TlieSHAKESPEA COUNTRY lUustraf ed WITH AVARS S APPENDICES ILLUSTRATING THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY B THE FRANKLIN COUNTRY LONDON Published at fhe Office of COUNTRY LIFE 20.Tavistock Sfreef Covent Garden, & by GEORGE NEWNES I^ Southampton Street / - The Shakespeare Country Illustrated. Good frend for Iesvs ^ake forbearl. TO Dice mE DVST ENCLOASED KARL^. Blest be f man i spared tms stones, AND CVRST BE HE ^ MOVES MY BONEs'. The Inscrif lions on the Graves of William and Anne Shakespears, Holy Tfinity Church, Stratjord-on-Avon. MEERE- LYETH INTERRIO Trt BODY OF AnNE Wlf E OF WlLUAM SHAKESHEaKE WHO DE»TEO THIS LIFE TK 6 DAY OFAyCV IClI BEING OF TJ€ ACE OF G>YSARES , Vbera. tu mater, iu lac , vfemq. dedi^i V* riiihi:pro tanto munere saiia (Ubo Quam mailcm ^ipDueat lipiQem. bonus Angl' ore Exeit Jchristr corpus .iin3if;o tuA *sxiVo Sed nil vof-iC'valent venias cUnChri4lereluT2,cl CUiifA licet tumuio mater et AstiA pi:eV THE "CHANDOS" PORTRAIT. (NATIONAL PORTR.\IT GALLERY.) 7^ha CozzjvtiyLiIe Lihrary THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY ILLUSTRATED. -•s? BY <:»^ JOHN LEYLAND LONDON Published zsX tke Office of "Country Life" 20Tavistock S^ Covent Ga^rden, i^Ivd Ijy George Newnes L^'' 7-1^ So\itha.nvptoiv S- • PREFACE. THE ^ireat love thnt fills the breasts of all men for the imperishable works of Siiakespeaie, the marvellous spell which his wonderful insight and lofty imagination have exercised over generations, and the profound interest that is felt in the incidents and circumstances of his life, have invested the scenes of his boyhood and later years with a fascination that is found nowhere else in England. A volume upon the Shakespeare Country, therefore, which should picture it in perfection, and be something more than a guide, yet including the elements of one, was long a necessity. 1 he unexampled success which attended the first issue of this book in the " Country Life Library " was a testimony to the want that existed. The volume is now presented with the illustrations that were so prominent among its attractions and with some that are additional and new. It has been decided also to give, in the form of appendices, some notes upon the Washington and Franklin countries, which are so often visited from Stratford, -and which, in any case, are so dear to American visitors. These new sections, though not directly connected with the subject of the book, will certainly, to many readers, add greatly to the interest and value it possesses. CONTENTS. pag: Introduction ........ i Stratfokd ........ 2 SnOTTERY AND ANNE HaTHAWAY'S COITAGE . . . '30 SlIAKE.SrEARE VILLAGES .... • 3\ Wilmcote and the Ardens . . . . . -35 Charlecote ....... ^o COMPTON Wyxvates . . . . -45 Warwick ........ 49 Kexilwokth ........ 79 Baddesley Clinton ....... 85 Stoneleigh .-\bbey and the Upper Avon . . . .go Shakespekre Portraits . . ... 94 A Shakespeare Chronology . . . . . .95 The Home of the Washingioss ..... 99 The Home of the Franklins . . . . .1-4 A Table of Distances ...... 130 Inde.x ......... 131 HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD. ' Well, this is the Forest of Arden !" — "As You Like It."- THE source of the inspirations of Sliakespeare's genius will ever re- main a marvel to the intellectual world. We follow him wondering from what fount he drew his knowledge, where he learned to play with unapproachable grandeur upon the gamut of passion, how he won his wistful sympathy with the joys and sorrows of all countries and all times, whence he grasped his power of analysing the principles, the emotions, and the affections of men. If such things are impossible to us, there still remain many things that illustrate the genesis of his .genius. There are the surroundings amid which his thoughts and imaginings had their ■birthplace. His Warwickshire home, with face but little changed from that which in his time it bore, is there ; the woods that were haunted by Titania and all the fairy crowd ; recesses that might have sheltered a Caliban ; ihe roads upon which Falstaff ranged his ragged crew. There are still the scenes in which he gleaned his subtle knowledge of the sights and sounds and hidden beauties of nature. Here, at the Stratford Grammar School, he often saw "The whininf; school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school." Among the Warwickshire peasantry are still the types of such as may first have given him his keen zest for boisterous revelry. There are references in the plays to local scenes, as to the drinking of the "sheer ale " of " Wincot," and Page's dog that " was out- run on Cotsall." From his corner in the inn- parlour he laughed loudly at Quince, the carpenter, Snug, the joiner. Bottom, the weaver, Snout, the tinker, and the rest. Their successors are in his Warwickshire home to- day. Often, we are sure, did he see " The sun-burn'd sicklemen, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow, and be merry." He had seen them don their "rye-straw hats," and meet the nymphs "in country footing," even as the Tempest masque bids them do. The nine men's morrice, the jovial plenty of oxen roasted whole, the loud-voiced rustics in their quarrels, the homely wisdom of a Touchstone, the simplicity of many an Audrey — these, where Shakespeare lived, the way- rarer may still discover. \n his days the country was " with shadowy forests and champains rich'd " much more than in these. The leafy depths of the forest of Arden were tenanted, as in the minds of some they still are, by strange imaginings, and the kindred of the Wild Huntsman crashed their stormy way with the wind through the glades at night-time, as the phantom coach is still believed by greybeards and ancient dames to rumble weirdly along the shadowy roads. There, too, and perhaps still more in the Vale of the Red Horse, southward beyond the Avon, it went very ill with the witches, and still the belief in witchcraft, in some remote regions, survives. There were some, in Shakespeare's days, by civil broil made outlaws, who, like the companions of the Duke, in " As you Like THE SHAKESPEARE COUXTRY. It," roamed the forest of Arden, livin;^ there " like the old Robin Hood of England, as they did in the golden world." Shall we go wrong if we say that, when the wasted abbeys no longer sheltered their occupants, the youthful poet met many a Friar Lawrence in the woods, from whom he won a good deal of his know- ledge of classics and the intellectual world ? There is, perhaps, no English shire so filled with history as that of Warwick. Its stirring story could not but move the imagination of Shakespeare. The famous legends of Guy still linger there ; about him were the signs of many episodes in the Barons' War in the days of Stephen and John ; he would know how Henry 111. la>- at Warwick during the great its bounds. From Edge Hill, indeed, twelve miles south-east of Stratford, there is a great, panorama of the shires of Warwick, Gloucester^ Hereford, Worcester, Stafford, Salop, Leicester, Nottingham, Northampton, Buckingham, and O.xford. It is the Feldon, or Vale of the Red Horse, a region tilled with interest, that is immediately before, while beyond, across the Avon, tiie open land is succeeded by the still well-wooded stretches of the old forest of Arden. STRATFORD. Stratford itself has changed more than the- country in which it lies. This has necessarily been so, for the concourse of people which has- An Old House in Rother Street. siege of Kenilworth. Not far off. Piers Gaveston was beheaded by the Barons on Blacklow Hill. He often looked upon the magnificent tomb of Richard Beauchamp, the great Earl of Warwick and Regent of France, who, in his " Henry VI.," plucks the " white rose with Plantagenet," and who, when Joan of Arc is brought to the funeral pyre, will spare no faggots " that so her torture may be shortened." The Shakespeare country is a beautiful land, a truly "English" region of hedges, fields, and glorious woods, purling streams and broad river courses, lovely lanes and rustic villages, level as a whole, but with many undulations, and with some considerable elevations within thronged to the birthplace of Shakespeare- demanded accommodation and led to change. Yet we can picture the place as it was, for old houses of timber are there such as lined the streets in Shakespeare's time. There is his Birthplace, to which all men resort. The- Guild School is there, in which his teaching began, with the Chapel in which he knelt, over against his house of the New Place, which, itself has been swept away ; and there is the- noble Church in which his remains repose. And still the ancient Clopton Bridge, over which he passed when he went London-ward, spans the broad stream of the Avon. When you enter Stratford from the Great Western Railway station, it is by the Alcester,. STRATFORD ■Road, vvliich brings you soon to the American Memorial Fountain, at the end of Rotlier Street. This work is an elegant Early English structure, with angle buttresses and many turrets, rising up to a spirelet over a clock. It was presented to Stratford by Mr. George W. Childs, a citizen of Philadelphia, and it is pleasant thus to meet at the outset a mark' of the keen interest which Americans take in the homeland of Shakespeare, bidding the passer- by partake of " honest water which ne'er left man i' the mire," albeit Shakespeare was no foe to generous sack with " a toast in't." Puck, Mustard Seed, Peaseblossom, and Cob- web sit aloft, and the Memorial, which was dedicated to public use by Sir Henry h'ving in Octobei', 1887, is otherwise appropriately adorned. There are some quaint houses hereabout, -and one especially in Rother Street, with curious timbering and overhanging upper storey. The Rother Market is the place where cattle were sold of yore, and where John Shakespeare, the poet's father, must have made many a bargain for skins with the countrymen who came with their droves into the town. From this point the road leads straight down through the place, by Bridge Street and Bridgefoot, to the Clopton Bridge and the Banbury Road. It is but a short walk from the Rother Market, by Mere Street to Henley Street, where Shakespeare's birthplace stands, much as he knew it when a boy. A better plan is to gain the first view of the house from Guild Street, at the rear; for, certainly, across the old-world garden where the plants are grown that h e loved, and mentions in his plays, it look's far more picturesque than from the frontage in Hen- ley Street. John Shak'espeare, the poet's father, a skinner and wool dealer who rose to comparative opulence as high- bailiff of Strat- ford, in is68, appears to have been living here a dozen years be- fore his famous son was born. There had been S h a k e s- peares, time-out- Ainerican Memorial Fountain. A House in Rother Street. of-mind, in Warwickshire. One was a felon at Coventry in 1359. Others appear to liave been persons of credit within tlie Manor of Baddesley Clinton in the same and the follow- ing century. John Shakespeare was not improbably the son of Richard Shal\espeare, a farmer of Snitterfield. Gentility has been attributed to him, but we must be content to regard him as a substantial burgess of Strat- ford, who carried on the trade of a glover and skinner, and dealt in grain and leather. He prospered in his early manhood, bought his wool- shop, and married Mary Arden, the daughter of Robert Arden, a farmer at Wilmcote. The Ardens, like the Shakespeares, were a family of many branches. Some of them, at least, belonged to the old faith, and one, Edward Arden, was executed at Smithfield for being concerned in an alleged plot against the Queen in 1583. There was a Henry Shakespeare, too, of Snitterfield, who was stubborn — " Shagspere est contumax '' — in regard to tithes, and otherwise incurred obloquy for not wear- ing " cappes on Sonda\-s and hollydays." The mystery as to John Shak'espeare's gen- tility is complicated by an argument concerning a grant of arms which was made to him ; certain it is that he rose to a leading position in Stratford, and, while his great son was an infant, was alderman and high bailiff of the THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. Shakespeare's Birthplace from the Garden Subsequently his property was mort town gaged, he was returned as a " recusant," and felF grievously into debt. He died in 1601, before the poet had reached his fortieth year. The history of his house cannot be fully told in this place. It has gone through many vicissitudes, but was rescued for the nation in 1847, and is now jealously preserved. For more than two hundred years the woolshop of John Shakespeare had stood as the " Maiden- head," or " Swan and Maidenhead" Inn, but it was not until the end of the last century that the birthplace itself was converted into a butcher's shop. The work of restoration and preservation was conducted with scrupulous care, and not an ounce of the old material that could be retained was removed. It is just such a house as a substantial trader of those times might have dwelt in. To the left, as you look at it from the road, is the portion of the house in which the Shakespeare family lived, while to the right lies the part in which John Shakespeare carried on his business, now used as a museum of Shakesperean objects. The first room you enter from the street is the small family parlour of former times, where is a fire- place recessed. Behind lies the kitchen with a somewhat curious fireplace, a recessed seat, and a hatchway opening to the buttery-cup- board. Beneath is a cellar, and behind are two small rooms for domestic use. A narrow stair- case leads up to the " birth-room," from which a mullioned window with diamond panes looks out into the road. It was here that the greatest genius of all literature first saw the light, an " infant mewling and puking in the nurse's arms," thence to " ripe and ripe " till the world grew greater for his thinking, a little room with oaken planks on which he trod. Behind is a small chamber (in which an old. portrait of the poet hangs), and there is an attic above. In the Museum part of the house are many Shakespeare documents, among them the letter of Richard Quiney to the poet, begging a loan of .£30, which is the only e.xisting letter that remains addressed to him. Careful hands have gathered here many curious and interesting objects, more or less associated with the bard, including several portraits and pic- tures, and the desk from the Grammar School at which they say he sat. How Shakespeare lived in this humble abode there is no evidence to tell. Many a picture has been painted by the light of imagination, based upon knowledge of the ways of life in. his time, of the place as it was when he was a boy. We know well the garbage thrown with- out in the road, the roaring fires in the chimneys, the store of housewifely things that lay in presses in the rooms. These pictures the visitor will best construct for himself — "such tricks hath strong imagination." It was certainly hence that Shakespeare wended his youthful way by the High Street and Chapel Street to the Grammar School. We cannot fancy him as an ordinary boy. Had he "the- < >- -J -JJ 2 — J f- XI ^ X en < in X THE SHAKESPEARE CO (W TRY. The Birth-Room. scnnlar's melancholy, which is emulation," filled with the desire' to know ? He was learn- ing already, indeed, from the book of human nature, drinkinp; deeply from the well of the things that Stratford held. Here was his little world, and all through his youth even to early manhood, he seems to have dwelt in his father's simple abode. In this house he was " The lover Sishing like furnace, with a woeful ballad. Made to his mistress' eyebrow." Here it was, we remember, that he lived through his father's falling fortunes. To these rooms from rural walks, from school, and from the work of his father's trade, he turned to shape the fancies of his brain. The instinct of home was strong within him, for, when he grew prosperous, he forthwith came back to the scene of his boyhood, and li\'ed and died at New Place, the neighbouring house of his own. How long he continued to dwell in his father's house cannot with certainty be known, but it has been surmised that, when he married Anne Hathaway in November, 1582, he took up his abode in Henley Street, and that his children Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith were born there. His father, though in circum- stances of difficulty, and, probably, of sus- picion — he was struck off the roll of aldermen, because of inability to pay his dues, and absence from his duties, in 1586— appears 10 have continued to live in the old house until his death, and his widow survived until 1608, seeing the ripeness of her son's genius and the fulness of his prosperity. It is but a short walk from Shakespeare's birthplace to the centre of Stratford, and to the site of the Market Cross. Henley Street brings you down to Bridge Street, and to the place where the rustic market is held, much as in Shakespeare's time, and the High Street leads thence to the right through the centre of the town. At the corner is the " Cage," so-called from its former use as a prison for vagrants and others. Here lived that Thomas Quiney who married Shakespeare's daughter Judith, and the pity is that his house has been modernised externally. Below are the cellars where Quiney, a vintner, stored his sack, and, behind, a dark chamber where the vag- rants lay in tantalising proximity to his wares. Lately, careful hands have uncovered some of the old interior woodwork of this house to which Thomas Quiney brought his bride, and in which Shakespeare Quine\-, the child named after his dead grandfather, lived his brief life and died. A little further along the High Street, on the opposite side, stands a ver\' quaint gabled dwelling, sometimes called the "Ancient," and sometimes the "Harvard" House, from m U < -1 < m (/) m < CO < m >- 'Ti < ^ CQ X LU X H STRATFORD. the fact that its builder's daugh- ter, Katharine Rogers, married John Harvard, of the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwarl<, whose descendant founded thr American College of that name. The house is richly carved with vine and other patterns, and tin projecting windows rest upon corbels, of which some are sculptured with human heads. The whole timbering is ver\' curious and characteristic. Beyond the house, at the junction of Ely Street and Sheep Street, Chapel Street begins, being a continuation of the High Street; and on the left-hand side of the way rise the most impres- sive houses in Stratford. The\' are known as the Five Gables, and are now the " Shakespeare Hostelrie." The vertical timbering is plain, but there is great quaintness in the high gables, and the narrow diamond panes between the beams are unusual. It is but a short distance from this point to the end of Chapel Street ; but, as he stands opposite to the Five Gables, the visitor sees the places where dwelt many of Shakespeare's Ivindred, the site of the house in which he lived and died, the Guild Chapel where he often worshipped, and some parts of the school in The Parlour and Kitchen. whicli he was trained. The houses externally have lost wholly their olden character, but they are the remains of ancient structures, and at least it is interesting to know that here dwelt Thomas Hathaway, Julius Shaw, who witnessed Shakespeare's will, and Thomas Nash, who married his grand-daughter. She survived to be- come the wife of Sir John Barnard, and died in 1670, the last descendant of the poet. »The house last named is now a Museum, and its interest- ing collection includes a mullion of Shakepeare's house, and a " shovel-board " of his time. Shakespeare's Disk. lO THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Library, East End, Between it and the corner of Chapel Lane just beyond lies the site of New Place, of which the foundations have lately been exposed. This was the house to which Shakespeare retired from Blackfriars, and in which he died on April 23rd, 1616. But, for many years after the purchase of New Place, the dramatist had no thought of leaving the busy world be- hind him. He was in the high tide of his prosperity, and his company was constanth- performing at court and in the country. It was even implicated in the plotting of Essex and Southampton. The Globe Theatre was built, and the publication of works went on, but Shak'espeare seems to have seized every op- portunity of revisiting his home-land, and he returned to it before he died. The house was pulled down in 1759, by its owner, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, who finding his trust a burden, had already cut down Shakespeare's mulberry tree. The weather mark of its gable may be discerned on the southern end ot Nash's house. What manner of dwelling it was we cannot tell, but it was doubtless a house of substance, and well furnished in its day. Shakespeare bought it from the family of Underbill in 1597, for £60, and restored it from its dilapidated state to his taste, calling it the New Place, for before, as a residence of Sir Hugh Clopton, in the reign of Henry VII., it had continued to be known as "the great house." There was a " great garden " where an orchard was laid out, as well as a small garden nearer the house, where the poet planted the famous mulberry tree, and a couple of barns. When Shakespeare thus betrayed his interest in Stratford, his neighbours spoke of him as "our countryman," and Richard Quiney, father of Thomas Quiney, afterwards of the "Cage," forthwith wrote to him, " from the Eell in Carter Lane," begging a loan of /30, and assuring him, "You shall nether loose creddytt nor mon- ney by me, the Lord wyllinge." This was in 1598, when Judith Shakespeare was a girl of thir- teen. She was not married to Thomas Quiney until February, 1616. Shakespeare, as we have seen, was at the time a man of affairs, and in the plentitude of his genius. The year 1593. had seen the publication, by Richard Field, the son of a Stratford tanner, of "Venus and Adonis," which Shakespeare, in the dedication to its " noble godfather," the Earl of South- ampton, speaks of as "the first heir of his invention." "Love's Labour's Lost" had heralded his dramatic triumphs, and the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and the " Comedy of Errors " were almost contemporary with the emotional splendour of " Romeo and Juliet," and the great roll of his plays continued to be un- folded. But it is not the purpose here to record the progress of his fortunes or his triumphs. His house of the New Place marks the strong love he bore for the scenes of his youth, and for his native country The Porch of the Guild Chapel. a. < X ^ U -/I -U Q -1 1 -n -r _i 'J O ;u a > ^1 u- < 12 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Harvard Houce. and town. Like his Earl (if Warwick in "Henry VI." lie could say, " In Warwicksliire I ha\-e true-liearted friends." His fatiier was declining in _\'ears ; his mother was still in the vigour of health ; there were many to whom he could say, " Neighbour, God speed ! " others to whom he was, or was to be, akin. We fancy, when he came to his native woods and fields from the gaiety of the court and the turmoil of the town, that he voiced his thoughts m the musings of the Duke in " As You Like It," who retired to the same forest of Arden — ■■ Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court ? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam. The seasons' difference. — as the icy fang. And churlish chiding of the winter's wind ; Which when it bites and blows upon my bo ly, Even tdl I shrmk with cold, I smile and say, — This is no flattery : these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. And this our life, exempt from public haunt. Finds tongues iu trees, books in the running brooks. Sermons in stones, and good in everything." — ((»'. /.) From the windows of his house, Shakespeare could look across to the low, broad, embattled tower, the beautiful porch, and the very tine PL'.'pendicular windows of the Guild Chapel, which stands now as it did then. The Guild, which was dissolved in 1536, nearly thirty Years before the poet was born, was an ancient charitable body dedicated to the Holy Cross, the Blessed Virgin and St. John the Baptist, chiefly for the relief of the sick and necessitous, its Chapel is a very beautiful and interesting structure, with a chancel dating from the 14th century, and a Perpendicular nave built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry Vli. Remains of curious frescoes are still within. From the old tower, the great bell still rings out in the early morning, and again at the hour of Curfew, and, by an ancient custom, the day of the month is in- dicated by the number of its strokes. Beyond the Chapel, the quaint timbered faqade of the Guild Hall stretches along Church Street. It is a long, low room, whereof the heavily-timbered ceiling is supported by beams rising from the walls. Here it was that companies of strolling players in Shakespeare's time, under the protection of neighbouring nobles, were wont to beguile the men of Strat- ford. Undoubtedly in this place his imagi- nation was stirred when he saw them enact Hudsarl ^T&arfis. The Site of New Place. < X U 14 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. such plays as "Ralph Roister Doister " and " Gordobuc," his own precursors, and the rude plays into the elements of which he afterwards breathed undying vitality Well might he ex- claim, when he witnessed such crude performances in like nar- row space, "Can this cock-pit hold The vasty fields of France ? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt ? ' ' Here still remain traces of strange archaic frescoes, one being a large representation of the Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John. At the further end, through a doorway, a quaint little place known as the Ar- moury, Council Chamber, or "Greeing" Room is entered. Hence, a staircase leads to the school-rooms above, and they point out the place, in the corner of the Latin School, where the black-board is seen in the picture, in which tra- dition says that Shakespeare sat. This is a fine room with an open timber roof, supported by massive tie-beams. Behind this ancient build- ing lie the playing field, and what is known as the Pedagogue's House, another quaint timbered structure. The Guild Hall, the School buildings, and the tower of the Chape! make a most picturesque group when seen from the rear. The Grammar School is known, as in Shakespeare's time, as that of Edward VI., but it was really founded in the time of Henry VI. by Thomas Jolyffe, a priest of the town, who belonged to the Guild. A reasonable sur- mise has been made that Shakespeare, after his school days, acted for a time as assistant to A Corner of the Guild Hall. The Latin School Room. Walter Roche, the schoolmaster, who was also a scrivener. From him the poet might have gained some of the legal knowledge which is so marked in some of his plays. The ancient build- ings were restored by the late Mr. Charles Edward Flower, whose name will always be revered in the honouring of Shakespeare's town. The Alms Houses, which are close by, represent another charitable work of the old Guild. At the other end of Church Street are the buildings of Trinity College School, whence the "Old Town" leads down, by the house of Dr. John Hall, who married Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna, to the Church of the Holy Trinity. In a county of fine churches this stands pre-eminent. It is a noble Perpendicular structure, by the river amid elms, with Decorated transepts, and an Early English tower, from which rises an elegant spire, of modern construction, replacing an earlier wooden one. A long avenue of limes leads to the north porch, a beautiful work, embattled, and with pin- nacled buttresses, having over it the rare feature of a little " parvise," such as is seen in but few churches. There is a nine-light Perpendicular west window, and, although the nave itself belongs to the Deco- rated period, the Perpendicular character is imparted by the bold and singularly large windows of the clerestory, the Q < 1 X f^ _) x: u X H -^ r-" S ^ o :ii oi H u- >- _I o X i6 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. 