Part 15

The main thoroughfare of Canterbury, to which the old West Gate gives access, has undergone no little rebuilding since the days of gables and timber fronts, and yet it retains in the aggregate much of that old-world air for which we reasonably look in a Cathedral city. Long and narrow the street remains; quaint are many of the buildings that line it. Across it, under narrow bridges, flow two branches of the little river Stour.

An amusing incident belonged to the "Red Lion."

[Sidenote: THE DUC DE NIVERNAIS]

One of the most outstanding historical figures upon the Dover Road is that no less kindly than courtly Ambassador, the Duc de Nivernais. That cultured Frenchman was employed by his sovereign, Louis the Fifteenth, in negotiating a Treaty of Peace which should conclude that disastrous contest to France, the Seven Years' War. An exchange of Ambassadors was effected between Great Britain and France; the Duke of Bedford crossing the Channel to Calais in the early part of September, 1762, the Duc de Nivernais voyaging to Dover, and landing there on the morning of September 11. The elements had been unkind to him, and his passage occupied no less than five hours; but Nivernais handed over to Captain Ray, the commander of the _Princess Augusta_ yacht (the vessel in which he had voyaged and suffered the most horrible pangs of sea-sickness), the sum of one hundred guineas, to be divided among the crew. Perhaps the unbounded gratitude with which he found himself again upon the shore--even though it were not his native land--accounted for the magnitude of this largesse.

The country was not eager for the peace which exhausted France desired, and looked upon Nivernais' commission rather as an attempt to curtail the glory which England and Englishmen were reaping on land and achieving by sea; but the French Ambassador was received with a show of enthusiasm and the discharge of cannon as he landed at Dover, and a crowd of shouting countrymen cheered him as, bowing his acknowledgments of this reception, he bowled away in a coach and six horses, accompanied by a retinue of twelve persons.

Bowled, did I say? Nay: the motion of the ill-hung equipages of that day, tumbling along over the wretched roads of those times, resembled little the smooth career of bowls gliding over trimly shaven bowling-greens. Rather should the motion be described as a series of hesitating lurches and unexpected jolts; and this in the comparative excellence of the highways in September!

The Ambassador had started upon his journey from Dover to London as soon as possible after the early hour of the morning when he had landed from the "Chops of the Channel"; but he arrived at Canterbury too late for further progress to be made that day. Therefore he put up in the Cathedral city, after having had the empty satisfaction, to a traveller in his exhausted condition, of being received _en grande tenue_ by the garrison.

The "Red Lion" inn was at that time the proper place for a personage of his quality to lie, and so the Duke with his party stayed there the night. For that night's lodging for twelve persons, with a frugal supper in which oysters, fowls, boiled mutton, poached eggs, and fried whiting figure, the landlord of the "Red Lion" presented an account of over L44. This truly grand bill has been preserved, not, let us hope, for the emulation of other hotel-keepers, but by way of a "terrible example." Here it is:--

L _s._ _d._ Tea, coffee, and chocolate 1 4 0 Supper for self and servants 15 10 0 Bread and beer 3 0 0 Fruit 2 15 0 Wine and punch 10 8 8 Wax candles and charcoal 3 0 0 Broken glass and china 2 10 0 Lodging 1 7 0 Tea, coffee, and chocolate 2 0 0 Chaise and horses for the next stage 2 16 0 ------------ 44 10 8

The Duke paid his account without a murmur, only remarking that innkeepers at this rate should soon grow rich; but it was, doubtless, with great relief that he left Canterbury for Rochester, where he dined the next day for three guineas.

News of this extraordinary bill was soon spread all over England. It was printed in the newspapers amid other marvels, disasters, and atrocities, and mine host of the "Red Lion," like Byron, woke up one morning to find himself famous. He would probably have preferred his native obscurity to the fierce light of publicity that beat upon him; for the country gentlemen, scandalized at his rapacity, boycotted his inn, and his brother innkeepers of Canterbury disowned him. The unfortunate man wrote to the _St. James's Chronicle_, endeavouring to justify himself, and complaining bitterly of the harm that had been wrought to his business by the constant billeting of soldiers upon him. But it was in vain to protest, and so bitter was the feeling against him that his trade fell off, and he was ruined in six months.

[Illustration: THE DUC DE NIVERNAIS.]

Meanwhile, the Duc de Nivernais was negotiating for peace at the Court of Saint James's; and, what with the difficulties of diplomacy and the rigours of the climate, he passed but a miserable time. "This country," he wrote, "is a cruel country for negotiation; one needs to have a body and a spirit of iron," and how little like iron was his frame may perhaps be judged from this portraiture of him, which shows a wistful-looking, hollow-cheeked elderly man, with nose and chin and eyes unnaturally prominent. The caricaturists took a mean advantage of his phenomenal leanness, and called him the "Duke of Barebones," and a Court witling made the cruel jest that "the French had sent over the preliminaries of an ambassador to conclude the preliminaries of a peace." He eventually _did_ conclude a peace, and, returning to Dover, left (how thankfully!) for France on May 22, 1763. Let us hope that, after all his trials with the English hotel-keepers and the English climate, he experienced a better passage across the Channel than when he first crossed it.

