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قراءة كتاب Canterbury

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Canterbury

Canterbury

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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should overthrow the Prince's son Richard II and finally rest by the famous warrior's side.

The devout but incapable and unfortunate Henry VI was at Canterbury eleven times, and more than once as a pilgrim. As a pilgrim, in humblest guise, he was here after his final defeat at Tewkesbury, his Queen in captivity, his son dead on the field "stabbed by the Yorkist Lords after Edward (the Fourth) had met his cry for mercy with a buffet from his gauntlet". Henry himself went hence to die in the Tower, and so end the hopes of the House of Lancaster.

The little open space between Mercery Lane and the Precincts gatehouse has seen many strange doings which we cannot record. In the thirteenth century Canterbury was requisitioned for a contingent of Edward I's Welsh invasion, and the monks refused to bear their share of the expense. This led to a furious dispute with the citizens, an embittered kind of "Town and Gown". A trench was dug before the gate to prevent ingress and egress of men or victuals, and the brethren appear to have been starved out. In the fifteenth century Edward IV hanged the Mayor and some of his friends here for complicity in treason.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM CHRIST CHURCH GATECANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM CHRIST CHURCH GATE (Page 24)

But these "old, unhappy far-off things" were before the existence of the present beautiful Perpendicular gatehouse, depicted in our illustration. Its Norman predecessor was still standing, lower, plainer, grimmer, like most Norman buildings. Prior Goldston did not finish this one till 1517. In 1520, when its carvings were fresh and the stone bright in the sunshine, and the great statue of Our Lord looked down from over the archway, and the octagonal side-turrets, like those of St. Augustine's, were not within three hundred years of being pulled down that bank-clerks might see the Cathedral clock from the other end of Mercery Lane—then there came to the last of the Great Pardons, with trumpetings and gorgeous retinue, two great kings riding under one canopy. One was Henry VIII and the other the mightiest monarch in Christendom, Charles V the Emperor of Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, President of the Diet which tried to murder Luther, as the Council of Constance had murdered Huss; but a far better man than Henry, and uncle of Henry's Queen, Katherine. Before them rode Cardinal Wolsey, and there were Spanish Grandees, and English Nobles, and Queen Katherine herself. "The streets", says Dr. Cox, "were lined with priests and clerks from all the parishes within twenty miles of the city, with censers, crosses, surplices, and copes of the richest sort. At the great west doors of the church (still opened only for royalties and archbishops) they were met by the Archbishop, and after saying their devotions they proceeded to Wareham's Palace. On one evening of that week Wareham gave a great ball in the hall of the Palace, when the Emperor danced with the then Queen of England, and Henry with the Queen of Aragon, the Emperor's mother."

Henry, as we know, had a taste for cloth of gold, and the affair must have been sufficiently sumptuous. This was perhaps the last of the great pageants.

Charles I came here with his fifteen-year-old bride; Charles II was gracious at considerable expense to the citizens, and brought as his Archbishop the faithful Juxon, who had been chaplain on the fatal day at Whitehall and had received the mystic word "Remember"; Elizabeth in her haughty way was "exceeding magnifical" at the charges of Archbishop Parker, whose wife she declined to call Madam, since clergymen had no business with wives. The little square has also humbler associations. It has been a bull-ring, where the poor beasts were baited "to make them man's meat and fit to be eaten". It has had a beautifully carved Market Cross, which gave place to the doubtful memorial to Marlowe. The massive oaken doors bear Juxon's coat of arms, for he set them up in place of those destroyed by the Puritans. They are open; let us pass to the object of our pilgrimage, the great Cathedral whose builders built better than they knew, and left for all time a history of this land and its faith, written and illuminated in stone.


THE CATHEDRAL

Once within Christ Church Gate, and in view of the whole southern side of the Cathedral, we may pause for a moment and enjoy the vision. That central tower, surely for dignity and beauty without its peer in the land, took from first to last fifty years in the building, and was christened from its first stone the Angel Steeple, from the figure with which it was to be crowned, though now, the Angel having taken flight, it is usually known as Bell Harry, from the great bell hung in it. Mark in the sunshine (for it is a sunny day) the depth and variety of shadows and lights on its moulded and sculptured surface. Not without pity and indignation do we read that Goldwell, the last of the priors who built the gatehouse and completed the tower, begged in vain, when a palsied old man, at the dissolution of the convent, to be continued in his old home as the first Dean. Nicholas Wotton, a wily monk not of the fraternity, whose stone effigy you will see kneeling in the Trinity Chapel, was appointed in his stead.

After Bell Harry, the next place in our admiration is due to the Norman staircase-turret, somewhat farther east, with arcading so fine and decorative as to remind us of arabesque. This turret, with its fellow on the north side, and the ruined staircase in the Green Court, are Norman work unsurpassed anywhere. The fivelight Decorated window of St. Anselm's Chapel is believed by well-qualified judges to be the most beautiful instance of early fourteenth-century tracery in the country. It is, of course, much later than the chapel, and was inserted, in 1336, by Prior Oxenden, whose account states the cost at £42, or about £650 of our money, all given by himself and his friends.

On our walk to the Norman turret and St. Anselm's Chapel we notice, under the east window of the Warrior's Chapel, a projection like a low buttress. It is the foot of Stephen Langton's tomb. He was originally buried within, when the chapel was built on to the transept; and later laid here, with the altar over his head, and his feet in the open ground.

As we move along the Precincts we are treading on the dust of the Cathedral-builders. For all this southern side was a graveyard—of the laity as far as St. Anselm's, and of the monks and clergy beyond. The two were divided by a wall, in which was set as gateway the gabled Norman arch which is now the entrance to the Bowling Green in front of us. It is a curious reflection that, in those days of primitive transport, these walls and towers were brought stone by stone from the quarries at Caen in Normandy. The barges crossed the Channel and were unloaded at Fordwych, about two miles from Canterbury. Formerly the tides came up the river in considerable volume, and Fordwych was a flourishing port with its Mayor and Corporation; and still has its queer little town hall, its ducking stool for scolds, and its prison, though only a tiny hamlet of one hundred and fifty people. When Louis VII of France made his annual grant of 1600 gallons of wine to Christ Church Priory, a fee was paid to the Mayor of Fordwych for the use of his crane in lifting the barrels from the boats. Not many

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