II

CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS

Canterbury [Footnote:  From “Two Months Abroad.”  Printed privately. (1878.)]

BY THE EDITOR

An Anglo-Saxon man may get down to first principles in Canterbury.  He reaches the dividing point in England between the old faith of Pagans and the new religion of Jesus the Christ.  The founder of the new gospel had been dead five hundred years when England accepted Him, and acceptance came only after the Saxon King Ethelbert had married Bertha, daughter of a Frankish prince.  Here in Canterbury Ethelbert held his court.  Bertha, like her father, was a Christian.  After her marriage, Bertha herself for some years held Christian services here alone in little St. Martin’s Church, but Ethelbert still loved his idols; indeed, for many years, he continued to worship Odin and Thor.  St. Patrick had been in Ireland a full century before this.

Bertha as a Christian stood almost alone in Saxon England, but her persistence at last so wrought upon Ethelbert that he wrote a letter to Pope Gregory the Great, asking that a missionary be sent to England.  This was in the sixth century.  St. Augustine and forty monks were dispatched by Gregory to the English shore.  To-day I have seen the church where this great missionary preached.  It still contains the font from which he baptized his many English converts.  In this church King Ethelbert himself embraced Christianity, and so it was that the union of Church and State was here effected.  Canterbury then became the mother of the Church of England—­a title she has retained through all succeeding years.

Few towns in England can interest an educated man more.  Its foundation dates from years before the Christian era—­how long before no man knows.  It is rich in history, secular as well as ecclesiastical.  The Black Prince, beloved and admired as few princes ever were, had a strong attachment for it, and here lies buried.  Opposite his tomb sleeps Henry IV, the king who dethroned Richard II, son of this same Black Prince.  Thomas a Becket, and those marvelous pilgrimages that followed his murder for three hundred years, have given it lasting renown.  The “father of English poetry” has still further immortalized it in his “Tales.”  Indeed, there are few towns possessing so many claims on the attention of the churchman, the antiquarian, and the man of letters.

One of the densest fogs I ever knew settled upon the ancient town the morning after my arrival.  It was impossible to see clearly across streets.  This fog increased the gloom which long ago came over these ancient monuments and seemed to add something unreal to the air of solemn greatness that appeared in every street and corner.  Chance threw me into Mercury Lane.  Here at once was historic ground.  On a corner of the lane stands the very old inn that is mentioned by Chaucer as the resort of the pilgrims whose deeds he has celebrated.  It is now used by a linen-draper.  The original vaulted cellars and overhanging upper stories still remain.