CHAPTER III

ST. MARY MAGDALENE, BURGATE STREET, CANTERBURY.

Ingoldsby was only in his seventh year when avery serious thing befell, for his father, the alderman, died in 1795. Those who love their Ingoldsby and everything that was his, as the present writer does, will be interested to know that he was buried at Upper Hardres ("Hards," in the Kentish speech), a small and lonely village, four miles from Canterbury, on the old Stone Street, as you go towards Lympne and Hythe. There, in the village church, high up on the south wall of the nave, the tablet to his memory may be found. What became of Elizabeth Fox is beyond our ken. We are told, in theLifeand Letters of Richard Harris Barham, by his son the Reverend Richard Dalton Barham, that she was at the time a confirmed invalid.

WESTWELL.

THE HALL, 61, BURGATE STREET, CANTERBURY, WHERE THE AUTHOR OF THE "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS" WAS BORN.

To three guardians had been given the administration of the comfortable patrimony of the boy, and by them he was sent to St. Paul's School, then in the City of London. Thence he went to Brasenose, Oxford, leaving the university with a modest B.A., degree in 1811. Meanwhile the villain of the piece had been at work, in the person of a dishonest attorney, one of his guardians, by whose practices his fortune was very seriously reduced. Returning to Canterbury, he seems to have contemplated studying for the law, but quickly relinquished the idea, and prepared himself for the Church. He was admitted to holy orders, and in 1813, in his twenty-fifth year obtained a curacy at Ashford. This was exchanged in the following year for the curacy of the neighbouring village of Westwell. Thus he was fairly launched on his professional career, becomingsuccessively Rector of Snargate and Curate of Warehorne, Minor Canon of St. Paul's and Rector of the united parishes of St. Mary Magdalene with St. Gregory-by-St.-Paul's, and finally, by exchange in 1842, Rector of St. Faith-by-St.-Paul's—a fine mid-nineteenth century specimen of the "squarson." A competent genealogist, an accomplished antiquary, a man of letters, he, by force of his sprightly wit, welded the fragmentary legends of the country—but largely those of his native county of Kent—into those astonishing amalgams of fact and fiction which, published first, from time to time, inBentley's Miscellany, were collected and issued as theIngoldsby Legends. It is not the least among the charms of those verses that fact and fiction are so inextricably mixed in them that it needs the learning of the skilled antiquary to sift the one from the other; and so plausible are many of his ostensible citations from old Latin documents, and his fictitious genealogies so interwoven with the names, the marriages and descents of persons, real and imaginary, that an innocent who wrote some years ago toNotes and Queries, desiring further particulars of what he thought to be genuine records, is surely to be excused for his too-ready faith.

The assumed name of "Ingoldsby" is stated by his son to be found in a branch of the family genealogy, but inquiry fails to trace the name in that connection, and it may be said at once that the Kentish Ingoldsbys are entirely figments of Barham's lively imagination. Yorkshire knows a family of that name, of whom Barham probably had never heard anything save their name. He was a man of property, and modestly proud of the descent heclaimed, and though by no means rich, his place was among—

Theéliteof the old county families round,Such as Honeywood, Oxenden, Knatchbull and Norton,Matthew Robinson, too, with his beard, from Monk's Horton,The Faggs, and Finch-Hattons, Tokes, Derings, and Deedses,And Fairfax (who then called the castle of Leeds his).

He was, in fact, "armigerous", as heralds would say, and the arms of his family were—not those lioncels of the Shurlands impaled with the saltire of the Ingoldsbys, of which we may read in the Legends—but as pictured here. It may be noted that another Barham family—the Barhams of Teston, near Maidstone—bore the three bears for arms, without the distinguishing fesse; and that they are shown thus on an old brass plate in Ashford church, which Ingoldsby must often have seen during his early curacy there.

THE BARHAM COAT-OF-ARMS.

When, however, he talks of the escutcheons displayed in the great hall of Tappington, charged with the armorial bearings of the family and its connections, he does more than to picturesquely embroider facts. He invents them, and the "oldcoat" "in which achevron between three eagles' cuisses sableis blazoned quarterly with theengrailed saltireof the Ingoldsbys"—which Mr. Simpkinson found to be that of "Sir Ingoldsby Bray,temp.Richard I."—is one not known to the Heralds' College.