XXXV

[Sidenote: HENRY THE EIGHTH]

Not all visitors to Canterbury were so evilly entreated as the Duc de Nivernais. Indeed, the city has been remarkable rather for its lavish and abounding hospitality than for any attempted over-reaching of the stranger. But since those strangers were chiefly Kings and Emperors, and great personages of that kind, perhaps it is little to be wondered at that the citizens, to say nothing of those greedy time-servers, the Priors and monks of Christ Church Priory and the Priory of Saint Augustine, rendered to those great ones of the earth the most abject suit and service. Almost every English sovereign has been here at some time or another, and many a foreign potentate besides. Henry the Second, it is true, walked into the city, barefoot, from Harbledown, and so to the Cathedral, doing abject penance for the murder of Becket, four years previously, and it seems to be equally true that as he proceeded to Becket's shrine he was scourged by the monks on his bare back and shoulders with knotted cords; but I think they would have laid on harder and with a better will had the penitent not been of so exalted a station. In short, I have little faith in the reported rigours of that punishment. A few years later came Henry's son, Richard Lion Heart, enlarged from his foreign prison. He landed at the port of Sandwich, and walked barefoot into Canterbury--so inimical was Saint Thomas to shoe-leather. Edward the First was pious enough to lay the Crown of Scotland before the Saint's shrine, and another Edward--the Black Prince--came here, in all humility, with the captive King of France. Another warrior, as brave and as ill-fated--Henry the Fifth--paid his devoirs to Becket as he came up the road, fresh from his glorious French campaigns. Another Henry, the Eighth and last of his name, bowed before the shrine in 1520, in company with the Emperor Charles the Fifth. On that occasion he was as fervent a worshipper as could well be desired, and as sincere as it is possible for a man to be who is at the same time a King and half a Welshman. No thoughts of spoliation of the Church then passed his mind. Indeed, the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the time made much of his visit, which seems to have been celebrated in a more than royal manner, if we may trust the chroniclers.

From Dover the two monarchs rode into Canterbury, preceded by Wolsey, and followed by a long procession of knights and esquires, men-at-arms and archers. The clergy, dressed in all the splendour of which the Romish Church is capable, thronged the streets to welcome the King, and knew as little about the calamities presently to befall them as fat geese suspect the significance of Michaelmas Day. Archbishop Warham welcomed the sovereigns to the Cathedral, and probably thought with a secret joy upon the ways of Providence which had removed Prince Arthur from this world to place his younger brother, Henry, upon the throne. For, had Prince Arthur lived to be King of England, the man whom we know as Henry the Eighth would have been Archbishop of Canterbury. That was the career designed for him, and, had Prince Arthur not died, how very differently things might have been fashioned!

Archbishop Warham could, as it happened, afford to look upon the ways of Providence with approval, for these events had made him Primate, and he celebrated his accession to the Primacy with a banquet whose details seem to belong to the _Arabian Nights_ rather than to sober history. Courses innumerable (and nasty, too, according to modern ideas) graced the festive board on this occasion, and the guests who partook of them made pigs of themselves over what the contemporary historian of these things calls the "subtylties" that bulked so largely at the feast. To the Duke of Buckingham, the high steward, fell the honour, or the duty, of serving the Archbishop with his own hands; and, partly in recognition of his services, and partly, no doubt, in consideration of his being so great a gourmand, he was accorded the privilege of staying three days at the new Archbishop's nearest manor, in order that he might be bled. That seems to have been the necessary performance after partaking of too many "subtylties."

But all this while I have been keeping His Most Christian Majesty, Henry the Eighth, waiting; and, having done so, it is well for me I am not his contemporary, for men did things so derogatory to his dignity only at the peril of losing their heads.

Well, eighteen years later, the King, who had knelt before Becket's bones, was engaged in uprooting the ancient faith, and his fury was naturally felt more acutely here, on this the most sacred spot of English soil. Becket was proclaimed a traitor, and in April, 1538, the martyr, dead three hundred and sixty-eight years, was summoned to appear in Court to show reason why his shrine should not be destroyed and his name blotted out from the records of the English Church. Thirty days were allowed "Thomas Becket" (thus the Royal Proclamation styled him, without title or handle of any sort to his name) to appear, and when he failed to present himself, sentence was pronounced against him by default. The sentence was that his bones should be burnt and scattered to the winds; a poor and inadequate kind of revenge. More to the point, perhaps, was the spoliation of the shrine of the Blessed Thomas; for the Royal Commissioners sent to strip it, loaded twenty-six carts with the valuables that had accumulated here during all those centuries, in addition to two coffers of jewels and gold containing the ransom of kings.

