em went on board the ships of
the merchant adventurers and sailed to foreign lands. Lastly, there were
the Pilgrimages.

From the tenth to the fifteenth century there was a rage for pilgrimage.
Everybody wanted to become a pilgrim. No money was wanted: there would
certainly be found every day some monastery at which bed and a supper
would be provided for the pilgrim: it was a joyous company which fared
along the road, some riding, some on foot, travelling together for
safety, all bound to the same shrine where they would hear the masses
and make their vows and so return, light-hearted: it was, in fact, the
mediaeval way of taking a holiday. Sometimes it was to Canterbury, where
was the shrine of Thomas Becket, that the pilgrims were bound: sometimes
to Walsingham, where was the miraculous image of the Virgin: sometimes
to Glastonbury, hallowed by the thorn miraculously flowering every year
on Christmas Day, planted by Joseph of Arimathea himself: sometimes it
was farther afield--to Compostella in Spain, Rome, or even
Jerusalem--that the pilgrims proposed to go. Chaucer describes such a
company all starting together, riding from London to Canterbury on
pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket. They are pilgrims, but there
is very little piety in their discourse: one can see that, whatever the
motive, whether for the expiation of sin, or any other cause, the
journey is full of cheerfulness and enjoyment. The Crusades were one
outcome of this passion for pilgrimage. Nay, the first Crusade itself
was little better than a great pilgrimage of the common people, so
ignorant that they asked at the sight of every walled town if that was
Jerusalem. It was a pilgrimage from which few, indeed, returned.

In England, the chief gain from pilgrimage was the bringing together of
men from the different parts of the country. Remember that the men of
the North could not understand the speech of the men of the South: a
Norfolk rustic at the present day would hardly understand a man of
Devon: there was always danger of forgetting that they all belonged to
the same realm, the same nation, and the same race.

But the love of pilgrimage spread so wide that it became a danger. The
rustic left the plough: the blacksmith his anvil: the carpenter his
bench: all left their wives and their children in order to tramp across
the country on pilgrimage to some shrine. By day they marched together:
at night they sat round the fire in the strangers' ro