We did.  For about an hour.  Then we decided to go out to our car, only to be told that we should expect to wait another three hours before the problem was fixed, and then we had to wait until the passengers who were booked on the ferry before us had gone over, and for that ferry to return...it was now nearly 11am, and we were supposed to be returning on the 4.45 ferry - which was really 3.45, because France is an hour ahead of the UK.  We decided to call it quits and rebooked our tickets...hopefully all will go well when we venture out to the docks again, on the 2nd of April!

Here's some information about Canterbury Cathedral from the book by Jonathan Keates and Angelo Hornak, accompanied by photos taken by both myself and Alex...

The present Canterbury Cathedral was built on the ruins of the old cathedral, dating from the 6th century, which was destroyed by fire in 1067.  Lanfranc, the first of Norman archbishops, had previously supervised the reconstruction of the abbey church of St Etienne at Caen (in Normandy) when he was abbot there, and the influence of this building is still traceable in Canterbury Cathedral, which was dedicated in October 1077.  The building is Romanesque in style, consisting of an imposing nave with a fine west front and a sanctuary at the eastern end.

It is something of a paradox, however, that most of the Romanesque work now remaining in the Cathedral
belongs to the period, not of the vigorous and energetic Lanfranc, but of his successor, a man quite as admirable but very different in character.  Four years during which the revenues of the see were appropriated by the degenerate King William Rufus were followed in 1093 by the appointment of Anselm as archbishop.  Wise and saintly, Anselm was a scholar of international repute.  It is to his vision, and to the enthusiasm of the monastry's priors Ernulf and Conrad, that we owe the tremendous crypt, the biggest of its period in England and preserved almost intact. 

The development of Canterbury as one of the world's great religious centres is linked inextricably with the martyrdom and subsequent canonisation of its most famous archbishop - St Thomas Becket.  Without the shrine of St Thomas, the continuing flow of pligrims to the mediaeval city, and the involved tissue of legend and hard fact into which early biographers wove the martyr's life, the mother church of England, for all its other associations, might well have been just another cathedral.  Even today, when many different interests draw visitors to the building, its ancient fame as the resting place of a great English saint endures.

Poetry, novels, drama and film have all celebrated the conflict between the archbishop and his former friend and master, King Henry II.  From the Icelandic "Saga of Archbishop Thomas" to Tennyson's portentous late Victorian tragedy "Becket" and TS Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral", that most intricately-wrought of modern verse dramas, writers have responded to the romance and heroism implicit in the story of one man's firm defiance of absolute authority.

Thomas has been presented as a champion of oppressed Saxons against Normans, as a stalwart defender of church liberties and as a man agonised by the need to choose between worldly advancement and spiritual recompense.  The facts are altogether less simple and more interesting, and make the head-on collision beetween king and archbishop seem as inevitable in a personal sense as it was in a political context.

Thomas Becket was born in London on 21 December 1118.  His father, Gilbert Becket, was a prosperous merchant who had held office as sheriff of the city, and his mother Matilda came from Caen in Normandy.  Evidently a very bright boy, Thomas was sent to a school at Merton Priory in Surrey, where he would have acquired the basic education of a mediaeval 'clerk' - grammar, logic, rhetoric and a thorough knowledge of Latin.  This does not imply that he was already intended for the Church, since literacy was in demand among professional men of his own class and among the nobility.  A fondness for study, however, sent him on to the famous schools of the University of Paris, at the time the best in Europe.
It seems here that decided to follow an ecclesiastical career, and the vow of chastity that he took in Paris suggests that he had begun to consider his future seriously.  Returning to England in 1140, after five years in France, he eventually joined the staff of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, who soon despatched him for further study in canon and civil law to the renowned faculties of Bolgona and Auxerre.

Thomas' evident administrative skill was given every encouragement by the Archbishop, who made him Archdeacon of Canterbury, and his progress during the turbulent reign of King Stephen, a time when 'Christ and his saints slept', was noted with interest and envy by others.  In 1154 Stephen died, having already willed his crown to the son of his cousin Matilda, with whom he had fought inconclusively for twenty years.  The new king, twenty-one-year old Henry of Anjou, crowned as Henry II, was to prove one of the most colourful, decisive and memorable of England's mediaeval rulers.

