s without interest, but close
to the churchyard is the site of a Hospital, founded, in the time of
Richard I., who endowed it, by Bishop Glanville of Rochester. This
place must have been known to Chaucer and his pilgrims. It was
dedicated in honour of Our Lady and cared for "the poor, weak, infirm
and impotent as well as neighbouring inhabitants or travellers from
distant places, until they die or depart healed." Those who served it
followed the Benedictine Rule. A singular example of the hatred of
these for the monks of Rochester appears in the story of the fight
between the monks and the Hospital staff with whom sided the men of
Strood and Frinsbury, a village hard by, which took place in the
orchard of the Hospital. The Bishop, however, soon brought all to
reason, and as a punishment the men of Strood were obliged to go in
procession to Rochester upon each Whit-Monday, carrying the clubs with
which they had assaulted the monks.

[Illustration: THE GATEWAY OF THE MONASTERY CLOSE, ROCHESTER]

That Strood stood on the ancient way its name assures us, since it is
but another form of Street or Strada, as they say in Italy. From
Strood we cross the great iron bridge, the successor of that at the
Strood end of which Bishop Glanville built a small chapel. The story
of the bridge is interesting. We do not know that there was a bridge
at all in Roman times, but certainly a wooden bridge was supplemented
in the time of Richard II. by a new one of stone, consisting of
twenty-one arches of different spans. This bridge stood higher up the
river than that of to-day, nearer indeed to the Castle, and as at its
western end there was a chapel, so at its eastern under the Castle,
John de Cobham founded, in Chaucer's time, in 1399, a Chantry for all
Christian souls, of which some ruins remain. This bridge, patched,
altered, and constantly repaired, lasted till the existing bridge was
built in our own time on the site of the old one of wood.

From the bridge we enter the High Street, almost certainly lying over
the old Roman road. Here are the old Inns, the Crown, the Bull, and
the King's Head. It is even probable that Chaucer may have stayed at
the Crown, the oldest of the three, not of course in the present
house, but in that which stood on the same site till 1863, and which
was said to date from the fourteenth century. [Footnote: The old house
was famous at least as the scene of Shakespeare's "Henry IV.," pt. i.
act ii. sc. i., as t