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CANTERBURY PILGRIMS.

ECIDEDLY the most picturesque features of "England's merrie days" are those connected with the pilgrimages and journeyings of the people. A vifit to Canterbury or to Walfingham was in old times a matter of no fmall difficulty; but our ancestors entered upon the work careless of obftacles, and thought lefs seriously of the fatigue of the road than do the

excurfionifts of the present day in taking their returntickets for the famous fhrine of à Beckett, or "eight hours at the fea-fide." Indeed the patron faint, to whose shrine these visits of the pilgrims were made, was, when living, the laft perfon in the world who would have wifhed that the journey should have been more unpleasant than was abfolutely neceffary. When the faint wore "hair fhirts, and ate the drieft of meats," it was after he had been disgraced by the king; but times were not always fo hard with the martyred Bishop of Canterbury. "He fed," says an old tract, "with the fatteft, was clad with the softest, and kept

company with the pleafanteft; his bridle was of filver, his faddle of velvet, his stirrups, fpurs, and boffes, double gilt; his expenfes far furpaffing the expenfes of an earl. And the king made him his chancellor, in which office he paffed the pomp and pride of Thomas Wolfey, Cardinal, as far as the one's fhrine surpasseth the other's tomb in glory and riches; and after that he was a man of war, and captain of five or fix thousand men, in full harness as bright as St. George, and his fpear in his hand, and encountered whofoever came against him, and overthrew the jollyeft rutter that was in all the hoft of France. And out of the field, hot from blood-fhedding, was he made Bishop of Canterbury, and did put off his helm, and put on his mitre; put off his harness, and on with his robes; and laid down his spear, and took his crofs ere his hands were cold; and fo came with a lufty courage of a man of war to fight another, while against his prince, for the Pope, when his prince's cause were with the law of God, and the pope's clean contrary."

One Thorpe, an old writer, looked, it is true, upon these pilgrimages with something of a Puritan fpirit; but was he not very properly tried for herefy?—He fays, "These men and women, that go on pilgrimages to Canterbury, to Beverley, to Karlington, to Walfingham, and to any other fuch places, are accurfed and made foolish, spending their money in waste ;" and he hints that the pilgrims went on their journeys more for the health of their bodies than of their fouls. Perhaps the quaint old man who faid this at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was not very

wrong in his estimate of the real character of pilgrimages; and we should be difpofed to believe that the pilgrims were "merry," rather than very pious in these affairs, efpecially when he tells us,—“I know well that when divers men and women will go thus after their own wills, they will arrange to have with them both men and women that can well fing wanton fongs, and fome other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes, so that every town they come through, what with the noise of their finging, and with the found of their piping, and with the jingling of their Canterbury-bells, and with barking of dogs after them, they make more noife than if the king came there with all his clarions and many other minstrels. And if thefe men and women be a month in their pilgrimages, many of them shall be an half year after great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars." The good Archbishop Arundel provided a fufficient answer to the ftern man who abused the merry doings of the pilgrims—“ When,” said the most reverend prelate of 1407, "one of them that goeth barefoot ftriketh his toe upon a stone and maketh him to bleed, it is well done that he or his fellow begin then a fong, or elfe take out of his bofom a bagpipe, for to drive away with fuch mirth the hurt of his fellow. For with fuch folace the travel and weariness of pilgrims is lightly and merrily brought forth.”

There is not a more pleasant picture of English life than that which Chaucer, the poet of character and manners, has drawn of the motley band of pilgrims, who affembled on that April morning at the Tabard Inn, of Southwark, to wend their

way to the shrine of the "blissful martyr" at Canterbury; and for the fake of the pleasant company which were then brought together, we will not inquire too closely into the motives by which they were actuated in undertaking the journey. Suffice it to fay, it was "the custom of the country," for has not England's greatest poet written,

Whanne that April with his shoures sote

r;

The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licuor
Of which vertue engendred is the flour,
Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne,
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle nighte with open eye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes,
To serve halwes conthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende

Of Englelond, to Canterbury they wende,

The holy, blissful martyr for to seke

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

What a merry troup is that to which he then introduces us-those "nine and twenty in a company" who arrived at the celebrated Tabard,

In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all.

The hoft receives his guests with befitting attention, and marshals them to the great pilgrims' room. First comes the

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