reverberated through Europe, though not perhaps with so enormous a
rumour as the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV. before Pope Gregory
VII. at Canossa scarce a hundred years before had done. The first and
the most famous of Canterbury pilgrims came to St Dunstan's church upon
the Watling Street, outside the great West Gate of Canterbury, as we
may believe in July 1174. There he stripped him of his robes and,
barefoot in a woollen shirt, entered the city and walked barefoot
through the streets to the door of the Cathedral. There he knelt, and
being received into the great church, was led to the place of Martyrdom
where he knelt again and kissed the stones where St Thomas had fallen.
In the crypt where the body of the martyr was preserved, the King laid
aside his cloak and received five strokes with a rod from every Bishop
and Abbot there present, and three from every one of the eighty monks.
In that place he remained through the whole night fasting and weeping
to be absolved on the following day.

[Illustration: WEST GATE, CANTERBURY]

The martyrdom of St Thomas, the penance of the King, these world-
shaking and amazing events might in themselves, we may think, have
been enough to transform the church in which they took place, if as
was thought at the time, heaven itself had not intervened and
destroyed Conrad's glorious choir by fire. This disaster fell upon
the city and the country like a final judgment, less than two months
after the penance of the King in 1174, and within four years of St
Thomas's murder.

Something of the great masterpiece that then perished is left to us
especially without, and it is perhaps the most charming work remaining
in the city, the tower of St Anselm, for instance, and much of the