5 
 
 ENGLISH LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 NO. 7 32. e. 
 
STRATFORD CHURCH, FROM THE RIVER. 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES 
 TO THE DEATH OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LEE 
 
 WITH FORTY -FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 EDWARD HULL 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 or 
 
 [ UNIVERSITY j 
 
 ~ r 
 
 r 
 
 SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 
 
 1902 
 
UB. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . i 
 
 i. THE ORIGIN OF THE TOWN, AND 'ITS RELATIONS WITH 
 
 THE SEE OF WORCESTER .... 8 
 
 2. AGRICULTURAL LIFE . . . . -15 
 
 3. MEDIEVAL TRADE, MARKETS, AND FAIRS . . 24 
 
 4. JOHN, ROBERT, AND RALPH OF STRATFORD . . 32 
 
 5. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY . 37 
 
 6. THE GUILD . . . . . 51 
 
 7. SIR HUGH CLOPTON'S BENEFACTIONS . . -76 
 
 8. THE REFORMATION AT STRATFORD . . .88 
 
 9. THE GROWTH OF SELF-GOVERNMENT . . 95 
 
 10. JOHN SHAKESPEARE IN MUNICIPAL OFFICE AND IN 
 
 TRADE ....... 104 
 
 11. THE STRATFORD INDUSTRIES AND POPULATION . HI 
 
 12. JOHN SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST SETTLEMENT IN STRATFORD 
 
 THE STREETS . . . . . .117 
 
 13. THE CONSTRUCTION AND FURNITURE OF THE HOUSES 
 
 THE GARDENS. . . . . .128 
 
 14. THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE TOWN . . 147 
 
 15. PLAGUES, FIRES, FLOODS, AND FAMINES . . 155 
 
vi Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 16. DOMESTIC AND SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: . . 168 
 
 17. THE OCCUPATIONS OF STRATF % ORD LADS 184 
 
 18. Tin; FLAYERS AT STRATFORD . . 192 
 
 19. RURAL SPORTS .... 199 
 
 20. CHARLECOTE HOUSE POACHING IN THE PARK. 211 
 
 21. INDOOR AMUSEMI . . 232 
 
 22. CHRISTENINGS AND MARRIAGES . . 243 
 
 23. SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD IN LATER LIFE . . 254 
 
 24. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT COMBE'S DEATH THE AT- 
 
 TEMPT TO ENCLOSE THE WELCOMBE FIELDS . . 272 
 
 25. SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH AND HIS DESCENDANTS . 283 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 STRATFORD CHURCH, FROM THE RIVER . Frontispiece. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MEADOW WALK BY THE AVON . . . .16 
 
 ASTON-CANTLOW CHURCH ... -25 
 
 THE CHURCH OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON . 39 
 
 PORCH OF STRATFORD CHURCH . . 43 
 
 STRATFORD CHURCH, FROM THE NORTH . . 47 
 
 REMAINS OF THE OLD FONT AT WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS 
 
 CHRISTENED ...... 50 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS . . 53 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF THE GUILD. INTERIOR . . -59 
 
 THE GUILDHALL ...... 65 
 
 SOME REMAINS OF THE OLD BUILDING AT THE REAR OF 
 
 CLOPTON HOUSE ...... 79 
 
 STRATFORD BRIDGE ...... 85 
 
 STAIRCASE OF CLOPTON HOUSE . . . .87 
 
 LUDDINGTON VILLAGE AND NEW CHURCH . . -93 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE BEFORE RESTORATION . .118 
 
 SNITTERFIELD CHURCH . . . . .121 
 
 THE RED HORSE HOTEL . . . . .129 
 
 THE ROOM IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN . 135 
 
viii List of Illustrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE UPPER STORY OF SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE . 139 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE . . 145 
 
 OLD HOUSES IN ROTHER STREET . . . 149 
 
 THE HOUSE OF DR. JOHN HALL . 157 
 
 OLD LYCH-GATE AT WELFORD . .163 
 
 AN OLD ALE-HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON . . .169 
 
 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL . 179 
 
 MARY ARDEN'S COTTAGE AT WILMECOTE . . . 205 
 
 CHARLECOTE PARK ...... 217 
 
 THE GRAND HALL AT CHARLECOTE .... 223 
 
 ARMS OF LUCY .... 231 
 
 BIDFORD. ... 233 
 
 HlLLBOROUGH ....... 239 
 
 STRATFORD, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST .... 244 
 
 ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE AT SHOTTERY. INTERIOR . 247 
 ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE AT SHOTTERY . .251 
 
 OLD CHURCH OF LUDDINGTON . . . . 253 
 
 APPROACH TO SHOTTERY, FROM STRATFORD . . . 259 
 
 CLIFFORD CHURCH AND OLD HOUSES . . . 267 
 
 THE CLOPTON PEW ...... 273 
 
 MEMORIAL OF SIR HENRY RAINFORD IN CLIFFORD CHURCH 276 
 
 OLD GRAVESTONES IN THE CHURCHYARD OF STRATFORD- 
 ON-AVON ....... 285 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S MONUMENT . .... 289 
 
 CHANCEL OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY, STRATFORD 293 
 THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON 297 
 THE CHANCEL OF STRATFORD CHURCH . . .301 
 
 DISTANT VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON . . . 303 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 " ONE thing more," wrote Sir William Dugdale 
 in 1657, at the close of the eighteen folio pages 
 of his Antiquities of Warwickshire devoted 
 to Stratford -upon -Avon, " one thing more in 
 reference to this ancient town is observable, 
 that it gave birth and sepulture to our late 
 famous poet, Will Shakespeare." There is 
 little need to add the comment that the "one 
 thing more," about Stratford, which the learned 
 antiquary thought to have adequately noticed in 
 these four-and-twenty words, has grown into the 
 only thing about it that most men now regard 
 as memorable. Nor would the modern pilgrim 
 that is, he who makes his pilgrimage with 
 fitting judgment readily admit that Dugdale 
 has indicated the highest points of interest 
 
 B 
 
Stratford-on- Avon 
 
 about Shakespeare's connection with Stratford. 
 That the borough was his birthplace and burial- 
 place gives it, after all, a smaller attraction than 
 that he lived there for full two-thirds of his life. 
 And completely as the resources of civilisation 
 have remodelled the town in many of its 
 aspects, it still boasts sufficient survivals of the 
 age of Elizabeth to give the sojourner a far-off 
 glimpse of Shakespeare's daily environment. 
 The nineteenth -century manufacturer has not 
 set his mark upon it : the inhabitants know 
 little of life at high pressure. Their acknow- 
 ledged affinity with the hero who makes their 
 life worth living in more than a single sense, 
 would seem to have held them aloof from all 
 the ruder currents of modern life. It is only 
 within the last half century that the town has 
 begun to extend its boundaries, and the exten- 
 sion has not yet attained very gigantic measure- 
 ments. The chief streets, with their offshoots, 
 although they have grown wider in many places 
 and in all cleanlier, still bear the names by 
 which Shakespeare knew them. The church 
 on the river bank has undergone little change, 
 and time has dealt very kindly with the exterior 
 of the ancient Chapel of the Guild, with the 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 Guildhall, and with the Grammar School, all of 
 which were once overlooked by the windows of 
 Shakespeare's far-famed house, at the meeting 
 of Chapel Street with Chapel Lane. Although 
 that house has gone, the public garden chris- 
 tened after it New Place occupies the exact site 
 of the ''great garden " that surrounded it when 
 the poet was its owner. Cross-timbered houses, 
 with the carved front in one instance at least 
 merely mellowed by the lapse of years, often 
 break the monotony of unlovely stretches of 
 modern brickwork. The stone bridge across 
 the Avon is in all its essentials the same as 
 when the Elizabethans crossed it. The water- 
 mill, although shaped anew, continues to do the 
 noisy work in which it has persevered through 
 nine centuries. 
 
 And when once the town is deserted for 
 Shakespeare's playing fields in the neighbour- 
 ing country, the changes grow less marked. 
 Stratford always stood upon a "plain ground," 
 as Leland described it early in the sixteenth 
 century, surrounded by "the champain," that is, 
 the flat open country. The woodland has 
 grown scantier, but there is still no lack of it on 
 the low hills of the district, and here and there 
 
4 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 on the banks of the river. The Forest of 
 Arden, which was in its decadence in Eliza- 
 bethan England, has now retreated into a mere 
 name, but it was always in historic times cut off 
 from Stratford by a wide enough tract of land 
 to prevent it from affecting materially the im- 
 mediate scenery. The Avon itself winds as of 
 old from Naseby to the Severn, with Stratford 
 on its right bank, midway between its source 
 and mouth, and at a little distance from Strat- 
 ford it still flows under bridges at Binton 
 and Bidford which are as authentic relics of 
 the sixteenth century as their fellow at Strat- 
 ford. Numberless villages, like Shottery and 
 Snitterfield, pursue that drowsy rural life which 
 seems always able to resist time's ravages. 
 They have not grown : some of them have 
 been renovated by the modern builder ; in a 
 very few cases they have fallen into decay and 
 all but disappeared. But none have quite 
 reached la fin du vieux temps ; and the 
 preservation of an occasional relic like the may- 
 pole on the village green at Welford suggests 
 to the least thoughtful passer-by their near 
 relationship with the past. Saunter where we 
 will by the homesteads and meadows of South 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 Warwickshire, we are still led from time to 
 time within view of scenes which may well have 
 inspired poetic passages like Perdita's invita- 
 tion to the sheep -shearing feast, or the song of 
 Spring in Loves Labour s Lost. 
 
 But there is some danger, although the 
 practice is an attractive one, in making Shake- 
 speare's name the central feature of all Stratford 
 history and topography. It has been done too 
 often already. The writers of guide-books or 
 monographs on the town and district have 
 always endeavoured to fix the attention of the 
 pilgrim or student exclusively on points of 
 Shakespearian interest, and have valued only 
 as much of their investigations as belongs to 
 Shakespearian lore. 
 
 The scraps of information that their 
 labours have yielded are of their kind beyond 
 price ; but they fail to enable the reader to 
 form a coherent conception of the town's 
 general development or social growth. With 
 all respect to the antiquaries of Stratford, it 
 may be said that they have overlooked facts 
 in the various stages of the history of the 
 borough which are of striking importance in 
 the municipal history of the country. Nor is 
 
6 Strat ford-on- A von 
 
 this the limit of their offence, if offence 
 can justly be used in such a context. Al- 
 though it would be only by an awkward 
 distortion of the neglected facts that they 
 could be turned to account in Shakespeare's 
 biography, those of them that relate to the 
 Middle Ages undoubtedly offer us traditions 
 which influenced the life and thought of 
 the poet as a Stratford townsman of greater 
 receptivity than his neighbours ; while those 
 that concern the late years of the six- 
 teenth century, or the early years of the 
 seventeenth, can be made to create for us a 
 picture of the society in which he actually 
 moved. Thus we may be brought to the 
 conclusion that something of Dugdale's method 
 of dealing with Stratford is not without its 
 advantages for the Shakespearian student. 
 It is possible that an account of the town that 
 shall treat it as a municipality not unworthy 
 of study for its own sake, and shall place 
 Shakespeare among its Elizabethan inhabit- 
 ants as the son of the unlucky woolstapler 
 of Henley Street or as the prosperous owner 
 of New Place, will be more suggestive and in 
 better harmony with the perspective of history, 
 
Introductory 7 
 
 than a mere panegyric on the parochial relics 
 as souvenirs of the poet's birthplace, home, 
 or sepulchre. The following pages are in- 
 tended as an experiment in the former direc- 
 tion. 
 
I 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE TOWN, AND ITS RELATIONS 
 WITH THE SEE OF WORCESTER 
 
 THERE are many towns in England that can 
 claim greater antiquity than Stratford - on- 
 Avon. 1 The county of Warwickshire, called 
 by Drayton (himself a Warwickshire man) the 
 heart of England, was doubtless in prehistoric 
 ages part of the vast forest which covered all 
 the Midlands, and which survived in later times 
 in the chain of wood stretching, with occasional 
 clearings, from Byrne Wood in Buckingham- 
 shire, through Abingdon and Wych Woods in 
 Oxfordshire, to the forests of Dean, Arden, 
 Cannock, and Sherwood, and the Derbyshire 
 
 1 The main authority for the history of mediaeval Stratford is 
 Dugdale's account of the town in his History of Warwickshire, first 
 published in 1656, and reissued under the editorship of Dr. William 
 Thomas in 1718. Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus gives the text of 
 the charters noted below. 
 
The Origin of the Town 9 
 
 Wolds. The discovery of a very few tumuli 
 in the district, containing some rude stone 
 implements, mark the presence of a very sparse 
 population in a neolithic age. 
 
 Avon is the Celtic word for river, which as 
 Afon is still good Welsh. Arden is formed from 
 the Celtic ard, high or great, and den, the wooded 
 valley a compound which also supplied Lux- 
 emburg with its district of the Ardennes. Place- 
 names like these prove the sojourn of Celtic 
 tribes in the north and south of Warwickshire 
 before the Roman occupation. The Romans 
 bestowed the title Cornavii on the inhabitants 
 of the county. We know nothing of its origin, 
 and find few traces of Roman civilisation in the 
 district. But Rome's ubiquitous roadmakers 
 did not leave the neighbourhood untouched. 
 Ryknield Street, which ran from Tynemouth 
 in Northumberland, through York, Derby, and 
 Birmingham, to St. David's, skirted the 
 Forest of Arden on its west side ; passed 
 through Studley and Alcester, and left the 
 county five miles below Stratford by way 
 of Bidford. The name of Straetford is a 
 proof, too, that this was not the only "street" 
 which approached the site of Stratford. It 
 
io Straiford-<nt-Avon 
 
 must have started into being like five other 
 villages in different parts of England similarly 
 named, as the approach of a Roman street to a 
 ford as the approach to a ford across the Avon 
 of the smaller Roman road that ran from Bir- 
 mingham through Henley-in-Arden to London. 
 But whether it had become an inhabited place, 
 or had its name before the Romans left Britain, 
 is mere matter of conjecture. 
 
 Of the Teutonic settlers, a Saxon tribe, 
 known to history as the Hwiccas, occu- 
 pied Warwickshire and its neighbourhood 
 in the sixth century ; but according to local 
 legends, the Celts did not make way for 
 them without a struggle, which was waged 
 very fiercely up the Welcombe Hills that 
 overlook Stratford. For some years the 
 Hwiccas lived in independence under their 
 own alderman ; but in the seventh century 
 they were absorbed within the great March- 
 land the middle kingdom of Mercia 
 and their aldermen declined into mere 
 agents of the Mercian kings. The see of 
 Worcester was formed about 679, and all 
 the district of the Hwiccas constituted the 
 bishop's diocese. 
 
