We soon pass by the opening—or rather the close—of the Pilgrims’ Way, and stopping at the sexton’s house in London Road, obtain his guidance to the church of St Dunstan, where there is much to see of interest. Immediately inside the western porch, a door admits us to the ancient lepers’ chapel, now used as a vestry, where those outcast folk could join in the worship of the congregation by using the squint, now blocked up with a cupboard. Here is an ancient chest, once on a time used for the collection of Peter’s Pence; and the table, a fine piece of cabinet work, is the old sounding-board. At the east end of the church is the Roper Chapel, in the vault beneath lying buried Margaret Roper and the head of Sir Thomas More, her father. To this chapel pilgrims still come, and another form of reverence has been paid to the “martyr” by the offers more than once made to purchase this unpleasant relic. When the vault was opened in 1879, during the restoration of the church, the head was found to be in a state of perfect preservation.
On the opposite side of the roadway, a short distance farther on toward the city, built into a brewery, is the red brick gateway of Roper House—or Rooper, as it is spelled on the monument in the church—where Margaret preserved the sad relic, which had first been exhibited on London Bridge.
And so back again to Canterbury.
ENVOI
Back again to Canterbury, where it is to be hoped our leisure will permit us to loiter, or which our good fortune may allow us to visit again and yet again.
Canterbury sits between History and Romance, the chief city of one of the most delightful and most interesting of English counties. Her streets are thronged with memories, crowded with historic figures. Romance and History mingle inextricably—Chaucer, Marlowe, Dickens; Augustine, Becket, Cranmer. In these pages an endeavour has been made to depict Canterbury and some of the surrounding country not with the pen of the historian or of the archæologist, but to set forth rather the personal impressions of a lover of old times, old ways and old books. Christ Church Cathedral is to him no mere record in cold stone of a dead past, but a living memorial of a living past. It is meant to be a book for those who share with the writer his delight in calling up to the mind’s eye ghosts of men and women dead and gone.
At first, as has been said, Canterbury strikes disappointingly on those who go thither thinking to step back straightway from the present into the past. But gradually and surely the past overpowers the present as we linger in its narrow streets and loiter in its ancient buildings. It is no city of the dead. The life of to-day throbs in its veins; but its to-day is dull, dim and uneventful compared with its stirring, many-coloured past.
These pages have touched upon many matters concerning which many volumes have been, and will be, written; but no attempt has been made at completeness. This book is not a guide, but rather aims at being a sign-post—pointing to the past. For many years yet pilgrims will come to Canterbury, and if this little work helps any of them to see and to hear there what has been so vivid and so clear to the writer of it, the object with which it is set forth will have been gained.
INDEX
The Illustrations are printed in italics.