In the fourteenth century pilgrimages had become the fashion for all classes. With kings and nobles they were a ceremonial duty. The sick man went to regain his health and discovered it, maybe, on the breezy heath or sunny downs long before he reached the Shrine. The simple devout soul, no doubt, found in the restful minster the religious consolation he came in search of. More worldly people enjoyed an inexpensive holiday. Merchants went on pilgrimages to avoid their creditors. During their absence an uncomfortable “slump” in business could be tided over. Chaucer half conveys a sly suggestion that this was the motive underlying the presence of the merchant in the “Canterbury Tales”: “There wiste no wight that he was in debt.” Workmen weary of a thankless task found a pretext in a pilgrimage for going off on the quest of a new master. An idle apprentice had an excuse ready at hand for exchanging the dull city workshop for a week in the Kentish orchards. A villein might succeed in reaching some distant town where he could live unbeknown by his lord for the necessary year and a day which meant permanent freedom. Statutes were passed over and over again to restrain these abuses, but they were all evaded. The pilgrimage was an institution hallowed from time immemorial, and none could gainsay the right of every Christian man to take in hand his scrip and staff. Imagine the motley procession almost ceaseless from morn till eve on the Roman roads to the North through St. Albans, Eastward to Canterbury, or Westward by Reading or Salisbury towards the favoured resort. Ladies of rank in their horse-litters or rich tapestried carriages; peasants in their springless two-wheeled dog-carts. Then a company of middle-class people on horseback, all of them, men and women alike, well able to manage their steeds. The very poor travelled on foot, and many better class trod barefoot some portion of the Walsingham green way as a penitential exercise. Lame, halt and blind negotiated their journey as best they could. The pilgrim roads were fairly good; Watling Street ran almost straight as an arrow as it was set out by the Roman engineers from Deptford to Canterbury. All roads were said to lead to Walsingham, and that through Ware and Newmarket, if not Roman, was nearly as direct. Pilgrims on horseback from the West of England might utilize the so-called “Pilgrims’ Way” to Canterbury, but by the fourteenth century the Kentish portion had been broken up into a series of feeders to the Watling Street. A similar bridle path ran from Newmarket towards Fakenham on the Walsingham route.