 
 
 Called, like the great Hospital in London, after St. 
 Thomas of Canterbury, but sometimes known as East- 
 bridge or Kingsbridge Hospital, is supposed by Somner to 
 have been founded by St. Thomas himself. It was 
 endowed by Archbishop Hubert Walter about the year 1200, 
 and received from William Cokyn the Hospital which he 
 had founded in St. Peter's Street, the union of the two 
 being confirmed by a Bull from Pope Innocent III in 
 1203. It was suppressed in the reign of Edward VI, and 
 passing into the hands of the King, it was used at the time 
 of the surrender of Calais as a hospital for the sick and 
 wounded of the garrison. After various vicissitudes, the 
 Hospital was refounded by Archbishop Parkes in 1569, only 
 to be again plundered and sold. It owes its present 
 existence to Archbishop Whitgift, who recovered its 
 
87 
 
 property and gave it new statutes. It consists of a vaulted 
 hall, from which the refectory is reached by a few steps ; 
 a chapel, till lately used as a school ; and a series of 
 chambers used by the Brothers and Sisters. A 13th 
 century wall painting was discovered here in 1879. A part 
 of it represents the Martyrdom of St. Thomas and the 
 penance of King Henry at the shrine in the Cathedral. 
 Five Brothers and Five Sisters still receive their lodging 
 here, and about ;£3o a year each, while an equal number 
 of Out-brothers and Out-sisters receive nearly the same 
 sum. 
 
 JESUS HOSPITAL OR THE BOYS' SPITAL, 
 
 Also in Northgate Street, was founded by Sir John Boys 
 at the end of the i6th century, and still houses a warden, 
 seven brothers and four sisters. The Hospitals of St. 
 James and St. Lawrence, both founded in the 12 th century, 
 for lepers, have long ceased to exist. The name of the 
 latter, however, still lives in the famous St. Lawrence 
 Cricket Ground, where during Canterbury Cricket Week 
 it is no uncommon occurrence to see from 15 to 20 
 thousand people watching the chief County Matches. 
 
 THE HOSPITAL OF ST. NICHOLAS, 
 
 Founded by Archbishop Lanfranc in 1084, and giving 
 shelter to nine brothers and seven sisters, is situated at 
 Harbledown, on the great London Road beyond Westgate. 
 Here it was that the Canterbury Pilgrims, on their way to 
 the Shrine of St. Thomas, halted to give alms and possibly to 
 drink at the Black Prince's Well before continuing their 
 pilgrimage. Here Erasmus and Dean Colet were shown 
 the upper leather of a shoe of St. Thomas, " bound with a 
 brazen rim, in which is a piece of glass resenibling a jewel," 
 and here to-day may be seen a large mazer with possibly the 
 same " piece of glass " set at the bottom ; and an ancient 
 alms box, probably the same as that into which Erasmus 
 and coundess thousands dropped their offerings in 
 
pre-Reformation days. The view of the Cathedral and city 
 from Harbledown is strikingly beautiful. 
 
 It may here be noted that the number of beneficiaries 
 assisted by the various Municipal charities in Canterbury at 
 the present day is more than 900. The great majority of these^ 
 however, are only recipients of coals, blankets, clothing, 
 boots, etc. ; forty-four receive a pension of £10 a year, but. 
 there are very few other actual payments in money. 
 
 THE JEWRY. 
 
