The Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury

THREE hundred and seventy years have passed since the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury was swept away, and the martyr's ashes were scattered to the winds. The age of pilgrimages has gone by, the conditions of life have changed, and the influences which drew such vast multitudes of men and women to worship at the murdered Archbishop's tomb have long ago ceased to work on the popular mind.

No longer does the merry cavalcade of Chaucer's lay ride forth in the freshness of the spring morning, knight and merchant, scholar and lawyer, Prioress and Wife of Bath, yeoman and priest and friars, a motley company from all parts of the realm, "ready to wenden on their pilgrimage with full devout courage" to Canterbury. The days of pilgrimages are over, their fashion has passed away, but still some part of the route which the travellers took can be traced, and the road they trod still bears the name of the Pilgrims' Way. Over the Surrey hills and through her stately parks the dark yews which lined the path may yet be seen. By many a quiet Kentish homestead the grassy track still winds its way along the lonely hill-side overlooking the blue Weald, and, if you ask its name, the labourer who guides the plough, or the waggoner driving his team, will tell you that it is the Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury. So the old name lives, and the memory of that famous pilgrimage which Chaucer sang has not yet died out of the people's heart. And although strangers journey no longer from afar to the martyrs shrine, it is still a pleasant thing to ride out on a spring or summer morning and follow the Pilgrims' Way. For the scenes through which it leads are fair, and the memories that it wakes belong to the noblest pages of England's story.

In those old days the pilgrims who came to Canterbury approached the holy city by one of the three following routes. There was first of all the road taken by Chaucer's pilgrims from London, through Deptford, Greenwich, Rochester, and Sittingbourne; the way trodden by all who came from the North, the Midlands, and the Eastern Counties, and by those foreigners who, like Erasmus, had first visited London. But the greater number of the foreign pilgrims from France, Germany, and Italy landed at Sandwich Haven or Dover, and approached Canterbury from the south; while others, especially those who came from Normandy and Brittany, landed at Southampton and travelled through the southern counties of Hampshire, Surrey, and Kent. Many of these doubtless stopped at Winchester, attracted by the fame of St. Swithun, the great healing Bishop; and either here or else at Guildford, they would be joined by the pilgrims from the West of England on their way to the Shrine of Canterbury. This was the route taken by Henry II. when, landing at Southampton on his return from France, he made his first memorable pilgrimage to the tomb of the murdered Archbishop, in the month of July, 1174. And this route it is, which, trodden by thousands of pilgrims during the next three centuries, may still be clearly defined through the greater part of its course, and which in Surrey and Kent bears the historic name of the Pilgrims' Way. A very ancient path it is, older far than the days of Plantagenets and Normans, of shrines and pilgrimages. For antiquarian researches have abundantly proved this road to be an old British track, which was in use even before the coming of the Romans. It may even have been, as some writers suppose, the road along which caravans of merchants brought their ingots of tin from Cornwall to be shipped at what was then the great harbour of Britain, the Rutupine Port, afterwards Sandwich Haven, and then borne overland to Massilia and the Mediterranean shores. Ingots of tin, buried it may be in haste by merchants attacked on their journey by robbers, have, it is said, been dug up at various places along this route, and British earthworks have been found in its immediate neighbourhood.

The road was, there can be no doubt, used by the Romans; and all along its course remains of Roman villas, baths, and pavements have been brought to light, together with large quantities of Roman coins, cinerary urns, and pottery of the most varied description. In medi?val days this "tin road," as Mr. Grant Allen calls it, still remained the principal thoroughfare from the West to the East of England. It followed the long line of hills which runs through the north of Hampshire, and across Surrey and Kent, that famous chalk ridge which has for us so many different associations, with whose scenery William Cobbett, for instance, has made us all familiar in the story of his rides to and from the Wen. And it lay outside the great trackless and impassable forest of Anderida, which in those days still covered a great part of the south-east counties of England. Dean Stanley, in his eloquent account of the Canterbury pilgrimage, describes this road as a byway, and remarks that the pilgrims avoided the regular roads, "probably for the same reason as in the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, the highways were unoccupied, and the traveller walked through byways." But the statement is misleading, and there can be little doubt that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this road was, if not the only means of communication between West and East, at least the principal thoroughfare across this part of England, and was as such the route naturally chosen by pilgrims to Canterbury.

Certain peculiarities, it is interesting to notice, mark its course from beginning to end. It clings to the hills, and, wherever it is possible, avoids the marshy ground of the valleys. It runs, not on the summit of the downs, but about half-way down the hill-side, where there is shelter from the wind, as well as sunshine to be had under the crest of the ridge. And its course is marked by rows of yew trees, often remarkable for their size and antiquity. Some of these are at least seven or eight hundred years old, and must have reared their ancient boughs on the hill-side before the feet of pilgrims ever trod these paths. So striking is this feature of the road, and so fixed is the idea that some connection exists between these yew trees and the Pilgrims' Way, that they are often said to have been planted with the express object of guiding travellers along the road to Canterbury. This, however, we need hardly say, is a fallacy. Yews are by no means peculiar to the Pilgrims' Way, but are to be found along every road in chalk districts. They spring up in every old hedgerow on this soil, and are for the most part sown by the birds. But the presence of these venerable and picturesque forms does lend an undeniable charm to the ancient track. And in some places where the line of cultivation gradually spreading upwards has blotted out every other trace of the road, where the ploughshare has upturned the sod, and the hedgerows have disappeared, three or four of these grand old trees may still be seen standing by themselves in the midst of a ploughed field, the last relics of a bygone age.