1 he Lime Avenue, Stratiord Church. aisle windows being of the Geometrical Deco- rated. The chancel is wholly Perpendicular, and has five four-light windows, with tran- soms on either side. It is singularly beautiful within, and is separated from the nave by a delicate screen. Tht east window is of seven lights, filled with indifferent stained glass, and has elegant work on either side of it. The stalls and miserere seats are curious, and there are carvings at the springs of the doorway arch on the north side. The size and importance of the Church are due, in part, to the fact that it was collegiate, with a consider- able staff of priests, and many altars. It may be said to have grown up about an earlier and smaller structure. John de Stratford, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, did much work there about the year 1332, and to him we owe the south aisle, at the east end of which stood the Chapel of St. Thomas a Becket, whereof the sedilia remain, and of which the altar stone has lately been re-erected in the chancel. The chancel itself was founded by Dr. Thomas Balshall, warden of the College, who died in i49i,and whose high tomb still stands against its north wall. The beautiful north porch was added at about the same time, with the west window and the windows of the clerestory. The Church thus remains structurally as Shakespeare knew it, and it has been well restored, so that it holds much (if the aspect it bore in his youth, though then doubtless it was marked by the late stripping away of many adornments, fres- coes, and pious memorials of a still earlier time. The Shakespeare monument is on the north wall, its upper part rising in front of a beautiful stained glass window, which is a memorial of the late Mr. J. O. Halliwell- Phillipps, the Shakespearean scholar. The poet is represented as if writing, quill in hand, habited in a slashed doublet with collar, and the lineaments which all men know. Corinthian pillars, with marble shafts, support the cornice, above which are cherubs and the blazon of Shakespeare, surmounted by a skull. The colouring of the figure, which was covered at the sugges- tion of Malone, has been restored, and only an epigram remains to tell of his vandalism : " Stranger, to whom this monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone, Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays, And daubs his tombstone as he marred his plays." Tile monument was sculptured by Gerard Johnson, and the features are believed to have been taken from a death mask. The inscription opens with a Latin lament for one who was a Nestor in judgment, a Socrates in genius, and a Virgil in his poetic art — more than any of these we, after a lapse of nearly three hundred years, may say. It proceeds : — " Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so last ? Read, it thov canst, whom enviovs death hath plast Within this monvment ; Shakspeare. with whome Qvicke naivre didi; ; whose name doth deck ys tombe Far mere ihan cost, sith all yt he hath writt, Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt. Obiit aiio. Dot. 1616, JEtatis 53, Die 23 Ap.'^ The Shakespeare graves are below, the one nearest to the wall being that of Shakespeare's wife, with a well-known Latin inscription. Next to it the eye talis upon the poet's own, with the famous words :— " Good frer.d for lesvs sake forbeare. To digg the dvst encloased heare ; Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yt moves my bones " Close by is the stone of Thomas Nash, who married Shakespeare's granddaughter, Eliza- beth Hall, and next to it that of her father, Di. John Hall. Elizabeth Hall, who married, for her < O o i < i8 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. I \ The Church, North Side. second husband, John Barnard, afterwards knighted, of Abington, near Northampton, was the latest descendant of the poet, and died in 1670. The last Shakespeare grave-stone is that of her mother, Susanna Hall, Shakes- peare's eldest daughter. It bears the well- known inscription beginning: — " Witty above her sexe. but that's not all. Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall : Something of Shakespere was in that, but this Wholy 01 him with whom she's now in blisse." The inscription was erased about the year 1707, gi\'ing place to the memorial of one Watts, but, Uugdi'.le ha\-ing preser\-t-d it, the lines were re- stored in 1836 The choir is otherwise full of interest, for it contains, as I shall show, other memorials of Shakespeare's friends, as well as the altar tomb already alluded to, now much disfigured, of Dr. Thomas Balshall, its founder, Warden of the College, which formerly stood on the west side of College Lane in the town. z m z O Q m z u < z < < O U LU X f- a. LU < 20 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNlRy. The Clopton The supreme interest of the splendid Church of Stratford lies in the fact that it marks the beginning and the close of Shakespeare's career. At the west end of the south aisle is preserved the bowl of the old font in which he was baptized, and the record remains in the parish register: "1564, April 26. Gulielmus tilius Johannes Shakspere." His tomb and monument, as we have seen, are in the choir. Between that babbling hour, therefore, and the day in April, 1616, on which he was buried, not as a " lean and slippered pantaloon," but in the pride of his manhood, lie the occupations of his life and the achievements of his genius, far transcending the " arithmetic of memory." Long before he returned to Stratford he was The Old Font. Chapel. well known as a successful dramatist, and his literary activity was continued, while he was acquiring property in Warwickshire, and busy, with the Burbages and others, in the building of the Globe Theatre in Southwark, and the management of his company of players. These thoughts are naturally suggested by the memorials of his life in Stratford Church. But its personal interest does not end with these. The effigies of the Combes — Richard, with Judith his intended wife, and John — friends of Shakespeare, in the choir, are most remarkable. Again, at the east end of the north aisle, where the Lady Chapel was, the Clopton monuments now are, certainly all very curious and interesting. The first of these is tlie ceno- taph of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, who died in that city and was buried in St. Margaret's, Lothbury. It was he who built the New Place, rebuilt the nave of the Guild Chapel, and erected the stone bridge. The monument of William Clopton and his wife, he in plate armour with a lion at his feet, and she in a dark robe with a white undcrbodice trimmed with gold, and a ruff, is remarkable through their children being sculp- tured above, three of them in swaddling clothes to intimate that they died in infancy. More imposing is the splendid monument of George STRATFORD. 21 Carew, Earl of Totnes, and Baron of Clopton, with his Countess, Joyce, the daughter of thib William Clopton. The effigies are of alabaster, and repose beneath a semi-circular arch, elaborately adorned with angels, cherubim, and devices. The Earl was Master of the Ordnance under James 1. He is sculptured in armour and wearing his robes, and there are imple- ments of war to indicate his relation to the military service, as well as the shields of Carew and Griffiths, with the motto, "Tvtvs svb vmbra leonis." A lion is at his feet, and his countess is represented in a white fur robe, with tippet, a ruff round her neck, and a coronet upon her head. The colouring of the effigies is peculiar. They were restored by Sir Arthur Hodgson in 1892. To this family of Clopton, which was, of course, well known to Shakespeare, belonged MargaretCiopton, who is surmised to have been the original of Ophelia. Many other monu- ments in the Chapel are interesting. One of the quaintest inscriptions in Stratford Church is that of Alderman Richard Hill, on the east wall of the south transept. He was a tradesman of the town in Shakespeare's time, a woollen draper, whose virtues survived him, and whose fame flourished still, as was testi- fied by his servant, " S.I.," who had " beheld it with mi eie." He was a pattern, we read, to such as succeeded him in his trade. " He did not use to sweare, to gloase, eather faigne, His brother to defraude in bargaininge ; Hee woold not strive to get excessive gaine In ani cloathe or other kinde of thinge." Shakespeare's Monument. The American Window. LikeWolsey,in the mouth of Griffith, good Master Richard Hill, had found a friend who would not that evil deeds should be writ- ten in brass, nor would com- mit his virtues to aught less durable. Many other beautiful things in this remarkable Church detain the visitor, and he turns with special interest to the memo- rials which American tra- vellers have added. The most important of these is the beautiful window placed by subscription on the north side of the choir. It is the middle window of the five on that side, and depicts, in admirable colour and design, the Seven Ages of Man, not as the melancholy Jaques describes them in his picture of that wordly stage on which men and women are as players, but as they were per- sonified by Moses, Samuel, Jacob, Joshua, Soloman, Abraham, and Isaac. Another win- dow, "the gift of America to Shakespeare's Church," has been erected in the south tran- sept, and, as completed, is an excellent testimony to the strong and enduring interest which Americans take in the homeland of the immortal "Swan of Avon." In the middle light is the Madonna with the Infant Christ, and in the flanking lights are St. Egwyn, Bishop of Worcester, King Charles the First, and Archbishop Laud on one hand, and Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, and William Penn on the other, while the Pilgrim Fathers are below. Mr. Bayard, the late United States Minister, unveiled the window on Shakespeare's birthday in 1896, though two lights depicting St. Eric, first bishop of Greenland, and a bishop of Connecticut had then to be added. The illustrations show very clearly the beautiful character of the detail of Stratford Church. The carved stalls and other of the old features are e.xcellent, and the edifice has been conscientiously, even if too thoroughly, restored, to the delight of pilgrims to Shakes- peare's shrine. 22 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Nave, looking West, This beautiful Churcii of the Holy Trinity at Stratford, which saw the beginning and end of Shakespeare's career, exercised some influence upon thecourse of it, we may be sure. How wide or deep that influence was we cannot tell. His mighty genius, which swept, with masterful power, through every note of human life and passion, passed from the fantastic gaiety of Titania and the fairy ring, or the ribald humour of Falstaff, to sound the sombre bitterness of Hamlet and the grim conscience of Macbeth. He turned from the boorish drunkeness of a Sly, or the rustic humour of a Touchstone or a Launce to " A purpose More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends Of burning youth." Like Vincentio, in "Measure for Measure," he loved"the liferemoved," andoften "heldinidle price to haunt assemblies," with youth, cost and witless bravery. In such moods we find him turning to churchesor seeking the counsel of rev- erend men. Perhaps it is here that the Church at Stratford plays its part. At all events, in churches he always treads with reverence, as he speaks of true religious men ; witness the counsel of Jaques to Touchstone and Audrey. We know that Shakespeare was not married in the Church we have visited ; but churches and friars' cells are generally associated in his plays either with wed- dings or funerals. There are sombre scenes, such as Westminster Abbey, where the corpse of Henry V. is discovered lying in state, and Bedford e.xclaims "Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night ! " and the churchyard, with the tragic terror of the Capulets' monu- ment. But earlier, in the same play, we have Romeo coming, hot-blooded, that tlie Friar may "close our hands with holy words." Remembering Shakespeare's youthful love for the Shottery maid, of which something may be said hereafter, it may be well, here in Stratford church- yard, to recall the milder counsels of the Friar. " These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume ; The sweetest honey l.s loathsome in his own deliciousness, .•\nd in the taste confounds the appetite : Therefore, love moderately ; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." There is, too, the church scene in "Much Ado About Nothing," with the disturbed wedding of Claudio and Hero, which may be thought, read with know- ledge, to throw some light on Shakes- peare's own marriage. j So we may link Shakespeare's plays with scenes he witnessed, perhaps, in the Church at Stratford. The sexton must have been his familiar. He had heard the clown singas he threw up sculls in the digging of graves. "Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness," says Horatio. "That scull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murther ! . . . There's another ! Why might not that be the scull of a lawyer ? . . . Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery .' " Such musings may well have passed through the mind of Shakes- peare in Stratford churchyard. The bones which were thus thrown up — making his eyes " ache to think on't" — were shovelled together, as if they " cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats with them," and carried to the charnel, house, which stood on the north side of the chancel. This had apparently been an aisle in earlier times, but, in Shakespeare's day, had become a place of horror, reflected in the lines upon his grave which beg rest for his bones. The charnel-house was some thirty feet long,. z O (- a. O u o of </5 H f- 2 O LU UJ O 3i LU 24 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. fifteen feet wide and very liigh. It was taken down in the year 1800, but traces of it were discovered in 1882, wlien huge piles of sculls were found upon its site. Visitors to Stratford Church will not regret the demolition of it. But now, leaving behind us the church, and the churchyard, with its yews and upstandiniz grave- stones, let us furtheV, as Sebastian might have said, "go see the reliques of this town," ere we " bespeak our diet " in the very hostel, if so we will, where Washington Irving abode. Very pleasant it is, at the outset, returning Stratford- ward by the river, to see the house of a true and generous lover of our national bard. For eastward of the Church is Avon Bank, once the residence of Mr. Charles E. Flower, and afterwards of his widow, who contmued his munificence. It was he who restored the Guild- hall and presented the site for _ the Shakespeare Memorial build- ings, which stand adjacent and very prominent by the river. The erection of these arose out of the ter-centenary festival of 1864, when the idea of erecting a national memorial to Shake- speare was discussed. To honour Shakespeare in some such way had entered into the mind of others. Garrick indulged a dream that Stratford might become a centreof Shakespeare study, and a school of acting and elocution. On the occasion of the festival of 1769, a wooden amphitheatre was erected where the Bancroft Gardens now are, in which many performances took place. Gar- rick, who was much interested in the proceedings, had a statue of the dramatist made at his own cost, which he afterwards pre- sented to the Stratford Town Hall,a Tuscan building.in Chapel Street, where it now stands in a niche. The idea took further shape, but without practical fruit, in 1820, when Charles Mathews the comedian, presented to tne people of Stratford, in their town hall, his last new entertainment, entitled " Country Cousins and the Sights of London," at the conclusion of which, as the play- bill preserved in the Memorial Library records, he had "the honour of submitting to the audience the nature of some pro- posals that have been suggested forthe purpose of erecting, in the form of a Theatre in Stratford, a national monument and mauso- leum to the immortal memory of Shakespeare." The existing structure is of a very striking character, but has a somewhat Continental ap- pearance. Itcomprisesasplendid library, embra- cing every class of literature which throws light upon Shakespeareorhistimes, atheatrein which his plays are periodically enacted, and a picture gallery in which are some most interesting works, including representations of many scenes in the plays from the easels of weU-known artists, andalargecollectionofengravings. Once a vear, in the Festival week, in April, Shakes- peare students and lovers throng to Stratford to honour his memory, and several of his plays are then represented in the theatre. To this work Mr. Flower was a most generous giver, and it ma\- be hoped that many will follow in his footsteps. Close by the theatre stands the Holy Trinity Church from the Lock on the Avoni STRATFORD. 25 The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. monument which Lord Ronald Gower presented to the town. Tlie figure of Shakespeare is good, and those of Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, Prince Henry, and Hamlet are really admirable. Beyond the Sliakespeare Memorial are the Bancroft Gardens, and then we reach the Clopton Bridge, a very remarkable structure of fourteen principal arches, with a causeway at either end lifting the roadway above the meadows, which were often flooded in former times. It was erected by Sir Hugli Clopton. Lord Mayor of London, in the days of Henry VIL, and has since been widened. This was the same Sir Hugh who built tlie house which after- wards became tlie New Place of Shakespeare, and rebuilt the nave of the Guild Chapel. Across the bridge is the Banbury Road, and from the bridge foot the visitor returns to town. The rustic life of neighbouring Warwickshire may be studied in the picturesque scenes of the Market Place, on market-days, when the farmers bring in their produce to sell. It was just so in Shakespeare's time, tliough then a row of houses with stalls stood in the middle of the broad space, and there were hostels there, as now, for the refreshment of the market- men. But in Shakespeare's days Stratford was a far more picturesque place than in these — a rural market town, almost wholly built of timber, with structures such as the " Birth- place "and the" Five Gables" lining tb.e streets and overhanging the roadway. Sanitation had not yet destroyed its unsavoury rusticity, nor fire swept away many of its buildings. The " Red Horse " is one of the inns in the Market Place, where still the arm-chair, poker and clock of Washington Irving may be seen ; and we can picture him making his " empire " there, as Shakespeare perhaps had done, and as Falstaff does in the play, with a chair for his state, a dagger for his sceptre, and a cushion for his crown. " To a homeless man," said the famous Knick'erbocker, '■ who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into his slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire.' Let the world witliout go as it may ; let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he has the wherewitlial to pay his bill, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The arm-chair is his tlirone, tlie poker is his sceptre, and the little parlour, some twelve feet square, his un- disputed empire." The parlour thus immor- talized is the front room on the left on entering the gateway of the inn. THE MARKET PLACE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON. WASHINGTON IKVING'S ROOM, THE RED HORSE INN. ( -^6 ) z LU a O 'J < LU O U O LU < < < X < 28 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Clopton Bridge. There are two places within a short walk of Stratford closely associated with Shakespeare. A mile and a half north-west of the tou'n stands the Clopton House, a gabled mansion that he knew, now much changed, indeed, from its early state. This was the Manor house of the Cloptons in his day, and they say he resorted to it often for reading and study. It has been surmised that the second scene of the "induction" of " The Taming of the Shrew " was cast there. The story of Charlotte Clopton, who is fabled to have been buried ali\'e in the Clopton Chapel, and is known as the "ghost lady," may probably have suggested to him an incident in " Romeo and Juliet." The romance of Margaret Clopton (daughter of William Clopton, who died in 1592), said to have drowned herself, out of hopeless love behind Clopton House, where still her spirit " walks," may have been in his mind when he wrote the end of distraught Ophelia. Clopton House was the seat of Sir Arthur Hodgson, and remains a place of very tine character, with many historical associations. The deluded plotters, devising their schemes in 1604-5, while Cecil gave them rope enough to hang themselves, resorted to it, invited by Ambrose Rookwood, a recusant. The " priest's room" is in the roof, where they are said to have assembled. When the plot was discovered, the Bailiff of Stratford searched the place, and found there a number of copes, vestments, crosses, crucifixes, chalices, "and other massing reliques." The house has a very fine panelled dining-room, with a deep bay, which has much storied glass in its panes, and the walls are lined with old portraits, in- cluding the mother of Cromwell, General Ireton, and the Queen of Bohemia. A Shakespeare by Wright, 1688, has been lent to the Memorial Gallery. The staircase, too, and other parts of this interesting mansion are noteworthy. We leave Stratford now to visit some neigh- bouring places more or less associated with the bard, but Shottery must be linked with the town itself — Shottery, at a short distance across the fields, the village where Shakespeare won his bride. It is a quiet rural spot, with many a delightful " bit" for the artist. They still show a quaint, thatched, half-timber, cottage, with its gable facing the road, a true old English farmstead, with a rustic garden before, as that in which she lived. Upon this matter there is, indeed, no certainty, for three families bearing the name of Hathaway were then located in the vicinity. Richard Hathaway, husbandman, whose will was proved in July, 1582, left a small sum by way of dowry to his daughter Agnes, a name sometimes interchanged with that of Anne — Shakespeare's marriage took place in December of the same year — and Hathaway's shepherd, in a will made in 1601, refers to " Anne Shaxpere, wyfe unto Mr. t&^ The Clopton House, Stratford. >- Qi OJ f- (- o o J < < < X 2: 30 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Interior of Anne Wyllyam Shaxpere." Two neighbours, who supervised and witnessed the will of Richard Hathaway, were also sureties in the bond, sealed with the initials " R.H.," for the marriage of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. Thus many points relating to this matter seem clear, though the place where the ceremony actually took place is not known. But into the interesting questions that sur- round the marriage of Shakespeare 1 will not enter. Some have surmised tint the " hand- "Anne Hathaway's Bed.' Hathaway's Cottage. fasting" preceded the ceremony; others, with great plausibility, that the marriage was performed by a priest of the " old learning." in Shottery Manor, there is a quaint room in the roof, with huge beams, which was, perhaps, the scene of a ceremony that would necessarily have been performed in secret. That there was something remark- able about the marriage seems probable, and it is certainly worth noticing that, in " As You Like It," when Touchstone is about to be married by Sir Oliver Mar-text, the vicar of the next village, Jaques asks him if he will be married thus, " under a bush, like a beggar." "Get you to church," he says, "and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is : this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot ; then one of you will prove a shrunk- panel, and, like green timber, warp, warp." But we may dismiss from our minds any strictures that have been offered in regard to Shakespeare's early relations with Anne. It is more pleasant, and, perhaps, more profit- able, to regard the rustic cottage at Shottery as, the scene of his wooing when he held " good name in man or woman " to be " the immediate jewel of their souls," and to think of Anne as a maiden free from reproach as Hero, and the one who inspired him with the pure and noble passion Ihat irradicates with emotional splendour all that is best in his plays. The house, like the Birthplace and the New Place m H o Qi < m a. CO m f- O ^ O < S C/) a. O m o X) P _: 32 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. Museum, is cared for by the Birthplace Trust. It is a humble dwelling, such as a husbandman of Shakespaare's days miyht well have lived in, though it is changed somewhat in these. There is, upstairs, an old carved four-post bedstead, which is ascribed, somewhat doubtfully, to Anne Hathaway. IVlrs. Baker, a descendant of the Hathaways, who took a simple pride in the house, lived in it, sitting sometimes, as she is seen in the picture, by the ingle-nook, with the bible by her side, wherein the generations of the Hathaways are recorded, or coming anon to the door to welcome the stranger. She died in 1899, and has been succeeded by her son. Ragley Hall beyond the Arrow, we reach Bidford, with a curious church, and the Falcon Inn, to which Shakespeare is said to have resorted. But, before reaching the village, the successor may be seen of " Shakespeare'.s crab-tree," under which he is said to have slept off the effects of a carouse. " Drunken Bidford " appears in that epigram which charac- terises other neighbouring villages, but, without reciting its lines, it may be useful to say that "Piping Pebworth," "Dancing Marston," " Haunted Hillborough," and " Hungry Graf- ton " are all hereabout. At Bidford we may cross the river, and return to Stratford on the Vicarage, Clifford Cnai SHAKESPEARE VILLAGES. Surrounding Stratford are many rustic vil- lages associated with Shakespeare or his family, and imagination will weave the thread of his fancy with the sights and sounds of that beautiful land. Picturesque Luddington still remains, where it is possible he was married. Tradition has long averred the story, though there is no witness to the fact. The village lies by the Avon on its right bank, about three miles from Stratford. Beyond it, the Binton Bridges span the river, there with an island in the middle, in most picturesque fashion. The manor house of " Haunted Hillborough," a Tudor dwelling, lies a little further along the stream, and then, proceeding through lovely country, with a fine view of left bank. There is delightfully rural and picturesque Welford on the way. Clifford Chambers, its neighbour, possesses still a venerable house with upright and horizon- tal beam-work, which is rare in its quaintness, with a gable at either end, the " house-body " in the middle, and an external staircase. Here dwelt, in Shakespeare's time, a certain John Shakespeare, but that he was the poet's father none can say. The \'illage lies a little apart, upon the tri'butary Stour ; but, returning to Stratford by the Avon, we may pass through the tangled shades of the Weir Brake, by a pathway overhung by many a tree — " Wf;ose antique root peeps out. Upon the brook tfiat brawls along tfiis wood." Here it is fabled that Shakespeare weaved the fancies of his " Midsummer Night's Dream." r ^^ : VIEWS AT LUUDINUTON. ■»i ( a:i ) 34 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. Billesley HaU. The places named lie to the south and west of Stratford, but on every side of the town there are villages of picturesque interest filled with Shakespearean associations. At Billesley, which lies north-west of the town, about two miles beyond Shottery, they claim also to ha\-e had the honour of marrying Shakespeare. There, at any rate, his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's last descendant, as we have seen, married Sir John Barnard. It has been surmised that Shakespeare visited Billesley Hall, which is a venerable and interesting mansion, approached between two urn-capped pillars, where, as at the Clopton House, a " priest's hiding-place," and beautiful panelled rooms and carvings remain from those stirring Tudor times. Temple Grafton, between Billesley and Bid- ford, is another pleasant village, standing upon a height, with a great view southwards towards the Cotswolds. The Church was taken down in 1875 and rebuilt. There is some documen- tary evidence tending to show that Shakespeare may actually have been married therein, for, in the Episcopal Register at Worcester, under the date of No\-ember 27th, 1582, the day before that of the marriage bond referred to, there is record of license for a marriage between " Wil- lielmum Sha.xpere et Annam Whateley de Temple Grafton." The incorrect descriptions of name and place have been variously ex- plained by commentators. The poet had, perhaps, in his mind's eye, the magnificent view here, when he bethought him of the local allusion in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," where Slender speaks of Page's fallow dog, which, he said, had been ■' out-run on Cotsall." More certainly associated with Shakespeare is Wilmcote, where the house of Mary Arden, his mother, still stands. It has been a good deal modernised, but is a halt- timber structure, which forms, with the neighbour ingf arm build- ings, a most picturesque group. The Ardens were a family of consideration in John Shakes- peare's time, tracing their des- cent to a Saxon Ailwin, and even to Guy of Warwick and King Athelstan. Robert Arden, of Park Hall, appears to have fought much and suffered a good deal in the Wars of the Roses, losing his head on the block for his share therein, in 1452. His son Walter, who married a Hampden, of Great Hampden, though restored by Edward IV., seems to have been a poorer man. Sir John Arden, Walter's eldest son, was an Esquire of the body to Henry \'ll., while the second son Thomas Arden, was of Wilmcote, in the parish of Aston Cantlow, and was the poet's great-grandfather. This Thomas Arden, in 1501, became possessed of land at Snittertield, which was afterwards tenanted by the Shakespeares. Robert Arden, his son, had seven daughters, of whom Mary, wife of John Shakespeare, and the poet's mother, was the youngest. Her family was one of many branches in Warwickshire. Edward Arden, who fell under displeasure, partly because of his religion and partly because, with mm \ ; ' , ! Tlie Drawing Room, BiHesley Hall. STRATFORD AND SURROUNDING VILLAGES. 