Behind that farcical "Mr. Simpkinson, from Bath," lurks a real person, and one not unknown to those who have read Britton and Brayley books on Cathedral antiquities. John Britton, the original of Simpkinson, was, equally with his contemporary Barham, an antiquary and genealogist of accomplishment, and a herald of repute. Barham would not have allowed as much, for there was, it would seem, a certain amount of ill-feeling between the two, which resulted in the satirical passages relating to "Mr. Simpkinson" to be met with in the pages of theIngoldsby Legends. They tell us that he was, among other things, "an influential member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose 'Beauties of Bagnigge Wells' he had been a liberal subscriber"; and that "his inaugural essay on the President's cocked-hat was considered a miracle of erudition; and his account of the earliest application of gilding to gingerbread a masterpiece of antiquarian research." In all this one finds something of that rapier-thrust of satire, that mordant wit which comes of personal rivalry; and the heartfelt scorn of a man who loved architecture, and was, indeed, a member of the first Archæological Institute, but who whole-heartedly resented the introduction of picnic parties into archæological excursions, and revolted at popularising architecture and antiquarian research by brake parties, in which the popping of champagne corks punctuated the remarks of speakers holding forthon the architectural features of buildings in a style sufficiently picturesque and simple to hold the attention of the ladies. Those who have found how unconquerable is the indifference of the public to these things will appreciate to the fullest extent the feelings of Tom Ingoldsby, while yet reserving some meed of admiration for John Britton's labours, which did much to advance the slow-growing knowledge of Gothic architecture in the first half of the century. His work may halt somewhat, his architectural knowledge be something piecemeal and uninformed with inner light; but by his labours many others were led to pursue the study of ecclesiastical art.

But the humour with which Barham surrounded "Mr. Simpkinson's" doings took no count of his accomplishments, as may be seen in the excursion to "Bolsover Priory", narrated in "The Spectre of Tappington". "Bolsover Priory", said Mr. Simpkinson, "was founded in the reign of Henry VI. about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition undertaken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to which he gave his own name of Bolsover, or Bee-Owls-Over (by corruption Bolsover)—a Bee in chief over Three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre."

Thus far Simpkinson. Now Barham turns, with good effect, on the ignorant sightseers to whom ruins are just a curiosity and nothing more.

"'Ah! that was Sir Sidney Smith,' said Mr. Peters; 'I've heard tell of him, and all about Mrs. Partington, and—'

"'P., be quiet, and don't expose yourself!' sharply interrupted his lady. P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.

"'These lands,' continued the antiquary, 'were held in grand sergeantry by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey——'

"'Lassy me! how nice!' said Miss Julia. Mr. Peters licked his lips.

"'Pray give me leave, my dear—owls and honey, whenever the king should come a-rat-catching in this part of the country.'

"'Rat-catching!' ejaculated the Squire, pausing abruptly in the mastication of a drum-stick.

"'To be sure, my dear sir; don't you remember that rats once came under the forest laws—a minor species of venison? "Rats and mice, and such small deer," eh?—Shakespeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats; and owls, you know, are capital mousers——'

"'I seen a howl,' said Mr. Peters."

"Bolsover Priory" is one of those few places mentioned by Ingoldsby that have not been identified with any real place in Kent. It might have been taken to mean the ruins of the Preceptory at Swingfield Minnis, some two miles from Tappington, had not Barham expressly said, in his prefatory notes to the "Witches' Frolic," that they were not the same.

ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, DEMOLISHED 1901.

The literary landmarks associated with Barham's residence in London are readily traced. On leaving Kent in 1821 to take up his residence in London,he, for a time, rented the upper part of the house, still standing, No. 51, Great Queen Street, Holborn. There his eldest surviving daughter, Caroline Frances Barham, afterwards Lady Bond, was born, July 22nd, 1823. In 1824, following his appointment to the rectorship of St. Mary Magdalene, the family removed to a house numbered "4" on the south side of St. Paul's churchyard, and there remained until 1839, when an exchange was made to a house in Amen Corner, Paternoster Row—thefirst house through the gateway—by arrangement with Sydney Smith, who was leaving it to reside in Green Street, Mayfair.

He describes the garden at the back of this house as "containing three polyanthus roots, a real tree, a brown box border, a snuff-coloured jessamine, a shrub which is either a dwarf acacia or an overgrown gooseberry bush, eight broken bottles, and a tortoise-shell tom-cat asleep in the sunniest corner, with a wide and extensive prospect of the back of the 'Oxford Arms,' and a finehangingwood (the 'new drop' at Newgate) in the distance."

AMEN CORNER, WHERE BARHAM DIED.

But the sprightly wit, the sound common-sense, the good-natured satire, were doomed to early extinction. It was in the prime of life, and when he might well have looked forward to further consolidating and extending the fame his genius had already brought, that the blow fell which laid him low. He had already, some twenty years earlier, suffered some slight temporary trouble with a sensitive throat, and although in general a robust man, was in that respect peculiarly liable to the weather. It happened, unfortunately, that he was present as a spectator at the opening by the Queen of the new Royal Exchange, October 28th, 1844. It was a bleak day, and, sitting at an open window in Cheapside placed at his disposal by a friend, he caught a chill from whose effects he never recovered. The evil was a stubborn inflammation of the throat, which clung to him throughout the winter, and by degrees reduced the strong man to an alarmingly weak condition. In the February of 1845 he was induced to visit Bath, in the hope of recovery in that mild atmosphere, but an imprudent return toLondon in the treacherous month of March, in order to attend a meeting of the Archæological Association, aggravated the malady. Still, that strong physique struggled against illness, and he once more partly recovered, only to be again laidlow by a cold caught at an April vestry meeting in St. Paul's. It was, however, not merely an exaggerated susceptibility to cold that by this time dogged his every excursion into the open air, but the grossly mistaken treatment of his medical man, who had inflamed the malady by applying caustic to the uvula. At the beginning of May, although reduced almost to the condition of a helpless child by his sufferings, he was taken again to the west; this time to Clifton, near Bristol. Unhappily, the local practitioner who was called in to attend him was by no means a properly qualified man, and on hearing of the mistaken treatment already followed, could think of nothing better than to continue it. It is not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he experienced no relief from the climate of Clifton, but grew steadily weaker. It was a sad time, for his wife was simultaneously laid low with illness. Everything devolved upon his daughter, Frances, then only in her twentieth year, for his son Dick was away in Cambridgeshire, doing duty as a clergyman.