The Origin of the Town 1 1 
 
 The seventh century all but closes without 
 supplying us with any authentic details as to 
 the rise of Stratford. (The earliest docu- 
 mentary clue to its origin is to be gleaned 
 from a charter dated 691, according to which 
 Egwin, the third Bishop of Worcester, 
 obtained from Ethelred, King of Mercia, 
 " the monastery of Stratford," standing on 
 land above three thousand acres in extent, 
 in exchange for a religious house that the 
 bishop had erected at Fladbury, in Worcester- 
 shirej The best critics have doubted the 
 authenticity of the document, but another 
 charter of unblemished reputation, dated nearly 
 a century later, supports its statements, and 
 leads to the inference that Stratford owes its 
 foundation to a monastic settlement. In 
 781 Offa, the great King of Mercia, con- 
 firmed, after much discussion, the right of 
 Heathored, the Bishop of Worcester, to 
 " Stretforde," then an estate of thirty hides ; 
 and in 845 another ruler of Mercia absolutely 
 surrendered to another bishop the Stratford 
 monastery by the Avon, to be held by him 
 and his successors free of all secular obligations. 
 This is the latest glimpse we obtain of this 
 
1 2 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 foundation, and it, perhaps, afterwards fell 
 into decay. The Bishops of Worcester, 
 like many others of their profession, doubtless 
 found it more to their interests to foster a 
 new village, and to cultivate the land about 
 it, than to maintain monks who could not 
 readily be turned to profit. According to 
 tradition, this early monastery stood on the site 
 where the church stands now, and, as in many 
 other parts of England, the first houses at 
 Stratford were probably erected for its servants 
 and dependents. Their abodes were doubtless 
 near the river, in the street that has for many 
 centuries been known as " Old Town." 
 
 The Saxon Bishops of Worcester were 
 evidently proud of their Stratford property, and 
 they sought with success to extend its bound- 
 aries in all directions. Records prove that 
 the land was rich in meadows, pastures, and 
 fisheries, and was well watered by shallow 
 brooks. It was at no distant date that the 
 bishop's original property, which included 
 only the immediate environment of the 
 monastery, obtained the name of Old 
 Stratford, to distinguish it from a newer 
 Stratforcl-on-Avon, which stretched far along 
 
The Origin of the Town 1 3 
 
 the north bank of the Avon. Thanes, who were 
 the country gentlemen of Anglo-Saxon society, 
 willingly rented under agreements for two or 
 three lives large plots of ground of the bishop, 
 and a few neighbouring villages retain in 
 their nomenclature traces of this occupation. 
 Alveston, originally called Eanulfestun, was the 
 homestead of Eanulf, its tenant in 872, under 
 Bishop Wearfrith. Bishopston (Bishopes- 
 tune) was doubtless the site of a small 
 homestead erected for the bishop's own 
 residence. All the fertile land about Clifford 
 was let in 988 to a Thane Ethelward. 
 
 (Thus, before the Norman Conquest, Strat- 
 ford had become a valuable portion of the 
 property of the see of Worcester ; and in this 
 condition of dependence it remained till the 
 Middle Ages closedJ It appears to have been 
 little disturbed by any of the political convul- 
 sions that overwhelmed many parts of Anglo- 
 Saxon England in the ninth and tenth centuries. 
 The Danes may have threatened it from a 
 distance while passing from the conquest of 
 Mercia into Wessex, on their first great 
 expedition ; but little is known of their route. 
 There can be little doubt that the tale of War- 
 
1 4 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 wick's legendary hero, Guy, embodies some 
 authentic tradition of a Mercian warrior who 
 successfully resisted the Danish invaders in the 
 tenth century. Perhaps to him the Stratford 
 townsfolk may have owed their immunity 
 from the second invasion of his kinsmen in 
 the tenth century ; and he may have at times 
 come among them on returning from hunting 
 or hawking in the Forest of Arden, of which 
 his friend and tutor Harald or Heraud, accord- 
 ing to the popular romance, was a native. 
 
 It is certain that the Norman Conquest passed 
 almost silently over South Warwickshire, and 
 Stratford showed little sign of its passage. Its 
 lord at the time was Bishop Wulfstan, who was 
 famed for his holy life, and was alone of all the 
 Anglo-Saxon prelates rewarded for his ready 
 acquiescence in the new dominion with continu- 
 ance in his office. He proved his gratitude by 
 twice leading his militia, his county tenants, some 
 of whom doubtless came from Stratford, in battle 
 against the Norman king's enemies once 
 against the half-Breton Earl of Hereford, who 
 sought to escape from William's yoke during 
 his absence in Normandy in 1074, and once near 
 Worcester against rebels from the Welsh border. 
 
II 
 
 AGRICULTURAL LIFE 
 
 IN 1085 the first distinct account of Stratford 
 was put on record by the Domesday surveyors, 
 and it supplies us with many interesting details. 1 
 The district had then been for several centuries 
 one of the Bishop of Worcester's manors, and 
 all the manorial machinery was at work upon it. 
 The township growing up there was a village 
 community, consisting mainly of very small 
 farmers and a few day-labourers with their 
 families, and in all their relations of life the 
 inhabitants were under the jurisdiction of the 
 bishop's steward, or seneschal, in virtual serfdom. 
 He presided over the manor court, constituted as 
 the court baron, to which the townsmen came 
 
 1 See Domesday Survey (Record Commission). Mr. Seebohm's 
 invaluable book on The Village Community in England (1883) has 
 defined the conditions of mediaeval agriculture. 
 
1 6 Stratford-ou- Avon 
 
 to supervise the payments of rent and dues, 
 the settlement of new-comers, and the distribu- 
 tion of land. He, too, kept order in the villages, 
 and, with the aid of the community assembled 
 in court leet, punished breaches of the peace. 
 
 MEADOW WALK BY THE AVON. 
 
 He saw that the land was properly cultivated, 
 that the ploughs were fully yoked, and that the 
 seed was fairly sown. 
 
 The actual extent of Stratford in William 
 I.'s time was fourteen and a half hides, or 
 nearly 2000 acres. It was of smaller extent 
 than it had been under the Mercian regime, for 
 
Agricultural Life 17 
 
 the neighbouring villages had now themselves 
 become so many separate manors. The inhabit- 
 ants consisted of a priest, who, doubtless, 
 conducted services in the chapel of the old 
 monastery, with twenty-one villeins and seven 
 bordarii. Each of these residents was the 
 head of a family, and their number, therefore 
 represents a population of about one hundred 
 and fifty. The villeins stood the higher in the 
 social scale. 
 
 On all sides of the village lay arable land, 
 divided by balks of earth into narrow strips, 
 each about half an acre in size. Each villein 
 held, besides his homestead, strips of this land, 
 sometimes amounting in the aggregate to sixty 
 acres, but the strips in one ownership seldom 
 adjoined each other, being scattered over all 
 the fields adjoining the village. The bordarii, 
 from the Saxon bord, a cottage, were cottagers 
 who owned a cottage with a garden, and some 
 five acres in strips distributed as in the case of 
 the villeins over the fields at hand. But every 
 householder, whether villein or cottager, evi- 
 dently possessed a plough. The community 
 owned altogether thirty -one ploughs, of which 
 three belonged to the bishop, the lord of the 
 
 c 
 
i s Sir at ford-on- A von 
 
 manor, and were probably drawn by a team of 
 eight oxen. Both classes of residents were 
 liable to small money payments to the lord 
 of the manor, and occasionally to payments 
 of agricultural produce, besides being called 
 upon to labour for several days every year 
 on portions of the land cultivated in the 
 bishop's own behalf. There was very little 
 meadow land. The Domesday surveyors 
 only found one field of that character five 
 furlongs long and two broad. All the energies 
 of the inhabitants were clearly engaged in 
 growing wheat, barley, and oats. By the river 
 at the same time stood the water-mill belonging 
 to the bishop. There the villagers were obliged 
 to grind all their corn, and they had to pay a 
 fee for the privilege. In 1085 the mill produced 
 an income often shillings annually, but the bishop 
 was often willing to accept eels in discharge of 
 the mill-fee, and a thousand eels were usually 
 sent to Worcester year by year by the customers 
 of the village mill. It is noticeable that the total 
 profit derived from Stratford by Wulfstan was 
 ,25 in the Domesday Survey, an amount five 
 times that derived from it in the days of 
 Edward the Confessor. The advance marks 
 
Agricultural Life 19 
 
 the rapid progress of the settlement in the 
 interval. 
 
 In the century and a quarter (from 1085 to 
 1210) following, the village does not seem to 
 have made any giant's strides. Alveston, 
 the obscure little village that now lies in the 
 bend of the river nearest to Stratford in its 
 upward course, seemed likely then to rival 
 it in prosperity. Just before the Norman 
 Conquest, "certain great men," says Dugdale, 
 had withheld Alveston from the Bishops of 
 Worcester after it had long been in their pos- 
 session, but William the Conquerer restored 
 it to Bishop Wulfstan, who generously made 
 it over to the great Worcestershire Priory. 
 Throughout the Middle Ages that religious 
 foundation rivalled the see itself in the posses- 
 sion of broad lands. Three mills were erected 
 beside the Avon at Alveston, and eels without 
 number were sent year by year by its inhabitants 
 to the refectory of the priory. The boundaries 
 of the Alveston Manor crept up in the thirteenth 
 century to their still existing limits on the 
 southern side of the bridge of Stratford (it was 
 a rude wooden bridge at this early date), and 
 the manorial officers planted a little colony by 
 
2o Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 their end of the bridge, which was known 
 to them and to the Elizabethans as Bridgetown. 
 Its dwellers were all of them bordarii or 
 cottagers, and in the descriptive rental of the 
 Worcestershire Priory compiled about I25O, 1 
 the names and annual dues, which varied from 
 five shillings to sixteenpence, are given at length. 
 One was called Brun, another John de Pont (or, 
 as we should say, John Bridge), another William 
 Cut. The steward, or seneschal, who looked 
 after this, with much surrounding property, 
 was a native of Stratford, Nicholas by name, 
 who held a messuage there with a garden 
 besides arable land in three neighbouring fields. 
 For his house and land he had to pay sixpence 
 quarterly, to cut hay in the meadow belonging 
 to the lord of the manor for one day, and to 
 help in stacking it, besides spending three days 
 in reaping his lord's grain. 
 
 The various services and payments due 
 as rent from the husbandmen of Stratford 
 and its neighbourhood at the time services 
 which seemed to increase in intricacy with 
 the centuries are given at length in the book 
 
 1 Cf. the Custwnary of the Worcestershire Priory, published by the 
 Camden Society. 
 
Agricultiiral Life 21 
 
 of the possessions of the Worcestershire Priory, 
 and illustrate the life led by the majority of 
 the villagers in the infancy of the town. Of 
 the changes in the condition of the inhabitants 
 since the Domesday Survey, it need only be 
 noted that many of the large estates outside 
 the town had been let as knight's fees, that 
 is to say, on condition of their holders per- 
 forming certain military services, and that 
 some of the villeins within the village had 
 become free tenants (libere tenentes], that is 
 to say, men free from the imputation of serf- 
 dom, who were permitted to cultivate their land 
 as they would, and paid for their farms a fixed 
 money rental, with little or no labour services 
 to supplement it. But the majority of the 
 inhabitants were still villeins or cottagers, and 
 labour services were exacted from both these 
 classes with vexatious regularity. Villeins who 
 owned sixty acres had to supply two men for 
 reaping the lord's fields, and cottagers with 
 thirty acres supplied one. On a special day an 
 additional reaping service was to be performed 
 by villeins and cottagers with all their families 
 except their wives and shepherds. Each of the 
 free tenants had then also to find a reaper, and 
 
22 Stratford-on-Avo* 
 
 to direct the reaping himself. Happily on that 
 occasion the steward saw that all the labourers 
 were fed at the cost of the manor. The villein 
 was to provide two carts for the conveyance of 
 the corn to the barns, and every cottager who 
 owned a horse provided one cart, for the use of 
 which he was to receive a good morning meal 
 of bread and cheese. One day's hoeing was 
 expected of the villein and three days' ploughing, 
 and if an additional day were called for, food 
 was supplied free to the workers. Villeins and 
 cottagers were also expected to assist in cutting 
 the hay, in carting and stacking it. When the 
 hay had all been gathered in, each householder 
 was to be presented with a ram, a fourpenny 
 cheese, and a small sum of money instead of 
 the fodder to which they were of old allowed to 
 help themselves. No villein nor cottager was 
 permitted to bring up his child for the Church 
 without permission of the lord of the manor. 
 A fee had to be paid when a daughter of a 
 villein or cottager married. On his death his 
 best waggon was claimed by the steward in his 
 lord's behalf, and a fine of money was exacted 
 from his successor if, the record wisely adds, 
 he could pay one. Any townsman who made 
 
Agricultural Life 23 
 
 beer for sale paid for the privilege. But 
 these charges exhausted the manorial demands. 
 Fishing was free, church dues were small, and 
 the mills and the barns for storing grain were 
 at times placed freely at the disposal of the 
 population. 
 
Ill 
 
 MEDI/EVAL TRADE, MARKETS, AND FAIRS 
 
 BUT although agricultural pursuits chiefly oc- 
 cupied the people of Stratford in the thirteenth 
 century, several of them also turned their 
 attention to trade, and in an account of the 
 settlement rendered to the Bishop of Worcester 
 about 1251, we can trace the rise of several 
 industries that acquired importance later. 
 There were already numerous weavers, tan- 
 ners, and tailors. There were carpenters and 
 dyers, whitesmiths and blacksmiths, wheel- 
 wrights and fleshmongers, shoemakers and 
 coopers. The mill employed a number of 
 labourers as millers and fullers. 1 
 
 The Bishops of Worcester were clearly 
 anxious to encourage such pursuits. Before 
 
 1 Cf. a survey of Stratford made for the Bishop of Worcester in 
 1251, privately printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps at the Middlehill Press. 
 
Medieval Trade, Markets, and Fairs 2 5 
 
 the close of the twelfth century they obtained 
 for the town from Richard I. the special privi- 
 lege of a weekly market upon the Thursday, a 
 privilege for which the citizens paid the bishops 
 an annual toll of sixteen shillings. At first the 
 
 ASTON-CANTLOW CHURCH. 
 
 Thursday market was with difficulty maintained, 
 and it almost died within a century of its birth. 
 But in 1314 it was reinaugurated, and became 
 a permanent feature of Stratford mediaeval life. 
 The pasture-land within and without the 
 manorial boundaries must have grown since 
 the date of the Domesday Survey, for cattle was 
 
26 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 certainly a staple commodity of the earliest 
 Stratford market. From time immemorial 
 one of the chief thoroughfares in the town 
 has been known by its present name of Rother 
 Market, and it was doubtless there that the 
 first market was held. Rother represents the 
 Anglo-Saxon word " Hreother," i.e. cattle (from 
 the Teutonic " Hrinthos," whence the modern 
 German rind]. The ancient word long survived 
 in Warwickshire, and was familiar to Shake- 
 speare, who employed it in the line, " The 
 pasture lards the rothers' sides." 1 It is a more 
 significant mark of commercial progress that 
 early in the thirteenth century the various dues 
 of such inhabitants as were anxious to engage 
 in trade were commuted by the lord of the 
 manor for a fixed annual sum of twelvepence, 
 payable quarterly. The holdings of these 
 traders consisted of little more than a house 
 and very small gardens, and were known as 
 burgages, while their holders were called bur- 
 gesses. Such a tenure bore, in the west of 
 England, the name of "the custom of Bristol," 
 a commercial port only second in importance 
 at the time to London ; and its introduction 
 
 1 Timon of Athens, IV. iii. 12. 
 
Medieval Trade, Markets, and Fairs 27 
 
 into Stratford proves the growth of mercantile 
 pursuits. 
 
 Meanwhile the national records do not con- 
 cern themselves with Stratford very much. 
 The Hundred Rolls of Edward I., which were 
 drawn up in many counties to form a survey as 
 complete as that of the Domesday Book, barely 
 deal with Warwickshire ; and all they tell us 
 concerning Stratford is that the king's justices 
 had regulated by standard the manufacture of 
 beer in the town, and that the steward of the 
 Bishop of Worcester had not enforced the 
 regulation. The entry adds that John, a clergy- 
 man and bailiff of the Bishop of Worcester, had 
 taken ten shillings from a man of Aston -Cant- 
 low, doubtless a political offender, who was 
 in prison at Stratford, as a bribe to permit him 
 to escape. Both these illegal episodes are dated 
 after the battle of E vesham. They seem to imply 
 some local discontent. Perhaps the people of 
 Stratford, or the bishop's steward there, had not 
 favoured Henry Ill's cause in his contest with 
 the barons, or it may be that the law had fallen 
 into contempt amid the confusion into w r hich 
 the Midlands were plunged by the strife which 
 closed in favour of the king at E vesham in 1265. 
 