It was Theobald who recommended Thomas Becket to Henry as Chancellor of the Realm.  This meant not only that he was entrusted with one of the highest offices of state, in which he could gain first-hand experience of the continuing problem of maintaining a balance between the various sectors of the community, but also that he was brought into close personal contact with the King.  The two men took an instant liking to each other, and their mutual respect was

evidently based on certain traits of character common to both:  a readiness to act quickly and firmly, a determination to stand by decisions once made, a hot temper and a refusal to mince words. 

Diplomat, mediator, advisor, administrator - it must have seemed, at the time of Archbishop Theobald's death in 1161, as if Thomas were truly the King's man.  It was surely no haphazard choice which led Henry a year later to fix on so close a friend to fill the vacant see.  But Thomas, surprisingly from a modern point of view, was still only a clerk in minor orders; he was ordained priest on 2 June 1162, consecrated Bishop on the following morning, and enthroned Archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral on the same day.  In assuming his new office he had taken the most momentous step of his career and set himself ona fatal course as far as his relationship with the king was concerned.

Thomas' main contention with Henry, apart from those over the disposal of church property and the application of taxes, concerned the issue of how churchmen should be tried and punished under the law.  It was during the regin of Henry II that the jury system was introduced for the first time.  Royal courts could still apply a range of harsh penalties, and so it was natural enough that the clergy should wish to be tried by their own courts, with milder punishments.  In 1164 Henry put forth the Constitutions of Clarendon, a series of 16 clauses clarifying the relationship between Church and State, and asserting the judicial rights of the crown.  Thomas at first agreed, then withdrew his assent, accompanying this retraction with a symbolic act of penance which, under the circumstances, was seen to be an overt criticism of the King's reforms.

The rift between the King and the Archbishop was now complete.  Summoning Thomas to Northampton, Henry called on him to accoutn for the money he had bene given to spend as Chancellor of England and for the revenues of the bishoprics and abbacies he had held.  Angry scenes ensued, during which Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, actually tried to wrench Thomas' primatial cross from his hands.  Despite his enemies in the church and among Henry's followers, he was already a popular hero with the common people and many of the clergy, and when he finally fled from Northampton in October 1164, he found willing helpers to assist him to flee to France, where he stayed in exile for six years.  In 1170 he returned to England, landing at Sandwich, to be greeted by cheering crowds lining the route to Canterbury.

Hardened in resolve, refusing to compromise, he was clearly ready to die for what he believed in.  It was his bitterest foe, Archbishop Roger of York, who touched off the explosion of rage which was ultimately to lead to Becket's martyrdom.  At an audience with Henry at Bures in Normandy, Roger had said:  'While Thomas lives, you will have neither quiet times nor a tranquil kingdom', whereapon the king, flying into one of his customary rages, cried, 'Who will rid me of this low-born (some say 'turbulent') priest?'

Four knights, Richard Brito, Hugh de Moreville, Reginald FizUrse and William de Tracy, chose to take Henry at his word and set off for England, arriving at Canterbury after mustering followers, on 29 December 1170.  Accusations and angry rebuttals flew from both they and Thomas, and as the knights and their men gathered around the palace with cries of 'Reaux, reaux' ('King's men, king's men'), Thomas was persuaded by the monks to enter the Cathedral, though he insisted the door should be left unbarred.  The knights burst into the building as Thomas was hustled through the north-west transept, while the late afternoon service of vespers was in progress.  In the darkness they called out for the Archbishop, and Thomas came down to face them.  They tried to seize hold of him, but Thomas shook them off, actually throwing FitzUrse to the ground.

It was FitzUrse who threatened the Archbishop with his drawn sword.  Tracy, calling 'Strike, strike!' to the others, cut deeply into Thomas' head, and it was only at a third blow that he staggered to the ground, calling on an earlier Canterbury martyr St Alphege and murmuring 'For the name of Jesus and the defence of the Church I am willing to die' as Richard Brito gave him the death stroke.  The force of this blow was such as to cut off the crown of the head and shatter the tip of the blade on the stone pavement - hence the name given to the neaerby altar of the Sword's Point, on which the tip of th sword was placed for the veneration of posterity.  This altar, destroyed in 1538, was restored in 1986.

The site of the martyrdom is preserved today in the north-west transept.  Within hours of the Archbishop's death, and to the accompaniement of a violent storm, the Cathedral was thronged with a mourning crowd, and two days later began the series of miracles which, in 1173, was to warrant his canonisation 'among the company of martyrs' by Pope Alexander III.











