SCHAMEL 153 



Sixteen years later an inquiry was held on these 

 matters, at the instance of the Queen, who, holding 

 the manor of Milton-next-Sittingbourne, was patron 

 of the chapel. There seems to have been a hamlet of 

 Schamel at this time, for a certain William the Weaver, 

 and others who gave evidence before the commission, 

 are located here. It must have been about this era 

 that the chapel was rebuilt, but little is heard of it 

 until June, 1358, when the Queen of Edward the Third 

 passed by, and gave 20,9. in alms. Friar Richard de 

 Lexeden was then in possession. Two years later. 

 King John of France passed, on his way home, and 

 gave twenty nobles, a sum equal to no less than 

 £120 of our money ; and that is the last we hear of the 

 Hermitage until it was for ever destroyed in 1542-43. 



Meanwhile, the chapel of Swanstree, at the east 

 end of the town, was as much upheld and cared for 

 by the Sittingbourne people as the Schamel chapel 

 was robbed and injured. Wealthy tradespeople left 

 money in their wills to its altars and for the repair 

 of the roads thither, and the Vicars of Sittingbourne 

 approved of it, because it not only did not take away 

 from them, but gleaned anything that the pilgrims 

 had to spare after they left Sittingbourne, and before 

 they came to the next town. But although so 

 favoured, this chapel has gone the way of the other, 

 and iiot a vestige of it remains. It stood on the 

 grounds of the present Murston Rectory. 



Sittingbourne was not a large place in the days that 

 ended with the advent of railway times, but it had an 

 astonishing number of hotels, inns, and beer-houses. 

 People had not at that time begun to see that the 

 royal road to fortune lay in the making of bricks and 

 tiles, and so they amassed riches by i)lundering the 

 travellers whose evil stars sent them down the road to 

 Canterbury and Dover ; and in the lulls of business 

 when no tra\'ellers were forthcoming, they ])robably 

 " kept their hands in " by overcharging one another. 

 I believe Sittingbourne must have been a town of inns, 



