THE CHOIR
The present choir, then, shows the work of these two Williams; nearly all, in fact, to the eastward of the crossing, from choir-screen to Becket’s Crown, is their handiwork. Meanwhile, Lanfranc’s heavy Norman nave was left uninjured by fire and untouched by those mighty builders, and it was not until the fourteenth century that it was reconstructed in the Perpendicular style by Prior Chillenden. “It had grown ruinous,” so say the records, but the greater probability is that it was not so crazy but that effectual renovation without rebuilding would have been possible. But the spirit of the age was altogether opposed to the ponderous character of Norman architecture. Men began to build so lightly and loftily that walls soon assumed the appearance of mere framings to the huge windows that characterize this ultimate phase of Gothic architecture.
The constructional aspect was gone altogether, and most of the artistic interest too. Vulgar ostentation of skill—engineering knowledge that led architects to pile up slender alleys of stone to the last point ofendurance—was the note of the age. Unfortunately, the age which witnessed the growth and development of the Perpendicular style was one of the greatest wealth and activity. A ceaseless and untiring energy pervaded the land, tearing down the Norman, the Early English, and the Decorated churches, and rearing upon their sites buildings immeasurably larger, loftier, and lighter, but less individual and less interesting in every way than the work of the builders who had gone before.
Frankly, then, the great soaring nave of Canterbury, with its long alleys of clustered pillars, its great windows and broad, unornamented wall-spaces, is disappointing. No details tempt the amateur of architecture to linger, and the sole ornamentation which the builder has allowed himself in this long-drawn-out vista is seen on the sparely sculptured bosses of the groining. The times which witnessed the piling up of this great nave were days when this church was rich beyond compare with the offerings of pilgrims; and, given riches, ostentation is sure to follow, but art is not to be bought at a price.
A long array of altar-tombs of kings, princes, warriors, and archbishops adds to the historical interest of Canterbury Cathedral. Easily first, both for historic and artistic value, are the tomb and effigy of Edward the Black Prince, who, dying of a wasting disease in 1376, was entombed in the Cathedral as near as might be to the Martyr’s shrine. There is not a statue in all England to rival the beautifully-wrought bronze effigy of the Black Prince which lies on an altar-tomb decorated with the Prince of Wales’s feathers he was the first to assume, surrounded by theIch Dienthat so admirably expresses the chivalry of his character.
The shields bearing his arms and badge are interesting. The arms, those with the leopards (or lions) of England, quartered with the lilies of France, are ensigned with the mark of cadency, indicating theheir, or eldest son, and bear above them the word “Houmout.” This is a Flemish word meaning “Chivalry,” literally “high mood.” The Dutch language has “hoog moed,” with the same sense.
THE BLACK PRINCE’S ARMS AND BADGE.
“ICH DIENE”
The shield with the badge of three ostrich feathers standing upright on their quills, bears the words “Ich diene.” In his will the Prince especially directed that these should appear. These “Prince of Wales” feathers, said to derive from the ostrich plumes of John, King of Bohemia, slain in the Battle of Créçy, give antiquaries a good deal to consider, for it is by no means certain that this is all the story. The Prince’s mother, Queen Philippa, used the badge; which, furthermore, seems to have been not unknown as a royal device. “Ich Dien” == “I serve,” is an expression of the heir’s loyalty and submission to the sovereign; and is perhaps a reading of Galatians IV, i, “The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he belord of all.” The modern drawing of the Prince of Wales’ feathers originated in Tudor times.
Here, then, he lies, in full armour, as he had enjoined in his will, the likeness of the spurs he won at Créçy on his heels, his head resting on his helmet, and his hands joined in prayer. The face and head are clearly an excellent portraiture of him, so masterly is the work, and so like the features to those of his father in Westminster Abbey and his grandfather at Gloucester! Traces remain of the gilding with which the effigy was covered; the shields of arms and the curious Norman-French inscription are uninjured, and every little detail of his magnificent memorial is as perfect now as when it was finished five hundred years ago. The wooden canopy suspended over his tomb has survived the march of time and the fury of revolution; his wooden shield; his blazoned tabard, colourless now and in the semblance of a dirty rag, but once a truly royal adornment of velvet, glowing with the red and blue and golden quarterings of England and France,—all these things are left to speak of the grief with which the nation saw its most perfect gentle knight borne to his grave. His gauntlets, too, and his tilting helmet are here, and only one thing is missing from its place. The sword wielded at Créçy and Poictiers, and at many another fight, has vanished from its scabbard. If, as tradition says, Cromwell stole that weapon, how much more impressive it is to think of the hero-worship thus felt by one great captain for another.
