The Cathedral Church of Canterbury | Page 9

dinner' and so thanked him heartily for the said present."
Such was the history of Becket's shrine. We have dwelt on it at some

length because it is no exaggeration to say that in the Middle Ages
Canterbury Cathedral owed its European fame and enormous riches to
the fact that it contained the shrine within its walls, and because the
story of the influence of the Saint and the miracles that he worked, and
the millions of pilgrims who flocked from the whole civilized world to
do homage to him, throws a brighter and more vivid light on the lives
and thoughts and beliefs of mediæval men than many volumes stuffed
with historical research. No visitor to Canterbury can appreciate what
he sees, unless he realizes to some extent the glamour which overhung
the resting place of St. Thomas in the days of Geoffrey Chaucer. We
have no certain knowledge as to whether the other shrines and relics
which enriched the cathedral were destroyed along with those of St.
Thomas. Dunstan and Elphege at least can hardly have escaped, and it
is probable that most of the monuments and relics perished at the time
of the Reformation. We know that in A.D. 1541, Cranmer deplored the
slight effect which had been wrought by the royal orders for the
destruction of the bones and images of supposed saints. And that he
forthwith received letters from the king, enjoining him to cause "due
search to be made in his cathedral churches, and if any shrine, covering
of shrine, table, monument of miracles, or other pilgrimage, do there
continue, to cause it to be taken away, so as there remain no memory of
it." This order probably brought about the destruction of the tombs and
monuments of the early archbishops, most of whom had been officially
canonised, or been at least enrolled in the popular calendar, and were
accordingly doomed to have their resting-places desecrated. We know
that about this time the tomb of Winchelsey was destroyed, because he
was adored by the people as a reputed saint.
Any monuments that may have escaped royal vandalism at the
Reformation period, fell before the even more effective fanaticism of
the Puritans, who seem to have exercised their iconoclastic energies
with especial zeal and vigour at Canterbury. Just before their time
Archbishop Laud spent a good deal of trouble and money on the
adornment of the high altar. A letter to him from the Dean, dated July
8th, A.D. 1634, is quoted by Prynne, "We have obeyed your Grace's
direction in pulling down the exorbitant seates within our Quire
whereby the church is very much beautified.... Lastly wee most humbly

beseech your Grace to take notice that many and most necessary have
beene the occasions of extraordinary expences this yeare for ornaments,
etc." And another Puritan scribe tells us that "At the east end of the
cathedral they have placed an Altar as they call it dressed after the
Romish fashion, for which altar they have lately provided a most
idolatrous costly glory cloth or back cloth."
These embellishments were not destined to remain long undisturbed. In
A.D. 1642, the Puritan troopers hewed the altar-rails to pieces and then
"threw the Altar over and over down the three Altar steps, and left it
lying with the heels upwards." This was only the beginning: we read
that during the time of the Great Rebellion, "the newly erected font was
pulled down, the inscriptions, figures, and coats of arms, engraven
upon brass, were torn off from the ancient monuments, and whatsoever
there was of beauty or decency in the holy place, was despoiled."
A manuscript, compiled in 1662, and preserved in the Chapter library,
gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows
were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of
the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and
ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much
other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly
hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and
chiefest of the furniture, with the rail before it, and the screen of
tabernacle work richly overlaid with gold behind it; goodly monuments
shamefully abused, defaced, and rifled of brasses, iron grates, and
bars."
The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard
Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the
Chapter library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar,
describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the
time of the Restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. "So little," says
this document, "had the fury of the late reformers left remaining of it
besides the bare walles and roofe, and these, partly through