2 8 St rat ford-on- A i wi 
 
 Further commercial privileges were con- 
 ferred upon the town at frequent intervals in 
 the thirteenth century. Stratford was then 
 endowed with a series of annual fairs, the chief 
 stimulants of trade in the middle ages. As 
 early as 1216 a grant was obtained by the 
 Bishop of Worcester for the holding of a yearly 
 fair, "beginning on the eve of the Holy 
 Trinity " i.e. on the Saturday following Whit- 
 suntide "and to continue for the two next 
 days ensuing." Other fairs were added as the 
 century progressed. In 1224 a fair was per- 
 mitted on the eve of St. Augustine, the 26th of 
 May, "and on the day and morrow after." In 
 1242 and in 1271 a similar distinction was 
 conferred on both the eve of the Exaltation of 
 the Holy Cross i4th of September "the 
 day, and two days following," and "for the eve 
 of the Ascension of our Lord, commonly called 
 Holy Thursday, and upon the day and morrow 
 after." The grant of the earliest fair on Trinity 
 Sunday was renewed in 1272, and in mediaeval 
 times it always proved the busiest of the four 
 gatherings, although that of the Holy Cross in 
 September has continued longest. Early in the 
 following century permission was secured by 
 
Mediaeval Trade, Markets, and Fairs 29 
 
 the townsfolk to hold another fair for the long 
 period of fifteen days, to begin yearly on the 
 eve of St. Peter and St. Paul, at the latter end 
 of June. Out of each of these celebrations the 
 Bishop of Worcester made an annual profit 
 of about nine shillings and fourpence. 
 
 The choice of Trinity Sunday for the earliest 
 of the Stratford fairs was doubtless due to the 
 facts that the parish church was dedicated to 
 the Holy Trinity, and that Trinity Sunday being 
 "the festival of the church's dedication," had at 
 Stratford, as in other parts of the country, long 
 been celebrated by a "wake," which brought 
 many neighbouring villagers to the town. The 
 spiritual side of mediaeval life had a tendency 
 to merge itself in the worldly side, and there is 
 nothing exceptional in a Sunday of specially 
 sacred character being turned to commercial 
 uses. In most mediaeval towns, moreover, 
 traders exposed their wares at fair-time in the 
 churchyard, and chaffering and bargaining were 
 conducted in the church itself. The Statute of 
 Winchester attempted in vain in 1285 to re- 
 strain this extravagance, but it persisted till the 
 Reformation. In an early printed "Comment 
 on the Ten Commandments by way of dialogues 
 
30 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 between Dives and Pauper" (1493), the 4< pro- 
 fane custom " is forcibly condemned. Dives 
 asks Pauper, "What sayest thou of them that 
 hold markets and fairs in Holy Church and in 
 Sanctuary ?" Pauper replies, " Both the buyer 
 and the seller, and men of Holy Church that 
 maintain them, or suffer them when they might 
 let [i.e. hinder] it, be accursed. They make 
 God's house a den of thieves." To which Dives 
 answers, "And I dread me that full often by 
 such fairs God's house is made a tavern of 
 gluttons. For the Merchants and Chapmen 
 keep there with them their wives and lemans 
 both night and day." The riotous times spent 
 at Stratford a century later, when the fairs 
 were in process, makes this a very pertinent 
 description. 
 
 Thus the close of the thirteenth century 
 guaranteed the future prosperity of Stratford. 
 The rivalry with Alveston was then practi- 
 cally over, and its development was assured. 
 The Bishops of Worcester had shown them- 
 selves exceptionally vigilant over its interests, 
 and it was proving year by year more profitable 
 to them. In 1251 the arable land returned to 
 them more than ^40; in 1299 more than 
 
Mediczval Trade, Markets, and Fairs 31 
 
 The mills had grown in number ; there were 
 three for grinding corn by the river, and one for 
 fulling elsewhere. They yielded at times as 
 much as ,13:6:8, an enormous increase on 
 their ancient profits. Arable, meadow, and 
 pasture all became richer with cultivation. The 
 lords of the manor found it convenient to make 
 a park in the neighbourhood for hunting pur- 
 poses, and therefore paid it frequent visits. 
 One bishop anticipating Justice Shallow, and not 
 always with more effect, threatened all who 
 14 broke his park and stole his deer " with 
 excommunication. 
 
IV 
 
 JOHN, ROBERT, AND RALPH OF STRATFORD 
 
 IN the fourteenth century the inhabitants were 
 no longer solely dependent for their welfare on 
 the benevolence of the lords of the manor. 
 Villenage gradually disappeared in the reign 
 of Edward III, and all who were not 
 burgesses became free tenants or copyholders, 
 paying definite rents for house and land. And 
 from these classes sprang men capable of 
 stimulating the prosperity of their birthplace 
 by their own exertions. Three fourteenth- 
 century prelates, one of whom rose to be Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and the two others to 
 be Bishops respectively of London and Chi- 
 chester, were natives of Stratford, and in days 
 when the principle of personal nomenclature 
 was still unsettled, borrowed of the town their 
 surnames. John of Stratford, Robert of Strat- 
 
Jo /in, Robert, and Ralph of Stratford 33 
 
 ford, and Ralph of Stratford were closely 
 related. The two former were brothers, and 
 Ralph was their nephew. 
 
 Robert, the father of the prelates Robert and 
 John, was a well-to-do inhabitant of Stratford, 
 who appears to have set his sons an example in 
 local works of benevolence. He it is to whom 
 has been attributed the foundation, in 1296, of 
 the chapel of the guild that is, of the religious 
 fraternity of which we shall speak hereafter and 
 of the hospital or almshouses attached to it. 
 But the benefactions of his sons and his 
 grandson were in many points more remark- 
 able, and are better known to authentic history. 
 
 There is little need to pursue their careers 
 in detail here ; but they gave so practical an 
 effect "to a more than ordinary affection " for 
 the town, that Stratford must always honour 
 their memory. It must always be profitable, 
 too, to study their lives as illustrating the rich 
 opportunities of advancement in the political 
 and ecclesiastical worlds open in the middle 
 ages to ability, even when revealing itself in 
 the sons of village farmers. John and Robert 
 were both for a time Chancellors of England, 
 and there is no other instance in English 
 
 D 
 
34 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 history of that high dignity falling to two 
 brothers in succession. 
 
 All three were educated at the Universities, 
 and successes there proved stepping-stones 
 to preferment in Church and State. Ralph 
 obtained a canonry at St. Paul's, which led to 
 the bishopric of the metropolis. The latter 
 office he held from 1340 to 1354, and during 
 his episcopate he rented a house in "Brug- 
 gestret," or Bridge Street, Stratford. 1 
 
 Robert's first benefice was the living of Strat- 
 ford itself, bestowed on him by the Bishop of 
 Worcester in 1319, and in that office he was the 
 earliest of the three relatives to give tangible 
 form to his regard for his birthplace. Long 
 streets were in the course of formation at Strat- 
 ford in the reign of Edward II. One ran from 
 the Holy Trinity Church towards the north- 
 east. ' Henley Street, whence Henley-in-Arden 
 could be most readily reached, had tenements 
 on both sides of it ; and Greenhill Street, 
 afterwards Moor Town's End, had, like Old 
 Town, long been inhabited thoroughfares. 
 Robert resolved to roughly pave these roads. 
 By obtaining permission in 1332 to impose 
 
 1 Corporation Records, vol. i. p. I. 
 
John, Robert, and Ralph of Stratford 3 5 
 
 a toll for four years " on sundry vendible 
 commodities," brought by the agriculturists 
 of the neighbourhood into the town, " he 
 defrayed the charge thereof," and the tax 
 was renewed for short periods, at his sugges- 
 tion, in 1335 and 1337, after he had left the 
 city to exercise higher dignities. From the 
 Archdeaconry of Canterbury he was promoted 
 in 1337 to the see of Chichester. But, like 
 his brother John, he aimed at political advance- 
 ment as well as ecclesiastical, and twice filled 
 the office of Chancellor of England. He 
 survived both his distinguished brother and 
 nephew, dying in 1362. 
 
 John of Stratford, the most eminent of 
 the three, made a name at Oxford by his 
 knowledge of civil law, was Bishop of Win- 
 chester from 1323 to 1333, and became in 
 the latter year Archbishop of Canterbury. 1 
 He played a prominent part in the politics of 
 his time. As Bishop of Winchester, he drew 
 up the Bill of Deposition against Edward II, 
 and Marlowe gives us a glimpse of him in the 
 most pathetic scene in his play of Edivard II. 
 He undertook more foreign embassies than any of 
 
 1 See Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. 
 
3 6 Stratford-on-A von 
 
 his contemporaries, and could boast of thirty-two 
 journeys made across the Channel in the public 
 service. It was John of Stratford who, after 
 Edward III left England on his first French 
 expedition in 1338, virtually governed the 
 country as Lord Chancellor. Twice already 
 had he filled that dignified office, But the 
 king was dissatisfied with the small amount 
 of money that his councillors now managed 
 to collect for his wars, and suddenly returned 
 in 1341 to dismiss all his ministers, charging 
 them with dishonesty in their offices. The 
 archbishop boldly denied Edward's accusa- 
 tion, and bade him remember his father's 
 fate, and the rights of the people of England. 
 The king had at length to yield to John of 
 Stratford, who takes his place in English 
 history as a sturdy defender of the constitu- 
 tion. 
 
V 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY 
 
 THE most notable benefactions which Arch- 
 bishop John of Stratford, before his death in 
 1348, conferred on Stratford were gathered 
 about the parish church. The church, 
 although at the time, as the evidence 
 of some of the stonework proves, a sub- 
 stantial erection, was not fully completed. 
 It had even then many architectural pre- 
 tensions. The tower still retains its Nor- 
 manesque panel arches, with their Early 
 English lights, which probably date from 
 the farther side of 1200. But John of 
 Stratford desired to make the structure more 
 stable and more elaborate. Although cruci- 
 form in shape, it had but an embryo south 
 aisle, and the north aisle was very narrow. 
 Having widened the north aisle, the archbishop 
 
3 8 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 placed there a chapel to the Holy Virgin, 
 and the Bishops of Worcester promoted the 
 decoration of the chapel by granting indulgences 
 to those who contributed money towards 
 the expenses. The south aisle the archbishop 
 built anew, and in it he set up a chapel in honour 
 of St. Thomas a Becket, with whom he had some 
 qualities in common. The church tower he 
 renovated, and probably added the wooden 
 spire, with which Shakespeare and his con- 
 temporaries were acquainted. But his work 
 was not wholly confined to mere structural 
 improvements. 
 
 In 1332, with the permission of the Bishop of 
 Worcester and Edward III, John of Stratford 
 formed a chantry of the chapel of the church, 
 dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr. It is 
 difficult for some of us nowadays to appreciate 
 the spirit that prompted such a foundation. 
 The archbishop's object was to endow five 
 priests to chant for all time at the altar of this 
 chapel masses for the souls of the founder and 
 his friends. John of Stratford, who had acquired 
 much property about Stratford, appointed for 
 the maintenance of the priests of his chantry 
 one messuage in Stratford, with the Manor of 
 
The Church of t/ie Holy Trinity 4 1 
 
 Inge, the modern Ingon-by-Welcombe, and 
 among those whose souls his masses were 
 expected to free from purgatory were, be- 
 sides himself, his brother Robert, his father 
 and mother, the Kings of England, and the 
 Bishops of Worcester. Of the five priests, 
 one was to be warden of the chapel and 
 another sub-warden. John of Stratford, in 
 spite of his political cares, watched over the 
 chantry with paternal affection. Year by year 
 he added land and houses in Stratford to its 
 possessions, and his friends followed his 
 example. One of these was Nicholas of 
 Dudley, parson of King's Swynford, in 
 Worcestershire, a connection of a family 
 with a notorious career before it, who made 
 over much property to the chantry about his 
 native village of Dudley. And the patronage 
 of the church of Stratford, John purchased of 
 the Bishop of Worcester, and gave to his 
 chantry priests, who thus fully controlled the 
 parish church. 
 
 Ralph of Stratford was not behind his 
 uncles in his generosity to his native town. 
 In 1351 he built for John's chantry priests 
 a "house of square stone for the habitation 
 
42 Stral ford-on- A ron 
 
 of these priests, adjoining to the churchyard." 
 The ten carpenters and ten masons, with the 
 labourers, who doubtless came from London 
 to erect the edifice, were placed, while at 
 Stratford, under the king's special protection. 
 The building came to be known as the College 
 of Stratford, and was familiar to the Eliza- 
 bethans and their successors, as the map of 
 1769 amply proves. In 1415 Henry V 
 confirmed all the privileges of the chantry 
 and the college, and the church of Stratford 
 then bore the honoured epithet of collegiate, 
 since it was under the supervision of a college 
 or chapter of priests, in much the same manner 
 as Westminster Abbey and St. George's Chapel, 
 Windsor, are to this day. 
 
 Other inhabitants of Stratford followed the 
 example set by the three prelates of Stratford, 
 and made many sacrifices to adorn their church. 
 True penitents were urged by the Bishop of 
 Worcester in 1321 to contribute to the building 
 and the repair of the belfry, and in 1381 to 
 adorn and illuminate the altar of the Virgin 
 Mary. The warden of the college in the time 
 of Edward IV, Dr. Thomas Balsall, " added a 
 fair and beautiful choir, rebuilt from the ground 
 
PORCH OF STRATFORD CHURCH. 
 
The Church of the Holy Trinity 45 
 
 at his own cost," which still survives. He 
 clearly employed master masons of different 
 schools. One was faithful to the older models, 
 and especially to the Early Decorated style. Of 
 his work are the tomb of Balsall, who died in 1 49 1 , 
 the north and south doors, and, doubtless, the font 
 at which Shakespeare was baptized. The other 
 artificer aimed at greater novelty. He studied 
 his bestiary, and perched paunchy toads on but- 
 tresses, or transferred dragon-flies in grotesque 
 attitudes to stone cornices. His angels are very 
 whimsical, and if the carvings in the stalls be 
 his, he delighted in picturing the least refined 
 aspects of humanity. Ralph Collingwood, the 
 warden at the close of the fifteenth century, 
 gave the collegiate church its final touches. 
 He renewed the north porch and the nave. 
 " The low decorated clerestory was removed, 
 the walls pulled down to the crowns of the 
 arches, rude angels (by some 'prentice hand) 
 were inserted to carry the pilasters, and the 
 walls were panelled with large lantern windows, 
 with a flattish roof." 1 
 
 In pursuit of Dr. Balsall's "pious intent," 
 Collingwood improved the church service 
 
 1 Knowles's Architectural Account of Holy Trinity Church. 
 
46 Sir at ford-on- Avon 
 
 by appointing "four children choristers, to be 
 daily assistants in the celebration of divine 
 service," and placed them under the supervision 
 of the college ; " which choristers," according to 
 Collingwood's ordination, " should always come 
 by two and two together into the choir to 
 Matins and Vespers on such days as the same 
 were to be sung there, according to the 
 Ordinale Sarum ; and at their entrance into 
 the church, bowing their knees before the 
 crucifix, each of them say a Pater Noster 
 and an Ave. And for their better regulation 
 did he order and appoint that they should sit 
 quietly in the choir, saying the Matins and 
 Vespers of our Lady distinctly, and afterwards 
 be observant in the offices of the choir : that 
 they should not be sent upon any occasion 
 whatsoever into the town : that at dinner and 
 supper they should constantly be in the college 
 to wait at the table : and to read upon the 
 Bible or some other authentic book : that they 
 should not come into the buttery to draw beer 
 for themselves or anybody else : that after 
 dinner they should go to the singing school : 
 and that their schoolmaster should be one of 
 the priests or clerks appointed by the discretion 
 
The Church of the Holy Trinity 49 
 
 of the warden, being a man able to instruct 
 them in singing to the organ : as also that they 
 should have one bedchamber in the church, 
 whereunto they were to repair in winter-time 
 at eight of the clock, and in summer at nine : in 
 which lodging to be two beds, wherein they were 
 to sleep by couples : and that before they did 
 put off their clothes they should all say the 
 prayer of De profundis with a loud voice, with 
 the prayers and orisons of the faithful, and 
 afterwards say thus, ' God have mercy on the 
 soul of Ralph Collingwood, our Founder, and 
 Master Thomas Balsall, a special benefactor 
 to the same.' ' For the maintenance of the 
 choristers, lands were assigned at Stratford, 
 Binton, and Drayton. 
 
