When ended was the lyf of seint Cecyle,
Er we had riden fully fyve myle,
At Boghton under Blee us gan atake
A man, that clothed was in clothes blake,
And undernethe he hadde a whyt surplys....
It semed he had priked myles three.

This man who, with his yeoman, overtakes the pilgrims, is the rich
canon, the alchemist who could pave with gold "all the road to
Canterbury town." He is said to have already ridden three miles, but
whence he had come it is impossible to say. That the pilgrims who had
ridden not quite five miles had come from Ospringe might seem
certain, and since they were overtaken by the Canon it is possible
that he was coming from Faversham. It is, however, more important to
explain, if we can, what the pilgrims were doing more than a mile off
the true Way at Boughton under Blean. The church of SS. Peter and
Paul is of some interest and of considerable beauty it is true, but so
far as we may know there was no shrine there of sufficient importance
to draw the pilgrims from the road, as at Faversham, nor one might
think would they be easily diverted from the goal of their journey
almost within reach. All sorts of routes have been given here, one
going so far as to lead the pilgrims south and east quite off the
Watling Street and across the old green road, the Pilgrims Way from
Winchester, to enter Canterbury at last by the South Gate. This is
absurd. No good explanation has yet been offered, but perhaps we may
be near the truth if we suggest that Chaucer and his pilgrims never
visited Boughton under Blean and the church of SS. Peter and Paul at
all. After all we have in Chaucer's text (Frag. G. Canon's Yeoman
Prologue) merely the name, and that in the old form, Boghton under
Blee. All this wild woodland and forest country which lies on a great
piece of high ground stretching north-east and south-west across the
Way parallel with the valley of the Great Stour, between Faversham and
Canterbury, hiding the one from the other, was known as the Blean. It
is equally certain that the village of Dunkirk was known as Boughton
until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a set of squatters
took possession of the ground, then extra parochial as of a "free-
port" from which no one could dislodge them. The district including
the greater part of the forest was afterwards erected into a separate
villa called the "villa of Dunkirk." Now Boughton Hill rises abruptly
beyond