7, the feast of the Translation of Becket's bones from the Crypt to the Trinity Chapel, and especially at the Great Pardons or Jubilees of the Feast every fifty years, from 1220 to 1520, these ways were crowded with pilgrims, English or foreign, on foot or on horseback, sick or whole, sad or merry, intent on paying homage and receiving a blessing, above all of winning the promised plenary indulgence at the miracle-working shrine. From the offerings of these pilgrims came in great measure the huge sums of money which enabled the monks to extend and exalt their church to its present magnificence. In 1220, the first of the Great Pardons, it has been estimated that 100,000 pilgrims offered £20,000 of our money; and this did not include the stream of worshippers and gifts that flowed on other days of the year. If we add to these "devotions of the people" the splendid generosity of the monks and clergy, we begin to understand how the Cathedral was paid for. Lanfranc gave the whole revenues of the manor of East Peckham, bestowed on him by William the Conqueror; and he was but the first of a series of munificent archbishops.

ST. NICHOLAS, HARBLEDOWN (Page 10)

It is one of the curiosities of history, though by no means without parallel, that these lavish gifts and this energy of costly building continued up to the very edge of doom. The great central tower, the Angel Steeple or Bell Harry, was not finished till 1490; Christ Church Gatehouse not till 1517; Henry VIII himself made offerings at the shrine in 1520. In 1538 he gave orders to plunder the shrine and burn Becket's bones, and in 1540 the monastery was dissolved.

It may be as well here to give some idea of the value of the spoil. "The official return of the actual gold of the shrine was 4994-3/4 oz., the gilt plate weighed 4425 oz., the parcel gilt 840 oz., and the plain silver 5286 oz." But Erasmus, who visited Canterbury in 1513, writes: "The least valuable portion was gold; every part glistened, shone, and sparkled with rare and very large jewels, some of them exceeding the size of a goose's egg.... The principal of them were offerings sent by sovereign princes." As, for instance, the golden cup presented by Louis VII of France in 1179, and the Royal Jewel of France, an immense ruby or carbuncle, given by the same Prince, which afterwards figured in a great ring on Henry's portentous thumb, and (we are rather surprised to learn) in the necklace of his Roman Catholic daughter Mary. There were crucifixes, statuettes, and ornaments of precious metal; there were innumerable gems, so that the last visitor at the shrine, in the very year of its destruction, declared "that if she had not seen it, all the men in the world could never a' made her to believe it".

We are scarcely surprised, therefore, to hear of the two large chests with which seven or eight men staggered out of the church, or of the twenty-six cartloads of vestments, plate, and other Cathedral property which were dispatched to London. The total value of Henry's confiscations from this church and priory is thought to have been not less than three million pounds of our money. For more than three hundred years there had been, outside Rome, no more famous place of pilgrimage, no more wonderful treasury of gifts and relics. One can guess the thoughts of the "sovereign princes" and other devout donors, when their costly offerings and those of their ancestors were poured pell-mell into the gaping coffers of the English king. It is less easy to guess the thoughts of the Canterbury citizens and other English folk who looked on with scarcely a protest. Some probably were cowed, and some sympathetic. Perhaps a dim consciousness was waking in the minds of the people, that monasticism and relic-worship had outlived their day of service, and that a new age was at hand. Even under Queen Mary no attempt was made to replace the shrine or renew the pilgrimages.

Let us, however, be as pilgrims ourselves—Chaucer's if you will—and enter the city along their ancient well-trodden way from the Tabard Inn at Southwark. Only we will start a short mile and a half from Canterbury at the Leper Hospital of Harbledown. It is now a group of modern almshouses, but still has its prior and sub-prior, as in the days when the lepers lived under the shadow of Lanfranc's Church of St. Nicholas, which they were forbidden to enter. This church and the square-timbered entrance by the porter's lodge are shown in our illustration.

An aged bedesman, on the steps to this garden porch, would greet the travellers in the road with a shower of sprinkled holy water, and hold out to be kissed by them a crystal set in the upper leather of the martyred Becket's shoe. The upper leather is gone, perhaps kissed away, but the crystal is still shown in the hospital, set in an old bowl of maple-wood. Erasmus and Colet came here in 1513, and were invited to do as others. They were scholars and thinkers, full of the new learning, and therefore scornful of the sanctity of slippers and bones. They declined—Colet rather crossly; Erasmus (tolerant soul) with a humorous twinkle and a kindly coin for the bedesman's box which is still to be seen within.

A few steps onward up the steep little Harbledown Hill and we have a view of Canterbury Cathedral across the River Stour—a view which has delighted the eye and heart of many pilgrims, whether ancient or modern. Nearly a mile downhill and we come to St. Dunstan's Church in the environs of Canterbury. Here in a vault is the head of a nobler martyr than Becket—of a man with all Becket's constancy and faith, with more than Becket's intellect, and without his haughty spirit and violent temper. All the world knows how the head of Sir Thomas More, one of the best and wisest of Englishmen, was set on London Bridge as the head of a traitor, and how, after fourteen days of this ignominy, it secretly passed into the possession of his daughter, Margaret Roper. It is less generally known that she finally placed it in the Roper vault in St. Dunstan's.

On the opposite side of the road, a little nearer the town, is the old brick archway which was once the approach to Margaret Roper's house, and beneath which father and daughter, who loved each other dearly, must often have passed together.

We have all been with David Copperfield and his aunt to Mr. Wickfield's house in Canterbury—"A very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long, low lattice windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too; so that I fancied that the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the pavement below".

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.