 The Jews of Canterbury were never so numerous as 
 those of London, York, Lincoln, Cambridge, and other 
 cities, but they were evidently an influential section of the 
 community during the greater part of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries. The Jewry, or Jew's quarter, was. 
 situated near High Street and White Horse Lane, and a 
 part of the old synagogue, or, perhaps, of the school, existed 
 until quite recent times in the stone parlour of the old 
 Saracen's Head Inn. Nothing, however, now remains to 
 distinguish the Canterbury Ghetto beyond the name of 
 Jewry Lane. The early history of the Jews in Canterbury 
 is fragmentary and obscure, but it is quite possible that the 
 city itself is referred to in one of the most beautiful passages- 
 in mediaeval Jewish literature, written by Abraham Ibn 
 Ezra, the " Rabbi Ben Ezra " of Robert Browning's poem, 
 a celebrated Spanish Jew who visited England in the year 
 1 158. The work in which it occurs was written in 
 London, but it is clear that the passage refers not tO' 
 London, but to some city in which he had sojourned on his- 
 way, and Canterbury is the one in which he would be likely 
 to make his longest stay. It runs thus: "It was in the 
 year 4919 (i 158), at midnight, on Sabbath eve, the 14th 
 of Tebeth (December 7th), that I, Abraham Ibn Ezra, a 
 Spaniard, was in one of the cities of the island called the 
 ' corner of the earth ' (Angle-land, or England), for that it is. 
 the last of the seven divisions of the inhabited earth. And 
 I was sleeping, and my sleep was pleasant to me. And I 
 looked in my dream, and behold, beside me stood one in 
 the semblance of a man. And he spake unto me and said :. 
 
89 
 
 ■* Take this letter that the Sabbath sendeth unto thee.' 
 And I bowed down my head and worshipped the Lord and 
 
 blessed the Lord And I laid hold upon it with my 
 
 two hands, and my hands dropped with myrrh. And I 
 read it, and in the beginning it was as honey for 
 
 sweetness From the day that I knew the Lord, 
 
 which created us, and learnt His commandments, I have 
 ever loved the Sabbath. Before she came, I was wont to 
 go out to meet her, and when she departed I was fain to 
 speed her with gladness and singing." 
 
 Of the Jews of Canterbury themselves, Aaron, who 
 was Rabbi before 1189, finds a place in Hebrew records as 
 ■one of the learned, and Rabbi Benjamin seems to have 
 been a worthy predecessor or successor in the charge of the 
 little community which Mr. Jacobs, to whose work on " the 
 Jews of Angevin England," I am indebted for the foregoing 
 extract, estimates at only twelve individuals at the end of 
 the 1 2th century. In the next century, for a few years 
 from about 1230, when a clearer glimpse of them is 
 obtainable, they must evidently have been considerably 
 more numerous. At this period, a certain Peter de 
 Bendinges, who appears in the Hebrew versions of the 
 documents connected with his case as " Pirash de 
 Bendigash," got into money difficulties and applied to the 
 Jews, the mediaeval bankers, for assistance. Nearly all the 
 law-papers relating to him and his fortunes are printed in 
 the sixth volume of the Archmologia Cantiana, and are 
 interesting, not only as throwing hght on the Jewish com- 
 munity at the time, but as illustrating several peculiarities 
 in the tenures of lands in Kent. In the first instance, 
 Peter makes over his Manor of Westwell to the Prior and 
 Convent of Christchurch for a sum of ^171 17s. and the 
 Manor of Little Chart at a rent of ten marks a year. This 
 deed is made in the presence of Stephen Langton, who 
 died in 1229, so that it cannot be later than this year. 
 
 By 1233, Peter is five marks in arrear with his rent, 
 and in 1234 he borrows 44s. of Mossekin (Moses) Crespin, 
 son of Jacob, and agrees to pay twopence a week for every 
 pound, if it is not repaid by a certain date, pledging all his 
 lands and chattels as security. Beforethe end of the year, 
 
9° 
 
 he borrows of Benedict (Barachyah) Crespin and his 
 brother Jacob, loos. for ten years, at the same rate of 
 interest, and in March, 1235, he acknowledges a debt of 
 ^1^ to Jacob Crespin, to be repaid with interest at 
 Mid-Lent. 
 
