This poem is printed from a copy in the Editor's folio MS. which had greatly suffered by the hand of time; but vestiges of several of the lines remaining, some conjectural supplements have been attempted, which, for greater exactness, are in this one ballad distinguished by italicks.[443]
[The shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham was the favourite English resort of pilgrims for nearly four hundred years, and the people of Norfolk were in great distress when their image was taken away from them, and the stream of votaries was suddenly stopped. In a copy of the Reliques in the library of the British Museum, there is a MS. note by William Cole to the following effect: "I was lately informed that the identical image of our lady of Walsingham being mured up in an old wall, and there discovered on pulling it down, was presented by the Earl of Leicester (Coke) to a relative of his of the Roman Catholic religion."
The shrine was connected with a Priory of Augustinian Canons, which was founded during the episcopate of William Turbus, Bishop of Norwich (1146-1174). When Henry III. made his pilgrimage to the shrine in the year 1241, it had long been famous, and was probably more frequented even than the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Foreigners of all nations came hither on pilgrimage, and in number and quality the devotees appear to have equalled those who toiled to the Lady of Loretto in Italy. Several of our kings visited the shrine after Henry III. had set the example. Edward I. was there in 1280 and in 1296, Edward II. in 1315, and Edward IV. and his queen in 1469. Henry VII. offered his prayers in "our Lady's Church" at Christmas time 1486-7, and in the following summer, after the battle of Stoke, "he sent his banner to be offered to our Lady of Walsingham, where before he made his vows." Spelman gives on hearsay evidence the report that Henry VIII., in the second year of his reign, walked barefoot to Walsingham from a neighbouring village, and then presented a valuable necklace to the image. Bartholomew, Lord Burghersh, K.G., by his will made in 1369, ordered a statue of himself on horseback to be made in silver, and offered to our Lady of Walsingham; and Henry VII., in his lifetime, gave a kneeling figure of himself. There are numerous references to Walsingham in the Paston Letters, and in 1443 we find Margaret Paston writing to her husband to tell him that her mother had vowed another image of wax of his own weight, to "our Lady of Walsingham," and that she herself had vowed to go on pilgrimage there for him. (Ed. Fenn, iii. 22.)
The total income of the place (including the offerings) was reported to be £650 in the twenty-sixth year of Henry VIII.'s reign, and Roger Ascham, when visiting Cologne in 1550, makes this remark: "The Three Kings be not so rich, I believe, as was the Lady of Walsingham." Now the treasures at Cologne are said to have been worth six millions of francs (£240,000).
The road to Walsingham was a well-frequented one, and a cross was set up in every town it passed through. An old track running by Newmarket, Brandon, and Castle Acre, which was used by the pilgrims, was known as the "Palmer's Way" or "Walsingham Green Way."
The Milky Way ("the Watling-street of the heavens," as Chaucer has it) has been associated with pilgrimages in several countries. In Norfolk, the long streaming path of light was supposed to point the pilgrim on his road to Walsingham, and was in consequence called the "Walsingham Way." In Italy, in France, and in the north of Europe it has been called "St. Jago's Way," "Jacobsstrasse," &c., as pointing the way to Compostella, and one of its Turkish names is "The Hadji's Way," as indicating the road to Mecca.[444]
Among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library is A Lament for Walsingham, in the handwriting of Philip, Earl of Arundel, the third stanza of which is as follows:
"Bitter, bitter, oh! to behould
the grasse to growe
Where the walles of Walsingam
So statly did sheue.
Such were the workes of Walsingam
While shee did stand!
Such are the wrackes as now do shewe
of that holy land!
Levell, Levell with the ground
the towres doe lye."