RUINS OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, OLD FISH STREET HILL, CITY OF LONDON, AFTER THE FIRE OF DECEMBER 1886.

The dying man—for the truth could be no longer disguised—kept a spirit of the supremest cheerfulness and Christian courage. His humorous verses on the incidents of his distressing illness—originally composed as replies to the inquiries of anxious friends and afterwards published in the collection ofIngoldsby Lyricsas "The Bulletin," are no whit inferior to the productions of his careless health.

When recovery at Clifton seemed hopeless, he was removed again to London, to the house he had occupied for the last six years, and made a grim joke as they assisted him into the house, on theappropriateness of his being brought at that juncture to Amen Corner. A few days he lay there, life ebbing away from sheer weakness; his mind still clear, and divided between making the most careful disposition of his property and fond memories of that "little boy Ned" who had died, untimely, some years before. It was then he wrote that last poem, the beautiful "As I Laye a-thynkynge," printed at the end of all editions of theIngoldsby Legendsas "The Last Lines of Thomas Ingoldsby." There is not, to my mind, anything more exquisitely beautiful and pathetic in the gorgeous roll of Englishliterature than the seven stanzas of the swan-song of this master of humour and pathos. It is wholly for themselves, and not by reason of reading into them the special circumstances under which they were written, that so sweeping a judgment is made. That they have never been properly recognised is due to the Wardour Street antiquity of their spelling, and still more to that strange insistence which ordains that the accepted wit and humourist must always be "funny" or go unacknowledged. It is a strange penalty; one that would seek to deprive the humourist of all human emotions save that of laughter, and so make him that reproach of honest men—a cynic.

It was on June 17th, 1845, that Barham died, untimely, before the completion of his fifty-seventh year. He was buried in the vaults of his former church, St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street Hill, one of those half-deserted city churches built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London. There he might have lain until now, but for the fire of December 2nd, 1886, which destroyed the building. For at least four years the blackened and roofless ruins stood, fronting Knightrider Street, and then they were removed, to make way for warehouses. The contents of the vaults were at the same time dispersed, the remains of Tom Ingoldsby being removed to Kensal Green Cemetery, while the tablet to his memory was appropriately transferred to St. Paul's, where, in the crypt, it may still be seen.

CANTERBURY

There stands a city, neither large nor small,Its air and situation sweet and pretty.It matters very little, if at all,Whether its denizens are dull or witty;Whether the ladies there are short or tall,Brunettes or blondes; only, there stands a city!Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute,That there's a Castle and a Cobbler in it.

Thus wrote Ingoldsby of his native city of Canterbury, in "The Ghost," and "sweet and pretty" its air and situation remain, sixty years since those lines were penned. For the changes that have altered so many other cities and towns have brought little disturbance here. No manufactures have come to abolish the prettiness of the situation; the air—the atmospheric air—is sweet and fragrant as of yore, and that other air—the demeanour and deportment—of Canterbury is still, as ever, gravely cheerful, as surely befits the capital city of a Primate whose Church is still a going concern.

Ingoldsby was exactly right in his epithetical summing-up, for prettiness and not grandeur is the characteristic of the gentle valley of the Stour, wherein Canterbury is set. Approach it from whatever quarter you will, and you will find prettiness only in the situation. Even when viewed from thecommanding heights of Harbledown and St. Thomas's Hill, the only grandeur is that of the Cathedral, and that is extrinsic, a something imported into the picture. Nay, even the uprising bulk of that cathedral church gains in effect from being thus set down in midst of a valley that is almost with equal justness called a plain, and whose features may, without offence, or the suspicion of any thought derogatory from their beauty, be termed so featureless.

Unquestionably the best direction whence to enter this ancient capital of the Kentish folk—this Kaintware-bury of the Saxons, the Durovernum of the Romans—is from Harbledown, whence the pilgrims from London, or from the north and west of England, entered. Only thus does the stranger receive a really accurate impression. With emotions doubtless less violent than those of the mediæval pilgrims to the shrine of the blessed martyr, St. Thomas, but still strongly aroused, he sees the west front of the Cathedral, its two western "towers," and the great central "Bell-Harry" tower displayed boldly before him, in the level, and may even identify the more prominent of the public buildings. Descending from this hill, he passes through the ancient suburb of Saint Dunstan, and enters the city beneath the frowning portals of the West Gate.

