England of My Heart : Spring

by Edward Hutton

As it appeared when that great Transitional choir was finished, Canterbury Cathedral remained till 1379. It is true that the north wall of the cloister and the lovely doorway in the north-east corner were built in the Early English time. It is equally true that the lower part of the Chapter House and the screens north and south of the choir and a glorious window in St Anselm's Chapel are Decorated work, but the Cathedral itself knows nothing of the Early English or of the Decorated styles. It stood till 1379 with a low and short Norman nave and transept to the west, and a great Transitional choir and transept to the east. In 1379 Lanfranc's nave and transept were destroyed.

It may be thought that at last a great and noble nave would be built north of the Frenchman's choir. Not at all. Again the English prejudice against destruction—a lack of intellectual daring in us perhaps— prevented this. One of the western towers of Lanfranc was to remain, and therefore the new nave though loftier than the old, was no longer, and it remains a glory certainly without, but within a hopeless disappointment saved from utter ineffectiveness only by the noble height of the great choir above it. It remains without life or zest, not an experiment but a task honestly and thoroughly done in the Perpendicular style.

To the same period belong the great western screen of the choir, the Chapel of St Michael and the Warrior's Chapel in the south transept, the Lady Chapel in the north transept, the Chantry and the tomb of Henry IV. in the Trinity Chapel, the Black Prince's Chantry and the screens of the Lady Chapel in the Crypt, the upper part of the Chapter House, now lost to us by restoration, and the south-west Tower.

There remained at the end of the fifteenth century but one thing needed—the central Tower. This, as it happened, was to be the last great Gothic work undertaken in this country, and in every way it is one of the most impressive and successful. Begun in 1475 and finished in 1503, the Angel Steeple is the last of Catholicism in England, and I like to think of it towering as it does over that dead city, and the low hills of Kent, over all that was once so sacred and is now nothing, as a kind of beacon, a sign of hope until it shall ring the Angelus again and once more the sons of St Benedict shall chant the Mass of St Thomas before the shrine new made: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes, sub honore beati Thomae Martyris, de cujus passione gaudent angeli et collaudant filium Dei.

For the great shrine, which for so long had been the loftiest beacon in England of the Christian Faith, was destroyed. It was the first work of the last Henry to avenge his namesake, and having made another Thomas martyr in the same cause, to wipe out for ever all memory of the first who had steadfastly withstood his predecessor. It is strange that the severed head of Blessed Thomas More should lie in the very church whence Henry II. set forth to do penance for the murder of the first Thomas.

We have no authentic record of the final catastrophe, such deeds are usually done in darkness. All we really know is that in 1538 "the bones, by command of the Lord (Thomas) Cromwell, were there and then burnt ... the spoile of the shrine in golde and precious stones filled two greate chests such as six or seven strong men could doe no more than convey one of them out of the church." That the shrine was of unsurpassed magnificence we have many witnesses. "The tomb of St Thomas the Martyr," writes a Venetian traveller who had seen it, "surpasses all belief. Notwithstanding its great size it is wholly covered with plates of pure gold; yet the gold is scarce seen because it is covered with various precious stones as sapphires, balasses, diamonds, rubies and emeralds; and wherever the eye turns something more beautiful than the rest is observed; nor in addition to these natural beauties is the skill of art wanting, for in the midst of the gold are the most beautiful sculptured gems, both small and large as well as such as are in relief, as agates, onyxes, cornelians and cameos; and some cameos are of such size that I am afraid to name it; but everything is far surpassed by a ruby, not larger than a thumb-nail, which is fixed at the right of the altar. The church is somewhat dark and particularly in the spot where the shrine is placed, and when we went to see it the sun was near setting and the weather cloudy; nevertheless I saw the ruby as if I had it in my hand. They say it was given by a king of France."

To carry out the theft with impunity it was first of all necessary to degrade the great national hero and saint and expose his memory to ridicule. In November 1538 St Thomas was declared a traitor, every representation of him was ordered to be destroyed, and his name was erased from all service books, antiphones, collects and prayers under pain of his Majesty's indignation, and imprisonment at his Grace's pleasure. The saint indeed is said to have been cited to appear at Westminster for treason, and there to have been tried and condemned. That seems, too superstitiously insolent even for such a thing as Henry. But we may believe Marillac, the French Ambassador, when he tells us "St Thomas is declared a traitor because his relics and bones were adorned with gold and stones."

So perished the shrine and memory of St Thomas, and with it the thousand year old religion of England to be replaced by one knows not what.

With the destruction of religion went the destruction of the religious houses. Of these the chief was the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church which lay to the north of the Cathedral and whose monks from St Augustine's time had always served it. Almost nothing remains of this, save the Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior's Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior's lodging, the Porter's gate, the Norman staircase of the King's school and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including the remains of the Archbishop's Palace in Palace Street.

Not less venerable than the Benedictine House of Christ Church was the other Benedictine monastery, also founded by St Augustine in honour of SS. Peter and Paul, to which dedication St Dunstan added the name of St Augustine himself. This stood outside the city to the east. It is said to have been founded by St Augustine outside the walls with a view to his own interment there since it was not the Roman custom, as we know, to bury the dead within the walls of a city. So honourable a place in the Order did this great house hold that we are told the abbot of St Augustine's Canterbury sat next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, the mother house, in the councils of the Order, and none but the archbishop himself consecrated the abbot of St Augustine's, and that in the Abbey Church. This also Henry stole away, seizing it for his own use. But by 1844 what was left of the place had become a brewery, and to-day there remains scarcely more than a great fourteenth century gateway and hall, the work of Abbot Fyndon in 1300. Of the church there is left a few fragments of walling, of St Augustine's tomb, nothing whatsoever.