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Canterbury in English History
Canterbury is world-famous, primarily because of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but its roots go back much further than that. The Canterbury Tales were written seven hundred years ago, in the late 1300's - by then, Archbishop Thomas Becket's murder (which led to the pilgrimages immortalised by Chaucer) was already 200 years in the past. Indeed, by Chaucer's time there had been settlement in Canterbury for over 1,300 years! To understand the breadth of Canterbury's history and how the different events and periods in its story fit together, consider the table below.
Take your choice of our other Canterbury pages:
Canterbury's History in summary:
The key features are:
* Canterbury had a lengthy (and rich) Roman period - nearly 400 years;
* St Augustine arrived very early in Anglo-Saxon times, just at the end of the Dark Ages (roughly, the 200 years following the departure of the Romans - a time for which there are no written records);
* the construction of the Cathedral we see today spanned over 400 years;
* pilgrimages to Becket's shrine brought wealth and fame to Canterbury over a 360-year period - then suddenly stopped;
* Canterbury became a relative backwater from the 1500's - which had the effect of preserving much of its medieval heritage.
Canterbury's History - the fuller story:
1. The Romans in Canterbury
2. Dark Ages to the Middle Ages
3. The Middle Ages: Becket, Kings, Pilgrims
4. Tudor and Stuart times
5. 1700 to 2000: the latest 300 years in Canterbury's story
1. The Romans in Canterbury
Settlement had begun at the river-crossing site of Canterbury around the time of the birth of Christ; prior to then, iron-age settlements had tended to be on hill-tops. The Romans were quick to develop the small settlement because it provided a river-crossing on the direct route from the Channel ports to London and the rest of England, along what came to be known as Watling Street (Richborough-Canterbury-London-Chester). Canterbury was also right in the middle of East Kent and therefore developed into a strong regional centre, a role enhanced by the Roman road network.
Julius Caesar led the first Roman expedition to Britain in 55 BC. He landed on the stretch of coast between the White Cliffs of Dover and thge Isle of Thanet (now no longer an Island since the channel separating it from the rest of Kent was drained and canalised). Caesar fought the local iron-age people near their hill-fort on Bigbury Hill just outside Canterbury; today the site of the fort stands out against the horizon (immediately south of the A2, bypassing the city) - it retains traces of its defensive ditches. Caesar was victorious, went on to London, but got no further before he decided to withdraw his force to Gaul (France) for the winter. He returned the next year, but the task of subduing Britain proved not worth the effort to him. Britain was left alone for nearly a century.
It was in 43 AD that the Emperor Claudius sent troops to conquer the country. This time they were successful. They landed at Deal and quickly conquered south-east England. A fort was built at Richborough whose ruins can be visited today - this served as the port and garrison through which Roman troop movements in and out of Britain were routed. Canterbury, known by the Romans as 'Durovernum', saw rapid development after about 100 AD with stone houses, a grid-pattern of paved roads, drainage, and trade.
It was not until a period of disturbance across the Empire in the 270's that a ditch and wall around the city was constructed; the route that the Roman engineers chose is the one followed by the remains of the walls today. The walls were substantially rebuilt in the late-1300's, but Roman traces survive in three places (St Mary Northgate Church, Queningate, and in the Castle grounds). This period also saw the construction of a large Roman Theatre, the remains of parts of which can be seen today in the basement of Slatters Hotel (St Margarets St). Adjacent to it were the Public Baths, and opposite was a Temple complex; it is believed that a town square and meeting place - the Forum - lay not far beyond that. To the north-east of these public areas was a large private house with high-quality mosaic floors - this property, revealed by the World War II bombing, can be visited in the Roman Museum.
