(Hmmll UnfotMttg |f itag BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hetirg W. Sage 1891 Arltt&Sn SL3 Cornell University Library DA 670.K3H29 3 1924 028 036 246 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028036246 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY flit H&IRf* THE DARK ENTRY, CANTERBURY, FROM THE GREEN COURT. " A long narrow vaulted passage, paved with flagstones, vulgarly known by the name of the ' Dark Entry. ' " r , .... . The Legend of " Nell Cook." r ronlispicce.} THE INQOLDSBY COUNTRY LITERARY LANDMARKS OF THE "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS" BY CHARLES G. HARPER AUTHOR OF "THE BRIGHTON ROAD," "THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD," "THE DOVER ROAD," "THE BATH ROAD," "THE EXETER ROAD," "THE GREAT NORTH ROAD," "THE NORWICH ROAD," "THE HOLYHEAD ROAD," "THE CAMBRIDGE, ELY, AND KING'S LYNN ROAD," AMD "STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE '' ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR LONDON ADAM & CHARLES BLACK 1904 T " Ingoldsby " has always been of that comparatively small number of authors who command a -personal interest and affection. Reading the " Legends " you cannot choose but see that when he sat down, often at the midnight hour, to dash off the fun and frolic that came so readily to his mind, it was a part of himself that appeared upon the page. He did not and could not, when he wrote for publication under a pseudonym, be other than himself, and did not self-consciously draw a veil of style around him and speak, a cloaked figure lacking ordinary human attributes, or as other than a man of the world. He claimed no sacerdotal privileges, and we know, from the published " Life and Letters " by his son, that he was in his life and intimacies, as the Reverend R. H. Barham, the same genial wit and humorist he appeared as " Tom In- vi PREFACE goldsby." He must, therefore, have been a likeable man, and those who knew him were fortunate -persons. The next best thing to knowing him is to know some- thing of the Ingoldsby Country, that corner of Kent where he was born and whose legends he has put to such splendid literary uses. The " Ingoldsby Legends " have so long since become a classic that it is indeed some- what surprising that no literary pilgrim, for love of their author and interest in his career, has before this traced the landmarks of his storied district. CHARLES G. HARPER. Petersham, Surrey. January, 1904. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I I. INTRODUCTORY II. BARHAM : THE AUTHOR OF THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS .... III. CANTERBURY IV. THE CATHEDRAL : THE MURDER OF BECKET V. TAPPINGTON HALL .... VI. ROMNEY MARSH .... VII. romney marsh {continued) VIII. OLD AND NEW ROMNEY, AND DYM CHURCH IX. HYTHE AND FOLKESTONE X. FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD XI. FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD {continued) XII. THE BACK OF BEYOND 7 28 41 63 77 98 no 124 143 159 165 XIII. THE BACK OF BEYOND {continued) . . 1 8 1 viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XIV. THE COASTWISE ROAD : FOLKESTONE TO DOVER AND SANDWICH . . . . 1 92 XV. SANDWICH TO THE VILLE OF SARRE . 208 XVI. SARRE AND RECULVER TO CANTERBURY 222 XVII. THE ISLE OF SHEPPEY . . . .233 XVIII. SOME OUTLYING INGOLDSBY LANDMARKS 257 PAGE The " Dark Entry," Canterbury, From the Green Court Frontispiece Sketch Map : The Ingoldsby Country .... 5 "Tom Ingoldsby :" the Rev. Richard Harris Barham . 13 No. 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury . . . Facing 14 St. Mary Magdalene, Burgate Street, Canterbury . . 15 Westwell 16 The Hall, No. 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury . Facing 16 The Barham Coat-of-Arms 18 No. 4, St. Paul's Churchyard 22 Amen Corner, where Barham died .... 24 Ruins of St. Mary Magdalene, after the Fire of December 1886 26 Canterbury Castle ... . . . 32 The Dane John, Canterbury . . ... 34 The Dark Entry • • 37 „,,„......*. 3" "The Martyrdom," Canterbury Cathedral . -52 The Vale of Barham . . . . . . -65 The " Eagle Gates," Broome Park . . . .67 Broome Park, the Real Original of Tappington Hall Facing 68 Tappington, from the Folkestone Road .... 69 Denton Facing 70 Denton Church and Court 71 Tappington Hall 73 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The " Merchant's-Mark " of Thomas Marsh of Marston . 74 Tappington Hall : Night Facing 74 Warehorne 79 A Sundial, Warehorne Church . . . . .81 Warehorne 82 The Royal Military Canal at Warehorne ... 84 Snargate 100 Brookland ......... 102 Ivychurch . . . 104 Newchurch, on Romney Marsh : " This recondite region ; this fifth quarter of the globe " Old Romney New Romney A Martello Tower Dymchurch Wall . The " Smugglers' Nest," Hythe Hythe, from the Road to Sandgate Folkestone .... The.Stade, Folkestone . Folkestone Harbour Folkestone in 1830. After J. M. Romney Marsh, from Lympne Lympne Castle .... A Cottage Tablet, Lympne . A Kentish Farm .... The Ruined Chapel, Court-at-Street An Old Sundial, Aldington . Aldington Cobb's Hall . W. Aldington Knoll Bilsington Woods Bilsington Priory Bilsington Church Orlestone Hill Saltwood Castle i°5 in 116 119 121 122 127 128 132 *35 137 Turner, R.A. Facing 140 144 146 147 148 149 iSi 154 *59 160 161 162 163 164 169 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi PAGE Westenhanger House 175 Lyminge 182 Lyminge Church 183 Old Houses at Elham 185 Acryse 187 The Preceptory, Swingfield Minnis . . . .190 The " Lone Tree " 197 East Langdon 199 "MarstonHall" 200 The "Three Horseshoes," Great Mongeham . i .201 St. Peter's, Sandwich 205 The Barbican, Sandwich 209 Sandwich, from Great Stonar 210 Richborough, and the Kentish Coast-line towards Rams- gate 213 The Smuggler's Leap 215 Monkton 217 ,. 218 The "VilleofSarre" 220 Chislett 223 Reculver 225 Fordwich 228 Fordwich Town Hall 230 Sturry 232 The Devil's Footprint 234 Minster-in-Sheppey 243 Tomb of Sir Robert de Shurland 245 The Horse-vane, Minster-in-Sheppey .... 246 The Soul, from a Monument in Minster-in-Sheppey Church 249 The Estuary of the Medway, from the Road near Minster- in-Sheppey 251 Shurland Castle 253 Netley Abbey 261 Salisbury Plain : where the Lavington Road branches off to the left from the one to Devizes . . . .266 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The present writer foregathered a little while since with a man who had been to the uttermost parts of the earth. He had just returned from Australia, and was casually met on what the vulgar call the "Tuppenny Tube," travelling from the Bank to Shepherd's Bush. It was a humorous anti-climax to all those other journeys, but that is not the point here to be made. He was full, as might have been expected, of tales strange and curious of those outposts of civilisation he had visited, and of legends of places — whose names generally ended with two gulps and a click — where civilisation was an un- known quantity. But to this man, who had been everywhere and elsewhere, who had crossed the Dark Continent when it was still dark, England, his native land, was largely a sealed book. Even as one spoke with him it could be perceived how perfect an exemplar he was of many globe-trotting Britons who roam the world and can talk to you at first 2 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY hand of Bulawayo or the Australian bush, but are instantly nonplussed if the subject of rural England be broached. When he was done talking of places with savage and infinitely-repetitive names, composed of fantasti- cally-arranged vowels, with never a consonant to consort with them, he was asked if he knew Kent. " Kent ? " he repeated, in Jingle-like fashion, " why, yes. Canterbury Cathedral, hop-gardens, Charles Dickens, Rochester, Dover, and — and all that," he concluded, with a vague sweep of his arm. " Run through it on y'r way to Paris," he added, in an explanatory way. And that was all he knew of Kent : a place you run through, on the way to somewhere else ! a country observed from fleeting and not very attentive glances obtained from a railway-carriage window ! Such glances furnished him fully forth in all he had cared to know of the Garden of England ! Not that one fully subscribes to that familiar epithet of praise, which must have originally been given by a Cockney who knew no better. Who that ever has sojourned in the west, and has known lovely Devon, would for a moment give Kent that pride of place ? Now, if it were called the " Market Garden of England ! " What ? But this is not to say that Kent is not very beau- tiful ; only it is not Devon. I do not pillory Kent because it is not something else, and would by no means contemn its chalky soil because of any affec- tion for the good red earth of that other shire. Kent has its lovable qualities, and when you have eliminated the thronging tramps, the paper and other factories, the objectionable hop-pickers, the beanfeasters, and INTRODUCTORY 3 the multitudinous yahoos who people its nearer Cockneyfied districts, there is a very considerable residuum of exquisite country. The elimination of all those items would be what the slangy term a " big order " ; but the tourist who knows, and even the tourist who does not actually know, but can infer and deduce, need never lose himself in the Kent of commerce and blackguardism. He seeks out, and by instinct finds, the best ; and, having found the best that Kent affords, is ready to declare that it is hard to beat. It is, for example, impossible to match, even in Devon, the beauty of that fertile fruit and hop-bearing belt of country which begins at New- ington, a few miles below Chatham, and continues beside the Dover Road, past Teynham and Faver- sham, and on to Canterbury. It is a beauty that appeals alike and at once to the artist and the man with carnal appetites and fleshly longings ; for, once off the dusty high-road, it is a constant succession of orchards and hop-gardens, wherein it is pleasant to lie on sunny afternoons in the dappled shade of the apple, pear, or cherry-trees, with the swede-eating sheep for sole companions, and the noise of the toil- some world coming restfully over the hedgerows. It is a noisy and a toilsome world. There goes the roar of the big guns down at the Medway forts ; the clear note of the bugles sings up faintly — like an anthem from amid a naughty nest of vipers — out of Chatham and New Brompton (we are being duly taken care of!) ; the whistling and rushing of the railway trains are never still, and you can hear that holiday world which takes its vacation strenuously, " pip- pipping " on cycles, " poop-pooping " on motor-cars, and playing the yearnful concertina on the passing 4 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY break like anything, t'other side of the merciful hedge. Even if you could not hear them, the signs of their passing would be evident in the cloud of chalk-dust which, like the pillar of cloud by day that guided the Children of Israel, marks their route. But the Land of Promise sought by those pilgrims, at such speed, is not ours. How should it be ? Theirs is ever the Next Place ; ours is Here. Theirs is the Promise without fruition ; ours is granted to the full, and Now, wherever we be. That is if we be indeed wise in our generation, and content with the happy moment. One understands that same happy moment, here and now, to be passed in the consumption of ripe cherries out of a cool cabbage-leaf, in the shade of the boughs that bore them. This is one way in which beauteous Kent appeals, as we have said, to the carnal man, who perceives that if indeed Devonshire cream be good, equally good are the kindly fruits of Kent. If Kent be essentially the Market Garden of England, rather than pre-eminently the Garden in the picturesque sense, certainly this country yields to none other in historic or literary interest. That coast where Caesar and Augustine, easily first among the great personages of history, landed ; this fertile county which contains the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Church of England ; the neigh- bourhood of Rochester and Maidstone, linked with the literary activities of Charles Dickens, must needs hold the affections of Englishmen, irrespective of the physical and aesthetic attractions of scenery. But there is another great literary figure connected with Kent, both by birth and by reason of his having exploited many of its rural legends in INTRODUCTORY 5 his merry verse. Richard Harris Barham was born at Canterbury, and in his Ingoldsby Legends created an Ingoldsby Country, which he had already SHEERHES5 Coiumtme WRCATfi Chislclf WHtbere*^' Cs'° ) # Upper Hardrts ( ( ' ) "' Balaam 1 .M > * A5Z2* «r TJtAffST ) (,„ ■°" < IWISCATCJ • \ SANDWICH \ ASHFORp / V 1 •' Denton \ V/ OMR«nn«« /iJymcfiurefi / The, 7 Ingoldsby C< JUNTRY. peopled with many notable characters before death cut him off in his prime. The capital of the Ingoldsby Country is Canterbury ; its very heart and core is comprised within the district to the east 6 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY of a line drawn due south from Whitstable to Canterbury, Denton, and Hythe ; and its frontiers make an indeterminate line to the west, beyond Romney Marsh and Ashford. The whole north coast of Kent, including Sheppey, the Swale, and the littoral of the Thames and Medway, is part and parcel of Ingoldsby Land, whose isolated and far- off dependencies are found at Shrewsbury, the scene of " Bloudie Jack " ; or Salisbury Plain, where the " Dead Drummer " is located ; at Wayland Wood, near Wymondham, in Norfolk, where the legend of the " Babes in the Wood " belongs ; and at Netley Abbey, the scene of a fine poem. London, too, has its Ingoldsby associations, duly set forth in these pages. CHAPTER II BARHAM : THE AUTHOR OF THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS There are coteries, circles inner and outer, in the world of letters, and there have always been. There are some in this time of ours whose members think they are of the giants whose memory the world will not willingly let die. There were other coteries when the nineteenth century was but newly come into its second quarter, when the period that is now known as Early Victorian was in the making, and when the Queen was young. The members of those literary brotherhoods are gone, each one to his place, and the memories of the most of them, of the books they wrote, the jokes they cracked, of their friendships and quarrels, are dim and dusty to-day. The taste in humour and pathos is not the taste of this time, which laughs at the pathos, and finds the humour, when not dull, merely spiteful and vindictive. When you rise from a perusal of Douglas Jerrold's wounding wit, you think him ungenerous and a cad, De Quincey's frolics merely elephantine, Hood's facilities dull, and Leigh Hunt's performances but journalism. All this is but the foil to show the brilliant humour, the fun, and the truly pathetic note of Richard Harris Barham's writings to better effect. 