Wist ye not where standeth a little toun,
Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun,
Under the Blee in Canterbury way.
Here the weary pilgrims made their last halt. The levity; the fun and frolic; the sound of songs and bagpipes ceased, and the seekers of Saint Thomas fell down upon their knees in the dusty road when they caught sight of the golden angel that then crowned the Bell Harry tower. Tears running down the cheeks of all, the pious and the indifferent alike resigned themselves to a religious ecstasy; and when they at length resumed their journey, Chaucer’s company of pilgrims rode slowly into the Holy City, listening to a sermon in place of the curious tales with which they had hitherto beguiled the way.
Harbledown stood then on the borders of the great “Bosco de Blean.” The “little town,” now a mile-long stretch of disconnected cottages, was much smaller, clustering round the parish church on one side of the road, and the Hospital for Lepers, with its chapel and rows of cottages, on the other. Down the road, the houses of Canterbury were to be seen nestling for protection against the Castle and Cathedral, while on the other hand stretched the dark forest, with the Archbishop’s gallows standing on a clearing in front. For not only did the dignified clergy point the way to the after life; they not infrequently helped their sheep on the way by means of rope or stake.
As the pilgrims passed that old Lepers’ Hospital, founded by Lanfranc in 1084, on this breezy and healthful hillside, whence rose the sweet smell of the herbs for which Harbledown (== Herbal down) has derived its name, one of the brethren of this charitable foundation would come out and sprinkle them with holy water, presenting the shoe of Saint Thomas to be kissed, and praying them for the love of God and the Blessed Martyr to give something towards the support of the poor lepers of Saint Nicholas. Rarely did the pilgrims fail to do so, and this institution must, in the course of years, have become very wealthy. Henry the Second; Richard Lion Heart, come home again from captivity; Edward the First, with Eleanor of Castile, on his return from Palestine; the Black Prince, with his captives, those trophies of Poictiers—King John of France and his son Philip—and many another must have enriched the place. John of France, on his way home, gave ten gold crowns “pour les nonnains de Harbledown,” and never, surely, before nor since, has an old shoe brought so much luck as Becket’s brought here. For centuries the devout came and pressed their lips to it, dropping coins into the wooden alms-box that is still shown, together with a mazer inscribed with the deeds of Guy of Warwick, and containing the great crystal with which the shoe was decorated. But times change and habits of thought with them, and although the scenery remains as of old, little else is left of the days of pilgrimage. How like the present aspect of the place is to the appearance it presented three hundred and eighty years ago may be seen from the writings of Disiderius Erasmus.
ERASMUS AND COLET
When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning in 1512 from their unconventional pilgrimage to Canterbury, they came, two miles from the city, to a steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high banks on either side. The scenery is the same as then. The selfsame banks of an equal abruptness still rise above the road; the rough and crazy flight of steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc’s old Hospital for Lepers, the Hospital of Harbledown. The immemorial yews are here even now; one still flourishing, the other decayed. But the Hospital has been rebuilt, and only the grey old Church of Saint Nicholas remains. Modern pilgrims, too, may pass without the attentions at one time bestowed on all who passed this way; attentions which disgusted the stern and matter-of-fact Colet, and amused his somewhat cynically-humorous companion. When they came to the gateway of the Hospital, there tottered down the steps an aged bedesman, and, sprinkling plentifully with holy water both themselves and their horses, he stepped forward, presenting the upper-leather of an old shoe, bound in brass and ornamented with a great crystal, to be kissed. This was the remnant of the Holy Shoe of Thomas à Becket, one of the most revered and valued possessions of the Hospital, kissed reverently by many thousands of pilgrims of every degree, and a great aid to the flow of alms. But Colet, who had already seen too much of this combined hero- and relic-worship, could no longer restrain the wrath which had been rising ever since he had left the shrine down below, with its old bones and dirty rags. He was covered, too, with the holy water which the old man had so recklessly showered on them. “What!” he shouted to Erasmus, “Do these asses expect us to kiss the shoes of all good men that have ever lived? Why, they might as well bring us their spittle to be kissed, or other bodily excrements!” The ancient bedesman was hurt, and possibly, had he been a younger man, he would have hurt this scoffer in return. However, he said nothing, and the cynical Erasmus (for cynicism always goes with a really kind heart) gave him a small coin, less from piety, you may be sure, than as a salve to his wounded feelings. And then they went away.
The shoe has vanished, but the crystal is still a valued, if not valuable, possession of the institution, and may be handled by the curious who can reflect upon its having also been touched by those two pilgrims, Erasmus the learned writer, and Colet the founder of Saint Paul’s School.