The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-11-21

tiquity. Long before the Romans
came the pleasant situation described
by old Gostling had attracted the
British and there was city here
called Durwhern, latinized by the
Romans into Durovernum, under
which name it appears in the itinerary
OF Antonius, now about 1900 years
old. Tradition, indeed, in the easy
way it has, assigns to Canterbury
even an earlier origin than Rome, but
as this rests upon no better founda-
tion than the fabulous narrative of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, it need not be
discussed further in this place. What
is we'll known is that at the beginning
of the Saxon Heptarchy, Canterbury
was the residence of the King of
Kent, and it was in the time of King
Ethelbert that st. Augustine in 597
landed on the Isle of Thanet and
was received by Ethelbert, as Green
says, ION the chalk-down above Min
ster, where the eye nowadays catches
miles away over the marshes the dim
tower OF Canterbury" Of that land
ing and its consequences, this writer,
the eloquent historian of England,
writes thus: Canterbury, the earliest
royal city of German England, became
the center of Latin influence. The
Latin tongue became again one of the
tongues of Britain, the language of
it's worship, it's correspondence, its
literature.
IF poetry began at later day in
the English epic of C@dmon, prose
took it's first shape in the Latin his
tory of Baeda. But more than the
tongue of Rome returned with Au-
gustine. Practically his landing re-
newed the union with the Western
world which that of Hengest had
destroyed. The new England was
admitted. into the older common
wealth of nations. The civilization,
art, letters, which had fed before the
sword of the English conquest, re-
turned with the Christian faith"
King Ethelbert became convert
of st. Augustine, an abbey was
| founded at Canterbury and that city
made metropolitan see with Angus
tine as first Archbishop of Canter-
bury. The great cathedral was be-
gun but was not completed until
centuries of vicissitudes, suffering re-
peatedly from the Danes, the scourge
of those early centuries; especially in
1011,.'when Canterbury was stormed
and great numbers of its inhabitants
put to the sword or carried into cap
tivity. The city was restored by
Canute and fourished under the Nor
mans, but the great event to which
more than all else except it's found
ing by Augustine, Canterbury owed
its wealth and its great cathedral, was
the murder of Thomas Beckett, its
Archbishop, in ITO. From that time
Canterbury became shrine in the
Catholic world, and the wealth of
kings and mobiles flowed into its
Golfers. Henry Ii. was here scourged
at the shrine of the martyrs by monks,
and pilgrimages to Canterbury al
most rivaled those to Jerusalem.
AS Chaucer, the morning star of
English song, tells us in his Canter-
bury Pilgrimage
And specially from every shire's end
OF Engle-land to Canterbury they wend
The holy blissful martyr for to seek
That them hath holpen when that they
were sick
A great festival was instituted in
honor of the great saint which con-
tinued to be held until the year 1920.
Henry VIII. resided here part of the
time, and here he entertained the
Emper Charles V. in 1919. Queen
Elizabeth also held court here, and
the city has even in Protestant times
sacredness to Englishmen that no
other city of England has.
The Cathedral of Canterbury is
said to have been erected on the site
of the palace of King Ethelbert and
an older church. Restored by Canute
in 1923, and again burnt, it was re-
built by Archbishop Lanfranc and
his successor, the pious Anselm, and
has had additions made to it since,
the additions, however, combining
into grand and harmonious whole,
in which the Norman architecture
predominates. 1t is the largest and
most magnificent ecclesiastical struc
ture in England, being 514 feet in
length, 154 feet in breadth, with a
central tower 235 feet high. In its
chapel are kept the ancient Saxon
charters and grants signed with a
cross by kings thousand years ago.
Here also are buried all the Arch
h;shona Of Canterhurv down tn the