The St Nicholas’ hospital mazer and St Thomas Becket: from ‘everyday’ object to relic
The article explores the meanings that may have been attached to the ‘Becket mazer’ by contemporaries from medieval times until the present day by charting its biography from everyday object to sacred relic. It examines the early history of the mazer and how it was used as a drinking bowl in a variety of settings, firstly in the Middle Ages and then either side of the Reformation and sets it in the context of the history of St Nicholas’s hospital during this period. The final section considers the mazer’s biography in modern times and how it was altered physically and metaphorically to become for some an artefact intrinsically linked to Becket, a status that it ‘enjoys’ in twenty-first century Canterbury.
Today the ‘Becket mazer’ (Fig. 1) as it is often called is on display in Canterbury Cathedral’s Treasury Exhibition in the cathedral’s undercroft.[fn1] For visitors, it is an object of curiosity, something from a bygone age that through its association with Thomas Becket, as displayed on the labelling, might be considered a relic in both senses of the word, an interesting but outdated object which has survived from long ago, as well as comprising something from a saint’s belongings that is kept as an object of reverence. Such an object in Igor Kopytoff’s terms can be seen as singular for it is potentially unique and unexchangeable and thus at the ideal polar opposite to objects involved in commoditization.[fn2] This differential is primarily cultural because societies mark part of their environment as ‘sacred’, which singularization provides.[fn3] Such an impetus is often a product of institutional forces – the state, religious bodies, that at the very least requires passive collective endorsement, as here. Yet this is not the sole route whereby things become singular for people individually and/or collectively can through the placing of value on an object or category of object, from jewels to drinking cups, remove them from the marketplace.[fn4]
[fg]jpg|Fig.1 Becket mazer – photo copyright and courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral.|Image[/fg]
This brings in another point raised by Kopytoff, the notion that objects have cultural biographies and by tracing these over the social ‘life’ of objects, it is feasible to gain insights into the societies that produced, used and perhaps finally discarded them. Moreover, by employing this spectrum from commodity to singular object, and by following any changes in status of an object over time it becomes, in Kopytoff’s terms, ‘the story of the various singularizations of [the object], of classifications and reclassifications in an uncertain world of categories [pg92]whose importance shifts with every minor change in context … [for] the drama here lies in the uncertainties of valuation and of identity.’[fn5]
Equally pertinent to this investigation of the mazer’s biography are David Lowenthal’s observations on relics and the past, especially where he explores the relationships between these historical remnants and the ways that they are seen, experienced and consumed by those in the present.[fn6] For he poses questions around just how ‘open’ these tangible remains are to viewers and is this their principal attraction, while at the same time considering how labels and other signposts may affirm authenticity and thus appeal to audiences, yet simultaneously ‘sacrifice communion with for information about’.[fn7] Furthermore, the act of display, while preserving the artefact and making it easier to view (or at least that is the curator’s intention), leads to a loss of context and provenance, and perhaps even more significantly, means that it cannot help but be seen through the audience’s modern minds and senses – the object is stranded in the present.[fn8] To try to draw together these various threads to construct a social biography of the mazer as far as it is possible to explore ideas about production and reception over time, this article will consider what is a mazer before charting its likely ‘life’ from fourteenth-century commodity to twenty-first-century singular object using a series of snapshots. Even though much of this analysis is speculative, because of the very limited nature of the available sources, both documentary and in terms of the mazer itself as material culture, this approach does offer useful ideas about why some things matter, as well as underlining Lowenthal’s cautionary observation that ‘relics render the past more compelling but not necessarily better understood … and data conveyed by relics are elusive and slippery’.[fn9] Nevertheless, such an attempt seems worth undertaking and the first snapshot examines the mazer as material culture in its early fourteenth-century setting at St Nicholas’ hospital near Canterbury, employing comparable material from Christ Church Priory. The [pg93]second investigates the Tudor period before turning to Victorian Canterbury and finally to the mazer’s recent history.
The mazer
Wooden bowls were ubiquitous during the Middle Ages, comprising various sizes, shapes and created from several tree species. Nevertheless, their survival rate differs considerably over time and contemporary manuscript illustrations offer additional valuable evidence respecting the chronology of their appearance and use. As Robin Wood has shown, by the eleventh century if not before, wooden drinking cups were being gradually replaced by drinking bowls of which one form would become known as the mazer.[fn10] For example, the Bayeux Tapestry provides pictorial evidence of the presence of circular flat-bottomed bowls by the later eleventh century, and similar shaped wooden bowls are displayed in the marginal illustrations of books such as the Luttrell Psalter (Fig. 2), where they comprised part of the tableware used for dining.[fn11] Such turned wooden bowls were made from a range of tree species, but especially alder and ash and were seemingly used for eating pottage rather than meat, but also potentially as drinking bowls.[fn12]
[fg]jpg|Fig. 2 Luttrell Psalter of people dining and using mazers (BL Add MS 42130, f. 208v) – image in the public domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/luttrell_psalter.|Image[/fg]
In shape, the mazer is very similar to these turned wooden bowls but is far thinner being created from the field maple (acer campestre) and this linking of tree and bowl was used to describe such utensils.[fn13] In the Christ Church Priory inventory from 1328, such bowls are listed as cyphi de mazer (cups or bowls of maple). The derivation of the word ‘mazer’ may relate to the Old High German masa, meaning a spot, which is linked to the speckled appearance of the grain of the maple wood, although Wood postulates that it means burr maple from the idea of a burr being an ‘excrescence or growth on a tree’.[fn14] A further term used in contemporary records is murra, but whether this relates to the colour of the wood rather than solely the maple per se is unclear.[fn15] Characteristically, mazers have a beautifully rounded profile with silver or silver-gilt decoration in the form of a band around the rim. According to Wood the earlier ones are usually plain whereas later medieval and Tudor examples more frequently have mouldings, and some also have inscriptions.[fn16] As well as being aesthetically pleasing this band provides protection because of the danger of splitting due to the bowl’s thinness.[fn17] Apparently, another common feature was a silver roundel or medallion in the base of the bowl, some in a silver-gilt mounting. Wood considers that early mazers from the fourteenth century typically had a simple roundel with a plain edge, but the textual evidence indicates pictorial or other designs were prevalent at this time and there are also some extant examples, although whether this represents the survival of predominantly higher quality pieces is difficult to judge.[fn18] Later examples often have a silver or silver-gilt foot mount, and where these are long, they are known as standing mazers.[fn19] These feet or stands are often decorated, and some of the early mazers have had such ornamentation added in later centuries, an indication, perhaps, of their adaptability.[fn20] Further features include covers, albeit the overwhelming evidence for these is textual because very few wooden covers have survived. However, they vary considerably from painted designs to heavily ornamented metalwork, and some had knobs, which suggests they were valued even though some were seemingly more fragile than the mazer itself.[fn21][pg94]
Today very few mazers survive outside museums, being on loan from aristocratic families, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, London livery companies, almshouses and medieval hospitals.[fn22] Among this last group are those from the twin foundations of St Nicholas’ and St John’s hospitals at Canterbury that together provide the largest collection of twelve mazers, including the ‘Becket mazer’. As Wood notes, as well as its size, this collection is especially fine because of its age, the pieces dating from the early fourteenth century and the collection also includes a painted wooden cover depicting two lions and flowering plants.[fn23]
The ‘Becket Mazer’: its early ‘life’
Today most of the Canterbury mazer collection belongs to St Nicholas’ hospital rather than to St John’s, and this may reflect the balance between the two houses from the medieval period. Furthermore, certain mazers in the collection have been linked to St Nicholas’s over the centuries, and while it is likely both institutions had far greater numbers of these items and other wooden bowls in the Middle Ages than now survive, this article will treat the ‘Becket mazer’ as having always belonged to St Nicholas’ hospital. Even though there is no documentary evidence to substantiate the dating of this mazer, the consensus of expert opinion places it in the fourteenth century, albeit it has been altered over time.[fn24] One of the alterations concerns the roundel, but it is impossible to know what was there before it was replaced by the piece of rock crystal, that is whether it was plain or had a pictorial or other design. Nevertheless, by drawing on the evidence of the other contemporary mazers belonging to the Canterbury hospitals and a Christ Church Priory inventory, it is feasible to suggest something about its potential early use.
