In the time
of Edward I. the Kirby of that day, Roger, rebuilt the castle, but it
is not the ruins of his work we see, these being of a much later
building. Nor will any one who visits Horton fail to see Fawks, the
famous old Elizabethan mansion of the London Alderman Lancelot
Bathurst, who died in 1594.
All this valley, as I have said, was used and cultivated by the
Romans, whose work we find not only at Darenth but also here at
Horton. At Fawkham, however, on the higher ground to the east I found
something more germane to the pilgrimage. For in the old church of
Our Lady there, over the western door, is a window in which we may see
one William de Fawkham clothed as a pilgrim with a book in his hand,
and on one side a figure of Our Lord, on the other the Blessed Virgin.
But the goal of my journey from the highway was reached at Eynsford.
Here indeed I found my justification for leaving the road while on
pilgrimage to Canterbury. For not only is Eynsford a beautiful place
in itself, beautifully situated, but it was the quarrel which William
de Eynesford had with St Thomas Becket, when the great archbishop was
in residence at Otford Castle, that led to the murder in Canterbury
Cathedral and the great pilgrimage which has brought even us at this
late day on our way.
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