 Shakespeare only knew Stratford after the 
 Reformation had stripped it of all these 
 ecclesiastical distinctions distinctions which 
 were so many tributes of affection paid to their 
 birthplace by his ancient fellow-townsmen but 
 the majority of them had been solidly embodied 
 in stone, with which time in his day had not dealt 
 unkindly. They were monuments enshrining 
 traditions not wholly lifeless, and may well have 
 helped a poet to realise the setting of scenes like 
 
 E 
 
5 o Sir at ford-on- Avon 
 
 King John's death under the windows of 
 Swinstead Abbey, or Gaunt's last moments in 
 Ely House. 
 
VI 
 
 THE GUILD 
 
 BUT mediaeval life at Stratford in the later 
 Middle Ages developed a new feature, which 
 gives it by far its greatest attraction to the 
 student of English municipal history. Self- 
 government was in the Middle Ages the aim of 
 every English town which deserved the name ; 
 but so far as our investigations have led us, 
 the townsmen of Stratford had made no 
 advance in that direction. Before the four- 
 teenth century closed, however, an institution 
 had arisen and taken formal shape in their 
 midst, which was to deprive the Bishops of 
 Worcester of their ancient authority. The 
 Guild, that then went by the triple name of the 
 Holy Cross, the Blessed Virgin, and St. John the 
 Baptist, and which still gives its name to the 
 picturesque chapel in Church Street, embodied 
 
52 Stratford-ou-Avou 
 
 this emancipating influence. It very possibly 
 represents the union of three distinct guilds, 
 each bearing one of the names cited ; but we 
 have no historical evidence of their combina- 
 tion, and for our present purpose it is sufficient 
 to regard it as a single institution. 1 
 
 The early English guilds must not be con- 
 founded with the modern survival in the city 
 of London. The guilds owed their origin to 
 popular religious observances, and developed 
 into institutions of local self-help. They were 
 societies at once religious and friendly, ''col- 
 lected for the love of God and our soul's need." 
 Members of both sexes and the women were 
 almost as numerous as the men were admitted 
 on payment of a small annual subscription. 
 This primarily secured for them the perform- 
 
 1 Ample materials for the history of the Stratford Guild are to be 
 found in " Stratford-on-Avon Corporation Records The Guild 
 Accounts," by Mr. Richard Savage, reprinted from the Stratford-on- 
 Avon Herald for 1885. This is a calendar of the extant accounts for 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which was prepared at the ex- 
 pense of Mr. Charles Flower of Stratford. Mr. Savage has prepared 
 for publication another collection of guild documents preserved at 
 Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford. See also Toulmin-Smith's " Docu- 
 mentary History of English Guilds" published by the Early English 
 Text Society, Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson's "Report on the Stratford 
 University," published in the Eighth Report of the Historical MSS. 
 Commission, and Thomas Fisher's extracts from the Guild Records 
 which appeared in the Gentleman' 1 s Magazine for 1835. 
 
THE CHAPEL OF THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS. 
 
The Guild 55 
 
 ances of certain religious rites, which were more 
 valued than life itself. While the members lived, 
 but more especially after their death, lighted 
 tapers were duly distributed in their behalf, be- 
 fore the altars of the Virgin and of their patron 
 saints in the parish church. A poor man in the 
 Middle Ages found it very difficult, without the 
 intervention of the guilds, to keep this road 
 to salvation always open. Relief of the poor 
 and of necessitous members also formed part of 
 the guild's objects, and gifts were frequently 
 awarded to members anxious to make pilgrim- 
 age to Canterbury, and at times the spinster 
 members received dowries from the association. 
 The regulation which compelled the members 
 to attend the funeral of any of their fellows 
 united them among themselves in close bonds 
 of intimacy. 
 
 But the social spirit was mainly fostered 
 by a great annual meeting. On that oc- 
 casion all members were expected to attend 
 in special uniform. With banners flying they 
 marched in procession to church, and subse- 
 quently sat down together to a liberal feast. 
 The guilds were strictly lay associations. 
 Priests in many towns were excluded from 
 
56 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 them, and, where they were admitted, held no 
 more prominent places than the laymen. The 
 Guilds employed mass priests to celebrate their 
 religious services, but they were the paid 
 servants of the fraternity. Every member was 
 expected to leave at his death as much property 
 as he could spare to the guilds, and thus in 
 course of time they became wealthy corporations. 
 They all were governed by their own elected 
 officers wardens, aldermen, beadles, and clerks 
 and a common council formed of their repre- 
 sentatives kept watch over their property and 
 rights. 
 
 Although these religious guilds did not 
 concern themselves with trade, in many instances 
 there grew up under their patronage smaller 
 and subsidiary guilds, each formed of members 
 engaged in one trade, and aiming at the pro- 
 tection of their interests in their crafts. Under 
 the name of craft-guilds, these offshoots often, 
 as in London, survived the decay of the 
 religious association ; their pedigrees became 
 obscured and they were credited with greater 
 originality and antiquity than they could justly 
 claim. Guilds of the religious kind can be traced 
 far back in Anglo-Saxon times. King Ine and 
 
The Guild 57 
 
 King Alfred mention them in their legal codes. 
 But the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw 
 their palmiest days. Chaucer includes some of 
 their members among his Canterbury pilgrims. 
 
 An Haberdasher and a Carpenter, 
 A Webbe, a Deyer, and a Tapiser, 
 Were all y-clothed in o livere 
 Of a solempne and grete fraternite. 
 
 Wei semed eche of hem a fayre burgeis, 
 To sitten in a gild halle, on the deis. 
 Everich, for the wisdom that he can, 
 Was shapelich for to ben an alderman. 
 
 At Stratford the guild claimed a very 
 ancient history. " The guild has lasted," wrote 
 its chief officers in 1389, "and its beginning 
 was, from time whereunto the memory of man 
 reacheth not." Its muniments now collected 
 in the birthplace at Stratford prove that it 
 had been in existence early in the thirteenth 
 century, and that bequests were then made to 
 it. William Sude, who lived in the reign of 
 Henry III, is the name of the author of the 
 earliest extant deed of gift, and he gave a mes- 
 suage of the yearly value of sixpence. Many of 
 his contemporaries are known to have followed 
 this example, for the sake of their own souls or 
 
5 8 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 those of their fathers and mothers. The 
 Bishops of Worcester encouraged such gifts, 
 and apparently contrived that some of the guild's 
 revenues should be devoted to the relief of 
 poor priests ordained by them without any sure 
 title. Godfrey Giffard, on ;th October 1270, 
 issued letters of indulgence for forty days to 
 all sincere penitents who had duly confessed 
 their sins, and had conferred benefits on the 
 Guild of the Holy Cross of Stratford-on-Avon. 
 Before Edward I.'s reign closed the guild was 
 wealthy in houses and lands. In 1353, from 
 which year the extant account-books date, there 
 was scarcely a street in Stratford without a house 
 belonging to the association. 
 
 It was in Edward I.'s time that the elder 
 Robert of Stratford laid for the guild the 
 foundation of a special chapel, and of neigh- 
 bouring almshouses. These buildings, with the 
 hall of meeting, called the Rode or Rood Hall 
 (rood being equivalent to cross), were doubtless 
 situated in Church Street, where the guildhall 
 and guild buildings subsequently stood, as they 
 stand at this day. The fourteenth century 
 witnessed a rapid growth of the guild's pros- 
 perity. In 1332 Edward III gave the corpora- 
 
The Giiild 61 
 
 tion a charter which confirmed its right to all its 
 possessions, and to the full control of its own 
 affairs. In 1389 Richard II sent commis- 
 sioners to report upon the ordinances of the 
 guilds throughout England, and the return for 
 Stratford is still extant, though the historians 
 of the town have persistently overlooked it. 
 The details are so picturesque that I make no 
 apology for quoting them in full. 
 
 These are the ordinances (the document begins) of 
 the brethren and sisters of the Guild of the Holy Cross of 
 Stratford. 
 
 First : Each of the brethren who wishes to remain in 
 the guild, shall give fourpence a year, payable four times in 
 the year ; namely, a penny on the feast of St. Michael, a 
 penny on the feast of St. Hilary, a penny at Easter, and a 
 penny on the feast of St. John Baptist. Out of which 
 payments there shall be made and kept up one wax candle, 
 which shall be done in worshipful honour of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and of the blessed Virgin and of the Holy Cross. And 
 the wax candle shall be kept alight every day throughout 
 the year, at every mass in the church, before the blessed 
 Cross ; so that God and the blessed Virgin, and the 
 venerated Cross, may keep and guard all the brethren and 
 sisters of the guild from every ill. And whoever of 
 the brethren or sisters neglects to come at the above-named 
 times [when the payments are due], shall pay one penny. 
 
 It is also ordained by the brethren and sisters of the 
 guild, that, when any of them dies, the wax candle before- 
 named together with eight smaller ones, shall be carried 
 
62 St rat ford-on-. I von 
 
 from the church to the house of him that is dead; and 
 there they shall be kept alight before the body of the dead 
 until it is carried to the church ; and the wax candles shall 
 be carried and kept alight until the body is buried, and after- 
 wards shall be set before the Cross. Also, all the brethren 
 of the guild are bound to follow the body to church, and 
 to pray for his soul until the body is buried. And who- 
 ever does not fulfil this, shall pay one halfpenny. 
 
 It is also ordained by the brethren and sisters, that if 
 any poor man in the town dies, or if any stranger has not 
 means of his own out of which to pay for a light to be kept 
 burning before his body, the brethren and sisters shall, for 
 their souls' health, whosoever he may be, find four wax 
 candles, and one sheet, and a hearsecloth to lay over the 
 coffin until the body is buried. 
 
 It is further ordained by the brethren and sisters, that 
 each of them shall give twopence a year, at a meeting which 
 shall be held once a year ; namely, at a feast which shall be 
 held in Easter week, in such manner that brotherly love 
 shall be cherished among them, and evil-speaking be driven 
 out ; that peace shall always dwell among them, and true 
 love be upheld. And every sister of the guild shall bring 
 with her to this feast a great tankard ; and all the tankards 
 shall be filled with ale \ and afterwards the ale shall be 
 given to the poor. So likewise shall the brethren do ; and 
 their tankards shall, in like manner, be filled with ale, and 
 this also shall be given to the poor. But, before that ale 
 shall be given to the poor, and before any brother or sister 
 shall touch the feast in the hall where it is accustomed to 
 be held, all the brethren and sisters there gathered together 
 shall put up their prayers, that God and the blessed Virgin 
 and the venerated Cross, in whose honour they have come 
 together, will keep them from all ills and sins. And if any 
 
77/6' Guild 63 
 
 sister does not bring her tankard, as is above said, she shall 
 pay a halfpenny. Also, if any brother or sister shall, after 
 the bell has sounded, quarrel, or stir up a quarrel, he shall 
 pay a halfpenny. 
 
 It is also ordained, that no one shall remain in this 
 guild unless he is a man of good behaviour. 
 
 It is moreover ordained, that when one of the brethren 
 dies, the officers shall summon a third part of the brethren, 
 who shall watch near the body, and pray for his soul, 
 through the night. Whoever, having been summoned, 
 neglects to do this, shall pay a halfpenny. 
 
 It is ordained by the Common Council of the whole 
 guild, that two of the brethren shall be Aldermen ; and six 
 other brethren shall be chosen, who shall manage all the 
 affairs of the guild with the Aldermen ; and whoever of 
 them is absent on any day agreed among themselves for a 
 meeting, shall pay fourpence. 
 
 If any brother or sister brings with him a guest, 
 without leave of the steward he shall pay a halfpenny. 
 Also, if any stranger, or servant, or youth, comes in, without 
 the knowledge of the officers, he shall pay a halfpenny. 
 Also, if any brother or sister is bold enough to take the 
 seat of another, he shall pay a halfpenny. 
 
 Also, if it happens that any brother or sister has been 
 robbed, or has fallen into poverty, then, so long as he bears 
 himself well and rightly towards the brethren and sisters of 
 the guild, they shall find him in food and clothing and 
 what else he needs. 
 
 These ordinances, providing for kindly gifts 
 of beer to the poor, for the preservation of good 
 fellowship among all the members and for their 
 
64 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 participation in each others' joys and griefs, 
 vividly put before us the simple piety and 
 charity of the Stratford townspeople. The 
 regulations for the government of the guild 
 by two wardens or aldermen and six others 
 prove the progress of the town in the direc- 
 tion of self-government. It is not difficult to 
 perceive how an association, which grew to in- 
 clude all the substantial householders of the dis- 
 trict, necessarily acquired much civil jurisdiction ; 
 how its members referred to its council their 
 disputes with one another ; how the aldermen 
 were gradually regarded as the administrators 
 of the municipal police ; or how the burgesses 
 preferred this new regime to servile dependence 
 on the steward of the lord of the manor. The 
 college priests were very jealous of the guild's 
 growing influence, and when the guild resisted 
 the payment of tithes brought a lawsuit against 
 it to compel their payment. But this seemed to 
 be the fraternity's only external obligation. 
 
 The ledgers or account-books of the guild, 
 still extant for the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, well repay close study. Their micro- 
 scopic details enable the historian to trace the 
 progress of the society in all its aspects 
 
The Guild 67 
 
 from year to year and almost from month to 
 month. 
 
 The receipts under the various headings of 
 44 light -money," rents, and fines increase with 
 satisfactory regularity, and the expenses grow 
 correspondingly. Candles both of tallow and 
 wax, repairs of house property, the setting up of 
 hedges, form large items of expenditure, but in 
 each year's balance-sheet the details of the food 
 and drink provided for the annual feast occupy 
 more and more extravagant space. The small 
 pigs and large pigs ; the pullets, geese, veal, and 
 "carcases" of mutton; the eggs, butter, and 
 honey ; the almonds, raisins, currants, garlic, salt, 
 pepper, and other spices were gathered in from all 
 the neighbouring villages in appalling quantities. 
 Gallons of wine and bushels of malt for brewing 
 ale were likewise provided in generous measure. 
 Horsemen were often equipped at the guild's 
 expense to bring in the supplies. After the feast 
 was done there came the settlement for such 
 items as washing the napery, rushes for the floor 
 of the dining hall, coal and charcoal for the 
 kitchen, the cooks' and other servants' wages. At 
 times the feast was enlivened by professional 
 minstrelsy. Twenty pence was paid to minstrels 
 
68 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 from Warwick in 1424 and a single performer 
 was often engaged at a fee of fivepence. 
 