 In 1236 comes the great crash, when Peter confirms 
 to "Bonamicus, the Jew of Canterbury," the Manor of 
 Little Chart at a quit-rent of a pound of pepper a year in 
 return for a sum down of ^200. Among the witnesses to 
 this deed are Samson, son of Aaron, and Cresselin, the son of 
 Hakelin (Isaac). The next year, apparently in accordance 
 with some arrangement between the Jews and the monks, 
 Peter gives the Manor of Little Chart to the Prior and 
 convent of Christchurch for 200 marks, to relieve him from 
 the debts by which " he was held bound in the Jewry." 
 There are no Jew witnesses to this deed, but there are five 
 other deeds seemingly all about contemporary with it, which 
 record that Benedict Crespin individually, Benedict and 
 Jacob Crespin jointly, and Isaac, son of Benedict, and 
 Jacob, son of Isaac, and Aaron Blund, of London, Josce or 
 Joseph, son of Moses, and Moses, son of Jacob, one and all 
 renounce any claim they may have against Peter on 
 account of the Manor of Little Chart, in the twenty-first 
 year of " Aronicus, son of King John '' (Henry III), 1237. 
 
 Not very long afterwards Peter died leaving a widow 
 Burgia. Burgia, evidently believing that the Manor of 
 Westwell was gavelkind, sued the priory for one-half of 
 it as her free-bench or dowry. Judgment, clearly correct, 
 was given against her, and she subsequently sued for 
 one-third of the Manor as dower, thereby admitting that 
 it was not gavelkind. The dispute was finally settled 
 by a compromise, the priory allowing her a corrody for 
 life in lieu of her " widow's third " of the Manor. A 
 corrody was an allowance of food and clothing, and in 
 this case the corrody allowed was that of a monk and a 
 man-servant. Burgia was more fortunate in her claim 
 on the Manor of Everlond in-Ash, which was only partly 
 held by knight's service, the remainder being in gavelkind. 
 She sued for her third of the former part and her half 
 of the latter, and succeeded in her claim. 
 
91 
 
 Throughout these transactions the Canterbury Jews 
 seem to have behaved at least as liberally as the Prior 
 and Convent of Christ Church. The rate of interest 
 demanded, about 43 per cent., seems high in these days, 
 but the loans were small, the times were troublous, and 
 it further seems as if interest did not begin to run until 
 after the time agreed on for repayment had passed. There 
 are instances, it is true, on record of loans from Jews 
 elsewhere at a rate as low as one penny a week per pound, 
 but there are also others at threepence, and the commonest 
 rate of all is fourpence, or nearly 87 per cent, per annum. 
 
 King John seems to have dealt with the property of 
 the Canterbury Jews as freely as with that of others 
 elsewhere. To the Earl of Surrey he gave a house in 
 the Jewry at London, belonging to Isaac and his brother 
 at Canterbury, while on Abram, the cross-bowman, 
 probably himself a Jew, he bestowed the house in 
 Canterbury of Isaac, the son of Jacob, and Bona, his 
 wife. This, however, was only his way of showing that 
 he regarded the Jewries as Royal preserves. On an 
 outbreak of anti-Semitic rioting in London, he writes to 
 the Mayor expressing his amazement at the impudence 
 of the citizens in molesting his own people. " You know," 
 he says, "that the Jews are under our special protection. 
 If we had granted our protection to a dog, it ought to 
 be inviolably observed." 
 
 Whether any Canterbury Jews were executed by 
 Edward I, when " of the Jews of both sexes there were 
 hanged in London 280, and a very great multitude in 
 the other cities of England," on the false charge of clipping 
 coin, does not appear. The last of them were among 
 the 16,000 who were banished from our shores in the 
 summer of 1290, the victims of a persecution more bloody, 
 but less criminal, than that with which their descendants 
 are visited at the close of the igth century in lands that 
 boast of their civilization. 
 
92 
 
 CHRISTCHURCH GATE, 
 
 At the end of Mercery Lane and the chief entrance to 
 the Monastery of Christchurch and the Cathedral, was built 
 on the site of the Norman gateway in 151 7, by Prior 
 Goldstone. Though damaged by time, and mutilated in 
 1648 by the religious maniac, Richard Culmer, this gateway 
 still remains one of the most beautiful specimens of 
 perpendicular work in the country. The battlements were 
 removed in the present century to allow some residents in 
 the vicinity to see the time by the Cathedral clock. 
 
