26o COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



Regis in a Maison Dieu as well, for the use of such kings 

 on this truly royal road as had got galled in the saddle 

 and felt disposed to lie on their royal faces for a night. 

 This Maison Dieu was founded by Henry the Second, 

 and came afterwards into the hands of the Knights 

 Templars. By them it was no doubt administered ac- 

 cording to their debonair wont. Barmaids, hot soup, old 

 Malvoisie, and no change given over the counter, put 

 fresh life into the old place, and dimly heralded the pro- 

 fuse hospitality of the coaching days ; made many knights 

 and squires of high estate linger on their pilgrimage, and 

 forget whither they were going. For they were going to 

 Canterbury we must suppose ; and from Boughton Hill, 

 about four miles on, the spire of the great cathedral was 

 first seen from the backs of war-horses, mules, from the top 

 of stage coaches, or from other points of view obtainable 

 by travellers of all ranks on the Dover Road, and at various 

 periods in its history. None but pedestrians or bicyclists 

 get this view now, because the railway after leaving 

 Faversham makes a detoii?- which does not command it. 

 At Faversham I should like to have paused if I had 

 any business there at all, for it was a most picturesque 

 place, and enshrines among its traditions a most pic- 

 turesque murder, redolent of gloom, premeditation and 

 the sixteenth century. The Dover Road proper how- 

 ever avoids Faversham altogether, so I must avoid it too, 

 and passing over Boughton Hill, and shortly afterwards 

 passing by " Courtenay's Gate" (where in May, 1838, 

 Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta, an amiable 

 man, believing himself to be somebody who he wasn't, 

 was shot, after his remarkable pilgrimage), pass into 

 Canterbury itself, which as a cathedral town stands 

 alone — like its cathedral. And everywhere in Canter- 

 bury — at the Falstaff Inn beyond the W^est Gate, in the 

 incomparable Pligh Street, a very coloured vista itself of 

 medi?cvalism — on the grand cathedral's dreaming close, 

 " the Middle Age is gorgeous upon earth again," as a 

 modern poet very felicitously puts it. On all sides, at 