8 THE 1NGOLDSBY COUNTRY Time has breathed upon the glass through which we see the lives and performances of Barham's contemporaries, and has obscured our view of them ; but the author of the Ingoldsby Legends remains, almost alone among that Early Victorian band, as acceptable to-day (nay, perhaps even more accept- able) than he was fifty years ago. The Ingoldsby Legends will never be allowed to die. Indeed, we live in times when their admirable sanity might well be invoked as a counterblast to modern neurotic conditions, and a healthy revulsion from superstitious revivals. Written at that now historic time when the Ritualistic innovations and tendency towards Roman Catholicism of the new school of theology at Oxford were agitating English thought, they express the common-sense scorn of the healthy mind against the mystification and deceit of the religion that the Reformation pitched, neck and crop, out of England, close upon three hundred and seventy years ago, and for which the large-minded tolerance of to-day is not enough. Domination is its aim, but no mind that can enjoy the mirth and marvels of the Legends has any room for such ghostly pretensions, and their continued popularity is thus, by parity of reasoning, something of an assurance. The Ingoldsby Legends are included in the Index Expurgatorium of Rome. Superfine critics have in recent years declared that Barham's fun has grown out of date, and that they cannot read him as of old. But your critic commonly speaks only for himself; and moreover, the superfine, who cannot read Dickens, for example, have been sadly flouted of late by the still increasing popular favour of that novelist. BARHAM 9 It was in the fertile county of Kent that Barham. was born, in the midst of a district that has ever been the cradle of Barhams. Eight miles to the south of the old Cathedral of Canterbury, and near by the Folkestone Road, there lies, secluded in a deep valley, an old-fashioned farmhouse, unpretending enough to the outward glance, but quaint and curious within. This is the old manor house of Tappington Everard, mentioned so often and so familiarly in the Ingoldsby Legends, and for many centuries the home of Richard Harris Barham's ancestors. " Tom Ingoldsby " himself was, indeed, born at Canterbury, near the Cathedral precincts, and first saw the world beneath the shadow of that great Church, of whose glories he was in after years to tell in his own peculiar and inimit- able way. His father, made rich by hops, was a man of consideration at Canterbury, and filled an Aldermanic chair with all the dignity that comes of adipose tissue largely developed. He was, in fact and few words, a fat man, and it was probably in reference to him that Tom Ingoldsby, in later years, wrote of the "aldermanic nose" trumpeting in the Cathedral during service. The Rev. Richard Harris Barham, the self-styled " Thomas Ingoldsby," claimed descent from the De Bearhams, anciently the FitzUrses, whose posses- sions extended round about Tappington for many miles of this fair county of Kent. He delighted to think that he was descended from one of those four knights who, on that dark December day of 1 1 70, broke in upon the religious quiet of the Cathedral and slaughtered Becket in the north transept. When their crime was wrought the io THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY murderers fled, FitzUrse escaping to Ireland, where he is said to have taken the name of MacMahon, the Irish equivalent of his original patronymic, which was just the Norman-Latin for " Bear's Son." He died an exile, leaving his Manor of Barham to his brother, who, so odious had the name of Fitz- Urse now become, changed it for an Anglicised variant, and called himself " De Bearham." Even- tually the aristocratic prefix " De " fell out of use, and in course of time even Bearham became " Barham." The Barhams held place and power here for centuries, giving their name to the village of Barham, which nestles, embowered in foliage, beneath the bleak and bare expanse of Barham Downs ; their estates dropping from them little by little until, in the time of James I., the remaining property was alienated by a Thomas Barham, a nerveless, unworthy descendant of the fierce FitzUrses, who sold it to the Reverend Charles Fotherby, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Thus were the Barhams torn from their native soil and rendered landless. The adjoining manor of Tappington, next Barham, had been held in 1272 by one Gerrard de Tappington, as one knight's fee. In the reign of Henry VIII. it was purchased by a certain John Boys, who died in 1544, when his son, William Boys, alienated a small portion of the demesne to a person named Verrier, and the manor, with the remainder of the demesne, to one Marsh, to whose descendants it passed until at length sold by Colonel Thomas Marsh to Mr. Thomas Harris, hopfactor of Canterbury, who died in 1729, and whose daughter and sole heiress had, by a singular BARHAM 1 1 freak of fate, married a John Barham, bringing him not only the old manor of Tappington, or Tapton Wood, as it has sometimes been styled, as her dower, but also some portions of the long-lost lands of those whom he claimed for ancestors, including the manors of Parmstead (called in olden times Barhamstead). It will be noted that it was a John Barham — not necessarily one of the Barhams of Tappington — who thus secured the Harris heiress. Kent contains more than one family of the name, but let us hope, for the sake of sentiment, that all Barhams, of whatever district, descend from the original assassin. It would certainly have been a grievous thing to Tom Ingoldsby if he had been compelled to cherish a doubt of the blood-boltered genuineness of his own ancestry. We have, indeed, some slightly different versions of what became of the FitzUrse family. One tells us that a branch lingered long in the neighbourhood of Williton, in Somerset, under their proper name, which became successively corrupted into Fitzour, and Fishour, and at last assumed the common form of Fisher. This is good news for Fishers anxious to assume long descent, even if they have to date from a murderer. Time throws an historic condonation over such things, and many an ambitious person who would not willingly kill a fly, and who would very naturally shrink from owning any connection with a homicidal criminal now on his trial, would glow with pride at an attested family tree springing from that blood- thirsty knight. Another tales gives the Italian name of Orsini as a variant of FitzUrse. If there be anything in it, i2 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY then assuredly the notorious Orsini of the infernal machine, who attempted the life of Napoleon III., was a reversion to twelfth century type. Other Barhams there are known to fame : Henry, surgeon and natural history writer, who died in 1726, and was one of the family of Barhams of Barham Court ; and Nicholas Barham, lawyer, of Wadhurst, Sussex, who died in 1577, and was descended from the Barhams of Teston, near Maid- stone. Nicholas was ever a favourite Christian name with all branches of the family, and Tom Ingoldsby so named his youngest son — the " Little Boy Ned " of the Legends. The witty and mirth-provoking Reverend Richard Harris Barham, destined to bear the most dis- tinguished name of all his race, was fourth in descent from the peculiarly fortunate John Barham who wedded the Harris hopfields and the Harris daughter. His father, himself a " Richard Harris " Barham — was that alderman of capacious paunch of whom mention has already been made. He resided at 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury, a large, substantial house of pallid grey brick, plain almost to ugliness outside, but remarkably comfortable and beautifully appointed within, standing at the corner of Canterbury Lane. A brick of the garden wall facing the lane may be observed, scratched lightly with " M. B. 1733." To this house he had succeeded on the death of his father, Richard Barham, in 1784. He did not very long enjoy the inheritance. The alderman was of truly aldermanic proportions, for he weighed nineteen stone. Existing portraits of him introduce us to a personage of a more than y /z^' ^■^pssi'vU' "TOM ING0LD5EY": THE REV. RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM. From a drawing by his son, the Rev. Richard Harris Dillon Barhan i 4 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY Falstaffian appearance, and the tale is still told how it was found necessary to widen the doorway at the time of his funeral. For eleven years he lived here; and here it was, December 6th, 1788, that the only child of himself and his housekeeper, Elizabeth Fox, was born. Elizabeth Fox came from Minster-in-Thanet. A miniature portrait of her shows a fair-haired, bright-eyed woman, with abundant indications of a sunny nature, rich in wit and humour. It is quite clear that it was from his mother Ingoldsby derived his mirthful genius, just as in a companion miniature of himself, painted at the age of six, representing him as a pretty, vivacious little boy with large brown roguish eyes, he bore a striking likeness to her. It is singular to note that the future rector of St. Mary Magdalene in the City of London was as an infant baptised at a church of precisely the same dedication — that of St. Mary Magdalene in Burgate Street, a few doors only removed from his birthplace. The tower only of that church is now standing, the rest having been pulled down in 1871. It is still possible to decipher some of the tablets fixed against the wall of the tower, but exposed to the weather and slowly decaying. There is one to Ingoldsby's grandfather, Richard, who died December 1.1th, 1784, aged 82, and to his grandmother, Elizabeth Barham, who died October 2nd, 1781, aged 81 ; and other tablets commemorate his aunts Eliza and Sarah, who died September 26th, 1782, and Decem- ber 1 6th, 1784, aged respectively forty-six and forty-four years. Ingoldsby was only in his seventh year when a BARHAM 15 very serious thing befell, for his father, the alderman, died in 1795. Those who love their Ingoldsby and everything that was his, as the present writer does, will be interested to know that he was buried at Upper Hardres (" Hards," in the Kentish speech), :**' ^m, ST. MARY MAGDALENE, BUKGATE STREET, CANTERBURY. a small and lonely village, four miles from Canterbury, on the old Stone Street, as you go towards Lympne and Hythe. There, in the village church, high-up on the south wall of the nave, the tablet to his memory may be found. What became of Elizabeth Fox is beyond our ken. We are told, in the Life i6 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY and Letters of Richard Harris Bar/mm, by his son the Reverend Richard Dalton Barham, that she was at the time a confirmed invalid. To three guardians had been given the adminis- tration of the comfortable patrimony of the boy, and by them he was sent to St. Paul's School, then in the City of London. Thence he went to Brasenose, Oxford, leaving the university with a modest B.A., degree in 1811. Meanwhile the villain of the piece had been at work, in the person of a dishonest attorney, one of his guardians, by whose practices his fortune was very seriously reduced. Returning to Canterbury, he seems to have contemplated studying for the law, but quickly relinquished the idea, and prepared himself for the Church. He was admitted to holy orders, and in 18 13, in his twenty- fifth year obtained a curacy at Ashford. This was - , WESTWELL. exchanged in the following year for the curacy of the neighbouring village of Westwell. Thus he was fairly launched on his professional career, becoming BARHAM 17 successively Rector of Snargate and Curate of Warehorne, Minor Canon of St. Paul's and Rector of the united parishes of St. Mary Magdalene with St. Gregory-by-St.-Paul's, and finally, by exchange in 1842, Rector of St. Faith-by-St.-Paul's — a fine mid-nineteenth century specimen of the "squarson." A competent genealogist, an accomplished antiquary, a man of letters, he, by force of his sprightly wit, welded the fragmentary legends of the country — but largely those of his native county of Kent — into those astonishing amalgams of faGt and fiction which, published first, from time to time, in Bentley's Miscellany, were collected and issued as the Ingoldsby Legends. It is not the least among the charms of those verses that fact and fiction are so inextricably mixed in them that it needs the learning of the skilled antiquary to sift the one from the other ; and so plausible are many of his ostensible citations from old Latin documents, and his fictitious genealogies so interwoven with the names, the marriages and descents of persons, real and imaginary, that an innocent who wrote some years ago to Notes and Queries, desiring further particulars of what he thought to be genuine records, is surely to be excused for his too-ready faith. The assumed name of "Ingoldsby " is stated by his son to be found in a branch of the family genealogy, but inquiry fails to trace the name in that connection, and it may be said at once that the Kentish Ingoldsbys are entirely figments of Barham's lively imagination. Yorkshire knows a family of that name, of whom Barham probably had never heard anything save their name. He was a man of property, and modestly proud of the descent he THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY claimed, and though by no means rich, his place was among — The elite of the old county families round, Such as Honeywood, Oxenden, Knatchbull and Norton, Matthew Robinson, too, with his beard, from Monk's Horton, The Faggs, and Finch-Hattons, Tokes, Derings, and Deedses, And Fairfax (who then called the castle of Leeds his). He was, in fact,,"armigerous," as heralds would say, and the arms of his family were — not those lioncels of the Shur- lands impaled with the saltire of the Ingoldsbys, of which we may read in the Legends — but as pictured here. It may be noted that another Barham family — the Barhams of Teston, near Maidstone — bore the three bears for arms, without the distinguish- ing fesse ; and that they are shown thus on an old brass plate in Ash- ford church, which In- goldsby must often have seen during his early curacy there. When, however, he talks of the escutcheons displayed in the great hall of Tappington, charged with the armorial bearings of the family and its connections, he does more than to picturesquely embroider facts. He invents them, and the u old THE BARHAM COAT-OF-ARMS. BARHAM 1 9 coat " " in which a chevron between three eagles' cuisses sable is blazoned quarterly with the engrailed saltire of the Ingoldsbys " — which Mr. Simpkinson found to be that of" Sir Ingoldsby Bray, temp. Richard I." — is one not known to the Heralds' College. Behind that farcical " Mr. Simpkinson, from Bath," lurks a real person, and one not unknown to those who have read Britton and Brayley books on Cathedral antiquities. John Britton, the original of Simpkinson, was, equally with his contemporary Barham, an antiquary and genealogist of accomplish- ment, and a herald of repute. Barham would not have allowed as much, for there was, it would seem, a certain amount of ill-feeling between the two, which resulted in the satirical passages relating to " Mr. Simpkinson " to be met with in the pages of the Ingoldsby Legends. They tell us that he was, among other things, "an influential member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose ' Beauties of Bagnigge Wells ' he had been a liberal subscriber " ; and that " his inaugural essay on the President's cocked-hat was considered a miracle of erudition ; and his account of the earliest application of gilding to gingerbread a masterpiece of antiquarian research." In all this one finds something of that rapier-thrust of satire, that mordant wit which comes of personal rivalry ; and the heartfelt scorn of a man who loved architecture, and was, indeed, a member of the first Archaeological Institute, but who whole-heartedly resented the introduction of picnic parties into archaeological excursions, and revolted at popularis- ing architecture and antiquarian research by brake parties, in which the popping of champagne corks punctuated the remarks of speakers holding forth 2o THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY on the architectural features of buildings in a style sufficiently picturesque and simple to hold the atten- tion of the ladies. Those who have found how unconquerable is the indifference of the public to these things will appreciate to the fullest extent the feelings of Tom Ingoldsby, while yet reserving some meed of admiration for John Britton's labours, which did much to advance the slow-growing know- ledge of Gothic architecture in the first half of the century. His work may halt somewhat, his archi- tectural knowledge be something piecemeal and uninformed with inner light ; but by his labours many others were led to pursue the study of ecclesi- astical art. But the humour with which Barham surrounded " Mr. Simpkinson's " doings took no count of his accomplishments, as may be seen in the excursion to " Bolsover Priory," narrated in " The Spectre of Tappington." " Bolsover Priory," said Mr. Simpkin- son, "was founded in the reign of Henry VI. about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition undertaken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to which he gave his own name of Bolsover, or Bee-Owls-Over (by corruption Bolsover) — a Bee in chief over Three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre." Thus far Simpkinson. Now Barham turns, with good effect, on the ignorant sightseers to whom ruins are just a curiosity and nothing more. BARHAM 21 " ' Ah ! that was Sir Sidney Smith,' said Mr. Peters ; ' I've heard tell of him, and all about Mrs. Partington, and ' " c P., be quiet, and don't expose yourself! ' sharply interrupted his lady. P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout. " ' These lands,' continued the antiquary, ' were held in grand sergeantry by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey- ' " ' Lassy me ! how nice ! ' said Miss Julia. Mr. Peters licked his lips. " * Pray give me leave, my dear — owls and honey, whenever the king should come a-rat-catching in this part of the country.' " ' Rat-catching ! ' ejaculated the Squire, pausing abruptly in the mastication of a drum-stick. " ' To be sure, my dear sir ; don't you remember that rats once came under the forest laws — a minor species of venison ? "Rats and mice, and such small deer," eh ? — Shakespeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats ; and owls, you know, are capital mousers ' " ' I seen a howl,' said Mr. Peters." " Bolsover Priory " is one of those few places mentioned by Ingoldsby that have not been identified with any real place in Kent. It might have been taken to mean the ruins of the Preceptory at Swingfield Minnis, some two miles from Tapping- ton, had not Barham expressly said, in his prefatory notes to the "Witches' Frolic," that they were not the same. The literary landmarks associated with Barham's residence in London are readily traced. On leaving Kent in 1821 to take up his residence in London, 22 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY he, for a time, rented the upper part of the house, still standing, No. 51, Great Queen Street, Holborn. There his eldest surviving daughter, Caroline Frances Barham, afterwards Lady Bond, was born, ffM/lffG; NO. 4, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, DEMOLISHED I90I. July 22nd, 1823. In 1824, following his appoint- ment to the rectorship of St. Mary Magdalene, the family removed to a house numbered " 4 " on the south side of St. Paul's churchyard, and there remained until 1839, when an exchange was made to a house in Amen Corner, Paternoster Row — BARHAM 23 the first house through the gateway — by arrange- ment with Sydney Smith, who was leaving it to reside in Green Street, Mayfair. He describes the garden at the back of this house as " containing three polyanthus roots, a real tree, a brown box border, a snufF-coloured jessamine, a shrub which