Part 14
To this neglected corner of England came a romantic and mysterious stranger in 1832. No one knew whence or how had come to Canterbury the picturesquely dressed man of commanding height and handsome face who, staying at the "Rose Hotel" in the High Street, soon attracted attention by his manner and the Eastern style of dress he affected. That he was fabulously rich, and that his name was Baron Rothschild were the common reports of the then somewhat dull Cathedral city, eager to dwell upon any subject that made for gossip; but it presently appeared, by his own accounts, that he was "Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay," Knight of Malta and King of Jerusalem. This extraordinary man, besides possessing the advantages of a handsome face and a fine presence, was gifted with a singularly persuasive eloquence; and professing himself to be the friend of the people, oppressed by a selfish aristocracy and a stupid Government, he aroused the wildest enthusiasm in a political campaign upon which he presently embarked, with the object of standing as Parliamentary candidate for the City of Canterbury. His charm of manner; the affability with which he would converse with the meanest peasant; and the really clever political discourses he wrote for a periodical leaflet called the _Lion_ which he had printed and published, created a number of partisans who flocked round him as he rode through Canterbury and the surrounding villages; or crowded the High Street in a state of the wildest enthusiasm when he harangued them from the balcony of the "Rose." He polled over nine hundred votes in the Conservative interest at the election, and thus came within an easy distance of becoming a member of Parliament. His indiscreet championship of some fishermen, who were being prosecuted by the Revenue officials for smuggling, gave political and social enemies the looked-for opportunity to injure a man who was so dangerous to the squires of Kent. He was prosecuted in turn, on a charge of perjury, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. From the County Gaol he was transferred to a lunatic asylum, and only liberated in the spring of 1838, on the assurances of friends in the vicinity of Canterbury that they would take charge of him.
Religious mania seems to have attacked the weak brain of this excitable enthusiast while in confinement, and his conduct presently became more eccentric than before. Roaming in the country villages, preaching religious and political salvation to the small farmers, the cottagers, and poor agricultural labourers of Kent, he aroused greater enthusiasm and personal love than before. He had always represented himself to be a member of the Courtenay family, whose head, the Earl of Devon, claims descent from Palaeologus, King of Jerusalem in early Crusading times; and, in addition, he announced himself as the rightful heir to a number of important estates in Kent and neighbouring counties. He let it be known that he, the noble Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta, and rightful King of Jerusalem, was not too proud to partake of food and shelter at the board and under the roof of the poorest. When he came in power, and claimed his rights, the oppressed should live freely on the land; the cruel New Poor Law that shut unfortunate men and women out from the world in "Bastilles," as though Poverty were a crime, and separated man and wife, whom God had declared by his handmaid, the Church, man should not put asunder, should be abrogated; and the workers should have a share in the products of their toil. The people largely responded to these advances; and poor folk, together with a number of the class who had earned themselves a small competency, and a few moneyed people, believed thoroughly in Courtenay. He was now a man whom many held to have been persecuted and imprisoned for his championship of the people, and they loved him for it, many of them with a whole-souled devotion that culminated in worship. Courtenay's extraordinary facial resemblance to the traditional appearance of the Saviour, and, finally, his ultimate assumption of the character of the Messiah, led many people to believe that Christ was actually come on earth to commence His promised reign; and entertainment, encouragement, and monetary contributions attended on their belief.
[Illustration: "SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY." _From an old print._]
Matters came to a crisis toward the end of May. Courtenay had marched the country round with agricultural labourers and others who had left their work in the fields to follow the Lord, and the farmers who thus saw their fields remaining untilled grew anxious. One, bolder than the rest, applied to the magistrate for the detention of his men who had thus left their employment; and, with a local constable named Mears and two others, he came up with Courtenay's band on the morning of May 31st.
[Sidenote: BATTLE OF BOSSENDEN]
Ever since the 28th of that month, Courtenay had been tramping the roads and lanes with a band of about one hundred rustics. Starting from Boughton on that day, they had bought bread, and, placing half a loaf on a pole, above a blue-and-white flag bearing a lion rampant, had marched through Goodnestone, Hernhill, and Dargate Common, where they all fell down on their knees while Courtenay prayed. Then they proceeded to Bossenden Farm, where they supped and slept in a barn. Leaving Bossenden at three o'clock the next morning, their leader took them to Sittingbourne, where he procured breakfast for the whole party at a cost of 25s. The rest of the day was spent in parading the country round Boughton, and the next evening was spent again at Bossenden Farm. The following morning, Mears the constable, with his party of three, came up with them in a meadow, and demanded the surrender of the farmers' men. The men refused to leave, and Courtenay shot the constable dead on the spot. Alarmed at this, the others rode off hastily to Canterbury for military assistance, while Courtenay administered the sacrament to his men in bread-and-water. All knelt down and worshipped him, and a farmer, one Alexander Foad, kneeling, asked "should he follow him in body or in heart?" "In the body," replied Courtenay; whereupon Foad sprang up, exclaiming, "Oh! be joyful, be joyful! The Saviour has accepted me. Go on, go on, I'll follow thee till I drop!"
