When seeking for the bright, sweet English daylight, who better could be our guide than Geoffrey Chaucer?

We have outlined briefly the story of the shrine, and of the resort to it of pilgrims high and low; but in order to paint effectively and to call up a true picture of mediÆval Canterbury, let us betake ourselves back through the centuries and set out from Southwark on an April morning, adding our humble selves to that immortal band of Canterbury Pilgrims, who whiled away the tedium of the journey with jest and story. Let Chaucer limn the day for us:—

They formed a company of nine-and-twenty, and in fellowship we’ll go toward Canterbury, with a right merry cheer. This is our route—

then—

and so along our pilgrims’ way through the pleasant country of Kent until we reach

maybe Harbledown, where we will loiter anon. And so to close sight of the Angel Steeple and of the hospitable red roofs nestling round the church, wherein stands the shrine we have set forth to see. Then down the steep way into the city, perchance to the music of Canterbury bells. We have arrived toward dusk, and naturally we shall at once seek out our lodging for the night, as did Chaucer’s company—

Alack, we cannot lay our heads under the same roof as did they—

There is little room for doubt but that this inn, the “Chequers of the Hope,” occupied the west corner of the angle formed by the High Street and Mercery Lane, hard by the old Butter Market and Christchurch Gate. Of the original building only fragments remain, for fire was only too busy here in the year 1865. Here was the dormitory of the Hundred Beds, the Pantry, the Buttery, the Dining Room, and the beautiful garden with its herbs and flowers, to all of which the writer of the “Supplementary Tale” makes reference. In olden days Canterbury might almost have been described

as a city of churches, religious houses, and hostelries and other accommodations for pilgrims—that was the atmosphere of mediÆval Canterbury. On the opposite side of High Street to the “Chequers” was a lodging for pilgrims erected by Prior Chillenden in the fifteenth century, which was for long years after the Reformation an ordinary inn for travellers.

Pilgrims came throughout the year in companies large and small, but the throng and press was tremendous at the festival of the Martyrdom on December 29, and in summer for the festival of the Translation on July 7, which also was the first day of Canterbury Fair. Larger still the crowds in the years of jubilee, 1270, 1320, 1370, 1420, 1470, and 1520, when on each fiftieth anniversary of the Translation the feast lasted for two weeks and indulgences were granted to all pilgrims.

Beside the inns, there was plenty other accommodation for pilgrims of all degrees, in the hospitals and convents, and, above all, in the Priory of Christ Church.

The city fathers, too, took their share in the festivals, among other entertainments providing a pageant of the Martyrdom; and here follow a few quaint extracts from an account of the expenditure one year upon the same: “Paid to carpenters hewing and squaring of timber for the pageant, 8d. For making St Thomas’s cart, with a pair of wheels, 5s. 8d. Paid a carpenter and his fellows making of the pageant, by four days, taking between them, by the day, finding themselves, 14d., 4s. 8d.... For 114 feet of board, bought for flooring the same pageant, 2s. 8d.... For nails, 7½d. For tallow for the wheels, 1d. For ale spent 1d. To four men to help to carry the pageant, 8d.... For gunpowder, bought at Sandwich, 3s. 4d.... For linen cloth for St Thomas’s garment, 6d. For a dozen and a half of tin silver, 9d. For glue and pack-thread, 3d.... To John a Kent for the hire of a sword, 4d. And for washing of an albe and an amys, 2d.”

Our pilgrims, who seem to have arrived fairly early in day,

and then went along Mercery Lane, under the great gateway—as we all still may go—and then broke upon their view a sight different in many ways, yet in many the same as now meets the eye. Dean Stanley has described it well for us: “The pilgrims would stream into the Precincts. The outside aspect of the Cathedral can be imagined without much difficulty. A wide cemetery, which, with its numerous gravestones, such as that on the south side of Peterborough Cathedral, occupied the vacant space still called the Churchyard, divided from the garden beyond by the old Norman arch since removed to a more convenient spot. In the cemetery were interred such pilgrims as died during their stay in Canterbury. The external aspect of the Cathedral itself, with the exception of the numerous statues which then filled its now vacant niches, must have been much what it is now. Not so its interior. Bright colours on the roof, on the windows, on the monuments; hangings suspended from the rods which may still be seen running from pillar to pillar; chapels, and altars, and chantries intercepting the view, where now all is clear, must have rendered it so different, that at first we should hardly recognise it to be the same building.”

Returning to our friends:—

After they had been thus sprinkled with the holy water—

waiting behind, gaping at the beautiful stained glass which then filled the windows of the nave, and wildly guessing at their subjects—

We can follow in their footsteps, presuming them to have taken the more natural and probably more usual way, going first to the transept of the Martyrdom, over an entrance to which was inscribed—

Neither could the pilgrims then nor we now see practically anything of what met the eye on the fatal day itself; nor shall we—as did they—kneel before the wooden altar the while the guardian of it shows to us the precious relics kept there. But—if we wish to understand the spirit of the multitude in those days, we must forget ourselves for the nonce, and become as little children of great faith.