[pg95]St Nicholas’ hospital at Harbledown (Fig. 3), a mile to the north-west of Canterbury and located within the archiepiscopal hundred of Westgate, was founded by Archbishop Lanfranc in about 1084, which means that it is the first post-Conquest hospital in England. Like its twin institution also founded by Lanfranc to the north-east just outside Canterbury’s Northgate, St Nicholas’ housed thirty men and thirty women, although these were to be lepers rather than the poor and infirm at St John’s. The settlement of Harbledown straddled the old road between London and Canterbury, Roman Watling Street, Lanfranc locating his hospital where it would have been convenient for the lepers to solicit alms from passing travellers and pilgrims.[fn25] Furthermore, Lanfranc had provided both hospitals with a substantial monetary endowment and like St John’s, St Nicholas’ received further donations in the form of lands, rents and other assets.[fn26]
[fg]jpg|Fig. 3 St Nicholas’ hospital chapel at Harbledown – photo Sheila Sweetinburgh.|Image[/fg]
Notwithstanding its prestige as an ancient archiepiscopal foundation that was accommodating a hundred lepers by the early fourteenth century, the hospital was seeking royal tax exemptions on account of its poverty.[fn27] This was not unusual among medieval hospitals, and it may have continued to be seen as a suitable recipient for charitable gifts within the spiritual economy. Having argued elsewhere that another of St Nicholas’ mazers, the larger ‘Guy of Warwick mazer’, may have been given to the hospital in the fourteenth century by John de Beauchamp of the great Warwick family or by a leading member of his entourage, it is possible [pg96]that the ‘Becket mazer’ was similarly a gift to the hospital, albeit with either a plain or decorated silver-gilt roundel.[fn28] As a far less ornate item, the donor may have been a local leading citizen or a person of similar status, and while this must remain supposition, it may have been offered by someone who wished to join the hospital’s community. Even though the giving of corrodies had been forbidden by Archbishop Winchelsey in the hospital’s revised regulations of 1299, this suggests people had sought such places, and Winchelsey’s successors, as well as the prior at Christ Church during archiepiscopal vacancies, deployed this system to provide accommodation for their servants and others in the later Middle Ages.[fn29] Furthermore, even though the evidence is from the fifteenth century and from St John’s hospital in Sandwich, it appears members of a hospital community or their relatives might donate a mazer to their chosen hospital, perhaps to secure a place there. Such a gift might be personalised, as at Sandwich, the inscription on the roundel indicating that it was for the soul of Christine Pikefish, who resided at St John’s hospital from 1418 to 1424, the mazer remaining there after her death as a reminder to the community to pray for her soul.[fn30]
A Christ Church Priory inventory may point to a similar relationship between mazer and monk.[fn31] In 1328 the refectorer compiled a list of over 180 mazers and while they were frequently designated by their appearance, Roger de Holyngbourne also used ownership and naming. Of the mazers linked to a hundred named monks, only two of these monks were apparently alive in 1328, while almost seventy had been at the priory in the mid to late thirteenth century, and others over a century earlier. Nonetheless, even though a few mazers were linked to long dead, often highly revered brethren such as Prior Wibert, the elderly monks in 1328 who had been at the priory for several decades would have known the monk ‘owners’ or at least known of them through hearsay as they used these mazers for their own meals in the refectory. Such a bringing together of the living and the dead at mealtimes was presumably seen as especially poignant being reflected in the depiction of christ in majesty often painted on refectory walls and the resemblance to the Eucharist. Additionally, the sharing of meals as portrayed in the Gospels offered points of comparison within the life at Christ Church, which was further deployed if the priory followed the pattern seen at Durham and at other Benedictine houses. For the Durham monks after their meal would process to the monastic cemetery and there pray bareheaded for a considerable time for the souls of their deceased brethren.