[Illustration: "COURTENAY." _From an old print._]
When the terrified three reached Canterbury, they secured the aid of a company of the Forty-fifth Regiment. A young officer, Lieutenant Bennett, staying with friends in the city, volunteered to go with them. Coming to Bossenden, they found Courtenay and his hundred followers strongly posted amid alder-bushes in a deep and sequestered part of Bossenden Wood. Courtenay exhorted his people to behave like men. "God," he said, "would protect him and them. Should he fall, he would infallibly rise again in greater glory than now; and wounds for his sake would be accounted for righteousness."
[Sidenote: DEATH OF "COURTENAY"]
Lieutenant Bennett advanced and called upon them to surrender, but Courtenay, raising his pistol, shot him dead, and his men leapt out from the woods furiously, armed only with cudgels and fanaticism, to attack the soldiers. One volley, however, stretched many dying, or bleeding from severe wounds, upon the ground, and Courtenay himself fell mortally wounded, exclaiming, "I have Jesus in my heart."
Thirteen people in all were killed in this affray: Mears the constable, Lieutenant Bennett, and Courtenay; eight "rioters" dying on the spot, and two others afterwards succumbing to their wounds. Many more were crippled for life. Twenty-three were committed to gaol: some transported across the seas, and others sentenced to short terms of imprisonment at home. Some of the men were buried in Boughton Churchyard, others at Hernhill, three miles away, overlooking the rich land that slopes towards the sea. Here Courtenay was buried, but the graves of himself and his men are unmarked by stone or mound. The fanaticism of the peasantry was not altogether extinguished by this dreadful ending, and the tale is told, on excellent authority, of a woman drawing water from a well and walking half a mile with it to moisten the lips of the dead leader, who had said that, should he fall, a drop of water applied to his mouth would restore him from death to life. The barbarous expedients of keeping his body in a shed of the "Red Lion" at Dunkirk until corruption had set in, and of omitting the resurrection clause from the Burial Service were resorted to, lest the country folk should persist in their belief of his divinity.
Thus ended the so-called "Courtenay Rebellion" of 1838. When he was dead, it became generally known that "Sir William Courtenay" was really but John Nichols Thom, the son of a Cornish innkeeper and farmer. Always a clever and handsome lad, he had grown up still more handsome, but with a religious enthusiasm and a romantic imagination inherited from his mother. He was for a time employed at Truro, but disappeared for some years until his strange descent upon Canterbury in 1832.
The "Red Lion," where the bodies of the dead were laid out, stands by the roadside at Dunkirk, and a cart-road on the hither side of it, to the left hand, made long after this extraordinary affair, and called "Courtenay Road," leads down to the still wild and thickly grown woods of hazel, alder, and miscellaneous scrub in which Bossenden Woods are situated. A gate--"Courtenay Gate"--stands by the scene of the struggle, but the trees marked at the time by the rustics in memory of Courtenay and his men, are not now to be discovered. The villagers still bear him in memory, and truly he deserves to be kept in mind, for though as "Sir William Courtenay" he was an impostor, yet he truly loved the people, and his naturally highly-strung mental organization, completely unstrung by an unnecessary imprisonment, was responsible for his religious pretensions and his blasphemous impersonation towards the end. Worse men than he are honoured in history and in public monuments, and it seems a pity that a childish spite should have hidden his grave and the graves of the poor fellows who fell that day. The pilgrim who takes an interest in these strange events, happening in this century, and in the reign of Queen Victoria, and who happens to visit the secluded village of Hernhill, may look for the site of "Sir William Courtenay's" resting-place beside the path where a yew-tree spreads a shade over the west entrance to the village church.
His death did good. The Government ordered a Commission to sit and inquire into the state of things that produced these events, and it appeared that the district was Godless and ignorant, a fit ground for fanaticism to spring up in and flourish. Schools were built, and the church of Dunkirk owes its existence to Courtenay's Rebellion. The superstitious countrymen who say the foundations of the building gave way several times before the walls could be commenced properly, declare that his ghost haunted the place. But, whatever else these doings teach, they teach us that a spirit of selfishness, of neglect, both on the part of Church and State, brings its inevitable retribution. The punishment fell then on these ignorant hinds; what should be the punishment in the hereafter of those who were morally responsible for the shedding of their blood?