35 The Arden House, Wilmcote. Sir Thomas Lucy and others, he refused to wear Leicester's livery, was implicated with his son-in-law and another in a plot against Elizabeth, and was executed at Smithtleld. It cannot be shown that the Shakespeares were of equal gentility to the Ardens, and a reason- able surmise is that John Shakespeare, before he fell upon evil times, aimed to raise his family to a worthy level, and to mark its posi- tion by the arms for which he applied, when Bailiff of Stratford, in 1569-70. His claim was based upon his honourable office, upon a grant by Henry Vll. to his antecessors — afterwards changed, in the draft, into " grandfather " — for service done, and upon his marriage to the daughter of a gentleman of worship in the person of Robert Arden. The house of Wilmcote — often, in old times, called Wincot — stands a little back from the road, with an old garden before it, and is very picturesque from the rear — a building of two stories, with dormers and good gables. Wilm- cote village is a rustic place, famed aforetime for the potency of its ale. It was the scene of the carouse of Christopher Sly, who appeals to its evidence when the servants of the Lord, in the "induction" to the "Taming of the Shrew," would persuade him, on his awaken- ing, into unfamiliar gentility. " Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath ; by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmak'er, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker } Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not ; if she say 1 am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom." Aston Cantlow (originally Cantelupe) is some two miles away. It is another very pretty village of the charming Warwickshire type, with old timber houses overlooking its green. The Church, too, is an interesting structure, much of it dating from the 13th century, con- sisting of a nave with an aisle on the north side, a chapel, a chancel, and an embattled tower at the west end. The village lies by the little river Alne, on the road from Alcester to Warwick, and there is delightful journeying to either. Warwick-ward the way is by Bearley to Snitterfield, whence the Shakes- peares came to Stratford. Charles II., flying from the field of Worcester, had more than one hairbreadth escape hereabout. At Bearley Cross, travelling in disguise as servant to the daughter of Colonel Lane, of Bentley, towar.'s Bristol, with his supposed mistress behind him upon the pillion, he narrowly eluded a troop of Cromwell's horse, who were eagerly on the alert, for it was known he had escaped from Whiteladies. Beyond the scene of this historic episode the road 'to Warwick passes through Bearley and Snitterfield Bushes, most lovely relics of the old woodland of Arden, abounding with picturesque beauties, melodious with birds, and redolent of wildtlowers in the spring. Beyond Snitterfield we shall not trace it. Richard Shakespeare, who was almost cer- tainly the poet's grandfather, lived in the 3'^ THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY Aston village, and there we reasonably surmise his father was born. John Shakespeare, after settling in Stratford, continued to hold property in Snitterfield, until, in the time of his falling fortunes, when some persecution was evidently directed against him, he was compelled to dispose of it. The Church is a good structure of the Decorated and Perpendicular periods, with a broad, low, embattled tower, and octagonal and clustered shafts. Within, the carved woodwork is particularly rich and inter- esting and well deserving of study. Richard Jago, the poet, was long Vicar of the place, and the house in which he lived still stands, a very quaint old gabled building. A magnifi- cent yew and several splendid limes are in the churchyard. Snitterfield Hall has long been destroyed. This account of "Shakespeare Villages" might have been ex- tended further. The history of the country neighbouring Strat- ford might also have been dwelt upon. Some allusion has already been made to the deluded plot- ters of 1604-5, ^^'ho lived in this vicinity. VVhether Shakespeare had any sympathy with the con- spiracy we cannot tell. If so, he never betrayed it. Probably he knew, better than his Warwickshire neighbours, how far-reaching were the ramifi- cations of the scheme, and what desperate purposes were entertained. Some of his company of players had been Cantlow. concerned in the rebellion of Esse.x and South- ampton, and he must have known many who came to the call of Sir Everard Digby at Dun- church. Ambrose Rookwood, the friend of Catesby, lived, as we have seen, at the Clopton House, to which Catesby, Wright, Winter, Keyes, the Grants, and others resorted. John Grant resided at Northbrook, near Snitterfield, where was the plotters' storehouse of arms. There they rested in their flight to Huddington on the morning of December 6th, 1605, and thence it was that Sir Everard Digby despatched Catesby's servant with a message to Coughton Court, the Throckmorton's place, near Alcester, giving to his friends, anxiously awaiting news, the terrible story of failure. The Church, Aston Cantlow. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. mm Charlecote Hall, CHARLECOTE. Let us now turn to Charlecote, which lies to the east of Stratford, close by the Avon, and at a distance of some three miles from the town. This is one of the finest Eliza- bethan houses in the county, and, indeed, in all England, always to be associated with Shakespeare, not so much because of his tra- ditionary poaching of game there, but because the quarrel between the poet and Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, was, in all probability, the cause of his leaving Stratford and joining the players in London. The house has all the venerable charm of mellow old brickwork, many-windowed walls, picturesque chimney stacks and turrets, quaint gardens, and a far- spreading park diversified by noble trees, beloved of the rooks, and with the classic Avon flowing through the midst. Sir Thomas Lucy was a very important man hereabout, stand- ing high in the favour of Elizabeth, who visited him when his house was scarcely out of the hands of the builders. He was one of the Commissioners appointed to draw up lists of recusants in the county, and in some of the lists so prepared the name of Sliakespeare's father appears. It seems quite certain that the Shakespeares fell under the knight's dis- pleasure, for it must not be forgotten that one of the Ardens, who was akin to them, a gentle- man of the old religion, was implicated in a plot against the Queen, and laid down his life, as we have seen. Whether, then, we are to hold to the traditionary story of the poaching, or believe that deeper causes lay at the root of the antipathy between Lucy and Shakespeare, we cannot but see that the poet intended to from the River. satirise him, and did so to all time, in the pedantic coxcomb who struts through the " Merry Wives of Windsor " and the second part of " Henr\' IV." as Robert Shallow, Esquire, the country Justice, who was " cust- alorum," " ratolorum," as well as "armigero." It is keen satire, indeed ; so scathing that we cannot but see that Shakespeare was here wreaking vengeance upon one who had done him a real or supposed wrong. Sir Thomas Lucy's family were of high antiquity in War- wickshire, but Falstaff pictures Shallow as one who "came ever in the rear- ward of the fashion." " I do remember him at Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese- paring, when he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. . . And now is this Vice's dagger become a squire, and talk's as familiarly of John of Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him." We see how, as if it had been William Shakespeare himself, the Justice receives his servant's plea for that "arrant knave," William Visor, " of Wincot"; and Shallow has just told us that arrant knaves " will backbite." We remember, too, Hamlet's advice to stand well with the players. The luce was a device in the shield of the Lucys, and Slender says of Shallow, •■ AH his successors, gone before him. have don't ; and all his ancestors, that come after him. may : they may give the dozen white luces in their coat." Yet there is something pleasant about the " cavaliero-justice," and we can yet, as it were, enter his orchard with him, and " eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting, with a dish of carraways." Sir Thomas Lucy was a CHARLECOTE. ^9 Thj Great Hall, Charlecote. proud man, and we can picture him, tire long- lineaged squire, rising a knight when Elizabeth enters his hall, never to forget the hour. To this day, his keen eye looks down upon the visitor from the wall of Charlecote Hall. There is evidence that the story of the deer-poaching was believed in Warwickshire in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and there were grave reasons, doubtless — perhaps graver than deer-poaching — for Shakespeare's flight to London. But, if, indeed, as Shallow says, the \'enison was " ill-killed," we may believe, with Washington Irving, tliat to Shakespeare this " poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park was, doubtless, like a foray to a Scottish knigl:t, and struck his eager and as yet untamed imagi- nation as something delightfully adventurous." In some respects Charlecote Hall is unique in character. It lies in a noble park of more than two hundred acres, now well stocked with red and fallow deer — though it is contended that in Shakespeare's time it was not formally imparked for the purpose of deer-keeping — and you approach it through a splendid gate- house, undir a round arch, with a beautiful oriel window over it, the whole surmounted by a long perforated cresting, and there are octagonal turrets at the corners crowned with cupolas. Like the house itself, the gate-house is of brick, with stone dressings. Between it and the hall lies the enclosed garden, with twisted beds and box edgings, flanked by a very beautiful balustrade, which is perforated in a singular fashion, characteristically in keep- ing with the house, with flower I'ases at every bend and angle. The centre block of the mansion has three gables and a tuie projecting porch, and great wings run out on either hand, so that the ground plan is roughly that of the letter E. The porch has some peculiarities. At each side of its round-headed doorway are Ionic pilasters, and above, flanking the coat-of-arms and the two-light mullioned window, .. are detached composite shafts resting upon brac- kets. Above runs the same perforated cresting which is found in many parts of the building. The projecting wings are many gabled, too ; octagonal turrets, like those of the gate, are at the corners ; and the various chimney stacks are a bold and characteristic feature. All is as Sir Thomas Lucy left it, save that, on one side, a library and dining-room were built in 1833, in exact keeping with the architectural character of the house, the imposing aspect of which they enhance. 40 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The great hall, which is entered through the porch, is a splendid apartment, hung with fine pictures, including a remarkable painting of Sir Thomas Lucy in sober black, with Joyce, his lady, and his children, all quaintly depicted by Cornelius Janssen. The apartment is richly panelled, and lighted by several great windows, of which one is a splendid bay with much armorial glass in its upper lights, includ- ing the luces, at which Sir Hugh Evans makes ribald merriment in the play. The roof is slightly pitched, the beams are well moulded, and the bosses richly carved. Space is want- ing to give here a list of the pictures which hang in the hall. They include many portraits of the Lucy family, going back to the 17th century, some of them by Kneller and Lely. Other Charlecote portraits are of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (on copper), and of William Bromley, Speaker of the House of Commons, 1710-14. The dining-room and library, which are modern, as 1 have said, are fine rooms in the south wing. The dining-room, especially, has a splendid plaster ceiling and much excellent carving. It is hung with many game-pieces, including one of Snyder's, which has a figure by Van Dyck, and its windows command a wide view of the country. Among the pictures in the library are portraits of Henry VIU. by Holbein, Elizabeth by Sir Antonio More, Lord Strafford by Stone, Queen Henrietta Maria by Van Dyck, and the Duchess of Ferrara by Titian. Other pictures in this room are by Velasquez, Guido Reni, Valentina, and Gainsborough. Here, too, is a splendid suite of furniture — two cabinets, a couch, an armchair, and eight chairs of ebony and ivory — given by Eliza- beth to her " sweet Robin " at Kenilworth, and brought thence to Charlecote. The drawing-room is another magnificent apart- ment, and upon its walls hang many fine pictures of the Italian and Dutch schools, in- cluding a superb Madonna by Fra Bartolommeo, and St. Cecilia by Domenichino, works of Titian, Giorgione, Carlo Dolci, and many others, as well as portraits of Queen Mary by Sir Antonio More, and Robert Rich, first Earl of Warwick of that family, by Zucchero. From every point of view Charlecote Hall groups most picturesquely. The placid Avon flows close by its gardens, and reflects the turrets and walls upon which Shakespeare must sometimes have gazed. The park is richly wooded, and dense belts of trees en- frame broad stretches of beautiful meadow. A The Library, Charlecote. ;^-J_ 42 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. splendid avenue of elms leads to the Church, a modern structure in the Decorated style, dating from 1853. In many respects it is very beautiful, but has no- thing so remarkable as the three monuments of the Lucys, which are in a mortuary chapel, separa- ted by a richly carved oaken screen from the chancel. Be- neath a rose window is the altar tomb of the Sir Thomas Lucy, of Shakespeare's day, and his wife Joyce. The tomb is classic in its character, and the knight is represented in plate-armour, with hands uplifted and bare head, while his wife is habited in a close-fitting gown with a coif upon her head. In front the tomb has two panels, with sculp- tured kneeling figures repre- senting Thomas and Anne, the children of the deceased. Sir Thomas wrote an eulogy of his wife, which is inscribed upon a black marble slab above, extolling her Christian virtues, and pronouncing her to have been singular as a housewife and mother, a maintainer of hospitality, esteemed by "her betters," and " misliked of none but the envious." Opposite to this monument is another altar tomb to the memory of the knight's son, another Sir Thomas, who is also represented in plate-armour, in a similar The Elizafcethan Suite, Charlecote. attitude. A curious feature is the figure of his second wife at the side of the tomb, kneeling upon a cushion in the attitude of prayer, and wearing a black gown with a tippet, and a ruff round her neck. This figure is of painted stone. The third tomb is of the third Sir Thomas Lucy, also with his wife, who was the daughter and heiress of Thomas Spencer, of Claverdon. This knight was killed by a fall from his horse, and, in the manner of his time, is represented in a recumbent attitude, resting upon his elbow, while the head of his <HI ^i!!>-^yifcl .-''T^^'-j -I^. The Garden Gate, Charlecote. COMPTUN IVY N YATES. 43 wife reposes upon a cushion. The tomb is surmounted by a canopy resting upon beautiful columns. The effigies are the work of the famous Bernini, who played so great a part during the decadence of Italian sculpture, and were executed in Italy from portraits sent out by Sir Thomas's widow. Of their kind there are few more remarkable monuments in Eng- land. Some other interesting features are in the church, and a very ancient font. The visitor to this neighbourhood will fmd a modern church of excellent character, by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, at Hampton Lucy, not far away, the old church at that ancient place having been destroyed ; and, at Sherborne, battle of 1642. Essex planted his Torces in front of the little town of Kineton, while the Royal troops held the position of advantage upon the hill, and the furious fight was waged between. There is a magnificent outlook from the hills. From Edge Hill House, indeed, where the Earl of Lindsey, who commanded the royal forces was carried mortally wounded, and where there are abundant relics of the fight, you may look on a clear day even to the Wrekin in distant Shropshire. It is a region of witchcraft, too. Even so late as 1875 it is known that some people of Brailes "drew blood" on a poor creature of Tysoe, even as Talbot, in the first part of " Henry VI." says to the Maid, " blood Compton Wynyates, from the West. between that place and Warwick, is one of the finest rural churches in the county. COMPTON WYNYATES. Before we turn our faces towards famous Warwick, we shall go out south-eastward from Stratford a little, in order to glance at a few places which lie along the hilly borderland of the Feldon or " Vale of the Red Horse." Our chief object is to survey that most picturesque of houses, Compton Wynyates, the seat of the Marquisof Northampton, which lies ata distance of about twelve miles from Stratford, in a region full of historic interest. The famous field of Edge Hill is its neighbour, but there is neither space nor necessity to deal here with the great will 1 dravv on thee ; thou art a witch." A few miles further south again, near where the road from Stratford to London, along which Shakes- peare often journeyed, passes through Long Compton, are the famous Rollwright or Rollrich Stones, about which most curious legends linger. These mark, perhaps, the burial place of prehistoric chiefs, but they say that the " King's Stone " is but the petrified form of a monarch who would have ruled over England if he could but have set eyes upon Long Compton, which is visible but a few yards from where he stands. About him is the circle of his petrified soldiers, and, at a little distance, stand the " Whispering Knights," who were his personal attendants, but played the traitor to his forgotten majesty. 44 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. But to come now to Compton Wynyates, which lies midway between Edge Hill and Long Compton, below the crest of this long range of hills. Warwickshire, though rich in castles and houses of a former time, has nothing to surpass the quadrangular mansion we have before us, witli its charmingly picturesque grouping of towers, turrets, gabies, and chimneys. The house belongs to that period of history in which it was safer for the country gentleman to place a moat between himself and the stranger, and a good drawbridge which would forbid access to his abode. The moat has gone, but the spyhole is there through which the warder lool<ed out, with the turret above, to which, upon the need the Battle of the Spurs, where he was knigiitecJ for his bravery, entertained King Henry the Eighth, with whom he had been at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir William was the builder of Compton Wynyates, and the crest which Henry gave him remains in the Hall. The room has a fme open timber roof and the gable-end is filled with timber work in a manner quite uncommon. Below are the minstrels' gallery, and the richly carved screen, which has the linen pattern in its panels, and representations of knights tilting with other subjects. The great slab of elm resting upon trestles, and the quaint furniture, are original, and of the time. The screen, as is usual in all houses of the period — as at Haddon- Compton Wynyates : The Moat. of a wider survey, he could ascend from his lodge by the twisting stairs. Some who came were, doubtless, turbulent folk, for, by one means or another, they have left the evidence of their defeated purpose with pike or hagbut upon the oaken door. There is the appearance of strength about that broad porch, which has stone seats within, and doors which gave access to the moat when the bridge was up. It is flanked by two most picturesque gables. Pass, then, through the archway, and you are in the quadrangle. Opposite stands the great hall, with its beautiful and elaborate bay, and the kitchen and domestic ofifices. The parlour, or private dining room, and the chapel are on the right hand as we enter the court.'' Here, in his hail. Sir William Compton, who greatly distinguished himself at Hall, for example — separates the hall from the lobby and the kitchens, which, at Compton Wynyates, have deeply recessed fireplaces. The parlour, or private dining room, which adjoins, and looks out through two mullioned windows over the gardens on the south, is wainscoted with oak, and has a ceiling, bearing the arms of Compton and Spencer, which was placed there by William Compton, first Earl of Northampton. The Earl had married, in Elizabeth's days, when he was yet Lord Compton, the daughter of rich Alderman Spencer of London, who was Lord Mayor in 1 594. The worthy alderman, as the story goes, did not approve the attention paid by the Court gallant to his daughter ; but, as love laughs loud at locks, so did Lord Compton laugh at the alder- man. By stratagem he procured admission to LU X H O > 9 O o u 46 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. the civic house in the guise of a bai<er carry- ing loaves, and, when he returned, he met the alderman, who commen- ded his energy, and gave him sixpence, saying that he was on the way to fortune. Great, there- fore, was the civic anger when it was afterwards discovered that the alderman's daughter was concealed in the very basket her father had presumed to be empty ; and it required the artifice of Elizabeth to induce him, who was very willing to dispos- sess his daughter, to stand as godfather to an infant, who proved to be his grandchild. The chapel is entered from the dining room. It has a very beautiful window of many lights, which is seen in the picture of the south front, and is divided by an oak screen. Some of the carvings in the chapel are very curious, especially those of the Seven Deadly Sins, which are depicted as mounted knights, each with an imp behind urging him forward. In the great tower adjoining is a splendid oak-panelled council chamber, with enriched doorways, as well as three staircases, leading up at the angles to what is known as the priest's room, where is the very unusual feature of a wooden altar slab. A long chamber, described as the barracks, e.xtends along the roof, and yet bears evidences of the soldiers who occupied in the Civil Wars. The house was captured for the Parliament after Compt The Hall, Compton Wynyatcs on Wynyates ; The South Front. a three days' siege in June, 1644, when the Earl of Northampton's brother, and about a dozen officers, and 120 men were captured, with eighty horses and great quantities of ammunition. Sir Charles and Sir William Compton endeavoured to retake the place in the following January, and gained a footing in the stables by night, but were repulsed with loss. The third Earl of Northampton retained his estates by paying a heavy composition. These notes will serve to show what an interesting house is this. Its staircase and drawing rooms, and the rooms ascribed to Henry VIII.,andCharles I., as those in which they slept, are all beautiful and interesting, with the other apartments of the house. There are many secret chambers within its walls, bespeaking the troubles and dangers of former times. Henry the Eighth's bedchamber bears still his badges and the arms of Katharine of Aragon, for it was in the early years of his reign that Compton Wynyates was built. As some illustration of the extent of this remarkable struc- ture, it may be interesting to note that it contains altogether about eighty rooms and fifteen distinct staircases. Monuments of its old possessors remain in the neighbour- ing church. We ascend the hill to the "pike" above, which indicates the path to the wayfarer, and, as we see the blue smoke rising from the fretted chimneys of Compton Wyn- yates, we feel indeed, that we have left an excellent type of the dwelling places of country gentlemen and noblemen of Shakespeare's early times. WARWICK CASTLE. 47 WARWICK. The city of Warwick is the capital, not only •of the county, but of the Slialcespeare country. Few county towns, and probably none of equal importance, maintain so quaint and old- world an aspect as this. The city reflects the character of its surroundings. You cannot enter it without seeing that it is at once tilled with history and invested with a wonderful pictur- esque charm. Tramcars from Leamington ■run, indeed, along the Jury Street, where, perhaps, the money-lenders were sheltered by the Baron, and the High Street where his retainers marched. But these streets are lined with houses of ancient features, and some indicative of Georgean gentility, and, •turn where you will, down the side lanes you meet the relics of a former time. The road from Stratford to Warwick brings you between Snitterfield and Hampton Lucy, through a beautiful country of wood and meadow, such as is characteristic of Warwickshire, to the west gate of the city. The distance is about seven miles. There is a long and gentle approach to the gateway, and pedestrians ■enter beneath the arch upon which rises the Chapel of the Earl of Leicester's Hospital. What a picturesque grouping we have here of "timber gables and archways, of towers, chim- neys, and battlements, awaking not only the memories of former times, but almost the visible presence of them, for all is here scarcely changed since Robert Dudley raised anew the old charitable foundation. Interior of the Barbican. The Barbican, Warwick Castle. It is a fitting entrance to the ancient town, through which the High Street and Jury Street lead you to the East Gate, which, like the other, has a Chapel over it, of striking aspect, though not an old one, nor one wholly satisfactory. These two gates mark the ex- tent of the city, which was encompassed by walls upon a roughly circular plan. From gate to gate a semi-circle of work's stretched to the north, having the great Church of St. Mary in its midst, while, on the other side, the wall went down by the Castle lodge and quaint Mill Lane to a spot where the ivy-grown piers of a Norman bridge still stand in the placid waters of the Avon, and where the lofty height of Cesar's tower, and the long curtain wall of the Castle, " the fairest monu- ment of ancient and chivalrous splendour which remains uninjured by time." overlook the stream. We shall not follow here the rise of Warwick from the dim region of its fabulous history, nor dwell upon its Saxon fame as the seat of a bishopric, established as early as the year 544, at the Church of All Saints, then within the Castle walls, but now united with that of St. Mary in the city ; tradition avers that Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, raised a castle here, and the mound still stands which her works are said to have crowned. The Castle was undoubtedl\- strengthened at a time shortly after the Norman Conquest. It was the scene of stirring episodes in the struggles among the Conqueror's immediate successors, and in ihe Ions wars which were waged between fMHi O m a: LJJ ■*-i, - y-'Z'j 1 ff 1 i 50 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. the King and the Barons. Sir John Giffard, Governor of Kemhvorth, carried off the Earl of War\vici\, who had tal<en part against the Barons, from his own Castle in '1264. At that time the Castle of Warwick suffered severely, but Henry III. made it his headquarters when he was conducting operations against the Barons at Kenilworth two years later. The importance of the position, however, caused it to be speedily restored, and it was a place of strength when Piers Gaveston was brought thither a prisoner by Guy Beauchamp, the " black dog of Arden," in 1312. By a curious change of fortune the walls which had held the taunting Gascon as a prisoner received Hugh le Despenser as their master and Edward II. as their guest. The great Richard Beau- champ, who built the Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's Church, welcomed Henry V. at the Castle in 1417, and the King-maker here imprisoned Edward IV. The Castle after- wards came to the Crown, and it was not until the time of Edward VI. that it was granted to the Dudleys. Elizabeth was enter- tained more than once at Warwick by Ambrose Dudley, who, though implicated in Northumber- land's plot, is spoken of as the " Good Earl," and whose monument is also in the Beauchamp Chapel. In 1605 the Crown once again granted it, to Sir Fulkt- Gre\'ille, who spent great sums in restoring it, and several times entertained James I. The Royalists besieged the place in 1642, and here the Earl of Lindsey died after the neighbouring battle of Edge Hill, being brought, mortally wounded, from Edge Hill House. Beneath Cesar's Tower, in the dungeon, there may still be seen among rudely-cut inscriptions, one of a Royal- ist soldier, master-gunner to the King, who was there confined. In the family of Greville the Castle has remained ever since. Originally, the road led straight down from the Church to the Castle, but the present entrance is by the gatehouse, constructed in 1800, on the site of an older building opposite to St. Nicholas' Church, which, though an ancient ecclesiastic foundation, is mainly a modern structure. The approach to the Castle from the lodge is through a very picturesque cutting in the rock, overgrown with ivy and trailing plants, which brings the visitor round by a great cur\'e to the barbican and gate- house. Issuing from the rock-cut way into the outer ward of the Castle, the whole northern face of the buildings bursts upon the visitor, the great ivy-grown barbican and gatehouse in the midst, and Ciesar's and Guy's Towers on either hand. The barbican gateway is a colossal structure, projecting some sixty feet from the embattled Guy's Tower and the Barbican Gatehouse, Warwick Castle. r It m O > < C/) H < U S o ^ u ^ Qi < ^ uT X g H Oi CQ u- O H Z (7) m Z U < z S < UJ Qi ilJ I WARWICK CASTLE. 