If, on the other hand, the modern pilgrim arrives per Chatham and Dover Railway, he will be dumped down in quite a different direction, on the south side of the city, near Wincheap Street, in which thoroughfare he will be able, without any delay, to discover his first Ingoldsby landmark in Canterbury, in the shape of the "Harris's Almshouses,"founded in 1729 by that ancestral Harris whose daughter his great-grandfather had married. They are five quite humble little red-brick houses, with a garden at the back, endowed for the support of two poor parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene, two of Thanington, and one of St. Mildred's. The value is the modest one of about £9 a year. An unassuming tablet on the central house of the row tells this story:

Mr. Thomas Harrisof this CityFounder of these FiveAlms-Houseshath endowed them withMarly Farm in Kentfor the Maintenance of fivePoor Familys for ever.

Ingoldsby—the Reverend Richard Harris Barham—became a governor of this charity on his attaining his majority, as already alluded to in the sketch of his birth and career.

The district of Wincheap only becomes tolerable after leaving the railway behind. This outlying part, without the city walls, was of old that place of degradation where the scourgings and stripes, the whips and scorpions of mediæval punishments, were inflicted; where offending books—ay, and the horror of it, the Protestant martyrs—were burnt of yore. In this "Potter's Field" that is not now more than a struggling little suburb where all the littlenesses of life are prominent, and few of its beauties are to be seen, there has of late been erected a great granite memorial pillar, surmounted by the "Canterbury Cross," on the site of the stakeat which forty-one victims of the Marian persecution perished. Shackle and stake, faggot and gyve, rivet and torch, how busy they were! It is a beautiful sentiment that rears this monument on the spot where they suffered who testified for Jesus; but it should stand, plain for all men to see, in the Cathedral Close itself.

Our course from this point into the city leads up to the Castle, mentioned in the Legends, and especially in that early one, "The Ghost," in whose stanzas are found many exquisitely apposite local Canterbury touches. That Castle is, in its secular way, as interesting as the Cathedral in its ecclesiastical:

The Castle was a huge and antique mound,Proof against all the artillery of the quiver,Ere those abominable guns were found,To send cold lead through gallant warrior's liver.It stands upon a gently-rising ground,Sloping down gradually to the river,Resembling (to compare great things with smaller)A well-scoop'd, mouldy Stilton cheese—but taller.The Keep, I find, 's been sadly alter'd lately,And, 'stead of mail-clad knights, of honour jealous,In martial panoply so grand and stately,Its walls are fill'd with money-making fellows,And stuff'd, unless I'm misinformed greatly,With leaden pipes, and coke, and coals, and bellows,In short, so great a change has come to pass,'Tis now a manufactory of Gas.

The Keep, I find, 's been sadly alter'd lately,And, 'stead of mail-clad knights, of honour jealous,In martial panoply so grand and stately,Its walls are fill'd with money-making fellows,And stuff'd, unless I'm misinformed greatly,With leaden pipes, and coke, and coals, and bellows,In short, so great a change has come to pass,'Tis now a manufactory of Gas.

CANTERBURY CASTLE.

It is immediately fronting the street that this keep of old romantic Norman times is found, with the smoke and noxious fumes, the chimneys and retorts, of the City of Canterbury Gas-light and Coke Company, very insistent to eyes and nose,in the rear; and, if you look down a by-street—"Gas Street" is the vulgar name of it—and peer into the empty roofless shell of that keep, you will discover it to be still a coal-bunker, and that those who, in the rhyme of Ingoldsby, manufacture "garss," are not more gentle with historic ruins than they were in 1825, when it was first put to this use. These shattered walls that, quarried by time and the hands of spoilers, do indeed, as Ingoldsby suggests, resemble one of those great, well-scooped cheeses found in the coffee-rooms of old-fashioned hotels, were built by two very great castle-builders; by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, and William de Corbeil, Archbishop of Canterbury. What Gundulf began for his master and over-lord William the Conqueror, William de Corbeil completed for Henry I. Among all the great castle keeps of England it ranked third in size,and in that respect was inferior only to those of Colchester and Norwich. It looks a very poor third indeed nowadays, and so battered and reduced that a hundred keeps are more upstanding and impressive. Alas! for that poor castle, its career was never an heroic one. It surrendered tamely to Louis, the Dauphin of France, in 1216, and for long years afterwards was a prison for Jews on occasions when persecutions of the Chosen People broke out. From that use it declined to the lower level of a debtor's prison.

Not far distant from it are the Dane John gardens, a public park of by no means recent origin. It has been for more than a hundred years what it is now, and is perhaps one of the very best wooded and most picturesque urban parks in existence. Antiquaries have long since ceased to trouble about the odd name, which appears to have originally come from an estate here, belonging to the Castle, and variously named the "Castle" or "Donjon" Manor. The huge prehistoric mound within its area was remodelled, heaped seventeen feet higher, crowned with a monument that halts between Gothic and Classic, and ringed round with a spiral walk about 1790. The very long and very complacent statement on that monument, telling how, when, and by whom all these things were done, is itself a monument of self-satisfaction.