The ancient stained glass of Canterbury Cathedral is one of the glories of mediaeval English art.  Canterbury was luckier than many cathedrals and churches in the early 16th century in escaping the attacks of pious iconoclasts, and it was only the Puritan reaction immediately before and during the Civil War which brought widespread destruction to several of the ancient windows.

Much work has been done in cleaning and restoring the glass itself, to recreate as vividly as possible the brilliance, variety and liveliness of design in the original, and since the Middle Ages, various panels have been shifted and reset in different parts of the church. 

At the west end of the nave, for example, can be seen figures from the genealogical series of windows formerly in the quire.  This type of picture series was very popular in mediaeval churches, where it was meant as a kind of visual stimulus for a largely illiterate congregation.
In the north-west trancept is a poignant survival of a splendid fifteenth century window featuring Edward IV and his queen Elizabeth Woodville, with their children, in the traditional kneeling posture of donors.  The original ensemble featured God the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Virigin Mary 'in seven glorious appearances', St Thomas Becket and a group of saints, some of whom, with prophets and apostles, can be seen in the tracery.  The rest was destroyed in 1642 by the puritan Richard Culmer, but the whole was clearly characterised by rich colour and expansive layout.  The window is dated to the early 1480s.

The large window in the south-west transept contains twenty-four more figures from the ancestry of Jesus which originally lined the clerestory of the quire.  These include the intensely compelling full-length seated Methuselah, in the lowest row, one foot raised, his left hand clutching the arm of his throne, the other stroking his beard.

The best of the Cathedral's treasure of stained glass is to be seen in the ambulatories and chapels of the quire and Trinity Chapel.  Most of these windows belong distinctly to the 12th and 13th century French tradition exemplefied so gloriously at Chartres, with whihc Canterbury certainly bears comparison.  They were formerly arranged in definite schemes, so that it was possible to 'read' the story represented in any given series along the line of panels or up and down the individual windows.  In the clerestory were the genealogy windows, a total of eighty-four panels designed to culminate in Christ and the Virgin Mary.  Scenes from the life of Christ filled the apse.  In the quire aisles and the eastern transept were windows whose theological subjects reflected the well-loved mediaeval habit of pairing events in the Old and New Testaments.  In the aisles of the Trinity Chapel were the beautiful series of windows, already described, portraying works and miracles of St Thomas Becket.  Some of the windows retain their original metal framework, and provide an intriguing source of study for those interested in the technique of applied art in the Middle Ages.

The Corona central window still holds several of its fine panels showing the principal events from Good Friday to Pentecost, foreshadowed by scenes from the Old Testament, carefully arranged in alternating shapes from the central illustrated squares as a species of commentary.  Here for example, the symbolism of the Entombment is underlined by representations of Joseph in the pit, Samson and Delilah in bed together, Jonah cast overboard from the ship, and Daniel in the lion's den.  In the same window the ultimate significance of Pentecost is deepened with illustrations of Aaron and his sons being ordained priests, Christ in Glory, Moses judging the people, and Moses receiving the tablets of the law.

Of later mediaeval glass the most interesting survivals, apart from the royal portrait figures in the north-west transept windows, are those int eh little chantry chapel of King Henry IV in the north quire aisle, dedicated to St Edward th Confessor.  Here, peering through the screen into the tiny chamber, we can appreciate the contrast in style and colour between the three surviving figures and the deep toned glazing of the Miracle windows in the aisle nearby. 














      
          
   






















                                                                                                                                                                                    
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The Eastern Crypt, built by William the Englishman to support the new Trinity Chapel above.

Views of various columns and vaulted ceilings.   >
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The stairs leading down to the site of St Thomas Becket's martyrdom





<<  Lovely photo of the Nave as taken from steps behind the altar.








Bible stand >>   >>   >>











<<   << Candles in Quire




Canterbury is rich in fine monuments of all periods, including those of Edward the Black Prince.  The Black Prince, eldest son of King Edward III, died on 8 June 1376.  His association with Canterbury had been a close one, and it is possible that Prior Hathbrand had been his tutor.  Born at Woodstock in 1330 and educated in the chivalric traditions of the late Middle Ages, Edward naturally became the symbol of England's hopes and aspirations in the prolonged wars with France.
An able military leader, he was given his soubriquet possibly, according to the chronicler Froissart, because of the terror he inspired with his bravery and ferocity, but not because of any suit of black armour he may have worn.