WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, AND THE “FALSTAFF” INN.
Day after day travellers—whose very name comes from “travail” = toil or trouble—journeyed amid dangers, and, when by mischance they were benighted, suffered agonies of apprehension. They intended only to “journey”—to travel by day, as the original sense of that word indicated—and were afflicted with the liveliest apprehensions when night came and found them still on the road. Toiling in the hollow roads, deep in ruts and mud, with terror they saw the sun go down while yet the friendly town was far away, and came at last, in fear and darkness, to the walled city, only to find its gates closed for the night. Every fortified town closed its gates at sunset; else, in those dangerous times, what use your gates and walls? As reasonably might the modern citizen leave his street door wide open all night, as the mediæval town not close its gates when the hours of darkness were come; and so those travellers and pilgrims who, from much story-telling, praying, or feasting along the road, arrived late at Canterbury, found the portals of Westgate sternly closed against them. Originally they were obliged to lie outside, under the walls or in the fields, instead of being made welcome at the comfortable hostels within, where a man might find jolly company in the rush-strewn hall, and for food and drink be free of the best; but, for the accommodation of such laggards, the suburb of St. Dunstan, without the walls of Canterbury, sprang up at a very early date, and to the custom they thus brought we owe the existence of the “Falstaff” inn, itself containing some fine “linen-pattern” panelling of the time of Henry the Seventh; but not, of course, the original house that, under some other name than the “Falstaff,” was early established for the entertainment of late-comers.
The “Falstaff” is a prominent feature of the entrance to Canterbury, and forms, with the stern drum towers of Westgate, built about 1380, as fine an entrance to a city as anything to be found in England. The present sign of the house derives from the instant and extraordinary popularity that Shakespeare’s Fat Knight obtained, from his first appearance upon the Elizabethan stage. The present “Falstaff” is a very spirited rendering, showing the Fat Knight with sword and buckler and an air of determination, apparently “just about to begin” on those numerous “men in buckram” conjured up by his ready imagination on Gad’s Hill. There is an air about this representation of him irresistibly reminiscent of that song which gave British patriots in 1878 the name of “Jingoes.” There are no patriots now: only partisans and placemen—but that is another tale. This Falstaff evidently “don’t want to fight; but by Jingo”—well, you know the rest of it.
SIGN OF THE “FALSTAFF,” CANTERBURY.
Not only pilgrims and travellers from London to Canterbury were thus looked after, but those also coming the other way, and thus we find a Maison Dieu established at Dover in the reign of King John by that great man, Hubert de Burgh, Chief Justiciary of England. A master and a staff of brethren and sisters were placed there to attend upon the poor priests and the pilgrims and strangers of both sexes, who applied for food and lodging. Kings cannot be classed in any of these categories; but they also are found not infrequently making use of the institution, on their way to or from France—and departing without a “thank ye.” The only one who seems to have benefited the Maison Dieu very much was Henry the Third, who endowed it with the tithe of the passage fare and £10 a year from the port dues.
It is scarce necessary to say who it was that disestablished the Maison Dieu. The heavy hand of Henry the Eighth squelched it, in common with hundreds of other religious and semi-religious institutions. At the time of its suppression the annual income was £231 16s. 7d., representing some £2,500 in our day. The master, John Thompson, who had only been appointed the year before, was an exceptionally fortunate man, being granted a pension of £53 6s. 8d. a year. The buildings were then converted into a victualling office for the Navy.
At last, in 1831, the Corporation of Dover purchased them, and the ancient refectory then became the Town Hall and the sacristy the Sessions House, and so remained until 1883, when a new Town Hall was built.
Similar institutions existed at others of the chief ports. At Portsmouth was the Hospital of St. Nicholas, or “God’s House,” founded in the reign of Henry the Third by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester. It is now the Garrison Church. At Southampton the “Domus Dei” was dedicated to St. Julian, patron of travellers, and now, as St. Julian’s Hospital and Church, is in part an almshouse, sheltering eight poor persons, and partly a French Huguenot place of worship.
The Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury from Southampton and Winchester was never a road for wheeled traffic, and remained in all those centuries when pilgrimage was popular, as a track for pedestrians, along the hillsides. It avoided all towns, and thus precisely what those pilgrims who wearifully hoofed it all the way did for shelter remains a little obscure: although it seems probable that wayside shelters, with or without oratories attached to them, were established at intervals. Such, traditionally, was the origin of the picturesque timbered house at Compton, now locally known as “Noah’s Ark.”