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 roadside hamlet of Court-at-Street, situated on a little 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, 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 offerings common at such shrines as those of St. Thomas á 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 RUINED CHAPEL, COURT-AT-STREET.
The story of the "Holy Maid of Kent" is intimately 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 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!
OLD SUNDIAL, ALDINGTON.
Wasted by sufferings that all the arts of the purblind medical practitioners of that time could not assuage, those doctors declared that there was something 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, devoutly 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 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 demoniacally 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 Domrémy 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 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.