as a city of churches, religious houses, and hostelries and other accommodations for pilgrims—that was the atmosphere of mediæval Canterbury. On the opposite side of High Street to the “Chequers” was a lodging for pilgrims erected by Prior Chillenden in the fifteenth century, which was for long years after the Reformation an ordinary inn for travellers.
Pilgrims came throughout the year in companies large and small, but the throng and press was tremendous at the festival of the Martyrdom on December 29, and in summer for the festival of the Translation on July 7, which also was the first day of Canterbury Fair. Larger still the crowds in the years of jubilee, 1270, 1320, 1370, 1420, 1470, and 1520, when on each fiftieth anniversary of the Translation the feast lasted for two weeks and indulgences were granted to all pilgrims.
Beside the inns, there was plenty other accommodation for pilgrims of all degrees, in the hospitals and convents, and, above all, in the Priory of Christ Church.
The city fathers, too, took their share in the festivals, among other entertainments providing a pageant of the Martyrdom; and here follow a few quaint extracts from an account of the expenditure one year upon the same: “Paid to carpenters hewing and squaring of timber for the pageant, 8d. For making St Thomas’s cart, with a pair of wheels, 5s. 8d. Paid a carpenter and his fellows making of the pageant, by four days, taking between them, by the day, finding themselves, 14d., 4s. 8d.... For 114 feet of board, bought for flooring the same pageant, 2s. 8d.... For nails, 7½d. For tallow for the wheels, 1d. For ale spent 1d. To four men to help to carry the pageant, 8d.... For gunpowder, bought at Sandwich, 3s. 4d.... For linen cloth for St Thomas’s garment, 6d. For a dozen and a half of tin silver, 9d. For glue and pack-thread, 3d.... To John a Kent for the hire of a sword, 4d. And for washing of an albe and an amys, 2d.”
Our pilgrims, who seem to have arrived fairly early in day,
“Ordeyned their dyner wisely, or they to church went,”
and then went along Mercery Lane, under the great gateway—as we all still may go—and then broke upon their view a sight different in many ways, yet in many the same as now meets the eye. Dean Stanley has described it well for us: “The pilgrims would stream into the Precincts. The outside aspect of the Cathedral can be imagined without much difficulty. A wide cemetery, which, with its numerous gravestones, such as that on the south side of Peterborough Cathedral, occupied the vacant space still called the Churchyard, divided from the garden beyond by the old Norman arch since removed to a more convenient spot. In the cemetery were interred such pilgrims as died during their stay in Canterbury. The external aspect of the Cathedral itself, with the exception of the numerous statues which then filled its now vacant niches, must have been much what it is now. Not so its interior. Bright colours on the roof, on the windows, on the monuments; hangings suspended from the rods which may still be seen running from pillar to pillar; chapels, and altars, and chantries intercepting the view, where now all is clear, must have rendered it so different, that at first we should hardly recognise it to be the same building.”
Returning to our friends:—
“Whan they wer al y-loggit, as skill wold and reson,
Everich aftir his degre, to chirch then was seson
To pas and to wend, to make their offringis,
Righte as their devocioune was, of silver broch and ryngis.
Then at the chirch dorr the curtesy gan to ryse,
Tyl the knyght, of gentilnes that knewe right well the guyse,
Put forth the prelatis, the parson and his fere.
A monk, that took the spryngill with a manly chere,
And did as the manere is, moilid all thir patis,
Everich after othir, righte as they wer of statis.”
After they had been thus sprinkled with the holy water—