Accordingly, though allowed to enter the Cathedral freely, their liberty within it was circumscribed. Admitted to the north transept by a special door--the Pilgrim’s door, now walled up--they could make their way into Godfrey de Lucy’s retro-choir, the great extension east of the high altar, where the shrine of the saint was placed. So much and no more of the Cathedral was open to them, for at the head of the presbytery steps, leading down to the south transept and nave, massive iron-work gates barred the way; the gates are to be seen still, though long since removed to near the western entrance of the Cathedral. And so their devotions ended, they would journey on--on [Illustration: MIDDLE GATE, WINCHESTER COLLEGE Middle Gate gives access to Middle or Chamber Court--so called from ‘Election Chamber,’ the large room over the gateway where ‘elections’ to college were formerly held. The three statues over the gateway represent the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel, and the Founder. The quaint old custom of college boys crossing the Quad bareheaded, in honour of the Virgin, is followed at Winchester College still. ] to the great Abbey of Hyde, then on to Headbourne Worthy church, to visit the Saxon rood at its western end, then on by Alton and Farnham, probably to rest for the night in the great Cistercian Abbey of Waverley hard by, and so on by Guildford and St. Martha’s to Canterbury--a well-defined route clearly marked even now for much of its length, and still known as the Pilgrim’s way. So great a vogue did the pilgrimage craving become that at length it had to be controlled and forbidden by law. Yet the pilgrimage had its uses--the open-air journey, severe though its hardships were to the ill-found and poorly shod, served, doubtless, as a magnificent tonic, both mental as well as bodily, and must have done much to correct the terrible insularity of ideas which a population otherwise chained to the soil must otherwise have engendered. Nor, in all probability, was the belief in the efficacy of pilgrimages in the cure of diseases, particularly mental ones, without at least some substantial basis of truth. As in the case of Henry of Hoheneck, so also, _mutatis mutandis_, might many a pilgrim to Winchester have had it said of him: And he was healed in his despair By the touch of _St. Swithun’s_ bones, Though I think the long ride in the open air, That pilgrimage over stocks and stones, In the miracle must come in for its share. A miracle none the less pronounced because the air of Hampshire Downs had been a potent but unrealized contributory factor in the result. CHAPTER XV THE MONASTIC LIFE Grosse Städte, reiche Klöster Schaffen, dass mein Land den euren Wohl nicht steht an Schätzen nach. KERNER, _Der reichste Fürst_.