DOORWAY IN CANTERBURY CLOISTERS THROUGH WHICH BECKET PASSED ON HIS WAY TO VESPERS.

The murder of Becket took place on the 29th of December, 1170. At five o'clock on that winter evening, as the Archbishop was on his way to vespers, the King's men, Reginald Fitz Urse and three knights who had accompanied him from Saltwood Castle, rushed upon him with their swords and murdered him in the north transept of his own Cathedral. The tragic circumstance of Becket's end made a profound impression on the people of England, and universal horror was excited by this act of sacrilege. Whatever his faults may have been, the murdered Archbishop had dared to stand up against the Crown for the rights of the Church, and had died rather than yield to the Kings demands. "For the name of Jesus and the defence of the Church I am ready to die," were his last words, as he fell under the assassins' blows. When he landed at Sandwich, on his return from France, the country folk crowded to meet him and hailed him as the father of orphans and deliverer of the oppressed, crying, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." His journey to Canterbury was one long triumphal procession.[1] The poor looked to him as their champion and defender, who had laid down his life in the cause of freedom and righteousness. Henceforth Thomas became a national hero, and was everywhere honoured as the Martyr of the English.

The popular belief in his holiness was confirmed by the miracles that were wrought in his name from the moment of his death. A violent storm broke over the Cathedral when the fatal deed was done, and was followed by a red glow, which illuminated the choir where the dead man's body was laid before the altar. The next day the monks buried the corpse in a marble tomb behind Our Lady's altar in the under-croft. For nearly a year no mass was said in the Cathedral, no music was heard, no bells were rung; the altars were stripped of their ornaments, and the crucifixes and images were covered over. Meanwhile, reports reached Canterbury of the wonderful cures performed by the martyred Archbishop. On the third day after the murder, the wife of a Sussex knight, who suffered from blindness, invoked the blessed martyr's help, and was restored to sight. And on the very night of the burial the paralytic wife of a citizen of Canterbury was cured by a garment which her husband had dipped in the murdered saint's blood.

These marvels were followed by a stream of devout pilgrims who came to seek healing at the martyr's tomb or to pay their vows for the mercies which they had received. A monk was stationed at the grave to receive offerings and report the miracles that were wrought to the Chapter. At first these wonders were kept secret, for fear of the King, and of Becket's enemies, the De Brocs, whose men guarded the roads to Canterbury. The doors of the crypt were kept bolted and barred, and only the poor in the town and the neighbouring villages crept to the tomb.[2] But on Easter Day, 1171, the crowds rushed in to see a dumb man who was said to have recovered his speech; and on the following Friday the crypt was thrown open to the public. From that time, writes Benedict, the monk of Canterbury, "the scene of the Pool of Bethesda was daily renewed in the Cathedral, and numbers of sick and helpless persons were to be seen lying on the pavement of the great church."[3] "These great miracles are wrought," wrote John of Salisbury, an intimate friend of Becket, who became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, and was an able statesman and scholar, "in the place of his passion and in the place where he lay before the great altar before his burial, and in the tomb where he was laid at last, the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and, a thing unheard of since the days of our fathers, the dead are raised to life."[4]

From all parts of England the sick and suffering now crowded to Canterbury, telling the same marvellous tale, how Thomas had appeared to them robed in white, with the thin red streak of blood across his face, bringing healing and peace. "In towns and villages, in castles and cottages, throughout the kingdom," writes another contemporary chronicler, "every one from the highest to the lowest wishes to visit and honour his tomb. Clerks and laymen, rich and poor, nobles and common people, fathers and mothers with their children, masters with their servants, all come hither, moved by the same spirit of devotion. They travel by day and night in winter and summer, however cold the weather may be, and the inns and hostelries on the road to Canterbury are as crowded with people as great cities are on market days."[5]

ST. CROSS FROM THE MEADOWS.

On the 21st of February, 1173, Pope Alexander III. pronounced the decree of canonisation, and fixed the Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury on the day of the Archbishop's martyrdom. In July, 1174, King Henry II., moved by the reports which reached him in Normandy of the popular enthusiasm for Becket, and fearing the effects of the divine wrath, came himself to do penance at the martyr's tomb. Three months after the King of the English had given this public proof of his penitence and obtained release from the Church's censures, "the glorious choir of Conrad" was destroyed by fire, on the night of September 5, 1174. The rebuilding of the church, which was largely assisted by offerings at Becket's tomb, was not finished until 1220, when the Saint's body was removed to its final resting-place in the new apse at the East end of the Chapel of the Blessed Trinity, where the Archbishop had said his first mass.

THE ENTRANCE TO ST. CROSS HOSPITAL.

On Tuesday, July 7, an immense concourse of people of all ranks and ages assembled at Canterbury. "The city and villages round," writes an eye-witness, "were so filled with folk that many had to abide in tents or under the open sky."[6] Free hospitality was given to all, and the streets of Canterbury literally flowed with wine. A stately procession, led by the young King Henry III. and the patriot Archbishop Stephen Langton, entered the crypt, and bore the Saint's remains with solemn ceremonial to their new resting-place. Here a sumptuous shrine, adorned with gold plates and precious gems, wrought "by the greatest master of the craft" that could be found in England, received the martyr's relics, and the new apse became known as "Becket's Crown."

The fame of St. Thomas now spread into all parts of the world during the next two centuries, and the Canterbury pilgrimage was the most popular in Christendom. The 7th of July was solemnly set apart as the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas, and henceforth the splendour of this festival threw the anniversary of the actual martyrdom into the shade. The very fact that it took place in summer and not in winter naturally attracted greater numbers of pilgrims from a distance. And on the jubilees or fiftieth anniversaries of the Translation, the concourse of people assembled at Canterbury was enormous.

