Cathedral Cities of England

by George Gilbert

In 1161 the city became almost extinct through fire, and at several subsequent periods it suffered severely from the same cause.

In 1170 the great event which stirred the kingdom, and which conveniently marks the starting-point of the disastrous half of Henry II.'s reign, was the great means of replenishing the treasury of the Cathedral. In that year Becket was murdered as he was ascending the steps leading from the nave into the choir. His name was subsequently canonised. His shrine was visited from far and near by every rank of pilgrim, who seldom left without depositing first some substantial token of their reverence for the saint. Four years after the murder popular feeling was as great as ever, so that it was probably to propitiate the people, as much as to ask for Divine intercession in his troublous affairs, that Henry II. performed a pilgrimage to the shrine and submitted himself to be scourged by the monks.

Another source of great importance to the Cathedral was the institution of the Jubilee by the Pope. It commemorated every fifty years the death of Becket, and till the last one, celebrated in 1520, attracted an immense number of pilgrims, who gave a great impetus to trade in the city. The number and richness of their offerings were incredible.

The dissolution of the priory of Christ Church was gradually effected; the festivals in honour of the martyr were one by one abolished; his shrine was stripped of its gorgeous ornaments, and the bones of the saint were burnt to ashes and scattered to the winds.

A part of the monastery of St. Augustine was converted into a royal palace by Henry VIII. In this palace Queen Elizabeth held her court for a short time. During her reign there was an influx of Walloons, who, persecuted for their religious tenets, had fled from the Netherlands and settled in Canterbury.

They introduced the weaving of silk and stuffs. To them Queen Elizabeth allotted the crypt under the Cathedral as their place of worship, where the service is still performed in French to their descendants.

In this Cathedral was solemnised the marriage of Charles I. with Henrietta Maria of France, in 1625. During the war between Charles I. and Cromwell the Cathedral was wantonly mutilated and defaced by the followers of Cromwell, who converted the sacred edifice into stables for his horses. At the Restoration, Charles II., on his return from France, held his court in the royal palace at Canterbury for three days. This monarch, in 1676, granted a charter of incorporation to the refugee silk-weavers settled in the city. These refugees, a few years after, were considerably increased by French artisans, who came over consequent on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

To those admirers of form and beauty the wonderful architecture of the present Cathedral must satisfy their every craving. To students the study of this colossal building must be a work of love, encouragement, and continued interest. Rebuilt soon after the Conquest by Archbishop Lanfranc, and worthily enlarged and enriched by his several successors, the Cathedral is a crowning work of grandeur and magnificence, exhibiting, in its highest perfection, every specimen of architecture, from the earliest Norman to the latest English. In form it is that of a double cross. Where the nave and the western transepts intersect, there springs up a lofty and elegant tower in the Later English style, with a spired parapet and pinnacles, with octagonal turrets at the angles, terminating in minarets. In the west end are two massive towers, of which the north-west is Norman, and the south-west is similar in character, though embattled, and little inferior to the central tower.

Perhaps the most noteworthy portions of this Cathedral, though it is hardly possible to make a distinction, are the Chapel of Henry IV., with its beautiful fan tracery depending from the roof; the small but beautiful Lady Chapel, which is separated from the eastern side of the transept by the interposition of a finely carved stone screen; and in that part of the Cathedral, called Becket's Crown, is the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, famous as the site of the gorgeous Shrine of St. Thomas à Becket. In "Becket's Crown" a softened light steals through the painted window. The interest in this window lies in the fact that most of the glass shown is ancient, and it is the fifth of the twelve windows in the Trinity Chapel which suffered severely at the hands of the Puritans in 1642.