 THE PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOPS. 
 
 Built originally by Archbishop Lanfranc near the site 
 of the Saxon Palace given by King Ethelbert to St. 
 Augustine, the ancient Palace has long ceased to exist 
 except in name. The stately hall, commenced by Arch- 
 bishop Hubert Walter, finished by Archbishop Stephen 
 Langton, and paid for by Archbishop Boniface, was pulled 
 down during the Commonwealth, as, after it had been 
 plundered by the Puritans, was a great part of the Palace. 
 What remained was converted into private houses, and 
 though, after the restoration, what remained of the Palace 
 with its precincts was disgorged, it has never been restored 
 till the present day ; nor has any Archbishop of Canterbury 
 resided in his own Metropolitan City. Happily, after so 
 long an interval, a new Palace, which will include a 
 portion of the old, is now in course of construction, and 
 when complete will again be the permanent home of our 
 Archbishops. Across a thousand years the Kentish 
 " Eternal City " looks back to-day with pride on the 
 hallowed friendship of a Plegmund and an Alfred. At the 
 close of another thousand years may she remember with 
 not less gratitude and reverence the names of a Temple and 
 a Victoria. 
 
 In September, 1299, after the marriage of the 
 King of England with the sister of the King of France, a 
 
93 
 
 most sumptuous feast was kept here for four days together, 
 most of the English and French nobles being present. 
 
 In 1520 a splendid ball was celebrated in the great 
 Hall on one of the nights in Whitsun week, when the newly- 
 eleCted Emperor Charles V. danced with the Queen of 
 England, and the King of England with the Queen ■ of 
 Arragon. This was followed by a Royal feast, at which the 
 Duke of Buckingham was server. 
 
 I" 1573 Queen Elizabeth kept her birthday at 
 Canterbury, and the Archbishop gave a sumptuous banquet. 
 
 THE GUILDHALL, 
 
 or Court House, as it was called in the last century, 
 and known previous to the reign of Henry VI as the 
 Speech House, stands at the corner of High Street and 
 Guildhall Street. It was rebuilt in its present form early in 
 the last century, and though not devoid of interest, is now 
 totally inadequate for the purposes for which it is required. 
 It contains a few curious portraits, notably those of John 
 Cogan, by Jansen, and Sir John Boys. There is also a 
 small array of arms, including some pikes removed from 
 Lady Wooton's house at St. Augustine's in 1641, when the 
 City was fortified "at the common charge." How frequent 
 these charges must have been at the time of the Civil Wars, 
 and how severely they must have been felt by the citizens, 
 may be gathered from the entries in the Burgmote Records, 
 which tell of many such assessments on the citizens to 
 provide soldiers, ships, and powder. In 1634, King 
 Charles I. makes demand for a Ship of War to be set forth 
 at the expense of the citizens. In 1638 a cess is levied on 
 the city to purchase powder " for its defence in these 
 perilous times." In the following year, the citizens are 
 taxed towards raising an army for His Majesty against the 
 Scots, on which occasion the City furnished 80 soldiers. 
 The following year it was compelled to send 56 more, and 
 to find sundry carters and horses. Cromwell, who 
 evidently had a grudge against the RoyaHst City which had 
 raised the cry " For God, The King, and Kent," compelled 
 
94 
 
 the citizens three years later to provide one hundred horse 
 soldiers, though they had already sent one hundred and 
 twenty men to Dover Castle, and ;^2,6oo in money to 
 London. At this time Canterbury was in the hands of the 
 Roundheads, and the importance of preserving it is 
 manifest from the fact that the Parliament at Westminster 
 expended ;^400 in strengthening the fortifications of the 
 City. 
 
 MARKETS AND FAIRS. 
 