Besides the crowds attracted by these two chief festivals, pilgrims came to Canterbury in smaller parties at all seasons of the year, but more especially in the spring and summer months. Each year, as Chaucer sings, when the spring-time comes round,

"When that Aprille with his showers sweete

The drought of Marche had pierced to the roote....

When Zephyrus eke with his sweete breathe

Inspired hath in every holt and heathe

The tender croppes ...

And small fowl?s maken melodie,

That sleepen all the night with open eye,

Then longen folk to go on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seeken strange 'strand?s' ...

And specially, from every shire's ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The holy blissful martyr for to seeke

That them hath holpen when that they were sicke."

BOX HILL.

The passage of these caravans of pilgrims could not fail to leave its mark on the places and the people along their path. The sight of these strange faces, the news they brought, and the tales they told must have impressed the dwellers in these quiet woodlands and lonely hills. And traces of their presence remain to this day on the Surrey downs and in the lanes of Kent. They may, or may not, have been responsible for the edible variety of large white snails, Helix pomatia, commonly called Roman snails, which are found in such abundance at Albury in Surrey, and at Charing in Kent, as well as at other places along the road, and which the Norman French pilgrims are traditionally said to have brought over with them. But the memory of their pilgrimage survives in the wayside chapels and shrines which sprung up along the track, in the churches which were built for their benefit, or restored and decorated by their devotion, above all in the local names still in common use along the countryside. Pilgrims' Lodge and Pilgrims' Ferry, Palmers' Wood, Paternoster Lane-these, and similar terms, still speak of the custom which had taken such fast hold of the popular mind during the three hundred and fifty years after the death of Becket, and recall the long processions of pilgrims which once wound over these lonely hills and through these green lanes on their way to the martyr's shrine.

THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.

ROOF OF STRANGERS' HALL, WINCHESTER.

Few traces of the Pilgrims' Way are now to be found in Hampshire. But early writers speak of an old road which led to Canterbury from Winchester, and the travellers' course would in all probability take them through this ancient city. Here the foreign pilgrims who landed at Southampton, and those who came from the West of England, would find friendly shelter in one or other of the religious houses, and enjoy a brief resting-time before they faced the perils of the road. The old capital of Wessex, the home of Alfred, and favourite residence of Saxon and Norman kings, had many attractions to offer to the devout pilgrim. Here was the splendid golden shrine of St. Swithun, the gentle Bishop who had watched over the boyhood of Alfred. In A.D. 971, a hundred years after the Saint's death, his bones had been solemnly removed from their resting-place on the north side of the Minster, where he had humbly begged to be buried" so that the sun might not shine upon him," and laid by Edgar and Dunstan behind the altar of the new Cathedral which Bishop Ethelwold had raised on the site of the ancient church of Birinus. This was done, says the chronicler Wulfstan, although the Saint himself "protested weeping that his body ought not to be set in God's holy church amidst the splendid memorials of the ancient fathers," a legend which may have given rise to the popular tradition of the forty days' rain, and the supposed delay in the Saint's funeral. From that time countless miracles were wrought at the shrine of St. Swithun, and multitudes from all parts of England flocked to seek blessing and healing at the great church which henceforth bore his name.

THE WEST GATE, WINCHESTER.

Under the rule of Norman and Angevin kings, the venerable city had attained the height of wealth and prosperity. In those days the population numbered some 20,000, and there are said to have been as many as 173 churches and chapels within its wall. In spite of the horrors of civil war, which twice desolated the streets, in the time of Stephen and Henry III., the frequent presence of the court and the energy of her prince-bishops had made Winchester a centre of religious and literary activity. And, although after the death of Henry III., who throughout his long life remained faithful to his native city, royal visits became few and far between, and the old capital lost something of its brilliancy, there was still much to attract strangers and strike the imagination of the wayfarer who entered her gates in the fifteenth century. Few medi?val cities could boast foundations of equal size and splendour. There was the strong castle of Wolvesey, where the bishops reigned in state, and the royal palace by the West gate, built by King Henry III., with the fair Gothic hall which he had decorated so lavishly. There was the Hospital of St. Cross, founded by the warrior-bishop, Henry de Blois, and the new College of St. Mary, which William of Wykeham, the great master-builder, had reared in the meadows known as the Greenery, or promenade of the monks of St. Swithun. Another venerable hospital, that of St. John's, claimed to have been founded by Birinus, and on Morne Hill, just outside the East gate, stood a hospital for lepers, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. There, conspicuous among a crowd of religious houses by their wealth and antiquity, were the two great Benedictine communities of St. Swithun and Hyde. And there, too, was the grand Norman church which the Conqueror's kinsman, Bishop Walkelin, had raised on the ruins of Ethelwold's Minster, with its low massive tower and noble transepts, and the long nave roofed in with solid trees of oak cut down in Hempage Wood. Three centuries later, William of Wykeham transformed the nave after the latest fashion of architecture, cut through the old Norman work, carried up the piers to a lofty height, and replaced the flat wooden roof by fine stone groining. But the Norman tower and transepts of Bishop Walkelin's church still remain to-day almost unchanged.

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL, SOUTH AISLE OF CHOIR.

So great was the concourse of pilgrims to St. Swithun's shrine in the early part of the fourteenth century, that Bishop Godfrey Lucy enlarged the eastward portion of the church, and built, as it were, another church, with nave, aisles, and Lady Chapel of its own, under the same roof. The monks had no great love for the lower class of pilgrims who thronged their doors, and took good care to keep them out of the conventual precincts. They were only allowed to enter the Minster by a doorway in the north transept, and, once they had visited the shrine and duly made their offerings, they were jealously excluded from the rest of the church by those fine ironwork gates still preserved in the Cathedral, and said to be the oldest specimen of the kind in England.

