When these pilgrims rode forth on that April morning--nine and twenty of them--from the "Tabard," to seek Becket's shrine, they started from the ultimate suburb of London. Picture that, Londoners of to-day, who find streets unceasing until Blackheath is gained, and no true roadside country this side of Gravesend! The thymy air then blew in at the casements of the many inns of Southwark, and the views thence extended over fields and meadows where countless chimneys now pollute the sky. Some way down the Kent Road ran a little stream across the highway--"Saint Thomas a Watering" the ford was called, and here the pilgrims made their first halt-- And forth we riden a litel more than pas, Unto the watering of Saint Thomas, And then our host began his hors arrest. Saint Thomas's Road marks the site of this stream, and the "Thomas a Becket" inn perpetuates a house of call for wayfarers; but the fame of all these things--of the heretics, the cutpurses, the varied thieves and beggars who were executed here, with their quarters stuck on poles by the ford by way of warning, is lost in the latter-day commonplace of the Old Kent Road. Yet, at this place, which was something more than a mere water-splash, and the Golgotha of this road out of London, many met their end through being born a little in advance of their time. This was, and is yet, a criminal offence; but it is no longer capital. If, for example, the unfortunate John Penry, Welsh scholar and graduate alike of Oxford and Cambridge, religious reformer and prime mover in the "Martin Marprelate" tracts, directed against the Episcopal bench, had but been born fifty years later, he would have been honoured, instead of meeting here an ignominious end. He was hanged at St. Thomas a Watering, May 29, 1593, and was a victim to the vengeance of my lords spiritual in general, and of Archbishop Whitgift in particular. V [Sidenote: MILESTONES] There are milestones on the Dover Road. Of course. Mr. F's aunt, in _Little Dorrit_, knew something about them, but not much. Her knowledge was general, not particular. We read in Chapter XXIII:-- "A diversion was occasioned here by Mr. F.'s aunt, making the following inexorable and awful statement: 'There's milestones on the Dover Road.' Clennam was disconcerted by this. 'Let him deny it if he can,' continued the venomous old lady. He could not deny it. There are milestones on the Dover Road."