The city walls, with their towers at regular intervals, even yet in very good preservation, bound the Dane John grounds in one direction. Still goes a broad walk on the summit of those walls, and the pilgrim might imagine himself a sentry guarding the mediæval city, were it not that denseand sordid suburbs spread beyond, on whose blank walls soap and cheap tea advertisements alternate with others crying the virtues of infants' foods and the latest quack nostrums.

THE DANE JOHN, CANTERBURY.

Canterbury is Canterbury yet, and Becket is still its prophet, but some things be changed. Electric lighting—of a marvellously poor illuminating quality it is true, and vastly inferior to the gas they brew at the Castle, but yet electric lighting of sorts—somewhat remodernises its streets; but it is still true, as at any time since Popery came down crash, that you cannot obtain lodging without money, or miracles, whether or no. Becket, however, still pervades the place. His arms—the three blackCornish choughs, red-beaked and clawed, on a blue field—have been adopted by the city, and every shop patronised by visitors sells china or trinkets painted or engraved with them. Pictures of the transept where he fell on that day of long ago; yea, even photographs of the skull and bones discovered some years since, and thought to be his, are at every turn. Becket is not forgot, and a certain portly Tudor shade—the wraith of one who ordained all worship and reverence of him to cease and every vestige of his shrine and relics to be destroyed—must surely be furiously and impotently angered. Little need, however, for that kingly shade to be thus perturbed; this modern and local cult of Saint Thomas is only business at Canterbury—and very good business, too.

Still goes the tourist-pilgrim along the way to the Cathedral trod by the sinners of mediæval times, to purge them of their sins and start afresh. Where they turned off to the left from the main street, down Mercery Lane, the present-day visitors still turn, and the Christchurch Gate, at the end of the narrow lane, opens as of old into the Cathedral precincts. It is a wonderful gatehouse, this of Christchurch, built by Prior Goldstone nigh upon four hundred years ago, and elaborately carved with Tudor roses, portcullises, and things now so blunted by time that it is difficult to distinguish them. Time has dissolved much of the worthy Prior's noble structure, like so much sugar.

It was here, in this open space in front of the Gate, that the quaint Butter Market stood until quite recently. Tardily eager to honour one of her sons, Canterbury was so ill-advised as to sweepaway the curious Butter Market to make room for the new memorial to Christopher Marlowe, the great dramatist of Shakespearean times, whose birthplace still stands in St. George's Street. It is a cynical freak of time that honour should be done to Marlowe at such a spot, for the Church in his lifetime held him to be "a wretch," a "filthy play-maker," an "atheist and a sottish swine," and it was thought that the unknown person who slew him in his thirtieth year was someone who thus revenged his insults to religion.

The Marlowe Memorial deserves attention. It is in the form of a nude bronze figure representing the Muse of Poetry, placed on a stone pedestal, and in the act of playing upon a lyre; but it is an exceedingly plump and eminently erotic, rather than intellectual, figure thus made to stand for the Muse—a Doll Tearsheet, with a coarse, sensual face, most inappropriately shaded by a wreath of poetic bays. The last touch of vulgarity is that especially municipal idea of giving the whole thing a smart finish by surrounding it with four ornate street-lamps.

THE DARK ENTRY.

Burgate Street, branching off from this point to the right, is the street where Barham was born; but our present business is to the Close, and round the south side of the Cathedral to the east end, where the Norman infirmary ruins stand. Turning here to the left, a narrow, stone-paved passage, in between high, ancient walls, leads crookedly through the romantic remains of the domestic buildings of the old monastery to the cloisters and the north side of the Cathedral. It is a twilight place, even now, in the brightest days of summer, and was once, before portions of it were unroofed, much darker. Thatwas the time when it obtained its existing name of the "Dark Entry." If the pages of theIngoldsby Legendsare opened, and the legend of "Nell Cook" is read, much will be found on the subject of this gloomy passage. That legend is the "King's Scholar's Story": the terror of a schoolboy of King Henry VIII.'s school, on the north side of the precincts, at the prospect of being sent back by thehaunted entry after dark, on a Friday, when the ghost of Nell Cook was supposed to have its weekly outing. Well might anyone believing in ghosts and omens especially desire not to meet that spirit, for such anencounter was supposed to presage the death of the person within the year:

THE DARK ENTRY, CANTERBURY.

"Now nay, dear Uncle Ingoldsby, now send me not I pray,Back by that Entry dark, for that you know's the nearest way;I dread that Entry dark with Jane alone at such an hour,It fears me quite—it's Friday night!—and then Nell Cook hath pow'r."

"And who, silly child, is Nell Cook?" asks Uncle Ingoldsby; and the King's Scholar answers:

"It was in bluff King Harry's days, while yet he went to shrift,And long before he stamped and swore, and cut the Pope adrift;There lived a portly Canon then, a sage and learned clerk;He had, I trow, a goodly house, fast by that Entry dark."The Canon was a portly man—of Latin and of Greek,And learned lore, he had good store,—yet health was on his cheek.The Priory fare was scant and spare, the bread was made of rye,The beer was weak, yet he was sleek—he had a merry eye."For though within the Priory the fare was scant and thin,The Canon's house it stood without;—he kept good cheer within;Unto the best he prest each guest, with free and jovial look,And Ellen Bean ruled hiscuisine.—He called her 'Nelly Cook.'"