ON THE RIVER ITCHEN, WINCHESTER.

Towards the close of the century, in the reign of Edward I., the fine old building still known as the Strangers' Hall was built by the monks of St. Swithun at their convent gate, for the reception of the poorer pilgrims. Here they found food and shelter for the night. They slept, ate their meals, and drank their ale, and made merry round one big central fire. The hall is now divided, and is partly used as the Dean's stable, partly enclosed in a Canon's house, but traces of rudely carved heads, a bearded king, and a nun's face are still visible on the massive timbers of the vaulted roof, blackened with the smoke of bygone ages. In the morning the same pilgrims would wend their way to the doors of the Prior's lodging, and standing under the three beautiful pointed arches which form the entrance to the present Deanery, would there receive alms in money and fragments of bread and meat to help them on their journey.

KING'S GATE, WINCHESTER, FROM THE CLOSE.

The route which they took on leaving Winchester is uncertain. It is not till we approach Alton that we find the first traces of the Pilgrims' Way, but in all probability they followed the Roman road which still leads to Silchester and London along the valley of the river Itchen. Immediately outside the city gates they would find themselves before another stately pile of conventual buildings, the great Abbey of Hyde. This famous Benedictine house, founded by Alfred, and long known as the New Minster, was first removed from its original site near the Cathedral in the twelfth century. Finding their house damp and unhealthy, and feeling themselves cramped in the narrow space close to the rival monastery of St. Swithun, the monks obtained a charter from Henry I. giving them leave to settle outside the North gate. In the year 1110, they moved to their new home, bearing with them the wonder-working shrine of St. Josse, the great silver cross given to the New Minster by Cnut, and a yet more precious relic, the bones of Alfred the Great. Here in the green meadows on the banks of the Itchen they reared the walls of their new convent and the magnificent church which, after being in the next reign burnt to the ground by fire-balls from Henry of Blois' Castle at Wolvesey, rose again from the flames fairer and richer than before. Here it stood till the Dissolution, when Thomas Wriothesley, Cromwell's Commissioner, stripped the shrine of its treasures, carried off the gold and jewels, and pulled down the abbey walls to use the stone in the building of his own great house at Stratton. "We intend," he wrote to his master, after describing the riches of gold and silver plate, the crosses studded with pearls, chalices, and emeralds on which he had lain sacrilegious hands, "both at Hyde and St. Mary to sweep away all the rotten bones that be called relics; which we may not omit, lest it be thought we came more for the treasure than for the avoiding of the abomination of idolatry." Considerable fragments of the building still remained. In Milner's time the ruins covered the whole meadow, but towards the end of the last century the city authorities fixed on the spot as the site of a new bridewell, and all that was left of the once famous Abbey was then destroyed. The tombs of the dead were rifled. At every stroke of the spade some ancient sepulchre was violated, stone coffins containing chalices, croziers, rings, were broken open and bones scattered abroad. Then the ashes of the noblest of our kings were blown to the winds, and the resting-place of ?lfred remains to this day unknown. A stone marked with the words, ?lfred Rex, DCCCLXXXI., was carried off by a passing stranger, and is now to be seen at Corby Castle, in Cumberland. To-day an old gateway near the church of St. Bartholomew and some fragments of the monastery wall are the only remains of Alfred's new Minster.

From this spot an ancient causeway, now commonly known as the Nuns' Walk, but which in the last century bore the more correct title of the Monks' Walk, leads alongside of a stream which supplied Hyde Abbey with water, for a mile and a half up the valley to Headbourne[7] Worthy. The path is cool and shady, planted with a double row of tall elms, and as we look back we have beautiful views of the venerable city and the great Cathedral sleeping in the quiet hollow, dreaming of all its mighty past. Above, scarred with the marks of a deep railway cutting, and built over with new houses, is St. Giles' Hill, where during many centuries the famous fair was held each September. Foreign pilgrims would gaze with interest on the scene of that yearly event, which had attained a world-wide fame, and attracted merchants from all parts of France, Flanders, and Italy. The green hill-side from which we look down on the streets and towers of Winchester presented a lively spectacle during that fortnight. The stalls were arranged in long rows and called after the nationality of the vendors of the goods they sold. There was the Street of Caen, of Limoges, of the Flemings, of the Genoese, the Drapery, the Goldsmiths' Stall, the Spicery, held by the monks of St. Swithun, who drove a brisk trade in furs and groceries on these occasions. All shops in the city and for seven leagues round were closed during the fair, and local trade was entirely suspended. The mayor handed over the keys of the city for the time being to the bishop, who had large profits from the tolls and had stalls at the fair himself, while smaller portions went to the abbeys, and thirty marks a year were paid to St. Swithun's for the repair of the great church. The Red King first granted his kinsman, Bishop Walkelin, the tolls of this three days' fair at St. Giles' feast, which privilege was afterwards extended to a period of sixteen days by Henry III. The great fair lasted until modern times, but in due course was removed from St. Giles' Hill into the city itself. "As the city grew stronger and the fair weaker," writes Dean Kitchin, "it slid down St. Giles' Hill and entered the town, where its noisy ghost still holds revel once a year."