The loss of almost all of St Nicholas’ hospital records in the Baedeker raid on Canterbury in 1942 means that it is impossible to know whether the community adopted a similar approach, but late medieval testamentary materials indicate that commemoration was an important aspect of the community’s life, which could extend to those outside the hospital. For example, John Whytlok wanted his name to be recorded in the bede-rolls at both St Nicholas’ and St John’s.[fn32] The linking to meals is more explicit in the case of Joane Bakke, albeit this was at St John’s, because she wanted the brothers and sisters there to celebrate her obit for three years as they would for a brother or sister who had died at the hospital.[fn33] This seems to have involved a meal of bread, cheese and ale, which could have included the use of mazers as drinking bowls. Such commemorative drinking similarly occurred every Sunday at St Bartholomew’s hospital at Sandwich, the fourteenth-[pg97]century regulations stating that the brothers and sisters should share a farthing’s worth of ale from a common pot before ending the evening by praying together for the hospital’s benefactors.[fn34] Thus, even though the ‘Becket mazer’ probably originated as a gift from an outside benefactor or someone seeking a place at St Nicholas’ hospital, it may have remained in some way linked to that person after death, continuing to be used by one ‘owner’ after another, an object that was ‘good to remember with’ concerning commemoration and praying for the soul of the donor and even possibly those who came after. Consequently, the mazer would become part of the hospital’s treasured plate through its antiquity and association, rather than through its intrinsic value as a commodity. Its survival during the later Middle Ages due potentially to its perceived worth among St Nicholas’ community as a singular thing, while seemingly many of its fellow drinking bowls remained commodities and perished when they became worthless.[fn35]
Before and after the dissolution
Located beside the London Road, those at St Nicholas’ hospital before 1170 had presumably collected alms from pilgrims predominately travelling to the shrines of St Augustine, and SS Dunstan and Alphage at St Augustine’s Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral respectively. However, thereafter it was St Thomas of Canterbury who was the greatest draw for pilgrims visiting Canterbury. Even though by the early sixteenth century the numbers coming to the shrine had declined, the hospital’s position just below the brow of the hill from which the newly erected Bell Harry Tower of the cathedral would have dominated the scene may have enhanced its ability to attract donations.[fn36]
Yet it is interesting that in 1513 perhaps one of the most famous pilgrims who visited Canterbury at this time, the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, was stopped as he passed the hospital on his way back to London. Publishing an account in 1526 of this pilgrimage under the title Perigrinatio Religionis Ergo, he noted that it was customary whenever anyone on horseback was seen approaching St Nicholas’ hospital that one of the old almsmen would run out from there, sprinkle the rider with holy water and thrust towards that person the upper leather of a shoe with a brass ring on it, in which was a piece of glass that might be taken for a jewel.[fn37] Having kissed the jewel, the traveller was expected to give a small sum of money. For Erasmus and his friend Dean Colet, this encounter took place as they travelled away from Canterbury, and Colet who was nearest the hospital on Erasmus’ left side received more of the holy water than his companion. According to Erasmus, Colet tolerated this but was far less sure about the shoe, especially when he was informed by the old man that ‘it is saynt Thomas shoo’.[fn38] As a consequence, Colet gave nothing to the hospital brother, whereas Erasmus was prepared to offer him a small sum (Fig. 4).
[fg]jpg|Fig. 4 Gatehouse of St Nicholas’ hospital – photo Sheila Sweetinburgh.|Image[/fg]
This narrative suggests that in the early Tudor period those at the hospital believed that they had a relic of St Thomas in the form of at least part of a shoe which still contained enough of the ornamental buckle that a jewel or something similar was still attached. Moreover, this knowledge was not confined to St Nicholas’ but had been dissipated far more widely and was perhaps best known by travellers and pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury. Presumably such a relic would [pg98]have been viewed as extremely valuable by the hospital’s community, as well as reinforcing the link between the hospital and the saint that had also been established by Henry II’s penitential pilgrimage in 1174 and his subsequent gift of part of Canterbury’s fee farm to St Nicholas’.[fn39] Yet neither this nor any other relic of St Thomas is mentioned in contemporary wills made either by the hospital’s brothers or sisters, or by any local testators in reference to the hospital. Such an omission is strange, not least because in the early sixteenth century the city had (re)created an annual St Thomas pageant and although not numerous, certain testators did give bequests to Becket’s shrine.[fn40]
Two decades after Erasmus’ publication, the situation had changed and when Henry VIII’s commissioners reported in 1546 regarding the hospital’s possessions in the chapel, they listed two copes, seven sets of vestments, a censer and four mazer bowls, but there is no mention of Becket’s shoe.[fn41] This might not be surprising considering the king’s animosity towards Becket, as witnessed by the complete obliteration of the shrine and the directive that Becket’s name should be erased from all liturgical calendars and books, as well as books such as The Golden Legend. For if the shoe existed, it had probably been secreted away and would have been much easier to hide than part of St Augustine’s shrine that was said to have been taken a few years earlier to Chilham, outside Canterbury.[fn42] Yet the shoe was not forgotten and in his Perambulation of Kent William Lambarde in [pg99]1570 was concerned to highlight ‘the shamefull idolatrie’ of late medieval people who were prepared to kiss it thereby ‘abusing the lips’ that were intended solely to offer praise to God.[fn43] However there is nothing in his account to indicate that he believed the shoe was still at the hospital, rather it was a useful vehicle to illustrate the perils of ‘the continuall craft of Sathan’.[fn44]
Of the four mazers in the commissioners’ report, none were described but their presence in the chapel may suggest that they contained decorated roundels rather than plain ones. However, there is nothing that survives from the hospital’s archive from this period to identify the mazers, while the single mazer listed as being at St John’s hospital is merely said to have been small and bound with silver.[fn45] This absence may be due to the loss of the hospitals’ records in 1942, but a more likely explanation is that the records deemed vital by such charitable institutions were charters and deeds, that is those relating to land ownership, not about objects. Furthermore, unless such objects had special value or importance to the community, that is their singularity was denoted through their being precious, they might not survive, either sold as commodities or lost as worthless.[fn46] The same situation appears to pertain to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the few surviving documents appear to show that record keeping at both hospitals was somewhat haphazard. The focus was on rents, as well as the financial situation more generally, not the state of the hospitals’ possessions.[fn47] Indeed, when Batteley began the task of copying out the charters kept in St Nicholas’ chest, he found that some disappeared between his visits.[fn48]
Regarding the mazers, there is a sole documentary reference to one mazer in the possessions of St Nicolas’ hospital. This is the ‘Guy of Warwick mazer’ that Duncombe and Batteley in their volume The Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals said was stored in the hospital’s chest, along with ancient charters and other deeds, in the hall. Both recognised the great antiquity of the mazer and noted that it was used as a communal drinking cup by the brothers and sisters on the annual feast day of St Nicholas, the hospital’s patronal saint.[fn49] In addition to its antiquity, the choice of this mazer may reflect its considerable size, as well as the fine craftsmanship of the roundel because there is nothing in the surviving records to indicate that the hospital community was aware of its early history.
Of the other mazers, nothing is known except that they survived these centuries. Other objects similarly survived, including several large pewter plates, a few collecting boxes and some other pieces. Whether the pewter plates should be seen as commodities in Kopytoff’s terms is a possibility, but the mazers and wooden collecting boxes may be far closer to the idea of singularity.[fn50] For even though there was a discontinuity between the past and these objects, they may have been kept as valued curios, as well as acting as markers of the hospital’s ancient heritage, an idea that may have become even more pertinent in the nineteenth century.
