"that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!"

Four knights took the king at his word, posted with all speed to
Canterbury, and charged the prelate to give way to the wishes of the
sovereign.

"In vain you threaten me," À Becket rejoined. "If all the swords in
England were brandishing over my head, your terrors could not move
me. Foot to foot you will find me fighting the battle of the Lord."

And then the swords of the knights flashed in the dim light of the
minster and another name was added to the Church's roll of martyrs.
The murder sent a thrill of horror through all Christendom; À Becket
was speedily canonized, and his tomb became the objective of
countless pilgrims from every corner of the Christian world.

In Chaucer's days, some two centuries later, the pilgrimage had
become a favourite occupation of the devout. Each awakening of the
year, when the rains of April had laid the dust of March and aroused
the buds of tree and herb from their winter slumber, the longing to
go on a pilgrimage seized all classes alike.

"And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke."

Precisionists of the type who are never satisfied unless they can
apply chronology in the realm of imagination will have it that
Chaucer's pilgrimage was a veritable event, and that it took place