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH

Leaving these historic memories behind us we follow the Monks' Walk until we reach Headbourne Worthy, the first of a group of villages granted by Egbert, in 825, to St. Swithun's Priory, and bearing this quaint name, derived from the Saxon woerth-a homestead. The church here dates from Saxon times, and claims to have been founded by St. Wilfred. The rude west doorway and chancel arch are said to belong to Edward the Confessor's time. Over the west archway, which now leads into a fifteenth-century chapel, is a fine sculptured bas-relief larger than life, representing the Crucifixion and the Maries, which probably originally adorned the exterior of the church. But the most interesting thing in the church is the brass to John Kent, a Winchester scholar, who died in 1434. The boy wears his college gown and his hair is closely cut, while a scroll comes out of his lips bearing the words: "Misericordiam Dni inetum cantabo." Next we reach Kingsworthy, so called because it was once Crown property, a pretty little village with low square ivy-grown church-tower and lych-gate, and a charming old-fashioned inn standing a little back from the road.

THATCHED COTTAGE, MARTYR WORTHY.

The third of the Worthys, Abbotsworthy, is now united to Kingsworthy. Passing through its little street of houses, a mile farther on we reach Martyrsworthy, a still smaller village with another old Norman church and low thatched cottages, picturesquely placed near the banks of the river, which is here crossed by a wooden foot-bridge. But all this part of the Itchen valley has the same charm. Everywhere we find the same old farmhouses with mullioned windows and sundials and yew trees, the same straggling roofs brilliant with yellow lichen, and the same cottages and gardens gay with lilies and phloxes, the same green lanes shaded with tall elms and poplars, the same low chalk hills and wooded distances closing in the valley, and below the bright river winding its way through the cool meadows. "The Itchen-the beautiful Itchen valley," exclaims Cobbett, as he rides along this vale of meadows. "There are few spots in England more fertile, or more pleasant, none, I believe, more healthy. The fertility of this vale and of the surrounding country is best proved by the fact that, besides the town of Alresford and that of Southampton, there are seventeen villages, each having its parish church, upon its borders. When we consider these things, we are not surprised that a spot situated about half-way down this vale should have been chosen for the building of a city, or that that city should have been for a great number of years the place of residence for the kings of England."

CHILLAND FARM, NEAR ITCHEN ABBAS.

Towards Itchen Abbas-of the Abbot-the valley opens, and we see the noble avenues and spreading beeches of Avington Park, long the property of the Dukes of Chandos, and often visited by Charles II. while Wren was building his red-brick palace at Winchester. Here the Merry Monarch feasted his friends in a banqueting-hall that is now a greenhouse, and a room in the old house bore the name of Nell Gwynne's closet. In those days it was the residence of the notorious Lady Shrewsbury, afterwards the wife of George Brydges, a member of the Chandos family, the lady whose first husband, Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury, was slain fighting in a duel with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, while the Countess herself, disguised as a page, held her lover's horse.

The river winds through the park, and between the over-arching boughs of the forest trees we catch lovely glimpses of wood and water. In the opposite direction, but also close to Itchen Abbas, is another well-known seat, Lord Ashburton's famous Grange, often visited by Carlyle. Here the dark tints of yew and fir mingle with the bright hues of lime and beech and silver birch on the banks of a clear lake, and long grassy glades lead up to wild gorse-grown slopes of open down. Still following the river banks we reach Itchen Stoke, another picturesque village with timbered cottages and mossy roofs. A little modern church, with high-pitched roof and lancet windows having a curiously foreign air, stands among the tall pines on a steep bank above the stream. But here our pleasant journey along the fair Itchen valley comes to an end, and, leaving the river-side, we climb the hilly road which leads us into Alresford.

New Alresford, a clean, bright little town, with broad street, planted with rows of trees, boasts an antiquity which belies its name, and has been a market-town and borough from time immemorial. Like its yet more venerable neighbour, Old Alresford, it was given by a king of the West Saxons to the prior and monks of St. Swithun at Winchester, and formed part of the vast possessions of the monastery at the Conquest. Both places took their name from their situation on a ford of the Arle or Alre river, a considerable stream which joins the Itchen below Avington, and is called by Leland the Alresford river. In the eleventh century New Alresford had fallen into decay, and probably owes its present existence to Bishop Godfrey Lucy, who rebuilt the town, and obtained a charter from King John restoring the market, which had fallen into disuse. At the same time he gave the town the name of New Market, but the older one survived, and the Bishop's new title was never generally adopted. The same energetic prelate bestowed a great deal of care and considerable attention on the water supply of Winchester, and made the Itchen navigable all the way from Southampton to Alresford.

In recognition of this important service, Bishop Lucy received from King John the right of levying toll on all leather, hides, and other goods which entered Winchester by the river Itchen through this canal, a right which descended to his successors in the see. South-west of the town is the large pond or reservoir which he made to supply the waters of the Itchen. This lake, which still covers about sixty acres, is a well-known haunt of moor-hens and other waterfowl, and the flags and bulrushes which fringe its banks make it a favourable resort of artists. Old Alresford itself, with its gay flower-gardens, tall elms, pretty old thatched cottages grouped round the village green, may well supply them with more than one subject for pen and pencil.

NEW ALRESFORD.

