of their sins, but humbly seeking that spiritual spring-clean—absolution. They were gay and light-hearted, reckless, and exceedingly improper, and rarely failed to deeply scandalise the innkeepers along the roads.
The “Tabard,” whence Chaucer’s pilgrims set out on that April morning in 1383, has long been a thing of the past. It was in 1307, one hundred and thirty-seven years after Becket’s martyrdom, that the Abbot of Hyde, at Winchester, built the first house, which seems to have been in two portions: one a guest-house for the brethren of Hyde and other clergy coming to London to wait upon that mighty political and religious personage, my Lord Bishop of Winchester, whose London palace stood close by, on Bankside; the other a more or less commercially conducted inn. When Chaucer conferred immortality upon the “Tabard,” in 1383, the lessee of that hostelry was the “Harry Bailly” of The Canterbury Tales, a real person, and probably an intimate friend whom Chaucer thus delighted to honour.
This was no mere red-nosed and fat-paunched purveyor of sack and other quaint liquors of that time, but one who had been Member of Parliament for Southwark in 1376 and again in 1379,[12] and was a person not only of considerable property, but a dignified and well-mannered man—better-mannered and of cleaner speech, we may suspect, than Chaucer’s pilgrims themselves:
A seemly man our hostè was withal
For to have been a marshal in a hall.
A largè man was he, with eyen steep,
A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe;
Bold of his speech, and wise, and well ytaught;
And of manhóod lackèd righte nought,
Eke thereto he was right a merry man.
Such a host, and no less a person, could have sat at supper with his guests, even with such gentles as the Knight and his son, the Squire, and the Lady Abbess; and thus only is he able to take charge of, and to assume leadership over, the party of twenty-nine on the long four days’ pilgrimage to Canterbury, and to reprove or praise each and all, according to his mind.
The “Tabard” derived its name from the sleeveless ceremonial heraldic coat, tricked out with gold and colours, worn by heralds. At a comparatively early date, however, the “science of fools,” as heraldry has severely been called, grew neglected, and “tabards” became little understood by common people. The sign of the house was accordingly changed to the “Talbot” about 1599; but even that has grown mysterious, and only folk with very special knowledge now know what a “talbot” was. In those days the meaning was well understood, and especially at inns, for it was the name of a fierce breed of dog—the old English hound, something between a mastiff and a bull-dog—kept chiefly by packmen to mount guard over their pack-horses and goods.
Both “Tabard” and “Talbot” are now nothing more substantial than memories. Little could have been left of the historic house in 1676, when the great fire of Southwark swept away many of the old inns. A newer “Talbot” then arose on the site, and stood until 1870: itself of so venerable an appearance that it was not difficult to persuade people of its being the veritable house whence Chaucer’s pilgrims set forth those many centuries ago.
The pilgrims only made Dartford the first night, a fifteen-miles’ journey that would by no means satisfy those inclined nowadays to follow their trail. We are not, however, vouchsafed any definite information as to Dartford, and the oldest portions of the existing “Bull” inn there are not, by perhaps two hundred years, old enough to have housed that miscellaneous party. But there was an inn, frequented by pilgrims, at that time upon the same site, and the “Bull” claims to be one of the oldest licensed houses in Kent—as well it may, for it is known to date back to 1450. In Chaucer’s time the landlord was, we are told, one Urban Baldock, himself a friend of the poet, and the source whence a great deal of information respecting pilgrims and their ways was gathered by him for The Canterbury Tales.
The oldest part of the “Bull” is the courtyard, galleried after the ancient style, but in these practical and in many ways unsentimental times roofed in with glass and used as a corn-market. Behind the carved wooden balusters of the gallery are the bedrooms, until late years largely given up to dust and cobwebs, but now rebuilt and again in use. Those who care for things that have had their day will think it fortunate that merely alteration, and not destruction, has been suffered here.
For the rest, the “Bull” at Dartford is Georgian, and its long brick front, with nine windows in a row, bears a strong family likeness to that of its namesake at Rochester. The bull himself, in great black effigy, occupies a monumental position among the chimney-pots, whence he looks down, like Nelson in Trafalgar Square, upon busy streets.
There have been happenings at the “Bull” in times much later than those of pilgrimage. On August 17th, 1775, a room off the gallery was the scene of an affray that led to Joseph Stacpoole, William Gapper, and James Lagier being indicted for shooting “John Parker, Esq.,” described as an Irish gentleman of fortune.
It seems that Joseph Stacpoole had lent John Parker and his brother Francis various sums of money, amounting in all to £3,000, and had very seriously embarrassed himself in doing so. He could not succeed in getting payment, and as he had good reason to suspect that the Parkers intended to abscond over sea, he followed them to Dartford, with his attorney and a bailiff. Hearing that they were staying with some friends at the “Bull,” Stacpoole sent Lagier, the bailiff, with a writ into the room they occupied, himself and Gapper following.
No sooner did the hot-headed Parker see the bailiff than he cried out, “Zounds! where are my pistols?” and one of his friends dashed out a candle with his hand and upset the only other. In this dim and dangerous situation the bailiff, mortally afraid for himself, cried out for help, and Stacpoole and Gapper came rushing in. Parker’s friends then seized Stacpoole by the collar, and seem to have shaken him so violently that they shook off the contents of a carbine he was carrying, with the result that Parker himself was shot through the body with three bullets. When that happened Parker’s brother fled to London, a Mr. Masterson ran downstairs, and a Mr. Bull, who had taken a prominent part in the collaring, was in so great a hurry that he jumped over the gallery into the yard.
The trial of Stacpoole and his two co-defendants did not take place until March 20th, 1777, when all were acquitted.
The last picturesque incident in the history of the “Bull” took place in 1822, when George the Fourth came posting along the road and the post-boy stopped here to change horses. He had just asked Essenhigh, the landlord, who that “damned pretty woman” was whom he saw at one of the windows, and mine host had only just replied that it was his wife, when a hostile crowd, in sympathy with “the persecuted” Queen Caroline, who had died the year before, began to “boo” and howl at the King. “When gentlemen meet, compliments pass,” says the adage, and one Callaghan, a journeyman currier, thrust forward and roared out, in the face of the “First Gentleman in Europe,” “You are a murderer!” a remark which possesses the recommendation neither of truth nor politeness, and resulted, in this instance, in the outrageous Callaghan being punched on the head and felled to the ground by one of the King’s faction. The King himself drove off in such a hurry that the postboy fell off his horse on leaving the town.
The pilgrims’ hostels that once existed at Rochester are things of the past, but it seems not unlikely that the “George,” in the High Street, almost opposite the Pickwickian “Bull,” was once something in this nature, for although the modern frontage is absolutely uninteresting, not to say distressingly ugly, and although it is now nothing more than a public-house, the very large and very fine Early English crypt, now used as a beer-cellar, shows that a building of semi-ecclesiastical nature once stood on the site. The “George” is an old sign, the present house being built on the ruins of one destroyed by
