The Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury

turalist whose memory haunts these rural scenes. Here he lived in the picturesque house overgrown with creepers, with the sunny garden and dial at the bac

olicked and danced" before him; the farmhouse which now marks the site of the ancient Priory itself, founded by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, in 1232-he has described them all. How the good Canons grew lazy and secular in their ways after a time, how William of Wykeham found certain of them professed hunters and sportsmen, and tried in vain to reform them, and how the estates were finally handed over to the new college of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford, by its founder, William of Waynflete-Gi

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9, and remained there until May, 1817, when they moved to the corner house of College Street, Winchester, where three months afterwards she died. During the eight years spent in this quiet home, Jane Austen attained the height of her powers and wrote her most famous novels, those works which she herself said cost her so little, and which in Tennyson's words have given her a place in English literature "next to Shakespeare." "Sense and Sensibility," her first novel, was published two years after the move to Chawton. "Persuasion," the last and most finished of the immortal series, was only written in 1816, a year before her death. Seldom, indeed, has so great a novelist led so retired an existence. The life at Chawton, so smooth in its even flow, with the daily round of small excitements and quiet pleasures, the visits to the "great house," and walks with her nieces in the woods, the shopping expeditions to Alton, the talk about new bonnets and gowns, and the latest news as to t

life and letters, where she spent many pleasant hours in the midst of her family, enjoying the beauty of the spot and its cheerful surroundings. But Chawton retains the supremacy as her own home, and

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ard II., it is said, gave one of his scullions, Morris Ken, the sum of twenty shillings because he fell from his horse so often out hunting, "which made the king laugh exceedingly." Here, too, after the battle of Evesham, Edward, Prince of Wales, defeated Adam de Gurdon, one of Simon de Montfort's chief followers. He is said to have challenged the rebel baron to a single combat, in which Gurdon was wounded and made prison

he loveliest Surrey scenery, their road was now to lie, and not until they crossed St. Katherine's ferry, at Guildford, were they finally to lose sight of its waters. The river itself,

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own on the streets of the little town, was first built by that magnificent prelate, Henry of Blois, but little of the original building now remains except the offices, where some round Norman pillars may still be seen. Farnham Castle was partly destroyed by Henry III. during his wars with the barons, and suffered greatly at the hands of the rebels in the time of Charles I., but was afterwards rebuilt by Bishop Morley. Queen Elizabeth paid frequent visits here, and on one occasion, while dining in the great hall with the Duke of Norfolk, who was suspected of planning a marriage with M

him the garden at Waverley where he worked as a lad, the tree near the Abbey from which he fell into the river in a perilous attempt to take a crow's nest, and the strawberry beds where he gathered strawberries for Sir Robert Rich's table, taking care to eat the finest! Among these hills and commons, where he followed the hounds on foot at ten years old, and rode across country at seventy, we

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ut after the fashion of those which he remembered in Holland, where he enjoyed the companionship of his beloved sister, Lady Giffard, and where his heart lies buried under the sundial. Here Swift lived as his secretary, and learnt from King William III. how to cut asparagus; here he wrote the "Tale of a Tub," and made love to Mrs. Hester Johnson, Lady Giffard's pretty

and his influence extended over several parishes through which the pilgrims had to pass, although the privileges which he claimed were often disputed by the Prior of Newark, the other ecclesiastical magnate who reigned in t

chalk ridge known as the Hog's Back. Here, at a place called Whiteway End, the end of the white chalk road, two r

es which stud the sides of the Hog's Back. This green woodland path under the downs was the ancient British and Roman track along which the Canterbury pilgrims journeyed, and which is still in some places spoken of by the inhabitants as the Way. Other names in local use bear the same witness.

tember in 1312, by which time the original day of the Saint's martyrdom had ceased to be as popular as the summer feast. Again the great fair at Shalford was fixed for the Feast of the Assumption, the 15th of August, so as to catch the stream of pilgrims which flowed back from Canterbury after the Feast of the Translation in July, and the seven days' fair there, that went by the name of Becket's fair. Fairs soon came to be held no

ough was rebuilt by the same Abbots, and was again allowed to fall into decay when the days of pilgrimages were over. Both the sister chapels of St. Katharine and St. Martha, we shall se

e and class set out on pilgrimages much as tourists to-day start on a foreign trip. Some, no doubt, undertook the journey from devotion, and more in a vague hope of reaping some profit, both material and spiritual, from a visit to the shrine of the all-powerful Saint, while a thousand other motives-curiosity, love of change and adventure, the pleasure of a journey-prompted the crowds who thronged the road at certain seasons of the year. Chaucer's company of pilgrims we know was a motley crew, and included men and women whose characters were as varied as their rank and t

often craved admittance, knowing that if the hand of justice overtook them they could always find refuge in one of those churches

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