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 the village of Dunkirk, and it may well be that this and not
the tiny hamlet nearly a mile to the south of the great Way, was
Chaucer's Boghton under Blee, where the Canon and his yeoman overtook
the "joly companye," and rode in with them to Canterbury. And it is
there at Mad Tom's corner that we first catch sight of the glorious
city of St Thomas.

"Mad Tom's corner!" That name, it is needless to say I hope, has no
reference to the great archbishop or the pilgrimage. Mad Tom's corner,
whence we get our first view of Canterbury, is intimately connected
with the gate close by, called Courtenay's gate, and refers to the
exploits of a mad Cornishman who came to Kent and especially to
Canterbury about 1832, and presently proclaimed himself to be the New
Messiah and showed to his deluded disciples the sacred stigmata in his
hands and feet. It was the custom of these unhappy people to meet in