Dean of Canterbury

“ I do not know any one who makes his house so agreable to his friends as my brother (William) . His parts and knowledge make him an excellent companion; and his apparent benevolence, integrity, and virtues endear his talents.... I agree entirely with the Primate that your rev. consort would grace a Stall; but he is of so unambitious a spirit, I believe he will not take any pains to get into one. Dean of Canterbury would suit him very well. A dean is not obliged to fast or pray, nor has the troublesome care of any soul but his own. ”

“ With two such powerful friends as Lord Liverpool and Lord North and with his own intrinsic merits he was clearly marked out for preferment. Accordingly, in 1781 he was made dean of Canterbury. He intended to resign his presidentship and reside exclusively in his native county of Kent, but was dissuaded by a friend; and ‘submitted to the unsettled life of a pilgrim between the two situations of his college and his deanery; and with everything that lay between Oxford and Canterbury he was acquainted, and with little besides.’ In 1788 his health seems to have broken down prematurely ”

“ Time can be relied on to quash an indictment against a nation, and we Americans should be sorry to think that there are to-day in England any of those who in 1863 sympathized with the Dean of Canterbury, and who are not now heartily ashamed of their attitude then. ”

“ On 11 Nov. 1634 he was instituted rector of Fecham in Surrey; on 31 Dec. 1638 he and John Juxon received from the king the lease of the prebend and rectory of Aylesbury for five years (ib. 1638–9 p. 191, 1640 p. 11) ; and 16 Feb. 1641–2 he was nominated dean of Rochester (ib. 1640-1, pp. 562–3) . On 3 Jan. 1643–4 he was constituted dean of Canterbury, a nominal office, as Kent was in the hands of parliament. He adhered to the king with great devotion, and attended him at Hampton Court and during his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight. ”

“ To the east of Henry IV.’s monument is the tomb of Dean Wotton, adorned with his kneeling figure. He was the first Dean of Canterbury after the reorganization by Henry VIII. Opposite to him is an unsightly brick erection which was once intended as a temporary covering for the remains of Odo Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon and brother of Admiral Coligny, who was one of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Cardinal fled from France in 1568, on account of his leanings towards the tenets of the Huguenots, [Pg 88] and was welcomed by Queen Elizabeth. ”

“ In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury, the Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as the name of the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps no ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yells of hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of shouts of triumphant and half insulting welcome; for the new Dean was William Sherlock. ”

“ This unknown lady, hospitable and kindly soul, we afterwards fancied tardily fulfilling a duty to the giver of the garden which other ladies earlier spurned, if we may trust a local writer to whose monograph I owe more than I should like to own. “The gentry—for here in Canterbury, as elsewhere, we have our jarring spheres—consider the place unfashionable, and frequent it very little, because it is much frequented by the tradespeople, the industrious classes, and the soldiery; who, one and all, behave with exemplary propriety.” ”

“ They were in Canterbury, according to good William Thorpe, who paid for his opinions by suffering a charge of heresy in 1405, “more for the health of their bodies than their souls.... And if these men and women be a month in their pilgrimage, many of them shall be an half year after great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars. They have with them both men and women that sing well wanton songs.” ”

“ In 1794 he was appointed Dean of Windsor, and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1805 owing to Court influence, which outweighed the hostility of Pitt, who wished to appoint his own nominee. As a prelate he was distinguished for many virtues and qualities befitting his office. He was president at the foundation of the National Society, and worked strenuously to advance the cause of education which it represents. While he held the primacy a fund which had been accumulated from the sale of Croydon Palace was applied to the purchase of Addington, where he lies buried. ”

“ In the delightful garden grows the old historic mulberry-tree, [342] about which it used to be said that the Deans of Canterbury sit under the mulberry till they turn purple, because those Deans were so frequently elevated to the episcopal bench, and bishops formerly, though it is rare now, always wore purple coats. I dined out with the Dean several times. I remember at one of the parties a son of Canon Blakesley saying to me—what I have often thought of since—"I find much the best way of getting on in society is never to be able to understand why anybody is to be disapproved of." ”

“ But it is a later and more sceptical traveller, Erasmus, who has left us the most vivid description of Harbledown and of the feelings which the sight of the relic aroused in the heart of his companion, Dean Colet. “Not far from Canterbury, at the left-hand side of the road,”{189} he writes, in the record of his pilgrimage, “there is a small almshouse for old people, one of whom ran out, seeming to hear the steps of the horses. ”

“ Living (1013-1020) also suffered much from the Danes, who from this time continued their incursions until the reign of Canute.
Egelnoth (1020-1038) is described as the first dean of the Canterbury canons who seem to have acquired an ascendancy over the monks ever since the massacre of the latter by the Danes in 1011. He restored the cathedral after the damages inflicted by the invaders. ”

“ Insomuch that when the archbishop of either of the sees dieth, the said privileges do not only remain to his successor (by which he is named Legatus natus) , but also in the mean time of vacation the same privilege resteth in the churches of Canterbury and York; and is executed by the prior, dean and chapter of the said churches; and so the said Act is directly against the liberty and privileges of the churches of Canterbury and York ”

“ If the main dish of the lunch is lamb from the flocks which you saw trying to whiten the meadows all the way from Folkestone, and destined to greater success as the season advances, the poetic propriety of the feast will be the more perfect. After you have refreshed yourself you may sally out into the Mercery Lane whither the pilgrims used to resort for their occasions of shopping, and where the ruder sort kept up “the noise of their singing, with the sound of their piping, and the jingling of their Canterbury bells,” which they made in all the towns they passed through on their devout errand. ”

