18 THE DOVER ROAD 



selling pardons from the Pope, and gets more by the 

 sale of relics in one day than the parson can earn in 

 two months. 



When these pilgrims rode forth on that April 

 morning — nine and twenty of them — from the 

 " Tabard," to seek Becket's shrine, they started from 

 the ultimate suburb of London. Picture that, 

 Londoners of to-day, who find streets unceasing until 

 Blackheath is gained, and no true roadside country 

 this side of Gravesend ! The thymy air then blew in 

 at the casements of the many inns of Southwark, and 

 the views thence extended over fields and meadows 

 where countless chimneys now pollute the sky. Some 

 way down the Kent Road ran a little stream across the 

 highway — " Saint Thomas a Watering " the ford was 

 called, and here the pilgrims made their first halt — 



And forth we riden a litel more than pas, 

 Unto the watering of Saint Thomas, 

 And then our host began his hors arrest. 



Saint Thomas's Road marks the site of this stream, and 

 the " Thomas a Becket " inn perpetuates a house of call 

 for w^ayfarers ; but the fame of all these things — of 

 the heretics, the cutpurses, the varied thieves and 

 beggars who were executed here, with their quarters 

 stuck on poles by the ford by way of warning, is lost in 

 the latter-day commonplace of the Old Kent Road. 



Yet, at this place, which was something more than a 

 mere water-splash, and the Golgotha of this road out of 

 London, many met their end through being born a 

 little in advance of their time. This was, and is yet, 

 a criminal offence ; but it is no longer capital. If, for 

 example, the unfortunate John Penry, AVelsh scholar 

 and graduate alike of Oxford and Cambridge, religious 

 reformer and prime mover in the " Martin Marprelate " 

 tracts, directed against the Episcopal bench, had but 

 been born fifty years later, he would have been 

 honoured, instead of meeting here an ignominious end. 

 He was hanged at St. Thomas a Watering, May 29, 1593, 