"The Canon was a portly man—of Latin and of Greek,And learned lore, he had good store,—yet health was on his cheek.The Priory fare was scant and spare, the bread was made of rye,The beer was weak, yet he was sleek—he had a merry eye.

"For though within the Priory the fare was scant and thin,The Canon's house it stood without;—he kept good cheer within;Unto the best he prest each guest, with free and jovial look,And Ellen Bean ruled hiscuisine.—He called her 'Nelly Cook.'"

It is not a very proper story that the King's Scholar unfolds; of how a "niece" of the Canon comes to stay with him, and arouses the jealousy of the good-looking cook, whose affections that "merry eye" of the Canon had captured. Nell Cook thereupon successfully poisons the Canonand the strange lady with "some nasty doctor's stuff," with which she flavours a pie destined for the Canonical table, and the two are found as the Scholar tells:

"The Canon's head lies on the bed,—his niece lies on the floor!They are as dead as any nail that is in any door!"

Nell Cook, for her crime, says Tom Ingoldsby, adapting to his literary uses the legend long current in Canterbury, was buried alive beneath one of the great paving-stones of the "Dark Entry"; when, local history does not inform us:

But one thing's clear—that's all the year, on every Friday night,Throughout that Entry dark doth roam Nell Cook's unquiet sprite.

And whoever meets Nell Cook is bound to die some untimeous death within the year! Certainly, the Dark Entry is not a place greatly frequented after nightfall, even nowadays—but that is perhaps less by reason of superstitious fears than because it leads to nowhere in particular.

THE CATHEDRAL: THE MURDER OF BECKET

It is by the south porch that the Cathedral is entered. Let none suppose this to be the veritable Cathedral that Becket knew; that was replaced, piece by piece, in the succeeding centuries, all save the Norman transept where he met his fate. The nave, by whose lofty, aspiring perspective we advance, was built in 1380 upon the site of that of the twelfth century. According to the testimony of the time, it was in a ruinous condition. Conceive, if you can, the likelihood of one of those particularly massive Norman naves like those of Tewkesbury and Gloucester, which this resembled, becoming ruinous! The more probable truth of the matter is that the feeling of the time had grown inimical to those cavernous interiors of the older architects, and sought any excuse for tearing them down and building in their stead in the lightsome character of the Perpendicular period.

This nave, then, much later than Becket's era, leads somewhat unsympathetically to that most interesting spot in the whole Cathedral, the north transept. Here is the "Martyrdom," as that massive Norman cross-limb where Becket fell beneath theswords and axes of his murderers is still called. You look down into it from the steps leading into the choir and choir-aisles, as into a pit. Little changed, in the midst of all else that has been altered, this north transept alone remains very much as it was when he was slain, more than seven hundred years ago, and the sight of its stern, massive walls does much to bring back to those who behold them that fierce scene which, in the passage of all those years and the heaping of dull verbiage piled up by industrious Dryasdusts and beaters of the air, has been dulled and blunted.

Barham—our witty and mirthful Tom Ingoldsby—felt a keen personal interest in this scene, for was not his ancestor—as he conceived him to be—Reginald FitzUrse, the chief actor in that bloody scene of Becket's death? He is flippant, it must be allowed, in the reference he makes to the occurrence in theIngoldsby Legends:

A fair Cathedral, too, the story goes,And kings and heroes lie entombed within her;There pious Saints in marble pomp repose,Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a sinner;There, too, full many an aldermanic noseRoll'd its loud diapason after dinner;And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket,—Till four assassins came from France to crack it.

Historians have not yet agreed upon the character of Becket, and no final conclusion is ever likely to be arrived at upon the vexed question of who was right and who wrong in the long-drawn contention between King and Archbishop. It is easy to shirk the point and to decide that neither was right; but another and a more just resort is to declare, afterdue consideration, that in the attempted secular encroachments of the Crown, and in the resistance of the Archbishop to any interference with the prerogatives and jurisdiction of the Church and the clergy, both sides were impelled by the irresistible force of circumstances. Becket was of English origin, and the first of the downtrodden Saxon race who had won to such preferment since the Norman rule began. Thus, besides being bound to defend the Church, of which he had become the head, he was regarded by the people, who idolised him, as their champion against those ruling classes whose mailed tyranny crushed them to earth.

A prime difficulty in judging the character of Becket is the extraordinary change in his conduct after he had been induced to accept the Primacy, that goal and crown of the clerical career ardently desired by all, and attained by Becket in his forty-third year. Long the favourite of the King, and already, as Chancellor, at the height of power and magnificence, there was little advantage in this elevation to the throne of Saint Augustine, and he seemed singularly unfitted to fill it, for until that juncture he had been among the most worldly of men. As Chancellor, his magnificence had outshone that of the King, he himself was gay and debonnair, clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting royally, and with hundreds of knights in his train. Nothing that the world could give had he denied himself. He was not only impressed personally with his unfitness, but the monks of Canterbury themselves, in conclave, desired to elect one of their own choice. It was, therefore, against the desire of the Church and against his own better judgment,foreseeing as he did much of the trouble that was to come, that he was given the headship.

