ERASMUS AND COLET 185 



derived its name, one of the brethren of this charitable 

 foundation would come out and sprinkle them \^dth 

 holy water, presenting the shoe of Saint Thomas to be 

 kissed, and praying them for the love of God and the 

 Blessed Martyr to give something towards the support 

 of the poDr lepers of Saint Nicholas. Rarely did the 

 pilgrims fail to do so, and this institution must, in the 

 course of years, have become very wealthy. Henry the 

 Second ; Richard Lion Heart, come home again from 

 captivity ; Edward the First, with Eleanor of Castile, 

 on his return from Palestine ; the Black Prince, with 

 his captives, those trophies of Poictiers — King John of 

 France and his son Philip — and many another must 

 have enriched the place. John of France, on his way 

 home, gave ten gold crowns " pour les nonnains de 

 Harbledown," and never, surely, before nor since, has 

 an old shoe brought so much luck as Becket's brought 

 here. For centuries the devout came and pressed their 

 lips to it, dropping coins into the wooden alms-box 

 that is still shown, together with a mazer inscribed with 

 the deeds of Guy of Warwick, and containing the great 

 crystal with which the shoe was decorated. But times 

 change and habits of thought with them, and although 

 the scenery remains as of old, little else is left of the 

 days of pilgrimage. How like the present aspect of 

 the place is to the appearance it presented three 

 hundred and eighty years ago may be seen from the 

 writings of Disiderius Erasmus. 



When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning 

 in 1512 from their unconventional pilgrimage to 

 Canterbury, they came, two miles from the city, to a 

 steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high 

 banks on either side. The scenery is the same as 

 then. The selfsame banks of an equal abruptness still 

 rise above the road ; the rough and crazy flight of 

 steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc's old 

 Hospital for Lepers, the Hospital of Harbledown. 

 The immemorial yews are here even now ; one still 

 flourishing, the other decayed. But the Hospital has 