In contrast, the story of the upper part of Becket’s shoe with the crystal continued to be repeated. For example, in his Antiquities of Canterbury, William Somner cited Wever as the authority that the shoe had been at St Nicholas’s hospital in early Tudor times and that it had been seen as a sacred relic.[fn51] Over a century later, Edward Hasted repeated the same story, continuing to set it in a pre-Reformation context, as did the publisher of The Kentish Traveller’s Companion in 1787 who implied that the shoe no longer existed.[fn52] Instead, it had become something from the [pg100]superstitious past where numerous pilgrims kissed a ‘bauble’ before proceeding to the saint’s shrine, and twenty years later G. A. Cooke espoused similar sentiments about the hospital’s former possession, calling the shoe a ‘fanciful relic’.[fn53]
The long nineteenth century
However, by the later nineteenth century attitudes had changed, which seemingly had a transformative effect in terms of the ‘Becket mazer’s’ form and attitudes towards it. Even though there are huge gaps in the evidence, at some point before W. H. St John Hope read his paper in 1886 on English medieval mazers one of these bowls at St Nicholas’ hospital had been altered. This involved the removal of the ‘original’ circular medallion and its replacement with an oval-shaped rock crystal within a circular gilded mount. The band around the rim had been damaged at some point, a piece having disappeared, and this had been repaired by inserting a section of silver (as seen in the mazer today) rather than silver-gilt. In his discussion concerning St Nicholas’ four mazers and the one belonging to St John’s hospital, St John Hope did not speculate when he thought the repair to the band had taken place.[fn54] Rather his focus was on the identity of the rock crystal which he was confident had come from Becket’s shoe, reporting that it was ‘commonly known as Becket’s shoe buckle’, albeit towards the end of his description he becomes slightly less definite about this tradition. Nevertheless, in his repetition of Erasmus’ story the tone is less judgemental than that of Cooke, Hope calling it ‘amusing’ and he also referred to the bishop of Dover’s comment that some contemporary Canterbury pilgrims devoutly regard it as a Becket ‘relic’.[fn55]
Even though an expert silversmith cannot date precisely the addition of the rock crystal, the mazer does reveal a few clues, albeit much of this remains speculative.[fn56] For example, while an obvious observation, the placing of an oval-shaped crystal in a round hole implies that this was far from an ideal situation, and thus that someone felt that there was a very special reason for making this alteration to provide the stone with a suitable setting. In addition, the gilded mount around the stone is mercury or fire gilded and this ancient technique was used until the mid-nineteenth century, the safer method of electroplating only becoming commercially available from the 1840s and fire gilding did not disappear until c.1870.[fn57] Dating this mount on stylistic terms is similarly challenging, but the pattern of little indents around the circumference could conceivably be viewed as displaying a Gothic look. Whether there is a piece of foil under the stone cannot be ascertained securely, but it is possible, and this technique was used in Victorian times to enhance the appearance of rock crystal.
If this was the time when the ‘Becket mazer’ was created, why may this have occurred and what cultural and other developments may have been influential? Even though it is difficult to disentangle the factors that may have been significant, for simplicity this article will consider them under the headings of religion, culture and the economy, especially as they affected the cathedral community and thus perhaps the archepiscopal hospital at Harbledown.
As Jeremy Gregory states, the Canterbury Dean and Chapter in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw themselves as fighting against non-Anglicans, including Roman Catholics, to preserve their Anglican church with its strong bond [pg101]between established religion and the state.[fn58] This fear of popery as a dangerous force that might destroy Great Britain was not solely confined to the cathedral cloister and, as well as leading to mass rallies and the establishment of educational institutions, Gregory sees it as producing strong feelings against the medieval church and what were seen as its superstitious and exploitative ways, matters that Anglicans denounced locally and nationally.[fn59]
Yet, as noted above, such views in Canterbury had changed a century later, for it was countenanced that an archiepiscopal establishment could own a relic that was revered, and that of all the saints, it was Thomas Becket. In religious terms this major shift within the Church of England, and specifically at Canterbury, was due to the influence of High Churchmen, although not all were ardent members of the Oxford Movement.[fn60] However, in seeking what they saw as ‘the beauty of holiness’, these Victorian clerical reformers were keen to resurrect certain medieval practices, including fasting before early communion.[fn61] Although some cathedral clergy at Canterbury did not agree with such developments, a situation replicated nationally, and the balance within the precincts did alter during Victoria’s reign, in broad terms the move was towards greater ritual, the cathedral liturgy focusing more on prayer and the eucharist and less on preaching.[fn62] Consequently, the enthusiastic, or at least benign, view of the bishop of Dover as expressed to hope would have been endorsed by Archbishop Benson, who as a High Churchman would have had no qualms regarding this treasure at his hospital at Harbledown and the responses it generated.[fn63]
