Southampton and
Chichester, and came through Winchester or Alton to Farnham; travellers
from the West of England joined the foreigners at Winchester, or came to
Farnham by the old Harrow Way, another ancient track from Salisbury
Plain. Thousands made the journey; more and more followed year by year.
At last it was determined to divide the stream. St. Thomas was murdered
on December 29, and the great pilgrimage to Canterbury and the return
centred round that date. In 1220 pilgrims were given a chance of paying
their vows in summer as well as winter. St. Thomas's body, on July 7,
was moved from the crypt under the nave to the grand altar in the nave,
and from that day forward the Feast of the Translation took its share of
the pilgrims' numbers. A constant stream journeyed east and west;
travellers with vows unpaid met travellers returning from the shrine,
and on and round the peopled highway sprang up booths and shelters to
meet the pilgrim's needs. Pedlars and merchants hawked their wares and
drove bargains by the road. Fairs were instituted in the villages along
the route; strolling musicians earned idle wages; beggars sat by the
roadside, at the churchyard corners, at the foot of the hills, and asked
for alms.

[Illustration: _The "Hog's Back."_]

And here, before we follow the pilgrims across the county from Farnham
to the lane by which they leave it east of Titsey, I want to make a
point clear. The pilgrims did not all travel to Canterbury by the same
road, along the selfsame track so many feet wide, as the Ordnance map
and some of those who have written on the Pilgrims' Way would argue.
There is not one single, separate path along which every pilgrim who set
out from Winchester to Canterbury travelled through Surrey. All that the
pilgrims did was to journey forward either on, or near, the old Way from
west to east and east to west, and it has happened that they used, more
than any other track besides the Way itself, one particular road. This
road can be followed parallel to the old Way for a long distance,
running from church to church under the chalk ridge; and it is this road
which is marked in the maps as the Pilgrims' Way. Perhaps that is
convenient, but it should be understood that not all the pilgrims went
by it. For pilgrims, after all, were as human then as walkers along
country roads are to-day. They would not all want to do the same thing
in the same way. Some of them would set out to do one thing and som