 The poultry and butter market, formerly held outside 
 Christchurch Gate, the fish market near the church of St. 
 Mary Fishman, the bread market by St. Mary Bredman, 
 and the oat market on Oaten Hill, where public executions 
 took place, and the wine market supposed to have been 
 held in Wincheap, all still survive in name, while Mercery 
 Lane, still one of the most picturesque streets in England, and 
 Butchery Lane, are left to tell of the commodities for which 
 they were formerly famed. Of the Canterbury Fairs only 
 one is still continued, the old Michaelmas Fair, called, 
 while still a statute Fair, " Jack and Joan Fair.'' King 
 Richard IL moved by respect for the Church in which his 
 father, Edward the Black Prince, was buried, granted four 
 Fairs to the Prior and Convent of Christ Church to be 
 held in every year. These Fairs, which were held within the 
 Cemetery Gate, have only been discontinued in com- 
 paratively recent times. Of the Fair granted by the charter 
 of Charles II mention has been already made. 
 
 INNS. 
 
 " At The Chekers of the Hope that every man doth 
 know," some of the remains of this famous Inn may still be 
 seen at the South-West Corner of Mercery Lane. The 
 vaulted ceiling still to be seen in the present shop is still as 
 it was in Chaucer's time. The inn was originally built in 
 the form of a quadrangle with an open courtyard, and the 
 rooms, reached from a staircase outside, projected one over 
 the other, the first floor being supported on pillars which 
 formed a colonnade. 
 
95 
 
 Near the ancient Chequers in the High Street is the 
 "Crown," now no longer an inn, though once of great 
 repute and extensive accommodation. It can be easily 
 recognised by the highly embossed figures which 
 ornament the street front. The upper floor is now used 
 as one of the Municipal offices. A richly-ornamented 
 Elizabethan ceiling is to be seen on the first floor. Other 
 old Inns still retaining something of their old-world 
 character, are — The Angel in St. Margaret's Street, the Fleur 
 de Lys in High Street, The Rose in St. George's Street, 
 and The Star and the Falstaff Tavern in St. Dunstan's 
 Street ; the last distinguished by a beautiful and elaborate 
 wrought iron support for the painted sign. 
 
 TRADES. 
 
 The weaving of silks, velvets, and brocades, and the 
 manufacture of cloth and woollen stuffs which, at the end of 
 the 17th century, employed 1,000 looms and 2,700 persons 
 in Canterbury alone, owed their existence almost entirely 
 to the Walloon and French refugees who settled in the 
 City at the time of the great religious persecutions in the 
 Netherlands and France. These "strangers," amounting 
 in 1630 to 1,300 persons, and after the Revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes to considerably more than 
 double that number, were granted numerous privileges, 
 and were permitted to exercise their various trades 
 without being enforced to purchase their " freedom." 
 To them Canterbury owes much of its prosperity in 
 the 1 6th, 17th, and i8th centuries, and some idea 
 of the high estimation in which its manufactures were 
 once held may be gathered from Hasted's account of his 
 visit in 1787 to Mr. Calloway's silk looms, where he saw the 
 richest and most beautiful piece of silk furniture made for 
 the Prince of Wales's Palace at Carlton House that ever 
 was made in this or any other kingdom. This same 
 merchant, besides silk weaving, introduced the weaving of 
 cotton into the city, and the famous " Canterbury muslins " 
 were at one time celebrated throughout the country. — Since 
 
96 
 
 the beginning of the century the character of the old 
 industries has almost entirely changed. With the exception 
 of a few looms still used for weaving linen, hand weaving 
 has almost , entirely disappeared. A successful weaving 
 school has, however, been recently started in High Street. 
 Of the other old Canterbury trades, among which may be 
 mentioned the manufacture of Canterbury brawn, tanning, 
 and brewing are still in a prosperous condition. 
 