53 jii.jj]i.uLi.44yi^ The Ramparts and sile of the Bear Tower> wall, and admitting a narrow passage, nearly one hundred feet in length, with a portcullis at either end, through to the inner ward of the Castle. A stone arch replaces the old draw- bridge which closed the gate against the un- welcome, whom the embrasured walls and towers threatened with destruction. Two octa- gonal loop-holed towers flank the defence both within and without, and lofty round towers stand between, united by a flying arch. The inner ward is irregularly quadrangular in shape, with a green space of grass in the middle, and •the effect of the many-windowed Castle, the ivy-grown towers, and deep embrasured walls, whereon many peacocks strut, shadowed by "Guy's Porridge Pot." the gaunt branches of gnarled old pines, is most striking and impressive. Let us survey the buildings that surround this inner ward. On the left, as we issue from the gatehouse, rises the great height of Caesar's Tower, which dates from about 1360, and was erected by Thomas, the tlrst Beau- champ, Earl of Warwick. It is, perhaps, the most remarkable example of medi:Bval military architecture in England, but presents its most formidable aspect when seen from the foot of its great sloping base without, by the river, where it lifts its bold loopholed form to a great machicolated gallery, above whose embrasures rises a still higher embattled turret. All the loopholes and embrasures are cut at the exact angle to admit of advantageous firing, and missiles dropped from above would rebound from the sloping base into the midst of troops assembled below. The residential parts of the Castle extend from this tower parallel to the Avon, above which they rear their grey old walls and rugged buttresses, shadowed by the spreading gloom of huge cedars which cling to the bank between, while, to the inner ward, they present many mullioned and tran- somed windows, with cusped heads, the walls surmounted by an embattled cresting, and over- looked by picturesque turrets. Much of the stonework here on the inner side is new, for a disastrous fire in 1871 wrought sad havoc in some of the domestic parts of the Castle, in- cluding the great hall, which was the scene of 54 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. \.t^^- 1 he Courtyard. the torchlight trial of G;ueston by the Barons; but now ivy mantles the walls with its soften- ing green, and the place looks much as of old. Opposite to the gatehouse, by which we entered the inner ward, an ivy-clad enclosing wall extends, by the broad, low Hill Tower, and Etheltleda's shrub-grown mount, to the Northern Tower, where it turns at right angles, and stret- ches in an irregular curve, with a great stepped wall, to Guy's Tower. The Bear and Clarence Towers, both incomplete, stand in the midst of the curve opposite to the Castle buildings, and date from the time of Richard ill., flanking the entrance to the gardens and the way which once led out to the town. Guy's Tower is a broad, multangular structure, also loopholed and machicola- ted, which was built by the second Thomas de Beauchamp at the end of the 14th century, and takes its name from the redoutable hero whose legend- ary fame adds a touch of poetry to the history of Warwick. Famous memories cling to this old courtyard. Hither came the mail-clad men to their stronghold — bold and downright were they, exercis- ing the right of the strongest, as when they dragged Gaveston trembling to the door. But, if injustice was sometimes done here, it was a place whence plentuous hospitality flowed to the poor. To this courtyard, in times of civil brawl, men might look for shelter. Then we may conjure up, from a later time, the spectacle this green space pre- sented when Elizabeth rode in with her great cavalcade, and when Ambrose Dudley crooked his knee. We can almost hear the hissing of his "fireballs and squibbes " that flew over into the town, and there set houses in a blaze. The Mill. THE ARMOURY, WARWICK CASTLE. (55 ) 55 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Great Hall, Warwick Castlf, The .iireat hall of the Castle is more than sixty feet long by thirty-fi\-e feet in width, its panelling and ceiling of oak, and its floor of red and white marble. Here are some of the redoubtable hero's fabulous relics, including his "porridge pot," which is capable of holding about one hundred and twenty gallons, with a great deal of curious and interesting armour. The "porridge pot" is really a huge \'essel for cooking the flesh rations of soldiers. Guy's armour and sword date from the period of Edward 111. to that of Henrv VIll. The rib The Cedar U,.i.. ;:ij; Room. of the famous dun cow he slew pro\'es to be that of a whale. " Fair Phyllis's slippers " are a pair of slipper-stirrups of the time of Henry VI. The Red Drawing Room, which opens from the Great Hall, takes its name from the deep colour of its wainscot, and has a ceilmg of white and gold, and the Cedar and the Gilt or Green Drawing Rooms to which it leads are very noble apartments, all commanding lovely views across the divided course of the Avon, pouring over the weir by the mill, and the wooded glories of the park. The Cedar Drawing Room has its panels richly carved, and its walls hung with famous Van Dycks. In the State Bedroom, entered from the Gilt Drawing Room, is a bed draped with salmon-colou- red damask and with richly embroidered counterpanes, which at one time belonged to Queen Anne. It was pre- sented to a former Earl of Warwick by George 111. The tapestry here is very fine. The Boudoir is the last of the main series of State apart- ments, and commands an un- ri\alled view from its windows. Sliadov\'ed by a cedar, the Avon flows below, in whose waters, strange to say, a William Shakespeare was- drowned in June, 1579 WARiriCK CASTLE. 57 Other apartments are the Chapel, which is a beautiful modern work; the great Dining Room ; tiie Compass Room ; the Library ; and tlie billiard Room. The Armoury, which is cut in the thicknes-of the wall, is arrayed with crossbows, muskets, breast-plates, morions, yataghans, swords, and a whole world of ancient or strange implements of war. The Castle is famous for its great collection of pictures, ranged in the State and private apartments. It is rich in works of Rubens and Van Dyck'. There is also an " Assumption," by Raphael. Among the Rubens pictures are portraits of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel ; Ignatius Loyola, and the Marquis de Spinola. Rem- brandt's " Dutch Burgomaster" is a celebrated picture. Of Van Dyck there is a splendid equestrian portra t of Charles 1., with other portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria, Prince Rupert, Strafford, and James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. The collection includes very remarkable portraits of Henry Vjll. and Anne B 1 e y n , by Holbein. One famous picture, by Moroni; is a " Warrior," clad in a black velvet doublet, Not less famous isMurillo's "Laughing Boy." Among other artists represented in this great collectioir are Paul Veronese, Salvator Rosa, Andrea del >arto, Lorenzo de Credi, Gerhard Dow, Cranach, Van der Velde, and Jan Breugirel ; and of the English school, Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Romney, and many more. Among the other treasures of Warwick Castle is a valuable collection of Shake- spearean relics and memorials. These include a manuscript copy of the " History of King Henry IV.," written in i6io, as is believed by Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden, and a volume of MSS. containing a copy of A Carnef of the Great Hall, Warwick Castle, "Julius CiTsar " belonging to Stuart times. The collection also includes the fine folio edition of 1623, and many early copies of single plays. The Shakespeare Room— a modern title — is near Ccesar's Tower. Upon its walls hang the "Shakespeare" attributed to Corneiis janssens, a " Queen Elizabeth," an "Earl of Leicester," and a "Sir Philip Sydney," Sir Joshua Reynolds's" Mrs.Siddons with the Mask of Tragedy," and others. The gardens are large and transcendentl^ beautiful, and it is difficult to imagine anything more lovely than the view down the course of the river when the evening sunlight floods the sylvan landscape, in a greenhouse in the garden stands the famous Warwick or Tivoli Vase, a very notable re- main of Greek art — the most splen- did, indeed, of its kind — sent to this country by Sir William Hamilton, from the place where it was dis- covered in 1770 near Tivoli. This surprising work is nearly si.x feet high and five feet in diameter at the top. its handles are intertwined vine stems, of which the tendrils are sculptured round the lip, and tiger skins are re- presented hanging below, with masks and other devices. The C a s t i e itself looks no- where more splen- did than from places wnere we see its grey walls reared above the tranquil Avon to a h.eight of about a hundred feet, the h ge bulk of Cfesar's Tower dominating the scene, and the quaint building of the old mill, with its water wheel, running out into the stream, while a great vista up the river, by the ivy-grown piers of the Norman Bridge, discloses a lovely stretch of country beneath the great segmental arch which carries Banbury Road. The rooks are cawing in the elm-tops, and the squirrels frisking in the oaks, while the gaunt arms of Scotch firs stretch down towards the amber 5S THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. St. Mary's Church, Warwick. water, which pours masicall\' o\er the weir by the mill. The Church of St. Mary is intimately bound up with the memory of the old possessors of the Castle. It is one of the finest, but most unfortunate, churches in England. A disastrous fire destroyed the tower, nave, and transepts in 1694, and these were rebuilt in a style that is a travesty of English architecture, and in which classic details and Gothic features are most strangely jumbled. At the same time, the tower, it must be admitted, is a well- proportioned composition, and, where its details cannot be discerned, is certainlv impressive. The Choir, the Beauchamp Chapel and the Chapter House, save that the roof of the former has been sadly spoiled e.xternally, are very fine, and few better examples of Perpen- dicular work can be found in England. Internally, the chancel is very beautiful. The east window, though not large, is a rich example of the time, and the same may be said of the side windows, the panelled walls, the rare and curious groining, with the flying ribs which support it, the now vacant niches, and the remarkable tomb of the fotmder. This was the second Thomas de Beauchamp, who built Guy's Tower in the Castle, though it is probable that li's greater son completed his work here. The high tomb of the founder, and his wife, who was Catherine, daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, stands in the midst of the choir. The Earl is represented in plate and chain armour, with an angel at his head, and his feet resting upon a bear, and he grasps the hand of his Countess, who is clad in a close-fitting robe with a reticulated coif upon her head, and a lamb at her feet. Round the tomb are sculptured, as "weepers," thirty- si.x members of the House of Beauchamp and its kindred, each with a shield below. There is no space here to describe other various monu- ments in this interesting Church, but, in the Chapter House, there will be found the tomb of Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke — " servant to Qvene Elizabeth, counceller to King lames, and trend to Sir Philip Sidney" — who was foully done to death in London in 1628. The gem of the Church is the Lady, or Beauchamp Chapel, which stands on the south side of the choir, and at a lower level, for there is no crypt beneath it, with a most lo\-ely little Chantry Chapel between. The Chapel was built by Richard Beauchamp, the great Earl of Warwick, whose high tomb stands in the midst, and the adjoining exquisite Chantry Chapel w-as intended forthe sayingof Low Mass. The roof of the latter is a most remarkable THE CHOIR, (59) ST. MARY'S CHURCH, WARWICK. THE CHANTRY CHAPEL, ST. MARY'S CHURCH, WARWICK. (60) WARWICK. 6i The Eeauchamp Chapel, West end. example of fan tracery, with exquisite details, and the canopied niches on each side of its east window are very elaborately wrought. Here several interesting monumental casques are stored. The Chantry is separated from the Beauchamp Chapel itself by traceried screen work, and the Chapel is reached by a descent of several steps. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, its founder, who died in the Castle of Rouen in 1439, being at that time, as the inscription on his tomb says, "Lieutenant- General and Governor of the Realm of France and of the Duchy of Normandy," is the same who appears in Shakespeare's Henry VI. and other plays. His body was brought to War- wick, and lay in a stone chest before the west door of the Chapel until the vault beneath his glorious altar tomb should be completed. The detail of the Chapel is not anywhere surpassed. The walls are most richly panelled ; the ribs, groinings, and the bosses are admirably wrought ; and the whole framework' of the splendid east window is adorned with statuettes in niches in a most elaborate style. The spoiler, however, undoubtedly laid unholy hands upon many statuettes of precious metals here. Some of the old glass remains. The tomb of Richard Beauchamp is a \'ery remarkable work. It is of Purbeclc marble, and his eftlgy of gilt brass, with uplifted hands, lies upon the top, beneath a brazen framework or hearse, over which formerly hung a pall. The Earl is represented, with a face that is an unmistakable portrait, in full plate armour, wearing the garter below his left knee, with bare head resting upon a tilting helm, and a muzzled bear and a griffin sitting at his feet. The ends of the bars which form the hearse are richly enamelled with shields. Round the tomb in niches are fourteen large and eighteen smaller figures of gilded brass, the former re- presenting the kindred of the deceased — among them the " King-maker,"— praying for the repose of his soul. The others are angels, in whose hands are scrolls, inscribed " Sit Deo lauset gloria; defunctis misericordia." Against the north wall of the Chapel is the monument of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester — Elizabeth's Dudley ■ — and his third wife. This is of composite classic character, with a semi- circular arch over the figures, and four pillars supporting a carved entablature, above which rises a curiously enriched triple cresting, with figures, and a large shield of arms ; but the LU a. < < Qi < m CQ m X V ■"/"i'l'ii'ih 64 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Quadrangle, Leicester's Hospital. monument, though finel)' wrought, is far from being so impressive as the noble tomb it adjoins. In some ways more remarl<able is the high tomb of Earl Ambrose Dudley, who is represented in armour, wearing his coronet, with a chained and muzzled bear at his feet. The tomb itself is classic in character, but its features are good. Much attention is always attracted by the monument of Robert Dudley's infant son against the south wall of the Chapel. It is a high tomb with the effigy of a child, evidently deformed, but richly habited, about three feet six inches in length. He is described in his inscription as the "Noble Impe," and much of his ancestry is there recorded. It deserves to be noted that the reredos of the Chapel is a basso-relievo of the Annunciation, taken from a classic source, and executed by a local sculptor. Though wholly out of keeping with the Chapel it is a very beautiful work. Other monuments and other beauties, the visitor to St. Mary's Church and the Bc-auc'iamp Chapel will easily discover. If Warwick possessed its Castle and its Chuich only, we should go away content, but tnere stands also the Leicester Hos- pital, already alluded to, by its west gate, a remain comparable in interest to the places that have been described. No more curious, quaint, picturesque e.xample of timber archi- tecture remains in this country. When you pass by its many gables and gablets, its steep tiled roofs, and overhanging upper stories, between the projecting porch and the row of lime trees, and enter at the gateway, you seem to leave the 19th century behind. No wonder, you will say, that its Brethren, veterans of the military service, from long inhabiting so old- world a dwelling, have acquired the dignity of archdeacons or deans. The Chapel is upon the left as you approach, surmounting the 1 2th century arch, originally a gateway to the town, while the domestic parts of the structure lie on the right. Originally, this was the hall of the Guilds of the Holy Trinity and St. George, and dates from the 15th century. Lilce most charit- able institutions, the united Guilds suffered under the rapacious hand of Henry VIII., and it was Robert Dudley who restored and re- founded the charity for the accommodation of twelve men, to be selected as old soldiers maimed in the wars, w^ho should have followed the Earl or his heirs in the field, or otherwise for the merit of their services to the Sovereign and country, or on grounds of honest poverty. THE GATEWAY, LEICESTER'S HOSPITAL. ( 05 ) 66 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY The Guild hns now a Master and twelve Bretliren, who are appointed by Lord de Lisle and Dudley, of Penshurst, as heir- general of the founder. Each Brother has ;^'8o a year, with a bed-room, sitting- room, and pantry, and the use of the common rooms of the Hospital. They wear long livery cloaks of blue cloth, whereof the silver badges have the Bear and the Ragged Staff, and, with a single e.xception, are those used in the time of Elizabeth. The courtyard of the Hospital is entered beneath an archway, with curious spandrels, and the inscriptions, "Peace be unto all who enter this house," and "Praise ye the Lord" upon the gateposts. Above, upon the par- geting, the initials "R.L.," carved devices of the Bear and the Ragged Staff, the motto "Droit et Loyal," an Earl's coronet, the date 1 571, and many shields of arms attract the eye by their quaint- ness. The courtyard has a most pic- turesque effect within. Opposite, as you enter, three gables of fine character with scLilptured barge boards, resting upon corbels carved with grotesque bears, rise above the elaborately tim- bered fa(;ade of the Master's Lodge. An oriel window, devices of the Bear and Ragged Staff and the Porcupine, and shields of arms, with the inscriptions, " Honour all men ; Love the Brotherhood ; Fear God ; Honour the King," are here. On the right is a cloister, with overhanging upper story, and a latticed walk, approached by an external staircase near the gateway, which leads also to where the Guild Chamber was. The Banqueting t \ii Mill Lanr, Warwick. The Entrance Gate, Leicester's Hospital, Hall, where James 1. was entertained, now devoted to another purpose, is on the opposite side of the court. The old kitchen, on the north, contains much ancient furniture, and utensils that shine like the sun. Taken in all its features, this ancient quadrangle is unique in character and richness. Behind the Hospital is an old English garden, shared by theMaster and the Brethren, where a Norman arch has been set up, which was discovered during the res- toration of the Chapel. There is a terrace e.xternally, which command ■; a splendid view towards Stratford and the Cotswold Hills, and brings the \isitor to the Chapel over the archway. This is dedicated to St. James, and its tower seems to have been built by Thomas Beauchamp about the end of the 14th century. The Chapel has been well restored, and now bears much of its original character, and the modern flying buttresses, added as a support on the side of the road, are an excellent feature. A parting glance over the Shakespeare country from the terrace is a pleasing conclusion to a \isit to Leicester's Hospital. For the fields and woods that Shakespeare knew are before us and little is changed in the land. THE N'lLOMETER AND NORMAN ARCH, LEICESTER'S HOSPITAL. THE CRYPT AND DUCKING STOOL. ST. MARY'S CHURCH. ( 67 ) 68 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Chapel ToTver, Leicester's Hospital. The many interests of ancient Warwick cannot he exhausted here. On the north side of the town, outside the ancient wails, is the Priory, formerly a monastery for Canons Regular, dissolved at the Restoration, and now represented by a noble Elizabethan house of many windows and gables, with fine oak- panelled rooms within. What was once St. John's Hospital stands on the right of the road from Warwick to Leamington, after passing through the east gate, towards the end of the Coventry road. It was founded as long ago as thetime of Henrv 11. by William de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, for the recep- tion of pilgrims and travellers, and the relief of the poor and infirm. Its funds were diver- ted to other purposes, and on the site of the charity stands a very fine 17th century house, with large transomed bay windows, quite a notable ex- ample of its period, and, like the Priory, having oak-wains- coted chambers within, and a fine oaken staircase. Of Leamington it is not the purpose to write here. An account of the Shakespeare country may pass over a modern town and health resort which Shakespeare never knew. Yet Leamington is a place abounding in attrac- tions, and occupying a central position for the exploration of the country, it is not without historic interest, for the well remains which Camden described in his "Britannia" in 1586, and the Pump Room, the Jephson Gardens, and the many other resorts of the town make it popular with a multitude of visitors. St. John's Hospital. — O in -J >- -1 3 i O X f- a z z: O m > > < LU 'XI X H IVARIVJCK. 71 This descriptive wandering tiirougli tlie Shakespeare land will take us a few miles north from \ Warwick by the winding course of the Avon. The whole country here- about is rich in natural beauties and rural attractiveness, and every village has rus- tic quaintness rarely attractive to the stran- ger. The Forest of Arden, which forms the woodland scene of "As You Like it," extended far on the west, and in Shake- speare's days was dense and solitary. Henley-in-Arden is a delightful old - world - place, with a Perpen- dicular church, a mar- ket cross, and many timbered buildings. Touchstone may well have wandered. " Ay, now I am in Arden, the more fool I ; " he says, " When I was at home I was in a better place, but travellers must be content." Beaudesert, which they pronounce Belser, is close by, and has exquisite Norman details in its church. At Rowington Hall, not far away, tradition asserts that Shakespeare wrote his "As You Like It." Three successive Richard Shakespeares lived at Here The East Gate. The Priory. Rowington, each of whom had a son named William, and a William of this place, not the poet, was a trained man with Sir Fulke Greville, at Alcester, in November, 1605. The house is a picturesque farmstead of the true Warwickshire character, with many quaintly timbered gables, and a passage from the porch leading right through. It is not difficult to believe that, if Shakespeare visited his kinsmen here on the very borders of the forest, he may well have conceived, if he did not write, his forest play at Rowington. A village a little further north is Temple Balsall, whose name bespeaks its former ownership by the Templars. It subse- quently came to the Knights Hospitallers, and, after going through many hands, was es- tablished as a hospital for poor persons. This is now a quaint building covering three sides of a quadrangle, with the Master's house completing the whole. The village is dis- tinguished by the possession of a very lovely church. From this country the Alne flows towards Alcester, and, on the other side of it lie Aston Cant- low and other •' Shakespeare Villages, "to which allusion has beenmade. Of BaddesleyClin- ton, between Rowington and Temple Balsall, we shall pre- sently find occasion to speak. 72 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Avenue, Guy's Cliff. But it would be impossible to describe in this sketch the more remote interests of the Shakespeare region, its old villages, beautiful scenery and historical places. Turn we there- fore once more to Warwick, and to the road thence towards Kenilwcrth and Coventry, which keeps generally the direction of the far winding Avon. It is often overhung deeply by trees, but is ever opening out to the way- farer lovely views and rustic prospects. \ little more than a mile from Warwick, Blacklow Hill rises in front — the place where (Javeston was executed. The story is told that the rest- less spirit of the scoffing Gascon rides, at drear midnight, along the road from Warwick Castle — the home of Guy Beauchamp, the " Black Dog of Arden," who was largely instrumental in his death — to Blacklow Hill, from v\-hose top the peasants say dismal bells are heard, as they hasten over Ganerslie Heath. Before Blacklow Hill is reached, Guy's Cliff, the noble mansion of Lord Algernon Percy, is seen standing in a superb situation by the stream — " a house of pleasure," said Leland, of its predecessor ; "a place meet for the Muses." Here the redoubtable Guy, "his battles o'er," is tabled to have spent the last years of his life, hidden even from "Fair Phj'llis," his wife, who rejoined him only on his death bed. He had slain the famous dun cow — kindred monster of the " worm " of Lambton, and of other "worms" of English legend, nay, even of the beast slain by Perseus, if not of Pvthon himself — and it was his custom, in the guise of a strange palmer, to beg food at his lady's bounteous hand. They still show an ancient excavation in the rock, one of many in this place, as his retreat, and his well is not far away. The story of Guy's retirement from the world is doubtless based upon legends of hermits who appear to have chosen this lonely spot as the place of their meditations. The first view of the house from the road is most striking, for it stands at the end of a long avenue of rugged old firs, which cast their shadows far across the sward. But it is difficult to imagine anything more romantic than the beauty of the view from the mill. You turn down a lane from the high road to where that old structure, with its picturesque gallery, stands upon the site of a mill that existed in Saxon times — a footpath further will bring you by a delightful way to Leamington — and you look over a broad stretch of the Avon, in whose waters overhanging trees dip their branches, and across an expanse of the greenest sward, to where the house rises in stately beauty, against a dark background of magnificent trees. In the still evenings of summer, when the sun- light falls athwart the scene, nothing more beautiful can be conceived. The house itself has no remarkable architectural features. The charm lies in the situation, and in the massive grouping of the structure. You do not look at Guy's Cliff as the work of an architect. That rippling, lake-like expanse of the Avon seems to- THE SUNDIAL AT GUY'S CLIFF THE RlVEk WALK, GUY'S CLIFF. ( 74) GUTS CLIFF. 75 The Ford, Kenilworth. reflect a creation of romance, rising like a castle of Otranto upon its rocky base, out of which it appears to grow. We can picture Evelyn, who visited "Sir Guy's grot" from Warwick, finding it but a squalid den made in the rock, turning to that rock, "crowned yet with venerable oaks, and looking on a goodly stream, so as it were improved as it might be, it were capable of being made a most romantic and pleasant place." Whatever Evelyn would have done appears to have been done, and Guy's Cliff is certainly a most charm- ing abode. Looking from its windows across the river to the mill, the scene is equally attractive. Close by the house is the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, which was built in the time of Henry VI., and has been restored, it contains a much muti- lated figure of the famous Guy, and is altogether very inter- esting and curious. Guy's cave and well are near the stream, and, as you visit them you may hear, as a re- miniscence of Guy, the musical notes of bells, hanging from the necks of beautiful dun kine which the noble owner keeps in his park. The house possesses a fine collection of pictures, including examples of Van Eyck, Wouwerman, Janssens, Van der Velde, Ruvsdael, Cuyp, Lely, and many more. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, had caused the old chapel at Guy's Cliff to be re- stored as a chantry. At the dissolution the place came to Sir Andrew Flammock, and passed through heiresses and by purchase to Mr. Samuel Greatheed, who represented Coventry in Parliament. In the time of Lady .Mary Greatheed, Sarah Kemble, afterwards the famous Mrs. Siddons, was at Guy's Cliff as a companion. From the Greatheeds the place passed through heiresses to Lord Algernon Percy in i8qi. Kenilworth Churcli. z o > < m X H t O -1 Qi CJ X to >- :3 O KENILIVORTII CASTLE. 