is either a dwarf acacia or an overgrown gooseberry bush, eight broken bottles, and a tortoise- shell tom-cat asleep in the sunniest corner, with a wide and extensive prospect of the back of the ' Oxford Arms,' and a fine hanging wood (the ' new drop ' at Newgate) in the distance." But the sprightly wit, the sound common-sense, the good-natured satire, were doomed to early extinction. It was in the prime of life, and when he might well have looked forward to ,further con- solidating and extending the fame his genius had already brought, that the blow fell which laid him low. He had already, some twenty years earlier, suffered some slight temporary trouble with a sensitive throat, and although in general a robust man, was in that respect peculiarly liable to the weather. It happened, unfortunately, that he was present as a spectator at the opening by the Queen of the new Royal Exchange, October 28th, 1844. It was a bleak day, and, sitting at an open window in Cheapside placed at his disposal by a friend, he caught a chill from whose effects he never recovered. The evil was a stubborn inflammation of the throat, which clung to him throughout the winter, and by degrees reduced the strong man to an alarmingly weak condition. In the February of 1845 he was induced to visit Bath, in the hope of recovery in that mild atmosphere, but an imprudent return to 2 4 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY London in the treacherous month of March, in order to attend a meeting of the Archaeological AMEN CORNER, WHERE BAEHAM DIED. Association, aggravated the malady. Still, that strong physique struggled against illness, and he once more partly recovered, only to be again laid BARHAM 2 5 low by a cold caught at an April vestry meeting in St. Paul's. It was, however, not merely an ex- aggerated susceptibility to cold that by this time dogged his every excursion into the open air, but the grossly mistaken treatment of his medical man, who had inflamed the malady by applying caustic to the uvula. At the beginning of May, although reduced almost to the condition of a helpless child by his sufferings, he was taken again to the west ; this time to Clifton, near Bristol. Unhappily, the local practitioner who was called in to attend him was by no means a properly qualified man, and on hearing of the mistaken treatment already followed, could think of nothing better than to continue it. It is not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he experienced no relief from the climate of Clifton, but grew steadily weaker. It was a sad time, for his wife was simultaneously laid low with illness. Everything devolved upon his daughter, Frances, then only in her twentieth year, for his son Dick was away in Cambridgeshire, doing duty as a clergy- man. The dying man — for the truth could be no longer disguised — kept a spirit of the supremest cheerful- ness and Christian courage. His humorous verses on the incidents of his distressing illness — originally composed as replies to the inquiries of anxious friends and afterwards published in the collection of Ingoldsby Lyrics as " The Bulletin," are no whit inferior to the productions of his careless health. When recovery at Clifton seemed hopeless, he was removed again to London, to the house he had occupied for the last six years, and made a grim joke as they assisted him into the house, on the 26 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY appropriateness of his being brought at that juncture to Amen Corner. A few days he Jay there, life ebbing away from sheer weakness ; his mind still clear, and divided between making the most cardial disposition of his property and fond memories of RUINS OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, OLD FISH STREET HILL, CITY OF LONDON, AFTER THE FIRE OF DECEMBER 1886. that "little boy Ned" who had died, untimely, some years before. It was then he wrote that last poem, the beautiful " As I Laye a-thynkynge," printed at the end of all editions of the Ingoldsby Legends as " The Last Lines of Thomas Ingoldsby." There is not, to my mind, anything more exquisitely beautiful and pathetic in the gorgeous roll of Eno-lish BARHAM 27 literature than the seven stanzas of the swan-song of this master of humour and pathos. It is wholly for themselves, and not by reason of reading into them the special circumstances under which they were written, that so sweeping a judgment is made. That they have never been properly recognised is due to the Wardour Street antiquity of their spelling, and still more to that strange insistence which ordains that the accepted wit and humourist must always be " funny " or go unacknowledged. It is a strange penalty ; one that would seek to deprive the humourist of all human emotions save that of laughter, and so make him that reproach of honest men — a cynic. It was on June 17th, 1845, that Barham died, untimely, before the completion of his fifty-seventh year. He was buried in the vaults of his former church, St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street Hill, one of those half-deserted city churches built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London. There he might have lain until now, but for the fire of December 2nd, 1886, which destroyed the building. For at least four years the blackened and roofless ruins stood, fronting Knightrider Street, and then they were removed, to make way for warehouses. The contents of the vaults were at the same time dispersed, the remains of Tom Ingoldsby being removed to Kensal Green Cemetery, while the tablet to his memory was appropriately transferred to St, Paul's, where, in the crypt, it may still be seen. CHAPTER III CANTERBURY There stands a city, neither large nor small, Its air and situation sweet and pretty. It matters very little, if at all, Whether its denizens are dull or witty ; Whether the ladies there are short or tall, Brunettes or blondes ; only, there stands a city ! Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute, That there's a Castle and a Cobbler in it. Thus wrote Ingoldsby of his native city of Canter- bury, in " The Ghost," and " sweet and pretty " its air and situation remain, sixty years since those lines were penned. For the changes that have altered so many other cities and towns have brought little disturbance here. No manufactures have come to to abolish the prettiness of the situation ; the air — the atmospheric air — is sweet and fragrant as of yore, and that other air — the demeanour and deportment — of Canterbury is still, as ever, gravely cheerful, as surely befits the capital city of a Primate whose Church is still a going concern. Ingoldsby was exactly right in his epithetical summing-up, for prettiness and not grandeur is the characteristic of the gentle valley of the Stour, wherein Canterbury is set. Approach it from what- ever quarter you will, and you will find prettiness only in the situation. Even when viewed from the 28 CANTERBURY 29 commanding heights of Harbledown and St. Thomas's Hill, the only grandeur is that of the Cathedral, and that is extrinsic, a something imported into the picture. Nay, even the uprising bulk of that cathedral church gains in effect from being thus set down in midst of a valley that is almost with equal justness called a plain, and whose features may, without offence, or the suspicion of any thought derogatory from their beauty, be termed so feature- less. Unquestionably the best direction whence to enter this ancient capital of the Kentish folk — this Kaint- ware-bury of the Saxons, the Durovernum of the Romans — is from Harbledown, whence the pilgrims from London, or from the north and west of England, entered. Only thus does the stranger receive a really accurate impression. With emotions doubtless less violent than those of the mediaeval pilgrims to the shrine of the blessed martyr, St. Thomas, but still strongly aroused, he sees the west front of the 'Cathedral, its two western " towers," and the great central " Bell-Harry " tower displayed boldly before him, in the level, and may even identify the more prominent of the public buildings. Descending from this hill, he passes through the ancient suburb of Saint Dunstan, and enters the city beneath the frowning portals of the West Gate. If, on the other hand, the modern pilgrim arrives per Chatham and Dover Railway, he will be dumped down in quite a different direction, on the south side of the city, near Wincheap Street, in which thoroughfare he will be able, without any delay, to discover his first Ingoldsby landmark in Canter- bury, in the shape of the " Harris's Almshouses," 30 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY founded in 1729 by that ancestral Harris whose daughter his great-grandfather had married. They are five quite humble little red-brick houses, with a garden at the back, endowed for the support of two poor parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene, two of Thanington, and one of St. Mildred's. The value is the modest one of about ^9 a year. An unassuming tablet on the central house of the row tells this story : Mr. Thomas Harris of this City Founder of these Five Alms- Houses hath endowed them with Marly Farm in Kent for the Maintenance of five Poor Familys for ever. Ingoldsby — the Reverend Richard Harris Barham — became a governor of this charity on his attaining his majority, as already alluded to in the sketch of his birth and career. The district of Wincheap only becomes tolerable after leaving the railway behind. This outlying part, without the city walls, was of old that place of degradation where the scourgings and stripes, the whips and scorpions of mediaeval punishments, were inflicted ; where offending books — ay, and the horror of it, the Protestant martyrs — were burnt of yore. In this " Potter's Field " that is not now more than a struggling little suburb where all the littlenesses of life are prominent, and few of its beauties are to be seen, there has of late been erected a great granite memorial pillar, surmounted by the " Canterbury Cross," on the site of the stake CANTERBURY 31 at which forty-one victims of the Marian persecution perished. Shackle and stake, faggot and gyve, rivet and torch, how busy they were ! It is a beautiful sentiment that rears this monument on the spot where they suffered who testified for Jesus ; but it should stand, plain for all men to see, in the Cathedral Close itself. Our course from this point into the city leads up to the Castle, mentioned in the Legends, and especially in that early one, " The Ghost," in whose stanzas are found many exquisitely apposite local Canterbury touches. That Castle is, in its secular way, as interesting as the Cathedral in its ecclesiastical : The Castle was a huge and antique mound, Proof against all the artillery of the quiver, Ere those abominable guns were found, To send cold lead through gallant warrior's liver. It stands upon a gently-rising ground, Sloping down gradually to the river, Resembling (to compare great things with smaller) A well-scooop'd, mouldy Stilton cheese — but taller. The Keep, I find, 's been sadly alter'd lately, And, 'stead of mail-clad knights, of honour jealous, In martial panopy so grand and stately, Its walls are fill'd with money-making fellows, And stuffd, unless I'm misinformed greatly, With leaden pipes, and coke, and coals, and bellows, In short, so great a change has come to pass, „. 'Tis now a manufactory of Gas. It is immediately fronting the street that this keep of old romantic Norman times is found, with the smoke and noxious fumes, the chimneys and retorts, of the City of Canterbury Gas-light and Coke Company, very insistent to eyes and nose, 3< THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY in the rear ; and, if you look down a by-street — " Gas Street " is the vulgar name of it — and peer into the empty roofless shell of that keep, you will discover it to be still a coal-bunker, and that those who, in the rhyme of Ingoldsby, manufacture " garss," are not more gentle with historic ruins than they were in 1825, when it was first put to this use. These shattered walls that, quarried by CANTERBURY CASTLE. time and the hands of spoilers, do indeed, as Ingoldsby suggests, resemble one of those great, well-scooped cheeses found in the coffee-rooms of old-fashioned hotels, were built by two very great castle-builders ; by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, and William de Corbeil, Archbishop of Canterbury. What Gundulf began for his master and over-lord William the Conqueror, William de Corbeil completed for Henry I. Among all the great castle keeps of England it ranked third in size, CANTERBURY 33 and in that respect was inferior only to those of Colchester and Norwich. It looks a very poor third indeed nowadays, and so battered and reduced that a hundred keeps are more upstanding and impressive. Alas ! for that poor castle, its career was never an heroic one. It surrendered tamely to Louis, the Dauphin of France, in 1216, and for long years afterwards was a prison for Jews on occasions when persecutions of the Chosen People broke out. From that use it declined to the lower level of a debtor's prison. Not far distant from it are the Dane John gardens, a public park of by no means recent origin. It has been for more than a hundred years what it is now, and is perhaps one of the very best wooded and most picturesque urban parks in existence. Antiquaries have long since ceased to trouble about the odd name, which appears to have originally come from an estate here, belonging to the Castle, and variously named the " Castle " or " Donjon " Manor. The huge prehistoric mound within its area was remodelled, heaped seventeen feet higher, crowned with a monument that halts between Gothic and Classic, and ringed round with a spiral walk about 1790. The very long and very complacent statement on that monument, telling how, when, and by whom all these things were done, is itself a monument of self-satisfaction. The city walls, with their towers at regular intervals, even yet in very good preservation, bound the Dane John grounds in one direction. Still goes a broad walk on the summit of those walls, and the pilgrim might imagine himself a sentry guarding the mediaeval city, were it not that dense 34 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY and sordid suburbs spread beyond, on whose blank walls soap and cheap tea advertisements alternate with others crying the virtues of infants' foods and the latest quack nostrums. Canterbury is \ Canterbury yet, and Becket is still its prophet, but some things be changed. Electric THE DANE JOHN, CANTERBURY. lighting — of a marvellously poor illuminating quality it is true, and vastly inferior to the gas they brew at the Castle, but yet electric lighting of sorts — some- what remodernises its streets ; but it is still true, as at any time since Popery came down crash, that you cannot obtain lodging without money, or miracles, whether or no. Becket, however, still pervades the place. His arms — the three black CANTERBURY 35 Cornish choughs, red-beaked and clawed, on a blue field — have been adopted by the city, and every shop patronised by visitors sells china or trinkets painted or engraved with them. Pictures of the transept where he fell on that day of long ago ; yea, even photographs of the skull and bones dis- covered some years since, and thought to be his, are at every turn. Becket is not forgot, and a certain portly Tudor shade — the wraith of one who ordained all worship and reverence of him to cease and every vestige of his shrine and relics to be destroyed — must surely be furiously and impotently angered. Little need, however, for that kingly shade to be thus perturbed ; this modern and local cult of Saint Thomas is only business at Canterbury — and very good business, too. Still goes the tourist- pilgrim along the way to the Cathedral trod by the sinners of mediasval times, to purge them of their sins and start afresh. Where they turned off" to the left from the main street, down Mercery Lane, the present-day visitors still turn, and the Christchurch Gate, at the end of the narrow lane, opens as of old into the Cathedral precincts. It is a wonderful gatehouse, this of Christchurch, built by Prior Goldstone nigh upon four hundred years ago, and elaborately carved with Tudor r'oses, portcullises, and things now so blunted by time that it is difficult to distinguish them. Time has dissolved much of the worthy Prior's noble structure, like so much sugar. It was here, in this open space in front of the Gate, that the quaint Butter Market stood until quite recently. Tardily eager to honour one of her sons, Canterbury was so ill-advised as to sweep 36 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY away the curious Butter Market to make room for the new memorial to Christopher Marlowe, the great dramatist of Shakespearean times, whose birthplace still stands in St. George's Street. It is a cynical freak of time that honour should be done to Marlowe at such a spot, for the Church in his life- time held him to be " a wretch," a " filthy play- maker," an "atheist and a sottish swine," and it was thought that the unknown person who slew him in his thirtieth year was someone who thus revenged his insults to religion. The Marlowe Memorial deserves attention. It is in the form of a nude bronze figure representing the Muse of Poetry, placed on a stone pedestal, and in the act of playing upon a lyre ; but it is an exceedingly plump and eminently erotic, rather than intellectual, figure thus made to stand for the Muse — a Doll Tearsheet, with a coarse, sensual face, most inappropriately shaded by a wreath of poetic bays. The last touch of vulgarity is that especially muni- cipal idea of giving the whole thing a smart finish by surrounding it with four ornate street-lamps. Burgate Street, branching off from this point to the right, is the street where Barham was born ; but our present business is to the Close, and round the south side of the Cathedral to the east end, where the Norman infirmary ruins stand. Turning here to the left, a narrow, stone-paved passage, in between high, ancient walls, leads crookedly through the romantic remains of the domestic buildings of the old monastery to the cloisters and the north side of the Cathedral. It is a twilight place, even now, in the brightest days of summer, and was once, before portions of it were unroofed, much darker. That CANTERBURY 37 was the time when it obtained its existing name of the " Dark Entry." If the pages of the Ingoldsby Legends are opened, and the legend of " Nell Cook " is read, much will be found on the subject Mm THE DARK ENTRY. of this gloomy passage. That legend is the " King's Scholar's Story " : the terror of a schoolboy of King Henry VIII. 