In the 300s and early 400s Roman Canterbury was at its peak. A walled city with a theatre, forum, temples, quality housing with heating and mosaic floors, and lively markets stocked with goods from the surrounding rich agricultural lands and also benefitting from trading links to continental Europe, Canterbury had achieved a level of relative civilisation that it was not to reach again for some six hundred years. And then, quite suddenly, when the Roman troops were withdrawn back to Italy in the year 410, the civilisation collapsed. Canterbury entered the 'Dark Ages'
2. Dark Ages to the Middle Ages
Amidst the ruins and chaos of Europe after the Roman Empire the Church had an important role as the repository of knowledge and learning. In 597 Pope Gregory despatched Augustine to revive Christianity in England. Canterbury was the first city he reached after landing a few miles north of the ruins of Richborough. The city at this time, oiver 180 years after the last Roman troops had left, was the seat of King Ethelbert, king of the people of Kent. The King's wife, Queen Bertha, came from Tours in central France - she was a Christian, and it is thought that she worshipped at an old Roman church just east of the city walls. This church carried the name of St Martin's Church after St Martin of Tours.
Augustine succeeded in converting Ethelbert to Christianity, and, because he was unable to establish a base in London and also because the kingdom of Kent was the strongest in the country at the time, Canterbury became the centre of the revived Christian Church in England. Pope Gregory appointed him Archbishop. Augustine's followers enlarged St Martin's Church - it is thus believed to be the oldest Christian Church in England, having been used uninterruptedly for Chritian worship for over 1,400 years.
Augustine founded an Abbey between St Martin's Church and the city - what we know today as St Augustine's Abbey. This was founded to serve as a burial place for the royal family and the Archbishops - following the Roman custom of burial outside city walls. The Abbey was in use for over 900 years before it was destroyed by order of Henry VIII in the 1540's.
But Augustine's most memorable development was sited just inside the city walls, in the north-eastern corner of the city on the site of what is believed to have been another Roman church. Given to Augustine by King Ethelbert, this was developed into Canterbury Cathedral. The early Cathedral had its own community of monks - Christ Church Priory; this community too only lasted until the 1540's. The Abbey and the Priory became fierce rivals. Centres of scholarship developed at both sites, making Canterbury one of Europe's leading centres of learning (universities did not appear in England until the 1200's)
The Anglo-Saxon period - roughly the 500's to the 1000's, named after the Angles (from whom evolved the word 'England') and the Saxons who came from northern Europe in the 400's and 500's (largely displacing the native Celtic people who pushed westwards to Wales, Cornwall and Ireland) - saw a measure of civilisation return to the country after the unrecorded barenness of the 'Dark Ages'. In Canterbury a new community rose out of the Roman ruins. In the 'Dark Ages' there had been little settlement inside the walls - cities were a dangerous place to be, being the target of raids - but now, in the centuries after Augustine, houses and roads appeared again. This developing settlement was known as 'Cantawaraburgh' - the 'burgh', or settlement, of the Canta people, the people of Kent.
These centuries were ones of fluctuating growth and decline. The great seats of learning that started to flourish in the 600's fell into disrepair in the late 800's when raids by the Vikings intensified. Two names in particular survive from this period, both Archbishops: Dunstan (Archbishop 959-988) and Alphege (died 1012). Dunstan - remembered today in St Dunstan's Church and the lively community of St Dunstan's that grew up between there and the Westgate - was responsible for monastic reform and a significant revival of the Church's strength during a break in Viking troubles. His tomb in the Cathedral (where Archbishops had started to be buried after the mid-700's) became a source of pilgrimage. Alphege - remembered today in St Alphege's Church in the city centre, used today as the Canterbury Centre - was Archbishop at the time of the last great Viking raid on Kent which led to the siege and ransacking of Canterbury in 1011. The Vikings took Alphege hostage and, the following Easter, murdered him; this is the subject of a famous stained-glass window in the Cathedral. Two years later King Cnut, the Viking leader who took the English crown (1016-35), repentant at Alphege's muder, gave the Cathedral the treasured remains of a St Mildred; St Mildred's Church - near the Castle ruins - was constructed in thanksgiving.