77 The Entrance to the Banqueting Hall, Kenilworth, KENILWORTH. It is about three miles frum Guy's Cliff to Kenilworth, which is reached by passing pictur- esque Blakedown Mill, Chesford Bridge, and Thickthorn House, a fine modern Gothic mansion. The thriving village of Kenilworth has somewhat outgrown its old picturesqueness. Yet not altogether. There remains an old house by the wayside, with the bear and the ragged staff, and Leicester's initials over the door. Then a pleasant way, by knoll and hollow, brings us to the world-famed Castle. It is a pretty wooded lane, crossed at one point by a stream, through which the waggoner passes by a ford beneath the trees. Kenilworth fves in history as a Royal palace, and Scott has enthroned it in the realm of romance. A \-olume would scarcely do justice to its inter- ests, and scanty space can be allowed to it here. When its grey walls are first dis- cerned through the trees, historic memo- ries crowd upon us, and we think of the half-legendary splen- dour of its later days. The Castle came to Henry 11. from Geoff- rey de Clinton, and longcontinued in Royal hands. John visited It many times, and is lu-lie\'ed to have done much at the works. Henry ill., too, was often at Kenilworth, and it was he that made Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Governor of the place. He appears to have constructed the dam of the great lake which protected the Castle on the southern and western sides, as well as several of the towers and outworks. When the Barons had been disastrously defeated at E\esham, the refugees fled to Kenilworth, and there the King conducted a great siege of the Castle, making Warwick his headquarters. The operations lasted many months, but the place was at last reduced by famine. Kenilworth afterwards passed through the hands of Thomas of Lancaster, and it was in its hall that Edward 11. renounced the Crown. Some who witnessed the dragging of the trembling monarch into tlie hall to signlhe 11 ii8. Kenilworth Castle, from the South-West. iai#-iil^B P: ■ JJKa*' * m>»t»m^i ; 'i>dt^S, !■■■■■' ST* 6^ ::,.!z: 7 -fc~ ^ Q ■" q: < >- H _J H la ■T" (- S o a U. ULl O z <: OS 1- z m w X H Q '1 z < — 1 Di n W < ^ .) O H T H i/j rv. a O ^ H . i tt n S :z ■ iT-tSIIH«r^nif(<iiiKiWi«;rH«>); 8o THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. Leicester's Buildings and Caesar's Tower. deed of his abdiL'ation, v\hile the Steward nf the Household broke his white wand of office, must have cast back their minds to the revelry which Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, had held in the self-same hall. John of Gaunt after- wards had the place, and greatly enlarged it, and it passed through the hands of the Henries, Henry VIll., in particular, extended the buildings, and Elizabeth granted the Castle to Robert Dudley, who further added to the structure. The Fireplace in the Gatehouse. Leicester was visited by the Queen at Kenilworth on several occasions, notably when "the lordly pleasures of Kenilworth" were devised, anticipating even the glories of the " Grand Monarque." It is surmised that Sbiakespeare ma\- have witnessed the gaiety, and at Kenilworth may have conceived the idea of the " Midsummer Night's Dream." Greeted by the blare of trumpets, welcomed by the Lady of the Lake and her nymphs, upon a floating island — a triumph of Leicester's fantastic imagination — receiving the homage of the gods, and witnessing extraordinary revellings, Elizabeth saw gaiety such as Eng- land had never seen before. Old writers describe the rejoicings, and Scott has exhausted upon them his descriptive powers ; yet Amy Robsart was not there to behold. But evil days awaited Kenilworth. The Castle was dismantled during the Commonwealth, and the great lake which had been one of its chief defences was drained. The outer ward enclosed a large garden and a space of many acres, and on two sides the great lake almost washed the base of the walls. The main parts of the structure which now stand are those enclosing the inner ward — Ca?sar's Tower, v\hich is really the Keep, at the north-east an"le, and the domestic buildings KENIUVORTH CASTLE. 8i extending on three sides. Henry Vlii.'s lodgings, which completed the quadrangle, have disappeared. The Keep is a most for- midable monument of Norman military archi- tecture, of great size, with wails of enormous thickness, and the characteristic angle towers. Beyond e.xtend Lancaster's Buildings, which date from the 14th century, including the k'itchen, with the remains of a huge fireplace, and the buttery. What is known as the Strong Tower comes next, adjacent to the Great Hall, these two completing one side of the quadrangle. Scott, without authority, calls the last-named tower Mervyn's Bower. The Hall must have been a truly magnifi- cent structure, for it is 90 feet in length by some 45 feet in breadth, and proportionately lofty. It was finely vaulted and liglited by great windows in deep recesses, with beautiful tracery, and a large oriel window remains on the inner side, comprising part of an octagon. Even in its ruins the place bears traces of its splendour. Next to it stood the White Hall, now destroyed, after which comes the curiously shaped Presence Chamber, with an oriel window overlooking the courtyard. Next to the Presence Chamber is the Privy Chamber, with a bay window and fireplace. Then we reach what are known as Leicester's •Buildings, standing upon the site of older works. It was here that Elizabeth resided during her famous visit to the Castle, but the remains are much mutilated. As we have seen, Henry VlM.'s lodgings, which completed the quadrangle, have disappeared. Strengthening the outer line of fortifications were Mortimer's Tower and the Swan Tower, at the south-eastern and north-western angles, overlooking the lake, and Lunn's Tower, and the Water Tower on the eastern side. It was Robert Dudley who built the great gatehouse, which is a very fine structure of three stories, with projecting octagonal turrets and manv windows. The Bear'and the Ragged Staff, the motto " Droit et Loyal," and the initials "R.L." with the date 1571, appear, as at Leicester's Hospital in Warwick, but as adornments of a beautiful alabaster Renaissance chimney-piece in an inner room. This, with the oaken over- mantel, appears to have come from one of the State Rooms Outside the wall of the Castle there extended, from Mortimer's Tower to the Floodgate, a long tilt-yard upon the dam of the lake, which Elizabeth passed over when she visited Kenilworth in 1575. The great chase beyond the lake was doubtless, in those days, well stocked with game. With these brief notes upon a great subject we must leave a Castle which has made a great mark upon history. Castle End, Kenilworth. < ■J z ^ < 5£ BADDESLEY CLINTON. 8^ Badiesley Cfinton : The North-East Front. BADDESLEY CLINTON. We now turn aside a little to visit a delight- fully quaint place, which has not been wasted like forlorn old Kenilworth. It is like the fable of the oak and the reed, for the contrast between Kenilworth Castle and Baddesley Clinton, which lies about five miles to the west of it, is very great. One is a strong military fortress, as we have seen ; the other is one of those quaint old mansions in which long- lineaged gentlemen have dwelt, and that are dotted yet throughout the length and breadth of the land, while sturdy fortresses have crumbled beneath the shock. Such houses go back to Shakespeare's time, and were familiar to him. Warwickshire has many of them. They stand generally amid great elms, in which ancestral rooks have their homes, and they lift their picturesque walls and battle- ments over old-world gardens, ending in gables and twisted chimneys, about which doves rlutter in the sunshine. Staunch knights have dwelt in them, fugitives have tak'en refuge in their chambers, cavaliers have entered at their open doors, and it requires no great exercise of imagination to people their alleys and bowers with the gentlemen with clouded canes, and the ladies in powder and patches, who were there a century and a-half ago. Baddesley Clinton is just such a place, and we fancy that many an archer may have winged his shafts from the top of its entrance tower. This, indeed, is one of the most characteristic moated and half-fortified manor houses in the county. Once the seat of the Clintons, it was bought in the days of Henry VI. by John Brome, a lawyer, belonging to a worthy family of ■tanners, who were located by the bridge at Warwick. His immediate predecessor at the place was one Catesby, who sold it willingly, for he seems to have wearied of disputes which had arisen through the action of the " King- Maker " in thrusting his steward into the estate. John Brome wore the Red Rose, and, so long as Henry Vi. was in power, his days were prosperous ; but, with the accession of Edward IV., he soon fell into disputes with the " Last of the Barons." So hot did the quarrel grow with Earl Richard's steward — one John Harthill — that the two men came to blows in the porch of Whitefriars Church in London, and Brome was killed in the scuffle. The lawyer had a son Nichdlas, who determined to avenge his father's death, and so, lying one day in wait in Longbridge Fields near Barford Bridge, south of Warwick, he fell upon the steward, who was riding to hold the Earl's court at Barford, and, after a fierce struggle, slew him where he stood. This Nicholas Brome was a man of an angry spirit, for later on he foully murdered a priest, who, to do him justice — if gossiping Dugdale speak truth — had been found in his parlour at Baddesley " choking his wife under the chin." Brome made amends for his act by building the tower and raising the body of Baddesley Church, with some other charitable deeds. Upon his death, the Manor House passed to Sir Edward Ferrers, grandson of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, who had married Constantia, one of his co-heiresses and in the Ferrers family it has remained ever since. To that family belonged Henry Ferrers, the specialfriend of Camden, who became a well-known antiqu- ary, and who received from a contemporary the supreme praise that he was "a well-bred gentleman, a good neighbour, and an honest man." The late Mr. Marmion Edward Ferrers was also well known as an antiquary. Upon BADDESLEY CLINTON: (84) THE MOAT AND ENTRANCE TOWER. BADDESLEY CLINTON. 85 his death the Manor House passed to his widow, wlio afterwards married Mr. Edward Heneage Dering. Tliis ancient house of Baddesley Clinton iiad a moat for its defence, whicli still remains, and is a somewhat uncommon feature in these days. Originally the moat was spanned by a drawbridge, which has been replaced by a brick bridge of the days of Queen Anne. The strong entrance tower or porch has some very curious and picturesque features, and is em- battled, and a low range of buildings llanks it on either hand. These form one side of the the rooms have much good furniture. The drawing room, on the north-east side of the house, has also a tine fireplace and rich panel- ling ; and the dining room, and other chambers all form parts of what is a truly fine English manor house of early times. From the corner of the hall, a staircase, lighted by old armorial glass, leads to the long gallery, the state bed- room, which has a fine fireplace rising to its ceiling, the richly decorated domestic chapel, and the sacristy, whence a staircase once led to a passage beneath the moat, and to the "ghost-room," next to the banqueting-hall. The Moat, Baddesley Clinton. courtyard, which is surrounded by buildings on three of its sides, presenting a low wall to the moat on the other. Pargeted gables and ivy- grown walls give the quadrangle a very quaint and beautiful character, and the chimneys are remarkably good. In the entrance tower is a fine oak-panelled chamber, lighted by a mul- lioned and transomed window externally, and by another facing into the courtyard, surmoun- ted by a timber gable. The great hall is panel- led with oak, and has a remarkable early Renaissance fireplace adorned with shields. The windows are rich in stained glass, and Thus, we see in Baddesley Clinton a true type of the gentleman's house of early Tudor times. Round the walls of its old chambers hang many portraits, each with a history ; and imagination will shadow forth shapes in the moonlight, and hear the rustle of kirtles and farthingales when the wind whispers through the galleries, and the rain patters on the panes. It is just such a place as you may breathe romances about, and it offers many a subject for the artist and lover of the picturesque. Allusion has been made to the suggestion that Richard Shakespeare, of Snitterfield^ 88 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. The Garden Gate, Stoneleigh Abbey. believed to have been the poet's grandfather, mav have been identical with, or related to, Richard Shakespeare, bailiff, of Wroxall Priory. Tliere is no certainty about the fact, but it is of interest to note that the site of the priory neighbours Baddesley Clinton, where in 1389, lived Adam Shakespeare, holding land by militar\' service, who perhaps, was Richard's ancestor. Wroxall Abbey, a great modern house, built in 1864, is near at hand. A curious story is told of the foundation of the priory. Sir Hugh deHatton, a Warwickshire knight, was taken prisoner in the Holy Land, liad lain long in durance, when one night St. Leonard appeared to him in a vision, who commanded him to establish a Benedictine convent. He took a vow in com- pliance, and was forthv\'ith transported, still in his chams, to Wro.xall, where his wife failed to recognise him, so changed was he by his sufferings, until he showed her part of the ring with which they had plighted their troth. The garden at Wroxall is curious anJ interesting, and its walls are ascri- bed to Sir Christopher Wren, who purchased the place from the des- cendants of the original grantee in 171 3. The modern mansion is of Tudor or Jacobean type, and does not stand quite on the site of its predecessor. The roofless chapter house of the priory, and some re- mains of the refectory, are its neighbours. The mansion contains a very fine collection of pictures, including works of T. Creswick, Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., P. F.Poole,R.A.,F.Goodall, R.A., J. R. Herbert, R.A., W. P. Frith, R.A., T. Faed, R.A. ("Highland Mary"), John Linnell, P. Nasmyth, David Cox, T. S. Cooper, R.A., J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and \'ery many more. STONELEIGH AND THE UPPER AVON. Now must this survey of our Shakespeare Countrv shortly end. A limit must be set even to pleasant journeying such as ours, and we have reached almost our northernmost bound. There remains famous Stoneleigh Abbey, the seat of Lord Leigh, a visit to which we cannot forego, and there, from an eminence in the park, we may view the three spires of ancient Co\-entr\-, seeming to tempt us further, thinking of Lady Godiva and the miracle plays, or we may linger musing beneath Shakespeare's oak, in a district which has many memories of the Shakespeares. We are now on the eastern side of Kenil worth, but still in the Forest of Arden, where the classic Avon flows through the glorious expanse of Stoneleigh Park. It is recorded that 2,000 hogs had feeding in the King's Wood, at Stone- leigh, in early times, wlien the Cistercians Stoneleigh Church. 90 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY. established their house by the river. The ancient features of the Abbey, the Norman doorways, and the glorious gate-house carry us back to very earlv times. The gate-house, the most considerable remain, is a vener- able structure of the 14th Cenlury, built by Robert de Hocklele, Abbot of Stoneleigh, who died in ii4Q. The building on its eastern side The Water Terrace, Stoneleigh Abbey. appears to have been the guest-house of the monks, and the place where alms were distri- buted to the poor. The whole building is singularly picturesque, and the open gallery on the south side is a quaint and unusual feature. The plan of the Abbey has been made out with an approach to certainty, and many remains are embodied in the present classic pile. The site was granted in 15 31 to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and passed through many hands to those of Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Thomas Leigh, Aldermen of London, the last-named of whom was Lord Mayor, and rode before Queen Elizabeth when she entered the City to be crowned at St. Paul's. Sir Thomas Leigh, great-grandson of the Lord Mayor, who lived at Stoneleigh, in a house in which the remains of the Abbey were embodied, a building of Tudor and Stuart times, received Charles \. when that unfor- tunate monarch, marching to Nottingham with 6,O03 horse, found the gates of Coventry closed against him. Since that time Stoneleigh has developed, in the hands of successive owners of the same family, and has assumed the classic aspect which it bears to-day — the great and formal pile forming a strontj contrast to .the old monastic building. The tall Ionic pilasters, support- i n g the deep cor- nice and balus- trade, possess the cha- racter of m u c h Stat e I i- ness, and the great house looks out over fair gar d ens and a g 1 r i u s p a r k , through the midst of which the Avon flows n w a r d towards G u y ' s Cliff and W a r - w i C k' . Tlie im- posing mansion was built by Edward, Lord Leigh, about the year 1720, and is richly stored with many works of art of rare and singular interest, which at times may be seen by the public. The interior is \-ery splendid, and the surroundings of Stoneleigh are remarkably attractive and beautiful. On tile way between tlie Abbey and Stone- leigh village, an ancient bridge is passed, built by the monks in the 14th Centui'y — a pic- ttn-esque structure near a lovely avenue of ancient trees, some of them still in their perfection, and others twisted and gnarled with age. it is worth noting that the trees here are very lofty, and that there is a huge oak near the rifle butts m the deer park, con- cerning which legend asserts that Sliakespeare wove his fancies beneath its boughs. Close by the bridge is Motstow Hill, an eminence commanding a fine view, deriving its name from the fact that here in ancient times the- STONELEIGH. 91 tenants did their suit and service at the King's Court on the summit. Stoneleigli Churcli is interesting, and well deserves a visit, for it has a late Norman transept, a Norman doorway on the south side, and a tower of Norman date, with a superstructure of the 14th Century. The nave is principally of Decorated character ; but the chancel arch is a notable example of Norman work, with round, zigzag, double cone, and billet mouldings, whilst tlie jambs are very richly carved. The church contains many monuments of the Lords Leigh. An attractive place, therefore, is Stoneleigh, with its picturesque village and rural church, its great house embodying many features of the ancient Abbey, and its fine and diversified park and embellished gardens, and a delightful point at which to conclude a Shakespeare wayfaring. This survey of the Shakespeare Country has traversed a rich district uf middle En^iland that was familiar to the great poet in his boyhood, and wherein he gained his familiarity with men and women, and with the sights and sounds of Nature, in a region rich in the memorials of the history wliich figures in his pages ; a region, moreover, to which he returned in his later years, after gradually building up a pro- perty at Stratford to which he might retire. Our survey might have extended further, and, indeed, it is difficult to know where to stop, for Warwickshire is peculiarly rich in domestic, castellated, and ecclesiastical architecture. We might have surveyed many other delightful villages, but we have gone, perhaps, far enough ; and what has been said will suggest to the reader, with the help of the pictures, what is the character of the Shakespeare land, what are the features that attract, and what are the interests that should be sought by those who would enjoy and appreciate the delights of that country, which will for ever be asso- ciated with our national poet. A Viiw Over the Avon at Stoneleigh. [92] SnATiBSPBJlTiB POTiTTiAJTS. EXTRAORDINARY interest attaches to the personality of Shakespeare — that man whose character, to use the words of "As Yoa Like It," was "composed of many simples extracted from many objects." It is this vital interest of personality, indeed, that gives its supreme attraction to the beau- tiful Shakespeare Country. The portraiture of the poet, again, is a subject that fascinates all lovers of his works. Numberless writers and critics have discussed the likenesses of Shakespeare, and the interest that surrounds the question of their authenticity is very great. This is a matter, however, concerning which the utmost doubt exists. The most important of all portraits should be the monu- ment in Stratford Church, which is, neverthe- i K i ' i, rt¥ ^ The D.-oeshout Ofiginil. less, disappointing. It is a somewhat clumsy e.xample of the mortuary sculpture of the time, and the heavy features and the roundi face do not call up the Poet's "eye in a fine phrensy rolling." The bust was the work of one Gerald Johnson or Janssen, a Dutch sculptor and tomb maker, who lived in Soath- vvark in the time of James I. Originally it was coloured, according to the custom of the times, but Malone caused it to be whitewashed in 1793, and it was not restored until 1861, when, from the traces of colouring that remained, the eyes were made light hazel,, and the hair and beard auburn. At the best,, the monumental bust belongs to a class turned out by men who never saw the subjects of their work, and were rather accustomed to. carve from stock models. Yet there is this tO' be said for it, that all other portraits conorm. more or less to the type, and that such authenticity as they may possess goes to support the general resemblance of the bust to the living original. It is believed by many authori- ties that the bust was sculptured from a death mask, and the circum- stance is probable, for the practice was common. A theory has been put for- ward that the " Becker Death Mask" was the original used by the sculp- tor of the Stratford bust. It was discovered in 1849 in an obscure shop at Mayence by Dr. Ludwig Becker, the librarian of the ducal palace at Darm- stadt, and was long in the possession of Count Francis von Kesselstadt, but afterwards passed to the daughter-in-law of the discoverer, Frau Oberst Becker. More certainly asso- ciated with Shakespeare s timeis^-l:e famous engrav- ing of Shakespeare -made by Martin Droeshout, which appeared as the frontispiece of the folio of 1623, with the ingenious epigrammatic lines of Ben Jonsoii ^ SHAKESPEARE PORTR.lIfS. 93 beneath, beginning with the words : — "This Figure, that thou here seest put. It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature, to out-doo the life." Notwithstanding this testimony to autiienticity as a likeness, it must be confessed that the figure is crude, and that we do not recognise in it the "hand- some, well-shap't man" of Aubrey. It has the common characteristic of baldness at the top of the head, and liair curhng about the ears, wliicii, with a slight moustache and beard, have given us so many portraits of Shakespeare. Droeshout was a Dutch artist, born in London in 1601, and was thus only fifteen when Shakespeare died, it seems, therefore, impos- sible that the portrait can be in any sense from life, and it was probably executed just before the production of the First Folio in 1623. It is extremely likely, I'.owever, that Droeshout worked from a painting, and it is singular that a portrait very credibly attributed to the period, closely resembling the engraving, has beenfound, and now hangs in the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford, where it is known as the " Droeshout Original." It was in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements of Peckham Rye, who purchased it obscurely in 1840, and placed upon the box in which he kept it this memorandum: ''The original portrait of Shake- speare, from which the now famous Droeshout engraving v/as taken." The portrait is painted on a panel, which is in two portions, and has in the upper left-hand corner the inscription. To the Reader. This Figure, that thou here feeft put, Irvvas for gentle Shakefpearecut; Wherein the Grauer had a flrifc with Nature, to out-doo the h'fe : 0,could hebuthauedrawne his wit As well in brafle, asheh<ith hit Hisface ; the Print would then furpalTe Alijlhat waseuerwritinbraile. But.fmce he cannot, Reader, looke Noton his Picfture, but hisBooke. B.I. The Droeshout Engraving. "Wiilm. Shakespeaie, 1639." There have been differences of opinion as to the authen- ticity of the picture, and it has been suggested that in some past time it has been painted-up THE SHAKESPhARH MONUMENT, ( 94 > ■ HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON. SHA KESPEA RE POR TR. 1 1 TS. 95 upon an old likeness to resemble the poet. On the other hand, Mr, Lionel Cust, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Sidney Colvin, and ether com- petent authorities, strongly inclined to the opinion that the painting was anterior to the •engraving, and it is not to be denied that it possesses qualities superior to those attained by Droeshout with his graver. When Mr. Clements died in 1895, Mrs. Charles Flower purchased it and presented it to the Stratford Memorial Picture Gallery. Among many other alleged or assumed likenesses of Shakespeare, the " Chandos portrait" in the National Por- trait Gallery is ■certainly the most interest- ing, though it cannot be regarded as of contemporary ■date. Burbage, who was Shak'espeare's fellow-actor, and a man with some artistic talent — as may be seen by a portrait of a woman " by Mr. Burbidge, ye actor," in the Dulwich Picture Cal- ler y — is be- lieved to have painted it. Whatever may have been its origin, it be- longed to Davenant, and afterwards to Mr. Betterton and to Mrs. Barry, the actress. When she died in 171 3, it was purchased by Mr. Robert Keck, a barrister, and afterwards passed to the hands of Mr. John Nichols, whose daughter married the third Duke of Chandos. The portrait thus came into the Duke's gallery and gained its present name. Afterwards it passed, through his daughter's marriage, to the second Duke of Buckingham, and was purchased in 1848 by the Earl of Ellesmere, who presented it to the nation. Another interesting portrait which possesses considerable artistic merit, is known as "The Ely Palace Portrait," and is The "Stratford" Portrait. now the property of the Birthplace Trustees at Stratford. There are obscurities in its history, but it appears to have been painted early in the 17th Century, and to have been in the possession of some friends of Shake- speare's residing in Little Britain. The painting remained with the family of the original owners until early in the igth Century, and was sold by a broker to Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely. Another portrait of interest is the " Davenant Bust," which was discovered built up in the wall of a warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, erected on the site of the Duke's Theatre, built by Davenant in 1660. It is of black terra- cotta, and has much merit. It passed througn the hands of Sir Richard Owen, who sold it to the Duke of Ij e V o n s h i r e . The Duke pre- sented it, in 1851, to the Garrick Club, and a cast is in the Shakespeare Memorial Gal- I e r y . The "Stratford por- trait," which hangs in the Birthplace, ;•> interesting, though mani- festly a copy with imagina- tive additions. Other well- Is- n own 1 i k e - ne>ses are the " L u m 1 e y portrait," pur- chased by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts in 1875, and probably an early copy of the " Chandos portrait " ; the " Jansen (or Janssens) portrait," of doubtful authen- ticity ; and the " Felton portrait," purchased by Mr. S. Felton in 1792 from Mr. J. Wilson of the Shakespeare Museum, Pall Mall, and bearing the inscription, " Gul. Shakespear, 1597, R.B." {i.e., Richard Burbage). In the Memorial Gallery also are the " Charlecote portrait," bought in 1853, and exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 ; and the " Welcombe portrait," of the Chandos type, painted on an old panel, but of which little is known. A SHAKESPEARE CHRONOLOGY. IN this account of tlie Shakespeare Countr_\- many references have been made to the poet's life_ It seems desirable, however, to add a brief chronology, so that the reader will be belter able to understand the relationship of events with the places and circumstances alluded to. The following table of dates and occurrences is not complete, but it includes the principal events of Shakespeare's life, with some references to his parentage, and gives the dates, real or assumed,, of his immortal works. 1328 1551 ■ 1356 1557 1561 1364 Richard Shakespeare, conjectured to have been the Poet's grandfather, was living at Snitterfield; he died in 1560, and was probably akin to Richard Shakespeare, of Wroxall, whose great- grandfather appears to have been Adam Shakebpeare, of Baddesley Clinton, vix-. 13S9. John Shakespeare, the Poet's father, settled in Henley Street, Stratford. He purchased a tenement in Henley Street, ad- joining the " Birthplace." and another in Greenhill Street. John Shakespeare married Mary, daughter of Arden, of Wilmcote. He was elected a Chamberlain of the Borough of Stratford. William Shakespeare, the Poet, born, April 22nd or 23rd. The Plague visited Stratford. John Shakespeare an Alderman of Stratford ; Bailiff of the borough, 156S ; his other children who survived, baptised as follows: Gilbert, Oct. 13, 1566; Joan. April 15. 1569; Richard. March 11, 1574; Edmund, May 3. 1580. The Queens Company and the Earl of Worcester's Company of Players visited Stratford- William Shakespeare probably began to attend the Stratford Grammar School. The Earl of Leicester's Company of Players at Stratford. John Shakespeare purchased the " Birthplace." in w^hich he had been living, for £40, from Edmund Hall. Queen Elizabeths progress through War- wickshire to Kenilworth At about this time Shakespeare seems to have entered his father's business. Leicester's players (aiterwards the Lord Chamberlain's Company) again at Stratford. 