The Black Prince was the darling of England. He had won a glory for this country the like of which had never before been known, and he was the flower of chivalry. But do those who gather round his tomb, and feel themselves the greater for being countrymen of his, ever think how little his chivalry would have spared them? His humble and dutiful bearing towards his father, and even to his captive, the King of France, shows that his reverence was for rank and titles; the cruelty he exhibited when,the city of Limoges having revolted, he ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants and was carried through the streets in a litter, to see his bidding done, dims the glory of his arms. Men, women, and children were alike butchered in those streets, and when, crying for mercy, they were hewed in pieces before his eyes, their fate left him unmoved. It was only when he saw three French knights fighting valiantly in the market-place against overwhelming odds, that the chivalry of the Black Prince was touched. That hundreds or thousands of the citizens should be slain was nothing to him, fortheywere nothing, but to see gentlemen of rank and birth fighting a hopeless fight was too much. He ordered the massacre to be stayed.
THOMAS À BECKET
When in the last days of 1170 Becket was murdered in his own Cathedral, no one could have foreseen how fertilizing would be the blood of the martyr to religious faith; and not only to faith but also to English thought, trades, and professions. No sinner could be considered safe for Paradise unless he had made pilgrimage to Canterbury, and this pilgrimage became one of the chief features of English life during four hundred years. We owe directly to it the inspiration which has given Chaucer, our earliest poet, an immortal fame; from it comes the verb “to canter”—originally describing the ambling pace at which the pilgrims urged their horses on this road, and now common in modern English speech; while the great bulk of the Cathedral would never have loomed so largely across the Stour meads to-day had it not been for the fervent piety that, centuries ago, heaped gold and jewels here for the expiation of sins. Pilgrimage was a blessed thing indeed for the keepers of inns and for a multitude of other trades; and mendicants had but to take staffand scrip, and tramp in guise of palmers through the country to be liberally helped on their way. The Palmer was, indeed, the ancestor of the modern tramp. He had but to go unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn, and he could live his life without toil or work of any kind. If he were taxed with filthy habits, he could reply that a vow to remain unwashed until he had reached this shrine or another forbade him to remove the grime that covered him as a garment; and his claim to be dirty would be allowed. Eventually the number of these palmers at home and from over sea became a nuisance and a danger to Church and State, and no less objectionable were the hermits who squatted down at every likely corner of the roads and solicited alms. Human nature in the fourteenth century was not appreciably different from that of the present era, when many would rather beg a livelihood than earn it; and not only the laziness and the number of these palmers and hermits, but also their shocking immorality, became a scandal, until many laws and Archiepiscopal edicts were levelled against them. Pilgrimage, Saint Thomas, and religion itself became discredited by these creatures, and even as early as the year 1370, the fame of Becket was resented by some, and the efficacy of pilgrimages doubted. That year was the fourth jubilee of Saint Thomas, when pilgrims were crowding in many hundreds of thousands to Canterbury from all parts of the civilized world to receive the free indulgences, the free quarters, and the free food and drink, alike for themselves and their horses, that were accorded to all who came to the jubilee festival that was held, once in every fifty years, for a fortnight. As these multitudes of pilgrims were proceeding along the road to Canterbury during the Festival fortnight of 1370, Simon of Sudbury, the then Archbishop, overtook them. This Prelate had a hatred for superstition somewhat in advance of his time. He did not believe at all in pilgrimages and but little in Thomas à Becket, and he told the crowds he passedon the road that the plenary indulgence which they were pressing forward to gain would be of no avail to purge their sins. The people who heard this heretical and previously unheard-of doctrine issuing from the mouth of an Archbishop, turned upon him in fear and rage, and cursed him as he went. A Kentish squire among the throng rode up and indignantly said, “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.” To this all the people replied with a fervent Amen!
SIMON OF SUDBURY
Saint Thomas was indeed avenged upon the Archbishop. Eleven years later, when Wat Tyler’s rebels pillaged London, and forced themselves into the Tower, they found Simon of Sudbury there, among others. Dragging him out, they beheaded him with revolting barbarity, and here he lies in the Choir, where his headless body was seen, years ago, the place of the missing head supplied with a leaden ball.
The spirit of irreverence grew fast. In 1512 Erasmus made, with Dean Colet, a pilgrimage to Canterbury, not so much from piety as from curiosity. Descending the hill of Harbledown, they came into the city, wondering at the majesty of the Cathedral tower and at the booming of the bells resounding through the surrounding country. They entered the south porch, discussing the stone statues of Becket’s murderers, then to be seen there; they entered the great nave, where Erasmus noted satirically the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus chained to a pillar; and, armed with a letter of introduction from Archbishop Warham, they were shown many things not usually exhibited to the crowd. Passing through the iron gates which then as now divided the nave from the more holy portion of the building, they were taken to the Chapel of the Martyrdom, where they kissed the sacred rust that remained on the broken point of Brito’s sword. From here they descendedinto the Crypt, which had its own priests in charge of the martyr’s perforated skull, which was shown, with four of his bones, on a kind of altar. The forehead was left bare to be kissed, while the rest was covered with silver. Here hung in the dark the hair-shirts, the girdles and bandages, and the cat-o’-nine-tails or more with which Becket had subdued the flesh; striking horror with their very appearance, reproaching the pilgrims for their luxuries and self-indulgence, and perhaps, as Erasmus remarks, even reproaching the monks. From the Crypt they returned to the Choir, where the vast stores of relics were unlocked for their admiration and worship.