[Sidenote: THE "REGALE" RUBY]

The King kept some of the jewels for his own personal use. Louis the Seventh of France had, a few years after the murder of Becket, visited the Shrine of St. Thomas, and had left there a magnificent ruby. Not merely had he left it; for the ruby--the "Regale of France," it was called--left itself, so to speak. In point of fact, it had been suggested to the French king that he should present that magnificent stone to the Shrine, and he was objecting to do so, when the great ruby leapt from the ring he was wearing and affixed itself to the Saint's reliquary, where it remained "shining so brightly that it was impossible to look steadily at it."

So the visitor went away without that gorgeous stone, marvelling greatly, as we do, some seven hundred and fifty years after the event.

The ruby, indifferently described as being "as large as a hen's egg," and "as large as a man's thumb-nail," was appropriated by Henry the Eighth.

Thus did Henry repay the magnificent hospitality extended him years before at Canterbury. The city saw but little of Royalty for many years afterwards; and, indeed, it was not until Charles the First came here to be married in the Cathedral that any great State function revived its past glories. Then the display made was worthy of local traditions. Feasting and general jollity prevailed while the newly-wed King and Queen remained in the city. A few years later, when loyalty was the passion of only a minority and the King was warring with the Parliament, the Dover Road and Canterbury witnessed a strange journey. None knew of it, for the matter was secret. It was, in fact, the smuggling out of the country of the little Princess Henrietta, away from the custody of the King's enemies. The French tutor of the Princess afterwards told the story of this escape. The Countess of Dalkeith was in charge of the little girl at Oatlands, and resolved at all hazards to restore her to her mother in France. Disguising herself, this tall and elegant body, one of the handsome Villiers family, acted the part of a poor French servant, little better than a beggar. She even fitted herself with a hump, and, carrying a bundle of linen, and with the Princess dressed in rags, set out by road for Dover, with the girl on her back, in the character of her little boy Pierre.

On the road, we are told, the Princess indignantly tried to tell everyone she was not "Pierre," but the Princess. Fortunately, no one understood, and these strange travellers arrived safely at Dover and crossed to Calais.

The adventure seems incredible when we consider that the Princess Henrietta Maria was born June 16, 1644, and that this journey to Dover is stated to have taken place towards the end of July, 1646. We have to ask ourselves, "Could a child of two years and a little over one month, understand and talk like that?" But the source of the story has been noted; and we are to recollect, as to the authentic date of the adventure, that Edmund Waller, the courtly poet, on New Year's Day, 1647, presented the Queen, then in Paris, with a poem on the subject, in which the Countess of Dalkeith's exploit is referred to:--

The faultless nymph, changing her faultless shape Becomes unhandsome, handsomely to 'scape.

Canterbury's rejoicings were not renewed until after the Commonwealth had come and run its course, and the Stuarts were free once more to show their curious facility for rendering their House unpopular.

And after the romantic times of that unfortunate family come the stolid annals of Dutch William, Anne, and the unimaginative Georges--a line of sovereigns for whom enthusiasm was impossible. Mean in their vices and contemptible in their virtues, they lived their lives and reigned over England, and posted along the Dover Road on their way to or from beloved Hanover; and no man's heart beat the faster for their coming, and none sorrowed overmuch for their going. All the Georges, and William the Fourth, too, were here, I believe, and in their train came the lean Keilmanseggs, the fleshly Schwellenbergs, and a variety of greasy Germans, fresh from the terrible voyage over sea; but no one cares in the least either where they went or whither they did not go.

[Sidenote: OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS]

But they all travelled with what we must now consider a snail's pace. The wealthiest, the most powerful, could go no faster than horses managed to drag them. When Sir Robert Peel was summoned in haste from Rome by William the Fourth to form a Ministry in 1834, he travelled full speed to London, and the journey took him just within a fortnight. He noted in his journal that he accomplished it in exactly the same time as the Emperor Hadrian had done seventeen hundred years before him. The means of travel at the disposal of both statesmen were identical--post horses.

Another Royal visitor (of a much later date indeed) discovered the "chops of the Channel" to be no respectors of personages. In fact, His Serene Highness Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was come across the water to wed his Cousin, Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland ("Empress of India" was yet in the loom of the future), found his serenity as much disturbed by the roughness of his passage as falls to the lot of most bad sailors, of whatever social stratum. He was, in short, very ill, and unable to proceed any farther that day. On the morrow, Friday, February 7, 1840, he resumed his journey to London, by road, of course, for the railways that serve Dover (and serve it badly, too!) had not as yet been built.