 The guild buildings, the chief room of which 
 was the guildhall, were enlarged and embellished 
 after 1400. A parlour was added in 1427 ; it 
 was paved with tiles, and the window was of 
 glass. A chimney was provided for the 
 counting-house at the same time and a school- 
 house was built. The building material all 
 came from neighbouring places tiles from 
 Warwick, stone from Drayton or Grafton, 
 plaster from Welcomb. Additions were also 
 made to the almshouses set up near at hand for 
 the guild's pensioners, and towards the close of 
 the fifteenth century the chapel was carefully re- 
 paired. Meanwhile the number of the members 
 steadily increased. One curious feature of the 
 later conditions of membership was that the souls 
 of the dead could be made free of the fraternity 
 on payment from the living as easily as the 
 living themselves. Thus, early in the fifteenth 
 century six persons surnamed Whittington, the 
 dead children of John Whittington, of Stratford, 
 were all admitted to a share in the guild's spirit- 
 ual benefit for the sum of ten shillings. Before 
 the Middle Ages closed, the fame of the guild 
 
The Guild 69 
 
 had grown wide enough to attract to its ranks 
 noblemen like George, Duke of Clarence, 
 Edward IV's brother, and his wife, with 
 Edward, Lord Warwick, and Margaret, two of 
 their children ; and so distinguished a judge as 
 Sir Thomas Lyttleton was one of the members. 
 Merchants of towns as far distant as Bristol 
 and Peterborough joined it, and few towns or 
 villages of Warwickshire were unrepresented on 
 its roll of members. All the neighbouring 
 clergy were prominent members. 
 
 The fee for admission at its flourishing 
 epochs varied from six shillings and eightpence 
 to four pounds, according to the wealth of the 
 candidates. Those artificers and traders unable 
 to pay the entrance fee in money were allowed 
 to defray it in work. Thus, in 1408 Simon 
 Gove, carpenter, was admitted on his under- 
 taking to build a porch at the door of the guild, 
 and in 1409 John Iremonger was admitted on 
 covenanting to build a house on the guild 
 ground, at the end of Henley Street. Five 
 years later John Ovyrton, a cook, of Warwick, 
 and his wife, were received into the fraternity 
 on condition of cooking the annual dinner, 
 for which they were to receive the hood of the 
 
70 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 guild the chief part of its distinctive uniform 
 and their expenses. In 1427 several weavers 
 were made free of the guild on condition of 
 supplying cloth for the members' hoods and a 
 banner with paintings on it. In other years, 
 building material tiles, plaster of Paris, stone 
 was taken instead of the fees. Gifts in kind 
 from the prosperous members were frequent. 
 Silver cups, silver spoons, ecclesiastical vest- 
 ments, missals, statues of saints, and wax for 
 candles were often presented by novices. Con- 
 tributions to the annual feasts of corn, malt, 
 salt, white or red wine, were always welcomed. 
 In 1416 the guild received from five members 
 "a great pot for frumetty, a broad dish of 
 mascolyn, one basin, one board - cloth, and 
 one towel"; and in 1426 eight couples of 
 rabbits, two ewes with lamb, and a boar. In 
 1421 the presents included a silver chalice 
 and a coat of armour, and in 1474 seven 
 pewter dishes and ten pewter saucers. A 
 schedule of " the diverse goodes and juellies 
 beynge in the Gildehalle " in 1434 is remark- 
 able for the number and richness of its 
 contents. Nor was there any falling off 
 in the bequests of houses and lands. The 
 
The Guild 7 1 
 
 guild acquired in 1481 the rectory and 
 chapelry of Little Wilmecote, where the 
 Ardens the ancestors of Shakespeare's mother 
 had property with all its tithes and profits. 
 In 1419 a tenement in Church Street, and 
 in 1478 a shop in the Middle Row, came into 
 its possession, and later nearly all High Street 
 and Chapel Lane then called Dead Lane or 
 Walker Street owned the guild as landlord. 
 
 The inner constitution did not undergo 
 much alteration until late in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. New ordinances were promulgated in 
 1444; and while they define with more pre- 
 cision than the former ones the duties of 
 the guild's officers, and the mode of election 
 to them, they differ from their predecessors 
 mainly in the increased importance attached to 
 the priests or chaplains, now five in number, 
 employed by the guild, and perhaps prove that 
 its ancient independence of ecclesiasticism was 
 in jeopardy. The chaplains were to perform 
 five daily masses hour by hour, from six o'clock to 
 ten in the morning. They were to live together 
 in one house, under as strict a discipline con- 
 cerning hours for sleep and meals as the 
 choristers in the college by the churchyard. 
 
72 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 They had to walk in procession with the 
 guild in their copes and surplices, with crosses 
 and banners, on the four principal feasts of 
 the year, and to officiate with the priests of 
 the college at the funeral of every member 
 and of the pensioners in the almshouses. 
 They were to avoid the county wakes, and 
 not to say mass out of Stratford without the 
 guild's permission. The guild had now its 
 master, aldermen, and proctors elected yearly. 
 Every new member was to be admitted in 
 the presence of the master, the clerk, and at 
 least two aldermen. No member could be 
 chosen alderman unless he had first served the 
 office of proctor. The proctors were, on the 
 Monday following the nativity of St. John the 
 Baptist (24th June), to receive and account for 
 the silver money received for providing candles, 
 and all the rents of the guild. They were 
 to make an annual inventory of the property. 
 Their duties also included the repair of all 
 the tenements of the Corporation, and the 
 arrangements for the feasts and dinners, of 
 the dates of which they were duly to in- 
 form the members. There were more dinners 
 than of old. Private entertainments were 
 
The Guild 73 
 
 given to neighbouring landlords. In 1463 
 the Bishop of Worcester was the guest of 
 the guild, with Sir John Greville and other 
 persons of distinction. The master and alder- 
 men met in council every quarter-day at least, 
 and absentees without excuse were fined forty 
 pence. The master saw to the purchase of 
 cloth for the members' hoods. The oath 
 taken on admission was to the effect that 
 the brother or sister would truly pay his 
 fine ; that he would seek in all things the profit 
 of the fraternity ; that he would refer all his 
 disputes with fellow-members to the master ; 
 and that he would sue none of his brethren 
 without leave of the master and aldermen, upon 
 pain of a fine of twenty shillings. The date of 
 the annual feast was altered to the 6th July, 
 the day of St. Peter and St. Paul. Several 
 regulations were issued later to prevent the 
 "great inconvenience and hurt that grow to 
 this guild by private affection and grant of 
 the master and part of his brethren," by which 
 land and houses were let at low rents to 
 favoured friends. 
 
 By far the most important of the new 
 objects of the guild in the fifteenth century 
 
74 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 was the organisation of the grammar school 
 for the children of the members. We have 
 seen that the schoolhouse was built in 1427. 
 Thomas Jollyffe is the name of the member 
 always associated with its foundation, but it 
 is now proved to have been in existence 
 before the date (1453) usually assigned to its 
 origin. Attendance was free, and the school- 
 master was forbidden to take anything from 
 his pupils. The master of the guild paid 
 him an annual salary of ten pounds. It was 
 at the guild school, somewhat altered in 
 shape, that Shakespeare was afterwards edu- 
 cated. 
 
 When the fifteenth century closed the days 
 of the guild's prosperity were numbered. It 
 had grown inconveniently wealthy, and its 
 wealth was administered by a narrow oligarchy. 
 Men and women of position in all parts of the 
 country had sought and obtained admission to 
 it, but the extension of the guild's boundaries 
 was not favourable to the simple fraternal senti- 
 ment, and the duties of membership acquired a 
 chilling formality. Religious feeling was de- 
 clining, and the steady growth of the priests' 
 influence in the guild's internal economy failed 
 
The Guild 75 
 
 to attract new members. The fee charged for 
 admission fell gradually from twenty-five shill- 
 ings to twenty-five pence, and yet candidates 
 decreased. To the commercial progress of the 
 country the decline may be in part attributed. 
 Subsidiary guilds or companies, formed of men 
 engaged in the same or cognate trades, had 
 risen up among the members of the old Strat- 
 ford guild, and had separated the great fraternity 
 into small cliques. At first the parent guild 
 appears to have encouraged the formation of 
 these traders' unions. We know that one room 
 of the guild buildings, where " John Smyth, 
 alias Colyere, first made a clock, having the 
 hand towards the street and figures all gilded," 
 was known as the Drapers' Chamber as early 
 as 1419, and was probably so called because the 
 Stratford drapers were permitted to assemble 
 there to regulate their business arrangements. 
 Other trades soon secured the same privilege, 
 arid in the sixteenth century every commercial 
 pursuit had its company at Stratford. When 
 the old religious guild was dissolved, these trade- 
 societies or craft-guilds lived on and shared 
 some of its traditions and repute. 
 
VII 
 
 SIR HUGH CLOPTON'S BENEFACTIONS 
 
 AT the close of the Middle Ages, the town of 
 Stratford - on - Avon looked back on some 
 seven or eight centuries of continuous progress. 
 Originally the offshoot of a monastery, it had 
 almost reached the dignity of an independent 
 township. Bishops had nurtured it in its 
 infancy and the discipline of religion had left its 
 mark on the town. The majestic church with 
 its college of priests testified to the pious bene- 
 factions of many generations of townsmen. 
 Religion too had developed among all the 
 inhabitants men and women a fraternal 
 sentiment powerful enough to call into being 
 the guild, which, with its hall, chapel, school, 
 almshouses, was barely less notable from the 
 architectural point of view than the collegiate 
 church. If the Stratford community, less 
 
Sir Hiigk Claptons Benefactions 77 
 
 fortunate than their Coventry neighbours, had 
 failed to develop a special industry, all the 
 simple crafts were practised in the town, and 
 were well organised among themselves. Strat- 
 ford undoubtedly felt some of the effects of the 
 transition from the mediaeval to the modern era. 
 IThe guild the centre of the town's mediaeval 
 life temporarily suffered collapse, but it was 
 quickly restored to a new and healthier career 
 as the governing body of the town, and its new 
 birth secured for Stratford municipal independ- 
 ence. Of outward change Stratford between 
 the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries knew 
 little. Not only the chief public buildings, 
 but many of the dwelling-houses with which 
 Shakespeare was familiar, dated from the 
 mediaeval period, and survived far beyond 
 Shakespeare's day. \J/ery early in the sixteenth 
 century some additional adornments were made 
 by private benefactors; But when these were 
 completed, Stratford was at all points the 
 Stratford that Shakespeare and his children 
 knew.y 
 
 From the neighbouring village of Clopton 
 
 1 For the early part of the sixteenth century, Jeaffreson's Report, 
 Toulmin-Smith's Account of the Guilds, and Dugdale are the chief 
 authorities. 
 
7 8 St rat ford-on- A von 
 
 came to Stratford, about 1480, Sir Hugh 
 Clopton, the last of its early benefactors, and to 
 him the town owed the latest structural improve- 
 ments. His biography offers many points of in- 
 terest. He energetically devoted great abilities 
 to commerce and to commercial speculations, 
 and is noted as an early example of the self- 
 made merchant. His pedigree is traced back 
 to Robert of Clopton, a substantial yeoman, 
 who in 1228 obtained from Peter de Montfort, 
 apparently a relative of the great Simon, the 
 Manor of Clopton, about a mile to the north- 
 east of Stratford. Of the ninth generation 
 in descent, Hugh was a younger son. His 
 elder brother, Thomas, who inherited the 
 family estates and the great Clopton Manor 
 House, was religiously inclined, and built, in 
 the first instance, an oratory in his manor- 
 house, and afterwards a " fair chapel," in which 
 he obtained Pope Sixtus IV's permission to 
 celebrate divine service. 
 
 Hugh turned his attention at an early age 
 to trade, and made his fortune as a mercer in 
 London. He was Lord Mayor in 1492, never 
 married, and devoted his leisure and his wealth 
 to philanthropy. Stratford was his country 
 
Sir Hugh Cloptoris Benefactions 8 1 
 
 home. There he erected, about 1483, "a 
 pretty house of brick and timber, wherein he 
 lived in his latter days," and obtained lands in 
 other parts of the town, and in Wilmecote and 
 Bridgetown. His " pretty house," the chief 
 building in the town, was, within the first 
 quarter of the sixteenth century, known as New 
 Place, and became Shakespeare's property in 
 r 597/ It stood in Chapel Street, at the corner 
 of Chapel Lane, and at the opposite corner of 
 the lane was the chapel of the guild. Clopton 
 hoped to end his days there, and in his will 
 stated his desire to be buried " in the parish 
 church of Stratford within the chapel of our 
 lady, between the altar there and the chapel of 
 the Trinity." But the fates were against the 
 fulfilment of his hope, and, dying in London in 
 1496, he finally " bequeathed " his body to the 
 chapel of St. Katherine, in the parish church of 
 St. Margaret, Lothbury. 
 
 New Place was far from being Clopton's sole 
 contribution to Stratford. The chapel standing 
 over against his house, and belonging to the 
 guild, of which he was a prominent member, 
 needed restoration in the last days of the 
 fifteenth century, and he readily defrayed the 
 
 G 
 
82 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 expenses of the work. He did not touch the 
 chancel, which was renovated about 1450, 
 but the nave he determined to rebuild. 
 Death overtook him before the structure was 
 finished, but by his will he provided for its com- 
 pletion. "And whereas," he wrote, "of late I 
 have bargained with one Dowland and divers 
 other masons for the building and setting up 
 of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, within the 
 town of Stratford-on-Avon aforesaid, and the 
 tower of a steeple to the same, I will that the 
 said masons sufficiently and ably do and finish 
 the same with good and true workmanship, and 
 they truly perform the same, making the said 
 works as well of length, and breadth, and 
 height, such as by the advice of mine executors, 
 and other divers of the substantialest and 
 honest men of the same parish, shall and can 
 be thought most convenient and necessary ; 
 and all the aforesaid works to be done by mine 
 executors, and paid upon my proper goods and 
 charges ; and in like wise the covering and 
 roofing of the same chapel with glazing, and all 
 other furnishments thereunto necessary to it, to 
 be paid by my said executors as the works 
 aforesaid goeth forth." The "furnishments" 
 
Sir Hugh Clapton s Benefactions 83 
 
 included elaborate paintings on the roof, illus- 
 trating the history of the Holy Cross. Although 
 in mediaeval times that history was usually 
 traced back to the creation of the world, 
 Clopton's artists connected it with no more 
 ancient personages than King Solomon and the 
 Queen of Sheba, and thence brought it by 
 several stages to the time of St. Helena, the 
 mother of Constantine, who made a successful 
 pilgrimage to Palestine to discover its where- 
 abouts in the fourth century. Other paintings 
 commemorated St. Thomas a Becket, St. 
 George and the Dragon, and the Last Judg- 
 ment. In 1804 the paintings were discovered 
 beneath a covering of whitewash, and they 
 were copied and engraved, but they have since 
 been more than once recoated with whitewash, 
 and are probably wholly destroyed. 1 
 
 Another of Sir Hugh Clopton's benefactions 
 was of greater practical utility. The towns- 
 people had long felt the need of a good bridge 
 over the river, and " the great and sumptuous 
 bridge upon the Avon, at the east end of the 
 town," constructed of freestone, with fourteen 
 
 1 Cf. Thomas Fisher's Series of Ancient Allegorical . , . Paintings 
 . . . discovered . . . at Stratford-on-Avon, London, 1807, fol. 
 