To read of the relics shown by the monks of Canterbury Cathedral fills one with amazement, both at the impertinence of those disgusting humbugs, and at the illimitable credulity that accepted the exhibition as genuine. Besides the pre-eminently holy (and really genuine) relics of the Blessed Thomas were heaps of bones, hair, teeth, and dust of a vast concourse of miscellaneous saints, with portions of their attire and articles connected with their domestic history. How genuine they were likely to be may be judged from a short list of the most venerated among them. The bed of the Virgin, with the wool she wove, and a garment of her making, occupied the foremost place, and the rock on which the Cross of Christ stood; His sepulchre; the manger; the table used at the Last Supper; the column to which He was bound when He was flagellated by the cursed Jews; and the rock whereon He had stood on ascending into Heaven, were prime favourites. More wonderful still, the monks possessed Aaron’s Rod; a portion of the oak on which Abraham mounted that he might see the Lord; and—more stupendously blasphemous than anything else—a specimen of the clay with which God moulded Adam!
THE NEW PILGRIMS
Colet was wearied with all this, and when an arm was brought forward to be kissed which had still thebloody flesh of the martyr clinging to it, he drew back in disgust. The priest then shut up, locked, and double-locked his treasures, and showed them the sumptuous articles, the great wealth of gold and silver ornaments, kept under the altar. Erasmus thought that in the presence of this vast assemblage of precious things even Midas and Crœsus would be only beggars, and he sighed that he had nothing like them at home, devoutly praying the Saint for pardon of his impious thought before he moved a step from the Cathedral. However, they had not yet seen all. They were led into the Sacristy, and “Good God!” exclaims Erasmus, “what a display was there of silken vestments, what an array of golden candlesticks!” Saint Thomas’s pastoral staff was there, a quite plain stick of pear-wood, with a crook of black horn, covered with silver plate, and no longer than a walking-stick. Here, too, was a coarse silken pall, quite unadorned, and a sudary, dirty from wear, and retaining manifest stains of blood. These things, relics of a more simple age, they willingly kissed, and were then conducted to the Corona, where they saw an effigy of Saint Thomas, “that excellent man,” gilt and adorned with many jewels. But here Colet’s anger broke forth, and he addressed the priest in this wise. “Good father, is it true what I hear, that Saint Thomas while alive was exceedingly kind to the poor?” “Most true,” said he, and he then began to relate many of his acts of benevolence towards the destitute. “I do not imagine,” said Colet, “that such disposition of his is changed, but perhaps increased.” The priest assented. “Then,” rejoined the Dean, “since that holy man was so liberal towards the poor when he was poor himself and required the aid of all his money for his bodily necessities, do you not think that now, when he is very wealthy, nor lacks anything, he would take it very contentedly if any poor woman having starving children at home should (first praying forpardon) take from these so great riches some small portion for the relief of her family?”
The priest pouted, knitted his brows, and looked upon the two friends with Gorgonian eyes, and he would probably have turned them out of the building had it not been for the Archbishop’s letter of introduction which they carried with them. Erasmus was alarmed at his friend’s free speech. He was pacifying the priest when the Prior approached and conducted them to the Holy of holies, Becket’s Shrine. A wooden canopy was raised, and the golden case enclosing the martyr’s remains disclosed. The least valuable part of it was of gold: every part glistened, shone, and sparkled with rare and immense jewels, some of them exceeding the size of a goose’s egg. Monks stood round, and they all fell down and worshipped, after which they returned to the Crypt, to see the place where the Virgin Mother had her abode, a somewhat dark one, hedged in by more than one iron screen. “What was she afraid of, then?” asks his interlocutor, and he replies, “Of nothing, I imagine, except thieves,” for the riches with which she was surrounded were a more than royal spectacle. Again they were conducted to the Sacristy; a box covered with black leather was brought out, and again all fell down and worshipped. Some torn fragments of linen were produced; most of them retaining marks of dirt. With these the holy man used to wipe the perspiration from his face and neck, the runnings from his nose, or such other superfluities from which the human frame is not free. The Prior graciously offered to present Colet with one of these dirty rags, and, indeed, to the devout such a gift would have been of a quite inestimable value. But Colet, handling the rags delicately as though they might possibly infect him, replaced them in the box with a contemptuous whistle. The Prior was a man of politeness and good breeding. He appeared not to notice this rude, not to say heretical, rejection of his gift, and, offering them a cup of wine, courteously dismissed them.