New Alresford was at one time a flourishing centre of the cloth trade, in which the Winchester merchants drove so brisk a trade at St. Giles' Fair. The manufacture of woollen cloth was carried on till quite recent times, and Dean Kitchin tells us that there are old men still living who remember driving with their fathers to the fair at Winchester on St. Giles' day, to buy a roll of blue cloth to provide the family suits for the year. But New Alresford shared the decline as it had shared the prosperity of its more important neighbour, and suffered even more severely than Winchester in the Civil Wars, when the town was almost entirely burnt down by Lord Hopton's troops after their defeat in Cheriton fight. The scene of that hard-fought battle, which gave Winchester into Waller's hands and ruined the King's cause in the West of England, lies a few miles to the south of Alresford. Half-way between the two is Tichborne Park, the seat of a family which has owned this estate from the days of Harold, and which took its name from the stream flowing through the parish, and called the Ticceborne in Anglo-Saxon records. In modern times a well-known case has given the name of Tichborne an unenviable notoriety, but members of this ancient house have been illustrious at all periods of our history, and the legend of the Tichborne Dole so long associated with the spot deserves to be remembered. In the reign of Henry I., Isabella, the wife of Sir Roger Tichborne, a lady whose long life had been spent in deeds of mercy, prayed her husband as she lay dying to grant her as much land as would enable her to leave a dole of bread for all who asked alms at the gates of Tichborne on each succeeding Lady Day. Sir Roger was a knight of sterner stuff, and seizing a flaming brand from the hearth he told his wife jestingly that she might have as much land as she could herself walk over before the burning torch went out. Upon which the sick lady caused herself to be borne from her bed to a piece of ground within the manor, and crawled on her knees and hands until she had encircled twenty-three acres. The actual plot of ground still bears the name of Lady Tichborne's Crawles, and there was an old prophecy which said that the house of Tichborne would only last as long as the dying bequest of Isabella was carried out. During the next six centuries, nineteen hundred small loaves were regularly distributed to the poor at the gates on Lady Day, and a miraculous virtue was supposed to belong to bread thus bestowed. The custom was only abandoned a hundred years ago, owing to the number of idlers and bad characters which it brought into the neighbourhood, and a sum of money equal in amount to the Dole is given to the poor of the parish in its stead.

Whether any of our Canterbury pilgrims stopped in their course to avail themselves of the Tichborne Dole we cannot say, but there was a manor-house of the Bishops of Winchester at Bishop Sutton, near Alresford, where they would no doubt find food and shelter. Nothing now remains of the episcopal palace, and no trace of its precincts is preserved but the site of the bishop's kennels.

After crossing the river at Alresford the pilgrims turned north-east, and according to an old tradition their road led them through the parish of Ropley, a neighbouring village where Roman remains have been discovered. A little further on the same track, close to Rotherfield Park, where the modern mansion of Pelham now stands, was an ancient house which bore the name of Pilgrims' Place, and is indicated as such in old maps.

THE HOG'S BACK.

A FEW miles to the right of the road is a place which no pilgrim of modern times can leave unvisited-Selborne, White's Selborne, the home of the gentle naturalist whose memory haunts these rural scenes. Here he lived in the picturesque house overgrown with creepers, with the sunny garden and dial at the back, and the great spreading oak where he loved to study the ways of the owls, and the juniper tree, which, to his joy, survived the Siberian winter of 1776.

And here he died, and lies buried in the quiet churchyard in the shade of the old yew tree where he so often stood to watch his favourite birds. Not a stone but what speaks of him, not a turn in the village street but has its tale to tell. The play-stow, or village green, which Adam de Gurdon granted to the Augustinian Canons of Selborne in the thirteenth century, where the prior held his market of old, and where young and old met on summer evenings under the big oak, and "sat in quiet debate" or "frolicked and danced" before him; the farmhouse which now marks the site of the ancient Priory itself, founded by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, in 1232-he has described them all. How the good Canons grew lazy and secular in their ways after a time, how William of Wykeham found certain of them professed hunters and sportsmen, and tried in vain to reform them, and how the estates were finally handed over to the new college of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford, by its founder, William of Waynflete-Gilbert White has already told us. The Hanger, with its wooded slopes, rising from the back of his garden, and that "noble chalk promontory" of Nore Hill, planted with the beeches which he called the most lovely of all forest trees, how familiar they seem to us! Still the swifts wheel to and fro round the low church-tower, and the crickets chirp in the long grass, and the white owl is heard at night, just as when he used to linger under the old walls and watch their manners with infinite care and love.

JANE AUSTEN'S HOUSE, CHAWTON.

One of the "rocky hollow lanes" which lead towards Alton will take us back into the road, and bring us to Chawton, a village about a mile from that town. The fine Elizabethan manor-house at the foot of the green knoll, and the grey church peeping out of the trees close by, have been for centuries the home and burial-place of the Knights. On the south side of the chancel a black and white marble monument records the memory of that gallant cavalier, Sir Richard Knight, who risked life and fortune in the Royal cause, and was invested with the Order of the Royal Oak by Charles II. after the Restoration. But it is as the place where Jane Austen, in George Eliot's opinion, "the greatest artist that has ever written," composed her novels, that Chawton is memorable. The cottage where she lived is still standing a few hundred yards from the "great house," which was the home of the brother and nieces to whom she was so fondly attached. She and her sister, Cassandra, settled there in 1809, and remained there until May, 1817, when they moved to the corner house of College Street, Winchester, where three months afterwards she died. During the eight years spent in this quiet home, Jane Austen attained the height of her powers and wrote her most famous novels, those works which she herself said cost her so little, and which in Tennyson's words have given her a place in English literature "next to Shakespeare." "Sense and Sensibility," her first novel, was published two years after the move to Chawton. "Persuasion," the last and most finished of the immortal series, was only written in 1816, a year before her death. Seldom, indeed, has so great a novelist led so retired an existence. The life at Chawton, so smooth in its even flow, with the daily round of small excitements and quiet pleasures, the visits to the "great house," and walks with her nieces in the woods, the shopping expeditions to Alton, the talk about new bonnets and gowns, and the latest news as to the births, deaths, and marriages of the numerous relatives in Kent and Hampshire, are faithfully reflected in those pleasant letters of Jane Austen, which her great-nephew, Lord Brabourne, gave to the world. There is a good deal about her flowers, her chickens, her niece's love affairs, the fancy work on which she is engaged, the improvements in the house and garden-"You cannot imagine," she writes on one occasion, "it is not in human nature to imagine, what a nice walk we have round the orchard!"-but very little indeed about her books. Almost the only allusion we find to one of her characters is in 1816, when she writes to Fanny Knight of Anne Elliot in "Persuasion." "You may perhaps like the heroine, as she is almost too good for me!" Anything like fame or publicity was positively distasteful to her. She owns to feeling absolutely terrified when a lady in town asked to be introduced to her, and then adds laughingly, "If I am a wild beast I cannot help it, it is not my fault!"

