There was also the pilgrimage of punishment, when a criminal was condemned to wander up and down the road whithersoever the Pope should direct him. There were many of those poor wretches to be met with on the road; most of them were murderers; a chain was made in which was worked up the sword or knife or other weapon with which the crime was committed; the neck, arms, and body of the criminal were bound round with this chain; so equipped, the malefactor toiled painfully from shrine to shrine, living on alms. It was not until the fourteenth century that the practice was discontinued. Can anything prove more abundantly the power of the Church than this punishment of murderers, who were simply loaded with these chains and then commanded to go forth on a pilgrimage from shrine to shrine? There was no police to enforce obedience; there was no guard set over the criminals; they were told to go and walk to a certain shrine and there to await further orders; and they obeyed. There were two kinds of pilgrimage: _peregrinatio major_ and _peregrinatio minor_. Of the former kind were those to the Holy Land and to Rome. Of the latter kind, those which generally satisfied our ancestors, were those to Walsingham with its Virgin, Glastonbury with its holy thorn, Waltham with its black cross, St. Edmund’s Bury with the body of the King, Durham with the shrine of St. Cuthbert, Chichester with that of St. Richard; there were also Beverley, Winchester, Lincoln, York, Peterborough—all famous shrines. The two places most popular were the Walsingham and the Canterbury pilgrimages. But in thinking of Chaucer’s immortal company we must remember that such companies left London daily in the summer bound for one or other of these holy places. In the illogical confusion of things belonging to the period the pilgrimage which for many was an orgy and a period of unbounded license all the way, was coupled with prayers devout and tears unfeigned. It would be idle to look too closely into the accounts of pilgrimages for evidences of the religious spirit among the pilgrims. Yet such evidences are found, notably in the fervent prayers and praises of Felix Fabri, who will be mentioned immediately. It is sufficient to remember that with the great mass of the people religion consisted in obedience. They had but to do what the Church ordered. After death there would be purgatory. Pilgrimage and other observances shortened the period of purgatory. They went, therefore, partly with that object, partly with the desire of seeing strange countries, partly to work off the restlessness that falls upon men, as upon nations, from time to time.