The Prince slept at Canterbury that night, and left, with his suite, _en route_ for Chatham at half-past nine the next morning, pursued by a body of clergymen with an Address. Alarmed at this appalling eagerness on the part of servile Britons to read lengthy orations of which he understood not a word, the Prince gave directions for the cavalcade to drive faster, and so they swept on through Chatham and Rochester, without stopping to hear what the Mayors and Corporations of those places had to say. Those deadly Addresses were, in fact, "taken as read," and the Mayors, Aldermen and others returned home with their ridiculous parchments, wiser, and, it is to be feared, not only sadder, but less loyal men. At Dartford, the bridegroom-elect was met by one of the Queen's carriages, and he thereupon changed from his travelling chariot to enter London in some degree of State. At New Cross an escort of the 14th Dragoons was waiting, and, instead of proceeding along the classic Old Kent Road, and so to the traditional entrance to London by London Bridge, he went to town by way of romantic Peckham and idyllic Camberwell, ending his journey at that dream of architectural beauty, Buckingham Palace. What followed: How the _Times_ waxed violent and denunciatory of Lord Melbourne and the frivolous _entourage_ with which he had surrounded the Queen: how that paper preached homilies, and how all the others, nearly without exception, gushed fulsome nonsense, it is not the business of the present historian to set forth. All he has to do is to remark that with this event closes the history of Royal processions along the Dover Road. The hilly road to Dover is not remarkable for sporting events, but two may here be noted. On April 1st, 1903, Mr. Walter de Creux-Hutchinson walked from Dover to London Bridge in 14 hrs., 19 mins., 40 secs.; and on September 18th, 1909, A. G. Norman cycled from London to Dover and back in 8 hrs., 8 mins. XXXVI [Sidenote: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL] The chief point of interest in Canterbury is, of course, the Cathedral, the bourne to which countless pilgrims came from all parts of the civilized world to gain the goodwill and intercedence of that thrice sacred and potent Saint Thomas whose peculiar sanctity over-topped by far that of any other English martyr, and whose shrine possessed scarce less efficacy than that of the most renowned Continental resorts of the pious. But long before Becket's day the Metropolitan Cathedral of Canterbury had arisen. The establishment of the See dates from the time when Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in A.D. 596, and, marching at the head of his forty Benedictine monks, held a conference with Ethelbert, King of Kent, by whose favour he was allowed to preach Christianity to the Saxons. Thus was the Cross of Christ re-introduced to these islands where it had flourished centuries before among the Romans and the Romanized British.