The Murder of Archbishop Sudbury

Today my Canterbury travels took me behind the modernist trapezium of the Marlowe Theatre and past the bijou Curzon Cinema to Pound Street. Here is Sudbury Tower, a fourteenth century tower built into the town walls near the Westgate and named after Simon of Sudbury, a controversial Archbishop of Canterbury.

Born in Sudbury (Suffolk) he studied in Paris and became chaplain to Pope Innocent VI, based in Avignon, who sent him in a diplomatic misson to Edwatd III of England. In 1362 he became Bishop of London and in 1375 Archbishop of Canterbury. 

In 1377 Edward III died and Sudbury crowned the boy King Richard II in Westminster Abbey. This did no harm to his career since he became Lord Chancellor in 1380. He was instrumental in the introduction of the poll tax which sparked the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 led by John Ball and Wat Tyler. When the peasants came to London they attacked the Tower and found him hiding there. They dragged him out and beheaded him (apparently it took eight blows to sever the neck completely).

This is what I love about Canterbury. In the old days, when parchment was a scarce resource, a scribe would sometimes use parchment that had already been written on; they would scrape off the ink and reuse it. This means that many historical documents have been lost but also that some have been preserved: in some cases we can still read the ancient text. The technical term for such a multiply rewritten manuscript is a palimpsest. Canterbury is like a palimpsest: its new streets have old buildings; within in nowness there are the marks of old times.