_Old Barthélemy Saint Hilaire, the indefatigable translator of Aristotle, used to say to me when he was our Foreign Minister: one must select, early in life, a vast intellectual task, that will be like a literary companion, a long-lived one, which you can never lose, because it is sure to outlive you. The author of this study thought the ampler work would be his literary companion._ _But his official duties thereupon became more exacting, and as they had a first claim, he had to part with his companion, whom, as will happen in life’s pilgrimage, others replaced at later stages of the journey. He desired, however, that some trace be left of an early comradeship: hence the present essay, illustrated in part from his pen-and-ink sketches, also a token of comradeship._ _The need of this new issue has supplied the occasion for a revision of the text, with numerous corrections and additions, written in a land unsuspected by the best-travelled of the ever-moving heroes of these pages, written too at a time when the Hundred years war of Chaucerian days has been replaced by a Hundred years peace, and when great deeds performed in common are, if we and our successors prove in any way worthy of our dead, the harbingers of a friendship not to be broken between France, England and America._ J. WASHINGTON, 1920. {11} CONTENTS PREFACE • 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS • 11 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • 13 INTRODUCTION • 23 PART I _ENGLISH ROADS_ I. ROADS AND BRIDGES • 29 II. THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER AND THE CASUAL PASSER-BY • 90 III. SECURITY OF THE ROADS • 149 PART II _LAY WAYFARERS_ INTRODUCTORY NOTE • 181 I. HERBALISTS, CHARLATANS, MINSTRELS, JUGGLERS, AND TUMBLERS • 183 II. MESSENGERS, ITINERANT MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS • 223 III. OUTLAWS, WANDERING WORKMEN, AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND • 254 PART III _RELIGIOUS WAYFARERS_ I. WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS • 283 II. THE PARDONERS • 312 III. PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 1. Pilgrimages, their motives: to fulfil a vow, to spite the king, to regain health • 338 2. Principal English pilgrimages; the one of European celebrity, St. Thomas of Canterbury • 346 3. Piety, merriment, abuses. Real and false relics. Signs and brooches. Pilgrim stories. Honest and false pilgrims • 357 4. Pilgrimages beyond sea, Calais, Boulogne, Chartres, Rocamadour, St. James of Compostela, Cologne, Rome. Offerings left and indulgences gained. Helping gilds. Faith, superstition, and scepticism. Pilgrimages by proxy • 370 5. The holy journey to Jerusalem. Pilgrims in the days of St. Jerome. Pilgrims in arms, the crusades. Itineraries and Journals. “Mandeville,” William Wey, the lord of Anglure • 395 CONCLUSION • 419 APPENDIX • 423 I. Patent of King John entrusting a French cleric with the completion of London Bridge, 1201 • 425