Culturally, the Victorian enthusiasm for medievalism was expressed through architecture, art works, literature and objects. One expression of this desire to revive a Gothic past romanticized in terms of chivalric values and a ‘miracle-believing faith’ was the popularity of the cult surrounding King Arthur that benefitted several places including Glastonbury, Winchester and Tintagel. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott’s tale of Ivanhoe and other novels offered attractive portrayals of folk heroes such as Robin Hood, and at the same time through such romantism of medieval life in natural habitats such as woodlands offered a stark contrast to William Blake’s ‘satanic mills’. Even though Canterbury did not experience industrialisation comparable to parts of London or in northern cities, it was not immune to these cultural changes seeing the development of a large-scale tannery, gas works and numerous breweries.[fn64] In addition, events in revolutionary France and later in 1830s Europe meant many within the establishment, and even those previously sympathetic to reform turned instead to traditional ideas, seeing the revival of Gothic forms as symptomatic of Englishness.[fn65] Furthermore, although the form this would take did lead to differences among practitioners and over the century, the concept of a national style would in turn influence the development of the arts and crafts movement. At Canterbury Robert Willis’ lectures in 1844, his subsequent detailed and scholarly published work on the cathedral’s fabric, and later analysis of the old monastic precincts, were similarly instrumental because he underlined the importance of the cathedral for its great architectural merit.[fn66] In response to these developments and in concert with the religious preferences of some within the cathedral and parochial clergy, a programme of restoration rather than repair was deployed at Canterbury concerning fixtures and fittings as well as the fabric in the cathedral, including the choir, around the precincts, such [pg102]as the chapter house and parts of the archbishop’s palace, the old St Augustine’s abbey, as well as several local parish churches including St Mildred’s and St Paul’s.[fn67] Not that all of these nineteenth century architectural interventions were solely Gothic revivals, but advocates of this development, such as Sir Gilbert Scott and William Butterfield, were important in shaping much of Canterbury’s ecclesiastical environment.[fn68] Similarly, W. D. Caröe’s later extensive restoration of Christ Church Gate highlighted the contemporary wish among some architects to draw on purer, pre-industrial ideals of art and craftsmanship, albeit ‘improving’ on this medieval past through the use of modern techniques and their somewhat dubious interpretations of historical sources.[fn69]
Thus, albeit religious ideas would become influential, in many ways Lyle sees the initial impetus behind the Gothic revival as secular.[fn70] Furthermore, it is probably also important to consider the economic implications, especially for a city that had welcomed pilgrims for centuries, and probably rightly envisaged the Middle Ages as Canterbury’s heyday. Rather than the stagecoach, it was seemingly the arrival of first the railways and later the motor car that enhanced the city’s attractiveness to day trippers from London or for those staying at the increasing number of seaside resorts on the east Kent coast. From the late 1850s Dean Alford’s innovative Sunday afternoon sermons at the cathedral drew large crowds, especially during the summer season, and the popularising of cathedral worship was extended by his two immediate successors.[fn71] This influx of visitors was also swelled by those who wished to view the results of the extensive restoration and other work on the fabric within the precincts, requiring the employment of cathedral guides. Even though after expenses the sum was insufficient to make a noticeable contribution, the innovative step in the late nineteenth century of allocating the fees collected for showing visitors around to the cathedral’s fabric fund firmly linked these two ideas together.[fn72] Not that all welcomed what they saw as intrusions into the precincts, but for others it reflected the late Victorian mood, seeing Canterbury ‘as a national ecclesiastical and historical memorial and monument’.[fn73] Furthermore, the idea of appealing for donations from the public, and especially from wealthy patrons towards specific building projects had been tried in the past and was to continue as a method to enhance the fabric fund into the twentieth century.[fn74]
The hospital authorities at Harbledown presumably watched the developments at the cathedral with interest, especially because in 1840 there was a pressing need to rebuild the decayed corrodians’ houses, some of which dated from the seventeenth century.[fn75] Even though the hospital continued to hold land locally, how far this protected the community financially during the nineteenth century is difficult to judge but as for Canterbury more broadly the opportunities presented by the arrival of first Victorian and then Edwardian tourists seem to have been grasped by the authorities. This may have begun as early as the mid-eighteenth century. An engraving by Arthur Nelson depicts a pastoral view of the hospital showing a well-dressed couple strolling along the lower road from the city to the hospital, a scene that suggests such a walk was suitable for genteel visitors who might wish to visit St Nicholas’.[fn76] Of specific importance was the original Norman church, but a century later it is feasible the ‘Black Prince’s Well’ (Fig. 5) had been added to the hospital’s attractions because the extant carving of three ostrich feathers looks Victorian.[fn77] By the later nineteenth century, therefore, it would [pg103]have been a noteworthy feature as visitors ascended the hill towards the main hospital buildings which included the seventeenth-century refectory (common hall) where the authorities kept St Nicholas’ remaining medieval possessions. Two early twentieth-century photographs show the Becket mazer with its crystal among others displayed, but a third photo as a postcard suggests that the authorities were still claiming that they had Becket’s shoe. Indeed, the card’s owner noted that the party in 1908 intended to drive out to Harbledown to see ‘the authentic shoe of Becket’ having already ‘had luncheon in a dear little tea house’, the party intending to travel to Dover the following day.[fn78]
Leaving aside the dubious shoe where the upper leather had now acquired a sole, the impetus surrounding the creation of the ‘Becket mazer’ might be seen as encapsulating the religious, cultural and economic forces seen at work in Canterbury, especially among its ecclesiastical community.[fn79] Furthermore, while still retaining its singularity as a treasured relic in both senses for some (see above), in Lowenthal’s terms others may have felt ‘more at home with it’ having put their own stamp on it in the form of these alterations.[fn80] For others, again, it was more of a curiosity among other similarly understood objects, such as the collecting boxes or other mazers, that potentially might enter the marketplace to become commodities.[fn81] Not that there is any evidence to suggest the hospital authorities contemplated the sale of these items, but the provision of a donation [pg104]in return for viewing them was at the very least a possibility. Yet, rather than commercialisation this was presumably envisaged by the authorities as a form of gift exchange within the concept of the spiritual economy that had been part of the hospital’s ethos throughout its existence.[fn82] Nonetheless, it does suggest that the biography of the ‘Becket mazer’ for the nineteenth and early twentieth century might benefit from viewing it as moving slightly from the position of singularity towards commoditisation, while at the same time being a ‘renovated relic’ with which contemporaries were more comfortable because it was ‘a product of the present, of people like [them] – not wholly the work of strange folk of long ago, with their weird and outlandish ways.’[fn83]