Soon after this came the downfall. With the struggles of the Reformation went the relics, the gold and jewels, and—worse than all—the decorations and painted windows of the Cathedral. With many abuses and with the disgusting humbug of the old order of things went also, it is sad to think, much of the living reality of religion; and Canterbury Cathedral is to-day an historical museum to the crowd of tourists, and an architectural model for students of that first of all the arts. Curiosity, and little else, draws the crowd. Byron has caught the spirit of the times happily enough (although “beadle” and “cathedral” are not among the elegancies of rhyme) when he says of Don Juan and his companion:—
They saw at Canterbury the Cathedral,Black Edward’s helm, and Becket’s bloody stone,Were pointed out as usual by the beadle,In the same quiet uninterested tone:—There’s glory for you, gentle reader! AllEnds in a rusty casque and dubious bone.
And how very dubious are the bones that are said to be those of Becket is a question that may not be enlarged upon here.
For the rest, a holy calm reigns unbroken in the Cathedral Close. Hemmed in and surrounded[7]by massive walls, modernity has no place here, and if the interior of the building is somewhat disappointing, the exterior and its surroundings, especially the north-east aspect, viewed from the Green Court, must be seen to be appreciated. To be sure, this part of the building is Norman and Early English, and no other periods produced such wildly irregular masses. Added to the original irregularity of outline are the puzzling ruins—ivied wall and brokenwindow—dating from the time when Henry the Eighth’s Commissioners destroyed the monastery. Queer passages, dark and tortuous, giving suddenly upon little cloisters and grassy quadrangles, are to be found everywhere; conspicuous among them the “Dark Entry,” immortalized by Tom Ingoldsby in hisLegend of Nell Cook.
THE CITY SERGEANT
By walking outside Canterbury, a mile distant to Saint Thomas’s Hill, on the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads below, at an understanding of how this great MinsterwasCanterbury, and how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and sunk back into retirement. Canterbury is far larger than ever before, and its modern pavements, that ring with soldiers’ tread, or with the speedy walk of busy citizens, are raised many feet above the street level of old Durovernum. Where the old Roman Watling Street left the city by what is now called the Riding Gate, the original paving of that military way was discovered some few years ago at a depth of fourteen feet below the level of the present road. Everywhere, when foundations for new houses have been dug, are discovered Roman pavements and the walls of forgotten buildings, and thus does Canterbury progress through the ages, rearing itself upon itself until its beginnings are hidden deep below the light of day. Strangely do modern ways here jostle with the old. A newly fronted house, proclaiming nothing of its antiquity, will yet often be found to contain much of interest. The ugly fronted Guildhall is an instance. Without, it is of the plainest and most uninteresting type; within, it has panelling and portraits and old arms to show the curious. At its door, too, stands all day and every day, or walks about the streets, agorgeous creature clad in black knee-breeches and silk stockings; with buckled shoes and cocked-hat; with coat and waistcoat of a courtly type, trimmed and faced with gold lace. It is nothing less than startling to see such an uniform in daily use; and, still more amazing is it, when you ask the wearer of it who he is, to hear him reply, with a grave politeness, that he is the City Sergeant. Old institutions live long here, and old people, too. At Canterbury died, in 1891, aged ninety-one, William Clements, one of the last, if notthelast, of the old stage-coach drivers, who had driven the “Tally-ho” coach between this and London long before the railway was thought of; and in July, 1901, aged 89, died Stephen Philpott, who was coachman of the Dover Mail, until the railway ran him off. He was transferred to a route between London and Herne Bay, and afterwards became proprietor of the “Royal Oak,” Dover, since demolished for street improvements.
“A GORGEOUS CREATURE.”
The Dover Road, after leaving Canterbury, loses very much of that religious character, picturesquely varied with robbery and murder, which is its chiefest feature between Southwark and the Shrine of Saint Thomas; for, although many foreign pilgrims landed at Dover to proceed to the place where the martyr lay, encased in gold and jewels, their number was nothing to be compared with that of the crowds who came into Canterbury from London, or along the Pilgrims’ Road from the West Country; and consequently the wayside shrines and oratories were fewer. The greater part of the sixteen miles between Canterbury and Dover is bare and exposed downs, with here and there a little village nestling, sheltered from the bleak winds, in deep valleys; but the first two miles, between the city and the coast, are now becoming gay with the geranium-beds, the lawns and gardens of Canterbury villadom.
WILLIAM CLEMENTS.