Starting about midday, the father of our future kings reached Canterbury at two o'clock. The inevitable Address was, it is surely scarcely necessary to add, immediately forthcoming, to which the Prince as inevitably "replied graciously"; afterwards attending service in the Cathedral, where, as he could have understood but little of the service, he must have been supremely bored. The Cathedral was thronged with crowds who came not so much in order to pray as to peep at the Princeling whom the young Queen had delighted to honour.

The Prince slept at Canterbury that night, and left, with his suite, _en route_ for Chatham at half-past nine the next morning, pursued by a body of clergymen with an Address. Alarmed at this appalling eagerness on the part of servile Britons to read lengthy orations of which he understood not a word, the Prince gave directions for the cavalcade to drive faster, and so they swept on through Chatham and Rochester, without stopping to hear what the Mayors and Corporations of those places had to say. Those deadly Addresses were, in fact, "taken as read," and the Mayors, Aldermen and others returned home with their ridiculous parchments, wiser, and, it is to be feared, not only sadder, but less loyal men.

At Dartford, the bridegroom-elect was met by one of the Queen's carriages, and he thereupon changed from his travelling chariot to enter London in some degree of State. At New Cross an escort of the 14th Dragoons was waiting, and, instead of proceeding along the classic Old Kent Road, and so to the traditional entrance to London by London Bridge, he went to town by way of romantic Peckham and idyllic Camberwell, ending his journey at that dream of architectural beauty, Buckingham Palace. What followed: How the _Times_ waxed violent and denunciatory of Lord Melbourne and the frivolous _entourage_ with which he had surrounded the Queen: how that paper preached homilies, and how all the others, nearly without exception, gushed fulsome nonsense, it is not the business of the present historian to set forth. All he has to do is to remark that with this event closes the history of Royal processions along the Dover Road.

The hilly road to Dover is not remarkable for sporting events, but two may here be noted. On April 1st, 1903, Mr. Walter de Creux-Hutchinson walked from Dover to London Bridge in 14 hrs., 19 mins., 40 secs.; and on September 18th, 1909, A. G. Norman cycled from London to Dover and back in 8 hrs., 8 mins.

XXXVI

[Sidenote: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL]

The chief point of interest in Canterbury is, of course, the Cathedral, the bourne to which countless pilgrims came from all parts of the civilized world to gain the goodwill and intercedence of that thrice sacred and potent Saint Thomas whose peculiar sanctity over-topped by far that of any other English martyr, and whose shrine possessed scarce less efficacy than that of the most renowned Continental resorts of the pious.

But long before Becket's day the Metropolitan Cathedral of Canterbury had arisen. The establishment of the See dates from the time when Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in A.D. 596, and, marching at the head of his forty Benedictine monks, held a conference with Ethelbert, King of Kent, by whose favour he was allowed to preach Christianity to the Saxons. Thus was the Cross of Christ re-introduced to these islands where it had flourished centuries before among the Romans and the Romanized British.

Saint Augustine, however, does not deserve quite all the honour that has been paid him for his work. He undertook his mission against his will and only by the peremptory orders of Pope Gregory the First; orders which he feared to disobey even more than he had dreaded coming over the sea from sunny Italy to convert the pagan Saxons. As first Archbishop of Canterbury he died in A.D. 605; and when he died he left the first Cathedral already built on the site of an ancient Romano-British Church where the present great Minster stands. But that was not by any means the first Christian Church in England. To the little village church of Saint Martin belongs that honour, and to this day the hoary walls of that building show the traveller unmistakable Roman tiles which, having been originally built into a pagan temple, remain to prove the humble beginnings of the Word that has spread throughout the world.

Saint Augustine's Cathedral was small, but, patched and tinkered by generation after generation, it lasted nearly five hundred years; until, in fact, the troubles of the Conquest practically ruined it. Lanfranc, the first Norman Archbishop, rebuilt the Cathedral Church, and now one rebuilding speedily followed another, each one growing more elaborate than before. Lanfranc's work was superseded in 1130 by a magnificent building approaching the present bulk of the Cathedral. Henry the First was present at its consecration, with David, King of Scotland; and all the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the realm, together with a great concourse of nobles, assisted. Conrad and Ernulf, Priors of Christ Church, were the architects of the work, and so grand was it, and so great was the occasion, that an old chronicler described the ceremony of consecration as "the most famous that had ever been heard of on earth since that of the temple of Solomon."

But, four years later, the "glorious choir of Conrad" was burned down, and all the pious fervour and exaltation that had raised these sculptured stones and tall towers was wasted. People and clergy alike "were astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and, maddened with grief and perplexity, they tore their hair and beat the walls and pavement of the church with their heads and hands, blaspheming the Lord and His saints, the patrons of the church."