Then we pass on down into the crypt under the choir and Trinity Chapel, whose darkness is broken by the light of many lamps. Here, if we are but common folk, we shall be shown only a part of the skull of the saint, to which we may put our lips; his shirt and hair-cloth drawers, which formed one of his chief claims to saintliness—for dirtiness was akin to godliness in those times. If, however, we are folk of high degree, the glowing treasures of the chapel of Our Lady Undercroft will be opened to us.

Then up into the choir, where in coffers of gold and silver and ivory there are hundreds of relics, and, as we have seen—

Of what kind these relics were we have already made note.

In St Andrew’s Tower were exhibited to the privileged the pastoral staff of the saint, the cloak and the blood-stained kerchief, even rags and shreds upon which he had wiped his nose and mopped his brow. We do not wish to be irreverent; there are certain relics of pious and saintly men which all can treat with respect if not with adoration; but relic worship ran mad and was too often reduced to absurdity, sometimes of a positively disgusting character.

Onward to the shrine of the saint, first visiting Becket’s Crown—the Corona—where we would be shown the portion of the saint’s skull which was shorn off by the murderer’s sword.

Then to the shrine itself, where lay the holy body, enclosed in splendour which has been described on another page.

The shrine was shown, maybe for the last time, in August 1538, to a Madame de Montreuil, as described in a letter to Cromwell: “....so by ten of the cloc, she ... went to the church, where I showed her Sainte Thomas’s shrine, and all such things worthy of sight, at which she was not little marveilled of the great riches thereof, saing to be innumerable; and that if she had not seen it, all the men in the wourlde would never a made her to belyve it. Thus ever looking and viewing more than an oure as well the shryne as Sainct Thomas’s hed, being at both sett cushions to knyle, and the Priour opening Saint Thomas’s hed, saing to her three times, ‘This is Sainct Thomas’ hed,’ and offered her to kysse it, but she nother knyled nor would kysse it, but still viewing the riches thereof.”[6]

So for six jubilees continued this throng to come from all the lands of Europe to this shrine in this English city; the shrine of a saint of whom no saintly deed has been recorded.

Then came the downfall, which Hasted has plainly described: “As this saint was stripped of the name, honour, and adoration which had for so great a length of time been paid to him; so was this church, most probably a principal allurement to the dead, robbed of all the riches, the jewels of inestimable value, and the vast quantities of gold and silver, with which this shrine was splendidly and gloriously adorned: his relics and bones were likewise taken away, and so destroyed and disposed of, that what became of them could not be known, least they might fall into such hands as might still honour them with veneration.”

With this adoration of the shrine the great end of the pilgrimage was attained, and our company departed “dyner-ward”—

“Signes,” among which were small lead bottles, containing water mingled with the blood of the martyr; and leaden brooches, upon which were a representation of the head of the saint, and the words Caput ThomÆ. So when the pilgrims scattered abroad over the countries from which they had come, both on their journey homeward and on their return, men might know that they had been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury; as Erasmus describes them—coming from this and other shrines—“covered with scallop shells, stuck all over with leaden and tin figures, adorned with straw necklaces and a bracelet of serpents’ eggs”; also, with scrip and staff, which their priests have blessed for them before they set out on what often was a long and perilous journey. Here is the prayer asking for blessing upon the scrip and staff—“O Lord Jesu Christ, who of Thy unspeakable mercy, at the

bidding of the Father, and by the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, wast willing to come down from heaven, and to seek the sheep that was lost by the deceit of the Evil One, and to carry him back on Thine own shoulders to the flock of the Heavenly hand; and didst command the sons of Mother Church by prayer to ask, by holy living to seek, and by knocking to persevere; that so they may the more speedily find the reward of saving life; we humbly beseech Thee that Thou wouldest be pleased to bless this scrip and staff, that whosoever for love of Thy Name, shall seek to bear the same by his side, to hang it at his neck, or to carry it in his hands, and so on his pilgrimage to seek the aid of the saints, with the accompaniment of humble prayer, being protected by the guardianship of Thy right hand, may be found worthy to attain unto the joy of the everlasting vision; through Thee, O Saviour of the World, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, ever our God, world without end.” And when the scrip and staff were given by the priest to the pilgrim, he said: “Take this scrip to be worn as the badge and habit of thy pilgrimage; and this staff to be thy strength and stay in the toil and travail of thy pilgrimage, that thou mayest be able to overcome all the hosts of the Evil One, and to reach in safety the shrine of the Blessed St Thomas of Canterbury, and the shrines of other saints whither thou desirest to go; and having dutifully completed thy course, mayest come again to thine own people with thanksgiving.”

Let not us of these later days take upon us to jest at these “men of old,” who “with gladness” set forth upon this pilgrimage. There were sinners and humbugs among them, as there have been and are every time and everywhere; but among them, also, men of humble and contrite hearts. May we not hope that their prayer has been granted, and that the pilgrimage of life brought them at the last “unto the joy of the everlasting vision”?