At the first milestone is Gutteridge Gate, where the old toll-house remains beside the “Gate” inn, and where bacchanalian countrymen gather on Sunday evenings in summer, drinking pots of ale as the sun goes down, and recalling to the artistic passer-by Teniers’ pictures of boors, as they shout and bang the wooden tables and benches with their pewter pots. Looking back at such a time down the long, straight road ascending from Canterbury, there come manyjingling sons of Mars, each man with his adoring young woman, and sometimes one on either arm, for there is great competition for these gallant Hussars, Lancers, and Dragoons among the Canterbury fair ones; and “unappropriated blessings” of a rank in life that does not permit of “walking out” with mere troopers sit at windows commanding the road, sighing for that the conventions of the age do not permit them to “stoop to conquer” the conquerors of their fluttering hearts. “I could worship that man,” says the Fairy Queen inIolanthe, gazing admiringly upon “Private Willis of the Grenadier Guards”; and how much more worshipful than a foot-soldier are the “cavalry chaps” of the Canterbury depôt!
GUTTERIDGE GATE
It was a hundred yards or so along the road from Gutteridge Gate that two Dragoons figured in a highway robbery upon His Majesty’s Mails in 1789. The bells were chiming three o’clock in the morning of July 31 in that year when Daniel Goldup, the mounted postman, came up the hill from Bridge with the French mails slung across his horse’s back. As he eased his pace in ascending the hill, three men called upon him to stop. One of them he recognized as a villager from Elham named Hills, and the two others he perceived to be Dragoons disguised in smock-frocks. Telling Hills he had no letters for him, Goldup proceeded on his way. Hills fired but missed, and the three then ran after him; one laying hold of the horse’s bridle while the other two seized the mail-bags and rifled them. They detained him an hour while they examined the letters, and then, tying up the mail-bags again, let him go.
The village of Bridge, down below, takes its name from the small bridge that carries the road over the Lesser Stour. It is a pretty and peaceful place to-day, with quaint boarded houses; a Norman and Early English church, containing some curious and grotesque carvings of Adam and Eve; and encircled by woods, the remote descendants of the almostimpenetrable forests that once surrounded Canterbury, leaving only Barham Downs and their neighbouring chalk hills bare and islanded amid a sea of greenery.
BRIDGE.
Barham Downs commence immediately beyond Bridge. They have been the scene of many remarkable gatherings, from the time of Julius Cæsar to the waning years of the last century, when the Downs were alive with soldiers camping here in readiness for that inglorious Armada that never left port—Napoleon’s flotilla of Boulogne.
To go back to the year 55B.C., when Cæsar first landed at Deal, may seem to the readers of eveningnewspapers something of an effort in retrogression—and so indeed, it is—but when you once succeed in getting there, the history and details of that time are a great deal more interesting than perhaps the reader of special editions, hot and hot, would imagine. Wecansucceed in picturing the detailed events of that remote time, because Cæsar, who was as mighty with the pen as with the sword, has left full and singularly lucid accounts of his wars here and on the Continent—lucid, that is to say, when one penetrates the veil of Latin behind which his exploits and the doings of his legionaries are hid; but darkly understood by the stumbling schoolboy, to whom theBello Gallicois as full of linguistic ambushes as the Kentish valleys were of lurking Britons in Cæsar’s time.
It was in the year 55B.C.that Cæsar, having overrun, if not having entirely conquered, Gaul, came to its northern coast and gazed eagerly across that unknown sea, beyond which had come strange warriors, extraordinarily strong and equally fearless, to aid those troublesome Gaulish fighting-men who had already given him four years of campaigning, and were still to prove themselves unsubdued. He had already felt the prowess of these “Britons,” as they were called, and fighting having slackened somewhat, he conceived the idea of voyaging across the Channel in quest of glory and adventure in the dim and semi-fabled land of these mysterious strangers. “Cæsar,” he says, speaking of himself always in the third person, “determined to proceed into Britain because he understood that in almost all the Gallic wars succour had been supplied thence to our enemies.” So much for his written reasons, but other things must have weighed with him. The lust of conquest would alone have impelled him forward beyond this very outer edge of the known world, even had he not desired to crush these allies of Gaul; but when wild tales reached him of the richness of the land that lay beyond this strait, whose cliffs he could dimly see, the impulse to invade it wasirresistible. But Cæsar was a cautious general, and rarely moved without having reconnoitred, and so he sent over a certain Volusenus to spy out that wonderful land whence came tin and skins, oysters, pearls, hunting dogs, gold, slaves, and terrible warriors. Volusenus sailed across the straits, and returned with quite as much information as could have been expected from one who had never left his ship. That sarcasm is Cæsar’s own, and no doubt he was in a peculiarly savage and sarcastic humour at the time, for although this Britain was so frequented by merchants, yet he could not find any one who would acknowledge having been there; and so his information as to the population, the shores and harbours of the country, remained vague and uncertain. And to add to the disappointments he had experienced from those crafty traders who wished to keep all knowledge of the island to themselves, this over-cautious Volusenus returned after four days with just such a hazy and indefinite story as he had been told before; the hearsay evidence of one who was too timorous to land!