But once enthroned, his conduct changed. He dismissed his magnificent household, feasted no more, expended his substance in charity and himself in good works; became, indeed, and in very truth, that Right Reverend Father in God which the simulacra, the windbags, the ravening wolves, the emptinesses that for hundreds of years have occupied his place, are styled. The sinner saved must be prepared for misunderstandings—it is part of the cross and burden he has taken up. The scarlet sins of the unregenerate are remembered against the saint, and his saintliness becomes to his old boon companions a hypocritical farce. That is why Becket's contemporaries did not understand him; that, too, is why so many, dimly fumbling by the rush-light glimmer of their little sputtering intelligences, presently choked and dowsed in the dusty, cobwebby garrets of incredible accretions of lies, mistakes, perversions and general rag-bag of pitiful futilities, have been left wandering in infinite darkness, and content so to wander in estimating him.

It was the sinners whose poisonous tongues did, by dint of much persistence, estrange the King's affections from Becket within a year, and their innuendoes were remembered when a growing struggle over disputed privileges found the Archbishop immovably set upon what he regarded as his duty, and not at all prepared to favour the King. If Henry had supposed the Archbishop whom he had created would be in every sense his creature, he must have been furious at his gross mistake. The fury of the Norman kings was like the unrestrainedparoxysms of a raving maniac, and opposition threw them into transports of rage, felt severely by animate and inanimate objects alike. This second Henry, whose eyes were said to have in repose been gentle and dove-like, is no exception. Ill fares the messenger who brings him bad news—as ill sometimes as though he had brought about the untoward things of which he tells. Slight displeasure means a thump, a resounding smack on the face from the Royal hands, or a right Royal kick on that part where honour is so easily hurt. May not enquiring minds, diligently bent on running to earth the origin of the still existing etiquette of retreating backwards from the presence of the sovereign, find it in a natural desire of courtiers at all hazards to protect that honour?

Conceive, then, the really Royal rage of this King, bearded by someone not to be dissuaded, persuaded, admonished, or let or hindered in any particular. He became like a wild beast, tearing whatever came in his way, flinging off his clothes, throwing himself on the floor and gnawing the straw and rushes, and not merely kicking the posteriors of messengers, but flying at them with intent to tear out their eyes.

What was that which wrought such enmity between such old-time friends? Not merely one, but many things, but first and last among them the determination of the King that the clergy, instead of being amenable for offences only to the ecclesiastical courts, should be answerable to the civil tribunals. This, the earliest of the at last happily successful series of blows at clerical privilege, seemed to Becket almost sacrilegious, and he determined to protect the Church against what was, he honestly thought,according to his lights and his sacerdotal sympathies, an unwarranted attack.

By all accounts this saint was not, in his new character, the most tactful of men. With the old courtier days gone by, he had discarded the courtier-like speech, and austerely held his own. Jealous of him, several great dignitaries of the Church supported the King: among them the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of London and Salisbury. Becket, as their spiritual chief, hurled excommunication at them, and it was even feared that he would do the same by the King. Then, in fear of his life, he went into six years' exile, ended by a pretence of reconciliation that was patently a pretence, even before he sailed for England. He was weary of exile, and ready to lay down his life for the Church.

It was early in December 1170 that he returned to Canterbury, "to die," as he prophetically had said, before embarking. Quarrels, insults, and petty persecutions met him, and thus sped December to its close. On Christmas Day he preached in the Cathedral on the text, as he read it (an all-important reservation), "On earth, peace to men of good will." "There is no peace," he declared, "but to men of good will," and with solemn meaning, readily understood by the great congregation that heard him, spoke of the martyrs who had fallen in olden days. It was possible, he added, that they would soon have another.

"Father," wailed that assembled multitude, "why do you desert us so soon? To whom will you leave us?" But, heedless of the interruption, he passed from a plaintive strain to one of fieryindignation, ending, in a voice of thunder, by a full and particular excommunication of many of his enemies and persecutors. "May they be cursed," his voice resounded through the building, "by Jesus Christ, and may their memory be blotted out of the assembly of the saints, whoever shall sow discord between me and my lord the King." So saying, he, with mediæval symbolism, dashed down a lighted candle upon the stones, to typify the extinction of those accurst, and, with religious exaltation on his face, left the pulpit, saying to his crossbearer, "One martyr, St. Alphege, you have already; another, if God will, you will have soon."

Already, while he spoke, his furrow was drawing to its end. Over in Normandy, where the King was keeping Christmas, the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury were suggesting that it would be a good thing if there were no Becket. "So long as Thomas lives," said one, "you will have neither good days, nor peaceful kingdom, nor quiet life."

