63. AN ENGLISH PILGRIM.
(From the MS. 17 C. xxxviii.)
The whole race of wanderers was, however, as we know, looked at askance by the king’s officers; these goings and comings disquieted the sheriff. We have already met labourers who, weary of their lord, left him under pretext of distant pilgrimages, and laid down without scruple the pilgrim’s staff at the door of a new master who would pay them better. False pilgrims were not less numerous than false pardoners and false hermits; they were condemned to repose, under pain of imprisonment, by the same statutes as the beggars and wandering workmen. Henceforward, orders Richard II in 1388, they too must have permits with a special seal affixed by certain worthy men.[518] Those without a permit should be forthwith arrested, unless infirm and incapable of work, for their good faith is then evident, and it is not for the love of vagabondage that they painfully go and visit “optimum ægrorum medicum,” Saint Thomas. Even greater severity was shown when it was a matter of {370} crossing the sea; would-be pilgrims must be furnished with regular passports; and the law applied to “all manner of people, as well clerks as other,” under pain of confiscation of all their goods. The exceptions made by the king show besides that it is wanderers of doubtful status and motives whom he has in view, for there are dispensations for the “lords and other great persons of the realm,” for the “true and notable merchants,” and lastly, for the “king’s soldiers.”[519]
This passport or “licence,” this “special leave of the king,” could only be available at certain ports, namely, London, Sandwich, Dover, Southampton, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Bristol, Yarmouth, Boston, Kingston-upon-Hull, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the ports of the coast facing Ireland. Heavy penalties were laid on all port wardens, inspectors, ship captains, etc., who were neglectful, or so bold as to show favour to roamers. In the year 1389, the king restrained pilgrims from embarking anywhere else than at Dover or Plymouth. To put to sea elsewhere, an “especial licence from the king himself” was necessary.[520] A number of such licences, as will be seen further, are still in existence.
IV
But the attraction of distant pilgrimages was great,[521] especially the three without equal: Rome, Jerusalem, and St. James’s of Galicia, held so sacred that, while most {371} of the vows taken by the benefactors of the great bridge at Avignon could be remitted on account of their gifts to this useful structure, exception was made if the question was of a pilgrimage to be performed to one of those three places.[522] With or without letters men crossed the Channel, for which they paid sixpence, or if they had a horse, two shillings.[523] They arrived at Calais, stopping there some time in a “Maison-Dieu,” or hospital, which had been built and endowed by pious souls with revenues “for the sustenance of the pilgrims and other poor folks repairing to the said town to rest and refresh them.”[524]
Setting out again, they went to Boulogne to pray to a miraculous virgin, whose hand still exists enclosed in a reliquary. The statue itself was thrown into a well by the Protestants in 1567, replaced on the altar in 1630, pulled down again at the Revolution and burnt, but one of the faithful saved the hand, which the church of Notre Dame preserves to this day. Chaucer’s travelled gossip, the Wife of Bath, had among other pilgrimages, made this one to Boulogne.[525] People also went to Amiens to venerate the head, or rather one of the heads, of St. John the Baptist.[526] Great was their wonder when, {372} continuing their journey, they fell in with another at Constantinople. Perhaps, let us hope, they were content with remarking as “Mandeville” does: Which is the true one? “I wot nere, but God knowethe; but in what wyse than men worschipen it, the blessed seynt John holt him a-payd.”[527] Then also people went to the shrine of the three kings at Cologne, to Paris where innumerable relics were kept, to Chartres, where, besides a famous statue of the Virgin, was shown the tunic she wore on the day of the Annunciation (preserved in the cathedral since 861),[528] to Vezelay, Tours, Le Puy, and to many other places in France, among which the celebrated and to the present day most frequented church of Our Lady of Rocamadour in Guyenne. The fame of this pilgrimage among Englishmen is attested by Langland, when he advises people belonging to the religious orders to cease pilgrimage-making, and rather practice virtue at home:
“Right so, if thow be religious · renne thou never ferther
To Rome ne to Rochemadore.”[529]