1578-S6 John Shakespeare in increasing financial difliculties. 1582 The Poet married Anne Hathaway, of Shottery, probably early in December. 15S3 His daughter Susanna born. 15S5 Hamnet and Judith (twins) were born. 1585? The Charlecote poaching incident; Shakespeare left Stratford. Shakespeare reached London, and secured theatri- cal employment, joining the Lord Chamberlains Company^ aiterwards known as the King's Players. The Players at Stratford. " Love's Labour's Lost," and " Two Gentlemen of Verona," probably written. The "Comedy of Errors" '■Romeo and Juliet" and Shakespeare returned as a recusant, September 5th. "Richard IT," "Richard HL," and "Titus Andronicus." "Venus and Adonis " published. The " Merchant of Venice," and " King John." " Lucrece " published, and many of the Sonnets composed. 1568 15 1573 1575 1577 15SG 15S7 1591 1592 1593 1594 (published in 1623), " Henry VI." John 1505 1595 1597 159S 1599 1600 i5oi 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 iCii 1613 1616 "M-dsummer Night's Dream," "All's Well that End's Well." and the "Taming of the Shrew,"' the latter with its references to Barton-on-the- Heath and to Wilmcote, or to Wilnecoie, near Tamwonh. John Shakespeare, the Poet's father, applied for a. grant of arms claiming that his (John's) grand- father rendered service to Henry VIL, and received a grant of land in Warwickshire " Henry IV." and the" Merry Wives of Windsor." William Shakespeare purchased the New Place in. Stratford, May 4th. Shakespeare's townsmen, Abraham Sturley and liichard Quiney (whose son aiterwards married Judith Shakespeare), applied to the Poet for pecuniary aid. " Henry V." written, and produced in the next year. The "Passionate Pilgrim," printed by Willijira Jaggard. " Much .^do About Nothing," and^' As- You Like It," probably the work of this yjear. " Twelfth Night." "Julius Caesar." Shakespeare's jather died Sep- tember Sth, and the Poet inherited the houses in, Henley Street, where his mother lived until her death in 1608. " Hamlet " produced. Shakespeare purchased 107- acres of arable land near Stratford, and a cottage and garden >n Chapel Lane, Stratford, opposite the lower grounds of New Place. " Tj^ilus and Cressida," probably James I. granted a special license to the Lord Chamberlain's- Company of which Shakespeare was a member. The " First Quarto " published. "Othello" and "Measure for Measure. " The " Second Quarto " published. Shakespeare bought a moiety of the Stratford Tithes " Macbeth " completed. "King Lear" written. Shakespeare's daughter Susanna married Dr. Joha Hall, June 5th. She lived at the New Placi, Strat- ford, until her death in 1649. " Timon of Athens," "Pericles," and " .Antony- and Cleopatra." Shakespeare's only grand- daughter, Elizab2th Hall, baptized February 21st. The Poet's motner died, and was buried at Str.itford, Sept. gth. " Coriolanus " " Cymbeline " .\ " Winter's Tale," the " Tempest," and probably " Henry VIII." Shakespeare finally settled at the New Place in Straiford. The Town Council there passed a resolution that stage plays were unlawful. Shakespeare bought a house in Blackfriars. The Globe Theatre burned. Judith Shakespeare married Thom.as Quiney, of Siratford, Feb. loth. Shake.'-peare said to have entertained Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson at the New Place. The Poet died, April 23rd. at the age of 52, and was buried in Stratford Church, April 25th. 4 THE ENGLISH HOMELAND OF GEORGE ^VCASHINGTON AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NOTES, GENEALOGICAL & TOT^OGRAPHICAL % [99] TUB BOMBS OF TUB WASmiNGTOMS. THIS midJle England, wherein lies tiie country of Sliakespeare, is famous fur many personal and historic memories besides, and not least because here also was the homeland of the ancestors of George Washi:igton, first President of the United States of America, and of Benjamin Franklin, the great American natural philosopher and diplomatist. Pilgrim- ages made to the hallowed scenes of the English poet's cradle-land are extended by many, and more especially by American visitors, to those places in Northamptonshire where dwelt the forefathers of Washington and Franklin. There is thus an excellent reason for including some account of the localities and their personal interests in this book. Sulgrave, the ancient home of the Washingtons, is within something more thart six miles of Banbury, and lies about twenty- four miles south-east of Stratford, being nearly midway between Banbury and Towcester,. while Brington, to which the family removed, is close to Althorp, and within some six miles of Northampton ; and another place associated with a branch of the Washingtons is Wormleighton, just within the Warwickshire border. To the home of the Franklins at Ecton, also in the neighbourhood of North- ampton, we shall turn later on. Many controversies have raged round the descent of George Washington. "Let no- man fancy he knows sport," said Mr. Mon- cure Conway, " unless he has family-treed an ancestor of George Washington's." Washing- ton himself knew very little about his Englisla -'-=^^^ASft Sulgrave Manor Houie from the South. lOO THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. ancestry, and told the Gaiter King of Arms, who sent him a pedigree of the gt-iierations of his forefathers, that he had heard the first of his family in Virginia were from one of the northern counties, but whetiier Yorkshire or Lancashire, or one more northerly, he could not tell. There had evidently come down to him a tradition of a still earlier time. Though descended from an ancient English family proud of its armorial honours, he thought it expedient, in 1788, not to accept the dedica- tion of William Barton's " Essa\- on Heraldry," because a portion of the community were " clamorously endeavouring to propagate an idea that those whom they wished invidiously to designate by the name of the ' well-born ' were meditating, in the first instance, to dis- tinguish themselves from their compatriots, and to wrest the dearest privileges from the bulk of the people." That was a spirit of revolt against the distinctions of birth which lasted long, but now exists no more. There are, in fact, few keener genealogists than Americans, who have learned to look back to the rock whence they were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they were digged, and would like to trace the origin of the stars and stripes in the ^argent shield, the two bars gules, and the three mullets of the same which the English Washingtons bore. in 1879, one Albert Welles, an enthusiastic The Entrance to the Mancr House. An Old Doorway. American genealogist, published a " Pedigree and History of the Washington Family derived from Odin, King of Scandinavia." He was one among many enthusiasts led far in their quest. The late Colonel Joseph L. Chester, without making such ambitious flights, devoted man)- years of his life to the investigation of the descent, but appears never to have discovered the truth ; and much credit for our knowledge of the facts must be given to Mr. Henry F. Waters, who came to England to prosecute his enquiries about the year 1885. Amid the discussions concerning this famous ancestr\', though we are brought into touch bv later discoveries with Tring in Hert- fordshire, Luton in Bedfordshire, and Purleigh in Essex, nothing has diminished the interest and importance that attach to the Norihamp- tonshire villages, churches, and houses iden- tified with the earlier Washingtons. The Washingtons of Sulgrave and Brington, after- u-ards of Virginia, were sprung from the old stock of the Washingtons of Warton in Lanca- shire, a place on the Westmorland border, and came originally, as there is every reason to believe, from an ancient family of Durham. To John Washington of Warton succeeded another John Washington of Warton, whose son, probably born at that place, was Laurence Washington, Mayor of Northampton in 1532 and 1545, the first man of real note on the VVashington tree, and the first to associate his family with the village and manor of nn nil ^h-m me ,- •0.l(ir Mil iiU.i IMfl i . crii MM H.nv ant <,\ii mi '•'.'• • ■1MI • THE PORCH AND ARMS AT SULGRAVE MANOR. ( TOT ) I02 THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. Sulgrave. Members of the Washinj^ton family continued to live at Warton, and the last of them seems to ha\-e been the Rev. Thomas Washington, instituted vicar of the parish in 17Q9, who died in 1823. The mother of Laurence Washington, Mayor of Northampton, was the daughter of Robert Kytson of Warton, and the sister of Sir Thomas Kytson of H engrave in Suffolk. This alliance was destined to have a great influence upon the later fortunes of the Washingtons. It brought them into relation- ship with the Spencers of Althorp and Worm- leighton, through the marriage of Sir Thomas mined the settlement of the Washingtons at Bringtonand Wormleigliton. The relationship will be made clear b\- the following links in tiie Kytson pedigree : Robert Kytson of Warton, Lanes. Sir Thomas Kytson of Hengrave. Margaret = John Washington of Warton. Catherine = Sir John Lamence Spencer. Washington. But the Kvtson marriage, and the fact that The Home of the Washnigtons from the Rear. Kytson's daughter, Catherine, to Sir John Spencer of Wormleighton, whose grandson. Sir Robert Spencer, was created Baron Spencer of Wormleighton in 1603. This relationship was further strengthened by the marriage of Laurence Washington of Northampton and Sulgrave with Amee or Amy, daughter of Robert Pargiter of Gret worth, whose near kinsman, William Pargiter, married the sister of the first Lord Spencer's wife. I his noble- man and his son William, Lord Spencer, were the firm friends of the son and grandsons of Laurence Washington, and their friendship was almost certainlv the infl'.;ence that djter- Sir Thomas Kytson was Laurence Washing- ton's uncle, may be supposed very reasonably to have had a further influence upon tlie latter. Laurence Washington, who appears to have come to Northampton, perhaps with his father, as a youth, was brought up to the law, and studied at Gray's Inn ; but, at an early period of his career, he turned his attention to com- merce, and made a large fortune in the woollen trade, becoming a prosperous merchant at Northampton, of which place, as we have seen, he was twice Mayor. Now his uncle. Sir Thomas Kytson, was one of the greatest merchants of the time, and one of the : H Qi X. u z ai 3 UJ X m S > < ai Oi Ll, O _i 3 (/5 THE CHURCH AND AVENUE AT SULGRXVE. (104) THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. lo; first princely traders to win his way into the ranl<s of tiie aristocracy, and iiis example, or more likely his advice and intluence, pro- bably had to do with Laurence Washington's devoting himself to business. Kytson, twice warden of the Mercers' Company, and its master in 1535, sheriff of the City of London in 1533, in which year he was knighted, was chief among tlie merchant adventurers, and, in tile Act of Parliament which seciu'ed Hengrave to him after the /r^- attainder of * - ■>. . Buckingham, from whom he had purchased it, is expressly referred to as "citizen and mercer of London, other- w i s e called Kytson the merchant." It is therefore reasonable to suppose that his nephew, Laurence Washington , was attracted to commerce by his uncle's success. There may have been a reason also for his entering into the wool trade in the fact that the Spencers were the foremost patrons of it in the Mid- lands. They had vast flocks of sheep in this part of Northampton- shire, and the first Lord Spencer is said to have aspired to possess 20,000 of the fleece-hiaring animals, but never could count more than 19,999 at one time. Wilson, in hi; "Life of James I.," sa)-s "his fi-lds and flocks brought him more calm and happy con- tentment than the various and mutable dispensations of a court." The same writer's account of a difference between Lord Spencer and Lord Arundel is curious. "My Lord," said the latter, " when these things you speak of were doing, your ancestors were keeping sheep," to which Lord Spencer gave the angry retort, "When my ancestors, as you say, were keeping sheep, 'y9ur ancestors were plotting treason." These are matters of interest as illustrating the circumstances in which the Washingtons settled in this part of Northamptonshire. Laurence seem; to have "m The North Door, Sulgrave Church. amassed wealth rapidly, and, w hen the religious con- vulsion came which brought about the dis- solution of the monasteries, he saw that the opportunity had arisen to acquire terri- torial posse ^- s i n s , and establish him- self among the g e n t r y f Northampton. witli whom his lineage, marriage, and wealth entitled him to tak'e his place. As a merchant of N orthampton he was well a c q u a i n t e d w i t h the Priory of St. Andrew there, and tixed his mind upoii its possessions at S u 1 g r a \' e , when they s h (I u Id be seized b\- the King's nefari- ous hand. At Sulgrave he would build dwelling-place, tlTAigh aspired to equal h.s uncle Kytson's magnificence at Hengrave. "Kytson the merchant" was building from about 1525 to 1538, and Lr Washington acquired Sulgrave following year. The fragments of Sulgrave Manor Hous? show it to have been a place of some distinc- tion, even in a time when manv fine houses himself a probably substantial he never ;urence in the io6 THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. were being raised. Here Robert de Pinkeney had endowed with possessions the Priory of St, Andrew at Northampton, and in 1539, fur the sum of ^321 14s. lod., the manor of Sulgrave, as well as Woodford, and certain lands in Stotesbury and Cotton, near North ampton, which had belonged to the Priory, with other lands in Sulgrave recently pos- sessed by the dissolved Priories of Canons Ashby and Catesby, were granted to this Laurence Washington, Mayor of Northampton. Washington continued to extend his posses- sions, and in 1543 Sir John Williams and one Anthony Stringer sold to him a great barn at Stotesbury and the rectory there. The prosperous wool mercliant had a large family, and though our purpose is with his eldest son Robert, the ancestor of the American President, it is not without interest to know that his second son, Laurence, was a man of importance in his time. He went to O.\ford, was demy of Magdalen, 1560-7 ; B.A. in October, 1567; barrister-at-law of Gray's Inn, 15S2; bencher, 1599; registrar of the Court of Chancery, 1593; and M.P. for Maidstone, 1604-11. He died in 161 1 at the age of seventy-three, being buried at Maidstone, and left a son of his own name, who was of Westbury and Garsdon, Bucks, and who, having studied at Gray's Inn, suc- ceeded his father as registrar of the Court of Chancery in 1619, and was knighted in 1627. As Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge says, in his "Life of Washington," the members of the younger line of the Washingtons seem to have been a successful, thrifty race, owning lands and estates, wise magistrates and good soldiers, marrying well, and increasing their wealth and strength from generation to generation. This N'ounger branch of the Washingtons attached itself to the Royal side, and there is good reason to suppose that the North- amptonshire Washingtons, descended from Robert, the eldest son of the Northampton merchant, were in sympathy with the King also, although they may not have embroiled themselves deeply in politics. At least it is A PEDIGREE OF THE WASHINGTONS. John Washington of W.irton, Lancashire. 1 John Washington of \\ arton = .Margaret, d. of Robert Kytson of Warton. Laurence Washington, grantee of Sulgrave = Amy, d. of Robert Pargiter. Ob. 1585. Buried at Sulgrave. I Ob. 1564. Buried at Sulgrave. Robert Washington = Elizabeth, d. of Robert Light Ob. 1619. Buried at Sulgrave. of Radway. Laurence Washington, Registrar of the High Court of Chancery. Laurence Washington = Margaret, d. of Ob. 1616. Buried I William Butler at Brington. of Tees, Sussex. Robert Washington = Eliz. ChishuU. Ob. 1622. Sir Laurence Washington. Knighted 1627. Sir William Washington of Packington. Sir John Washington of Thrapston. Rev. Laurence Washington = Amphilli.;, d. of John Roades. Fourth son. Rector of Purleigh, Essex. John Washington B. at Tring, 1634. Went to V'irginia about 1658. Ann, d. of Nathaniel Pope. Second wife. Laurence Washington. Went to Virginia about 1666. Laurence Washington = Mildred Warner. Ob. 1697. I .\ugustine Washington. GiiORGE Washington. Born 1732. Died 1799. THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. IC7 clear that their friends and kins- men the Spencers were ardent supporters of the Royal cause, and the third Lord Spencer, created Earl of Sunderland, was killed on the King's side in the first battle of Mewbury. The descent of the Washingtons, and the relationship of the many Laurences in the line to one another, will be made clear by the pedigree set forth on p. no, which shows the descent of George Washington from Laurence Washington of Sulgrave, twice Mayor of Northampton. To the original grantee of Sulgrave, who died February 19th, 1585, succeeded his eldest son, Robert, then of the age of forty. This Robert is supposed to have suffered from some pecuniary embarrassments, butthere appears to be no real knowledge of his circumstances, and he was cer- tainly able to educate his sons well and to maintain his position in the county. His sons Chris- topher and William both matricu- lated at Oriel College, Oxford, in December, 1588 — the sounding year of the Armada — and the former of tliem graduated B.A. in 1594-5. Robert's eldest son was Laurence, whom we will call the second Laurence to distinguish him from his grandfather, the Mayor of Northampton, in 1610, Robert Washington, jointly with this son, the second Laurence, agreed to sell the manor house at Sulgrave to their cousm Laurence Mal<e- peace, for reasons which are not knov\'n, thougli probably they were not dissociated from pecuniary considerations. One of tlie first Laurence Washington's daughters had married Abel Makepeace, and with the Makepeaces the manor house remained until 1659, so that it is probable the Washingtons were often within its walls. Perhaps, indeed, John Washington, the emigrant, ancestor of George Washington, paid a visit to it bc-fore leaving for Virginia about 165S. Having sold Sulgrave, the second Laurence Washington removed to Brington, near North- ampton, his father, perhaps, going with him, though the latter was buried in the family vault at Sulgrave. Laurence Washington, the son, now of Brington, had, as we have seen. an uncle of his own name who was registrar of the High Court of Chancery, and a cousin who was to be knighted in part for his services The Interior from the Forch. in the same office, but it is scarcely possible not to feel that in going with him from Sulgrave to Brington we follow the family passing under something of a cloud. The second Laurence had seventeen children, a family burden which was doubtless a heavy charge upon his resources. Two of them, however, rose to positions of importance, and were knighted — Sir William Washington of Packington in 1622, and Sir John Washington of Thrapston in 1623. But there are evidences of rather straitened circumstances in the cases of others. Thus it is known that while the brothers were on friendly terms with the family at Althorp, their youngest sister, Lucy, was acting as housekeeper there. The fourth son of the second Laurence, and the brother of Sir William and Sir John, to whom attention must be directed, was the Reveiead Laurence Washington, who appears to have been a boy of si.x or seven I05 THE UWSHINGTON COUXTRY. when tlie family removed to Br ng- 1 en . It w a s almost certainlv the friendship of the Spencers of Althorp, which is close to Brington, and the ready- help received from them, that took the Wash- ingtons to that place. The Spencers appear to have be- friended them — ■ their names often appear in tie household books — and it is pro- bable that young Laurence (the third Laurence, we may call him), often pored over the books in Althorp library. He matriculated November 2nd, ■^i^i^' Tl.e Ancient Tr,:asure Chest, Sulgrave Church. Lit 162I, Brasenose, being then Oxford, nineteen years of age, described as "generosi filius " — the son of a gentleman — obtained his B A. 1623, M. A. 1626, was fellow of the college 1624 to 1633, lecturer in 1627, and proctor in 163 1, receiving the latter_ appointment apparently on the orders of Charles \. Being ordained, Laurence Washington was pre- sented to the rich rectory of Purleigh in Essex, and married Ainphi'lis, the daughter of John Roades, farm bailiff to Sir Hdmund Verney. He lived in a time when it was no easy thing for a clergyman, whether by sympathy Roundhead or Cavalier, to hold his place. Heated partisans on either side denounced the others as guilty of shameless offences. Fuller saysthatsome misdeedsoftheclergy cried aloud to justice for punishment, and Baxter declares that in all the countries he was acquainted with, six to one at least, if not many more, sequestrated b_v the committees, were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or especially guilty of drunken- ness or swearing. Drunkenness was the charge preferred against the ancestor of George Washington, but we cannot hold it to be proved. Fuller tells us that the complainers were in many cases factious people, and Clarendon says that, if a few of the meanest and mostvicious parishioners could be brought to prefer a petition against their parson to the House of Commons, how falsely soever, and contrary to the judgment of the parish, he was sure to be prosecuted for a scandalous minister. There is, besides, direct evidence in favour of the Rev. Laurence Washington in Walker's " Sufferings of the Clergy," where it is said that the rector of Purieigh was reputed to be a very worth\-, pious man, and very moderate and sober. Rightly or wrongly, however, the decision was against him, and he was deprived, in all probabilitv because his sympathies were not with the Parliamentar\' malcontents. The Memorial Brass of Laurence Washin»ton ithe Elder) and his Wife Amee at Sulgrave. a. :d a. ^ z is z 5 m Qi LU CQ Qi O uu -J iS^' LU (- JKr. o t ^K ' < _J I^B'V _J Hr' d H K > < ^ LU ^•^^f X r— ' no THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. r^ -*■ 3.--*^ In the Village of Litlle Brington. The rector was ejected from liis benefice in 1643, and appears to have suffered a good deal, but was afterwards presented to a- small living in the same district, and his widow received partial compensation for his depriva- tion. There is thus good ground for believing that suDstantial injustice had been done to him, and the Committee on Plundered Ministers in 1649 made partial reparation. His small living was perhaps in the neighbourhood of Tring, for tiiree of his children were born there, but it is not unlikely that he found sympathy and shelter with his friends, the Spencers of Althorp. The third Lord Spencer, created Earl of Sunderland, who was killed at Newbury, had married Dorothy Sidney — Waller's Sacharissa — daughter of the second Earl of Leicester, and this lady, who survived him many years, made Althorp, where she lived retired, "a sanctuary to the loyal sufferers and learned clergymen." John Washington, the Rev. Laurence Washington's eldest son, great-grandfather of the famous President, went to America some time between 1655, when he was made administrator of his mother's property, and 1659, when he is found in Virginia, fol- lowed by his younger brother Laurence, who was married at Luton, June 26th, 1660, liad a daughter baptised there December 22nd, 1663, was livingat Tring in 1665, and was in Virginia in 1667. These notes upon the Washingtons and their association with Sulgrave and Brington ma_\' serve as a prelude to some account ot the interests of those places Sulgrave derives nearly all its importance for the \'isitor from the fact that it was the home of the Washingtons, and is the place in England with which they are most closely as>ociated. it may be reached with ease from Banbury by the Northampton road known from ancient times as " Banbury Lane," the visitor diverging by a by-road from Thorpe Mandeville. The whole distance is about six and a-lialf miles. I he place also lies witliin easy distances of Helmdon, Culworth, and Moreton Pinkney Stations. The manor house whicii the first Laurence Washington, Mayor of Northampton, built, is an edifice of stone, greatly changed since his t me, and now much fallen from its high estate. After passing from the hands of the Make- peaces, to whom it was conveyed by Robert Washington and his son, it was converted into a farmhouse. Changes passed over it and disfigurements grew upon it ; internally it was divided, some parts disappeared, and out- buildings were added ; so that now it is but a poor representative of its former self. The house is usually approached from the north, from the village street, but the only original portion remaining is on the further side, facing south, and running east and west. The TflE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. Ill building is still a farmhouse, and a field, in which there are some old elms, lies between it and the road. The most interesting feature is the gabled porch or projecting bay on the south, which has an excellent doorway, v\'ith a low Tudor arch under a square head and label, with the Washington arms in the spandrels. Above is a shield in plaster, much defaced, and over that a window. Above that again, also in plaster, are the Royal arms, with a lion and a gritfin, or dragon, as supporters, and the letters " E.R." Within, the lion and dragon are seen again, embossed in plaster on either side. The adornments are a good deal defaced and are not easy to make out, and the same is the case witli some other features of the place. The hall of the house is entered from this porch, and, as was customary in such buildings, runs at right angles to it, being now divided into two rooms. When the house was thus altered, the screen which separated the hall from the lobby was removed, and thus the original character was destroyed. The fireplace is arched. The great window- is muUioned, and originally had much stained glass, now removed, but two pieces are at Weston House, three miles north-east, and six shields, believed to have come from the same window are in the windows of Fawsley Church, eight miles and a-half to the north. The hall window at Sulgrave can never have possessed those features of archi- tectural distinction which were commonly found in the better examples of the architecture of its time. It is evident that the east wall of the hall was not an outside wall, and it has been stated that the mansion extended about seventy feet to the east of the present building. The part running north, at right angles to the hall, is a later addition, the original house having been built upon a different and more elaborate plan. Possibly Laurence Washington was never able to complete the structure. The manor house, as it stands, is a satis- factory, though not in any way remarkable, example of the work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with oak beams, panelling and tlooring of the same, and the gables high-pitched and good. The English representatives of the Washingtons once thought of purchasing the house, but it was found to be too dilapidated to be converted into a residence. We may now proceed to the church, which stands at the west end of the village, and is very closely associated with the Wash- ingtons. It is partly in the Decorated style. ■Kl^iii^J i The Washington House, Little Brington. 1 12 THE WASHINGTON COLWTRY. and consists of a cliancel, with Perpendicular windows, nave, aisles, north and south porches, and square embattled tower, with angle but- tresses, and a west door of plain but unusual character. The porch on the noith side is of the same period as the earlier parts of the church, while the south porch is dated 1564. The character of the edifice is not imposing, and it cannot be said that Sulgrave Church ranks high among the splendid ecclesiastical edifices of the shire. The nave arcade is of the Decorated period, with four bays separatin:^ the na\-e from the aisles. One very remark- able feature of the church is the liagioscope, enabling worshippers in the south aisle to witness the elevation of the host. On the south side of the chancel, beneath a large Perpendicular window, is a small window with an oaken shutter, apparently intended to enable lepers to attend the services without actually entering the church. Mucii of the window tracery belongs to a modern restora- tion. The north doorway is very quaint, and there is a beautiful \'ista across the church, with the old octa- gonal font in the foreground. On each side of the chancel roof are carved heads, said to be those of Edward 111. and Queen Philippa. One very interest- ing object IS the ancient church chest, very curiously banded with iron — a stout and excellent e.vample of the old treasure chest, wherein records, church plate, and priceless vest- ments were stored. There are kindred examples at Hus borne C r a w 1 e y, Stoke Albany, Ste v i ngton, Te m psf r d, and man v other Inscription on the Wjsh'nglon House. Lit.le Bnngton. places. The chest at Sulgrave, as shall be explained, has been used for the storage of mucli less holy objects than it was originally intended to preserve. Many other interesting objects are in the church, hut none so interesting as the Washington memorials, which, however, have suffered grievously from sacrilegious hands. Under the east window of tlie south aisle is a slab in which originally were the complete memorial brasses of the first Laurence Washington and his family. They were six in number. He desired to be buried " in the south aisle before my seat," and was repre- sented in close-fitting doublet, and long fur- bordered robe, with large broad-toed shoes. The brass representing .Amy Washington ha-; long since disappeared, and the head of Laurence himself is no longer there. The lady appears to have been in a plain costume of the time. There were brasses also of four son^ and seven daughters, in two groups, as ' ' weepers," represented in a manner that was customary at the time. The sons had coats and breeches of the period, w i t h hose and broad-toed shoes, and the dau2hters were habited in long gowns, with close caps. The slab was muti- lated in August, 1889, by two i n d i \- i d u a 1 s, said to have been dressed as gentlemen, and the brass "weepers" were carried away. Time has told also upon the plate re p 1 e s e n t i n g the Washing- ton arms. The plate recording the interment is inscribed as follows: " Here h'eth buried \e bodys of Laurence Wasshingto, Gent, and Amee his wyf, by whome he THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. 