's school, on the north side of the precincts, at the prospect of being sent back by the 3§ THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY haunted entry after dark, on a Friday, when the ghost of Nell Cook was supposed to have its weekly outing. THE DARK ENTRY, CANTERBURY. Well might anyone believing in ghosts and omens especially desire not to meet that spirit, for such an CANTERBURY 39 encounter was supposed to presage the death of the person within the year : " Now nay, dear Uncle Ingoldsby, now send me not I pray, Back by that Entry dark, for that you know's the nearest way; I dread that Entry dark with Jane alone at such an hour, It fears me quite — it's Friday night ! — and then Nell Cook hath pow'r." " And who, silly child, is Nell Cook ? " asks Uncle Ingoldsby ; and the King's Scholar answers : " It was in bluff King Harry's days, while yet he went to shrift, And long before he stamped and swore, and cut the Pope adrift ; There lived a portly Canon then, a sage and learned clerk ; He had, I trow, a goodly house, fast by that Entry dark. " The Canon was a portly man — of Latin and of Greek, And learned lore, he had good store, — yet health was on his cheek. The Priory fare was scant and spare, the bread was made of rye, The beer was weak, yet he was sleek — he had a merry eye. " For though within the Priory the fare was scant and thin, The Canon's house it stood without; — he kept good cheer within ; Unto the best he prest each guest, with free and jovial look, And Ellen Bean ruled his cuisine. — He called her ' Nelly Cook.'" It is not a very proper story that the King's Scholar unfolds ; of how a " niece" of the Canon comes to stay with him, and arouses the jealousy of the good-looking cook, whose affections that " merry eye " of the Canon had captured. Nell Cook thereupon successfully poisons the Canon 4 o THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY and the strange lady with "some nasty doctor's stuff," with which she flavours a pie destined for the Canonical table, and the two are found as the Scholar tells : "The Canon's head lies on the bed, — his niece lies on the floor! They are as dead as any nail that is in any door ! " Nell Cook, for her crime, says Tom Ingoldsby, adapting to his literary uses the legend long current in Canterbury, was buried alive beneath one of the great paving-stones of the " Dark Entry " ; when, local history does not inform us : But one thing's clear — that's all the year, on every Friday night, Throughout that Entry dark doth roam Nell Cook's unquiet sprite. And whoever meets Nell Cook is bound to die some untimeous death within the year ! Certainly, the Dark Entry is not a place greatly frequented after nightfall, even nowadays — but that is perhaps less by reason of superstitious fears than because it leads to nowhere in particular. CHAPTER IV THE CATHEDRAL : THE MURDER OF BECKET It is by the south porch that the Cathedral is entered. Let none suppose this to be the veritable Cathedral that Becket knew ; that was replaced, piece by piece, in the succeeding centuries, all save the Norman transept where he met his fate. The nave, by whose lofty, aspiring perspective we advance, was built in 1380 upon the site of that of the twelfth century. According to the testimony of the time, it was in a ruinous condition. Conceive, if you can, the likelihood of one of those particularly massive Norman naves like those of Tewkesbury and Gloucester, which this resembled, becoming ruinous ! The more probable truth of the matter is that the feeling of the time had grown inimical to those cavernous interiors of the older architects, and sought any excuse for tearing them down and building in their stead in the lightsome character of the Perpendicular period. This nave, then, much later than Becket's era, leads somewhat unsympathetically to that most interesting spot in the whole Cathedral, the north transept. Here is the " Martyrdom," as that massive Norman cross-limb where Becket fell beneath the 41 42 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY swords and axes of his murderers is still called. You look down into it from the steps leading into the choir and choir-aisles, as into a pit. Little changed, in the midst of all else that has been altered, this north transept alone remains very much as it was when he was slain, more than seven hundred years ago, and the sight of its stern, massive walls does much to bring back to those who behold them that fierce scene which, in the passage of all those years and the heaping of dull verbiage piled up by industrious Dryasdusts and beaters of the air, has been dulled and blunted. Barham — our witty and mirthful Tom Ingoldsby — felt a keen personal interest in this scene, for was not his ancestor — as he conceived him to be — Reginald FitzUrse, the chief actor in that bloody scene of Becket's death ? He is flippant, it must be allowed, in the reference he makes to the occur- rence in the Ingoldsby Legends : A fair Cathedral, too, the story goes, And kings and heroes lie entombed within her ; There pious Saints in marble pomp repose, Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a sinner ; There, too, full many an aldermanic nose Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner ; And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket, — Till four assassins came from France to crack it. Historians have not yet agreed upon the character of Becket, and no final conclusion is ever likely to be arrived at upon the vexed question of who was right and who wrong in the long-drawn contention between King and Archbishop. It is easy to shirk the point and to decide that neither was right ; but another and a more just resort is to declare, after THE CATHEDRAL 43 due consideration, that in the attempted secular encroachments of the Crown, and in the resistance of the Archbishop to any interference with the prerogatives and jurisdiction of the Church and the clergy, both sides were impelled by the irresistible force of circumstances. Becket was of English origin, and the first of the downtrodden Saxon race who had won to such preferment since the Norman rule began. Thus, besides being bound to defend the Church, of which he had become the head, he was regarded by the people, who idolised him, as their champion against those ruling classes whose mailed tyranny crushed them to earth. A prime difficulty in judging the character of Becket is the extraordinary change in his conduct after he had been induced to accept the Primacy, that goal and crown of the clerical career ardently desired by all, and attained by Becket in his forty- third year. Long the favourite of the King, and already, as Chancellor, at the height of power and magnificence, there was little advantage in this elevation to the throne of Saint Augustine, and he seemed singularly unfitted to fill it, for until that juncture he had been among the most worldly of men. As Chancellor, his magnificence had out- shone that of the King, he himself was gay and debonnair, clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting royally, and with hundreds of knights in his train. Nothing that the world could give had he denied himself. He was not only impressed personally with his unfitness, but the monks of Canterbury themselves, in conclave, desired to elect one of their own choice. It was, therefore, against the desire of the Church and against his own better judgment, 44 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY foreseeing as he did much of the trouble that was to come, that he was given the headship. But once enthroned, his conduct changed. He dismissed his magnificent household, feasted no more, expended his substance in charity and himself in good works ; became, indeed, and in very truth, that Right Reverend Father in God which the simulacra, the windbags, the ravening wolves, the emptinesses that for hundreds of years have occupied his place, are styled. The sinner saved must be prepared for misunderstandings — it is part of the cross and burden he has taken up. The scarlet sins of the unregenerate are remembered against the saint, and his saintliness becomes to his old boon companions a hypocritical farce. That is why Becket's contemporaries did not understand him ; that, too, is why so many, dimly fumbling by the rush-light glimmer' of their little sputtering intel- ligences, presently choked and dowsed in the dusty, cobwebby garrets of incredible accretions of lies, mistakes, perversions and general rag-bag of pitiful futilities, have been left wandering in infinite dark- ness, and content so to wander in estimating him. It was the sinners whose poisonous tongues did, by dint of much persistence, estrange the King's affections from Becket within a year, and their innuendoes were remembered when a growing struggle over disputed privileges found the Arch- bishop immovably set upon what he regarded as his duty, and not at all prepared to favour the King. If Henry had supposed the Archbishop whom he had created would be in every sense his creature, he must have been furious at his gross mistake. The fury of the Norman kings was like the unrestrained THE CATHEDRAL 45 paroxysms of a raving maniac, and opposition threw them into transports of rage, felt severely by animate and inanimate objects alike. This second Henry, whose eyes were said to have in repose been gentle and dove-like, is no exception. Ill fares the messenger who brings him bad news — as ill some- times as though he had brought about the untoward things of which he tells. Slight displeasure means a thump, a resounding smack on the face from the Royal hands, or a right Royal kick on that part where honour is so easily hurt. May not enquiring minds, diligently bent on running to earth the origin of the still existing etiquette of retreating backwards from the presence of the sovereign, find it in a natural desire of courtiers at all hazards to protect that honour ? Conceive, then, the really Royal rage of this King, bearded by someone not to be dissuaded, persuaded, admonished, or let or hindered in any particular. He became like a wild beast, tearing whatever came in his way, flinging off" his clothes, throwing himself on the floor and gnawing the straw and rushes, and not merely kicking the posteriors of messengers, but flying at them with intent to tear out their eyes. What was that which wrought such enmity between such old-time friends ? Not merely one, but many things, but first and last among them the determination of the King that the clergy, instead of being amenable for offences only to the ecclesiastical courts, should be answerable to the civil tribunals. This, the earliest of the at last happily successful series of blows at clerical privilege, seemed to Becket almost sacrilegious, and he determined to protect the Church against what was, he honestly thought, 46 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY according to his lights and his sacerdotal sympathies, an unwarranted attack. By all accounts this saint was not, in his new character, the most tactful of men. With the old courtier days gone by, he had discarded the courtier- like speech, and austerely held his own. Jealous of him, several great dignitaries of the Church sup- ported the King : among them the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of London and Salisbury. Becket, as their spiritual chief, hurled excommunica- tion at them, and it was even feared that he would do the same by the King. Then, in fear of his life, he went into six years' exile, ended by a pretence of reconciliation that was patently a pretence, even before he sailed for England. He was weary of exile, and ready to lay down his life for the Church. It was early in December 1 1 70 that he returned to Canterbury, " to die," as he prophetically had said, before embarking. Quarrels, insults, and petty persecutions met him, and thus sped December to its close. On Christmas Day he preached in the Cathedral on the text, as he read it (an all-important reservation), " On earth, peace to men of good will." " There is no peace," he declared, " but to men of good will," and with solemn meaning, readily under- stood by the great congregation that heard him, spoke of the martyrs who had fallen in olden days. It was possible, he added, that they would soon have another. " Father," wailed that assembled multitude, "why do you desert us so soon ? To whom will you leave us ? " But, heedless of the interruption, he passed from a plaintive strain to one of fiery THE CATHEDRAL 47 indignation, ending, in a voice of thunder, by a full and particular excommunication of many of his enemies and persecutors. "May they be cursed," his voice resounded through the building, " by Jesus Christ, and may their memory be blotted out of the assembly of the saints, whoever shall sow discord between me and my lord the King." So saying, he, with mediaeval symbolism, dashed down a lighted candle upon the stones, to typify the extinction of those accurst, and, with religious exaltation on his face, left the pulpit, saying to his crossbearer, " One martyr, St. Alphege, you have already ; another, if God will, you will have soon." Already, while he spoke, his furrow was drawing to its end. Over in Normandy, where the King was keeping Christmas, the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury were suggesting that it would be a good thing if there were no Becket. " So long as Thomas lives," said one, " you will have neither good days, nor peaceful kingdom, nor quiet life." The thought thus instilled into the King's mind threw him into a frenzy. "A fellow," he shouted — " a fellow that has eaten my bread has lifted up his heel against me ; a fellow that I loaded with benefits has dared to insult the King and the whole Royal family, and tramples on the whole kingdom ; a fellow that came to Court on a lame sumpter-mule sits without hindrance on the throne itself. What sluggard wretches, what cowards, have I brought up in my Court, who care nothing for their allegiance to their master ! Not one will deliver me from this low-born, turbulent priest ! " So saying, he rushed from the room, doubtless to roll in one of those 48 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY ungovernable Plantagenet rages upon the floor of some secluded chamber. The four knights who from among that Court sprang forth to prove themselves, even to the awful extremities of sacrilege and murder, true King's men, were Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Bret. In the light of later events, the monkish chroniclers, eager to discover the marvellous in every circumstance of the tragedy, found a dark significance in their very names. FitzUrse, they said, was of truly bear- like character ; De Moreville's name proclaimed him to be of " the city of death " ; Le Bret was "the brute." With so much ingenuity available, it is quite surprising they could not twist Tracy's name into something allusive to murder ; but they had to be content with the weak suggestion that he was of "parricidal wickedness." All save Le Bret had been knights owning fealty to Becket while he was Chancellor. It is detailed in these pages, in the description of Saltwood Castle, how they landed in England and made for Canterbury. A dreadful circumstance is that they knew perfectly well on whom to call when they reached the city, and waited upon a sympathiser with the King, Clarembald, the Abbot of St. Augustine's, who is thus sufficiently im- plicated. From the Abbot's lodging they sent a com- mand, ordering the Mayor to issue a proclamation in the King's name forbidding any help being given to the Archbishop. Then they took horse again and rode to the Palace, accompanied by their men-at-arms, whom they posted in a house hard THE CATHEDRAL 49 by the gateway. The short day of December 29th was nearly at its close when they drew rein in the courtyard beneath the great hall of the Palace, where the Archbishop and his household had but just retired from supper. They had left their swords outside, and came as travellers, their mailed armour concealed under long cloaks. Entering the hall they met the seneschal, who ushered them into the private room where the Archbishop sat, among his intimates. " My lord," he said, " here are four knights from King Henry wishing to speak with you " ; and they were bidden enter. FitzUrse began the furious discussion. The