Earlier this week I was pleasantly surprised to see Dr Ryan Perry (University of Kent) on the BBC regional news talking about William Caxton’s printed version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and why he would have chosen that book rather than a religious treatise to print when he first set up his print shop in London. As Ryan explained, Caxton was an astute business man who knew a ‘best-seller’ when he saw one, and this link between Becket and Canterbury, and Chaucer is still very much in place today, as it was in the late Middle Ages. Ryan was filmed standing inside the ‘Canterbury Tales’ experience in St Margaret’s Street, but this is far from the only location the TV producer could have chosen.

Even though ‘The Cheker of the Hope’ is long gone they could have filmed by the stone lion that still decorates the dragon post on the corner of the High Street and Mercery Lane, or at one of the other ‘inns’ where Chaucer’s and other medieval pilgrims presumably would have stayed on the High Street, in the Burgate, around the Bullstake (now the Buttermarket), or in ‘Westgatestrete’ (site of ‘The Cornysh Chogh’), to name just the main locations. Alternately, the film crew might have gone to the city’s museum in Stour Street, if it had been open, in the old Poor Priests’ Hospital where Ryan could have shown off the matrix of the city’s late medieval seal with its representation of Becket’s murder; or looking at the seal itself in the cathedral archives, as it appears attached to a 14^th-century document belonging to the Dean & Chapter, Christ Church Priory’s successors; or in Canterbury Cathedral Library where the majority of the entry about St Thomas of Kent was likely cut out in the mid-16^th century from The Golden Legend, printed by Caxton’s successor Wynkyn de Worde in 1493. Finally, the BBC’s production team could have filmed Ryan in the cathedral itself, and again there are several choices – from the Martyrdom to the Corona to the site of the great shrine, now marked by the chandelier which presumably initially held the cover that was lowered over the shrine at specific times in the annual cycle of commemoration of the saint after 1220 – but perhaps more than all these places, Ryan could have stood below one of the Becket windows.

As I’m sure you know most of these beautiful windows portray scenes relating to the ‘miracles’ by St Thomas recorded by Benedict and William in the aftermath of Becket’s death. Thus the original windows pre-date Chaucer’s pilgrims by about two centuries. Nonetheless, even though Chaucer never actually got his pilgrims to Canterbury and the shrine, an enterprising author, perhaps one of the Canterbury monks, remedied that PR defect and, as I have said before, recounted their visit to the shrine, which included looking at the great stained glass windows. Being good tourists as well as pilgrims, some of them also toured the city to observe the sights, as well as partaking of refreshment and other hospitality at ‘The Cheker’. And it is these two strands: writers and writings of late medieval Canterbury, and the Becket stained glass that I want to feature this week.

Working chronologically, both in terms of subject matter and when these events will take place, I first want to mention the Tenth Becket Lecture that will take place at Canterbury Christ Church University on Thursday 28 January at 6pm (drinks available from 5.30pm). As in the last few years the lecture will take place in Old Sessions House in the large lecture theatre and this year it is to be given by Dr Rachel Koopmans, Associate Professor of History at York University in Toronto, Canada and an Associate Fellow of Toronto’s Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Some of you may know Dr Koopmans because she gave a lecture at Canterbury Cathedral Archives & Library last year to a packed house on the Ancestor windows, but this time she will be turning her attention to the Becket ‘miracle windows’. Her chosen topic is an assessment not just of the medieval representations of the miracle-working saint but also the replacement with modern glass as a result of the actions of iconoclasts, especially men such as ‘Blue Dick’ Culmer during the Civil War period. As Rachel will explain both sets of glass are important (medieval and modern) for they can tell us about technical details, but, just as important, social, religious and cultural aspects of the society in which they were constructed and viewed – the bringing together of producers and consumers, and their continuing engagement with the legacy of this long-ago murdered archbishop. I’m sure this will be a fascinating lecture and Rachel is the obvious scholar to give it, not least because she is currently working on a new catalogue and study of the Thomas Becket ‘miracle windows’ at Canterbury. Moreover, she recently published a highly acclaimed book on medieval collections of miracle stories, so Canterbury is fortunate to have her.

The other strand I’ll just mention very briefly at this stage is Professor Peter Brown’s lecture for the Medieval Canterbury Weekend that will explore several texts in English, including one on sin and salvation that a monk from St Augustine’s Abbey translated into Kentish dialect in the mid-14^th century. Another he will cover is the text noted above – the enterprising continuation of Chaucer’s most famous work. As Peter will explain, we also know the cathedral monks were reading poems by Thomas Hoccleve, as well as Chaucer, and one of those linked to Hoccleve still survives in Canterbury Cathedral Archives and is one of only two extant copies. So if you have not looked at the details for the Medieval Canterbury Weekend, 1–3 April 2016 [www.canterbury.ac.uk/medieval-canterbury], I would recommend you do so because there are also other talks about relics, pilgrims and pilgrimage, and much, much more.