The Black Prince was the darling of England. He had won a glory for this country the like of which had never before been known, and he was the flower of chivalry. But do those who gather round his tomb, and feel themselves the greater for being countrymen of his, ever think how little his chivalry would have spared them? His humble and dutiful bearing towards his father, and even to his captive, the King of France, shows that his reverence was for rank and titles; the cruelty he exhibited when, the city of Limoges having revolted, he ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants and was carried through the streets in a litter, to see his bidding done, dims the glory of his arms. Men, women, and children were alike butchered in those streets, and when, crying for mercy, they were hewed in pieces before his eyes, their fate left him unmoved. It was only when he saw three French knights fighting valiantly in the market-place against overwhelming odds, that the chivalry of the Black Prince was touched. That hundreds or thousands of the citizens should be slain was nothing to him, for they were nothing, but to see gentlemen of rank and birth fighting a hopeless fight was too much. He ordered the massacre to be stayed.
XXXVII
THOMAS À BECKET
When in the last days of 1170 Becket was murdered in his own Cathedral, no one could have foreseen how fertilizing would be the blood of the martyr to religious faith; and not only to faith but also to English thought, trades, and professions. No sinner could be considered safe for Paradise unless he had made pilgrimage to Canterbury, and this pilgrimage became one of the chief features of English life during four hundred years. We owe directly to it the inspiration which has given Chaucer, our earliest poet, an immortal fame; from it comes the verb “to canter”—originally describing the ambling pace at which the pilgrims urged their horses on this road, and now common in modern English speech; while the great bulk of the Cathedral would never have loomed so largely across the Stour meads to-day had it not been for the fervent piety that, centuries ago, heaped gold and jewels here for the expiation of sins. Pilgrimage was a blessed thing indeed for the keepers of inns and for a multitude of other trades; and mendicants had but to take staff and scrip, and tramp in guise of palmers through the country to be liberally helped on their way. The Palmer was, indeed, the ancestor of the modern tramp. He had but to go unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn, and he could live his life without toil or work of any kind. If he were taxed with filthy habits, he could reply that a vow to remain unwashed until he had reached this shrine or another forbade him to remove the grime that covered him as a garment; and his claim to be dirty would be allowed. Eventually the number of these palmers at home and from over sea became a nuisance and a danger to Church and State, and no less objectionable were the hermits who squatted down at every likely corner of the roads and solicited alms. Human nature in the fourteenth century was not appreciably different from that of the present era, when many would rather beg a livelihood than earn it; and not only the laziness and the number of these palmers and hermits, but also their shocking immorality, became a scandal, until many laws and Archiepiscopal edicts were levelled against them. Pilgrimage, Saint Thomas, and religion itself became discredited by these creatures, and even as early as the year 1370, the fame of Becket was resented by some, and the efficacy of pilgrimages doubted. That year was the fourth jubilee of Saint Thomas, when pilgrims were crowding in many hundreds of thousands to Canterbury from all parts of the civilized world to receive the free indulgences, the free quarters, and the free food and drink, alike for themselves and their horses, that were accorded to all who came to the jubilee festival that was held, once in every fifty years, for a fortnight. As these multitudes of pilgrims were proceeding along the road to Canterbury during the Festival fortnight of 1370, Simon of Sudbury, the then Archbishop, overtook them. This Prelate had a hatred for superstition somewhat in advance of his time. He did not believe at all in pilgrimages and but little in Thomas à Becket, and he told the crowds he passed on the road that the plenary indulgence which they were pressing forward to gain would be of no avail to purge their sins. The people who heard this heretical and previously unheard-of doctrine issuing from the mouth of an Archbishop, turned upon him in fear and rage, and cursed him as he went. A Kentish squire among the throng rode up and indignantly said, “My Lord Bishop, for this act of yours, stirring the people to sedition against St. Thomas, I stake the salvation of my soul that you will close your life by a most terrible death.” To this all the people replied with a fervent Amen!
SIMON OF SUDBURY
Saint Thomas was indeed avenged upon the Archbishop. Eleven years later, when Wat Tyler’s rebels pillaged London, and forced themselves into the Tower, they found Simon of Sudbury there, among others. Dragging him out, they beheaded him with revolting barbarity, and here he lies in the Choir, where his headless body was seen, years ago, the place of the missing head supplied with a leaden ball.
The spirit of irreverence grew fast. In 1512 Erasmus made, with Dean Colet, a pilgrimage to Canterbury, not so much from piety as from curiosity. Descending the hill of Harbledown, they came into the city, wondering at the majesty of the Cathedral tower and at the booming of the bells resounding through the surrounding country. They entered the south porch, discussing the stone statues of Becket’s murderers, then to be seen there; they entered the great nave, where Erasmus noted satirically the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus chained to a pillar; and, armed with a letter of introduction from Archbishop Warham, they were shown many things not usually exhibited to the crowd. Passing through the iron gates which then as now divided the nave from the more holy portion of the building, they were taken to the Chapel of the Martyrdom, where they kissed the sacred rust that remained on the broken point of Brito’s sword. From here they descended into the Crypt, which had its own priests in charge of the martyr’s perforated skull, which was shown, with four of his bones, on a kind of altar. The forehead was left bare to be kissed, while the rest was covered with silver. Here hung in the dark the hair-shirts, the girdles and bandages, and the cat-o’-nine-tails or more with which Becket had subdued the flesh; striking horror with their very appearance, reproaching the pilgrims for their luxuries and self-indulgence, and perhaps, as Erasmus remarks, even reproaching the monks. From the Crypt they returned to the Choir, where the vast stores of relics were unlocked for their admiration and worship.
To read of the relics shown by the monks of Canterbury Cathedral fills one with amazement, both at the impertinence of those disgusting humbugs, and at the illimitable credulity that accepted the exhibition as genuine. Besides the pre-eminently holy (and really genuine) relics of the Blessed Thomas were heaps of bones, hair, teeth, and dust of a vast concourse of miscellaneous saints, with portions of their attire and articles connected with their domestic history. How genuine they were likely to be may be judged from a short list of the most venerated among them. The bed of the Virgin, with the wool she wove, and a garment of her making, occupied the foremost place, and the rock on which the Cross of Christ stood; His sepulchre; the manger; the table used at the Last Supper; the column to which He was bound when He was flagellated by the cursed Jews; and the rock whereon He had stood on ascending into Heaven, were prime favourites. More wonderful still, the monks possessed Aaron’s Rod; a portion of the oak on which Abraham mounted that he might see the Lord; and—more stupendously blasphemous than anything else—a specimen of the clay with which God moulded Adam!
THE NEW PILGRIMS