Read "The Cathedral of Canterbury" by Esther Singleton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
W. H FREMANTLE.
The foundation of St. Martin's Church and the lower part of its walls, / which are Roman, stood in 598 as they stand to-day; and they were the / walls of the little church which had been given to the Christian Queen / Bertha and her chaplain Bishop Luithart, by her pagan husband King / Ethelbert. When Augustine passed towards the city, as described by the / Venerable Bede, with his little procession headed by the monk carrying / a board on which was a rough picture of Christ, and a chorister bearing / a silver cross, his heart, no doubt, beat high with hope: but his hope / would have grown into exultation could he have looked forward through / the centuries, and beheld the magnificent Cathedral which was to spring / up where his episcopal throne was fixed, and the energetic and varied / Christian life which has issued from this first home of Anglo-Saxon / Christianity. To us the scene is full of historical recollections. / Between the place where we are standing and the Cathedral are the / city walls, on the very site which they occupied in the days of / Ethelbert, and the postern-gate through which Queen Bertha came every / day to her prayers; in the nearer distance, a little to the right of / the Cathedral, are the remains of the great abbey which Augustine / founded; to our left is the Pilgrims' Way, by which, after Becket's / canonization, those who landed at Dover made their way to the shrine of / St. Thomas.