Canterbury

by William Danks

CANTERBURY FROM THE STOUR [(Page 11)]

Nowhere in the country will you find so many of these old houses; some of them in part dating back to the fourteenth century; and Dickens felt the charm of them. Many are now hidden behind ugly modern fronts, but many are yet unspoiled. Doubtless some of these in St. Dunstan's Street took in belated pilgrims who arrived after curfew and the shutting of the city gate.

Just outside Westgate is the old Falstaff Inn, with its sign suspended from a remarkable bracket of fifteenth-century ironwork. This reminds us that before the era of coal mining in the north, Kentish men were craftsmen in iron, obtaining unlimited fuel from the forest of the Weald. Doubtless there were Kentish pikes and blades, Kentish helmets and hauberks, at Cressy and Poitiers, at Agincourt, in the Wars of the Roses, and at Flodden. While we are looking at old houses let us pass through Westgate (we will return in a moment) and visit the Canterbury Weavers, shown in our illustration. It rises sheer from the water, and its windows "bulge" over the water, where the river crosses the street near Eastbridge Hospital. It is, in spite of repairs and restorations, a fifteenth-century building, and, as viewed from the bridge, not less picturesque than a nook of Bruges or Ghent.

Eastbridge Hospital, just opposite, belongs to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but is not a specimen of domestic architecture. It is a charitable foundation which survived Tudor confiscations through the intercession of Cranmer, and still shelters its aged poor. Somewhat farther, on the same side, is No. 37, a French silk-weaver's house, built in the fifteenth century for one of the refugees from religious persecution. It is almost unchanged: the ground floor is the shop, the first floor is for the family and the loom, and the story above has its door for receiving the bales of silk hauled up from the street.

We must not wander farther without turning to look at Westgate, the last remaining of Canterbury's seven city gates and the best thing of its kind in the kingdom. With its round flanking towers and its massive portal, it takes us back in a moment to the fourteenth century, and makes us wonder and sigh that citizens could have had the heart to destroy its fellows. For even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century the walls and gates of the ancient town were almost intact. With grim amusement, not unmixed with disgust, we recall the story that once the Town Council was equally divided on the proposition that it should be pulled down to admit the huge caravans of Wombwell's Wild Beast Show. It was saved only by the casting vote of the Mayor, to whose common sense it occurred to make a way round it. And that Mayor, not the least of Canterbury's worthies, is not even yet commemorated by—

"Colossal bust
Or column trophied for triumphal show".

There was an earlier Norman gateway here with, oddly as it seems to us, the Church of the Holy Cross on the top of it. In 1380 Archbishop Simon Sudbury built the present structure and found ground space beside it for the church. And thereby hangs a tale. Sudbury was not only a munificent builder, but a man of vigorous mind, wise before his time. He overtook a company of pilgrims nearing this gate, and spoke to them very plainly on the matter of relics and pilgrimages, declaring that no Pope or plenary indulgence could avail without the contrite heart and the changed life. This was, be it remembered, 150 years before the Reformation, and not even from a bishop could such a doctrine be received. The fury of the crowd found voice in the curse flung then and there upon the preacher by one of the Kentish gentry: "My Lord Bishop, for this act of yours, stirring the people to sedition against St. Thomas, I stake the salvation of my soul that you will close your life by a most terrible death". "From the beginning of the world", adds the Chronicler, "it never has been heard that anyone ever injured the Cathedral of Canterbury and was not punished by the Lord." Eleven years later, for his share in the hated Poll-tax, the Archbishop was dragged out of the Tower of London by the rebels under Wat Tyler and beheaded. His body was buried in the choir of the Cathedral, and when uncovered accidentally was found to have a leaden ball in the place of the head, which is still preserved at his native Sudbury.

From Westgate the main street, under as many aliases as a hardened criminal, starting as St. Peter's Street, continuing as High Street, Parade, and St. George's Street, runs the whole length of the city, with quaint and curious dwellings on either hand. If we were real pilgrims, and had walked or ridden all the way from London, we should make at once for "The Chequers of the Hope" mentioned in the supplementary Canterbury Tale. It is only a few hundred yards away, where Mercery Lane turns off to the left, and has, or had, its dormitory of a hundred beds. Alas! it was burned down in 1865, and we shall recognize it only by a modern carving of the Black Prince's crest—the leopard with protruding tongue—on the stone corner of the house where the two streets meet.