If Schamel was, as it were, the western part of Sittingbourne with its chapel and hermitage, Swanstree was the eastern part, and it, too, had its chapel of St Cross and its hospital of St Leonard.  There is, however, this difference, that, whereas the priest and people of Sittingbourne did all they could to suppress the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, they on the contrary did all they could to encourage the chapel and hospital of Swanstree.  Why?  Because pilgrims coming from London or the north with full pockets towards Canterbury, would reach Schamel before passing through Sittingbourne, but Swanstree only after passing through the town!

Following the Pilgrim’s Road out of Sittingbourne one soon comes to Bapchild, where at the exit from the village on the north side of the road of old stood an oratory, and a Leper’s Hospital, of which nothing seems really to be known save that it was founded about the year 1200.  According to Canon Scott-Robertson, it was dedicated in honour of St James, which is a curious dedication for a Leper House, but common enough in a Hospital for pilgrims.  Oratory and Hospital have alike disappeared, but close by the place where they stood there still remains St Thomas’s Well, now known as Spring Head or Spring.

So I went on through Radfield, where of old was a wayside chapel, and Green Street to the Inn at Ospringe, passing, half a mile away to the north, Stone Farm, and, nearer the road, the ruins of Stone Chapel, another of those little wayside oratories still so common in Italy and France but which nowadays in England we lack altogether.

Ospringe itself is an interesting place.  To begin with, the very ancient inn by the roadside, together with the equally old house opposite were once, according to Hasted, the historian of Kent, a Hospital founded by Henry ii., for the benefit especially of pilgrims.  This hospital, he tells us, “was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and was under the management of a master, three brethren and two clerks existed till the time of Edward IV.”  Henry VIII., having seized by force all such property as this in England, gave this Hospital to St John’s College in Cambridge, which still owns it to the loss of us poor travellers.  No doubt what money comes to the college from this poor place goes to the support and bolstering up of the Great Tudor Myth upon the general acceptance of which most of the vested interests in England largely depend.  But let us poor men lift up our hearts.  The Great Tudor Myth is passing, and every day it is becoming more evident that it can be supported very little longer.  Let us determine, however, that we will not be taken in again, and under the pretence of a reformation of religion fix upon our necks a new political despotism worse than the Whig and Protestant aristocracy that the sixteenth century brought into being, to the irreparable damage of the Crown and the unspeakable loss of us the commonalty.  May St Thomas avert an evil only too likely to befall us.  As for Ospringe, however, it was after all in some sort royal property, the Crown having anciently a Camera Regis there for the King’s use when he was on his way to Canterbury or to France.