113 had issue iiij sons & vij daughts, w^ Laurence dyed ye . . day of . . an. 15 . . , & Amee deceassed the vj day of October ano Dni, 1564." EvidentK- this inscription vva? placed in posi- tion after the death of Lauren ce Washington's wife, and when he followed her to the grave many years later, in 1585, the b 1 a n k s for recording the date of his own death were never filled in. The affixing of brasses in this way was not uncommon, but in the case of the Washing- ton memorial there was a singular failure on the part of someone to render the last offices to the late Mayor of Nortliampton. We cannot but experience indignation and shame at the Oli Sundial at Little Brington, Showing the Washington Arms, a sense of perpetration of the barbarous defacement of this historic memorial. The monument has not been uncared for, however, careful hands having preserved it from further decay, and having placed upon the wall above it a reproduction of the original inscription. This tablet was erected by members of tlie family in 1893. Beyond the church and manor house the visitor to Sulgrave will not find much to interest him. Barrow Hill in the parish is an ancient tumulus, and, though it is not lofty, it has been asserted that nine counties may be seen from its crest — Northamptonshire, Warvvick-- shire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Gloucester- shire, Berivshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedford- shire, and Hertfordshire. An ancient ash tree on the top was looked upon as unholy in this land where men were prone to believe much in the marvellous. The witches were believed to hold Satanic revelries around it, and the men of Sulgrave resolved therefore to cut it down. Proceeding then to the tumulus axe in hand, they looked back to find their village apparently in ilames. Hastening back to extinguish the fire, they found it had existed in imagination only, and when they returned to the tree they saw that their axe-marks had disappeared. Thenceforward no villager was found valiant enough to undertake the destruc- tion of the mysterious ash tree. Some inter- esting places are in the n e i gh b u r- hood of S ul- grave. Cul- vvorth has an ancient and inte resting church, re- stored, the base of a fine cross, upon many steps, and a manor house in which Charles L slept on June 27th, 1644, when he entered Cul- worth with an army of 5,500 foot and 4,000 horse on his way to Ban- bury. A stone near the en- trance is still called "King Charles's Stone," This is a region of England which witnessed many events of the Civil War, and had been the scene of fighting in earlier times. In the year 914 the Saxons and Danes waged sanguinary battle on Dunsmoor or Danesmoor, between Culworth and Edgecote, and on the same ground in Jul\', 1469. a strong body of insur- gents inflicted a severe defeat upon the partisans of Edward IV., and, capturing the Earl of Pembroke, his two brothers, and eight other gentlemen, carried them to Banbur_\', where they were beheaded. It is recorded that the village of Culworth was from 1770 to 1787 the headquarters of a band of housebreakers and highwaymen, known as the Culworth gang, who were the terror of Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and the adjoining counties, and most of whom were hanged, as may be read in the local registers. The old oaken chest in Sulgrave Church was one of the stores for their ill- gotten gains, for the parish clerk was impli- cated in their proceedings, and having been con- demned to death in July, 1787, was reprieved to transportation for life. This rascally clerk, William Abbot by name, a shoemaker by 114 THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. trade, was a desperate marauder, and is said to have been accustomed to carry a loaded pistol under iiis cioal\ during tiie services in Sui- grave Ciuirch, being apprehensive the agents of the law might endea\'our to lay hands on him in the sacred edifice, and being resoK-ed, it would appear, to sell his life dearly. Not far from Culworth is Edgecote Park, where Queen Elizabeth stayed in August, 1572, and where Charles 1., with his sons Charles and James, was the guest of Sir William Chauncy on the night before the battle of Edgehill, which itself was the most sounding ev^^nt in the annals of this part of England. The existing house is more recent, having been built in 1752. The King and his sons arrived on October 22nd, 1642, and very early on the morning of the next day, being a Sunday, a messenger arrived from Prince Rupert with intelligence that the Parliamentary forces were at hand. Charles was aroused, and orders were given for the march to EJgehill. The famous house of Canons Asliby is about four miles north-east of Culworth, and the whole district is worth exploring. At Wormleighton, over the Warwicksliire border, still stands the ancient manor hjuse of the Spencers, Barons Spencer of Wormleighton, an extremely interesting edifice, as well as a church of note, and in the village lived for a brief period a branch of the Washingtons of Sulgra\-e. The registers record the marriage of Robert Washington, second son 0' Robert Washington of that place, and Elizabeth Chis- hull, February 19th, 1595, and the baptism of George Washington, son of Laurence Wash- ington, gentleman, August 3rd, i5oS. Robert and Elizabeth lived until i522, and are both buried at Great Brington. Let us now follow the migration, about the year i5io, of Robert Washington of Sulgrave, son of the builder of that house, and father of the last-named Robert Washin4ton, to Brington, where he went, probably in his falling fortunes, with his son Laurence, and perhaps at the same time his younger son Robert. Robert the father returned to Sulgrave later on and died there. It is said that Sir Robert Spencer, Baron Spencer of Worm- leighton, then lord of Althorp, being attached to the Washingtons by friendship and kindred, The Fox and Hounds Inn, G.-eat B.-inglor.. C/) O u z < u :z) CJ ■JJ O O CQ ii6 THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. welcomed this Robert and his sons, and afforded them shelter and a iiome at Little Brington. He had wide possessions in the region, and was " reported to have by him the most money of any person in England." He married Mar- garet, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Francis WilloLighby of Wollaton, and their daughter was wedded to William Pargiter of Gret- worth, a cousin of the Washingtons. When his wife died the first Baron Spencer remained a widower, in relation to which Ben Jonson has a quaint quatrain : ** Who since Thamyra did die Hath not brook'd a lativ's eye, Nor allow'd about his place Any of the female race.'' The parish of Brington, which lies some six- miles north-west of Northampton, contains the two villages of Great and Little Brington — the former being the seat of the parish church, and tlie latter having the house ascribed to the Washingtons. The house is a modest structure, with a high-pitched gable, small mullioned windows, and lesser lights above close to the eaves. It seems to have been built originally for a family having some pretensions to gentility, and has architectural details such as the other houses in the village cannot boast. Over the doorway is a tablet, which speaks of sorrow and vicissitude : " The Lord geveth ; the Lord taketh away ; blessed be the name of the Lord. Constructa i6o5." There has been speculation as to whether this inscription has reference to loss of worldly goods and the compulsory departure from Sulgrave Manor, or whether it refers to the death of Gregory Washington, son of Laurence and his wife Margaret, the daughter of William Butler of Tees in Sussex, or some other bereavement. Since Sulgrave was not sold until 1610, we ma\' perhaps safely refer it to a date before the Washingtons were in possession, unless, indeed, we suppose that Robert was living there at an earlier date. The house is partly modernised, but there are quaint staircases, with massive oaken supports, and the rooms are low and old- fashioned. The rear part still retains much of its old picturesqueness. That no absolute proof exists showing this to ha\'e been the house of the Washingtons is true, but all the probabilities point that way. It is, in the first place, the only house in the village that can reasonably be ascribed to them, and it certainly existed "^"^'■"■**'''V!<«pi — -r" iJ ^ -<- ^- Mn ^^ Ji^ x-j^f^H^-^^^^i The Burial Register of Gregory, Son of Liurence and Margaret Waihington, January 17ih, IbOfa-?— Brington Church. THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. 117 ") ) ,' "^ .— *,^-^ n-" >**< '' t'''^- ^ l> (TC./fff'iit-Ta :j \<->f t 0'i^(^ u.-- yi>'-f/ ^\> //L ,^, . C. The Burial Register of Laurence Washington, December 15th, 16Ib, Brington Church. when they came there. In the neighbourhood, within recent years, an interesting discovery, associating the place further with the family, has been made. An old sundial was unearthed, which appears to have belonged at one time to the house. The gnomon has gone, but the details of the dial remain, and on the lower part, with the date 1617, are unmistakably the arms of the Washingtons. As to the village of Little Brington, it has great picturesqueness, arising from the quaint- ness of its well-kept cottages and houses, its tali elms, its picturesque village green, with the quaint well, covered by a conical thatched roof, and overshadowed by the boughs of cedars. The village has changed compara- tively little since tlie Washingtons knew it. Laurence Washington died in 1616, and was buried at Brington, while his father, Robert, lies at Sulgrave. The house at Brington then appears to have been occupied by Robert's younger son, Robert, and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John Chishull. Both these died in March, 1622, and we shall find their memorial stone in Brington Church. The Laurence who died in 1616 was the father of Sir William Washington of Pack- ington and Sir John Washington of Thrapston, who have been referred to, and also of the Reverend Laurence Washington, from whom the first President of the United States was descended. The Reverend Laurence, after vacating his living at Purleigh in the circum- stances which have been recorded, probably lived for a time at Little Brington. Great Brington, the capital of the parish which the Washingtons had made their liome, lies about half a -mile trom Little Brington, and there is a pleasant walk or drive along a pretty country lane. We know very well that Laurence Washington and his brother Robert often traversed this way. Here lay their business and occupations, and, like their neighbours at Little Brington, they resorted to the church, to which, when Death called them, they were carried. Great Brington is more often approached from Northampton, and a charming route is by Althorp Park. The country is undulating, richly wooded, dotted with farmsteads and with old houses, embowered in climbing plants and roses, and often overhung by noble trees. The drive through the park is glorious, for there are woods on either hand, lovely in the spring- time, gorgeous in the autumn, magnificent cattle grazing in the glades of the park, and herds of deer tro.iptng tovvards the woodland retreats as the visitor approaches. Althorp House, where the Washingtons found ready sympathy in their distresses, and to which some of them often resorted as the friends of the noble owner of the time, Robert, Lord Spencer, is seen on the right. It is a plain and stately building, with a deep frontage on one side, where is the approach to the classic portico between great projecting wings, while on the other side its long facade looks across a radiant garden to the uplands and trees of the park. Althorp House shall not be described here. It has grown out of the original mansion built by Sir John Spencer, the great sheep-owner, and successive owners have altered and added to it within and without. The staircase and perhaps the gallery were planned by " Sacha- rissa," Countess' of Sunde'-land. during her widowhood, when she made the iiuiise a refuge for distressed clergyman. A splendid collection iiS THE IVASHIXGTON COUNTRY. of pictures is in tlie house, but the great library that made it famous is no longer there, having been sold to Mrs. Rylands of Man- chester, who presented it to that city as a memorial of her late husband. Many biblio- graphical treasures, indeed, remain at Althorp, and there are numerous family memorials, including the old household books in \vhi:h are many references to the Washingtons. It may be noticed that, though far from having a level character, much of the country hereabouts is something of a tableland, and on issuing from the park, along a lane shadowed by trees, into the village of Great Brington, it is seen that the elevated tract comes to an abrupt termination with a sudden descent to the north. Standing, indeed, on the village green by the old cross, a mag- nificent prospect is surveyed. It is a garden - land that is seen, rich in its pasturage, and in its acres of wheat and oats, with many orchards, and copses here and there. Drayton, speaking of this very region, said : " The worst foot of her earth is equal to the best." It is therefore pleasant, from the village green, the churchyard, or the last houses of the village, to survey the land. As to the village itself," like that of Little Brington, it seems to possess an air of comfort and pros- perity, such as we find in places in the neigh- bourhood of great estates like Althorp. Lord Spencei, with the spirit of his ancestors, is deeply interested in the welfare of his estates, as the pleasant aspect of the village of Great Brington reveals. The church, standing high on the hill in the grand position described, holds a notable rank even among the famous churches of Northamptonshire. Externally the effect is very fine, for the church and its broad square tower are well proportioned, and the sur- roundings are very beautiful. The tower, aisles, arcade of the nave, and the curious and remarkable font are Early English, and of very good character. The piers of the nave arcade on the south side are somewhat unusual, being octagonal, with hollows in each face. Many of the windows are Perpendicular, and the clerestory of the nave, as well as the chancel and north porch, belong to that period and are rather late in their st\-le. Much was done for the church by Sir John Spencer, the first possessor of his family, who died in 1522, and the details are extremely good, tradition saying that the design was by the architect of Henr_\' Vil.'s Chapel at Westminster. A bay of five sides, with a large window in each, was added in 1846 by the fourth Earl ispencer, in memory of his father, mother, and brother, and in this case a direct copy was made of the Westminster chapel. The nave is still furnished with the old oaken benches dating from about 1450. This seating and the bench ends are well worthy of attention. The Spencer monuments are in the family chape! on the north side of the chancel, and fill the three arches which separate it from the church itself. The earliest is that of Sir John Spencer, who is represented in plate armour, with his wife, under a very rich Perpendicular canopy, on an altar tomb, with much heraldic carving. The monument dates ' ///v ///:TH-i K B^^ The Arms of Laurence Washington and his Wife, Mirgaret Bailer, Great Brington, I61b. THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. 119 Here lies h^terred y bodies of Euzab:VV\shincton widdowe who changed this life forimortaixttie Y i^'oF March 1622- As also y body of Robert Washington gent her late hvsband second ^ SONNE OF Robert Washington of Solgbave in y CovNTV OF North: Es4 who dented this life y 10 OF March 1G22 AFTERTftY livedlovinglytocetver \H THIS PARISH Inscription of Robert and Elizabeth Washington, Great Brington, J622. from 1522. The monument under the central arch, which is very elaborate, is that of Sir John Spencer, who is represented in effij;/ with his wife, Catherine, the daughter of Sir Thomas Kytson of Hengrave. It was through this marriage, as has been explained, that the Spencers were connected with the Washingtons. The design is of classic character in its Elizabethan rendering, and there are great obelisk-like columns at the angles. The knight is in plate armour with a ruff, and his lady has a curious hood raised over her head. This imposing tomb, like others in the chapel, is rich in its heraldic display. Under the western arch is the monument of Robert, first Baron Spencer, and his lady, very rich and elaborate. The other memorials are very numerous. Without, however, describing the Spencer monuments further, it may be said that all are interesting, and that there is some very fine modern work. To many visitors to the church the Wash- ington memorials are its most interesting features The original Laurence Washington, Mayor ot Northampton, and his son Robert, who lived some time at Brington, were both, as has been said, buried in Sulgrave Churcn. The memorials at Great Brington are those of Robert Washington's sons, Laurence and Robert, the former of these being the direct ancestor of George Washington. Laurence Washington's epitaph is on a stone in the pavement of the chancel, the inscription very distinct, and the Washington arms, impaled with those of Laurence Washington's wife, are deeply sculptured at the head. The inscription is as follows : "Here lieth the bodi of Laurence Washington, Sonne & heire of Robert Washington of Soulgrave in the countie of Northampton, Esquire, who married Margaret, the eldest daughter of William Butler of Tees in the countie of .Sussexe, Esquire, who had issue by her 8 sonns & 9 daughters, which Laurence decessed the 13 of December A. Dni. 1616. "Thou that by chance or choyce of this hast sight. Know life to death resigns as day to night ; But as the sunns retorne revives the day. So Christ shall us, though turned to dust & clay." The memorial of Laurence Washington's brother Robert, who died in the same year as his wife — Elizabeth Chishull — 1622, is in the nave, and also bears the Washington arms, with the addition of a crescent as the mark of cadency for the younger son. The inscription, which is as follows, presents some pecu- liarities : " Here lies interred ye bodies of Elizab: Washington, Widdowe, who changed this life for imortallitie ve igth of March 1 622. .-Vs also ye body of Robert Washington, Gent, her late husband, second sonne of Robert VV^ashington of Solgrave in ye county of North. Esqr., who depted this life ye lo'h of March 1622, after they lived lovingly together many yeares in this parish." It would appear that this Robert Wash- ington carried on the business of a farmer and miller — at least, it is known that he rented a windmill from Lord Spencer. Some Wash- ington inscriptions in the church registers may be given here. One is of Laurence, whose grave has been described : " 1616. Mr. Lawrance Washington was buried the .xvth day of December." His brother's entry is as follows: " 1622. Mr. Robert Washington was buried March ye nth." There is also the entry of Robert Washington's wife: "Mrs. Elizabeth Washington, widow, buried March ye 20'h." Another entry is that of a Wash- ington marriage : " 1620. Mr. Philip Curtis and M>3 Amy Washington were married August 8." the visitor to Great Brington THE SPENCER TOMBS, ( i^o ) GREAT BRINGTON CHURCH. THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. 121 Church will find many other things to interest him. Thus, exter- nully, on the south side, beneath a richly- moulded canopy sur- mounted by gabled stone- work, is the effigy of an ecclesiastic, possibly of William Grendon, tor, who in 1275. ancient de rec- dieJ '1 hf cross just outside the churchyard, from which the superb view is commanded, also adds ver\' greatly to the picturesque- n e s s of the place, shadowed as it is by the arms of a mighty elm. I here are other interests of this place relating to Charles 1. which may be mentioned here. As is well known, the King, after surrendering himself to the Scotch army, was sent in 1647, by order of the Parliament, to Holdenby or Holmby House, to remain there till he had assented to the proposals for peace, where he divided his time as a virtual captive between his studies and his amusements. The place was selected because it was "capacious and in the heart of the kingdom," and when Charles approached, nundreds of the gentry met him and escorted him to Holdenby. He frequently went to Lord Vaux's at Harrowden to enjoy a game with the bowls, and also visited Althorp, from which place Holdenby House, as Evelyn records, was plainly visible, for the sake of the well-kept lawn there, on the site of the present flower garden, and was entertained in a manner befitting his Koyal rank. Evelyn's note is interesting, where he speaks of "a prospect from the park (Althorpj to Holmby Details of O.ie of th: Spencer Tombs, Great Brington. House, which, being demo- lished in the late Civil Wars, shows 1 ke a Roman ruin, shaded by the trees about it, a stately, solemn, and pleasing view." It was a view shut out by later planters, who, like some predecessors, placed tablets to indicate the date of their work — " the only in- stance,'' Evelyn says, " 1 know of the like in our country." Sir William Spen- cer planted a very beautiful wood in 1624, through which there is now a very pleasant walk towards Great Bring- ton Church. 'Ihere is a tradition that when Charles was at Hul- denby he received communion at Brington Church, kneeling on the north side. Holdenby House is still an extremely interesting'place, half a ruin and half restored, and two of its gateways remain. It came through Elizabeth Holdenby to the Hattons, and Sir Christopher Hatton was born there in 1540. It was a mansion famous for archi- tectural splendour, and was said to have been built from the designs of the mysterious John of Padua, and had two vast quadrangles. Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor, spoke of Holdenby as "the last and greatest monument of his youth," and he wrote to Sir Thomas Heneaee in 1580 that he intended "to view my house of Kirby, which 1 yet never surveyed, leaving my other shrine, 1 mean Holdenbye, still unseen, until that holy saint may sit in it, to whom it is dedicated." By the "holy saint" he meant Queen Elizabeth, who, however, never visited the 122 THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. place. The present house consists of the north side of the inner quadrangle of the old structuie, and has many excellent features. The mansion was sold bv the celebrated Sir Christopher Hatton to James 1., and during the Civil War was much ra\'aged ; but the chief devastation came later, when one Adam Baynes pulled much of it down. Here it was that Charles was seized by Cornet Joyce at the behest of the Army. The King was playing at bowls at Althorp — where he is said to'have found the " bias " not quite true — when Jo\-ce was observed among the spectators, and shortly afterwards Charles was obliged to surrender himself to the some- what rough demand. The Army had assem- bled on Triplow Heath, and intelligence reached the Parliament too late to give hope of securing the King. The house was sur- rounded during the night, and the governor, Colonel Graves, having escaped, the troops guarding Charles opened the gates and wel- comed the soldiery. The cornet demanded to seethe King with a cocked pistol, it is said, in his hand, but Charles was unwilling to be disturbed, and Joyce retired until the morning. The King demanded of him by what autho- rity he came to seize the Royal person, and the cornet replied that it was by the authority of the Army, whereupon the King asked if he had the written permission of Sir Thomas Fairla.x. Jo\-ce reiterated that he The Ancient Font, Greit Brington. :^4 1. ---' The Tomb of an Ecclesiastic, Great Brington. came from the Army, and, being further ques- tioned, pointed to his commission in the persons of the troopers standing behind him. To which the King replied, " I never before read such a commission, but it is written in characters fair and legible enough — a company of as hand- some, proper gentlemen as I have seen for a long while." That same evening the King, in a coach, accompanied by the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh, and escorted by the soldiery, set out for Hinchinbrook. Those members of the Washington family whose sympathies were with the King in the war, were doubtless greatly interested in the Royal sojourn at Holdenhy House, and the conjecture may be hazarded that some of them may have made personal acquaintance with the monarch. More might have been said of the natural beauties of this attractive region, for the district round Northampton is full of good architecture and landscape charm. It may be interesting to quote a passage from Whyte Melville's romance of " Holmby House " descriptive of the wide prospects in the immediate neighbourhood of Brington. He was speaking actually of Holdenby. " The slope of the ground, which declines from it on all sides, offers a succession of the richest and most pastoral views. Like the rolling prairie of the Far West, valley after valley of sunny meadows, dotted with oak and elm. THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY. 123 undulates in ceaseless variety as far as the eye can reach ; but, unlike the boundless prairie, deep dark copses and thick luxuriant hedgerows diversify the foreground and blend the distance into a mass of woodland beauty." It is a region, also, as may well be supposed, full of history. Lying in the midst of a great forest district, Northampton was a resort favoured by Norman and Angevin kings for the pleasures of the chase, and the horn of the Royal huntsmen was often heard in the places where the Washingtons afterwards made their home. Many Parllam ents and important councils were held in the town, and the barons of the country often gathered at this great centre of the Midlands. Of St. Andrew's Priory, estab- 1 i s h e d for Cluniac monks shortly after the Conquest, which owned most of the churches in Northampton- shire, and out of whose poss e s s ions L a u r e n c e Was h i n gton carved his estate, not a vestige re- mains. There are, however, churches enough to gratifv the architectural enquirer in Nort ampton and its neighbour- hood. No object claims a visit more than Queen Eleanor's Cross, the most perfect of the memorials raised by Edward I. at the places where the body rested of his beloved consort, Eleanor of Castile, on its last journey from Harby in Nottinghamshire to Westminster. " Living, I loved her dearly," he wrote, "and dead, I shall never cease to love her." The exquisite remain, which stands on high ground Ancient Benches in Greit Brington Church. to the south of Northampton, a mile from the town, commanding a view of the place, is raised upon eight steps, and has been freed from the tasteless excrescences with which the age of Anne disfigured it. It is octagonal, the lower portions being adorned with sculp- tured tracery and shields; above are four most graceful statues of the Queen, under enriched canopies, while the upper portion has panelling, canopies, and finials. The details are fall of grace, and executed with the utmost delicacy. Indeed, the whole range of English archi- tecture has few examples more beautiful. Un- fortunately the s p i r e - 1 i k e crown of the whole has dis- appeared, and its exact cha- racter is uncer- tain; butQueen Eleanor's Cross, though shorn of its final charm, is still beautiful in its design, pathetic in its memories, and sanctified in its significance. It differs in some respects from the lovely Eleanor Cross at Geddington in the same county. The Cross certainly cannot be overlooked by visitors to this part ot Eng- land. And now, leaving the Washington country, let us recall, what IS our chief interest in its attractive scenes, that the great-grandson of the original Laurence Washington of Sulgrave, being the son of the Laurence Washington who is buried at Great Brington, was that Reverend Laurence Washington whose sons were the two emigrants to Virginia, and that, through John, the elder of them, this Reverend Laurence Washington was great -great- grandfather of the first President of the United States. [ 134] TUB BOMB OB TTiB BTiAJSJiUlSS. THE \illar;e of Ecton, to which we now direct our steps, derives nearly all its interest from the fact that there flourished the stem from which Benjamin Franklin sprang. The place is some five miles from Northampton, to the north-east of that ancient town, and is appro.iched through the roads by Weston Favell and Great Billing. Its position is upon the higher land tlanking the vale of the Nene on the north, where are the villages of Earls Barton and Great Doddington, and the road from Northamptun. through Ecton to Welling- borough. At this place the Franklins had probably lived for a long period before they rose into the light of actual know- ledge. Ben- jamin Franklin says that, from the notes of his uncle, he learned they had been there 300 years, and " how much longer he knew not." The great philoso- pher adds that the sturd y family from which he sprang, thus settled for a long course of years in the village, had augmented its income, arising from a small patrimony of thirty acres, by adding t) it the profits of a blacksmith's business, the The Ma eldest son always being bred to the trade. The blacksmith was a man of importance in every village in those times, and there was great scope for his craftsmanship, both in practical and decorative matters, and it has been suggested that the Franklins of Ecton were bell-founders also. The first of the family of whom there appears to be any actual record was one Henry Franklin, whose son Thomas was bap- tised at Ecton Church on October Sth, 1598. Of this Thomas Franklin little is known, but he was a man of importance in the village, and was acting as church- warden in i6s3, when a collection was made at Ecton tor the relief of the distressed town of Marl- bor ou g h in Wilts, and he signed the register in attestatiijn of the fact on September 6th of that year. His son Josias said that " he was imprisoned for a year and a day on suspicion of being the author of some poetry that t o u c h ed the character of some great man." By his wife Jane he had four sons, of whom all ha\'e come into some note — T h o m a s , baptised at Ect(in in 1637, who lived and died there; John, who was Farm, Ecton. THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE. THE PARISH CHURCH, ECTON. (120) 126 THE FRAXKLIX COUNTRY. a dyer at Banbury ; Benjamin, who went to America and died there at a great ajje, after whom tiie piiiio- sopher was named ; and Josias, the youngest, who left England in 1682, and was Benjamin Fr a n klin's father. Thomas Franl<lin, the son, brought up as a smith, but encouraged in learning, lil<e his brothers, by " an Esquire Palmer," the principal gentleman of the parish, qualified as a scrivener, and became a considerable man in the county. He acted as clerk to the Com- missioners of Taxes, and was undoubtedly a person of intelligence who took part in many public-spirited move- m e n t s . Thomas Franklin died at Ecton 1702-3, and it is worthy of the unsafe condition of time remembering also R.. Th; Ancient Font, Ecton. on Januar)' 7th, note, as illustrating the country in his the fact that his sister married a mar» of the name — that the entry next preceding his in the register is that of a husbandman, one Thomas Morris, who had been barbarously robbed and murdered by tliree highwaymen upon the Wellingborough road. T homas Franklin's gravestone still stands in Ecton churchyard, and bears the following inscription: "Here lyeth the bod\' of Tliomas Franklin, who departed this 1 ife January 6*, Anno Dni. 1702, in the sixty-fifth yeare of his age." The memorial stone to his wife is near hy , and is thus inscribed : " Here lyeth the body of Eleanor Franklin, the wife of Thomas Franklin, who departed this life the I4»h of March, 171 1, in the 77th yeare of her age." Benjamin, brother of this Thomas Frank- lin, was an ingenious man, and among the ^ Tomb ot Thomas Franklin. Ecton. Tomb of Eleanor Franklm, Ecton. THE FRANKLIN COUNTRY. 127 manuscripts and books which came from him to his illustrious nepiievv, were some consisting of poems and sermons, partly written in a shorthand of his own. To the third of the brothers, John, the dyer of Banbury, the youngest brother, Josias, Benjamin Franklin's father, was apprenticed. Josias Franklin is recorded to have been "converted" by certain Nonconformist minis- ters, but many circumstances regarding him are unknown. He Ictt Itn^Liiid f(jr America about 1682 with his wife and three children, and settled at Boston as a soap-boiler and tallow - chandler in 1706, and there Benjamin Franklin, his youngest son, was born. The philosopher has placed it upon record that his researches showed him to be the youngest son of the youngest son for about five generations back. It was intended that he should follow his father's trade, but his active and, as he says, his "bookish" tastes, caused him to rebel ; and though he would have liked to go to sea, he was at last apprenticed to his brother James as a printer, through which trade he rose to the heights of his philosopln-, and gained the esteem and the trust of his countrymen in many important affairs. There is no certainty as to the place in which the Franklins dwelt at Ecton. Some, without authority, have pointed to the Manor Farm, but the tradition is uncertain and doubtful. Others say that the Franklins' house was destroyed by fire many years ago. There is, in a garden np fcynifi^^^ <K,a^ rtBriiiiri|iiiir<iinw Title-page of the Register Book, Ecton. adjoining the rectory, a well spoken of as the Franklin Well, and it is possible that the village forge was at this place, for it is in close proximity to the main thorough- fiire of the village. The church of St. Mary Magdalene at Ecton is interesting, but not distinguished, in character. It has a massive square tower, with angle buttresses, upon the top of which a more modern and rather incongruous portion has been placed. There is much that is worthy of note externally and internally in the details of the architecture — the fine arcading of the aisles, sup- ported by octagonal piers, the chancel arch, and the windows. The present state of the interior, however, leaves much to desire. There are some interests in the village, and the place h.is a certain picturesqueness. Its quamtness has appealed to artists, and there is something very attractive in the lines of \' e n e r a b 1 e elms which f I a n k the a p p r a c h by the road. The World's End inn has lost its principal feature of interest, for the sign which Hogarth is said to have painted and presented to mine host, as a " recognition of his skill as a brewer of wholesome toddy," has been removed. The manor house was for many years famous for its Hogaiths, e.\ecuted at various times by the master dari,ig his \'isits to the rectory. An interesting country is that in which Ecton stands, and much more might have been said about this land in which the Franklins IV ■aXcim.uX. m mortem, ^^-fcimu-r kiWc mcninu.T h^ l^ciH. lii^Mij «»-(*.? /J. y*^**',-''P«^^^/»y<^ Tie 7nffTinii»T =^<-nir^<- fi^V /itTn<^ c/^ 'i^'-f^ ']^"*<^ ^^'»^' l^J2^'fl*-r*<^ £2$t-rmt^ /yV)«<* tf'/J'xnA /<-»cV /"^<~ ^Vi/ J ('/^ V^^lj^fMrr/^ C^ ^mt. ^5 I BAPTISMAL REGISTER OF THOMAS, SON OF HENRY FRANKLIN, OCTOBER STH, 1598. *«**»i. « r^|3-^^f^^ ;^-/ ' BAPTISMAL RLUISTER OF THOMAS, SON OF THOMAS FRANKLIN, MARCH iiTH, 1657. ( 128) THE FRANKLIN COUNTRY. 129 ' ^/ ^//^' </^>^--^ ^^^^ O^f^rn^^ m^Wnf Signature of Thomas Franklin, Ecton, September, 1653. spent their lives. The interesting church of features do certainly give the impression Great Billing may be alluded to, while the still of very high antiquity. Castle Ashby, the more famous church of Earls Barton should famous house of the Marquis of Northampton, be visited for the great and singular tower, is another attraction of the same neighbour- which, by common consent, is referred to hood, and the sylvan delights of Yardley Chase, Saxon times, and its massive and sombre and the scenes in which Cowper passed his character, its round arches, and many unusual days, are a few miles beyond to the south. Burial Register of Thomas Franklin, Ecton, January, 1702-3. A TABLE OF DISTANCES. Distances by MILLS Alcester • SI Evesham Alderminster 5* Alveston . 2* Hampton Lucy Aston Cantlow 6i Haselor Atherstone ■ 3 Harvington honington BiDFORD 6S Billesley • 5 Kineton BiNTON 4 Leamington Charlecote • 4i LUDDINGTON Clifford Chambers 2i COMPTON WyNYATES . ■ 15 Preston-on-St( Road from Stratford -on -A ^on. MILES MILLS 14* Shipton-on-Stour . II Shotteky I 5i Snitterfield . • 4* 7 loj Temple Grafton . 6 lO Tredington ■ 8J Tysoe, Lower I2j 10 Tysoe, Upper . ■ I3i II Warwick Si 2j Welcombe 2 Wellesbourne Hastings 5i 4 Wellesbourne Mountford ■ 5 Wilmcote . 4 Edgehill Ashow Baddeslev Clinton Barford (by Warwick) Bishop's Itchington (by Harbury) Bishop's Tachbrook Blakedown Mill Bourton (by Princethorpe) Brandon Charlecote (by Warwick) Chesford Bridge Claverdon (by Warwick) COMPTON WYNYATES . Coventry . Edgehill Tower Guy's Cliff Mill Salford Priors 8* Distances by Road from Leamington. MILES MILLS 6S Hampton Lucy Hampton-on-the-Hill (by • 9i 9i Warwick) • 45 5 Haseley' 6 Hatton • 6J 8 Henley-in-Arden . 12* 2} HuNNiNGHAM (by Offchuixli) . 4* 2i loi Kenilworth 53 9i Kineton (by Warwick) 13 8f 3i (by Gaydon Inn) Hi Ladbroke • 9 Si 19* Marton 8* 9i MiLVERTON . 2J 155 Norton Lindsey Offchurch 6* S Radford Semele . rowington Snitterfield (by Warwick) SOOTHAM Stivichall Stoneleigh Abbey Stoneleigh Lodge Stratford-on-Avon Temple Balsall Ufton . Warwick Castle . Welcombe (by Warwick) Wellesbourne WOLSTON WooDCOTE House Wroxall Abbey MILES If ■ Si Si ■ 7 8* • si 35 I2j 4j 95 8 9 5i Distances from Local Railway Stations. STATION m:i 1 s STATION MILES Arrow . Alcester I Norton Lindsey . Claverdon • li Ashow Kenilworth -4 Aston Cantlow . . Bearley 2* Packington, Great Hampton-in Arden 2i Great Alne !i Packwood Pinley . Knowle Claverdon . I* Baddesley Clinton KiNGSWOOD '* Billesley Wilmcote 2 Radway . Kineton • 3i Brington, Great . Althorp Parx >i ROWINGTON . KiNGSWOOD • li Little . II II 3 Butler's Marston . Kineton li Snitterfield Southam . Bearley Marton 3 4 Compton Verney Kineton 2 Stoneleigh . Kenilworth 3 CoMPTON Wynvates II 7 SULGRAVE Banbury 6i COUGHTON Alcester 2 II . Culworth 2 II Helmdon(GC-) . I Earls Barton Castle Ashby li .. . Helmdon (L & N.W ) 2* ECTON . Billing ■ ^i ,1 MORETON PiNKNEY ■ 3i Haseley Hatton o Temple Balsall . Knowle 3 Haselor . . Alcester • k Temple Grafton Alcester 3 Hatton Hatton 1 .1 . BlNTON 2 Henley-in-Arden . Bearley a Hillborough Bidford ■i Wappenbury . Welford . Marton . BiNTON • 3 I Kenilworth Castle Kenilworth . I Wilmcote Wilmcote , i Knowle Knowle 'i Wixford . wolverton . . Alcester Claverdon 2 ij Lapworth . KiNGSWOOD 2 Wootton . KeNILW'ORTH ij WORMLEIGHTON Fenny Compton I* Merioen Hampton-in Arden 3 Wroxall . Hatton 3 INDEX. Althorp House Akden, Forest of Arden Family .... Aston Cantlow .... Baddesley Clinton . . . • Bearley ..... Beaudesert .... BiDFORD . . . • ■ Billesley . . . . ■ Billing, Great .... BiNTON Bridges . . . • Birthplace of Shakespeare Blacklow Hill .... Brington, Little, and Washington House . Brington, Great, AND Washington Memorial Canons Ashby .... Charlecote House and Chukcii . Charles I. at Holdenby Clifford Chambers .... Clopton Bridge . . . • Clopton House .... Compton Wynyates ... Culvvorth . . . . • Distances, A Table of. Earls Barton Church . Ecton and the Franklins . Edgecote House Five Gables, The, Stratford. Franklin, Benjamin, his Ancestors . Gaveston, Piers, Beheaded Grammar School, Stratford Guild Hall and Chapel, Stratford Guy, Earl of Warwick Guy's Cliff .... Hampton Lucy .... Harvard House, Stratford Hathaway, Anne . . . . Henley-in-Akden .... Holdenby (Holmey) House Holy Trinity Church, Stratford Hospital, Leicester's, Warwick Irving, Washington, at Stratford Kenilworth Castle . . . . Kytson, Sir Thomas Leamington ..... Leicester's Hospital, Warwick Leigh, Sir Thomas .... Lucy, Sir Thomas Luddington ■ . . . . Memorial Buildings, Stratford Motstow Hill .... Museum, The Shakespeare, Stratford PAGE 117 • 71 ■ 34. 35 ■ . 35 3. 83-S5 35 ■ 71 32 • 34 129 ■ 32 3-6 72 116, 117 s 11S-120 114 ■38-43 122 • 32 25 . 28 43-46 113, 114 130 129 124- 127 114 9 124- 127 72 14 12 -14 72 72 -75 43 6 6, 28 29 71 121, 122 14 64 -24 -66 • 77 -Si 102, 105 68 . 64 -66 90 3S, 39 42 32 24 go . 4 New Place, Stratford Northampton and Queen Eleanor's Cross Portraits, Shakespeare ROLLWRIGHT StONES Rowington ..... PAGE 10 123 92-95 43 Shakespeare Chronology, A . . . 96 Shakespeare, Henry ... 3 Shakespeare, John . ■ 3. 4. 36 Shakespeare, William — Birthplace: .... . 3-6 His House of the New Place . . .10 His Kindred at Stratford 9, 10, 12, 14 Marriage with Anne Hathaway . 28, 30, 34 Monument ... .16 Stratford the original source of his inspiration i Shakespeare Portraits Shottery .... Snitterfield .... Spencers of Wormleighton and Althorp 102, 105, loS. 114 Warwick 92-95 28-32 35. 36 St. Mary's Church. Stoneleigh Abbey Stoneleigh Church . . . . Stratford — Ancient Houses Clopton Bridge Clopton House . . . . Guild Chapel, Hall and School Holy Trinity Church and Shakespeare Memorials New Place .... Shakespeare's Birthplace Shakespeare Memorial Buildings Town Hall . . . . Trinity College School Sulgrave . . . . Church and Washington Memorials Manor House Temple Balsall . . . . Temple Grafton Warwick ...... Castle . . . -47 Leicester's Hospital ... 64 Priory ..... St. John's Hospital .... St. Mary's Church . . .58 Washington, George, His Ancestors . gg et Washington, Laurence, Mayor of Northampton I co- Memorial Inscription, &c., Sulgrave Washington, Rev. Laurence . . . 107- Washington Family . . loo-iio, 114- Wilmcote . . 34 Wormleighton .... Wro.xall ..... 17, 118 5S-64 88-go ■ 91 3.6,9 25 . 28 12, 14 14-24 10 3-6 24 • 24 14 99. 105 111-113 105, no, HI 34 47 -57 -66 68 68 -64 seq. -105 112 109 "7 . 35 114 88 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. American Window, Holy Trinity Church Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shotteky — Interiors , . . . . Photo.. D. McNieUe. Slratford. View from the Garden Photo.. Fritr £- Co.. Reis.ite. View from the Road . Arden House. Wilmcote Aston Cantlow .... Baddesley Clinton .... BiLLESLEY Hall .... Birthplace of Shakespeare — Exterior \'iews .... Parlour and Kitchen . Photo.. Frith S- Co.. Reigate. The Birth Room .... Photo.. D. McNieUe. Stratford. The Debk .... The Librarv .... Photo..' Poiiltoil &■ Son. The Library, East End The Museum .... Brington, Little .... Bkington. Great . .114 Church and Cross Spencer Monuments . Charlecote Hall, The Terrace Ehzabethan Suite. Great Hall and Librar P)...to,. D. McNielle. Stratford. The Gate-house The Garden Gate View from the River Clifford Cha.mbers, The Vicarage Clopton Bridge. Stratford Clopton House .... Compton Wynyates The Hall, various Views . Photos,. \'a!sntine i5- Sons. Dundee. The Quadrangle Photo.. D. McNielle. Stratford. ECTON AND THE FraNKLIN LOCALITIES PAGE 21 30 • 27 29 31. 35 36 S3-86 34 • 4. 5 9 log, 113 122, 123 "5 120, 121 37 39.40,42 41 42 38 ■ 32 2S . 28 43. 46 45, 46, 47, 48 48 . 124-126 Fountain, .American Memorial, Stratford . 3 Franklin Gr.avestones, Ecton . 126 Franklin Registers . . 127, 128, 129 Grammar School, Stratford . -13, 14 Guild Chapel and Five Gables, Stratford 10, ii Guy's Cliff .... 69, 70, 72-74, 76 Harvard House, Stratford Holy Trinity Church, Stratford Pht>to.. D. McNielle. Str.itford. .\merican Window Exterior Views Interior Views Shakespeare Memorials The Lime Avenue Photo.. D. McNieUe. Stratford. The Monument Plioto.. Poulton 5- Son. The Old Font View from the Island Photo., u. McNielle. Stratford. Kenilworth — Castle .... Castle End The Church . The Ford . To face M 12 e I 15 16, 17. 18, 20 22 24 22 19. 21 94 16 21 20 16 77- -80, 82 81 75 75 Leicester's Hospital, Warwick The Nilometer and Norman Arch Photo.. Bedford. Luddington .... 63-68 69 33 Map of the Shakespeare Country. Map of the Washington and Franklin Countries. Memorial Fountain, American Memorial Theatre ..... Photo.. D. McNieUe. Stratford. New Place, Site of . Red Horse Inn. Washington Irving's Room Photo.. Bedford. 26 94 Shakespeare Monument, Holy Trinity Church Photo., Bedford. Shakespeare, Portraits of . Frontispiece, 92-95 Shottery — Anne Hathaway's Cottage . . 27 Stoneleigh Abbey .... The Church ..... Stratford — American Memorial Fountain . Ancient Bridge .... Photo.. Frith G- Co.. Reigale. Ancient Houses . . 2, 3, 5, 11, 12 Clopton Bridge .... 28 Clopton House . . . . .28 Grammar School . . . . 13, 14 Guild Chapel . . . .10, 11, Holy Trinity Church . . -15 Memorial Theatre .... Photo,, D. McNielle. Stratford. New Place, Site ot . . . Red Horse Inn, Washington Irving's Room Photo., BedlV'td. Skakespeare's Birthplace. Shakespeare Memorials The Market Place Photo.. Frith iS- Co., Reieate. St, John's Hospital, Warwick. St. Mary's Church, Warwick The Crypt and Ducking Stonl photo.. Bedford. SuLGRAVE Manor House Solgrave Church Treasure Chest . 29. 30 87-91 88 3 23 12 -22 25 12 26 19. 21, 94 . 26 68 58-62 67 99-102 103. 104, 105, 107 108 Warwick — Castle ... 47. 49. 50, 51, 53-57 Guy's Porridge Pot ... 53 Photo.. Poulton tS- Son. Leicester's Hospital . 63-67 Priory 7' Remains of Ancient Bridge . 52 St. John's Hospital . . 68 St. Mary's Church . . . 58-62 The Cedar Drawing Room ... 58 Photo., Poulton &■ Son. The Mill ..... 54 Washington, Laurence, Memorial Brass . 108 Washington House, Little Brington hi, 112 Washington Sundial, Little Brington . 113 Washington Registers . iifi, 117 Washington Inscriptions iiS, 119 Wilmcote, Home of Shakespeare's Mother . 31 Photo . Bedford. Wilmcote, Arden House . . -35 THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. SHaliespeare's Country. & BRITISH AND AMERICAN VISITORS Will find that the Largest Store for PbotograpbSt Guides, and maps IS AT 9, HIGH STREET, WARWICK. THE ONLY AUTHORISED GUIDES TO . . . Warwick Castle, Guys Cliff, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Al^on, and Charlecote ARE TO BE OBTAINED AT THE ABOVE ADDRESS, FROM .... Henry T. Cooke & where tiie largest Collection of . . . Photographs of this highly historical locality may be seen. OURISTS ARE INVITED TO CALL AND OBTAIN FREE INFORMATION AS TO WHAT IS TO BE SEEN, AND HOW BEST TO SEE IT. T The Entrance Gate, Leicester's Hosi'ital THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. WARWICK (Si Shakespeare's Country. WHERE TO STAY- THE WOOLPACR HOTEL OLD ESTABLISHED nRST-CLASS HOUSE FOR Families, Gentlemen, American Tourists, etc. M' UCH enlarged, and heated throughout in winter. Within a few minutes' walk of St. Mary's Church, the Castle, and Earl of Leycester's Hospital, and centrally situated for visiting Guy's Cliffe, Kenilworth, Stoneleigh Abbey, Charlecote Park, and Stratford-on-A\'on. The Coff£e Rcos[. LADIES' COFFEE ROOM, BATHROOMS, SMOKING LOUNGE, EXCELLENT STABLING. CHARGES MODERATE. CARRIAGES OF EVERY DESCRIPTION. The Woolpack Hotel. Mrs. HALBEARD, Proprietress. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. 111. Royal Leamington Spa. A Convenient Centre for Kenilworth, Warwick, . Quy's Cliffe WHERE TO STAY. LA PLAISANCE. Stoneleigh Abbey, . . Ciiarlecote Parl<, . . . Stratford-on-Avon, etc. High-Class Private Hotel & hoarding Establishment FOR . . FAMILIES, GENTLEMEN Well appointed, every home comfort, excellent cuisine; south aspect; most pleasantly, conveniently, and cen- trally situated in the highest and most fashionable part of Leamington. Near Parade, Pump Room, Public Gardens, and Trams, and within five minutes' walk of the Campion Hills. ^WL ■■ ^'jMli^jL Wm^m m w^ MTOiiii'.ii'i«i iMm'- wm La Plaisance. Telephone No.: "0655 Leamington," Telegraphic Address : " La Plaisance, Leamington.' AND . . AMERICAN VISITORS. SMOKING ROOM. BATHROOM. FOOTMAN. Private Silling Rooms, if required. Good Accommodation for Cycles. Garage for Motors and Livery Stables close by. Lady Resident : MISS PROFFITT-WHITE. ^^ Leamington Spa Courier and Warwickshire Standard." PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY. Proprietor, FRANK GLOVER. Price, 1d. THE BEST LOCAL NEWSPAPER . . ROYAL LtAMINGTON SPA. {B\- permission 0/ the Propriclorof the "Leamington {By peimission of the Proprietor of the " Leamington Spa Courier.") ALSO Publisher ana Propricior . of the Excellent and . . Well-kno%>n Handbook , SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE, STRATFORD-ON-A\'ON. {By permission oj the Pr.^prietor o the " Leamington Spa Courier.' Spa Courier.") "SHAKESPEARE'S LAND/' By C. J. RIBTON-TURNER. Containire some of the latest Maps and PLANsof the whole of South Warwickshire, and beautifully illustrated. Indispensable to Motorists, Cyclists. Pedestrians, and Tourists generally. Bound in cloth Price 33. 6d. nett. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advevtisements. Royal Leamington Spa. LADIES^ TAILOR and COSTUA4IER 32, The Parade, Leamington Spa, and 4, Spring Street, London, W. jS^ London Telephone No.: "723. Western. Mr. BLUCK at;ends Ihe Leamington Eitablishment personally. All Garments are made in his London Workrooms (uhich are perfect in equipment and sanitation), by an efficient stafT. A Large Stock of Cloths always on View at 32, The Parade. A Selection of SILKS, DRESS MATERIALS, TRIMMINGS, etc., specially brought from his London House for individual requirements. ^•«2S_ COSTUMES, DRIVING COATS, RIDING HABITS, FURS, FUR-LINED and FUR-TRIMMED GARMENTS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION. FURS RENOVATED AhD REWORKED. RECEPTION and DINNER GOWNS, BLOUSES, SHIRTS, etc. 32, THE PARADE, LEAMINGTON SPA, and at 4, SPRING STREET, LONDON, W. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advcrlisaimits. ROYAL LEAMINGTON SPA. CLEVEDON HOU5E, 44, CLARENDON SQUARE. High-Class l^esioential 'Boarding House for Families, Gentlemen, English and (American Tourists, etc. . . PLEASANT SUMMER AND WINTER RESORT. HUNTING CENTRE. Cle\edon HorSE. ■* I ^HE House is most handsomely decorated and appointed, and pleasantly situated in ■*■ the hijihest and most fashionable part of the town, within a few minutes' walk of the Pump Room, Jephson Gardens, and principal places of interest. Every convenience and comfort. Excellent Cuisine, SMOKE ROOM, etc. Use of Private Gardens (Clarendon Square). For full particulars address the Lady Resident. Stevenson & Sons, CARRIAGE MANUFACTURERS, 2, PARADE, ANoCLARENDON AVENUE, royal LEAMINGTON spa. EST. 1846. C. W. BROMWICH Plating, Enamelling, and Repairing of Motors and Cycles are Specialities. . . . GARAGE FOR MOTORS. STORAGE FOR CYCLES. FOR MOTORS. PETROL. }) Motors for Hire by Day, Week, or Season. Motors Run from Warqvick to Stratfora-on-A'von. Motor Works : MORTON STREET, KENILWORTH ROAD. (Close to Ui-i-er Parade and Clarendon Hotel.) By [permission oj the Protirietors of the '^Leamington Spa Courier." VI. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. ROYAL LEAMINGTON SPA, WARWICK, AND SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY. ROYAL LEAMINGTON SPA. The "Shakespeare" Coach, FARES: Box Seats, 7/6; u Otl^er Seats, 6 - LEAMINGTON TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON, will run daily, Sundays excepted, starting from the REGENT HOTEL, LEAMINGTON, at 10 a.m., and returning from the Shakespeare Hotel, Stratford, at 3.30 p.m. WARWICK. Warwick Arms Hotel. First-class Hotel for Families and Gentlemen. Ladies' Coffee and Drawing Room. Near the Castle, and most central for visiting Ken; Iworth and Stratford. JOHN PERKIN, Job Master and Dealer in Horses, LILLINCTON MEWS, LEAMINGTON SPA. BRAKES, CARRIAGES, Etc. Branch Booking and Order Offices : The Regent Hotel and Be/ant's Music Stores. Telephone No. 541. ROYAL LEAMINGTON SPA. WHERE TO STAY. The I'VRAI'E, I.fcAM'.NGTON Sl'A. (By permission of the Proprietors of the Leamington Spa Courier. Crown Hotel. (FAMILY HOTEL.) ■piNEST Coffee Room in the Midlands ; Reading and Drawing Rooms; Private Sitting Rooms ; Billiard Room (two tables); Electric Light. First-Class Livery and Biit Stables. Motor Accom- modati n. Close to Pump Room, Jephson Gardens, and both Railway Stations ARTHUR PHILLIPS, Proprietor. Clement Scolt mentions in Free Lame of a visit to the "Crown." He says : " Ic is difficult to get me to my room, for I have cist envious eyes on great Grandfather's Clocks (green and gold Japanese pattern), Old English Sideboards (beautifally carved), andon all the old-world treasures of an Inn, such as one seldom meets with in these flashy, luxurious days." Telephone No. 0654- Telegrams: "CROWN. LEAMI NQTON. ' Patronised by Ainerican Visitors- Posting House. Proprietor, E. SHERREY. NEWNES' Thin Paper Classics. 1 'rioted in large clear type, on extremely thin but thoroughly opaque paper, narrow foolscap 8vo, 6} by 3 J, with Photogravure Frontispiece and Title-page to each volume printed on Japanese Vellum, from drawings by Edmund J. Si'Llivan and A. Garth J ONES. " Beautiful little books bound in leather, well printed and nobly illustrated." — The Sphere. I. SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS & POEMS. In j Volumes, wnh glossary. Lambskin, in slip case, los. 5d. net. Parchment, in box, 12s. 6d. net. Or separately, in lambskin, 3s. 6d. net per Volume. Vol. I. The Comedies, with General Glossary. ,, 2. The Histories and Poems. „ 3. The Tragedies. " Fills most conveniently a gap we have oft(.n wondered at in these days of publishing enterprise. " — . I Uunuiim . CEO. NEWNES, LTD., 7-12, Southampton St., Strand, W.C. THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. Royal Leamington Spa. Leamington Collegiate School. Head Master; ARNOLD THORNTON, B.Sc. LEADING FEATURES COMMERCIAL CURRICULUM. MODERN METHODS. FAIR FEES. Trial Scene from "Merchant of Venice," March 1900. GENERAL AIM— THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEN, not Bookworms. LABORATORY, MUSEUM, GYMNASIUM, MILITARY DRILL. THE CORPORATE LIFE OF THE SCHOOL IS STIMULATED BY Annual Speech Day and Prize Distribution Literary and Debating Society. Dramatic and Musical Recitals. Annual Athletic Sports. Games Club, Cycle Club, etc. SCHOLARSHIPS For passing London Matriculation, ^lo Senior Cambridge . . . j£io Junior Cambridge (Honours) . £y los. Junior Cambridge(Pass) ^^5 Preliminary Cambridge (Honours) . . ;^5 (See Prospectus.) FEES PER TERM: BOARDERS Entering under 13 M ?s Entering over 13 lO gs. DAY BOYS Preparatory . - = 3 gs- Lipper School £3 17s THE SHAKESPEARE COUNTRY.— Advertisements. THE "COUNTRY LIFE" LIBRARY. RE-ISSUE OF The Century Book OF Gardening. In Twenty=six 6d, Nett Parts, Edited by E. T. COOK (Editor of "The Garden," Author of "Trees and Shrubs for EngHsh Gardens," " Gardening for Beginners," etc.) WITH A COLOURED PLATE OF TEA ROSE "LADY ROBERTS," AND AN APPENDIX, BRINGING THIS REMARKABLY SUCCESSFUL WORK UP TO THE PRESENT DAY. PART I. No modern work upon gardening has excited more admiration or gained warmer praise from those with a knowledge of horticulture than "The Century Book of Clardening," which was first issued in 1900 in weekly parts, and since then has commanded a large sale in this country and abroad in volume form. Although there have been many imitations, the demand for the book has increased to such an extent that a re-issue in weekly parts, with an Appendix, has become necessary. The illustrations in this new edition will be considerably strengthened ; some of those that appeared in the first issue having been replaced by others still more beautiful and instructive. Thus the forthcoming parts will be even more valuable and pictorial, and with the Appendix will make the most fasci- nating and helpful guide to horti- culture that exists at the present day. ^■^^'*^^^^^^'^ ^ J NETT THE CENTURY BOOK OF GARDENING GEORGE NEWNES LTD. 7-lQ SOUTHAMPTON ST. STRAND W.C. (^T* lUU'liHJUWH!» SOME PRESS NOTICES. Times.— " No department of gardening is neglected, and the illustrations of famous and beautiful gardens and of the many winsome achievements of the gardener's art are so numerous and attractive as to make the veriest cockney yearn to turn gardener. If 'The Century Book of Gardening" does not make all who see it covet their neighbours' gardens through sheer despair of ever making for them- selves such gardens as are there illustrated, it should, at any rate, inspire everyone who desires to have a garden with an ambition to make it as beautiful as he can." Standard. — " It covers everything from tlie windo\% box to the extensive parterres and shrubberies around one of the siately Halls of l.ngland, and touches on every aspect of the subject. The abundance and beauty of its illustrations are characteristic of 'The Cenlury Hook of Gardening.' The book, in fact, is a ' florilegium" of the most charming garden scenery in England." Daily News.— " We cannot imagine a more deliglitful book than this really luxurious volume. Though its avowed purpose is to serve as a guide to the world of tlowers, fruits and homely vegetables, and to supi'ly the home gardener with a reliable text book, you cannot dip into any corner of it without forgetting the din and dust of the great city, and flying in >our iiund's eye to the quiet country-side. What a lovely land is Old England, and how little we know of itl The only adverse criticism which we have to ofier concerning this work is that we close it with a profound feeling of envy of those whom a kind Providence permits to dwell in such exquisite nooks as are shown to us in so many of these places. What we like about this book, too, is the pleasant intermingling of gossip from, say, Mrs. Earle, the writer of the charming ' Pot- Pourri from a Surrey Garden,' with the sternly practical advice as to the rearing of such agree- able edibles as say, the tasty tomato. We repeat that in this book the necessary powder is judiciously concealed beneath the overlaying jam. And without powder how should we grow even a tomato ? " Published at the Offices of COUNTRY LIFE, 20, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, W.C. ; and by GEORGE: NEWNES, Ltd., 7-12, Southampton Street, Strand, W.C. D 000 092 81 V'V '&W'^''\