The story of the fall of the shrine and the overthrow of the power of the martyr is so remarkable and was so implicitly believed at the time, that it cannot be passed over in spite of the doubts which modern criticism casts on its authenticity. It is said that in April, a.d. 1538, a writ of summons was issued in the name of King Henry VIII. against Thomas Becket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, accusing him of treason, contumacy, and rebellion. This document was read before the martyr’s tomb, and thirty days were allowed for his answer to the summons. As the defendant did not appear, the suit was formally tried at Westminster. The Attorney General held a brief for Henry II., and the deceased defendant was represented by an advocate named by Henry VIII. Needless to relate, judgment was given in favour of Henry II., and the condemned Archbishop was ordered to have his bones burnt and all his gorgeous offerings escheated to the Crown. The first part of the sentence was remitted and Becket’s body was buried, but he was deprived of the title of Saint, his images were destroyed throughout the kingdom, and his name was erased from all books. The shrine was destroyed, and the gold and jewels thereof were taken away in twenty-six carts. Henry VIII. himself wore the Regale of France in a ring on his thumb. Improbable as the story of Becket’s trial may seem, such a procedure was strictly in accordance with the forms of the Roman Catholic Church, of which Henry still at that time professed himself a member: moreover it is not without authentic parallels in history: exactly the same measures of reprisal had been taken against Wycliffe at Lutterworth; and Queen Mary shortly afterwards acted in a similar manner towards Bucer and Fagius at Cambridge.
The last recorded pilgrim to the shrine of St. Thomas was Madame de Montreuil, a great French dame who had been waiting on Mary of Guise, in Scotland. She visited Canterbury in August, a.d. 1538, and we are told that she was taken to see the wonders of the place and marvelled at all the riches thereof, and said “that if she had not seen it, all the men in the world could never ’a made her believe it.” Though she would not kiss the head of St. Thomas, the Prior “did send her a present of coneys, capons, chickens, with divers fruits—plenty—insomuch that she said, ‘What shall we do with so many capons? Let the Lord Prior come, and eat, and help us to eat them tomorrow at dinner’ and so thanked him heartily for the said present.”
Such was the history of Becket’s shrine. We have dwelt on it at some length because it is no exaggeration to say that in the Middle Ages Canterbury Cathedral owed its European fame and enormous riches to the fact that it contained the shrine within its walls, and because the story of the influence of the Saint and the miracles that he worked, and the millions of pilgrims who flocked from the whole civilized world to do homage to him, throws a brighter and more vivid light on the lives and thoughts and beliefs of mediæval men than many volumes stuffed with historical research. No visitor to Canterbury can appreciate what he sees, unless he realizes to some extent the glamour which overhung the resting place of St. Thomas in the days of Geoffrey Chaucer. We have no certain knowledge as to whether the other shrines and relics which enriched the cathedral were destroyed along with those of St. Thomas. Dunstan and Elphege at least can hardly have escaped, and it is probable that most of the monuments and relics perished at the time of the Reformation. We know that in a.d. 1541, Cranmer deplored the slight effect which had been wrought by the royal orders for the destruction of the bones and images of supposed saints. And that he forthwith received letters from the king, enjoining him to cause “due search to be made in his cathedral churches, and if any shrine, covering of shrine, table, monument of miracles, or other pilgrimage, do there continue, to cause it to be taken away, so as there remain no memory of it.” This order probably brought about the destruction of the tombs and monuments of the early archbishops, most of whom had been officially canonised, or been at least enrolled in the popular calendar, and were accordingly doomed to have their resting-places desecrated. We know that about this time the tomb of Winchelsey was destroyed, because he was adored by the people as a reputed saint.
Any monuments that may have escaped royal vandalism at the Reformation period, fell before the even more effective fanaticism of the Puritans, who seem to have exercised their iconoclastic energies with especial zeal and vigour at Canterbury. Just before their time Archbishop Laud spent a good deal of trouble and money on the adornment of the high altar. A letter to him from the Dean, dated July 8th, a.d. 1634, is quoted by Prynne, “We have obeyed your Grace’s direction in pulling down the exorbitant seates within our Quire whereby the church is very much beautified.... Lastly wee most humbly beseech your Grace to take notice that many and most necessary have beene the occasions of extraordinary expences this yeare for ornaments, etc.” And another Puritan scribe tells us that “At the east end of the cathedral they have placed an Altar as they call it dressed after the Romish fashion, for which altar they have lately provided a most idolatrous costly glory cloth or back cloth.”
