In those days shrines were the watering places for autumn or summer holidays, of our ancestors, and pilgrimages a popular and a fashionable amusement, which the Knight and the Prioress might share with the notable house-wife or jolly miller, without any prejudice to personal dignity.

And now, whilst the party are assembling, let me furnish some idea of the Tabard as it was, when Charles Knight gives an account of his visit to, and careful inspection of it, and restores it in imagination to what it was in the days of Chaucer. He says, 'We now request our readers to enter once more the Pilgrim's room and assist us to restore it to something of its original appearance. From end to end of the long hall, there is no obstruction to the eye except those two round pillars or posts placed near each end to support the massy oaken beams and complicated timbers of the ceiling. The chimney-pieces, too, and panels are gone, and in their stead is that immense funnel-shaped projection from the wall in the centre opposite the middle window, with its crackling fire of brushwood, and logs on the hearth below. The fire itself appears pale and wan in the midst of a broad stream of golden sunshine, pouring in through the windows from the great luminary, now fast sinking below the line of Margaret's Church, in the High Street opposite.

"Branching out in antlered magnificence from the hall at one extremity of the room, are the frontal honours of a first-rate deer, a present probably from the monks of Hyde to their London tenant and entertainers.

"At the other end of the hall is the cupboard with its glittering arrays of plate, comprising large silver quart pots, covered bowls and basins, ewers, salt cellars, spoons, and in a central compartment of the middle shelf is a lofty gold cup with a curious lid. Lastly, over the chimney

bulk hangs an immense bow with its attendant paraphernalia of arrows, the symbol of our host's favourite diversion.* Attendants now begin to move to and fro, some preparing the tables, evidently for the entertainment of a numerous party, others strewing the floor with herbes sote (sweet),' whilst one considerately closes the window to keep out the chilling evening air, and stirring the fire throws on some more logs.

"Hark! Some of the pilgrims are coming; the miller gives an extra flourish of his bag-pipe as he stops opposite the gateway that they may be received with due attention. Yes, there they are now slowly coming down the yard, that extraordinary assemblage of individuals from almost every rank of society, as diversified in character as in circumstances, most richly picturesque in costume. An assemblage which only the genius of a Chaucer could have brought so intimately together, and with such admirable purpose.

"Yes, there is the Knight on his good horse; the fair but confident wife of Bath! The squire challenging attention by his graceful management of the fiery curvetting steed. The Monk with the golden bells hanging from his horse's trappings, keeping up an incessant jingle. But who is this in a remote corner of the gallery, leaning upon the balustrade, the most unobserved, but most observing of all the individuals scattered about the scene before us? His form is of a goodly bulk, and habited in a very dark violet coloured dress, with bonnet of the same colour; from a button on his breast hangs the gilt anelace, a kind of knife or dagger. His face is of that kind which once seen is remembered for ever. Thought, 'sad but sweet,' is most impressively stamped upon his pale but comely

Gybon de Southeworke appears in the Roll of Agincourt as an archer, under Sir Richard Hastings, trained perhaps at Newington Butts.

features, to which the beard lends a fine antique cast. But it is the eye which most arrests you, which seems to open as if it were glimpses of an unfathomable world beyond. It is the great Poet-pilgrim himself, the narrator of the proceedings of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. The host, having now cordially welcomed the pilgrims, is coming along the gallery to see if the hall be ready for the entertainment, making the solitary man smile, as he passes, at one of his 'merry japes (jokes).' As he enters the hall who could fail to witness the truth of the description. "A seemly man our hosté was withal,

For to have been a Marshall in a ball.

A largé man he was, with eyen sleep

A fairer burgess is their none in Chepe,

Bold of his speech, and wise and well y taught,
And of manhood him lacked righté nought,

Eke thereto was he right a merry man.'

"At the evening meal, at which mine host presides, he Harry Bailey by name, proposes to act as guide to the pilgrims, and, in order to enliven the journey, suggests that each should tell two tales on the way out, and two on their return home." Such is the setting of the picture, the tales themselves are from different sources, written at different times, but the most valuable part of the whole, perhaps, is the prologue beginning with a fine description of spring, and then describing each one of the goodly company assembled. The stories told are twenty-five: some humourous, some pathetic, some tender and graceful, some borrowed from ancient legends, some taken from the Italian, but all and each suitable to the character of the person who relates it. As for instance, the 'Prioress' tale of the Child Martyr slain by Jews, which has been so happily modernized by Wordsworth? His great design

was left unfinished, but it is not merely as a Poet we are to regard him, not merely as a delineator of life and character, but, as Occleve has said, as the first finder of our faire language, which even in Elizabeth's time is spoken of so apologetically by two of its greatest masters, Bacon and the "well-languaged Daniel," but which, beginning with Chaucer, has spread and spread, till well nigh all North America, the great peninsula of Southern Africa, India, the great continent of Australia, the beautiful Islands of New Zealand, the wild Fijis, and now even the far distant Japan, all speak our language, read our literature, and make our thoughts their own. We, denizens of the Borough, may well be proud that he who led the van in this march of the English tongue has connected his greatest effort with the story of Southwark !

"Following in the wake of the Tabard, immortalized by Chaucer, another and the oldest of the taverns for which Southwark was so famous, viz., the Bricklayer's Arms, will soon become a thing of the past. In the reign of Edward III. Philip de Comines recorded that the Burgundian lords who came over after the battle of Cressy, to issue a general challenge to the English Knights in a tournament to be held at Smithfield, lodged at this house, which he describes as "a vaste hostel, on the olde rode from Kent into Southwarke, about two-thirds of a league from the bridge across the Thames." He adds, "the Burgundians were mightilie overthrowne." A century later, Warwick, the great Kingmaker, on his journey to France to demand the French King's sister's hand for Edward IV., waited here for his horses and retinue. Here Anne of Cleves waited while her portrait was forwarded to her husband, Henry VIII. In later times, Blake after his victory over Van Tromp, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Duncan (Lord Camperdown), Lord

Hood, after his victory over the French fleet, and Sir Horatio Nelson, after his battle of the Nile, all made this house their head quarters. In the latter part of the last century the house fell into the hands of one Townsend, who modernized it, but falling out with his builder, the latter inscribed under the dormer the following lines:"By short mugs and glasses

This house it was built,

By spendthrifts, not Townsend,

The sign it was gilt."

This inscription still remains, as do also the old oak beams and garniture of centuries ago." *

CHAPTER VI.

THE TWO FRIENDS, HENRY VI. OF ENGLAND AND James I. OF SCOTLAND HIS CAPTIVE, and Chief MOURNER.

J

T becomes somewhat difficult at times to gather up the threads of my tale, and weave a connected whole, and before I can introduce the figures of my Southwark story, it is necessary that I should bring up the general history to the same point.

John of Gaunt left to his family the inheritance of his own restless and turbulent character. Henry of Bolingbroke, his eldest son, seized the crown from Richard, and took the uneasy burden upon himself, whilst the incessant quarrels between his other son Henry, the Cardinal Beaufort and his grandson Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, were the primary cause of the misfortunes of his great grandson Henry VI. reign.

* For this account of the Bricklayer's Arms, I am indebted to a paragraph in a local paper.