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We shall not have the opportunity of being so proud and impatient as Dean Colet of unhappy memory, for no shoe, alas, of St Thomas or any other saint will be offered for our veneration in the Hospital of St Nicholas at Harbledown to-day.
It was upon as fair a spring morning as ever was in England, that I set out from Canterbury through the West Gate, and climbing up the shoulder of Harbledown, some little way past St Dunstan's, turned out of the Watling Street, south and west into the old green path or trackway, which, had I followed it to the end, would have brought me right across Kent and Surrey and Hampshire to Winchester the old capital of England.
We need not doubt that he halted at Harbledown to salute the martyr's shoe, and he may have washed in the water of the well, which was henceforward called by his name. Another tradition relates that he had water brought to him from this well when he lay sick, ten years later, in the archbishop's palace at Canterbury. Another good view may be had from the crest on which stands St.
Wite ye nat wher ther stant a litel town Which that y-cleped is Bop-up-and-down Under the Blee in Caunterbury weye? This "littel town" it might seem, has disappeared, unless indeed it be Harbledown itself, which certainly bears geographically much resemblance to that descriptive name, as Erasmus describes it in his strange book.
Margaret, his youngest daughter, was married unto Ezekiel Charke, Bachelor in Divinity, and Rector of St. Nicholas in Harbledown, near Canterbury, who died about sixteen years past, and had a son Ezekiel, now living, and in Sacred Orders; being at this time Rector of Waldron, in Sussex.
Landing at Southampton, he came by the Pilgrims' Way to Harbledown, and so entered the ancient city. At the church of St. Dunstan, outside the walls, he took off his ordinary dress and walked barefoot through the streets to the monastery of Christ Church.
I don't suppose you'd ask any questions if you were told to take a letter straight to the man in the moon. I wonder what it can mean." And continuing his run, he soon left the steady-going old soldier far behind. Up High Street, under the great gate, along through the wide, straggling street beyond, into the open country, and then across through the fields to Harbledown.
Beyond Harbledown, some two miles from Canterbury, he Pilgrims' Road along the hillside passes clean through earthwork of unknown antiquity. Well, it was here the Seventh Legion charged: here, indeed, we stand upon the very battlefield which saw the birth of civilisation in our island. Lying there in the early morning sunshine I considered it all over again.
Such a view may well be got from the hills of Harbledown, a village about two miles from Canterbury, containing in itself many objects of antiquarian and æsthetic interest. It stands on the road by which Chaucer's pilgrims wended their way to the shrine of St. Thomas, and it is almost certainly referred to in the lines in which the poet speaks of
The lukewarm pilgrim should therefore remember that he will add vastly to the richness of his impressions if he deserts his train at Selling or Chartham and walks the rest of the way over Harbledown, where he will see the little city of the Middle Ages encircled with its ancient wall and crowned by the towers of its cathedral very much as did the cosmopolitan groups of travel-soiled men and women who for century after century feasted their eyes from the selfsame spot.
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