In St Andrew’s Tower were exhibited to the privileged the pastoral staff of the saint, the cloak and the blood-stained kerchief, even rags and shreds upon which he had wiped his nose and mopped his brow. We do not wish to be irreverent; there are certain relics of pious and saintly men which all can treat with respect if not with adoration; but relic worship ran mad and was too often reduced to absurdity, sometimes of a positively disgusting character.
Onward to the shrine of the saint, first visiting Becket’s Crown—the Corona—where we would be shown the portion of the saint’s skull which was shorn off by the murderer’s sword.
Then to the shrine itself, where lay the holy body, enclosed in splendour which has been described on another page.
The shrine was shown, maybe for the last time, in August 1538, to a Madame de Montreuil, as described in a letter to Cromwell: “....so by ten of the cloc, she ... went to the church, where I showed her Sainte Thomas’s shrine, and all such things worthy of sight, at which she was not little marveilled of the great riches thereof, saing to be innumerable; and that if she had not seen it, all the men in the wourlde would never a made her to belyve it. Thus ever looking and viewing more than an oure as well the shryne as Sainct Thomas’s hed, being at both sett cushions to knyle, and the Priour opening Saint Thomas’s hed, saing to her three times, ‘This is Sainct Thomas’ hed,’ and offered her to kysse it, but she nother knyled nor would kysse it, but still viewing the riches thereof.”[6]
So for six jubilees continued this throng to come from all the lands of Europe to this shrine in this English city; the shrine of a saint of whom no saintly deed has been recorded.
Then came the downfall, which Hasted has plainly described: “As this saint was stripped of the name, honour, and adoration which had for so great a length of time been paid to him; so was this church, most probably a principal allurement to the dead, robbed of all the riches, the jewels of inestimable value, and the vast quantities of gold and silver, with which this shrine was splendidly and gloriously adorned: his relics and bones were likewise taken away, and so destroyed and disposed of, that what became of them could not be known, least they might fall into such hands as might still honour them with veneration.”
With this adoration of the shrine the great end of the pilgrimage was attained, and our company departed “dyner-ward”—
“And sith they drowgh to dyner-ward, as it drew to noon.
Then, as manere and custom is, signes there they bought;
Fa men of contré shuld know whom they had sought,
Eche man set his silver in such thing as they likid.”
“Signes,” among which were small lead bottles, containing water mingled with the blood of the martyr; and leaden brooches, upon which were a representation of the head of the saint, and the words Caput Thomæ. So when the pilgrims scattered abroad over the countries from which they had come, both on their journey homeward and on their return, men might know that they had been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury; as Erasmus describes them—coming from this and other shrines—“covered with scallop shells, stuck all over with leaden and tin figures, adorned with straw necklaces and a bracelet of serpents’ eggs”; also, with scrip and staff, which their priests have blessed for them before they set out on what often was a long and perilous journey. Here is the prayer asking for blessing upon the scrip and staff—“O Lord Jesu Christ, who of Thy unspeakable mercy, at the