ny of his kidney he seems to
have forgotten the scripture upon which, as he would have asserted,
his whole philosophy and action was based,--the scripture I mean which
speaks of One, "the lachet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop
down and unloose." We shall not have the opportunity of being so
proud and impatient as Dean Colet of unhappy memory, for no shoe,
alas, of St Thomas or any other saint will be offered for our
veneration in the Hospital of St Nicholas at Harbledown to-day. Yet
not for this should we pass it by, for of all places upon the road, it
best of all conserves the memory of those far away days when Chaucer
came by, and half-way up the hill rested awhile and prayed, e'er from
the summit he looked down upon Canterbury.

The Hospital of the Forest or Wood of Blean, dedicated in honour of St
Nicholas, lies upon the southern and western side of the last hill
before the western gate of the city. It was founded in 1084 by
Archbishop Lanfranc, and no doubt for a time served as a hospital for
Lepers, but it was soon appropriated for the use of the sick and
wayfarers generally, and though nothing save the chapel remains to us
from Lanfranc's day, the whole place is so full of interest that no
one should pass it by.

The chapel became in time the parish church of this little place on
the hillside which grew up about the hospital which itself was
probably placed here on account of the spring of water known as St
Thomas's or the Black Prince's well, south and west of the building.
Most of the chapel is of Norman building, the western doorway for
instance, the pillars and round arches on the north of the nave dating
from Lanfranc's time. But the south side is later, of the thirteenth
century, and the font and choir are later still, being Perpendicular
fifteenth century work.

The hospital, however, as we see it, is a rebuilding of the
seventeenth century, but it was fundamentally restored in the
nineteenth. In the "Frater Hall," however, are some interesting
remains of the old house, among them a fine collection of mazers and
two bowls of maple wood, in one of which lies perhaps the very
crystal which Erasmus saw, and which was set in the upper leather of
the shoe of St Thomas.

Below the hospital in the orchard is the old well known as St
Thomas's. Above it grows an elder, surely a relic of the days of the
Pilgrimage. For the elder was known as the wayfaring tree and was
sacred to pilgrims and travellers.