1066 saw the Norman conquest, and changes to Canterbury. William the Conqueror had a motte-and-bailey castle rapidly constructed - the motte (the mound, with a wooden keep) was on what is now the mound in Dane John Gardens, and the bailey (ditch) extended around roughly the extent of today's Gardens. 'Dane John' is a corruption of the French word donjon, or castle keep. By the turn of the century (1100) William's succcessors had built the stone castle at the southern end of the city, whose massive ruined keep still stands.
In 1070 William appointed Lanfranc, a 70-year-old Italian monk then serving as Abbot of Bec in Normandy, as Archbishop of Canterbury. A dynamic leader, Lanfranc rebuilt the Saxon cathedral, destroyed in a fire in 1067, in the Romanesque (Norman) style. Lanfranc's Nave survived until 1377, but his Choir was rebuilt by his immediate successor, Anselm (also from Bec). The oldest surviving parts of the Cathedral date from Anselm's time, most notably the crypt. See The Building of Canterbury Cathedral.
3. The Middle Ages: Becket, Kings, Pilgrims
The building of the Cathedral spanned the Medieval Period - the 'Middle Ages', generally reckoned in English History to be the time between 1066 and the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 (Bosworth marked the effective end of the Wars of the Roses, a civil war which, at its close, brought the Tudor dynasty to the throne). The Middle Ages saw England develop into a unified nation-state, its kings lead the country into wars with France (notably the 100 Years War of 1337 to 1453), and the nation suffer several periods of civil war. Two periods within the Middle Ages, separated by 200 years, proved particularly significant for Canterbury: the reign of Henry II (1154-89) and the time of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400).
Henry II and Thomas Becket
Henry II, a young and dynamic king who brought huge territories in France to the English crown, quarrelled with his good friend Thomas Becket after he had moved Becket from being Chancellor of England to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket took his new role very seriously and fought for the church's rights as against the king's. The quarrel led to a lengthy period of exile for Becket. It was Becket's return from exile and actions he took when resetablishing his authority that caused Henry's anger and impatience to get the better of him. His alleged famous exclamation to his close knights, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", led four of his men to murder Becket. Believing they were following the king's wishes they travelled from France (where Henry had his court at the time) to Canterbury. On the afternoon of 29 December 1170 they arrived at the Archbishop's Palace and tried to see Becket. But Becket's followers persuaded the Archbishop - with some difficulty - to head for what they presumed was the safety of the Cathedral. But the knights pushed their way in from the Cloisters and caught up with Becket just inside the door (in the North-West Transept). There they hacked him to death, slicing off the top of his head. A bare stone altar and a dramatic cross-shaped dagger mark the spot today.
Becket's murder was the most documented and, to many, the most shocking single act in medieval Europe. It transformed the life of Canterbury by bringing mass pilgrimages to a cathedral already famous for pilgrimages to St Dunstan's tomb. In July 1174 Henry himself came to do penance at the altar - he literally came on his knees. Just six weeks later a huge fire destroyed the choir and east end of Anselm's Cathedral; fortunately the Crypt (containing both Becket's tomb and some stunning Norman architecture) survived. This near-disaster gave those charged with rebuilding the opportunity to work in the new Gothic style that was spreading across northern Europe.
Over 30 years of construction saw a masterpiece of Gothic architecture arise on the Norman foundations. This same period saw the construction of Chartres, Notre Dame in Paris, and Reims cathedrals.
The pilgrim trade received its biggest boost when this work was completed and Becket's body was moved up to its new resting place in the Trinity Chapel beyond the main altar. In 1220 Henry III led dignitaries, including the king of France, in a splendid ceremony to mark the occasion. This put Becket's shrine right at the heart of the Cathedral.
Four years after this grand ceremony a small band of monks arrived from the continent and, without fanfare, opened a very diffferent chapter in the city's religious development. These were followers of St Francis of Assisi - the Franciscans - the first of several groups of friars to arrive. Although all would be closed down by Henry VIII three hundred years later, a few buildings from each of the Franciscan ('Greyfriars') and Dominican ('Blackfriars') monasteries survive today.