XXXIII
[Sidenote: DUNKIRK]
Dunkirk was anciently a common in the Forest of Blean, and was a veritable Alsatia, the resort of lawless men who squatted here because it was not within any known jurisdiction. Hasted, in his _History of Kent_, says houses were built here and "inhabited by low persons of suspicious character, this being a place exempt from the jurisdiction of either hundred or parish, as in a free port, which receives all who enter it, without distinction. The whole district from hence gained the name of 'Dunkirk.'" This part of the road, being in neither hundred or parish, was neglected and left in a ruinous state until nearly the close of the eighteenth century.
At Dunkirk, on passing the "Gate" inn, with its sign of a five-barred field-gate hanging over the road, the traveller obtains his first glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral, the Bell Harry tower rising grey above the green valley of the Stour. Now the road goes downwards towards Harbledown in a succession of switchback ups and downs that, noticeable enough for remark even at this lapse of time, must have been much more marked in Chaucer's day. Here the pilgrims would see the Cathedral faintly from the crest of a hillock, losing it for a few minutes as they rode or tramped down the succeeding declivity, and regaining it on the next hill; until, coming to Harbledown, its majesty burst upon them in an uninterrupted view. The striking characteristics of the road here were noted by Chaucer himself, who, indeed, does not mention Harbledown by name; the description is alone sufficient to identify the place:--
Wist ye not where standeth a little toun, Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun, Under the Blee in Canterbury way.
Here the weary pilgrims made their last halt. The levity; the fun and frolic; the sound of songs and bagpipes ceased, and the seekers of Saint Thomas fell down upon their knees in the dusty road when they caught sight of the golden angel that then crowned the Bell Harry tower. Tears running down the cheeks of all, the pious and the indifferent alike resigned themselves to a religious ecstasy; and when they at length resumed their journey, Chaucer's company of pilgrims rode slowly into the Holy City, listening to a sermon in place of the curious tales with which they had hitherto beguiled the way.
Harbledown stood then on the borders of the great "Bosco de Blean." The "little town," now a mile-long stretch of disconnected cottages, was much smaller, clustering round the parish church on one side of the road, and the Hospital for Lepers, with its chapel and rows of cottages, on the other. Down the road, the houses of Canterbury were to be seen nestling for protection against the Castle and Cathedral, while on the other hand stretched the dark forest, with the Archbishop's gallows standing on a clearing in front. For not only did the dignified clergy point the way to the after life; they not infrequently helped their sheep on the way by means of rope or stake.
As the pilgrims passed that old Lepers' Hospital, founded by Lanfranc in 1084, on this breezy and healthful hillside, whence rose the sweet smell of the herbs for which Harbledown (== Herbal down) has derived its name, one of the brethren of this charitable foundation would come out and sprinkle them with holy water, presenting the shoe of Saint Thomas to be kissed, and praying them for the love of God and the Blessed Martyr to give something towards the support of the poor lepers of Saint Nicholas. Rarely did the pilgrims fail to do so, and this institution must, in the course of years, have become very wealthy. Henry the Second; Richard Lion Heart, come home again from captivity; Edward the First, with Eleanor of Castile, on his return from Palestine; the Black Prince, with his captives, those trophies of Poictiers--King John of France and his son Philip--and many another must have enriched the place. John of France, on his way home, gave ten gold crowns "pour les nonnains de Harbledown," and never, surely, before nor since, has an old shoe brought so much luck as Becket's brought here. For centuries the devout came and pressed their lips to it, dropping coins into the wooden alms-box that is still shown, together with a mazer inscribed with the deeds of Guy of Warwick, and containing the great crystal with which the shoe was decorated. But times change and habits of thought with them, and although the scenery remains as of old, little else is left of the days of pilgrimage. How like the present aspect of the place is to the appearance it presented three hundred and eighty years ago may be seen from the writings of Disiderius Erasmus.
[Sidenote: ERASMUS AND COLET]
When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning in 1512 from their unconventional pilgrimage to Canterbury, they came, two miles from the city, to a steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high banks on either side. The scenery is the same as then. The selfsame banks of an equal abruptness still rise above the road; the rough and crazy flight of steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc's old Hospital for Lepers, the Hospital of Harbledown. The immemorial yews are here even now; one still flourishing, the other decayed. But the Hospital has been rebuilt, and only the grey old Church of Saint Nicholas remains. Modern pilgrims, too, may pass without the attentions at one time bestowed on all who passed this way; attentions which disgusted the stern and matter-of-fact Colet, and amused his somewhat cynically-humorous companion. When they came to the gateway of the Hospital, there tottered down the steps an aged bedesman, and, sprinkling plentifully with holy water both themselves and their horses, he stepped forward, presenting the upper-leather of an old shoe, bound in brass and ornamented with a great crystal, to be kissed. This was the remnant of the Holy Shoe of Thomas a Becket, one of the most revered and valued possessions of the Hospital, kissed reverently by many thousands of pilgrims of every degree, and a great aid to the flow of alms. But Colet, who had already seen too much of this combined hero- and relic-worship, could no longer restrain the wrath which had been rising ever since he had left the shrine down below, with its old bones and dirty rags. He was covered, too, with the holy water which the old man had so recklessly showered on them. "What!" he shouted to Erasmus, "Do these asses expect us to kiss the shoes of all good men that have ever lived? Why, they might as well bring us their spittle to be kissed, or other bodily excrements!" The ancient bedesman was hurt, and possibly, had he been a younger man, he would have hurt this scoffer in return. However, he said nothing, and the cynical Erasmus (for cynicism _always_ goes with a really kind heart) gave him a small coin, less from piety, you may be sure, than as a salve to his wounded feelings. And then they went away.