84 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 arches, and " a long causeway " of stone, " well 
 walled on each side at the west," was erected 
 by Sir Hugh. Leland, the antiquary, who 
 visited Stratford about 1530 on a tour through 
 England, noted in his account of his journey 
 the great value of this gift. ''Afore the time 
 of Hugh Clopton," he wrote, "there was but a 
 poor bridge of timber, and no causeway to come 
 to it, whereby many poor folks either refused 
 to come to Stratford when the river was up, or 
 coming thither stood in jeopardy of life." The 
 bridge required frequent repair, as we shall see, 
 in Shakespeare's day, but enough of it is still 
 standing to convince us of the workmanlike 
 thoroughness with which its foundations were 
 laid. 
 
 By Sir Hugh Clopton's will Stratford largely 
 benefited in other ways. "He bequeathed also 
 C marks to be given to xx poor maidens of 
 good name and fame dwelling in Stratford, i.e. 
 to each of them five marks apiece at their 
 marriage ; and likewise C/. to the poor house- 
 holders in Stratford ; as also L/?'. to the new 
 building the cross aisle in the Parish Church 
 there" (Dugdale). The testator did not, at the 
 same time, forget the needs of the poor of 
 
Sir Hugh Claptons Benefactions 87 
 
 London, or their hospitals ; and on behalf of 
 poor scholars at the Universities, he established 
 six exhibitions at Cambridge and Oxford, each 
 of the annual value of four pounds for five years. 
 
 STAIRCASE OF CLOPTON HOUSE. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE REFORMATION AT STRATFORD 
 
 ALTHOUGH the town was thus structurally com- 
 pleted, its internal government had not advanced 
 with the times. The steward of the Bishop of 
 Worcester, the lord of the manor, was still in 
 name the supreme authority. The Reformation 
 gave the needful impulse and exerted a deter- 
 mining influence on the constitutional develop- 
 ment of Stratford. Before the Reformation had 
 run its full course, it brought to fruition the 
 townspeople's desire for self-government. 
 
 The new movement respected none of the old 
 rights of ecclesiastics to property, and the claims 
 of the Bishops of Worcester to manorial rights in 
 Stratford were summarily set aside. About 
 1550 John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, one of 
 Edward VI's Lord Protectors, and afterwards 
 Duke of Northumberland, was installed in the 
 bishop's place as Lord of the Manor of Stratford, 
 
( UNIVERSITY ) 
 V, 
 
 ^^^^^^^ 
 
 The Reformation at Stratford 89 
 
 and the king added to this estate the Lordship, 
 Manor and Castle of Kenilworth, which was not 
 very far distant. When the Duke of Northum- 
 berland's ambitious plot to set his daughter-in- 
 law Lady Jane Grey on the throne of England 
 came to nought, and he paid the penalty of failure 
 on the scaffold, Queen Mary humanely made 
 Stratford over for a short while to his widowed 
 duchess ; but she finally assigned it to the 
 Savoy Hospital beyond Temple Bar, which she 
 had revived for the poor of London. Such 
 changes in the ownership of the manor did not, 
 however, very nearly affect the townsmen ; for 
 the manorial property had been diminished by 
 gifts of the Bishops of Worcester to the guild, and 
 the powers of the manorial lord had been lessened 
 by the assumption of many of his ancient func- 
 tions by the fraternity's wardens and aldermen. 
 More important to the townsmen were the 
 laws of Henry VIII's reign, dealing with 
 religious houses and corporations. The Acts 
 for their dissolution immediately affected more 
 than one institution at Stratford. The college 
 the home of the chantry priests was the 
 first to fall. In 1535 commissioners visited it, 
 and found the warden, the five priests, and the 
 
9o Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 four choristers living there sumptuously. Sub- 
 sidiary chapels had been set up by the college 
 in the neighbouring villages of Bishopston and 
 Luddington, of which they owned the tithes. 
 Its lands were under the supervision of a 
 steward and a bailiff. The annual income was 
 ^128 : 9 : i. In 1545 another report was 
 made, and it was noted that all its officers had, 
 besides a good yearly stipend, two shillings 
 weekly for their diet allowed out of the posses- 
 sions of the institution. It was rich in silver 
 and gold, and Henry VIII appropriated, 
 before the close of his reign, no less than 260 
 ounces of its plate. The priests were appar- 
 ently permitted to reside within the college till 
 1547, but in that year all college chantries and 
 free chapels were finally suppressed. For four 
 years the Stratford College seems to have been 
 uninhabited. In 1551 it was made over as a 
 royal gift to the Earl of Warwick, the new lord 
 of the manor. He transformed it into a private 
 residence; but his execution in 1553 brought 
 the building again into the hands of the 
 Crown. Elizabeth leased it in 1576 to a Richard 
 Coningsby, and he it was who sublet it to 
 wealthy John Combe, who lived there on good 
 
The Reformation at Stratford 9 1 
 
 terms with Shakespeare, although he bore the 
 reputation of being a "devilish usurer." 
 
 The guild underwent a far more striking 
 transformation. The politicians who sur- 
 rounded Henry VIII and Edward VI found 
 the destruction of religious corporations not 
 more satisfactory to their consciences than to 
 their purses. In 1545 and in 1547 com- 
 missioners came to Stratford to report upon 
 the possessions and constitution of the Guild 
 of the Holy Cross. The income was estimated 
 at /^5 : i : 1 1 ?r, of which 2 1 : 6 : 8 was paid as 
 salary to four chaplains. There was a clerk, who 
 received 45. a year ; and Oliver Baker, who saw 
 to the clock (outside the chapel), received 1 35. 4d. 
 " Upon the premises was a free school, and Wil- 
 liam Dalam, the schoolmaster, had yearly for 
 teaching ^10." " There is also given yearly," 
 the report runs, " to xxiiij poor men, brethren 
 of the said guild, Ixiijs. m]d. ; vz. x^. to be 
 bestowed in coals, and the rest given in ready 
 money ; besides one house there called the 
 Almshouse ; and besides v or vjV/. given 
 them of the good provision of the master of 
 the same guild." In the report of 1547 the 
 importance of the guild chapel to the town is 
 
92 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 strongly insisted upon. It was more centrally 
 situated than the parish church, since the town 
 had long left the banks of the river, and the 
 old and sick regularly attended service there. 
 The chapel stood in the midst of the town, " for 
 the great quietness and comfort of all the 
 parishioners there ; for that the parish church 
 standeth out of the same town, distant from the 
 most part of the said parish half a mile and 
 more ; and in time of sickness, as the plague 
 and such like diseases doth chance within the 
 said town, then all such infective persons, with 
 many other impotent and poor people, doth to 
 the said chapel resort for their daily service." 
 
 But in 1547 all these advantages ceased: the 
 guild was dissolved, and all the property came 
 into the royal treasury. It was, as we have seen, 
 in the same year that the lordship of the manor 
 was transferred from the Bishops of Worcester to 
 the Protector Northumberland, who was far too 
 occupied with affairs of state to renew the worn- 
 out machinery of manorial government. And 
 now too all the functions of local government 
 which the guild had tacitly exercised were para- 
 lysed. For six years the town lacked any 
 responsible government. 
 
IX 
 
 THE GROWTH OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 
 
 BUT the inconvenience of anarchy, barely 
 tempered by the occasional appearance of the 
 steward of the manor, was felt to be an un- 
 bearable humiliation. About 1550 the leading 
 townsmen the old officers of the guild laid 
 their grievances before the king, and begged 
 him to rehabilitate the guild as a municipal 
 corporation. The application was successful, 
 and Edward VI's reply, dated 7th June 1553, 
 unreservedly placed the government of the 
 borough in the hands of its own inhabitants. 
 
 Whereas (the charter ran) the borough of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, is an ancient 
 borough, in which borough a certain guild was in former 
 time founded and endowed with divers lands, tenements, 
 and possessions, from whose rents, revenues, and profits a 
 certain Grammar School was maintained and supported for 
 the education and instruction of boys and youths, and a 
 
96 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 certain charitable house was there maintained and sup- 
 ported for the sustenance of twenty-four poor persons, and 
 a certain great stone bridge called Stratford Bridge, placed 
 and built over the water and river of the Avon beside the 
 said borough, was from time to time maintained and re 
 paired. And the lands, tenements, and possessions of the 
 same guild have come into our hands and now remain in 
 our hands. And whereas the inhabitants of the borough 
 of Stratford aforesaid from time beyond the memory of man 
 have had and enjoyed divers franchises, liberties, and five 
 customs, jurisdictions, privileges, reversions, and quittances 
 by reason and pretext of charters, concessions, and con- 
 firmations made in ancient time by our progenitors to the 
 masters and brethren of the aforesaid guild and otherwise, 
 which the same inhabitants of the same borough aforesaid 
 are now very little able to have and enjoy, because the 
 aforesaid guild is dissolved, and in consideration of other 
 causes now apparent to us whence it appears likely that 
 the borough aforesaid and the government thereof may go 
 to a worse state from time to time, if a remedy be not 
 quickly provided. On which grounds the inhabitants of 
 the borough of Stratford aforesaid have humbly prayed us 
 that we would accord them our favour and abundant grace, 
 for the amelioration of the said borough and the govern- 
 ment thereof, and for the support of the great works which 
 they from time to time are compelled and ought to sustain 
 and support, and that we would deign to make, reduce, and 
 create them the same inhabitants into a body corporate and 
 politic. 
 
 And directions followed ordering this " reduc- 
 tion " and " creation " to proceed without delay. 
 Thus the ancient guild did not lie long in 
 
77/6' Growth of Self -Government 97 
 
 cold obstruction ; in 1554 it entered on a new 
 tenure of life. The names and functions of its 
 chief officers were slightly changed, but the 
 bailiff, chosen on the Wednesday next before 
 the Nativity of our Lady (8th September), was 
 merely the old warden newly spelt. The alder- 
 men bore the same titles as of old. The 
 proctors were replaced by the chamberlains. 
 The clerk's and beadle's offices remained un- 
 changed. The common council continued to 
 meet monthly in the guildhall or one of the 
 adjoining chambers "at nine o'clock of the 
 forenoon," summoned by the bell of the guild 
 chapel ; but the assembly now included, besides 
 the bailiff and ten aldermen, the ten chief or 
 capital burgesses, and its edicts governed the 
 whole town. Regular performance of duty was 
 secured by fines of six-and-eightpence on all 
 absentees from meetings of the council, and of 
 ten pounds on any councillor declining to 
 assume the office of bailiff when elected to it. 
 Very heavy penalties (five pounds for a first 
 offence, ten for a second, and "to be expulsed" 
 for ever for a third) punished those who dis- 
 cussed " forth of the council chamber" any of 
 its proceedings. "In all and every general 
 
 H 
 
98 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 procession," every councillor, according to 
 "orders passed" in 1557, was to take part "in 
 his honest apparel as in his gown" a survival 
 of the hood of the guild on pain of a twelve- 
 penny fine, and a like forfeiture awaited any one 
 who attended a " hall " without " his gown upon 
 his back." The characteristic fraternal senti- 
 ment of the original institution was perpetuated 
 in the orders "that none of the aldermen nor 
 none of the capital burgesses, neither in the 
 council chamber nor elsewhere, do revile one 
 another, but brotherlike live together, and that 
 after they be entered into the council chamber, 
 that they nor none of them depart not forth but 
 in brotherly love, under the pains of every 
 offender to forfeit and pay for every default, 
 vjs. viijW." Similarly, when any councillor or 
 his wife died, all were to attend the funeral " in 
 their honest apparel, and bring the corpse to 
 the church, there to continue and abide devoutly 
 until the corpse be buried." 
 
 The estates of the guild, to which the greater 
 part of the college lands were added, became 
 the corporate property, and the chattels of the 
 guild the vestments, armour, and plate - 
 passed into the hands of the new body. T The 
 
The Growth of Self -Government 99 
 
 school, in which Edward VI showed a special 
 interest, became, with the chapel and alms- 
 houses, institutions of the borough. The vicar 
 of the parish church was a corporate officer, 
 with a salary of twenty pounds annually and 
 two pounds in tithes. Nearly all functions that 
 the steward of the lord of the manor had per- 
 formed were absorbed in the new regime, and 
 for their due exercise a few r new legal and police 
 offices were created. The bailiff was a duly- 
 appointed magistrate. He attended the judges 
 at the assizes, and presided, with his sergeants 
 and constables, in a monthly court of record, for 
 the recovery of small debts, and at the great law- 
 days or leets, to which all the inhabitants were 
 summoned to revise and enforce the police regula- 
 tions. The leets were held twice a year on the 
 Wednesdays after the feast of St. Michael the 
 Archangel (29th September) and after Low 
 Sunday, i.e. the week after Easter. Shakespeare 
 was familiar with these observances. Kit Sly, 
 talking in his sleep, promises to present the ale- 
 wife of Wincot at the leet, " because she brought 
 stone jugs and no seal'd quarts " ; and lago 
 speaks in metaphor of keeping ''leets and law- 
 days." The new corporation also assumed the 
 
i oo Stratford-OH-A -con 
 
 duty of supervising the trade of the town. Under 
 the shadow of the religious fraternity, we have 
 watched the trading companies come into being, 
 and the town council now kept them strictly under 
 its own control. The bailiffconfirmed indentures 
 of apprenticeship, and the chamberlains de- 
 manded a fee on the admission of a new 
 member into a craft or mystery. Prices of 
 bread and beer were fixed by the corporation, 
 and ale-tasters were annually appointed to en- 
 force orders as to the quality and price of 
 victuals. Searchers were also nominated to 
 inspect the tanneries, and to prevent the 
 common abuses in the preparation of leather 
 which were prohibited by statutes of the realm 
 in 1566 and I6O3. 1 
 
 It is essential for the student of the social 
 history of Stratford to grasp clearly the leading 
 differences between life in the sixteenth and in 
 the nineteenth centuries, and of the first im- 
 portance is it to realise how little personal 
 liberty was understood in Elizabethan country 
 towns. Scarcely an entry in the books of the 
 
 1 For the general social condition of the reformed municipality, sec- 
 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's invaluable Life of Shakespeare, his y\ T cw riacc 
 (1864), and his privately printed publication containing the Chamber- 
 lain's Accounts 1564-1618, and the Council Books (A and B). 
 