But Cæsar’s desire to see Britain was only whetted by the deceits which those artful traders had practised upon him, and by the vague reports of his envoy. He lay at Portus Itius, identified either as Boulogne or some place in the immediate vicinity, and, collecting a flotilla of over eighty vessels, with an additional eighteen for his cavalry, he sailed from under the shelter of Grey Nose Point at midnight, August 24,B.C.55. The following morning about six o’clock, this armada arrived under Dover cliffs. The cavalry, however, which had sailed from a different harbour, had been driven back by adverse winds, and did not arrive until four days later. His force, then, consisted of two legions of foot soldiers, equal to about 10,000 men. No sooner had the transports anchored in Dover harbour than the cliff-tops became alive with Britons, armed, and determined to resist a landing. Seeing this, Cæsar decided to select some less dangerous landing-place,and, weighing anchor, sailed seven miles onward to Deal. The British, however, were ready for him when he reached the site of that town, and it was only after a stubborn fight on the beach, and half in the waves, that the Roman legionaries effected a landing. The decks of Cæsar’s triremes were crowded with men who slung stones, threw javelins, and worked great catapults against the Britons, in order to cover the advance of the heavily armoured soldiers as they waded through the shallow water. When once these men, led by the intrepid standard-bearer of Cæsar’s favourite Tenth Legion, had gained the beach, their discipline, their helmets, armour, shields, and short swords speedily prevailed against the ill-protected and undisciplined hordes of the brave islanders. The day was won, and the Romans, having put the Britons to flight, encamped by the shore. Three weeks of battles, ambushes, skirmishes, and negotiations for peace followed this landing, and then Cæsar left Britain. The equinox was at hand, and storms raged. Half his fleet was destroyed by a tempest, and he was anxious to be away. So, accepting any terms that he might with honour, he patched up his vessels and sailed for Gaul; and thus ended the first attempt of the Romans to conquer Britain.
The following year Cæsar determined to invade the island on a larger scale. His first expedition had been obliged to remain ingloriously within sight and sound of the waves; but this time the general resolved to push into the heart of the country. Sailing from his former harbour, his force numbered five legions and two thousand horse, roughly 27,000 men, and with this army, considerable as times went, he landed, unopposed, at Deal on the morning of July 22. Cæsar tells us that the Britons were frightened by the great number of his ships seen sailing across the Channel, but the truth seems to be that he had been sowing jealousies and dissensions among the petty chiefs and kinglets of Kent, and that a secret understanding was arrived atbetween himself and a discreditable son of King Lud by which his landing should not be contested. However that may be, Cæsar left a guard over his vessels, and started immediately on a twelve miles’ night march inland, in force.
When morning dawned, he found himself on a high table-land with a river flowing along a valley below him, and here he first descried the Britons. The place at which Cæsar had arrived was Barham Downs, and the river he saw was the Lesser Stour, that even now, although a much smaller stream than then, flows through the valley to the right of the Dover Road. A road of some sort existed even at that time, although it perhaps might be more correctly described as a “track.” Down it went the exports of that far distant age; the undressed skins of wild animals; the dogs and the gold; and up this way from the primitive Dover came the beads and the trinkets; the manufactures of pottery and glass, which our very remote fathers loved as much as the uncivilized races of to-day delight in the selfsame kind of thing.
Cæsar deployed his forces along the ridge of the Downs facing the road, the river, and the enemy, who had entrenchments on the further side of the river immediately fronting him and others advancing diagonally toward the road which they crossed on the northern hill-top at Bridge, ending at a point slightly to the north-east of the place where Bekesbourne Station stands now. Cæsar’s first object was to reach the water in the valley, there to refresh his horses, and a forward cavalry movement was made with this object.
“OLD ENGLAND’S HOLE.”
“OLD ENGLAND’S HOLE.”