The thought thus instilled into the King's mind threw him into a frenzy. "A fellow," he shouted—"a fellow that has eaten my bread has lifted up his heel against me; a fellow that I loaded with benefits has dared to insult the King and the whole Royal family, and tramples on the whole kingdom; a fellow that came to Court on a lame sumpter-mule sits without hindrance on the throne itself. What sluggard wretches, what cowards, have I brought up in my Court, who care nothing for their allegiance to their master! Not one will deliver me from this low-born, turbulent priest!" So saying, he rushed from the room, doubtless to roll in one of thoseungovernable Plantagenet rages upon the floor of some secluded chamber.

The four knights who from among that Court sprang forth to prove themselves, even to the awful extremities of sacrilege and murder, true King's men, were Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Bret. In the light of later events, the monkish chroniclers, eager to discover the marvellous in every circumstance of the tragedy, found a dark significance in their very names. FitzUrse, they said, was of truly bear-like character; De Moreville's name proclaimed him to be of "the city of death"; Le Bret was "the brute." With so much ingenuity available, it is quite surprising they could not twist Tracy's name into something allusive to murder; but they had to be content with the weak suggestion that he was of "parricidal wickedness." All save Le Bret had been knights owning fealty to Becket while he was Chancellor.

It is detailed in these pages, in the description of Saltwood Castle, how they landed in England and made for Canterbury. A dreadful circumstance is that they knew perfectly well on whom to call when they reached the city, and waited upon a sympathiser with the King, Clarembald, the Abbot of St. Augustine's, who is thus sufficiently implicated.

From the Abbot's lodging they sent a command, ordering the Mayor to issue a proclamation in the King's name forbidding any help being given to the Archbishop. Then they took horse again and rode to the Palace, accompanied by their men-at-arms, whom they posted in a house hardby the gateway. The short day of December 29th was nearly at its close when they drew rein in the courtyard beneath the great hall of the Palace, where the Archbishop and his household had but just retired from supper. They had left their swords outside, and came as travellers, their mailed armour concealed under long cloaks. Entering the hall they met the seneschal, who ushered them into the private room where the Archbishop sat, among his intimates. "My lord," he said, "here are four knights from King Henry wishing to speak with you"; and they were bidden enter.

FitzUrse began the furious discussion. The knights had seated themselves on the floor at the Archbishop's feet, and waited until he should finish the conversation he was holding with a monk. When Becket turned and looked calmly at each in turn, ending with saluting Tracy by name, FitzUrse it was who broke in with a contemptuous "God help you!"

The Archbishop's face flushed crimson. He was a man of vehement nature, and it is wonderful that he restrained himself from striking that insolent intruder. "We have a message from the King over the water," continued FitzUrse; "tell us whether you will hear it in private, or in the hearing of all."

Within the hearing of all that message, such as it was, was given. It was but a reiteration of old demands and old grievances, made to goad the Archbishop into fury, and to afford an excuse for an attack upon him. The discussion aroused both sides to anger, and the knights, calling upon all to prevent the Archbishop from escaping, dashedoff, with the cry of "To arms!" for their swords.

But Becket harboured no thoughts of escape. Although he perceived that death was near, he made no retreat, being indeed, by this time, fanatically bent upon the martyr's crown. Outside, the signal had been already given to the men-at-arms, who now came pouring in, with shouts of "Réaux!" or "King's men." The knights now returned, their swords girt about them. Already, however, the Archbishop's attendants had closed and barred the doors, and were endeavouring to save him from that death he seemed to welcome. With kindly violence they pushed and pulled him by obscure passages from the Palace and along the cloisters, while the blows of axes and the splintering of wood told how in their rear the murderers were hewing their way onward. Thus at last, strenuously resisting, he was impelled towards the door that opened from the cloisters into the north transept.

Once within the Cathedral the monks bolted the door behind them, and in their haste excluded some of their brethren, thus left, unprotected, to face the onrush of armed men. Hearing these unfortunate ones vainly knocking for admittance, Becket, exerting all his authority, commanded the door to be opened; and when he found his words disregarded, broke away from those who held him and drew back the bolts with his own hands.

Seeing the way thus made clear for those pursuing men of wrath, the crowd of anxious monks surrounding the Archbishop immediately turned and fled to those hiding-places they knew of. Only three remained, dauntless, by their chief. Thesewere Robert of Merton, William FitzStephen, and Edward Grim, who stood by him, vainly imploring him to flee. Only one concession he made to their entreaties. He would go to the choir, and there, before the high altar, the holiest place in the Cathedral, with all dignity make an end.

It was as he was thus ascending the steps from the transept that the knights burst into the sacred building. Bewildered at first by the almost complete darkness, they could only shout at random, "Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the King?" No answer. Then, falling over a monk, came an oath, from FitzUrse, and the question, "Where is the Archbishop?" Becket himself answered, and descending again into the transept, confronted them. He stood in front of what was then the the Chapel of St. Benedict, and calmly asked, "Reginald, why do you come into my church armed?" For answer FitzUrse thrust a carpenter's axe he had found against his breast, and with a savage oath declared, "You shall die: I will tear out your heart!" "Fly!" exclaimed another, not so eager to commit the sin of sacrilege, before which the mediæval world recoiled; "Fly! or you are a dead man!" striking him with the flat of his sword, to emphasise the warning.

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