ounded about the year 1200.
According to Canon Scott-Robertson, it was dedicated in honour of St
James, which is a curious dedication for a Leper House, but common
enough in a Hospital for pilgrims. Oratory and Hospital have alike
disappeared, but close by the place where they stood there still
remains St Thomas's Well, now known as Spring Head or Spring.

So I went on through Radfield, where of old was a wayside chapel, and
Green Street to the Inn at Ospringe, passing, half a mile away to the
north, Stone Farm, and, nearer the road, the ruins of Stone Chapel,
another of those little wayside oratories still so common in Italy
and France but which nowadays in England we lack altogether.

Ospringe itself is an interesting place. To begin with, the very
ancient inn by the roadside, together with the equally old house
opposite were once, according to Hasted, the historian of Kent, a
Hospital founded by Henry II., for the benefit especially of pilgrims.
This hospital, he tells us, "was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and
was under the management of a master, three brethren and two clerks
existed till the time of Edward IV." Henry VIII., having seized by
force all such property as this in England, gave this Hospital to St
John's College in Cambridge, which still owns it to the loss of us poor
travellers. No doubt what money comes to the college from this poor
place goes to the support and bolstering up of the Great Tudor Myth
upon the general acceptance of which most of the vested interests in
England largely depend. But let us poor men lift up our hearts. The
Great Tudor Myth is passing, and every day it is becoming more evident
that it can be supported very little longer. Let us determine,
however, that we will not be taken in again, and under the pretence of
a reformation of religion fix upon our necks a new political despotism
worse than the Whig and Protestant aristocracy that the sixteenth
century brought into being, to the irreparable damage of the Crown
and the unspeakable loss of us the commonalty. May St Thomas avert an
evil only too likely to befall us. As for Ospringe, however, it was
after all in some sort royal property, the Crown having anciently a
Camera Regis there for the King's use when he was on his way to
Canterbury or to France.

At Ospringe I left the great road to visit Davington and to sleep at
Faversham. The long spring day was already drawing in when I came into
Davington, as delightful and charm