Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
        Warwick, and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester....

CHAPTER V

THE PILGRIMS’ ROAD

FAVERSHAM TO CANTERBURY

From Faversham at least to the environs of Canterbury, the Pilgrim’s Road seems to be unmistakable, for the Watling Street runs all the way straight as a ruled line.  Yet so few are the remaining marks of the pilgrimage, so little is that great Roman and mediaeval England remembered by men or even by the fields or the road which runs between them with so changeless a purpose, that at first sight we might think it all a myth.  And yet everything that is fundamental or really enduring and valuable in our lives we owe to that England which was surely one of the most glorious and strong, as well as one of the happiest, countries in Europe.  Yet must the disheartened voyager take comfort, for in how many small and negligible things may we not see even to-day the very mark and standard of Rome, her sign manual after all, under the rubbish of the modern world.  And if you desire an example, let me give you weathercocks.

No man can walk for day after day along this tremendous road which leads us straight as a javelin thrust back through all the lies and excuses to the truth of our origins, without noticing, and especially since he must keep an eye on the wind and the weather, the astonishing number of weathercocks there be between London and Canterbury.  Upon almost every steeple, chanticleer towers shining in the sun and wildly careering in the winds of spring.  You think that nothing at all, the most ordinary sight in modern England?  But for the seeing eye it reveals, how much!  Everyone of these weathercocks crows there on the tip top of the steeple over each town or village because of an order of the Pope.  They were to be the sign of the jurisdiction of St Peter, and that by a Bull of the ninth century.  How entrancing it is to remember such a thing as that in the midst of modern England.

In spite of the weathercocks and their watchfulness, however, the memories of the great pilgrimage between Faversham and Harbledown are dishearteningly few.  One might surely expect to find something at Preston for instance, where, coming out of Faversham, one rejoins the Watling Street, but there is nothing at all to remind one of the great past of the Way.  It is true that Preston church, dedicated in honour of St Catherine, is both ancient and beautiful, and once belonged to the monastery of Christ Church in Canterbury; but neither in its channel, which must once, before the eastern window was inserted in 1862, with its single lancets and sedilia, have been extraordinarily fine, nor in the nave, is there any memory at all of St Thomas or the Pilgrims.  It is not indeed until we come to Boughton that we are reminded of them.