Now we may return to the "Chequers of the Hope", but not to its dormitory of a hundred beds. There is a fine frankness, far removed from modern municipal ambition, in the names of these old streets. Mercery Lane, Butchery Lane, Wincheap (Wine Market), and Beer-Cart Lane tell their own story. As we look down narrow, crooked Mercery Lane, with its overhanging fronts, struggling to survive "improvements", we not only recognize "the last enchantments of the Middle Age", but we ask what kind of mercery used to stock the stalls under the arcades which once sheltered the sidewalks? Chiefly, no doubt, cheap memorials or "signs" of the accomplished pilgrimage; the little leaden bottles or "ampulles", containing water from the well near Becket's tomb in the crypt, and the infinitesimal tincture therein of the martyr's blood; also leaden brooches representing his mitred head. "These signs", says Dean Stanley, "they fastened on their hats or caps, or hung from their necks, and thus were henceforth distinguished. As the pilgrims from Compostella brought home the scallop-shells which still lie on the seashores of Gallicia--as the 'Palmers' from Palestine brought the palm-branches still given at the Easter Pilgrimage--as the 'roamers' from Rome brought models of St. Peter's keys, or a 'Vernicle'--that is a pattern of Veronica's handkerchief--sewed on their caps--so the Canterbury Pilgrim had his hat thickset with a 'hundred ampulles' or with leaden brooches. Many of these are said to have been found in the beds of the Stour and the Thames, dropped as the vast concourse departed from Canterbury or reached London."
What processions, triumphal or funereal, have passed along Mercery Lane and crossed the little open space before the gateway to the Precincts! Two French kings, and nearly every English sovereign till Queen Anne, have been here. Louis VII of France as a pilgrim, John of France as the captive of the Black Prince, Henry II on his bitter pilgrimage of penance in 1174; Richard Coeur de Lion with his captive, William the Lion of Scotland, in 1189; Henry III with the Magna Carta Archbishop Stephen Langton at the Great Pardon of 1220. Here before the Cathedral gate halted for a moment the weeping cavalcade when they buried the Black Prince, in 1376--