A Canterbury Pilgrimage

It was towards the end of August, when a hot sun was softening the asphalt in the dusty streets of London, and ripening the hops in the pleasant land of Kent, that we went on pilgrimage to Canterbury. Ours was no ordinary journey by rail, which is the way latter-day pilgrims mostly travel. No. What we wanted was in all reverence to follow, as far as it was possible, the road taken by the famous company of bygone days, setting out from the hostelrie where these lordings lay one night and held counsel, making stations by the way at the few places they mention by name, and ending it, as they did, at the shrine of the ‘holy, blissful martyr’, in the Canterbury Cathedral.