knights had seated themselves on the floor at the Archbishop's feet, and waited until he should finish the conversation he was holding with a monk. When Becket turned and looked calmly at each in turn, ending with saluting Tracy by name, Fitz- Urse it was who broke in with a contemptuous " God help you ! " The Archbishop's face flushed crimson. He was a man of vehement nature, and it is wonderful that he restrained himself from striking that insolent intruder. " We have a message from the King over the water," continued FitzUrse ; " tell us whether you will hear it in private, or in the hearing of all." Within the hearing of all that message, such as it was, was given. It was but a reiteration of old demands and old grievances, made to goad the Archbishop into fury, and to afford an excuse for an attack upon him. The discussion aroused both sides to anger, and the knights, calling upon all to prevent the Archbishop from escaping, dashed 50 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY off, with the cry of " To arms ! " for their swords. But Becket harboured no thoughts of escape. Although he perceived that death was near, he made no retreat, being indeed, by this time, fanatically bent upon the martyr's crown. Outside, the signal had been already given to the men-at-arms, who now came pouring ,in, with shouts of " Reaux ! " or " King's men." The knights now returned, their swords girt about them. Already, however, the Archbishop's attendants had closed and barred the doors, and were endeavouring to save him from that death he seemed to welcome. With kindly violence they pushed and pulled him by obscure passages from the Palace and along the cloisters, while the blows of axes and the splintering of wood told how in their rear the murderers were hewing their way onward. Thus at last, strenuously resisting, he was impelled towards the door that opened from the cloisters into the north transept. Once within the Cathedral the monks bolted the door behind them, and in their haste excluded some of their brethren, thus left, unprotected, to face the onrush of armed men. Hearing these unfortunate ones vainly knocking for admittance, Becket, exerting all his authority, commanded the door to be opened ; and when he found his words disregarded, broke away from those who held him and drew back the bolts with his own hands. Seeing the way thus made clear for those pursuing men of wrath, the crowd of anxious monks surrounding the Archbishop immediately turned and fled to those hiding-places they knew of. Only three remained, dauntless, by their chief. These THE CATHEDRAL 51 were Robert of Merton, William FitzStephen, and Edward Grim, who stood by him, vainly imploring him to flee. Only one concession he made to their entreaties. He would go to the choir, and there, before the high altar, the holiest place in the Cathedral, with all dignity make an end. It was as he was thus ascending the steps from the transept that the knights burst into the sacred building. Bewildered at first by the almost complete darkness, they could only shout at random, " Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the King ? " No answer. Then, falling over a monk, came an oath, from FitzUrse, and the question, " Where is the Archbishop ? " Becket himself answered, and descending again into the transept, confronted them. He stood in front of what was then the the Chapel of St. Benedict, and calmly asked, " Reginald, why do you come into my church armed? " For answer FitzUrse thrust a carpenter's axe he had found against his breast, and with a savage oath declared, " You shall die : I will tear out your heart ! " " Fly ! " exclaimed another, not so eager to commit the sin of sacrilege, before which the mediaeval world recoiled ; " Fly ! or you are a dead man ! " striking him with the flat of his sword, to emphasise the warning. Then the four united their efforts to drag him from the Cathedral, but without success. Himself a powerful man, he seized Tracy and flung him heavily upon the pavement. FitzUrse, advancing upon him with a drawn sword, he called by a vile name, adding, " You profligate wretch, you are my man ; you have done me fealty ; you ought not to touch me." No fear, it will be seen, in all this, 52 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY THE "MARTYRDOM, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. but a not unreasonable fury, somewhat obscuring the martyr spirit. Fury on both sides, for FitzUrse, THE CATHEDRAL 53 losing the last atom of restraint, and yelling " Strike ! " aimed a blow with his great, two-handed sword that, had it been better directed, must have smote off the Archbishop's head. As it was, it merely- skimmed off his cap. Becket, who must have been momentarily surprised to find himself still alive, then covered his eyes with his hands, and bending his head, was heard to commend his cause and the cause of the Church to God, to St. Denis of France, to St. Alphege and all the saints of the Church. Tracy then dealt a blow, partly intercepted by Grim, whose arm, protecting the Archbishop, was broken by it. By this time blood was trickling down the Archbishop's face. He wiped it away and mur- mured, " Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit ; " and then, falling at a further blow from Tracy, " For the name of Jesus, and for the defence of the Church, I am willing to die." There he lay, and so lying, received a tremendous stroke from Richard le Bret, who accompanied it with the exclamation, " Take this, for love of my lord William, brother of the King ! " That stroke not only clove away the upper part of the skull, but the sword itself was broken in two. Vengeance was accomplished. When the assassins fled from that scene of blood, it was quite dark. They went as they had come, by the cloisters, shouting that they were " King's men," and cursing and stumbling over unfamiliar steps. A servant of the Archdeacon of Sens was sufficiently unfortunate to be wailing for the cruel death of the Archbishop when they passed, and foolish enough to be in their way. They fell over him, and, still heady with that struggle and the lust 54 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY of blood, gave him in passing a mailed kick, and so tremendous a sword-thrust that for long afterwards he had sufficient occasion to lament for himself. It was something of an anti-climax to their murderous passions that they should, as they now did, repair to the Archbishop's Palace and make a burglarious raid upon the gold and silver vessels of the church, and loot from Becket's stables the magnificent horses he kept. With this personal plunder, and with a mass of the Archbishop's documents and papers seized on behalf of the King, they were preparing to depart when the very unusual circumstance in December of a violent thunderstorm set a final scene of horror upon that closing day. The news fell heavily upon the people of Canter- bury, who reverenced Becket far more than did those within the Church who had immediately sur- rounded him ; and the citizens came rushing like an irresistible torrent into the Cathedral as soon as they heard of the sacrilegious deed. Like the greater number of our cathedrals, this of Canterbury has been greatly altered since that time. It was into a Norman nave that the excited populace thronged — a building that must have closely resembled the still-existing nave of that period at Gloucester, gloomy and dark at the best of times, but on this December evening a well of infinite blackness, faintly illuminated by the distant lights twinkling in the choir and on the high altar. This horror-stricken crowd was only with great difficulty forced back and at last shut out, and it was long before the monks returned to the transept where the Archbishop had fallen before the blows of THE CATHEDRAL 55 the four. There his body lay in the dark, as it had been left, his blood still wet on those cold stones, as Osbert, the chamberlain, entering with a single light, held out at arm's length in that cavern of blackness and unimaginable gloom, steps in it, and, if he be not quite different from other men, shudders and almost drops his glimmering candle when he finds what awful moisture that is in which he has been walking. Osbert alone has ventured to seek his master. Where, then, are the others of his household ? In hiding, like those monks who, now that all is still, venture, like rats, to come from their hiding-holes in chapel and triforium, or from secret places contrived for such emergencies in the roof. The Archbishop lay upon his face, the upper part of his scalp sliced off by that whirling blow of Tracy's, and the contents of his head spilled over the pavement, just as a bowl of liquid might be overset. Osbert, with rare fortitude, replaces that scalp as one might replace a lid, and binding the head, he and the monks between them place the body upon a bier and carry it to the high altar in the choir. There were those among the monks who felt small sympathy for Becket. To them he was but a proud worldling whose remarkable preferment to the Primacy had been scandalous, and whose quarrels with the King had been, they thought, dictated more for the advancement of his own personal authority than for sake of a purely impersonal desire to preserve and cherish the rights of the Church. He had been elected Archbishop by desire of the King and against the feeling of the Priory, and they thought he should, in consequence, have been 56 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY more complaisant to Royal demands. They were not a little jealous of the man set to rule over them, and moreover, could not at once perceive the martyr and the saint in the dignitary thus at last struck down in that long struggle. They were horror-stricken at the sacrilege of it, but did not burst into grief and lamentations for the individual until that happened which put a very different complexion upon the dead Archbishop's character. Far into the night, as the monks sat in the choir around that silent figure, his aged friend and instructor, Robert of Merton, told them of the secret austerities of his later life, and made a revelation that wholly changed their mental attitude. To prove his words, he exposed the many layers of the clothing to those who gathered round, and showed how, beneath all, and next the skin, the " luxurious " Archbishop had worn the habit of a monk, and had endured the disciplinary discomfort of a hair-shirt. There, too, on the skin, were visible the weals of the daily scourgings by which the Archbishop mortified the flesh. Nor was this the sum of his virtues, for when, a little later, his garments were removed, previous to interment, they were found to be swarming with vermin ; that hair-cloth, itself so penitential, densely populated with a crawling mass whose presence must have made it more penitential still. According to the accounts of those who beheld these transcendent proofs of sanctity, the hair-cloth was bubbling over with these inhabitants, like water in a simmering cauldron. At sight of such unmistakable evidences of holiness the brethren went into hysterics. " See, THE CATHEDRAL 57 see," they said to one another, " what a true monk he was, and we knew it not ! " — an oblique and unpleasing reflection upon the personal habits of the monastic orders. They kissed him, as he lay dead there, and called him " St. Thomas," and at last, unwilling that any tittle of his sanctity should be impugned, buried him in his verminous condition. Meanwhile, newly alive to the saintly character of him whom they now clearly perceived to be a martyr, orders were given to rail off the spot where he had fallen, and for every trace of his blood to be jealously preserved. But unhappily for the Church, the common people, who had from the moment of his death regarded their Archbishop as a martyed saint, had already soaked up the greater part of that precious blood in strips hastily torn from their clothes, and had been given his stained and splashed outer garments. These were losses that could never be made good, but they did not greatly matter to those who could so dilute the little remaining blood that it sufficed to supply the uncounted thousands of pilgrims who made pilgrim- age to the shrine of St. Thomas for the space of three hundred and fifty years, and took away with them little phials containing, as they fondly believed, so intimate a relic of England's most powerful saint. In spite of the dark legends that tell how vengeance overtook the assassins, it does not seem to be the fact that they were adequately punished for their fearful crime, and certainly no Royal displeasure lighted upon them. " The wicked," we are told, " flee when no man pursueth," and the knights, fearful of the revenge that might be 58 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY taken upon them by the people of Canterbury, rode off, unhindered, with their small escort of men-at- arms, to Saltwood. Within that stronghold they felt safe. That they would have been equally safe at Canterbury we may suppose, for Robert de Broc, shut up within the strong walls of the Archbishop's Palace, felt strong enough to threaten the monks with what he would do if they dared so honour the dead Prelate as to bury him among the tombs of the Archbishops. He would, he declared, tear out the body, hang it from a gibbet, hew it in pieces, and throw the fragments by the highway, to be de- voured by swine or birds of prey. It is quite evident that Robert de Broc was a good hater and a very thorough partisan of the King. The monks did well to be afraid of him, and meekly forbearing from giving offence, laid their martyr in the crypt. The four lay only one night at Saltwood. The next day they rode to the old manor-house of South Mailing, near Lewes, itself a property be- longing to the Archbishops, and throwing down their arms and accoutrements upon a dining-table in the hall, gathered comfortably round the cheerful hearth, when — says the legend — the table, unwilling to bear that sacrilegious burden, started back and threw the repugnant load on the ground. The arms were replaced by the startled servants, who came rushing in with torches ; but again they were flung away, this time with even greater force. It was one of the knights who, with blanched face, declared the supernatural nature of this happening. The following morning they were off again, bound for Hugh de Moreville's far distant York- shire castle of Knaresborough, where they remained THE CATHEDRAL 59 for one year. It would have been too scandalous a thing for the King to receive his bravos at once, for he had a part of his own to play that would have been quite spoiled by such indecent haste — a dramatic part, but one that fails to carry any conviction of its sincerity. It was at Argenton that he heard of the successful issue of his com- mission, and on receipt of the news isolated himself for three days, refused all food but milk of almonds, rolled himself in penitential sackcloth and ashes, and grievously called upon God to witness that he was not responsible for the Archbishop's death. "Alas ! " exclaimed that trembling hypocrite, " alas ! that it ever happened." But it is not in empty lamentations, real or feigned, that penitence is found. The assassins went unpunished, and, together with others of Becket's bitterest enemies within and without the Church, were even promoted. Before two years had passed the four knights were found constantly at the King's Court, on familiar terms with him and his companions in hunting. It is a cynical commentary upon the kingly penitence that one of the murderers, William de Tracy, became Justiciary of Normandy. But something had to be done to expiate a deed whose echoes rumbled horrifically throughout Europe. The Pope, Alexander III., indicated a course of fighting against the infidel in the Holy Land, and it seems probable that they did so work off their sins ; all except Tracy, who, having made over his Devonshire manor of Daccombe to the Church, for the maintenance of a monk for ever, to celebrate masses for the repose of the souls of the living and the dead, set out for Palestine, 60 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY but was for so long driven back by contrary winds that he almost despaired of setting foot abroad. This especial retribution meted out to him was for the particular heinousness of having dealt the first effective blow at the martyr. When at last he was carried to the coast of Calabria, he was seized with a mysterious disease at Cosenza, a disease whose agonies made him tear the flesh from his bones with his own hands. Thus entreating, " Mercy, St. Thomas ! " he perished miserably. The mysticism of the time told many dreadful legends. Dogs refused to eat from the tables of the murderers ; grass would not grow where their feet went ; those they loved were doomed to misery and death. From the King a certain humiliation was demanded, but it amounted to little beyond an oath, taken on the gospels before the Papal legates, that he had not ordered or desired the murder, and an expressed readiness to restore property belonging to the See of Canterbury. This easy satisfaction was given at Avranches, in May 1172, but if it was sufficient for the Pope it did by no means calm the English people, who saw in the cumulative domestic troubles and foreign disasters of the time the wrath of Heaven. The greater penance of 1 1 74 was accord- ingly decided upon. Arriving from Normandy on July 8th, he journeyed to Canterbury, to the shrine of the already sainted martyr, by