The Time of Chaucer
After a fall at the time of the Black Death (1349-50), which killed one in three of the population of England, the pilgrim business was thriving by the time of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's career, as a senior government official as well as a poet, spanned the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. Edward III started the 100 Years War with France, fighting for the French throne and particularly to expand the English lands in south-west France (Aquitaine); his reign saw English victories at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), won with the newly-developed longbow.
Edward's son was known as the Black Prince; a ruthless man, he was poised to succeed to the throne but died a year before his father. His burial in 1376 in Canterbury Cathedral was another grand occassion - his tomb, close to where Becket's shrine stood, is still there, his breastplate and sword on display in a glass case nearby. The boy-king Richard II succeeeded Edward. Four years into his reign the violent Peasant's Revolt erupted. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sudbury, who had funded both the start of the rebuilding of the Nave and the construction of the city's Westgate, was taken prisoner by the mob and murdered. The remainder of Richard's reign was an unhappy one, ending with his ousting (and subsequent murder) by Henry Bolingbroke - Henry IV. Shakespeare's history plays deal with this coup and its effects (in sequence: Richard II, Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, Henry V). Henry IV became the only monarch to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Whilst these royal squabbles were underway, Chaucer was busy writing his Canterbury Tales. These are a collection of stories told in turn by each of a very mixed group of pilgrims travelling from London to visit Becket's shrine in Canterbury. In many respects Chaucer's time saw the peak of the pilgrim business. Pilgrimages represented an opportunity for variety and excitement in lives that were frequently marked by struggle, ignorance and disease. Bear in mind that more than a century was to elapse before the winds of the Reformation and humanism swept away much of the superstition and exploitation of the (wealthy) Church; most people would probably have entered into pilgrimages with much the same blend of recklessness, piety and fun as Chaucer's fictitious pilgrims. It was in this period that the biggest of the pilgrim inns were constructed - large timber-framed structures with central courtyards; two wings of the largest survive on the corner of Burgate and the Buttermarket. Another symbol of Canterbury's prosperity at this time was the rebuilding of the city's walls. This project included the construction of the Westgate, today the city's only surviving medieval gate. The rebuilding had been hastened by the 100 Years War which instilled a feeling of vulnerability to french invasion.
Chaucer died in 1400. The subsequent years saw Henry V's famous victory at Agincourt (1415), with the young king visiting Canterbury Cathedral on his triumphant return journey to London. The remainder of the fifteenth century encompassed the Wars of the Roses and the coming to power of the Tudor Kings. The second Tudor, the infamous Henry VIII, was to bring catastrophe to Canterbury.
4. Tudor and Stuart times
Henry VIII, having caused a split with Rome over his divorce plans, went on to attack the power and wealth of the Church. In Canterbury he ordered Becket's shrine completely destroyed in 1538. By 1541 all of the monasteries in Canterbury had been closed down: St Augustine's Abbey, Christ Church Priory, and the Blackfriars (Dominicans), Greyfriars (Franciscans) and Whitefriars (Augustinians) foundations in the centre of the city. St Augustine's was torn down and the stone shipped across the Channel to build new fortifications around England's last French possession: Calais.
With Becket's shrine destroyed, the pilgrim traffic stopped. Canterbury plunged into relative decline. More horrors followed: the 1550's saw more than 40 Protestants burnt at the stake during the short-lived Counter-Reformation in the reign of Queen Mary; a memorial in Martyrs Field Road tucked away in the residential streets of the Wincheap district (south of the city walls) marks the spot. However, intolerance on the continent worked in the city's favour: a large number of Protestants from the Low Countries (present-day Belgium and the Netherlands), fleeing persecution, fled to the city bringing their well-developed skills in weaving and silks. French Huguenots added to this population; a weekly service in French is still held in the Cathedral Crypt for the descendants of these Huguenots.