“ The passers-by of to-day are not those whom we should see, for we should bend our mind’s eye on monk, priest and pilgrim, on knight, dame and squire, or king, queen and prince; it needs no vivid imagination to call up these shades of the past. But above all and through all the pageantry of old days looms the church; Canterbury is a city of churches, of priories, monasteries, hospitals. There is St Dunstan’s, where in the Roper vault they say is the head of Sir Thomas More ”

“ The monuments here are interesting rather than beautiful. Dean Fotherby is commemorated by a hideous erection bristling with skulls. Dean Boys is represented as he died, sitting among his books in his library; it is curious that the books are all apparently turned with the backs of the covers towards the wall, and the edges of the leaves outwards. Here also is the monument of Dean Turner, the faithful follower of Charles I.
part of south-western transept. ”

“ But it is not history—not the story of dead events—that chiefly fascinates us in Canterbury, or, indeed, in any such city; it is the lives of the men who made that history, who took part in those events. Here, as we walk the streets, we think of Augustine, of Thomas, of the Black Prince, of many another; and of many great men of letters—Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe, Thackeray, Dickens, Stanley: the first painting for us the Canterbury of his own days, the last that of past times. ”

“ To our right were the old red-brick almshouses and the little church of St. Michael, one of the many oldest churches in Kent, and of which all we could see was the ivy-covered tower. It was here that Henry, when on his way to the holy shrine, dismounted, that, as became his humble calling of pilgrim, he might walk into Canterbury. And it was here, too, that the Person began his long-winded discourse. But we, less reverent than King Henry, now mounted again; and, less phlegmatic than the Person, we held our peace. ”

“ The securities for impartial election to fellowships are unusually minute, and there is a great variety of regulations strongly tinged with the mystical tendency of the founder’s own mind. Canterbury College, founded by Archbishop Simon Islip in 1361, differed from these in its original constitution, since it embraced both secular and ‘religious’ students, and was mainly designed to promote the study of the civil and canon law. ”

“ FIRST VIEW As we stand upon the summit of Bell Harry Tower—more happily called the Angel Steeple—of Canterbury Cathedral, looking down upon city and countryside, much of the history of England lies spread beneath our feet: the Britons were at work here before the Romans came marching with their stolid legions; here to Ethelbert, Saxon King of Kent, St Augustine preached the gospel of Christ; in the church below, Becket was murdered and the Black Prince buried; to this city, to the shrine of St Thomas, came innumerable pilgrims, one of them our first great English poet ”

“ Indeed, Canterbury is a city of great memories.
Augustine was, of course, the monastery’s chief treasure, and next came the body of St Mildred which was given to the house by Canute. It must never be forgotten by those who would look at things mediæval with mediæval eyes, that in those days the dead were more powerful than the living; even kings humbled themselves before the bones of dead saints. ”

“ Canterbury is so situated that ever since England has been and as long as England shall be, this city has been and will be a centre of the nation’s life.
At first entrance to it, Canterbury does not impress with its antiquity; there are, indeed, the ancient Cathedral, ancient gates and ancient houses. But as the sights of the city grow familiar, as its atmosphere enters into our souls, as its story becomes known, gradually and surely we realise that most of what we see now is but youthful compared with the great age of the place ”

“ He persistently styled himself knight of Malta, and sometimes king of Jerusalem. The Canterbury people of all classes were won over by his handsome face and figure, his strange oriental garb, and his apparent generosity, which was really derived from loans raised out of his credulous followers. At the general election of December 1832 he was nominated for Canterbury, and polled 375 votes; standing for East Kent a few days later he polled only four. In March 1833 he started a paper at Canterbury, called ‘The Lion,’ which ran to eight numbers. ”

“ To this the King's messengers replied, "Appoint from among yourselves, my lords, men whom you may send to make these proposals to the lord King; for we, knowing that his wrath is roused, fear to tell him of them." When the clergy had done so, the King's anger broke forth, and giving way to furious rage, he declared the Archbishop of Canterbury himself and all the clergy of England outside his guardianship and protection ”

“ And there is a foolish monument to him, where once stood the butter-market, outside Christ Church gate. Of the man’s manner and appearance we know not anything; his works live, but the man is dead even to our mind’s eye. Yet there are some of us who would rather meet his shadow here than even those of Chaucer and of Dickens; perchance because we know him not.
Canterbury is yet in many ways a mediæval city, despite railways and electric lights. We can enter it by the fourteenth century West Gate, built by Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, the one gateway mercifully spared to us out of six ”

“ The primacy of Canterbury had long carried with it an authority second only to that of the Pope himself, and it was impossible to carry out the intended reform unless a man devoted to the royal authority, and careless of the interests of the Church, were seated in the archiepiscopal chair. It was evident that for this purpose no fitter man could be found than Becket; and on the death of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D. 1161) , the king recommended his chancellor to the bishops as the person to succeed to the primacy. ”

“ But both ways we usually fall short of the fact; they were most picturesque, most uncomfortable. We have seen how once upon a time the Cathedral, now so decorously grey,{67} blazed with purple and fine linen; so too was it with all life; the very streets now so sober-minded were then a veritable kaleidoscope; all life was highly coloured, save that of the cloister. In those times in the good city of Canterbury it must have been as difficult when one took his walk abroad to avoid the sight of a hospital or of a holy house as to-day to escape from the clangour of church bells. ”

“ As Chancellor, his magnificence had outshone that of the King, he himself was gay and debonnair, clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting royally, and with hundreds of knights in his train. Nothing that the world could give had he denied himself. He was not only impressed personally with his unfitness, but the monks of Canterbury themselves, in conclave, desired to elect one of their own choice. ”