Aspects of Kentish Local History

enabled him to leave this memorandum of himself and his family. Our landlord informed us (which I could hardly believe, considering his zeal for a remembrance both in the inside and outside of the church) that Isles was a Dissenter and a Presbyterian; but when I recollected, my knowledge and acquaintance with some of these people, I could easily reconcile it. He purchased this vault in the churchyard (over which the monument there is placed) for ever for five guineas, from the present incumbent, Mr. Cooke, who gave absolution to Charnock and Keys, and from that act of his has been commonly called Absolution Cooke.
   Within this church on the north side is the monument with a very proper inscription of ............ Southouse, who wrote a little book of the antiquities of this place, entitled "Monasticon Fevershamense".
   From Faversham we set out about eight in the morning for Canterbury, which is about nine miles distance from it. We got into the great road again at the east end of Ospringe, and about two miles further passed through a village called Boughton, but by the present neighbours and inhabitants commonly called Bocton, and sometimes Bocton Bleen. It is the same town mentioned by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales by the name of Boughton under Blee⁷. I should hardly have taken more notice of it than of any other village we passed through,

but for the mention of it in the scene of those ancient pilgrims. It is about a mile west of a large hill or forest called the Bleen, covered with wood, but of a very small shrubby kind. From the western ascent of this hill, there is a prospect of part of the sea towards the north east, [Sic] and from the ascent of this hill into the town of Canterbury is a very fine made road, which I suppose to have been part of the old Roman Way, but have been since informed by Dr. Thorpe that it was made at the expense of the gentry of that county about a hundred years ago, and has been ever since kept in good repair and order by the bordering parishes. The nearer we approached to Canterbury the larger [the] hop gardens we saw, but not more fertile than those lesser ones which we saw at a greater distance from it. About eleven o'clock we got into the "Red Lion" at Canterbury.

NOTES

  ¹ Buckingham Wall. The garden wall of Buckingham House, afterwards Palace (cf. the analogy of Kensington). This lane from Hyde Park Corner is now represented by Grosvenor Place.
   ²  Horse Ferry. The well-known former ferry from Westminster to Lambeth, the approach to which still bears the name of Horseferry Road. It should be remembered that at the time of this tour London Bridge was