the Pilgrims' Road, living the while upon bread and water. Coming to Harbledown, he resigned horseback for a barefooted walk into the city. Thus, with a mere woollen shirt and a cloak, he came to the Cathedral, kneeling in the porch, and then proceeding directly THE CATHEDRAL 61 to the scene of the martyrdom, where he again knelt and kissed the stone where the Archbishop had died. From that spot, he was conducted to the crypt, where the tomb still remained, and, placing his head and shoulders in the tomb itself, received on his shoulders five strokes of a rod from each bishop and abbot present, and three each from the by- standing eighty monks. This discipline must have killed him had those monks laid on with the hearty goodwill customary with prison warders ; but their stripes were mere formalities, and the King departed the next morning, after passing a solitary fasting vigil in the crypt, where, during the solemn hours of the night, he had had ample opportunity of repentance. From Canterbury he rode to London, absolved and with a whole skin. The nation saw much virtue in this public repara- tion. How could they fail so to do when the affairs of the realm took an immediate and decided turn for the better, when the King of Scots, long a terror in the north, was captured at Alnwick, and when the invading fleet of Henry's own rebellious son was repulsed ? The forgiveness and the miracu- lous intercession of the beatified Thomas were prompt and efficacious. The cult of this peculiarly sainted person was extraordinary, and far transcended that of any other martyr. To his shrine, erected in a place of especial honour, and encrusted with gold and gems, the pilgrims of many nations and many centuries flocked, greatly to the enrichment of the Church. The miraculous cures wrought at his tomb, and the marvellous legends that clustered around the story of his life and death, were the theme of ages. But 62 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY the gross superstitions, and the grosser scandals, tricks, and miscellaneous knaveries that were en- couraged by that martyr-worship had discredited him by the time of Henry VIII., that less super- stitious age when it was possible for the King and his advisers to declare " Thomas Becket " a traitor, to submit his relics to every indignity, to destroy them and his shrine, and to seize all the endow- ments and valuables connected with his worship. The great destruction wrought at the Reformation accounts for the scantiness of Becket's memorials. Here, in the " Martyrdom," only the Norman walls that looked down upon the scene, and some portions of the pavement, are left. A square piece of stone, inserted in the middle of a large slab, marks the exact spot where he fell, and tells how the original stone, regarded as of a peculiar sanctity, had been at some time or another removed. CHAPTER V TAPPINGTON HALL The central point of the Ingoldsby Country- is, of course, the Ingoldsby manor house of Tappington Hall. To discover this we must leave Canterbury by the Dover Road, and, climbing up to the rise of Gutteridge Gate, where a gibbet stood in ancient times and a turnpike-gate until recent years, drop down into the village of Bridge, whose name derives from an arch thrown at an early period across the River Stour. At the summit of the corresponding rise out of Bridge, the road, running exactly on the site of the Roman Wading Street, comes to that bleak and elevated table-land known as Barham Downs, the scene of Caesar's great batde with the Britons on July 23rd, a.d. 56. Twenty- seven thousand Roman soldiers, horse and foot, met the wild rush of the Britons, who, with the usual undisciplined and untaught courage of uncivilised races, flung themselves upon the invaders and were thrown back by the impenetrable wall of the serried phalanxes. Recoiling dismayed from this reception, they were instantly pursued by the Roman cavalry and cut up into isolated bands, who fought courage- ously all that fatal day in the dense woodlands. Protected by mounds and trenches defended with 63 64 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY palisades of stakes cunningly interwoven with brush- wood, they prolonged the hopeless contest until nightfall, and then fell back. Caesar, describing these woodland forts as oppida, gives especial at- tention to one particularly troublesome stronghold. " Being repulsed," he writes, " they withdrew them- selves into the woods and reached a place which they had prepared before, having closed all approaches to it by felled timber." This retreat was captured by the soldiers of the Seventh Legion, who, throw- ing up a mound against it, advanced, holding their shields over their heads in the military formation known as " the tortoise," and drove out the de- fenders at the sword's point. This, the last place to hold out, is, despite the eighteen and a half centuries that have passed, still to be seen in Bourne Park, on the summit of Bridge Hill, and is familiarly known in the neighbourhood as "Old England's Hole." "Never forget," the old countryfolk have been wont to impress their children — " never forget that this is Old England's Hole, and that on this spot a last stand for freedom was made by your British forefathers." Everyone in the neighbourhood knows Old England's Hole. It is seen beside the road, on the right hand, just where the cutting through the crest of the hill, made in 1829, to ease the pull-up for the coach-horses, begins. At that same time the course of the road was very slightly diverted, and, instead of actually impinging upon this ancient historic landmark, as before, was made to run a few feet away. Now the spot is seen across the fence of the park, the old course of the road still traceable beside it, as a slightly depressed grassy track, N OS A COTTAGE TABLET, LVMPNE. the sea, over crumbling earthy cliffs, tangled with impenetrable bracken, blackberry brambles, and hazel coppices. This is the especial district of that fine prose legend, " The Leech of Folke- stone " — " Mrs. Bother- by's Story," as Ingoldsby names it. The place has ever been the home of superstition and the miraculous. To quote Ingoldsby himself, " Here it was, in the neighbouring chapelry, the site of which may yet be traced by the curious antiquary, that Elizabeth Barton, the ' Holy Maid of Kent,' had commenced that series of supernatural pranks which eventually procured for her head an unenvied elevation upon London Bridge." Although that eminent pluralist and cautious though fiery reformer, Erasmus, was Rector of Aldington in 1 5 1 1, and opposed, alike by policy and temperament, to shams and spiritual trickery, the old leaven of super- stition worked freely in his time, and, indeed, survived 148 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY until recent years. Nay, more than that, these solitudes still harbour beliefs in the uncanny. The district, as of old, has an ill name, and the warlocks and other unholy subjects of Satan, once reported to make its wild recesses their favourite rendezvous, are found even now, in confidential interludes, to be not wholly vanished from the rural imagination. The moralist, from his lofty pinnacle, of course condemns these darkling survivals, but there be ,-r -" ,;av A KENTISH FARM. those, not so committed to matter-of-fact, who, re- volting from the obvious and the commonplace, welcome the surviving folklore, and, plunging into its haunts, forget awhile the fashion of Folkestone, Sandgate, and Hythe. The allusion in "The Leech of Folkestone" to the " neighbouring chapelry " is a reference to an ancient chapel of Our Lady whose roofless walls are still to be found on the undercliff at the road- side hamlet of Court-at-Street, situated on a little FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD i 49 unobtrusive plateau midway between the level of the road from Hythe to Aldington and the drop to Romney Marsh. This, in those old days, was one of those minor places of pilgrimage which, «5"'V^V THE RUINED CHAPEL, COURT-AT-STREET. possessing only an inferior collection of relics and being situated in out-of-the-way nooks and corners, could not command the crowds and the rich offer- ings common at such shrines as those of St. Thomas ISO THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY a Becket, and other saints of his calibre. It is, indeed, a shy and retiring place, and the stranger not in search of it and not careful to make minute inquiries would most certainly miss the spot. It is gained down a short steep trackway beside the Court Lodge Farm, and, when found, forms a pleasing and unconventional peep — the delight of the artist, and at the same time his despair, because he cannot hope to convey into his sketch that last accent of romance the place owns. Here, where the track dips down and becomes a hollow way, the great gnarled roots of the thickly-clustering trees are seen in their lifelong desperate clutch at the powdering soil, and the trunks, wreathed here and there with ivy, shouldering one another in their competition for light and sustenance, form a heavy and massive frame to the picture beyond — a picture of ruined chapel and sullen pool, fed by landsprings from the broken cliff, and level marsh beyond, bounded only by that insistent row of Martello towers, and by the dull silver of the sea. The story of the " Holy Maid of Kent " is intim- ately connected with this chapel. It seems that in 1525 there was living at the cottage still standing at Aldington, and called " Cobb's Hall," one Thomas Cobb, bailiff to my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, who, among his many other fat manors, owned all this expanse of Aldington, then largely a hunting forest. We do not know much of Thomas Cobb, but of his servant-maid, Elizabeth Barton, we possess a fund of information, now humorous and then tragical. Like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth Barton was quite a humble and uneducated peasant-girl. Her very name is rustic, " barton " being a term even now in FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 151 use to denote a barn or cattle-shed. In midst of her service at " Cobb's Hall " this poor Elizabeth is stricken down by an extraordinary complication of internal bodily disease and mental affliction. Alas ! poor Elizabeth — no longer shall you scour pots or cleanse plates ; no more for you are the homely domestic duties of the bailiff's home ! Wasted by sufferings that all the arts of the pur- blind medical practitioners of that time could not assuage, those doctors de- clared that there was some- thing more than ordinary in her affliction. Some merely thought their science not sufficient for a cure ; others, anxious for the professional credit of themselves and the practice of medicine, darkly hinted that here was an instance of demoniacal possession ; and others yet, listening to the half-conscious ravings of the unhappy girl, took another view, and, de- voutly crossing themselves, averred that this was a visitation from God, and that she was becoming possessed of a divine knowledge of things to be. A perusal of the quaint and voluminous contemporary records of Elizabeth Barton's career disposes one to OLD SUNDIAL, ALDINGTON. 152 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY the belief that her ailments brought on a condition of temporary, but recurrent, religious mania. She had always been a devout girl, as the parish priest, Richard Masters, was ready to declare ; but neither he, nor any of his time, knew anything of mania of the religious variety, and when, called to her bedside, he saw and heard her in trances and somnambulistic excursions, implicitly believed that the " very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments " she was heard to narrate were inspired. Those who had believed her de- moniacally possessed were refuted by these pious sayings. The Devil, it was obvious, had no part in these things, but the Holy Ghost was working, through the medium of this poor peasant girl, to great events. That was a time when such manifestations were, from the point of view of the Church, eminently desirable. Reformation was knocking at the gates of Popery — thunderous knocks and not to be denied. The Roman Catholic clergy and their religion were fast becoming discredited, and it was necessary to bolster up it and them by any means. The story of Joan of Arc, although a hundred years old, was by no means forgotten, and it was thought that what the farm-maiden of Domremy could do for the Crown of France, this native product of Kentish soil might achieve for the Catholic Church in England. So Richard Masters, enthusiastic, took horse and rode all the way from Aldington to Lambeth Palace, where the old and doting Archbishop Warham, in fear and rage at the impious dealings of Henry VIII. with Holy Church, received the story of this FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 153 Kentish miracle with a hope that something might come of it. A good deal actually did so come, but not greatly to the advantage of Roman Catholicism. " Keep you," said he, " diligent accompt of all her utterances : they come surely of God, and tell her "that she is not to refuse or hide His goodness and works." As a result of this ghostly advice of the Arch- bishop, Masters returned and persuaded Bailiff Cobb that pot-scouring and scullery-work were occupations distinctly beneath the dignity of one clearly the elect of the Holy Spirit, and she was promoted immedi- ately to the place of an honoured guest in his house. At the same time she experienced a recovery, and became again the clumsy, big-footed country wench of yore. Meanwhile, however, the fame of her " prophecies " was bruited about in all that country- side — the cunning Richard Masters saw to that — and Cobb's house became a place of pilgrimage. Some came for the merely vulgar purpose of having their fortunes told ; others sought the laying on of hands, for one so gifted could surely cure the ailing ; and all combined to make Cobb's life a misery. None was more disappointed at her recovery and consequent descent from supernatural heights to her former commonplace level than Elizabeth herself, and she determined to simulate her former natural trances. This iniquity seems to have been suggested by the Church, in the persons of two monks sent by the Archbishop from Canterbury. Those worthies, the cellarer of the Priory of Christ Church, one Doctor Bocking, and Dan William Hadley — took her under instruction. They educated the previously ignorant girl in the marvellous legends of the old 154 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY Catholic female saints, taught her to believe herself one of that company, and coached her in all the abstruse doctrines of their religion. In her recurring cataleptic states, sometimes real, but oftener feigned, she re-delivered all these doctrines, and naturally astonished those who had known her for ignorant and absolutely without education, into a belief in her divine mission. At this juncture it was thought desirable to transfer her to the neighbouring Chapel of Our ■sffWiWf- ■■■'■' • ■ . 1 ALDINGTON. Lady, where she might not only work good to the Church in general, but attract pilgrims and their offerings to the shrine, which of late had been doing very bad business, and was scarcely self- supporting. No one in our own times understands the art of advertisement better than did the religious of those days, and the occasion of her transference from Cobb's Hall to the Chapel was made the occasion for a great ceremonial. She had given out that she " would never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image of Our Lady " at that place, and, indeed, declared that the FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 155 Virgin had appeared to her and promised recovery on her obedience. On that great day — the thing had been made so public — there were over two thousand persons present to witness the promised miracle, the whole concourse singing the Litany and repeating psalms and orations while Elizabeth was borne to the spot on a litter, acting to perfection the part of one possessed, " her face wondrously disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out and lying upon her cheeks. