England of My Heart : Spring

by Edward Hutton

That Strood stood on the ancient way its name assures us, since it is but another form of Street or Strada, as they say in Italy. From Strood we cross the great iron bridge, the successor of that at the Strood end of which Bishop Glanville built a small chapel. The story of the bridge is interesting. We do not know that there was a bridge at all in Roman times, but certainly a wooden bridge was supplemented in the time of Richard II. by a new one of stone, consisting of twenty-one arches of different spans. This bridge stood higher up the river than that of to-day, nearer indeed to the Castle, and as at its western end there was a chapel, so at its eastern under the Castle, John de Cobham founded, in Chaucer's time, in 1399, a Chantry for all Christian souls, of which some ruins remain. This bridge, patched, altered, and constantly repaired, lasted till the existing bridge was built in our own time on the site of the old one of wood.

From the bridge we enter the High Street, almost certainly lying over the old Roman road. Here are the old Inns, the Crown, the Bull, and the King's Head. It is even probable that Chaucer may have stayed at the Crown, the oldest of the three, not of course in the present house, but in that which stood on the same site till 1863, and which was said to date from the fourteenth century. [Footnote: The old house was famous at least as the scene of Shakespeare's "Henry IV.," pt. i. act ii. sc. i., as the resting-place of Queen Elizabeth in 1573, and as the inn honoured by Mr Pickwick. It should never have been destroyed.]

In Rochester, serene and yet active, the very ancient seat of a bishopric, we have something essentially Roman, the fortress on the Watling Street guarding the passage of the Medway, precisely as Piacenza was and is a Roman fortress upon the Emilian Way guarding the passage of the Po. The Romans called the place Durobrivae, and though we know little of it during the Roman occupation of Britain, we may be sure it was a place of very considerable importance, as indeed it has remained ever since, twice in fact in our history the possession of Rochester has decided a whole campaign.

Rochester, indeed, could not have escaped the military eye of the Romans. It must be remembered that the natural entry into England is by the Straits of Dover, and that for a man entering by that gate there is only one way up into England and that the line of the Watling Street, for he must cross the Thames, even though he be going only to London. The lowest ford upon the Thames is that at Lambeth, which the Watling Street used. Now there is but one really formidable obstacle in the whole length of the Watling Street south of the Thames. That obstacle is the estuary of the Medway, which Rochester guarded and possessed. Rochester then was first and foremost a great fortress, just as Piacenza was and is.

What was its fate in the Dark Age that followed the failure of the Roman administration we do not know; but with the advent of St Augustine Rochester at once received a Bishop. It was, indeed, the first post in St Augustine's advance from Canterbury, King Ethelbert himself building there a church in 597 in honour of St Andrew. It thus became a spiritual as well as a material fortress. Of its fate after the Battle of Hastings we know little, but it submitted without resistance and came into the hands of that Odo of Bayeaux who gave so much trouble to William Rufus.

It is now that we see Rochester suddenly appear in its true greatness. Odo, expelled by William, had on the Conqueror's death returned and successfully obtained of Rufus his estates, among them the Castle of Rochester, which he had built. In 1088, however, he was once more in rebellion against the Crown on behalf of the Conqueror's eldest brother, Robert of Normandy. Rufus struck him first at Pevensey, which was the Norman gate of England. He took it but unwisely released Odo, on his oath to give up Rochester Castle and leave the country. Rochester was then in the hands of Eustace of Boulogne, sworn friend of Duke Robert, and when Odo appeared with the King's Guard before the Castle, demanding its surrender, he, understanding everything, captured his own lord and the king's guard also and brought them in. Rufus then turned to his English subjects and demanded their assistance, for his Barons were then, as they have invariably been throughout English history, against the Crown, which truly represented and defended the people. They flocked to the Royal Standard, and after six weeks' siege, plague and famine ravaging the garrison, Odo surrendered and was imprisoned at Tonbridge, and later expelled the kingdom. As this great rascal Bishop came out of Rochester Castle, the English youths sang out "Rope and Cord! Rope and Cord for the traitor Bishop." But Odo was too near to the king.

That was the first time we know of in which Rochester stood like the gage of England; the second was in the Barons' wars. When King John, in 1215, had taken Rochester and notably discomfited the rascal Barony, they immediately invited Louis of France to assist them. He set sail with some seven hundred vessels, landed at Sandwich, and retook Rochester, which had been so badly damaged that it could not defend itself. Forty-eight years later, in 1264, Henry III. being king, Simon de Montfort coming into Kent, burnt the wooden bridge over the Medway which was too strongly held by the loyal inhabitants of Rochester for him to capture, took the city by storm, sacked the Cathedral and the Priory, and laid siege to the Castle. He failed, and Lewes could not give him what Rochester had denied.

Rochester Castle, which hitherto only famine had been able to open, was to fall at last to Wat Tyler and his Peasants in 1381, with the help of the people of the city. After that culminating misery of the fourteenth century, which was so full of miseries, Rochester plays little part in history for many years. She appears again to take part in innumerable pageants, such as that in which Henry VIII. in 1540, and on New Year's day, first saw Anne of Cleves and was astonished at her little beauty, or that which greeted Elizabeth in 1573, or that which greeted Charles I. and his bride after their wedding at Canterbury, or that which shouted for the Merry Monarch, when Charles II. rode down the High Street in 1660, after his landing at Dover. It was his brother, unfortunate and unhappy, who came in without any herald and stole away in the night of December 19, 1688, having foregone a throne and lost a kingdom.

All these, sieges or pageants, however, what are they but a tale that is told. There remains, in some sort at least, the Cathedral. This is the oldest thing in Rochester and the most lasting. It was founded in the end of the sixth century as we have seen, and its first Bishop was that St Justus who had come with St Augustine from the monastery of St Andrew on the Coelian Hill in Rome, the monastery we now know by the name of the man who sent them, St Gregory the Great. St Augustine and St Justus were not, however, at first received with enthusiasm in Rochester. Indeed, it is said that fish tails were hung to their habits as they went through the city and that in consequence the people of the diocese of Rochester were ever after born with tails, and were thus known as caudati or caudiferi, while upon the Continent this beastly appellation was even till our fathers' time applied to all English people.