These embellishments were not destined to remain long undisturbed. In a.d. 1642, the Puritan troopers hewed the altar-rails to pieces and then “threw the Altar over and over down the three Altar steps, and left it lying with the heels upwards.” This was only the beginning: we read that during the time of the Great Rebellion, “the newly erected font was pulled down, the inscriptions, figures, and coats of arms, engraven upon brass, were torn off from the ancient monuments, and whatsoever there was of beauty or decency in the holy place, was despoiled.”
A manuscript, compiled in 1662, and preserved in the Chapter library, gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. “The windows were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest of the furniture, with the rail before it, and the screen of tabernacle work richly overlaid with gold behind it; goodly monuments shamefully abused, defaced, and rifled of brasses, iron grates, and bars.”
The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the Chapter library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar, describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the time of the Restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. “So little,” says this document, “had the fury of the late reformers left remaining of it besides the bare walles and roofe, and these, partly through neglect, and partly by the daily assaults and batteries of the disaffected, so shattered, ruinated, and defaced, as it was not more unserviceable in the way of a cathedral than justly scandalous to all who delight to serve God in the beauty of Holines.” Most of the windows had been broken, “the church’s guardians, her faire and strong gates, turned off the hooks and burned.” The buildings and houses of the clergy had been pulled down or greatly damaged; and lastly, “the goodly oaks in our common gardens, of good value in themselves, and in their time very beneficial to our church by their shelter, quite eradicated and set to sale.” This last touch is interesting, as showing that the reforming zeal of the Puritans was not always altogether disinterested.
After the Restoration some attempt was made to render the cathedral once more a fitting place of worship, and the sum of £10,000 was devoted to repairs and other public and pious uses. A screen was put up in the same position as the former one, and the altar was placed in front. But, in a.d. 1729, this screen no longer suited the taste of the period, and a sum of £500, bequeathed by one of the prebendaries, was devoted to the erection of a screen in the Corinthian style, designed by a certain Mr. Burrough, afterwards Master of Caius College, Cambridge. A little before this time the old stalls, which had survived the Puritan period were replaced: a writer describes them, in the early half of the seventeenth century, as standing in two rows, an upper and lower, on each side, with the archbishop’s wood throne above them on the south side. This chair he mentions as “sometime richly guilt, and otherwise well set forth, but now nothing specious through age and late neglect. It is a close seat, made after the old fashion of such stalls, called thence faldistoria; only in this they differ, that they were moveable, this is fixt.”
Thus wrote Somner in a.d. 1640: the dilapidated throne of which he speaks was replaced, in a.d. 1704, by a splendid throne with a tall Corinthian canopy, and decorated with carving by Grinling Gibbons, the gift of Archbishop Tenison, who also set up new stalls. At the same time Queen Mary the Second presented new and magnificent furniture for the altar, throne, stalls of the chief clergy, and pulpit. Since then many alterations have been made. The old altar and screen have been removed, and a new reredos set up, copied from the screen work of the Lady Chapel in the crypt; and Archbishop Tenison’s throne has given place to a lofty stone canopy. In 1834 owing to its tottering condition the north-west tower of the nave had to be pulled down. It was rebuilt on an entirely different plan by Mr. George Austin, who, with his son, also conducted a good deal of repairing and other work in the cathedral and the buildings connected with it. A good deal of the external stonework had to be renewed, but the work was carried out judiciously, and only where it was absolutely necessary. On the west side of the south transept a turret has been pulled down and set up again stone by stone. The crypt has been cleared out and restored, and its windows have been reopened. The least satisfactory evidences of the modern hand are the stained glass windows, which have been put up in the nave and transepts of the cathedral. The Puritan trooper had wrought havoc in the ancient glass, smashing it wherever a pike-thrust could reach; and modern piety has been almost as ruthless in erecting windows which are quite incredibly hideous.
In September, 1872, Canterbury was once more damaged by fire, just about seven hundred years after the memorable conflagration described by Gervase. On this occasion, however, the damage did not go beyond the outer roof of the Trinity Chapel. The fire broke out at about half-past ten in the morning, and was luckily discovered before it had made much progress, by two plumbers who were at work in the south gutter. According to the “Builder” of that month, “a peculiar whirring noise” caused them to look inside the roof, and they found three of the main roof-timbers blazing. “The best conjecture seems to be that the dry twigs, straw, and similar débris, carried into the roof by birds, and which it has been the custom to clear at intervals out of the vault pockets, had caught fire from a spark that had in some way passed through the roof covering, perhaps under a sheet raised a little at the bottom by the wind.” Assistance was quickly summoned, and “by half-past twelve the whole was seen to be extinguished. At four o’clock the authorities held the evening service, so as not to break a continuity of custom extending over centuries; and in the smoke-filled choir, the whole of the Chapter in residence, in the proper Psalm (xviii.), found expression for the sense of victory over a conquered enemy.”