Curiously enough, the Pilgrims' Way, in the later course of its path, brings us to Godmersham, that other and finer home of the Knights on the Kentish Downs, a place also associated with Jane Austen's life and letters, where she spent many pleasant hours in the midst of her family, enjoying the beauty of the spot and its cheerful surroundings. But Chawton retains the supremacy as her own home, and as the scene of those literary labours that were cut short, alas! too soon. "What a pity," Sir Walter Scott exclaimed, after reading a book of hers, "what a pity such a gifted creature died so early!"

CHAWTON HOUSE

From Chawton it is a short mile to Alton, famous for its breweries and hop gardens, and its church door, riddled with the bullets of the Roundheads. Our way now leads us through the woods of Alice Holt-Aisholt-the Ash wood; like Woolmer, a royal forest from Saxon times. Alice Holt was renowned for the abundance of its fallow deer, which made it a favourite hunting ground with the Plantagenet kings, and on one occasion Edward II., it is said, gave one of his scullions, Morris Ken, the sum of twenty shillings because he fell from his horse so often out hunting, "which made the king laugh exceedingly." Here, too, after the battle of Evesham, Edward, Prince of Wales, defeated Adam de Gurdon, one of Simon de Montfort's chief followers. He is said to have challenged the rebel baron to a single combat, in which Gurdon was wounded and made prisoner, but the victor spared his life and afterwards obtained a royal pardon for his vanquished foe. A wild rugged tract of country, Alice Holt was a chosen haunt of robbers and outlaws, the terror of the wealthy London merchants who journeyed to St. Giles' Fair at Winchester, and in the fourteenth century the wardens of the fair kept five mounted serjeants-at-arms in the forest near Alton, for their protection at that season.

Soon after leaving Alton the pilgrims would catch their first sight of the river Wey, which rises close to the town. Along the banks of this stream, flowing as it does through some of the loveliest Surrey scenery, their road was now to lie, and not until they crossed St. Katherine's ferry, at Guildford, were they finally to lose sight of its waters. The river itself, more than one writer has suggested, may owe its name to this circumstance, and have been originally called the Way river from the ancient road which followed the early part of its course.

FARNHAM CASTLE.

Leaving Froyle Park, Sir Hubert Miller's fine Jacobean house, on our left, we pass Bentley Station, and, still following the river, join the Portsmouth road just before entering Farnham. This town, which takes its name from the commons overgrown with fern and heather still to be seen in the neighbourhood on the Surrey side, is now surrounded with hop gardens. It was among the earliest possessions of the Bishops of Winchester, and formed part of the land granted to St. Swithun, in 860, by Alfred's elder brother, Ethelbald, King of Wessex. The Castle-palace, which still looks proudly down on the streets of the little town, was first built by that magnificent prelate, Henry of Blois, but little of the original building now remains except the offices, where some round Norman pillars may still be seen. Farnham Castle was partly destroyed by Henry III. during his wars with the barons, and suffered greatly at the hands of the rebels in the time of Charles I., but was afterwards rebuilt by Bishop Morley. Queen Elizabeth paid frequent visits here, and on one occasion, while dining in the great hall with the Duke of Norfolk, who was suspected of planning a marriage with Mary Queen of Scots, pleasantly advised the Duke to be careful on what pillow he laid his head. The lawn, with its stately cedars and grass-grown moat, deserves a visit, but the most interesting part of the building is the fine old keep with its massive buttresses and thirteenth-century arches, commanding a wide view over the elm avenues of the park, and the commons which stretch eastward on the Surrey side. Prominent in the foreground are the picturesque heights of Crooksbury, crowned with those tall pines which Cobbett climbed when he was a boy, to take the nests of crows and magpies.

Farnham, it must be remembered, was the birthplace of this remarkable man, and it was at Ash, a small town at the foot of the Hog's Back, that he died in 1835. All his life long he retained the fondest affection for these scenes of his youth. In 1825 he brought his son Richard, then a boy of eleven, to see the little old house in the street where he had lived with his grandmother, and showed him the garden at Waverley where he worked as a lad, the tree near the Abbey from which he fell into the river in a perilous attempt to take a crow's nest, and the strawberry beds where he gathered strawberries for Sir Robert Rich's table, taking care to eat the finest! Among these hills and commons, where he followed the hounds on foot at ten years old, and rode across country at seventy, we forget the political aspect of his life, his bitter invectives against the Poor-laws and Paper-money, the National Debt and the System, and think rather of his keen love of nature and delight in the heaths, the sandy coppices, and forests of Surrey and Hampshire. And now he sleeps in the church of Farnham, where he desired to be buried, in the heart of the wild scenery which he loved so well.

CROOKSBURY FROM NEWLANDS CORNER.

