seventeenth century, and two brasses, one to William Bloor, who died in 1529, and the other to John Norden, who died in 1580, and to his four wives.  As for William Bloor, there is a local story of some relation of his, Christopher Bloor by name, and of a nightly journey on a coach driven by a headless coachman beside whom sits a headless footman, and all drawn by headless horses, Christopher himself sitting within, his head in his hands.  So much I heard, but I could not find out what it portended or referred to.

But it is not till we come into Newington that we find any sign or memory of St Thomas or the Pilgrimage.  This village, however, became famous as a station for the pilgrims, because on his last journey from London to Canterbury, the great Archbishop here administered the rite of Confirmation.  A cross was erected to commemorate this event, and there the pilgrims knelt to pray.  But Newington in St Thomas’s day was better known on account of a great scandal involving the name of the convent there.  This convent was held of the king, of his manor of Middleton.  We read that divers of the nuns, “being warped with a malicious desire of revenge, took advantage of the night and strangled the lady abbess, who was the object of their fury and passionate animosities, in her bed; and after, to conceal so execrable an assassination, threw her body into a pit, which afterwards contracted the traditional appellation of Nun-pit.” [Footnote:  Philipotts, “Villare Cantianum,” quoted by Littlehales, op. cit. p. 27.] Now whether this tale be true or an invention to explain the queer name “Nun-pit” we shall never know, but as it happens we do know that the nuns were removed to the Isle of Sheppey and that St Thomas persuaded King Henry ii. to establish at Newington a small house of seven secular canons to whom was given the whole manor.  But curiously enough, one of these canons was presently found murdered at the hands of four of his brethren.  Exactly where this convent was situated would seem to be doubtful.  What evidence there is points to Nunfield Farm at Chesley, about a mile to the south of the high road.

Newington itself in its cherry-orchards is a pretty place enough to-day, with an interesting, if restored, church of Our Lady in part of the thirteenth, but mainly of the fourteenth century.  It is a fine building with charming carved details and at least four brasses, one of the end of the fifteenth century (1488) to William Monde, two of the sixteenth century (1510 and 1581) and one of the year 1600.  There is nothing, however, in the place to delay anyone for long, and the modern pilgrim will soon find himself once more on the great road.

On coming out of Newington such an one will find himself in about a mile at Key Street, where is the Fourwent Way, in other words the cross roads, where the highway from the Isle of Sheppey to Maidstone crosses the Pilgrims Way.  Here of old stood a chapel of St Christopher or another, at which the pilgrims prayed, and remembering this, I too, at the cross roads, though there was no chapel, prayed in the words of the prayer which begins: