Where It All Goes Down
Bishop's Lynn (Later Kings Lynn)—and Various Exotic Locations
Margery Kempe hails from Bishop's Lynn in northwestern England, a town just about 97 miles north of London and about 41 miles slightly northeast of the large and prosperous trade town of Norwich.
Norwich was also, in Kempe's day, a happening place for spiritual growth. It held the Norwich Cathedral, seat of the Bishop of Norwich and shrine to the murdered boy-saint William. And more importantly for Kempe, the great English mystic Julian of Norwich lived in a small cell attached to St. Julian's Church.
Kempe also travels extensively—sometimes disastrously—throughout England. She journeys to Canterbury Cathedral (think Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) and more than once to Lambeth Palace in London to seek the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
And because Margery Kempe is such a rebel, we can plot on a map all the places where she was arrested: Leicester (75 miles east of Bishop's Lynn), Hessle (97 miles north), and again on the way home from Lambeth Palace in London.
Kempe also makes her way, largely unaccompanied, on an epic journey to Jerusalem. She stops in Venice on the way out and back, and then she spends an extended time in Italy visiting religious sites. On the way to Rome, Kempe visits Assisi, home to the saintly Francis and Clare.
But while she's gone, Kempe mostly resides in Rome, taking the time to weep in major churches such as St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Saint Peter's Basilica. She also visits St. Bridget's hospice and convent and several other churches before returning to England.
Kempe's later bursts of wanderlust take her on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, and to Prussia (with an emergency landing in Norway) with her very hostile, extremely unwilling daughter-in-law. From there, she has to make her way across war-torn Europe into Calais, on the coast of France, where she would take ship again on—thank heavens—the last sea voyage of her life.