The shoe has vanished, but the crystal is still a valued, if not valuable, possession of the institution, and may be handled by the curious who can reflect upon its having also been touched by those two pilgrims, Erasmus the learned writer, and Colet the founder of Saint Paul's School.
XXXIV
[Sidenote: CANTERBURY]
The entrance to Canterbury from London is one of the most impressive approaches to a city to be found in all England. The traveller passes through the suburb of Saint Dunstan, by the old parish church that holds the severed head of Sir Thomas More, coming into the city through a street of ancient houses and under the postern arch of West Gate. The great drum towers of West Gate mark the ancient limits of the mediaeval city, and guard an opening in the city wall which stood on the further side of the little river Stour. A drawbridge effectually prevented the entrance of an enemy, and when the strongly-guarded gate was closed at nightfall, belated citizens had to stay outside and put up with the inconvenience as best they could, in company with such travellers and pilgrims as arrived late from too much storytelling, feasting, or praying, on the road. For the accommodation of these travellers the suburbs of Saint Dunstan and West Gate arose early without the walls of the city, and several inns--the "Star" and the "Falstaff" among them--remain to show how considerable was the belated company entertained here.
West Gate, as we now see it, is the successor of a much earlier gate, and was built by the ill-fated Simon of Sudbury. It is the only one remaining of all the seven gates of the city, and owes its preservation rather to its convenience as a prison for poor debtors, than to any love our eighteenth-century barbarians had for mediaeval architecture. It is to-day a police-station, and thus carries on the frugal and utilitarian traditions which originally spared it in the destruction of much else of beauty and interest.
Ancient buildings are carefully preserved nowadays. Why? Can we flatter ourselves that the provincial mind is more enlightened? I am afraid not, and must sorrowfully come to the conclusion that the ignorant authorities of our country towns would be as ready as ever to demolish their old monuments, did not their natural shrewdness teach them that, as strangers come from all quarters of the world to view their historical remains, they must be regarded in the light of a valuable asset. So far, they are undoubtedly right. Let them "restore" and tear down the remaining gates and towers and castles in the provincial towns of England, and they will prove, in the scarcity of visitors that will follow on their Vandalism, how valuable, in more senses than one, are the ancient ways.
Canterbury has seen a great deal of this senseless disregard for antiquity. Six gates, as I have said, were wantonly destroyed, but the passion for destruction did not stop here. The remains of the Norman castle were years ago converted into a coal-hole of the local gasworks, and are still put to that degradation; great stretches of the city walls, with their watchtowers, were taken down for corn-mills to be built with their materials; and, worse than all, stupidity of this kind ran riot among the Dean and Chapter in the thirties. For seven hundred and fifty years had Lanfranc's north-western tower of the Cathedral stood, while the south-western had been rebuilt nearly three hundred years before. This dissimilarity vexed those assembled holders of fat prebends and decanal loaves and fishes, who drank port and read _The Times_, and had not a single sensible idea in their meagre brainpans, beyond a notion that one thing ought to match with another, and that as every Jack should have his Jill, so also should everything else possess a pendant. How truly British!
[Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY.]
Well, if these western towers did not match, they must be made to; and so to find an excuse for pulling down the older one. There is always some graceless modern architect, with palm itching for five-per-cent. commissions, who would undertake or advise anything to procure a job, and the Dean and Chapter found such a man, who conceived Lanfranc's work to have gone beyond repair. To this creature, Charles Austin, their own diocesan architect, who should have been earnest to preserve, rather than to destroy, they gave instructions for the pulling down of the Norman work and for its replacement by an exact copy of the Perpendicular tower. The thing was done in 1832. So little beyond repair and so sturdily strong was that Norman tower, that it was necessary to blow it up with gunpowder. A German invading Goth and malignant destroyer could do no more.
The work of demolition and the building of the new tower was done at a cost of L25,000. The architect pocketed L1,250 as commission, and all who care for architecture have lost one of the very few Norman Cathedral towers known in England. But then, how exactly those towers match, and how satisfied must be all good people who would sacrifice everything for the sake of uniformity!