With the destruction of religion went the destruction of the religious houses.  Of these the chief was the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church which lay to the north of the Cathedral and whose monks from St Augustine’s time had always served it.  Almost nothing remains of this, save the Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior’s Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior’s lodging, the Porter’s gate, the Norman staircase of the King’s school and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including the remains of the Archbishop’s Palace in Palace Street.

Not less venerable than the Benedictine House of Christ Church was the other Benedictine monastery, also founded by St Augustine in honour of SS.  Peter and Paul, to which dedication St Dunstan added the name of St Augustine himself.  This stood outside the city to the east.  It is said to have been founded by St Augustine outside the walls with a view to his own interment there since it was not the Roman custom, as we know, to bury the dead within the walls of a city.  So honourable a place in the Order did this great house hold that we are told the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury sat next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, the mother house, in the councils of the Order, and none but the archbishop himself consecrated the abbot of St Augustine’s, and that in the Abbey Church.  This also Henry stole away, seizing it for his own use.  But by 1844 what was left of the place had become a brewery, and to-day there remains scarcely more than a great fourteenth century gateway and hall, the work of Abbot Fyndon in 1300.  Of the church there is left a few fragments of walling, of St Augustine’s tomb, nothing whatsoever.

Less still remains to us of the smaller religious houses that abounded in Canterbury.  Of the Austin Canons, the Priory of St Gregory founded by Lanfranc in 1084 near St John’s Hospital, also a foundation of Lanfranc, in Northgate Street, really nothing, a fragment of old wall; of the Nunnery of St Sepulchre, a Benedictine house, nothing at all.  As for the Friars’ houses scarcely more remains.  Of the earliest, the Dominican house, only the scantiest ruins of the convent, the refectory, however, once in the hands of the Anabaptists, is now a Unitarian chapel.  Of the White Friars, nothing.  Of the Franciscan house, the charming thirteenth century ruin that stands over the river to the south of St Peter’s Street.  That is all.

The Canterbury of St Thomas is no more, it perished with his shrine and his religion.  Even the hospital he is said to have founded, which at any rate was dedicated in his honour, was suppressed by Edward VI.; it is, however, still worth a visit, if only for the sake of the wall painting recovered in 1879, in which we see the Martyrdom, and the penance of the King.

But in Canterbury to-day St Thomas is really a stranger, no relic, scarcely a remembrance of him remains; yet he was the soul of the city, he is named in the calendar of his Church St Thomas of Canterbury.