In The Choir, Which Is Shut Up With Iron Rails, Are The Following
Monuments:-
King Henry IV., with his wife Joan of Navarre, of white marble.
Nicholas Wootton, Privy Counsellor to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary,
and Elizabeth, Kings and Queens of England.
Of Prince Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and Cornwall, and Earl of
Chester.
Reginald Pole, with this inscription:
"The remains of Reginald Pole, Cardinal and Archbishop of
Canterbury."
Cardinal Chatillon.
We were then shown the chair in which the bishops are placed when
they are installed. In the vestibule of the church, on the south
side, stand the statues of three men armed, cut in stone, who slew
Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a saint for this
martyrdom; their names are adjoined -
Tusci, Fusci, Berri. {18}
Being tired with walking, we refreshed ourselves here with a
mouthful of bread and some ale, and immediately mounted post-horses,
and arrived about two or three o'clock in the morning at Dover. In
our way to it, which was rough and dangerous enough, the following
accident happened to us: our guide, or postillion, a youth, was
before with two of our company, about the distance of a musketshot;
we, by not following quick enough, had lost sight of our friends; we
came afterwards to where the road divided; on the right it was down-
hill and marshy, on the left was a small hill: whilst we stopped
here in doubt, and consulted which of the roads we should take, we
saw all on a sudden on our right hand some horsemen, their stature,
dress, and horses exactly resembling those of our friends; glad of
having found them again, we determined to set on after them; but it
happened, through God's mercy, that though we called to them, they
did not answer us, but kept on down the marshy road at such a rate,
that their horses' feet struck fire at every stretch, which made us,
with reason, begin to suspect they were thieves, having had warning
of such; or rather, that they were nocturnal spectres, who, as we
were afterwards told, are frequently seen in those places: there
were likewise a great many Jack-a-lanterns, so that we were quite
seized with horror and amazement! But, fortunately for us, our
guide soon after sounded his horn, and we, following the noise,
turned down the left-hand road, and arrived safe to our companions;
who, when we had asked them if they had not seen the horsemen who
had gone by us, answered, not a soul. Our opinions, according to
custom, were various upon this matter; but whatever the thing was,
we were, without doubt, in imminent danger, from which that we
escaped, the glory is to be ascribed to God alone.
Dover, situated among cliffs (standing where the port itself was
originally, as may be gathered from anchors and parts of vessels dug
up there), is more famous for the convenience of its port, which
indeed is now much decayed, and its passage to France, than for
either its elegance or populousness: this passage, the most used
and the shortest, is of thirty miles, which, with a favourable wind,
may be run over in five or six hours' time, as we ourselves
experienced; some reckon it only eighteen to Calais, and to Boulogne
sixteen English miles, which, as Ortelius says in his "Theatrum,"
are longer than the Italian.
Here was a church dedicated to St. Martin by Victred, King of Kent,
and a house belonging to the Knights Templars; of either there are
now no remains. It is the seat of a suffragan to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who, when the Archbishop is employed upon business of
more consequence, manages the ordinary affairs, but does not
interfere with the archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Upon a hill, or
rather rock, which on its right side is almost everywhere a
precipice, a very extensive castle rises to a surprising height, in
size like a little city, extremely well fortified, and thick-set
with towers, and seems to threaten the sea beneath. Matthew Paris
calls it the door and key of England; the ordinary people have taken
into their heads that it was built by Julius Caesar; it is likely it
might by the Romans, from those British bricks in the chapel which
they made use of in their foundations. See Camden's "Britannia."
After we had dined, we took leave of England.
FRAGMENTA REGALIA
OR, OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATE QUEEN ELIZABETH, HER TIMES, AND
FAVOURITES. WRITTEN BY Sir Robert Naunton, MASTER OF THE COURT OF
WARDS. A.D. 1641.
To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry
VIII. by Anne Boleyn, the second of six wives which he had, and one
of the maids of honour to the divorced Queen, Katharine of Austria
(or, as the now styled, Infanta of Spain), and from thence taken to
the royal bed.
That she was of a most noble and royal extract by her father will
not fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her
veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the
greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering
that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the
intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the
Normans, that, through vicissitude of times, and after a
discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre should fall
again and be brought back into the old regal line and true current
of the British blood, in the person of her renowned grandfather,
King Henry VII., together with whatsoever the German, Norman,
Burgundian, Castilian, and French achievements, with their
intermarriages, which eight hundred years had acquired, could add of
glory thereunto.
By her mother she was of no sovereign descent, yet noble and very
ancient in the family of Boleyn; though some erroneously brand them
with a citizen's rise or original, which was yet but of a second
brother, who (as it was divine in the greatness and lustre to come
to his house) was sent into the city to acquire wealth, AD
AEDIFICANDAM ANTIQUAM DOMUM, unto whose achievements (for he was
Lord Mayor of London) fell in, as it is averred, both the blood and
inheritance of the eldest brother for want of issue males, by which
accumulation the house within few descents mounted, IN CULMEN
HONORIS, and was suddenly dilated in the best families of England
and Ireland:
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