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CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

CHAPTER I

CANTERBURY CHILDHOOD

In the midst of verdant valleys and well-wooded hills reposes Canterbury, capital of the ancient kingdom of Kent. Branches of the sleepy Stour intersect the plain in all directions, and one of these branches dividing, clasps two arms round the ancient city-a city claimed by one of its many renowned sons to be older than Rome itself!1 Steeples and spires and time-tinted turrets rise from out the plain, whilst far above them all, soar into mid-air the lofty towers of the Cathedral, the guardian of this erstwhile sacred city.

Canterbury, in many respects the second and in some even still the first city of the kingdom, in the latter half of the sixteenth century was gradually recovering from the shock it had received in the reign of King Henry the Eighth. It was not so much the spoliation of its enormous wealth-and sixand-twenty wagons had been employed in carrying off its gold and jewels 2-as the blow given to its sanctity by the desecration of its shrine, the decanonisation

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of its patron saint, and the overthrow of its religious pre-eminence. The loss of the miracle-working reputation which Henry had deprived the city of did more to impair its position than did the loss of its material possessions.

With the succession of Elizabeth, in 1558, brighter days seemed dawning on the distracted land, and 'the fair city of the East' shared in the general resuscitation. Civic prosperity, which had fluctuated sadly during the last two reigns, was, for a time at least, partially restored, and Canterbury smiled once more. Princes and ambassadors and other notabilities again made the city their halfway restingplace on the journey to London, and to some extent Canterbury resumed its wonted aspect. The prophets and the martyrs of the new mental era were born, but as yet they had neither preached, nor prophesied, nor had they yet suffered for the crime of knowledge. At present all went merrily, and men knew not the penalty of too much learning.

Freed from internal and foreign strife the citizens of Canterbury reverted to the love of the good things of this world, and appeared to concern themselves little with the mental problems which so violently agitated people in some parts of the kingdom. The misdeeds and offences which had been ascribed to the rule of priestcraft continued, or rather revived with renewed prosperity, and the city was a hotbed of vice. Wealth and poverty still elbowed each other in the streets, and extravagance and usury still held

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their carnivals. Midnight outrage and drunken brawls were anything but infrequent, and as the severity of punishment increased so did the number and nature of crimes. The civic records show that men literally carried their lives in their hands, for no one paraded the streets without a weapon, and daggers were used/ on the slightest provocation.

For the many pilgrims who in this latter half of the sixteenth century still thronged the thoroughfares, some merely to view, others to secretly worship at, England's holiest but desecrated shrine, what a vision was conjured up! Narrow streets overshadowed by lofty buildings already sombre with age; strange public edifices decorated with marvellous heraldic signs in colours more or less faded; ancient churches and quaint dwelling-places unfolded to view in confused, picturesque succession. Grotesque and gloomy as that city seemed to the stranger, it was still less darksome than many a contemporary city of even less antiquity, and was well cared for by its citizens. As early as 1474, in the thirteenth year of the fourth Edward's reign, an Act had been passed for paving the principal thoroughfares, in which it had been stipulated that they should be properly pitched with boulders and Folkestone stone and, in order to have the work properly carried out, it was enacted that every proprietor should pave that portion of the street upon which his burgage (tenement) abutted. Many other equally useful local regulations were made by the corpora

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