Over the next two centuries Canterbury's quiet life was interrupted by just a few notable events. Queen Mary's more tolerant successor, Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) passed through the city several times - she celebrated her 40th Birthday here in 1573. On one occasion she travelled to Canterbury to interview the Duc d'Alencon with a view to marriage - she is said to have met him in what is now the Queen Elizabeth Tea Rooms in the High Street (which has a well-preserved Elizabethan ceiling in the first-floor tea-room), During the English Civil War in the 1640's Puritan extremists destroyed many of the windows in the Cathedral's Nave and Transepts (but fortunately not the 12th-century glass in the east end depicting the miracles that were reputed to have occured to pilgrims after visiting Becket's shrine). In 1647 the population started a Royalist revolt in protest at Puritan attempts to ban the celebration of Christmas. This was fiercely put down: Cromwell ordered that one-quarter of the city's walls be pulled down to ensure the city's future compliance - this was the sector between the Castle and the Westgate. However, just thirteen years later Charles II rode through in triumph on his return to England on the Restoration of the monarchy.
5. 1700 to 2000: the latest 300 years in Canterbury's story
The 1700's saw some measure of revival for Canterbury: the rise of stagecoach travel and turnpikes made the city's location on the main London to Dover road important once more. Coaching inns thrived. The closing years of the century saw a burst of schemes for 'improvements': amongst these were the creation of the Dane John Gardens, and the demolition of all the city's gates. Only the Westgate survived - because it was the city's prison.
The early 1800's saw the establishment of large barracks, hastened by the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1831 one of Britain's earliest passenger railways was opened, between Canterbury and Whitstable. Running north from what is now Canterbury West Station, the line went under the future site of the University of Kent in the country's first passenger railway tunnel, ending up in the port of Whitstable to link up with boats travelling up the River Thames to London. Direct rail links to London followed in 1846 (Canterbury West) and 1860 (Canterbury East, on the London to Dover line).
The 20th century has seen the city suffering the common pressures of suburban growth and the effects of widespread car ownership. However, four events stand out in this century. In 1942 one-quarter of the city centre was destroyed by bombing - the bulk of the damage being caused on the night of 1st June; some sixty people died. Amid the worst of the damage, just south of the Cathedral precincts, was revealed the mosaic pavement hidden since Roman times (now the site of the Roman Museum). In the 1960's a ring road was constructed around most of the city walls - for the first time, all London to Dover traffic did not have to go down Canterbury's High Street! In 1982 Pope John Paul II, on his first trip to Britain, became the first papal visitor to Canterbury Cathedral since the break with Rome in the 1530's. He and Archbishop Runcie prayed together at the site of Becket's murder. In 1994 the Channel Tunnel was opened. This has increased the number of day-visitors from continental Europe, and has once more underlined the effects of Canterbury's strategic position on its destiny - the closest English cathedral city to the continent is even more firmly on the tourist circuit.
Canterbury has entered the 21st century as a strong regional centre, with serious concerns regarding employment, but enjoying better and more sensitive town planning than in previous generations. Tourism offers the same mix of potential and pressure as ever. (By way of illustration of the pressures, Canterbury Cathedral receives approximately 1,700,000 visitors annually - a mean of nearly 700 per hour 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. every Monday to Saturday!)
The city's history is not forgotten: as well as the excellent Heritage and Roman Museums opened in recent years, there are occasional reminders of the huge span of Canterbury's involvement in England's development, especially in Church matters. 1997 saw celebrations of the 1,400th anniversary of St Augustine's arrival. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury no longer lives in the city (he works from his London base, Lambeth Palace, though he retains a residence in Canterbury at the Archbishop's Palace adjacent to the Cathedral), his not infrequent appearances in the city - leading charity walks, preaching at Easter services, giving the blessing at the city's street Carol Service - are reminders that the current incumbent, Dr Rowan Williams, is just the latest in a line that goes back to the year 597. He is in fact the 104th Archbishop since St Augustine.
