a time of the year when "Longer folk to go on pilgrimage, And specially from every shire's end Of Englande, to Canterbury they wend, The holy, blissful martyr for to seek, That them hath holpen, when that they were sick," that Chaucer and his company met at the Tabard. St. Thomas of Canterbury was murdered in the year 1170, by four knights, instigated thereto by a passionate exclamation of King Henry II., who was at feud with him relative to the respective rights of Monarchy and the church, and his shrine during the intervening years had become one of the most popular in the kingdom; the Saxon people, down-trodden by their Norman lords, looking upon him as a sort of clerical Robin Hood, the defender of the rights of the poor against Regal and Baronial oppression, and in process of time it had become resplendant with precious metals and gems, the offerings of pious devotees. Says Chaucer— "Befell that in that season, on a day, In Southwark, at the Tabard, as I lay, Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury, with devout courage, At night was come unto that hostelry; With nine and twenty in a company, Of sundry folk by aventure yfall In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all, That toward Canterbury wouldeh ride. The stables and the chambers weren wide And well we weren eased atte best" (well accommodated). He then gives a series of photographs of the pilgrims, representatives of various classes of the people of England at a most eventful period of our history—a period when Wycliffe was laying the foundations of the Protestant Church; when Wat Tyler and his fellow serfs were rising in assertion of their liberties; when Chaucer and Gower were fashioning the English language into shape, as contradistinguished from the Norman-French of the Court; when the feeble Richard occupied the throne, to be shortly driven hence by his cousin Bolingbroke, which eventually led to the Wars of the Roses, and resulted in the extinction of a vast number of the Norman families, rendering it easier for the Saxon element of the kingdom afterwards to gain the ascendancy. Amongst the company are a knight, a worthy man, who had done deeds of prowess in all parts of the world, yet was meek as a maid, who was dressed in a "fustian gipon, alle besmattered" with marks of travel; along with him was his son, "a younge squire, a lover and lusty bachelor," with "lockes curl'd, as they were laid in press;" also his attendant, a yeoman "clad in green," and under his belt "a sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen." There was also a prioress "That of her smiling was full simple and coy; Whose greatest oath n'as of Saint Eloy," who sung the service "entuned in her nose full sweetly, and French she spoke full fair and fetisly, after the school of Stratford-atte-Bow."