[fg]jpg|Fig. 5 Harbledown Black Prince’s Well – photo Sheila Sweetinburgh.|Image[/fg]
Recent times
The collection of mazer bowls seems to have remained at St Nicholas’ hospital during the twentieth century, and in the 1960s they were apparently freely on show with the hospital’s other treasures to those who made an appointment to see them.[fn84] However, in the summer of 1968 they were transferred to the Victoria & Albert Museum, and in the case of the ‘Becket mazer’ this was not due to its devotional value as a Becket relic but that it with the others from the two Canterbury Norman hospitals were very rare survivals of early fourteenth-century artefacts and thus required greater protection.[fn85] Yet the timing is interesting because it was only two years before the 800th anniversary of Becket’s murder and in 1969 the Dean and Chapter would begin in earnest a scheme to set up an exhibition of silverware from churches across the diocese, as well as a small exhibition of twelfth-century art relating to Becket and Canterbury with the intention that it would be finished for 1970.[fn86] Even though it soon became clear there were too many obstacles to achieve this for the centenary, the removal of the mazers to London is odd, especially because of the links between the hospital authorities and the cathedral clergy. Nevertheless, a succession of entries within the chapter minute Book indicates that during the 1970s there was far more factionalism than co-operation inside and outside the cathedral, and nobody seems to have given any thought to the ‘Becket mazer’ still at the museum in London.[fn87]
According to Ingram Hill, the agreement with the Victoria & Albert Museum meant that the mazers were on indefinite loan, but they were back in Canterbury after ten years.[fn88] Which party was responsible for this decision is unclear because neither appears to have the necessary records, but the fact that the archdeacon reported at a chapter meeting in September 1978 that the trustees of the hospital were wondering what to do with them and that they would be happy to consider any interest by the cathedral points to the initiative for their return coming from London.[fn89] However, the cathedral community was still embroiled in a dispute over the siting of the new Treasury and there was no attempt to take up the hospital trustees’ offer.[fn90] Indeed, when the Treasury Exhibition finally opened in 1979 in the western crypt there was no mention of the ‘Becket mazer’ in the chapter minutes, instead the artefacts on display were said to date from the fifteenth century to modern times.[fn91]
It is feasible, nevertheless, that the hospital authorities were still deeply concerned about providing suitable protection for their mazer collection, but unfortunately the [pg105]evidence is missing.[fn92] To achieve this level of security, it was presumably agreed by St Nicholas’ trustees that most of the collection should go on loan to Canterbury City Council to become part of its heritage museum at the Beaney, later transferred in 1987 to the poor priests’ hospital, but that the ‘Becket mazer’ with its ‘link’ to the cathedral’s saint should join other diocesan artefacts in the cathedral Treasury Exhibition in the western crypt.[fn93] There it remained, albeit the cathedral’s website suggests that it had newly arrived in 2016, which is strange. The website entry again repeats the story of Erasmus and that it is of ‘specific interest as the crystal in the centre is said to have come from Thomas Becket’s shoe’. It further notes that ‘legend has it that the crystal set at the heart of this particular mazer was taken from the shoe worn by Becket at the time of his murder’ and thus it is ‘a curious object that gives us a glimpse into medieval pilgrimage and the history of Becket.’[fn94]
Notwithstanding this desire to label and thus affirm its historical significance, does this leave the ‘Becket mazer’ as an isolated feature, segregated physically and metaphorically from its fellows?[fn95] It may be one of the four mazers at Harbledown in 1546 but the evidence appears to suggest that at this time it had a circular print of some sort at its base, which may have depicted a saint thereby helping to explain the mazer’s survival. Yet, it was probably not an image of St Nicholas, and consequently not especially valued regarding the annual commemoration of the hospital’s patronal saint. Even more problematic is the issue of the provenance of the crystal because all the early modern and later commentators rehearse Erasmus’ account, providing nothing substantial beyond this alleged incident c. 1513, while the only shoe fails to meet the criteria mentioned in the same account.
Nevertheless, there is another way to explore the cultural significance of the ‘Becket mazer’ in terms of legacy, for regardless of whether it has any provable link to Becket or not, it is this perception that is the crucial aspect. For by focusing on how, why and what such an object ‘means’ in today’s world, as well as seeking to try to unlock ideas about its meaning in past cultures, it has been possible to investigate how such ‘artefacts are at once past and present’ (Fig. 6). In addition, and probably equally applicable here, by exploring how the mazer has been protected as a relic, let alone how it has been embellished, it appears that in Lowenthal’s terms this ‘skews its form and our impressions’ and thus our ‘interaction with the past’s residues ceaselessly alters their nature and context, unwittingly if not intentionally’. Consequently, from the mazer’s possible use at St Nicholas’ hospital in the Middle Ages, to the hospital’s relationship with St Thomas in the sixteenth century and the implications of the Reformation, and then the hospital’s later history in modern times when once again the hospital’s authorities and others seemingly sought to revitalise the association between hospital and saint, in part a reflection of Canterbury’s and the cathedral’s shift from pilgrim to tourist trade, this assessment has suggested that ‘the past informs the present [and] that its relics [such as this mazer] are crucial to our identity’.[fn96] Yet, it is important to end with a couple of cautionary points. Firstly, we cannot see objects as they were seen by our ancestors because we cannot unknow what we know and secondly any attempt to give meaning in the present to objects from the past needs to recognise that ‘they do things differently there’.[fn97][pg106]
