Canterbury

by Gordon Home

THE STORY OF CANTERBURY

It would be a mistake to imagine that it solely was due to that bloody deed perpetrated on a certain December afternoon back in Norman times that Canterbury occupies a place of such pre-eminence in English history, for the city was ancient before the days of Thomas of Canterbury; and in this short chapter it is the writer's endeavour to indicate the position of that tragic occurrence in the chronology of the former Kentish capital.

The earliest people who have left evidence of their existence near Canterbury belong to the Palæolithic Age; but as it is not known whether this remote prehistoric population occupied the actual site, or even whether the valley may not have then been a salt-water creek, it is wiser in this brief sketch to pass over these primitive people and the lake-dwellers who, after a considerable interval, were possibly their successors, and come to the surer ground of history. This brings us to the early Roman invasions of Britain and Julius Cæsar's description of the people of Kent, whose civilization he found on a higher level than in the other parts he penetrated. He described them as being little different in their manner of living from the Gauls, whose houses were built of planks and willow-branches, roofed with thatch, and were large and circular in form, but he adds:

All the Britons dye themselves with woad, which gives them a bluish colour, and so makes them very dreadful in battle. They have long hair, and shave all the body except the head and upper lip.

These people, owning allegiance to various chiefs and living in camps or villages defended by earthen ramparts, were attacked by the Roman expeditions which invaded Britain in the opening years of the Christian Era, and there is evidence for believing that there was a British settlement of considerable importance on the site of Canterbury. Of this there remains a lofty artificial mound, now known as the Dane John—another form of the familiar donjon. The Romans called it Durovernum, a name perhaps derived from the British Derwhern, and although their historians are curiously silent in regard to the place there cannot be any doubt that the town rose to great importance in the later years of the four centuries of the Roman occupation of Britain. A glance at a map of the Roman roads in Kent shows Durovernum as a centre for five great ways leading from the coast towns of Portus Lemanis (Lymne), Portus Dubris (Dover), Portus Ritupis (Richborough, near Sandwich), Regulbium (Reculver), and also the Isle of Thanet, and from this important centre the Watling Street ran straight to Londinium. These roads all converge upon the spot where the River Stour became a tidal estuary and where it was fordable, and all who arrived or departed from the ports nearest to Gaul would therefore of necessity pass that way. Another indication of the size of the town is found in the five Roman burial-places discovered close to Canterbury, and if anything else were needed it is only necessary to look at the walls of St. Augustine's Abbey and many other buildings of the Middle Ages to see the large quantities of Roman material then available. Wherever any excavation has taken place in the heart of the present city, the foundations of Roman buildings with tesselated pavements and quantities of pottery, small objects of domestic use, and coins have been brought to light. These remains are all far beneath the present surface, a most significant fact in relation to the transition period between Roman and Saxon Canterbury.

The Romans having finally abandoned Britain early in the fifth century, the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons began to take a permanent form, and the Jutes gained possession of the south-eastern corner of England. During the period of struggle between the rival groups of invaders Durovernum must have been entirely abandoned by the Britons, and the conquerors having reduced the city to a shapeless ruin, appear to have allowed it to become over-grown to such an extent that when, after a lapse of perhaps a whole century, the town was rebuilt, no attempt was made to dig down to the former surface. The new buildings therefore arose with their foundations some feet above the original level of the Romano-British city. So complete was the gap between the destroyed Durovernum and the Saxon town which eventually grew up that men had had time to forget the old name, and, finding it necessary to invent one, called it Cantwarabyrig, which meant the city of the men of Kent. This title reveals the fact that the new settlers had by this time fixed their limits in Kent, and that they had found this site at the junction of all the Roman roads the most convenient for their capital. It was probably not until Ethelbert had begun to reign in 561 that Canterbury became the most important place in Kent, and at that time the site of the Cathedral was outside the town walls. Ethelbert, it should be mentioned, had extended his power so far beyond the confines of Kent that he had authority as far north as the Humber, and Bede writes of "the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his dominions."

Up to the year 597 this Saxon capital, of practically all south-eastern England, was completely heathen, saving only the King's Frankish wife Bertha and Bishop Luidhard, who had come over as her chaplain about the year 575, when the marriage with the heathen Ethelbert had taken place. But in the year 597, that famous landmark in the Christianizing of Saxon England, Augustine, landed—if Bede may be trusted for a topographical detail of this character—on the island of Ebbsfleet, where Hengist and Horsa had previously found a haven for their vessels. This is now part of the corner of Kent, called Thanet, and is an island no longer. There Ethelbert, in that generous and broad-minded speech, familiar to all students of English history, while expressing himself as content with the gods of his forefathers (these included Thor, Woden, Freya, and the rest), yet would place no obstacles in the way of these missionaries of new and strange ideas. He even provided them with quarters in Canterbury, and in the old church of St. Martin outside the city, where Queen Bertha had been in the habit of worshipping with her chaplain, Augustine and his monks began to preach and instruct all who cared to listen. It seems unlikely that the influence of the queen and her good chaplain should have been entirely without results, and it is quite possible that Augustine found the ground prepared for the seed he diligently began to sow. Bishop Luidhard, whose name should always be linked with that of St. Augustine, appears to have died soon after the arrival of Pope Gregory's mission, and his remains were eventually placed in a golden chest in the church of Saints Peter and Paul, afterwards St. Augustine's.

The zeal and enthusiasm of the band o missionaries began to bring in many converts. Ethelbert himself consented to be baptized on June 2 in the year of Augustine's landing, and the Saxons soon began to embrace the new faith in thousands, so that in a very few years the Christianizing of England had made such progress that Canterbury became the headquarters of the Christian Church in England, a position it has held without interruption ever since—a period of over 1,300 years. It took England nearly nine centuries to make up its mind to rid itself of the stultifying authority of the Bishop of Rome and to shake itself free from monasticism and the various forms of idolatrous worship which grew up in the sultry atmosphere of the Papal Church; but these great changes have been evolved, and still the ancient city of Canterbury, hallowed with so many memories of saintly lives, continues to be the metropolis of the Established Church of England. And the imminence of further change carries with it no danger of any break in this long association of Canterbury with ecclesiastical control, for if in the slow grinding of the wheels of Time there should cease to be a State Church in this land, the organization of the churches holding to the Elizabethan form of worship will no doubt continue to be centred and focussed at Canterbury.