Beautiful Britain | Page 5

in St. Dunstan's outside the city, on the
Whitstable Road.
Canterbury appears to have grown and prospered in spite of various
attacks made by the Danes until the year 1011, when the city, after a
defence lasting nearly three weeks, fell into the hands of the invaders
through treachery from within. Alphege, the good old archbishop, was
obliged to witness the savagery of the Danes when they burst through
the gates and began a horrible slaughter, which included the monks of
Christ Church, and it is said that about 7,000 Saxons perished. Not
content with all this butchery, they burnt the cathedral. Archbishop
Alphege was carried off by the victorious Danes, who at Greenwich
gave way to drunken excesses, and in brutal fashion killed their
prisoner. The body was brought from London, where it had been buried,
back to Canterbury ten years later by Canute, the first Danish King of
England, who made what atonement he could by lending his freshly
painted state barge for the ceremonious translation of the martyr's
remains. Arrived at Canterbury, the King proceeded to further
demonstrate his submission to the Church his people had devastated by
hanging up his crown in the cathedral which Alphege's successor,
Archbishop Living, had reroofed. Canute, having made a journey to
Rome in 1031, among other pious resolutions, declared that he would
amend his life and conversation, and it was with his help that the Saxon
cathedral was properly repaired and decorated.
During the year following the Norman Conquest a fire began in
Canterbury, which, besides destroying many houses, reduced the
unfortunate cathedral to a roofless ruin once more. Three years later, in

1070, when Lanfranc was made the first Norman archbishop, he
decided that the Saxon walls were worthless, and he swept away every
trace of the building, which may have been partially Roman, before
proceeding to erect a larger and grander pile in the Norman style
familiar to him. One feature of the original church has, nevertheless,
left its mark on the Norman cathedral. This was a crypt described by
Eadmer, the monkish historian, who, as a boy, saw the Saxon church
being demolished. It was only a small affair, but it must have been the
most remarkable feature of the comparatively small oblong building,
for it was not, properly speaking, a crypt at all, but an undercroft
beneath the eastern altars. "To reach these altars," says Eadmer, "a
certain crypt, which the Romans call a confessionary, had to be
ascended by means of several steps from the choir of the singers. Thus
the Norman archbishop, in planning a larger cathedral, constructed a
crypt under the choir of his new building, and the steps one ascends
to-day are there as the direct outcome of the structural methods of rude
Saxon times."
Lanfranc completed his new cathedral in 1077, and in his lifetime he
also founded the great Benedictine priory of Christ Church, whose
considerable remains add so much medievalism to the surroundings of
the vast cathedral. Anselm succeeded Lanfranc after an interval of a
few years, during which Rufus found it exceedingly desirable to keep
the see vacant while the revenues were diverted into the royal coffers,
and scarcely twenty years after his predecessor's church was finished,
Prior Ernulph pulled down the east end and constructed in its place the
magnificent Norman choir, with its transepts and chapels standing with
various alterations to-day. This great work was finished by Prior
Conrad, who succeeded Ernulph, and the noble work, which became
known as Conrad's Choir, was consecrated in 1130 by Archbishop de
Corbeuil. To make this bald statement and omit to mention the
ceremony attending it would be misleading; for not only were Henry I.
and David of Scotland present, but Canterbury saw such a gathering of
dignitaries of Church and State with their splendid retinues that the
historian found nothing to compare with it but Solomon's dedication of
the Temple!

This splendid church, representing the finest achievement of Norman
master-builders and workmen, rising high above the domestic quarters
of the monastery and standing forth conspicuously from every part of
the little walled city, then consisting, to a considerable extent, of low
wooden houses, had now reached the stage in its development when it
was to be the scene of the murder which was to make Canterbury the
most famous resort of pilgrims in Europe. This occurred forty years
later; but no change in the great Norman church had taken place in that
period.
So thrilling is the whole story of Becket's murder that there is every
temptation to tell again the tale of Henry II.'s hasty exclamation, and
the headlong journey from Normandy to Canterbury made by those
four knights whose foul deed history has not ceased to condemn; but
for a full account the reader is advised to turn