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had been in a tunne, her lips not greatly moving ; she all that while continuing by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it told anything of the joys of Heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and con- trarywise, when it told anything of Hell, it spake so horribly and terribly that it put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession, and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole " ; and no wonder, for she was shamming all the while, with the aid of a cunning ventriloquist, who thus spoke so sweetly of Heaven and so horribly of Hell. But this " miracle " so successfully imposed upon the people that she was, without exception, regarded as a saint. The Virgin, on second thoughts, per- sonally desired her not to take up her residence in the Chapel, but to take Dr. Bocking for her spiritual father, to assume the name of Sister 156 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY Elizabeth, and to proceed to the Priory of St. Sepulchre, in Canterbury. The blasphemies easy to the Catholics of that time could not possibly be better shown than by this narration. Her progress of impudent imposture at Canter- bury is more than surprising — it astounds the inquirer. She delivered oracles, which were printed and commanded a large sale, and to her, for advice on the religious questions then agitating the realm, resorted many of the noblest and best in the land. Of course, with the tuition and under the protection of the Church, her opinions and advice were dis- tinctly against the King, whom she grew so rash as to threaten, on the question of his divorce and re-marriage. Nay, more, she found it possible to admonish the Pope. Sir Thomas More believed in her holy mission ; Catherine of Aragon, the divorced Queen, supported her ; Henry alone cared not a rap for her prophecies of disaster. She actually forced a way into his presence at Canterbury, on his return from France. He should not, she declared, reign a month after he married Anne Boleyn, and " should die a villain's death " ; but he married her — and nothing happened. Strange to say — strange, after all we have heard of Henry's ferocity — nothing either happened at that time to the " Holy Maid " herself. She postponed the date of the coming disaster — put it forward a month — and still nothing happened. Greatly to the surprise of many, the King still reigned and seemed happy enough. Meanwhile the most extravagant claims were made for the " Holy Maid." Once every fortnight, from the chapel in the Priory, she was, amidst celestial FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 157 melodies, taken up to Heaven, to God and the saints. Her passage to the chapel lay through the monks' dormitory, and, according to the acts of accusation levelled against her, her pilgrimages to that chapel were not altogether so innocent of carnal things as could have been desired. Angels constantly visited her in her cell, and when they had departed came the Devil himself, horned, hoofed, and breathing sulphureous fumes, in manner appro- priate. Accounts the monks gave of this last visitor were, however, not always received with that respectful belief anticipated, and so the Maid submitted to a hole being burnt in her hand, to convince the incredulous that Old Nick had come and attempted her virtue. It is impossible to quote the grossly indecent monkish stories ; but they are ingenious, as also was their practice of escorting pilgrims to the outside of her cell when the Evil One was supposed to be present. The visitors observed with their own physical eyes, and smelt, with their own nostrils, the " great stinking smokes, savouring grievously," that then issued from the crevices of the door ; and went away, fearing greatly. Later, when she was arrested, a stock of brimstone and assafcetida was discovered in her apartment, and these diabolical stinks found ready explanation. She ran a course of three years' blasphemous deception before the Act of Attainder was prepared, under which she and several of her accomplices were arrested, found guilty of high treason, and executed at Tyburn. That same Richard Masters who discovered her existence to the religious world, Dr. Bocking^ and four others suffered with her, 158 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY on April 2 1 st, 1534. Her last words have their own interest. " Hither," said she, addressing the people, " I am come to die. I have been not only the cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved, but am also the cause of the death of all these persons which at this time here suffer. And yet I am not so much to be blamed, con- sidering that it was well known unto these Teamed men that I was a poor wench without learning ; and therefore they might have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not proceed in no such sort ; but their capacities and learning could right well judge that they were altogether feigned. But because the things which I feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost, and not I that did them. And I, being puffed up with their praises, fell into a proud and foolish fantasye with myself, and thought I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me to this case, and for the which I now cry to God and the King's Highness most heartily mercy, and desire all you good people to pray to God to have mercy on me, and all them that here suffer with me." " If," says Lambarde, who was amused by the Maid's impudent career — " if these companions could have let the King of the land alone, they might have plaied their pageants as freely as others have been permitted, howsoever it tended to the dishonour of the King of Heaven." CHAPTER XI FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD {cOlltillUcd) "Cobb's Hall" stands prominently to the left of the road, after passing by the village of Aldington, and is a very noticeable old half-timbered rustic COBB S HALL. dwelling-house, now interiorly divided into two cottages. In the up-stairs bedroom of one may be seen the remains of a fine decorative plaster ceiling and a strange pictorial plaster frieze surmounting a blocked-up fireplace. This singular design is old enough to have been here in Elizabeth Barton's 159 i6o THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY time, and she must have been familiar with its representations of Adam and Eve and their highly problematical surroundings of queer birds and beasts, not modelled from the life, and now, after centuries of wear and many coats of paint, so blunted and battered that it is difficult to tell certainly whether any particular plaster protuberance is intended for an elephant, a sheep, or a crow. To the left of Aldington, on a road through the "' •■"■""■, ^~Zr*s-----77?.-^: r : - ".:' ALDINGTON KNOLL. alder thickets, hugging the edge of the cliffs, is Aldington Knoll, a very remarkable hillock rising boldly and bare from above the surrounding brush- wood and coppices. In the legend of " The Leech of Folkestone " it is described as " a sort of woody promontory, in shape almost conical, its sides covered with thick underwood, above which is seen a bare and brown summit, rising like an Alp in miniature." To this spot it was that Master Marsh resorted, at the rising of the moon, for his meeting with the FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 161 conjuror, Aldrovando. Barham well chose this legendary Knoll of Aldington for that miraculous seance, for this is not only a well-known landmark, but is the subject of much folklore. Thus, the older rustics will tell how the Knoll is said to be guarded by drowned sailors, keeping watch and ward over a gigantic skeleton with a great sword, E1LSINGTON WOODS. unearthed " once upon a time " by a reckless digger for the treasure once popularly supposed to be buried here. Something very terrible happened to that unfortunate spadesman, and since then a general consensus of rustic opinion has left the Knoll alone. A local rhyme tells how — Where he dug the chark shone white To sea, like Calais Light ; but that is poetic license, the prehistoric barrow — for 1 1 1 62 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY ---- j zmm$ ■ "fssfl' 1 '" ■....-,.. -....-.■ ,...i..t,. iMr^ BILSINGTON PRIORY. such it seems to be— that crests the Knoll is of yellow sand and gravel. Beyond, in a tract of country thickly covered with scrubwood, is the village of Bilsington, with Bilsington Priory, now a farmhouse, standing remote in midst of eight hundred acres of copse. It is a grimly picturesque house, this desecrated Priory of St. Augustine, and doubly haunted— firstly by a prior who tells red-hot beads, and secondly by the spook of a woman who was murdered by her husband for accidentally smashing a trayfull of china. The nightly crashings are said by the most unveracious witnesses to still continue, but however that may be, the place certainly is haunted by innumerable owls, who roost fearlessly in some of the deserted rooms. FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 163 Away by the roadside is Bilsington village, its moated Court Lodge Farm and parish church grouped together. It was Bilsington bell that struck One ! in " The Leech of Folkestone," and advised Master Marsh that his torments were, for the time, over. By Ruckinge and Ham Street we come up Orlestone Hill, that " Quaker-coloured ravine " Kmvp, EILSINGTON CHURCH. described in the story of " Jerry Jarvis's Wig." " The road," says Ingoldsby, " had been cut deep below the surface of the soil, for the purpose of diminishing the abruptness of the descent, and as either side of the superincumbent banks was clothed with a thick mantle of tangled copsewood, the passage, even by day, was sufficiently obscure, the level beams of the rising or setting sun, as they 164 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY happened to enfilade the gorge, alone illuminating its recesses." The cutting is there to this day, but it must be confessed that neither it nor the hill are so steep as that description would have us believe. Here it was that the body of Humphry Bourne was found, ORLESTONE HILL. murdered by Joe Washford, demoniacally possessed and incited by the wig that Jerry Jarvis, the scoundrelly solicitor of Appledore, had given him. • From the little church of Orlestone that, with a picturesque black and white manor house crowns the hill, it is five miles into the market-town, and railway centre of Ashford. CHAPTER XII THE BACK OF BEYOND : THE HINTERLAND OF FOLKESTONE AND HYTHE The business of getting out of Folkestone is a weariful aifair, for there are not only the heavy rises in the roads to be surmounted, but the great rolling chalk hills that shut in the valleys reverberate the heat of the sun to a degree that is often stifling, and in these latter days the tiresome hindmost suburbs of Folkestone conspire to render the explorer's lot a hard one, going back dustily inland, beyond Radnor Park, until they join forces with what was once the rural village of Cheriton Street. It is a remarkable stretch of country to which one comes at last ; a tumbled area of bare, grassy chalk downs, rising up into bold sugarloaf peaks and cones, very dry and parching. Shorncliffe Camp is hard by, occupying the high ground between Cheriton and Sandgate, and up and down this valley and these hillsides it is the fate of the brave defenders of their country to be manoeuvred, in season and out. When the soldiers of Shorncliffe Camp look down from their windy eyrie upon the long, dry course of the valley, they feel tired and thirsty, and as they look on it every day this amounts to saying that the thirst of Shorncliffe Camp is a transcendent thirst, and not to be 165 1 66 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY measured by ordinary standards. The sweating swaddy's acute thirst is induced by reminiscent and prospective agonies of drought in the reviews and field-days, past and to come, in that waterless bottom. He and his forebears have been learning their martial trade here for considerably over a hundred years, for it was in 1794 that Shorncliffe Camp was first founded, to house the despondent and ragged troops landed from the disastrous retreat of Sir John Moore upon Corunna. They learn their drill with every circumstance of unmilitary squalor and untidiness at Shorncliffe, and although they are turned out with pomp and display on grand occasions, the dirt and raggedness of the camp itself, and the makeshift out-at-elbows appearance of men and material, do not form a picture of military glory. Tommy " at home " at Shorncliffe is a very different creature from the oiled and curled darling of the nursemaids on the sea-front at Hythe or Seabrook ; and with unshaven face, short pipe in mouth, in shirt-sleeves and with braces dangling about his legs, wandering among the domestic refuse and garbage that plentifully bestrew the place, looks very little like a hero. It is very pleasant to leave the struggling shops of the ultimate Folkestone suburbs behind, to forget the strenuous struggles with bankruptcy waged by those pioneer shopkeepers at the Back of Beyond, and to bid good-bye at length to the last outposts of the pavements, the kerbstones, and the lamp- standards. It is not, however, so pleasing, having put all these evidences of civilisation behind one, to observe, peering over the distant hillside, a THE BACK OF BEYOND 167 vast building which on inquiry proves to be the workhouse, another, and a rather grim, reminder of that civilisation which in one extremity flaunts in silks and satins on the Folkestone Leas, and in the other sets its servants, the ministrants to all that display, to eke out an objectless existence in stuff and corduroy within this giant barrack. It is the dark reverse of the bright picture of south coast life and fashion. It is a relief to turn away from this evidence of Folkestone's prosperity, and to secure a quiet hillside nook whence, on one of those insufferably hot days invariably selected for elaborate evolutions and parades, to watch the sweating Tommies harried up and down the blistering valley in the service of their country, to the raucous and unintelligible yells of commanding officers, comfortably and coolly supervising their heated efforts from the easeful vantage-point of horseback. The contemplative pilgrim finds the energy thus displayed by rank and file to be what a tradesman would call " splendid value " for the reward of a shilling a day, but dolefully admits to himself that not for less than four times that pay can he obtain a man to do a job of honest, but less laborious and exacting, work in a private capacity. Up yonder, on the hillside, the signallers are working the heliograph and energetically waving flags. Their energy makes one positively feel tired. It is " Caesar's Camp " whence the bright dot-and- dash signal-flashes of the heliograph are proceeding ; if we were clever enough, or duly trained, we could read the messages sent. We must not suppose, because "Caesar's Camp" is so named, that Caesar 1 68 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY himself, or any other Roman, ever camped there : if he had camped in half the places so called, he would have had no time for fighting. Julius Caesar, in fact, is said to have camped, and Queen Elizabeth to have slept, in more places than their poor ghosts would recognise if they were ever allowed to revisit these glimpses of the moon. Nay, even in " regions Caesar never knew " his camps absurdly appear. It is quite certain, for example, that the great general was never in South Africa, and yet " Caesar's Camp," overlooking Ladysmith, was the scene of much fighting in the second Boer War. A complete change from this scene of martial glory and perspiration is Cheriton itself, where the ancient church stands on a hilltop, away from Cheriton Street. In the rear go the chasing lights and shades of sun and clouds, racing over the yellow-green of the grassy hills ; ahead plunges a tree-shaded winding line leading unexpectedly to the sea. It is the one unspoiled little rural oasis in the urban and suburban deserts of a seaboard that has grown fashionable. All too soon it ends, and the villas of Seabrook are reached. Seabrook and Hythe we have already seen. Now let us strike boldly inland, and, leaving Hythe to the left, tackle the perpetual rise and fall of the roads that lead past the romantic castle of Saltwood to the bosky glades of Westenhanger. Saltwood Castle is a peculiarly interesting object in the Ingoldsby Country, for it was the place where the four knights who murdered Becket assembled, on the night before the tragedy, and FitzUrse, among them, was, as we have already seen, claimed by Barham as his ancestor. The massive circular THE BACK OF BEYOND 169 stone entrance-towers of the Castle come into view as we turn inland and surmount the crest of the hill at the back of Hythe. From this hilltop it is seen how exquisitely beautiful was the situation of Saltwood in days of old, before Hythe and its neighbouring mushroom townlets had begun to throw out their villas and suburban residences upon the spurs of the downs, flouting the sylvan solitude WWit SALTWOOD CASTLE. and mediaeval aloofness of that secluded fortress. It lies a mile inland, at the head of a green and moist valley, still thickly wooded, sloping to the sea. We do not fully realise, until we take thought, the due meaning of that beautiful name of Saltwood ; but, dwelling upon its old history, and in imagination sweeping away the modern accretions of houses, it is possible to recover the look of that Saltwood of old, when the woodlands were even more dense than now, and extended to the very margin of the sea ; 170 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY when a little pebbly brook came prattling from the bosom of the downs beyond, and, overhung by forest trees, found its way to the beach. The high tides then oozed some little distance up the valley, and the trees dipped their branches in the mingled waters of sea and stream. No roads, save the merest bridle-paths, then led up to the Castle, whose towers rose from amid the encircling trees like some fortress of fairyland. From very early times Saltwood Castle was held by the Archbishops of Canterbury. It was, indeed, the seizure of this archiepiscopal castle and demesne by the Crown, and the grant of them to Randulf de Broc, that formed one of Becket's bitter grievances against Henry II. De Broc and his relatives were not only seated on the Archbishop's property, but were given the custody of his palace at Canterbury during his long six years' banishment, and on his return in December 1170, strenuously set themselves to be as insolent and as injurious as possible. Randulf himself hunted down the Archbishop's deer with the Archbishop's own hounds, and seized a