“True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
“Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.”
Then there are the East Bridge Hospital, possibly founded by Becket for “wayfaring and hurt men,” now an almshouse, and St John’s Hospital, with its charming half-timber gateway, and others. And what should such a city do without a castle? Yet the good citizens are content with a neglected ruin, the remnants of a fortress first built in the twelfth century, and full of historic memory. But castles have no living faith to keep them whole and sound; they have no usefulness, and this is a utilitarian age. Indeed, it is solely due to accident that any part of the fine old keep remains, for in the early years of last century the city fathers decided to utilise it as a quarry. But modern picks found ancient cement too strong for them, and the undertaking, not proving remunerative, was abandoned. It would have been a gross blunder to leave Canterbury unfortified, standing as it did upon the most important coast road in the kingdom. The keep was completed about 1125, and the castle further strengthened by Henry II. At one period it was the principal county prison. Here it stands amid the prosaic modernity of to-day, a hoar and unhonoured relic of the wild past.
From this desecration we turn to the leafy walks that surround the Dane John, that mysterious mound whose principal use has been to afford sport for etymological antiquaries. Donjon, we are told it may be rightly; may be also wrongly. Best had we mount the steps to the summit of the city wall, hereabouts in a wonderfully good state of preservation, and walk along it toward the cattle-market and so on to St Augustine’s College. Here we touch fingers with pagan days, for on this spot, so it is related, Ethelbert worshipped the gods of his fathers. To St Augustine he gave this temple, though such a high-sounding name misfits what was doubtless a modest erection, and it was consecrated as a Christian church in the name of St Pancras. Between it and the city rose the Benedictine monastery of St Peter and St Paul, afterward dedicated also to Augustine himself and by his name thenceforth generally known. In July 1538 came the downfall with the arrival of Henry VIII.’s commissioners; there was a demonstration of resistance on the part of the monks, but cannon provided a conclusive argument; and then the end, the glory departed. Here were buried not only Augustine, but King Ethelbert and many of the archbishops. The saint who came as an apostle of Christianity to Kent founded this great monastery; now it is a missionary college of the Church of England, whence preachers of Christ’s teaching go forth to the ends of the earth. On the saint’s tomb could once be read a brief epitome of the events of his stirring life: “Here resteth the Lord Augustine, first
Archbishop of Canterbury, who erewhile was sent hither by Blessed Gregory, Bishop of the City of Rome, and being helped by God to work miracles, drew over King Ethelbert and his race from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ. Having ended in peace the days of his ministry, he departed hence seven days before the Kalends of June in the reign of the same king, A.D. 605.”