The Growth of Self-Government 101 
 
 new council fails to emphasise the rigidly 
 paternal character of its rule. If a man lived 
 immorally he was summoned to the guildhall, 
 and rigorously examined as to the truth of the 
 rumours that had reached the bailiff's ear. If 
 his guilt was proved, and he refused to make 
 adequate reparation, he was invited to leave 
 the city. A female servant, hired at a salary 
 of twenty-six shillings and eightpence and a pair 
 of shoes, left her master suddenly in 161 1. The 
 aldermen ordered her arrest on her master's 
 complaint. Her defence was that " she was 
 once frightened in the night in the chamber 
 where her master's late wife died, but by what 
 or when she cannot tell " ; but this plea proved 
 of no avail, and she spent some months in the 
 gaol by the guildhall. Rude endeavours were 
 made to sweeten the tempers of scolding wives. 
 A substantial "clicking stool," with iron staples, 
 lock, and hinges, was kept in good repair. The 
 shrew was attached to it, and by means of ropes, 
 planks, and wheels, was plunged two or three 
 times into the Avon whenever the municipal 
 council believed her to stand in need of cor- 
 rection. Three days and three nights were 
 invariably spent in the open stocks by any 
 
102 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 inhabitant who spoke disrespectfully to any town 
 officer, or who disobeyed any minor municipal 
 decree. No one might receive a stranger into 
 his house without the bailiff's permission. No 
 journeyman, apprentice, or servant might "be 
 forth of their or his master's house " after nine 
 o'clock at night. Bowling alleys and butts 
 were provided by the council, but were only to 
 be used at stated times. An alderman was 
 fined on one occasion for going to bowls after 
 a morning meeting of the council, and Henry 
 Sydnall was fined twenty pence for keeping 
 unlawful or unlicensed bowling in a back shed. 
 Alehouse-keepers, of whom there were thirty 
 in Stratford in Shakespeare's time, were kept 
 strictly under the council's control. They were 
 not allowed to brew their own ale, or to en- 
 courage tippling, or to serve poor artificers 
 except at stated hours of the day, on pain of 
 fine and imprisonment. Dogs were not to go 
 about the streets unmuzzled. Every inhabitant 
 had to go to church at least once a month, and ab- 
 sentees were liable to penalties of twenty pounds, 
 which in the late years of Elizabeth's reign com- 
 missioners came from London to see that the local 
 authorities enforced. Early in the seventeenth 
 
The Growth of Self -Government 103 
 
 century swearing was rigorously prohibited. 
 Laws as to dress were always regularly en- 
 forced. In 1577 there were many fines exacted 
 for failure to wear the plain statute woollen 
 caps on Sundays, to which Rosaline makes 
 reference in Loves Labours Lost, and the 
 regulation affected all inhabitants above six 
 years of age. In 1604 " the greatest part" of 
 the population were presented at a great leet, 
 or law-day, "for wearing their apparel contrary 
 to the statute." Nor would it be difficult to 
 quote many other like proofs of the persistent 
 strictness with which the new town council of 
 Stratford, by the enforcement of its own orders 
 and of the statutes of the realm, regulated the 
 inhabitants' whole conduct of life. 
 
X 
 
 JOHN SHAKESPEARE IN MUNICIPAL OFFICE 
 AND IN TRADE 
 
 IT was this sober form of government that 
 demanded William Shakespeare's allegiance 
 from youth to the close of his life, and in his 
 later days there can be no doubt of his loyal 
 conformity to all its precise edicts. It was of 
 this government that his father, John Shake- 
 speare, was an energetic member, filling all the 
 chief offices, from ale -taster and constable 
 to that of bailiff and chief alderman, between 
 1557 and 1577; and from his boyhood every 
 detail of municipal organisation must have been 
 familiar to the poet. 
 
 Before 1557 his father was a leading or 
 " capital" burgess and a member of the town 
 council. He was an ale-taster in 1557, and had 
 to enforce the order " that all the brewers, that 
 
John Shakespeare in Municipal Office 105 
 
 brew to sell either ale or beer, shall sell their ale 
 or beer for threepence the gallon under the hair- 
 sieve (i.e. new), and threepence -halfpenny the 
 gallon stale, and thirteen gallons to the dozen, 
 and that no victualler and no alehouse -keeper 
 shall sell any ale or beer contrary to this order ; 
 and that all bakers that bake bread to sell shall 
 sell four (i.e. quarter) loaves for a penny, two 
 (i.e. half) loaves for a penny, and one (i.e. 
 whole) loaf for a penny, and so to keep the 
 assize (the testing of weights and measures) 
 delivered every Thursday at night, upon pain 
 of imprisonment." On 3Oth September 1558, 
 and again on 6th October 1559, John Shake- 
 speare was. chosen one of the four constables, 
 and had to direct the watch throughout the 
 year, and, Dogberry-like, once every month, 
 from Michaelmas to Candlemas or oftener, 
 "as the case requireth it, to call to him certain 
 of the council and some other honest men, 
 and keep and have a privy watch for the good 
 rule of the town." In 1559 and in 1561 he was 
 one of the four " affeerors "officers who 
 assessed in the court - leets fines for minor 
 offences, for which the statutes prescribed no 
 express penalties. From 1561 to 1564 he was 
 
1 06 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 a chamberlain, and duly presented year by year 
 the municipal accounts. 
 
 On 4th July 1565 John Shakespeare 
 reached the dignity of an alderman. He took 
 the place of William Bott, a wealthy capitalist 
 from Coventry, who relieved William Clopton, 
 an heir of Sir Hugh, of some of his pecuniary 
 difficulties by purchasing New Place of him 
 in 1563. Bott was of a quarrelsome temper. 
 He was evidently one of those self-sufficient 
 blusterers whom William Shakespeare delighted 
 to honour with his ridicule in characters like 
 Bottom and Dogberry. In 1565 Bott brought 
 an action against Richard Sponer, a poor 
 painter, inhabiting a cottage in Chapel Lane, 
 for stealing twelve pieces of squared timber 
 from his garden, and at the same time he had 
 a serious dispute with his fellow-councillors. 
 He spoke evil words of Master Bailiff and 
 others. He said that " there was never an 
 honest man of the council," whereupon he 
 "was sent for and did not come to his answer." 
 On the contrary, he gave "such opprobrious 
 words that he was not," in his fellow-councillors' 
 opinion, " worthy henceforth to be of the 
 council," and was consequently " expulsed, 
 
John Shakespeare in Municipal Office 107 
 
 to be none of the company." It was Bott's 
 disgrace that secured John Shakespeare his 
 alderman's gown. Three years later, at 
 Michaelmas 1568, John rose higher and 
 became bailiff, and on 5th September 1571 
 he was chief alderman, a post which he 
 retained till 3d September of the following 
 year. After Michaelmas 1572 he ceased to 
 take an active part in municipal affairs. The 
 duties of the aldermen could not be well 
 performed by poor men. In 1563 and 1564, 
 when John Shakespeare was chamberlain, 
 he had been able to advance as much as 
 ^3 : 2 : 7^ to the corporation, but as the cen- 
 tury grew older his monetary resources failed 
 him. In 1564, when the plague raged at 
 Stratford, he had liberally contributed to the 
 funds raised by the aldermen in behalf of their 
 poor and afflicted neighbours. In 1576 he 
 paid twelvepence towards the beadle's salary ; 
 but in 1578 he was unable to supply his share 
 of the payments privately made by his fellow- 
 councillors " towards the furniture of three 
 pikemen, two billmen, and one archer," who 
 were apparently sent by the corporation to attend 
 a muster of the trained bands of the county. 
 
loS St rat ford-on -A -con 
 
 Nor was he at the same time able to give 
 the small sum of fourpence for the relief of 
 the poor. Failure to pay such pecuniary dues 
 as these combined, with long-continued absence 
 from the " halls," to cause the corporation, on 
 6th September 1586, to deprive John Shake- 
 speare of his alderman's gown. He thus retired 
 from public life when his son William was 
 twenty-two years of age, and in no position 
 to give his father any assistance. 
 
 John Shakespeare's assumption of municipal 
 office would prove, in the absence of all other 
 evidence, that he was engaged in trade in the 
 town. The first bailiff whose name is recorded 
 was a skinner, and all his successors, with 
 rare exceptions, were business men. When 
 John Shakespeare was first proposed for that 
 office in 1567, the rival candidates were a 
 butcher and a brewer. John Shakespeare's 
 mercantile occupation has been a matter of 
 endless controversy. It is certain that on 
 1 7th June 1556 he sued, in the capacity of 
 a glover, before John Burbage, the bailiff, 
 one Thomas Siche, of Arscotte, Worcester- 
 shire, for a debt of eight pounds ; and between 
 1565 and 1579, whenever he attached his 
 
/olui Shakespeare in Municipal Office 109 
 
 mark to official documents (he could not write), 
 he rudely drew the glover's trade-mark an 
 instrument resembling the stretcher still used 
 by sellers of gloves. Twenty-three years later 
 he was always described as a yeoman. But 
 here is no real inconsistency. Stratford still 
 retained many agricultural characteristics. 
 Small farmers lived there in number, and, 
 except those inhabitants exclusively engaged 
 in some recognised urban manufacture, they 
 dealt in all the products yielded by the cultiva- 
 tion of land and stock. Thus, in 1597 George 
 Perry, of Stratford, was described as using, 
 ''besides his glover's trade, buying and selling 
 of wool and corn, and making of malt," and 
 Richard Castell, of Rother Market, was a glover, 
 "while his wife uttereth weekly two strikes of 
 malt." Joyce Hobday, a widow, was similarly 
 selling at one time wool, calves' leather, and 
 gloves. John Shakespeare's business was, 
 doubtless, of even wider extent. He cultivated 
 far more land than the majority of his 
 neighbours. About 1557 he married Mary 
 Arden, the youngest daughter of Robert 
 Arden, of Wilmecote, his father's old landlord, 
 and she had inherited from her father "all his 
 
1 10 Stratford-on-. Iron 
 
 land in Wilmecote called Ashbies, and the 
 crop upon the ground, sown and tilled as it 
 is," and was, with her sister Alice, her father's 
 residuary legatee, which gave her arable 
 and pasture land at the little village of Snitter- 
 field. About 1570 John purchased a small 
 farm called Ingon Meadow, containing fourteen 
 acres, for eight pounds. The produce of these 
 estates was, doubtless, sold by John Shake- 
 speare at Stratford. As early as 1556 we 
 find him complaining that his neighbour, Henry 
 Field, unjustly detained barley belonging to 
 him. In 1564 he sold timber to the corpora- 
 tion. Sheep, meat, skins, wool, and leather 
 were among the commodities in which he dealt. 
 That his business transactions were numerous 
 is proved by the frequency of his suits for 
 the recovery of debts in the local courts 
 between 1557 and 1595. His failure after 
 1580 was probably due to some unfortunate 
 speculation in corn, or to the recurrence of 
 dearths, of which dealers were forbidden by 
 statute law, strictly enforced by the town 
 council, to take any commercial advantage. 
 
XI 
 
 THE STRATFORD INDUSTRIES AND POPULATION 
 
 DESPITE the absence of strict divisions of trade, 
 and the trading by one person in many distantly- 
 related commodities, John Shakespeare's and 
 his son's contemporaries maintained the trade 
 societies initiated by their mediaeval pre- 
 decessors, and descriptions of the various 
 trading companies are still extant. These 
 societies often embraced the followers of more 
 trades than one, but each society was a very 
 close corporation. " The weaver's art," as in 
 the thirteenth century, held among them the 
 first place. There were, besides, mysteries 
 or crafts of skinners, tailors, shoemakers, 
 saddlers, glovers, whittawers (i.e. tanners of 
 white leathers), and collarmakers ; a company 
 of chandlers, soapmakers, ironmongers, and 
 bakers, survived beyond 1726. Pewterers 
 
1 12 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 butchers, brewers, drapers, grocers, carpenters, 
 and painters were also numerous in the town. 
 
 Orders were frequently passed bidding no 
 person set up any trade or occupation "before 
 he be made free of its company," and enjoin- 
 ing on every one the necessity of " sorting 
 himself into one company or another," but 
 almost all the shopkeepers, like John Shake- 
 speare, contrived to follow more than one 
 trade. Thus Adrian Ouiney, a prominent 
 mercer, dealt, together with his wife, in such 
 various commodities as ginger, red lead, 
 Southwich cloth, lime, salad oil, and deal 
 boards. This Quiney owned a house in 
 Henley Street, and was bailiff in 1572 ; his 
 grandson Richard was an intimate friend of 
 the poet, and his great - grandson Thomas 
 married Judith Shakespeare, the poet's younger 
 daughter, just before her father's death in 
 1616. Shoemaking seems to have formed a 
 more exclusive industry. Among the chief 
 shoemakers of the town was a namesake of 
 John Shakespeare, possibly a cousin, living 
 in 1590 in Bridge Street. He filled municipal 
 office as constable and ale-taster in 1585, and 
 was master of the company of shoemakers in 
 
The Stratford Industries and Population 1 1 3 
 
 1585. In 1587 he was in pecuniary difficulties, 
 and received a loan of five pounds from the 
 corporation out of Oken's Chanty a fund be- 
 queathed to the town by Thomas Oken, of War- 
 wick, in 1570, for the relief of poor tradesmen. 
 Soon afterwards he appears to have left Stratford. 
 Certain regulations like those enforced 
 upon bakers and brewers by the ale-tasters, 
 or those enforced by the tannery searchers, 
 hampered, with advantage to the consumer, 
 the freedom of trade. There were customs of 
 stretching and straining cloths, and of chalk- 
 ing and " otherwise deceitfully making them," 
 which were frequently prohibited under rigorous 
 penalties. Leather was often imperfectly tanned 
 and made hollow by divers mixtures, such as 
 obnoxious fats, so that "boots within two or 
 three days' wearing will straightway become 
 brown as a hare -back ; and, which is more, 
 fleet and run about like a dishclout ; and 
 which is most of all, hold out no water or 
 very little." Horse -hide was often sold for 
 ox-hide. Corn dealers were ordered, under 
 heavy penalties, in 1596, not to " ingross, 
 forestall, or regrate," but "to furnish the 
 market rateably and weekly " with fixed 
 
1 1 4 St rat ford-on-.- 1 "cou 
 
 quantities. These prohibitions often affected 
 traders disastrously, but their customers in- 
 variably benefited. 
 
 Trade was maintained at a normal rate of 
 briskness by the weekly markets and the 
 half-yearly fairs, the chief of which fell in 
 September. The town council strictly regu- 
 lated the procedure of the fairs, and appointed 
 to each trade a station in the streets. Thus, 
 raw hides at markets and fairs were to be laid 
 down at the cross in Rother Market. Sellers 
 of butter, cheese, all manner of white meat, 
 wick-yarn, and fruits were to set up their stalls 
 by the cross at the chapel. A site in the High 
 Street was assigned to country butchers, who 
 repaired to the town with their flesh, hides, and 
 tallow. Pewterers were ordered to "pitch" 
 their wares in Wood Street, and to pay for 
 the ground they occupied fourpence a yard. 
 Saltwains, whose owners did a thriving trade 
 in days when salted meats formed the staple 
 supply of food, were permitted to stand about 
 the cross in Rother Market. At various points 
 the victuallers were permitted to erect booths. 
 These regulations were needful to prevent 
 strife, and fines for breach of the rules often 
 
T/ie Stratford Industries and Population 1 1 5 
 
 reached as large a sum as five pounds. The 
 townsmen were anxious to secure for them- 
 selves all the advantages of these gatherings, 
 and the council often employed men armed 
 with cudgels to keep Coventry traders out of 
 the town. 
 
 These details, which are drawn from the 
 council books of the Stratford Corporation 
 from 1557 to 1607, indicate much commercial 
 activity. For a country town, we may judge 
 Stratford to have been fairly populous. We 
 know that the commissioners appointed to 
 report on the guild in 1547 stated the 
 chapel to be the chief place of worship for 
 fifteen hundred " houseling people," i.e. persons 
 accustomed to take the holy sacrament. In 
 1562 there appeared to have been about thirty 
 householders in each of the twelve streets of 
 the town, which would roughly show a popula- 
 tion of two thousand persons. Plagues, like 
 the disastrous one of 1564, were continually 
 reducing the population, but new arrivals from 
 the neighbouring villages appear to have main- 
 tained it at a fairly steady average. Small 
 farmers were finding agriculture growing year 
 by year less profitable ; the great city merchants 
 
1 1 6 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 had long been buying up arable-land to trans- 
 form it into pasture-land, sheep and wool were 
 now more profitable commodities than wheat or 
 barley or oats, and the new landlords only culti- 
 vated their estates with a view to securing the 
 largest profits. Far less labour was required 
 in tending sheep than in growing corn. 
 Agricultural labourers, therefore, found their 
 services at a discount, and flocked to the 
 towns. The yeomen too found it to their 
 advantage to move into towns, where their 
 produce could readily find purchasers. Strat- 
 ford, we have seen, attracted a rich man like 
 William Bott from Coventry, about 1560. 
 Some years before it had attracted from the 
 neighbouring village of Snitterfield John 
 Shakespeare himself. 
 