 THE KING'S SCHOOL, 
 
 situated in the Mint Yard, may justly claim to be the 
 oldest of our English public schools. It is certain that 
 Archbishop Theodore, in the 7 th century, founded a school 
 within the City of Canterbury wherein he placed professors 
 of all the liberal sciences, and there is no doubt that 
 Canterbury was the great centre of learning at least 200 years 
 before King Alfred is said to have founded the school at 
 Oxford. The present school, refounded by Henry VIII in 
 1 541 for 50 King's Scholars, formed an integral portion of the 
 Cathedral foundation. It was re-organized in 1879 by the 
 Charity Commissioners. Among the many eminent men 
 who have been educated here may be mentioned 
 Christopher Marlowe, Richard Boyle "the great Earl of 
 Cork," Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York, Lord Chief 
 Justice Tenterden, William Harvey, the discoverer of the 
 circulation of the blood, and Sir Andrew Clark. 
 
 THE ROYAL MUSEUM AND FREE LIBRARY, 
 
 both belonging to the Corporation are now permanently 
 housed in the new building of the Beaney Institute, recently 
 completely from designs by the City Surveyor, Mr. A. H. 
 Campbell. The building, which has a handsome half- 
 timbered front facing High Street, near the Guildhall, has 
 been partially paid for out of a legacy of ^10,000 left to the 
 City by the late Mr. Beaney, a native of Canterbury, who 
 amassed a large fortune in Australia. According to the 
 terms of his will, a num.ber of his portraits weie ordered to 
 
97 
 
 be hung in a conspicuous part of the building, and he 
 originally intended that the money which he left to the City 
 should be used to found an institute for the education of 
 working-men. The Corporation, however, with the consent 
 of the Charity Commissioners, have wisely addsd another 
 five thousand pounds to the original sum, and erected the 
 present building for the purposes of the already existing 
 Free Library and Museum. By special permission of Her 
 Majesty the Queen, the Museum, which has been in 
 existence since 1825, is now styled the Royal Museum. 
 
 It occupies the whole of the first floor of the new 
 building, as well as a large room in the half basement used 
 for the natural history collections, and is fitted throughout 
 with electric light. The i8th century chandelier in the 
 large room was originally from the Cathedral. The 
 mahogany cases with which the Museum is fitted were 
 formerly in the British Museum ; they have been rebuilt by 
 Messrs. Cubitt and Co., and were paid for partly out of a 
 legacy left to the museum by the late Miss Lawrence, and 
 partly out of a gift of one hundred pounds given by W. 
 Oxenden Hammond, Esq., of St. Albans Court, who has 
 taken a particular interest in the Museum. 
 
 The Museum, though not on a large scale, contains many 
 objects of remarkable rarity. Besides the Geological and 
 Natural History Collections not yet arranged, the Museum 
 contains a small ethnological collection, which includes 
 three eligible specimens of Maori tatooed heads. Upstairs 
 particular attention may be drawn to the collections of pre- 
 historic implements, Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities 
 found in Canterbury and Thanet and East Kent. Special 
 notice should be taken of two Rune-stones found at Sand- 
 wich. The name, which has been read r^HjEBUL, is 
 incised on the larger stone. Nothing is now perceptible on 
 the smaller one, though both were probably inscribed with 
 the names of those in whose memory they were erected. 
 Professor Stephens, in his Old Northern Runic Monuments, 
 considers these stones unique, and that they belong to the 
 fourth or fifth century ; being probably the oldest funeral 
 blocks ever found in this country not belonging to a Celtic or 
 Romano-British population. A nearly perfect specimen of an 
 
98 
 
 Anglo-Saxon glass vessel, with hollow, tear-like pro- 
 tuberances, from Reculver, is to be seen in the same room. 
 Near the central window is 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE'S CHAIR, 
 
 formerly in the chancel of the Church of Stanford Bishop, 
 in Herefordshire. This chair is believed to be the one in 
 which St. Augustine was seated when he received the 
 British Bishops at Augustine's Oak. It was turned out of 
 the church during the restorations many years ago, and was 
 acquired by the late Dr. James Johnston, who had been 
 aware of its existence and the tradition concerning it some 
 forty years previously. It was presented to the Royal 
 Museum in 1899, by his son, G. Cocks Johnston, Esq., of 
 Cheltenham. Close by is a 14th century chair taken from 
 the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Rouen during the Revolu- 
 tion. This chair was originally in a well-known collection 
 in Paris, and is lent by the Hon. Curator. 
 