But this advance precipitated the battle that was imminent, for the Britons, who held the opposite ridge in force, rushed down the slope to the waterside, and furiously attacked the Roman horse. Exhausted though they were by a waterless night march, the Roman cavalry met the assault, and, repelling it, drove the enemy back into the woods. This cavalry charge was followed by a general advance into the dense thickets, into which, excellently suited, both by nature and by art, for defence, the Britons had retired. Here they fought in small bands, protected by mounds and trenches and by felled trees cunningly interlaced. One of theseoppidaremains in Bourne Park, on the summit of Bridge Hill and beside the Watling Street which, until 1829, was identical with the Dover Road. In that year a slight deviation was made to the left over the hilltop for about two hundred yards’ length of roadway, and in the course of cutting through the hill a number of Roman urns and skulls were discovered at a depth of five feet. The circular earthwork of the redoubt still remains in very good preservation, surrounded with trees, the successors of those which covered the hill when the Britons and Romans contended together here. The place is known locally as “Old England’s Hole,” and tradition has it that here the Britons made theirlast stand. Tradition is not lightly to be put aside at any time, but when it is supported by Cæsar’s own words it deserves all respect. “Being repulsed,” he writes, “they withdrew themselves into the woods, and reached a place which they had prepared before, having closed all approaches to it by felled timber.” The soldiers of the Seventh Legion, however, soon captured this stronghold. Throwing up a mound against it, they advanced, holding their shields over their heads in the formation known as “the tortoise,” and drove out the defenders at the sword’s point. This was the last place to hold out that day. Everywhere the Britons were dislodged, and numbers of them slain. The survivors withdrew further into the woodlands that surrounded Caer Caint, and Cæsar, suspecting ambuscades in those unknown forests, forbade pursuit.
BATTLE OF BARHAM DOWNS
It was evening before the last fighting was done. The battle had raged on a front extending for three miles, from Bekesbourne to Kingston, and it now remained to camp for the night, and to fortify against a possible surprise the ridge which Cæsar held. And so, before the exhausted soldiery could lie down to rest after the incessant labours of two days and nights, they threw up the lines of entrenchments that still, after a lapse of more than nineteen hundred years, remain distinct upon Barham Downs.
The next day the Romans buried their dead, and Cæsar had just despatched three columns in a forward movement towards Caer Caint, when hasty news arrived from Deal that a storm had shattered his fleet. The rear-guard of the hindmost column was just disappearing from his gaze as he stood on Patrixbourne Hill, and hurriedly sending messengers to bring the expedition back, he at once prepared to return to the coast, taking with him artificers for the repair of his vessels, and an escort sufficient to secure his own safety. Cæsar had no certain means of knowing how long a time his absence would extend, but, bidding his legions toremain in camp until his return, and meanwhile to increase the strength of their defences, he set out. He was absent ten days. In the meanwhile the courage of the Britons had revived. They perceived from their woody lairs the Roman soldiery busily throwing up mounds and long lines of earthworks on the level summit of the downs, and they judged that the invaders were compelled, either by fear, or from lack of numbers, to remain on the defensive. Their numbers increased as the days went by and the Romans made no advance, and they were now commanded by a general of great ability, none less than the celebrated Cassivelaunus. Cæsar, on his return, was harassed by them, and found his camp seriously threatened when he arrived. Leaving 10,000 men in camp, he advanced with the remainder, and made a determined stand on a spot that may be identified on the hills half a mile to the north-west of Bridge. Here a desperate and bloody day’s fighting took place, the Britons returning again and again after repeated repulses. Many of the foremost legionaries who had pursued them into the woods were surrounded and slain there; many more of the Britons fell in that glorious fight. One of the Roman tribunes, Quintus Laberius Durus, was killed that day, and Nennius, one of the foremost British leaders, was slain in the last onset, when he burst at the head of a chosen few on the Roman soldiery engaged in the formation of a camp. Both sides claimed the victory, and, indeed, Cæsar had, so far, little reason to boast, for when night came he had only advanced three miles beyond the stream upon which his first camp on Barham Downs had looked, and, even then, he had only been enabled to hold his own by the aid of reinforcements drawn from his camp-guard. The next day, however, put a different aspect upon his campaign. He had probably intended to rest his troops, and sent out a strong force only in order to perform the necessary foraging; but the Britonsattacked them with such fierceness that another battle was fought, resulting in a decisive victory for the Romans, who pursued the vanquished and cut them down for miles. The Britons were now thoroughly disheartened, and retreated towards London along their track-way, followed by Cæsar. Desultory fighting occurred on the way, and one ineffectual stand was made at some unidentified place, conjectured to have been at Key Coll Hill, near Newington. But, thenceforward, the accounts left by Cæsar and by early British writers grow confused. Whether the victorious general, in pursuit of Cassivelaunus, crossed the Thames at London, or whether “Coway Stakes,” near Weybridge, mark the scene, will never be known. But when he had penetrated into Hertfordshire, and had humbled the British king to the point of asking for peace, Cæsar found it was time to return to Gaul. Exacting hostages, he commenced his retreat. Harassed by flying bands of natives, who cut off stragglers and placed obstacles in his line of march, he reached Deal in September, sailing thence on the 26th of that month. Thus ended Cæsar’s second and last invasion of Britain. He had been six weeks in the island; had marched a hundred miles into its dense forests, and had humbled the native princes. But winter was approaching, and it was dangerous to delay. He returned to the Continent, a victor, with hostages, prisoners, and promises of tribute; but he left many of his expedition, dead, behind him. And it is significant of how hazardous these invasions were, that not until another ninety-six years had passed did another Roman so much as land on these shores.