Just under Crooksbury, that "grand scene" of Cobbett's "exploits," lies Moor Park, the retreat of Sir William Temple in his old age, which seemed to him, to quote his own words, "the sweetest place, I think, that I have ever seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad." There we may still see the gardens which the statesman of the Triple Alliance laid out after the fashion of those which he remembered in Holland, where he enjoyed the companionship of his beloved sister, Lady Giffard, and where his heart lies buried under the sundial. Here Swift lived as his secretary, and learnt from King William III. how to cut asparagus; here he wrote the "Tale of a Tub," and made love to Mrs. Hester Johnson, Lady Giffard's pretty black-eyed waiting-maid. The memory of that immortal love-story has not yet perished, and the house where she lived is still known as Stella's Cottage. Here, too, just beyond Moor Park, on the banks of the Wey, are the ruins of Waverley Abbey, the first Cistercian house ever founded in England, often described as "le petit C?teaux," and the mother of many other abbeys.

The more distinguished pilgrims who stopped at Farnham would taste the hospitality of the monks of Waverley, and Henry III. was on one occasion their guest. The Abbot of Waverley, too, was a great personage in these parts, and his influence extended over several parishes through which the pilgrims had to pass, although the privileges which he claimed were often disputed by the Prior of Newark, the other ecclesiastical magnate who reigned in this part of Surrey. Pilgrims of humbler rank would find ample accommodation in the ancient hostelries of Farnham, which was at that time a place of considerable importance, and returned two members to Edward II.'s Parliament.

Their onward course now lay along the banks of the Wey until they reached the foot of the narrow, curiously shaped chalk ridge known as the Hog's Back. Here, at a place called Whiteway End, the end of the white chalk road, two roads divide. Both lead to Guildford, the one keeping on the crest of the ridge, the other along its southern slope.

The upper road has become an important thoroughfare in modern times, and is now the main road from Farnham to Guildford; the lower is a grassy lane, not always easy to follow, and little used in places, which leads through the parishes of Seale, Puttenham, and Compton, the bright little villages which stud the sides of the Hog's Back. This green woodland path under the downs was the ancient British and Roman track along which the Canterbury pilgrims journeyed, and which is still in some places spoken of by the inhabitants as the Way. Other names in local use bear the same witness. Beggar's Corner and Robber's or Roamer's Moor are supposed to owe their appellations to the pilgrims: while the ivy-grown manor-house of Shoelands, bearing the date of 1616 on its porch, is said to take its name from the word "to shool," which in some dialects has the same meaning as "to beg."

Another trace of the Pilgrimage is to be found in the local fairs which are still held in the towns and villages along the road, and which were fixed at those periods of the year when the pilgrims would be either going to Canterbury or returning from there. Thus we find that at Guildford the chief fair took place at Christmas, when the pilgrims would be on their way to the winter festival of St. Thomas, and was only altered to September in 1312, by which time the original day of the Saint's martyrdom had ceased to be as popular as the summer feast. Again the great fair at Shalford was fixed for the Feast of the Assumption, the 15th of August, so as to catch the stream of pilgrims which flowed back from Canterbury after the Feast of the Translation in July, and the seven days' fair there, that went by the name of Becket's fair. Fairs soon came to be held not only at towns such as Farnham, Guildford, and Shalford, but at the small villages along the Pilgrims' Road. There was one in the churchyard at Puttenham, and another at Wanborough, a church on the northern side of the hill, which belonged to Waverley Abbey, where the offerings made by the pilgrims formed part of the payments yearly received by the Abbot, while a third was held on St. Katharine's Hill during five days in September.

Even the churches along the road often owed their existence to the Pilgrimage. The church of Seale was built early in the thirteenth century by the Abbots of Waverley, and that of Wanborough was rebuilt by the same Abbots, and was again allowed to fall into decay when the days of pilgrimages were over. Both the sister chapels of St. Katharine and St. Martha, we shall see, owed their restoration to the pilgrims' passage, and many more along the Way were either raised in honour of St. Thomas, or else adorned with frescoes and altar-pieces of the Martyrdom.

Along this pleasant Surrey hill-side the old Canterbury pilgrims journeyed, going from church to church, from shrine to shrine, and more especially if their pilgrimage took place in summer, enjoying the sweet country air and leafy shades of this quiet woodland region. They lingered, we may well believe, at the village fairs, and stopped at every town to see the sights and hear the news; for the pilgrim of medi?val days was, as Dean Stanley reminds us, a traveller with the same adventures, stories, pleasures, pains, as the traveller of our own times, and men of every type and class set out on pilgrimages much as tourists to-day start on a foreign trip. Some, no doubt, undertook the journey from devotion, and more in a vague hope of reaping some profit, both material and spiritual, from a visit to the shrine of the all-powerful Saint, while a thousand other motives-curiosity, love of change and adventure, the pleasure of a journey-prompted the crowds who thronged the road at certain seasons of the year. Chaucer's company of pilgrims we know was a motley crew, and included men and women whose characters were as varied as their rank and trade. With them came a throng of jugglers and story-tellers and minstrels, who beguiled the way with music and laughter as they rode or walked along, so that "every town they came through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking of the dogs after them, they made more noise than if the king came there with all his clarions." In their train, too, a crowd of idle folk, of roving pedlars and begging friars and lazy tramps, who were glad of any excuse to beg a crust or coin.

The presence of these last was by no means always welcome at the inns and religious houses on the road, where doubtful characters often craved admittance, knowing that if the hand of justice overtook them they could always find refuge in one of those churches where the rights of sanctuary were so resolutely claimed and so jealously defended by the Abbot of Waverley or the Prior of Newark.

COMPTON VILLAGE.