vessel off" Hythe laden with wine, a present from the King to Becket, killing some of the crew and casting the survivors into the dungeons of Pevensey. It was ill business quarrelling with that heady family, unanimously bent upon spiting and spoiling his Grace, from bloody murder and the seizing and destroying of property down to acts of wanton and provocative petty buffoonery. While Randulf de Broc was committing murder and piracy upon the high seas, his kinsman Robert, a renegade monk, on Christmas Eve waylaid one of the Arch- bishop's sumpter-mules and one of his horses and THE BACK OF BEYOND 171 cut off their tails. It was this minor indignity that made the greater impression upon Becket's mind. For it he cursed and excommunicated both Randulf and Robert on Christmas Day from the nave pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. Saltwood Castle, however, and the De Brocs bore a still further part in the tragedy of Becket, now fast drawing to its final act. "When the four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Bret, rushed forth from the King's presence at his court of Bur, in Normandy, on the night of December 24th, with murder in their hearts, they agreed to cross the Channel by two different routes, landing at Dover and at Winchelsea and meeting here, in this fortalice of Saltwood, where hatred sat embattled, already excom- municated and given over in any case to damna- tion, and so ready for any deed. Ghastly legends, theatrical in the rich gloom of their staging, tell how the four from over sea and Randulf de Broc met here, and plotted together on this night of December 28 th the deed that was to be done on the morrow ; arranging all the details of that act of blood in the dark, with extinguished candles, fearful of seeing each other's faces — so strong a hold did the event take of the popular imagination. The next morning, calling together a troop of soldiers in the King's name, they galloped off to Canterbury, along the Stone Street, to the commission of that crime whose echoes have come down to us, still hoarsely reverberant, despite the passing of more than seven centuries. But it must not be supposed that here at Salt- wood we see the veritable walls that sheltered those 172 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY assassins. There is nothing remaining at Saltwood that can take us back to the days of Becket. The oldest, as well as the most imposing, part is the entrance, whose great drum-towers, built or restored by the cruel and haughty Archbishop Courtenay about 1350, give a very striking impression to one who stands beneath them of the almost impregnable strength of such mediaeval strongholds before the days of heavy ordnance — the walls are so thick and smooth, the loophole windows so high up and small, the stout gate so strengthened with iron. If to force such a place seems almost impossible in cold blood, what of the time when it was defended by determined persons who heaved heavy stones from the battlements, so high up, upon the devoted heads of the equally determined persons, so far below ; when the molten lead poured down in silvery cascades, to burn through the flesh to the very bone, and the winged missiles sped from the arbalasts into the liver of many a gallant warrior ? — The oak door is heavy and brown; And with iron it is plated and machicollated, To pour boiling oil and lead down ; How you'd frown Should a ladle-full fall on your crown ! One is altogether indisposed to quarrel with the very thoroughgoing restoration that has given these great entrance-towers so striking an air of newness, for one instinctively feels that these towers must have looked so in times when the garrison was still kept up. While the place remained a fortress- residence it would have been simply suicidal not THE BACK OF BEYOND 173 to maintain the entrance in the utmost state of repair. The arms of Courtenay — the three-pointed label and the three bezants — supported by an angel, still remain over the entrance, but Courtenay himself, before whose frown his unfortunate tenants trembled, and in whose rare and uncertain smiles they dared to breathe in deprecating fashion, is forgotten locally. In Cornwall, in Wales, or in any Celtic part of Great Britain he would have survived in wild diabolic legend, but in Kent, which has been phlegmatic and matter-of-fact ever since Hengist and Horsa and the rest of the Teutons landed, he has long been consigned to dryasdust records, where his memory lingers, inanimate. When a little of the dust has been banged out of him, he can be made to strut the stage again and lord it once more, like the very full-blooded tyrant he was, zealous in upholding the spiritualities and the temporalities of the Church, and fanatic in the exaction of deference and manorial dues to himself. Did any poor hind or woodsman offend, ever so unconsciously, in failing of that deference, why, let him be seized and flung into some Little Ease or earthly purgatory, damply underground, there to reflect, with stripes, upon the majesty of Arch- bishops in general, and of Courtenays in particular, and to wonder when it shall please my lord to release him. Meanwhile, his Grace has forgotten all about his victim, and is thundering in his manorial court against the trembling bailiffs and townsfolk of his manor of Hythe, who have not done him, as he imagines, that yeoman service which is his due, and have now come to compound 174 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY for that dereliction with fines in good coin and propitiatory offerings for his table, such as porpoises (the old records call them "porpusses ") and others of the beastly dishes that mediasval times delighted in. All these folk had cause to rejoice when his exacting Grace died in 1396, and made way for a milder occupant of the seat of St. Augustine, but they were not happy until the Reformation came and the Church and the manor parted com- pany. The property now belongs to the Deedes family, but it needs no very prophetic eye to discern the ultimate fate of Saltwood's ownership. It lies too near the gates of the consorted towns of Hythe and Folkestone and their satellites to be much longer suffered to maintain its present semi-solitude, and the day will come when it and its romantic setting of woods will be offered to and purchased by those towns as a public park. The landscape- gardener will be let loose upon it ; winding gravel paths of the kind that takes a league of path to go a mile of distance will be made, and the public will be requested to " keep off the grass " and to "place all refuse in the receptacle provided for the purpose " : all very parlourmaidenly, and the essence of neatness and order, but — well, there ! one can imagine the choleric ghosts of De Broc and Courtenay and those of many a gross man- at-arms or warlike seneschal walking on the grass in derision, or with ineffective kicks of impalpable mailed feet seeking to demolish the receptacles. Magnificently-wooded hills stretch from Saltwood inland to Westenhanger, and the delightful road goes full in view of the gorgeous sylvan beauties of Sandling Park, presently to come to a broad THE BACK OF BEYOND 175 highway running due north and south, beside whose straight course the ruined, ivy-clad outworks and towers of an ancient mansion are seen, in whose midst is planted an eighteenth-century mansion. This is Westenhanger House, erected by Squire Champneys in place of that older manor house which was built on the site of a still more ancient fortified place by Henry VIII. Like many another manor of ancient descent, Westenhanger has been WESTENHANGER HOUSE. many times in and out of Royal possession. Its odd name, inviting inquiry, really means no more than, in modern parlance, " Westwood," and is derived from the Saxon angra. It is mentioned in a deed of St. Augustine's monastery as " Le Hangre," and was early divided into two portions, Westen and Osten (or eastern) Hanger. Remains of the moat that once surrounded the old fortified mansion are still to be seen, together with the defensible towers. Westenhanger stands upon the old Stone Street 176 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY from Lympne to Canterbury, surrounded by densely wooded parks and neighboured unromantically in these times by a railway — nay, more, a railway junction. One might suppose that the force of modernity could no further go, but that supposition would be an error, for the grounds of the famous old place have been of late years converted into a racecourse, and Westenhanger House itself is given up to the business of a new turf enterprise — a sufficiently thorough change from those remote times when it was a bower of Henry II. and the Fair Rosamond, that beauteous harlot of whom Queen Eleanor was so very properly jealous, and for whose safety from the queenly nails and tongue the infatuated king built several artful retreats in various parts of the country. The chief bower of the wanton Rosamond was at Woodstock. Its like, according to the old ballad-writers, was never seen. It had a hundred and fifty doors, and a vast number of secret passages, so cunningly contrived that no one could find a way in or out without the aid of a thread. Despite those precautions, or possibly because there were a hundred and forty-nine doors too many, the furious Queen Eleanor did enter and poisoned the " Rosa Mundi " ; and " a good job, too," will be the verdict of most people with properly-developed domestic instincts. Rosa- mond was buried in all the unmerited pomp and odour of sanctity in Godstow Nunnery. If that shameless young person had remained at Westenhanger, where there was, apparently not so embarrassing a choice of doors, she might have escaped the Queen's vengeance altogether. Nothing, however, at Westen- hanger is of so great an age as Rosamond's day, THE BACK OF BEYOND 177 although, to be sure, the remaining angle-towers were built only some forty years later. Stone Street, that goes so broad and straight on towards Canterbury, is not the deserted road that many are inclined to think it. Once a week it is populated by a stream of carriers' covered carts going between Canterbury and the obscure villages on either side of the Roman way, not yet within touch of railways ; and some very quaint survivals are to be found on those occasions. There are carriers from sleepy hollows who are as russet in complexion and clothing from head to foot as the soil, and as much a product of it as the trees and fruits. These are those true Kentish men in whose mouths the sound of " th " is impossible, and who pronounce the definite article " the " like a Frenchman. To hear a Kentish rustic holding forth upon the iniquities of " de wedder " when he is intent upon abusing the climate is as humorous an interlude as to listen to a Kentish housewife who talks in unaccustomed plurals and asks the hungry tourist at tea if he will have any more " bread and butters." Others there are in a way less rustic, if equally provincial. These are those grand seigneurs in the carrying line who sport ancient silk or beaver hats and wear broadcloth of an antique cut — broadcloth that was once black and hats that of old were glossy. If the clothes can scarcely be suspected of being heirlooms, the hats certainly are. They are extremely rare and genuine stove-pipes, calculated to impress the rural neighbours with the dignity of the wearers and to extinguish the casual stranger at Canterbury with spasms of laughter. " He were giv' me by my feyder," said Carrier Hogben of Postling, who, 12 178 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY alas, is now gathered to his kin in the rural church- yard ; and that amazing headgear seemed to gather respect to itself when referred to in the masculine gender. It seemed to stand more upright, and to look more rigid, if that were possible. " Yes," he repeated, " m' feyder givvimee, and 'e's still a good 'un. Dey don't mek 'at's like 'e now," he added with pride, as he carefully brushed it the wrong way with his coat-sleeve, so that the nap stood up like the fur of a cat when it sees a strange dog. One used to heartily agree that hats of that sort are not made nowadays. Hogben was then wont to give a grunt of satisfaction. " Cloes used to be made to last," he would say, as he carefully replaced that gruesome tile in the box that had held it close upon forty years, "and folks when dey'd got a good 'at, took care of 'im." Having put away that impressive head-covering and resumed his everyday clothes, " Mr. Jeremiah Hogben," as he was respectfully known by his rustic neighbours on carrying days and Sundays, became simple " old Jerry " or " old Hogben " for the rest of the week. It was as though a king had relin- quished his robes and regalia and come among the people as one of themselves. Mr. Hogben, in common with the rest of the countryside, had a good deal of inaccurate lore respecting the Stone Street. According to him, it was made by the builders of Canterbury Cathedral, to convey stone quarried at Lympne to the scene of operations. He declined to believe in the Romans. They were "foreigners," and as such, incapable of road-making — " or anything else," as he sweepingly declared. Mr. Hogben had seen a foreigner once : THE BACK OF BEYOND 179 an Italian with a monkey and a hurdy-gurdy organ, who had found his way to Postling by mistake — the only manner in which strangers ever do find them- selves in that village. Not having been present at this rencounter, it is difficult to determine which of the trio was the more astonished — the monkey, the Italian, or Mr. Hogben. Presumably the monkey, for at sight of the carrier and his hat the terrified animal escaped up a tree, whence his master only recovered him after much trouble and many "Per Baccos ! " " Swearing awful, he was," according to Hogben. " Do you understand Italian, then ? " we asked. " Lor' bless ye, no, sir ; whatever put dat in yer 'ed : no Eyetalian for me, so long as I can talk Inglish ; and when dey tells me dat such as dem, mid deir monkeys and orgins, made this ere road what we're travelling on, why, I begs to not believe a bit of it." " But the modern Italians and the ancient Romans are not precisely the same people." " So gentlemen like you've told me afore ; but what I says is, dey both comes from Italy, don't dey ? Well den, it stands to reason dey're the same. No people what goes about the country playing hurdy-gurdies ever made this road, I'll stake me life on't." If Hogben had no respect for foreigners, his manner indicated that he owned an awed kind of deference to the memory of Lord Rokeby of Mount Morris, past which park he had driven on his way to and from Canterbury for many years. Which of the several Barons Rokeby it was whose doings in lifetime and whose post-mortem pranks were the 180 THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY theme of his discourses, does not appear. " He had a goolden bart" (he meant "bath") "for Sundays and a marble one for week-days, and he'd sit in 'em all de marciful day long and read de papers and have his bit o' grub. When he got tired o' dat, and t'ought he'd like a stroll, he'd just nip outer de bart and walk about de park, as naked as Adam before dey inwented fig-leaves. An' now " (? cause and effect) " he drives down de Stone Street every midnight, wid his head in his lap and four coal- black haases, breading fire. No, I can't say I ever seed him — and dunnosiwanto : reckon I'd run awaiy. I knewed a man what did see 'im, and it gran' nigh druv 'im offn 'is *ed." Such are the legends still current at the Back of Beyond, but they are dwindling away. Even old Hogben could find it possible to say that " ghostesses " were already " quite out-o'-doors " — by which he meant that they were out of fashion. But he was bung-full of smuggling lore, and could illustrate his stories with object lessons, as he drove his steady course along the Stone Street. " 'See dat tree," he would say, in passing a copse. " Dat's where de Ransleys " — naming a ferocious family of smugglers, men and women, notorious for their cruelties and out- rages — " dat's where de Ransleys tied one of deir haases, before dey were taken off" to Maidstone Gaol." The horse was starved to death, thus haltered, and the gang, who had been known to beat a Revenue officer to death, were almost heart-broken when they heard of it. Such contradictions are we all. CHAPTER XIII the back of beyond (continued) If we continued along this straight road, the Mecca of the Stone Street carriers, Canterbury, would be reached again. Instead, we turn to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the Elham Valley and the hoary village of Lyminge, looking very new when viewed from a little distance, by reason of the sudden eruption of red-roofed villas come to disturb the ancient seclusion. Have a care how you pro- nounce the name of this village, lest by some uncovenanted rendering you proclaim yourself a stranger. The cautious in these matters always accost the first inhabitant met with, and ask him the name of the place, a method never known to fail unless the encounter takes place outside the post-ofHce and the inhabitant be a crusty one who, curtly, and with an over-the-shoulder jerk of the thumb, says, " You'll find it written up there." By the united testimony of the phonetic spelling of the thirteenth century and the twentieth century pronunciation of the natives, " Lyminge " should be enunciated with a short, not a long, "y" for the first syllable ; while one should, for the second, pronounce as in " singe " or