BARHAM DOWNS.
The camp which Cæsar constructed along Barham Downs is still to be seen. On this wild and worthless tract of land which has never known cultivation, the marks of the spade will exist for many centuries if left undisturbed by new-comers. And although many historic gatherings have taken place here, no entrenchments have been made since the defeat of the Britons inB.C.54. King John’s army of sixty thousand men encamped here in 1213, to withstand the French invasion, and Simon de Montfort, somewhat later, at the head of disaffected Barons; Henrietta Maria held her first Drawing Room here in a tent, while on her way to be married to Charles the First at Canterbury; and, centuries afterwards, a great army encamped on Barham Downs in readiness for Napoleon’s projected invasion. But on none of these occasions were any earthworks thrown up, and the fosses and ditches that still remain to be explored are of undoubted Roman construction.
COLDHARBOURS
Here, amid these long lines of Roman entrenchments, occurs again the mysterious name of “Coldharbour,” a perplexing place-name that is found no less than 170 times in England, in situations the most diverse and in districts widely scattered. At least twenty-six of these Coldharbours are to be found on the ordnance maps of Kent, and six of them on, or closely adjoining, the Dover Road. Their situation, scattered thus along the old militaryviâof Watling Street, adds greatly to the force of the argument that this singular name has some connection with Roman times, but what connection, and what is the real meaning of the name, not all the acumen and ingenuity of archæologists has ever been able to satisfactorily explain. The fact of the great majority of Coldharbours lying by the site of Roman roads or camps has led to the ingenious theory that they first acquired their name in Saxon times when, the country being wasted with ruthless and decimating wars, the Roman villas still remaining were destroyed, and great desolate tracts of country created. Travellers (this theory goes on to say) could find no other shelter on their journeys save the ruined walls of the once magnificent palaces that the Romans had left; and as they crouched, shivering, to leeward of these ruinated and roofless remains of a decayed civilization, and tried to warm themselves at fires painfully and laboriously made of leaves and sticks, they called them “coldharbours.” Unhappily for this theory, the places called “Coldharbour” are by no means always situated in exposed situations, and no remains of buildings have been discovered on their actual site, although their neighbourhood is frequently found to be rich in Roman remains. A suggestion has been made that “cold” is a variant of “cool,” and that, far from being the miserable refugees of forlorn travellers, the Coldharbours were really the “Mount Pleasants” and “Belle Vues” of ancient times, to which our remote forbears resorted for “a breath of air.” We should probably be within our rights in deriding this suggestion as a theory made to fit a fertile imagination, but it is not safe, in the presence of such an apparently insoluble problem, to do more than present a few of the derivations advanced. It would be equally rash to assume that the stations of the “colubris arbor,” the Roman serpent-standard, gave their name to these places, although the idea is plausible enough.
Many Coldharbours are in exceedingly exposed places, as indeed here, on Barham Downs,[8]and many more are in quite sheltered situations, in places where dense woodlands once spread, giving work and shelter to charcoal-burners. This fact has led to the formulation of another theory, one which holds that these strangely named places were, prosaically enough, “coal-harbours,” or storage-places for charcoal. It is much to be desired that some leisured antiquary would devote himself to the elucidation of the name and the rescuing of the purpose of these Coldharbours from the mists of a remote and romantic antiquity. The other Kentish Coldharbours to be found nearthe Watling Street are at Bishopsbourne, Bridge, Newington, Northfleet, Sittingbourne, and Woolwich, and all—so close is the connection between the name and ancient dwellings—near the site of undoubted Roman stations or villas. Alike with the equally mysterious name of “Mockbeggar,” which also occurs with great frequency, the meaning of “Coldharbour” will probably never be discovered.[9]
Standing here beside the road at evening when the sun is going down and these bleak unenclosed uplands grow dark and mysterious, the centuries pass away like a fevered dream. Here and there the solemn expanse of the barren land is diversified by a few trees; here and there a few yards of hedge, beginning nowhere in particular and ending with equal strangeness, skirt the way; weather-beaten sign-posts start suddenly out of the moorland, and occasional haycocks take on a dead and awful blackness as the evening light dies out of the sky in long and angry streaks of red. When the moon rises and casts her cold beams upon the road and plays strange pranks with the shadows of trees and bushes, then the days of the Romans are come once more, and the legionaries live again. They rise from their camp of nineteen hundred years ago; they march along the Watling Street that was made by their descendants; and the sheen of their armour, the glitter of the pale moonlight on their eagle standards, and the tramp of many feet are as real to the imaginative traveller, if not of a greater reality, than the moaning telegraph that runs on countless poles in a diminishing procession beside the road as far as eye can reach.