 Among other objects of interest in the same room may 
 be mentioned the ancient Burghmote horn with which the 
 Corporation, down to the year 1835, were wont to be 
 assembled. Mention of this horn is made in the reign of 
 Henry III, when, in an action of trespass brought by the 
 Abbot of St. Augustine's against the citizens, the bailiffs are 
 accused of raising the Commonalty by the sound of the 
 horn to the number of 5,000, in order to commit an outrage 
 on the Abbot's property in revenge for a supposed invasion 
 of the rights of the City by the Abbot. In 'the same case 
 may be seen the historic silver maces of the now extinct 
 Corporation of Fordwich, with some other specimens of 
 ancient metal work. The cases at the end of the room 
 contain a collection of Old English earthenware and 
 porcelain, which includes many interesting specimens of Old 
 Lambeth and other English Delft ware, lent by the Hon. 
 Curator. 
 
 In the room adjoining may be seen the loan exhibition 
 of ecclesiastical and other art from the Victoria and Albert 
 
99 
 
 Museum, and in the small room may be seen the celebrated 
 Tinworth terra-cottas and a collection of modern Lambeth 
 ware, kindly lent by Messrs. Doulton and Co. On the 
 walls are two representative pictures by the well-known 
 Canterbury artist, Sidney Cooper, R.A., and at the end of 
 the large room a full-length portrait of the Princess Eliza- 
 beth, Queen of Bohemia, and daughter of James I, by 
 Vandyke, [Mr. J. van Miereveldt ?] and one of the original 
 studies in oil of the " Wheel of Fortune," by Sir Edward 
 Burde Jones, Bart., lent by the Hon. Curator. The 
 Museum possesses an almost complete collection of 
 engravings and prints of old Canterbury, presented by Dr. 
 Pugin Thornton, and in the library there are about forty 
 similar prints presented by J. Henniker Heaton, Esq., M.P. 
 In addition to these, the Museum is rich in engravings, the 
 valuable Ingram collection of old Italian engravings and 
 drawings having been presented last year by Ingram 
 Godfrey, Esq., of Brooke House. 
 
 THE FREE LIBRARY, 
 
 Founded in 1857, and fitted with all modern improvements, 
 has been entirely furnished at the expense of Joshua Cox, 
 Esq., a citizen of Canterbury, who presented a thousand 
 guineas for the purpose. There is a large reading-room, on 
 the walls of which is a collection of savage and. other arms, 
 a magazine room, in which the various Colonial portraits of 
 Dr. Beaney are displayed to the best advantage, and a 
 lending and reference Hbrary. The last contains some 
 valuable topographical works, and by an arrangement with 
 the East Kent Natural History Society this valuable and 
 extensive library is now kept in the Corporation building. 
 The Reference Library has lately received many valuable 
 gifts, notably, two hundred guineas from the well-known 
 benefactor to the city. Alderman George Collard, Esq., J.P., 
 Mayor of Canterbury. This money is to be expended on 
 the purchase of books relating to Kent and Canterbury. 
 
THE SIDNEY COOPER SCHOOL OF ART, 
 
 Founded by Thomas Sidney Cooper, E^q., R. A., and situated 
 in High Street, deservedly holds a high position among 
 similar institutions. 
 
 [A complete list of all works relating to Canterbury, 
 together with much additional matter which would be out of 
 place in the present necessarily brief summary will be in- 
 cluded in the General Handbook to Canterbury which tlA 
 Editors hope shortly to publish^] 
 
 Men of Kent, remember ye, 
 Like your sire= of old to be, 
 Foremost of our English free !