[fg]jpg|Fig. 6 Mazer amongst other treasures. ‘Canterbury, Mother-City of the Anglo-Saxon Race’, 1903 published by the Canterbury Chamber of Trade, with the co-operation and assistance of the Corporation of the city – Cross & Jackman. Courtesy of Tina Machado (Historic Canterbury website).|Image[/fg]
Endnotes
[fn]1|Or it was until the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is currently in storage. I should like to thank Dr Sarah Turner, the collections manager, for access to the mazer and to Justin Richardson, a master silversmith and jeweler, for his expert opinion (see below).[/fn]
[fn]2|I. Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’, in The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), p. 69.[/fn]
[fn]3|Kopytoff citing Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915), ibid, p. 73.[/fn]
[fn]4|Ibid., pp. 80–3.[/fn]
[fn]5|Ibid., p. 90.[/fn]
[fn]6|D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country Revisited (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 386, 389.[/fn]
[fn]7|Ibid, pp. 434, 436, 438.[/fn]
[fn]8|Ibid., pp. 445–6, 472, 495.[/fn]
[fn]9|Ibid., p. 394; D. Miller, ‘Introduction’, in Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, ed. D. Miller (London, 1998), pp. 5–6.[/fn]
[fn]10|R. Wood, The Wooden Bowl (Ammanford, 2005), pp. 38, 72.[/fn]
[fn]11|Ibid., p. 75. MS BL Cotton Galba E.IV, ff. 178–80; there is a copy of the inventory in W. H. St John Hope, ‘Of the English medieval drinking bowls called mazers’, Archaeologia 50 (1887), 176–81.[/fn]
[fn]12|Wood, Wooden Bowl, pp. 37–8, 76, 77, 79.[/fn]
[fn]13|Ibid., p. 38. 107[/fn]
[fn]14|Hope, ‘Mazers’, 129; Wood, Wooden Bowl, p. 108.[/fn]
[fn]15|R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Word List (Oxford, 1965), pp. 306, 308.[/fn]
[fn]16|Wood, Wooden Bowl, p. 102.[/fn]
[fn]17|Among the extant mazers, repairs using metal ‘staples’ are fairly common.[/fn]
[fn]18|Wood, Wooden Bowl, pp. 103, 105; MS BL Cotton Galba E. IV, ff. 178–80.[/fn]
[fn]19|Wood, Wooden Bowl, pp. 100, 102.[/fn]
[fn]20|Ibid., p. 102.[/fn]
[fn]21|Lid of the ‘Bute mazer’; National Museum of Scotland IL.2001.182.1.2[/fn]
[fn]22|Now in the York Minster Archives is a mazer known either as ‘Archbishop Scrope’s Indulgence Bowl’ or ‘The cordwainers’ mazer bowl’, see Rev. D. J. Hobman, The Story of the “Cordwainers” Mazer Bowl (York, 2019).[/fn]
[fn]23|Wood, Wooden Bowl, p. 100.[/fn]
[fn]24|Hope, ‘Mazers’, 143; Rev. C. E. Woodruff, ‘Church Plate in Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana 28 (1909), 152; Canon D. Ingram-Hill, ‘Inventory of the Possessions of St Nicholas’ Hospital’ (unpub., 1988); Canterbury Cathedral collections. It is one of the examples that Christopher Woolgar mentions in his recent article: C. M. Woolgar, ‘Meanings of food in medieval Britain and Ireland: themes’, Journal of Medieval History 49: 5 (2023), 583–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2268346 [accessed 09/11/2024].[/fn]
[fn]25|Rev. D. Ingram-Hill, Eastbridge Hospital and the Ancient Almshouses of Canterbury (Canterbury, 1969), p. 16; S. Sweetinburgh, The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift- giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin, 2004), pp. 78–9.[/fn]
[fn]26|MS Lambeth Palace Library MSS 1131, 1132.[/fn]
[fn]27|Calendar Patent Rolls 1334–1338, p. 184.[/fn]
[fn]28|S. Sweetinburgh, ‘A Tale of Two Mazers: Negotiating Donor/Recipient Relationships at Kentish Medieval Hospitals’, Archaeologia Cantiana 136 (2015), 117–26.[/fn]
[fn]29|R. Graham (trans. and ed.), Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis AD 1294–1313, Canterbury and York Society, 2 vols (oxford, 1952, 1956), ii, p. 831; J. Duncombe and N. Battely, The History and Antiquities of the Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals at or near Canterbury viz. St Nicholas at Harbledown, St John, Northgate and St Thomas of Eastbridge, with Some Account of the Priory of St Gregory, the Nunnery of St Sepulcre, the Hospitals of St James and St Lawrence and Maynard’s Spittle (London, 1785), pp. 211–13. See, for example, those listed by Hussey from the priory registers who entered through its patronage; A. Hussey, ‘The hospitals of Kent’, The Antiquary 45 (1909), 417–18; Sweetinburgh, Role of the Hospital, pp. 115–16.[/fn]
[fn]30|Sweetinburgh, ‘Tale’, 127–32.[/fn]
[fn]31|S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Remembering the Dead at Dinner-Time’, in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings, ed. T. hamling and C. Richardson (Farnham, 2010), pp. 257–66.[/fn]
[fn]32|MS KHLC PRC 32/7, f. 70.[/fn]
[fn]33|MS KHLC PRC 17/7, f. 213.[/fn]
[fn]34|Sweetinburgh, Role of the Hospital, p. 215; Sweetinburgh, ‘Tale’, 129–30.[/fn]
[fn]35|Kopytoff, ‘Cultural Biography’, pp. 75–6.[/fn]
[fn]36|S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Pilgrimage in ‘An Age of Plague’: Seeking Canterbury’s ‘Hooly Blisful Martir’ in 1420 and 1470’, in The Fifteenth Century XII: Society in an Age of Plague, ed. L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (Woodbridge, 2013), p. 73.[/fn]
[fn]37|D. Erasmus, Perigrinatio Religionis Ergo: Ye Pylgremage of Pure Deuotyon, source, ‘The Earliest English Translations of Erasmus’ ‘Colloqua’ 1536–1566’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 2 (1928), 187–8, Leuvan University Press: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23971948 [accessed 14/03/2020].[/fn]
[fn]38|Ibid., 188.[/fn]
[fn]39|D. Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London and New York, 2000), pp. 49–50.[/fn]
[fn]40|S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Looking to the Past: The St Thomas Pageant in Early Tudor Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana 137 (2016), 164, 169–73.[/fn]
[fn]41|E. Holland, trans., The Canterbury Chantries and Hospitals in 1546: A Supplement to Kent Chantries, Kent Records 12 Supplement (Ashford, 1934), p. 41. [/fn]
[fn]42|J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII 18, ii (1543) (London, 1902), p. 303.[/fn]
[fn]43|W. Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent (1570, new edn Bath, 1970), p. 288.[/fn]
[fn]44|Ibid., p. 287.[/fn]
[fn]45|Holland, Canterbury Chantries, p. 19.[/fn]
[fn]46|As worthless, they were singular objects having no exchange value; Kopytoff, ‘Cultural Biography’, pp. 74–5.[/fn]
[fn]47|MS Lambeth Palace Library MS 1169.[/fn]
[fn]48|MS Lambeth Palace Library MS 1132, see also MS 1355, f. 16v.[/fn]
[fn]49|Duncombe and Batteley, Archiepiscopal Hospitals, p. 180.[/fn]
[fn]50|Kopytoff, ‘Cultural Biography’, pp. 80–1.[/fn]
[fn]51|W. Somner, The Antiquities of Canterbury, with an intro. By W. Urry (1703, repr. Wakefield, 1977), p. 86.[/fn]
[fn]52|E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 12 vols, 2nd edn (Canterbury, 1797–1801, repr. 1972), 9, p. 15. W. Gilman, publ., The Kentish Traveller’s Companion, ‘3rd edn’ (Rochester, 1787), p. 143.[/fn]
[fn]53|G. A. Cooke, Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Kent (London, c.1810), p. 141.[/fn]
[fn]54|In addition to these mazers, he noted that St Nicholas’ had a further three mazers which had neither bands nor prints; Hope, ‘Mazers’, 137.[/fn]
[fn]55|Ibid., 142–3.[/fn]
[fn]56|I am very grateful to Justin Richardson for his observations on the mazer.[/fn]
[fn]57|Antique Sage, ‘The history of a lost art – mercury Gilding’ (2015–21): https://www.antiquesage.com/history-lost-art-mercury-gilding/ [accessed 30/08/2021].[/fn]
[fn]58|J. Gregory, ‘Canterbury and the Ancien Régime: The Dean and Chapter, 1660–1828’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson, N. Ramsey and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), pp. 252–4.[/fn]
[fn]59|Ibid., pp. 238–9, 254.[/fn]
[fn]60|P. B. Nockles, ‘Aspects of Cathedral Life, 1828–1898’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson et al. (Oxford, 1995), pp. 257, 270–1.[/fn]
[fn]61|Ibid., pp. 274–5. As an indicator of the enthusiasm for sacred practices and symbolism during this period, see Rev. J. M. Neale and Rev. B. Webb, trans. and introduction, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments. A Translation of the First Book of The rationale divinorum Officiorum by William Durandus (Cambridge, 1893, 1st trans. 1842), reprinted 2007.[/fn]
[fn]62|Nockles, ‘Cathedral Life’, pp. 273, 275.[/fn]
[fn]63|Ibid., pp. 275–6.[/fn]
[fn]64|Nevertheless, contemporary prints of the city emphasize its rural setting; L. and M. Lyle, Canterbury and the Gothic Revival (Stroud, 2013), pp. 52–4.[/fn]
[fn]65|Ibid., pp. 55–6.[/fn]
[fn]66|Ibid., pp. 35–6.[/fn]
[fn]67|Nockles, ‘Cathedral Life’, pp. 280–1; K. Eustace, ‘The Post-Reformation Monuments’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson et al. (Oxford, 1995), pp. 535–6; 538, 541.[/fn]
[fn]68|Lowenthal, Past, pp. 498, 517.[/fn]
[fn]69|Ibid., pp. 500, 501–2. R. Austin and P. Seary, ‘Christ Church Gate, Canterbury Cathedral: A Desk-based Assessment, Revision 1’ (unpublished CAT report, 2009), pp. 36–61.[/fn]
[fn]70|Lyle, Canterbury, p. 54.[/fn]
[fn]71|Nockles, ‘Cathedral Life’, pp. 272–3, 275.[/fn]
[fn]72|Ibid., p. 282.[/fn]
[fn]73|Ibid., p. 295.[/fn]
[fn]74|Ibid., p. 283.[/fn]
[fn]75|D. Ingram Hill, The Ancient Hospitals and Almshouses of Canterbury (Canterbury, 1969), p. 20; J. Purchese, ‘The Hospital of S. Nicholas, Harbledown’, in Harbledown Heritage, ed. P. Osborne (Harbledown, 2000), p. 36 citing the charity commissioners’ report of 1837.[/fn]
[fn]76|St Nicholas Harbledown in 1766 from an engraving by Arthur Nelson, cited in N. Orme and M. Webster, The English Hospital 1070–1570 (New Haven and London, 1995), p. 36. The ‘Whitehall inn’ was located on this lower road in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and it also functioned as a tea gardens during its later history, apparently disappearing c. 1906; M. Kidd, ‘Inns Past and Present’, in Harbledown Heritage, ed. Osborne, pp. 40–1.[/fn]
[fn]77|This was the Revd Ingram Hill’s view, and just as fanciful, he believed, was the story that the Black Prince had asked for water from this spring as he lay dying; Ingram Hill, Ancient Hospitals, p. 17. According to T. Machado, the well is mentioned by name in a publication dated 1889; http://www.machadoink.com/St%20Nicholas%20Harbledown.htm [accessed 28/11/2021]. It was still being linked to the Black Prince in the 1930s when Charles Igglesden further suggested the well water was known in medieval times for its curative powers against leprosy, a disease, he believed, the Black Prince had suffered from; Purchese, ‘Hospital’, citing C. Igglesden, A Saunter through Kent with Pen and Pencil, volume 29: Harbledown, Hackington, New Romney and Hawkinge (Ashford, 1934).[/fn]
[fn]78|T. Machado, http://www.machadoink.com/St%20Nicholas%20Harbledown.htm [accessed 28/11/2021].[/fn]
[fn]79|Lowenthal, Past, p. 501. This confusion regarding the apparent appearance of a sole for ‘St Thomas’ shoe’ may explain why John Brent in 1879 had stated that it was the sole which was ‘set with jewels or coloured stones’; J. Brent, Canterbury in the Olden Time (Canterbury, 1879), p. 171.[/fn]
[fn]80|Lowenthal, Past, p. 503.[/fn]
[fn]81|Kopytoff, ‘Cultural biography’, pp. 69–70.[/fn]
[fn]82|Sweetinburgh, Role of the Hospital, pp. 79–81.[/fn]
[fn]83|Lowenthal, Past, p. 580.[/fn]
[fn]84|Although said to have been completely revised (undated, c. 1981), it is feasible that the entry in Canterbury’s official guidebook about St Nicholas’ hospital and the warden’s willingness by prior arrangement to show visitors the house’s ‘many ancient relics’ was copied from the earlier edition of the guidebook; J. Boyle, Canterbury Pilgrim’s Guide (Canterbury, n.d.), p. 68.[/fn]
[fn]85|As Ingram Hill noted a year later, the mazers were St Nicholas’ greatest treasures; Ingram Hill, Ancient Hospitals, pp. 21–2.[/fn]
[fn]86|‘Vice-chairman’s report to the friends of Canterbury Cathedral’, Forty-Second Annual Report (Canterbury, 1969), p. 4.[/fn]
[fn]87|CCAL: DCC/CA/23, 1963–70, pp. 837, 845, 928, 936, 943, 949, 1023.[/fn]
[fn]88|Ingram Hill, Ancient Hospitals, p. 21.[/fn]
[fn]89|CCAL: DCC/CA/25, 1977–84, p. 215.[/fn]
[fn]90|CCAL: DCC/CA/24, 1971–6, pp. 36, 263, 267, 528, 829; DCC/CA/25, 1977–84, pp. 164, 177, 227.[/fn]
[fn]91|CCAL: DCC/CA/25, pp. 273, 278, 294; Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle (Canterbury, 1980), p. 7.[/fn]
[fn]92|Although probably completely co-incidental, it is interesting that the same 1980 edition of the Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle also contains an article on a St Thomas reliquary, The Peterborough Chasse, that had been sold at auction the previous year to the British Rail Pension Fund; see also the V&A Museum website; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/o80222/casket-the-becket-casket/the-becket-casket-casket-unknown/ [accessed 19/12/2021].[/fn]
[fn]93|The Canterbury Cathedral catalogue entry refers to ‘Canon D Ingram Hill’s 1988 Inventory: The Becket Mazer’, which may indicate when it arrived at the cathedral.[/fn]
[fn]94|Canterbury Cathedral website; https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/heritage/archives/object-of-the-month/mazer-on-display/ [accessed 29/11/2021].[/fn]
[fn]95|Lowenthal, Past, p. 438.[/fn]
[fn]96|Ibid., p. 413.[/fn]
[fn]97|Ibid., pp. 473 and 3, citing L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between.[/fn][pg110]