XII 
 
 JOHN SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST SETTLEMENT IN 
 
 STRATFORD THE STREETS 
 
 IT was, in all probability, in 1551, just before 
 the borough had reached the all -important 
 stage of incorporation, that John Shakespeare 
 first came to Stratford. In the Middle Ages 
 there were no Shakespeares at Stratford. But 
 in the surrounding districts families of the name 
 were numerous. Thus, among the members of 
 a guild which closely resembled the Stratford 
 guild at Knoll, near Hampton- in -Arden, 
 Shakespeares, Shaxpers, Shakespeyres, Shak- 
 speeres, called Richard, John, William, Agnes, 
 Isabella, are found repeatedly between 1464 and 
 1555. Some of these lived at Rowington, and 
 can be traced there till the close of the last 
 century ; one Thomas Shakespeare, of Rowing- 
 ton, was a disciple of Jack Cade. A family of 
 
1 1 8 Str at ford-on- Avon 
 
 Shakespeares also lived at Warwick till the 
 close of the sixteenth century, and on i6th 
 June 1579 William, one of these, according to 
 the register in the church of St. Nicholas, War- 
 wick, met his death by drowning in the river 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE BEFORE RESTORATION. 
 
 Avon. (How invaluable might this piece of evi- 
 dence prove to the monomaniacs who believe 
 that Bacon wrote Will Shakespeare's plays !) 
 
 But the poet, although doubtless col- 
 laterally related to many of these families, 
 was directly descended from none of them. 
 John Shakespeare probably belonged to a 
 
The Streets i 1 9 
 
 branch residing in the sixteenth century at 
 Snitterfield, a little village four miles to the 
 north of Stratford, and the Richard Shakespeare 
 who was a farmer, renting there of Robert 
 Arden of Wilmecote a small tenement, with a 
 little land attached to it, in 1550, was doubtless 
 John's father and the poet's grandfather. 
 
 Snitfield, or Snitterfield, had seen days 
 of commercial prosperity, but it was at this 
 time chiefly occupied by small farmers and their 
 labourers. It had a church at the time of the 
 Norman Conquest, and in 1242 a market and a 
 fair had been granted it. As a manor it had 
 successively belonged to a monastery of 
 Bordsley and to many Earls of Warwick, and it 
 came, in the sixteenth century, into the hands 
 of John Hales, the founder of a free school at 
 Coventry a very wealthy man, whose lame- 
 ness, the result of an accident, gained for him 
 the sobriquet of " Hales with the club foot." 
 In 1552 John Shakespeare was living in Henley 
 Street, Stratford, but it was not until 1556 that 
 he purchased houses in the town. In that year 
 he entered into copyhold possession of two 
 tenements, one with a garden and croft (i.e. an 
 enclosed plot of land), in Greenhill Street, at a 
 
1 20 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 rental of sixpence, and another with a garden 
 only in Henley Street. But these dwellings he 
 apparently let again, and continued to reside in 
 the house he had first occupied in Henley Street. 
 This tenement he bought, with its gardens, 
 orchards, and the house adjoining, which had 
 been previously in his occupation for business 
 purposes, for forty pounds, in 1575. It was in 
 an upper story of the former of these houses 
 that his son William was born in 1564, 
 probably on 23d April. It is of interest to note 
 that the nearest neighbours of John Shake- 
 speare were on one side John Wheler, and on 
 the other, before 1591, George Badger, a draper, 
 who was once constable of the town. It was, 
 doubtless, among their children that William 
 Shakespeare found his earliest playfellows. 
 
 It may be well to follow John Shakespeare 
 from his first entrance into the town, and take 
 a survey of it in his company. We shall thus 
 gain some knowledge of that aspect of it with 
 which his son William was familiar in his youth. 
 John Shakespeare would have originally entered 
 Stratford by the Warwick Road, near which 
 Snitterfield lies, and would have found himself 
 on arrival at the bottom of Bridge Street, by 
 
The Streets 1 2 3 
 
 the causeway leading to the stone bridge. 
 Leland, the antiquarian traveller of 1530, said 
 of the general appearance presented by Stratford 
 to a stranger, "It hath two or three long streets, 
 besides back lanes. One of the principal streets 
 leadeth from east to west, and another from 
 north to south. . . . The town is reasonable 
 well builded of timber." Passing up Bridge 
 Street, which led on from east to west, the 
 new-comer came upon a small row of shops 
 and stalls in the centre of the road known as 
 Middle Row, of which the south side was 
 Bridge Street, and the north, Back Bridge 
 Street. It was in Bridge Street, it will be' re- 
 membered, that John Shakespeare, the shoe- 
 maker, had his stall. The row was pulled down 
 less than a century ago to form the wide 
 thoroughfare of modern Bridge Street. In 
 Bridge Street stood the three chief inns of the 
 town the Swan, the Bear, and the Crown, of 
 which the latter is believed to have occupied the 
 site of the present Red Horse Hotel ; and for 
 many years a large house there, known as the 
 Cage, and probably at one time the prison, was 
 in the occupation of Henry Smith, a vintner. 
 When the top of Bridge Street was reached, it 
 
i J4 St rat ford-on- A von 
 
 divided into two roads Wood Street to the left 
 and Henley Street to the right and the latter 
 soon led into the country. Wood Street ran on 
 into Greenhill Street, afterwards Moor Town's 
 End, which, though still retaining a rural hedge, 
 was fringed with a few houses. Behind Henley 
 Street lay gravel-pits belonging to the guild, 
 which were largely used in the repair of the 
 bridge, and in rare paving operations in the 
 town ; but no inhabitant was allowed to help 
 himself there. At right angles to the west end 
 of Wood Street was Rother Market, where a 
 stone cross stood, and the borough's weekly 
 cattle market was held, and thence lanes led to 
 Evesham. 
 
 The chief or market cross of the town was at 
 the head, i.e. the west end of Bridge Street, at 
 the corner of High Street, which ran parallel to 
 Rother Market. It was a stone monument 
 covered by a low tiled shed, round which forms 
 were^placed for the accommodation of listeners 
 to the sermons, which, as at St. Paul's Cross, 
 London, were occasionally delivered there. At 
 a later date a room was placed above it, and a 
 clock above that. The open space about it 
 formed the chief market-place of the town, and 
 
&* 3 
 s ; s 
 
 I . I * I 
 
 a a si 33" 
 
 II 
 
 li! 
 
The Streets 1 2 5 
 
 its site is now occupied by a house known as 
 the Market-house. At the pump which stood 
 near it housewives were frequently to be seen 
 "washing of clothes," and hanging them up on 
 the cross to dry, or the butchers might be de- 
 tected hanging meat there ; but these practices 
 were disapproved of by the corporation, and 
 finally forbidden in 1608. The stocks, pillory, 
 and whipping-post were set up hard by the cross. 
 From the high or market cross, the street 
 that ran in a south-westerly direction introduced 
 the visitor to the most substantial buildings of 
 the town, and from the householders there the 
 bailiff was usually chosen. In other parts of 
 Stratford most of the houses were detached ; 
 here there were a few vacant spaces, but the 
 houses mostly adjoined each other. The first 
 portion was the High Street, and mainly con- 
 sisted of shops. The second portion was 
 Chapel Street, and among the large private 
 houses there stood New Place, which in 1597 
 became William Shakespeare's property. The 
 lower end of the street was known as Church 
 Street, and at the corner, facing New Place, 
 was the chapel of the guild, succeeded by the 
 school, guildhall, gaol, and almshouses. Above 
 
126 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 the chapel-porch was a third cross, and near at 
 hand a second pump, which was removed by 
 the council's order in 1595, and its site filled 
 with gravel and rubbish. Turning to the 
 left at the end of the street, Old Town was 
 reached, where gardens and unoccupied land 
 surrounded several large houses. John Hall, 
 one of the poet's sons - in - law, had a resi- 
 dence there early in the seventeenth century. 
 This road ultimately led to the churchyard and 
 to the parish church, by the banks of the river, 
 41 a fair large piece of work," as Leland describes 
 it, "... at the south end of the town." 
 Over against the church was a stately residence 
 of the Combes, formerly the College of Strat- 
 ford, and but a little way down the road that 
 ran between its grounds and the cemetery were 
 the river-mill and the mill-bridge, which was 
 not pulled down till late in the present century. 
 By the river, near the church, doubtless stood 
 the cucking-stool for the scolding wives, and a 
 field belonging to the town in the neighbour- 
 hood was known as the bank-croft, or bancroft, 
 where drovers and farmers of the town were 
 allowed to take their cattle to pasture for an 
 hour a day. "All horses, geldings, mares, 
 
The Streets 127 
 
 swine, geese, ducks, and other cattle " found 
 there contrary to this regulation were impounded 
 by the beadle in the pinfold, which was situated 
 near at hand. 
 
 The back lanes of which Leland wrote 
 stretched from Rother Market to the river, 
 and intersected High Street and its con- 
 tinuations. The chief of them was Ely Street, 
 or Swine Street, joining High Street at 
 its junction with Chapel Street, and running 
 to the Avon as Sheep, or Ship, Street. 
 Parallel with these roads were Scholar's Lane, 
 or Tinker's Lane, crossing Chapel Street by 
 New Place, and thence to the river bearing the 
 name of Chapel Lane, or Dead Lane, or Walker 
 Street. In both Tinker's and Chapel Lanes 
 were gravel-pits, digging in which was strictly 
 fordidden within eight feet of the road. Many 
 cottages in the smaller thoroughfares did service 
 as alehouses. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE CONSTRUCTION AND FURNITURE OF THE 
 HOUSES THE GARDENS 
 
 THE visitor to modern Stratford will learn from 
 this account of the streets of the town in the 
 sixteenth century how kindly time has dealt 
 with their names. Nor of the outward appear- 
 ances of the houses in Shakespeare's day will 
 his own observation fail to give him a good 
 conception. The majority of them, two stories 
 high, were constructed of timber beams, set 
 crosswise far apart, with the panels or inter- 
 stices of lath and plaster. The roofs were usually 
 of thatch, with dormer windows nestling there 
 when the front wall did not rise into steep 
 gables. Porches shaded the door ; often a 
 narrow, slanting, tiled or wooden roof ran 
 along the house front over the window on the 
 ground floor, and beneath this kind of shed, 
 
K 
 
The Gardens 1 3 1 
 
 called a pentice or penthouse, the smaller 
 traders set a stall for their goods. The better 
 houses in High Street and Chapel Street, like 
 New Place, were of timber and brick, instead 
 of plaster, and Shakespeare appears to have 
 rebuilt the greater part of his residence with 
 stone, of which the College was wholly con- 
 structed. Tiled roofs were characteristic of 
 such buildings, but at times an owner of con- 
 servative tendencies would insist on the superi- 
 ority of thatch, like Walter Roche, who moved 
 into a house in Chapel Street in 1582, and 
 replaced the tiles with thatch. Occasionally 
 the woodwork in the front of the houses, as in 
 the surviving example in High Street, built 
 in 1596, was carefully carved with fleurs de 
 Us and interlacing designs, and the oriel 
 windows and overhanging beams were sup- 
 ported by carved brackets. Chapel Lane, one 
 of the streets well within the town, and others 
 in its outlying districts, like the rural parts 
 of Henley and Greenhill Streets, were 
 chiefly occupied by barns, where the grain 
 from the neighbouring country, largely culti- 
 vated by the townsmen, was stored. These 
 were constructed like the smaller dwelling- 
 
i 3 2 St rat ford-on- A von 
 
 houses of timber, lath, and plaster, and 
 were invariably thatched. 
 
 The gardens of the houses were separated 
 from each other by mud walls, which were con- 
 structed of clay, road-sand, or mud, and usually 
 thatched at the top. In constant need of repair, 
 they afforded little protection against robbers, 
 who often forced their way through them. The 
 land about the houses was very generally 
 planted with fruit-trees, and the orchard about 
 the guild buildings was noted for its plums and 
 apples. The garden of New Place was long 
 famed for its mulberries. Pleasure gardens 
 were an exclusive characteristic of the great 
 manor-houses in the surrounding country, but 
 it is certain that flowers and a few cooking and 
 medicinal plants were cultivated in the small 
 plots in the town, and it is quite possible that 
 more ambitious attempts at horticulture were 
 made in the exceptionally large gardens of 
 New Place and the College. Elm-trees were a 
 very common feature of the Stratford gardens. 
 In 1582 it was reported to the council that of 
 four backyards in Dead or Chapel Lane the 
 street where the barns predominated there 
 were eleven elms and one ash-tree growing in 
 
The Gardens 133 
 
 one of them, twenty-six elms in another, one in 
 the third, and four in the fourth. Several 
 gardens in Henley Street could boast of at 
 least four elms, and elm -trees marking the 
 borough's boundaries on the Birmingham and 
 Evesham roads were surveyed with much 
 ceremony in Rogation Week year after year 
 by the town officers. Thus the town was well 
 shaded in summer, and he who would learn the 
 rudiments of forestry had little need to go far 
 afield. Shakespeare frequently indicates a sig- 
 nificant familiarity with the pruning of trees 
 and the simpler operations of horticulture. 
 His gardener in Richard II has no dilettante 
 acquaintance with the. method of cutting off 
 "the heads of too fast-growing sprays," or of 
 rooting away 
 
 The noisome weeds, that without profit suck 
 The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. 
 
 At the proper season he wounds 
 
 The bark, the skin of our fruit-trees ; 
 Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood, 
 With too much riches it confound itself. 
 
 Others of Shakespeare's characters give very 
 adequate explanation of the gardener's hatred 
 of weeds, of " hateful dock, rough thistles, 
 
134 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 kexies, burs," of "tooth'd briars, sharp furzes, 
 pricking gorse and thorns"; they well knew the 
 evil work wrought by u envious worms and 
 caterpillars," and were not ignorant of the uses 
 of manure for those roots 
 
 That shall first spring and be most delicate. 
 
 lago's specious philosophy finds its most vigor- 
 ous expression in his comparison of "our 
 bodies" to "our gardens, to the which our wills 
 are gardeners," where we may "plant nettles or 
 sow lettuce ; set hyssop and weed up thyme ; 
 supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it 
 with many." This practical knowledge was 
 doubtless acquired while the poet was working 
 with his father in the garden or orchard about 
 his home in Henley Street, and was developed 
 later in the "great garden" about his own 
 residence in Chapel Street. 
 
 The interior of the Elizabethan houses of 
 Stratford had little of what we understand by 
 comfort. In the smaller houses for a long 
 period chimneys were rare. A mere hole in 
 the wall allowed the smoke to escape. In 
 many cases the internal space was not par- 
 titioned off. The ground floor formed a single 
 
The Gardens 1 3 7 
 
 "hall," and "each one made his fire against 
 a reredos in the hall, where he dined and 
 dressed his meat." In the case of the larger 
 houses, the hall was likewise the chief apart- 
 ment, and a single loft above, sometimes divided, 
 formed the only sleeping -room, but here there 
 was usually a parlour and another chamber cut 
 off from the hall and cellars and outhouses 
 devoted to the buttery. A change for the 
 better came over Stratford in the matter of 
 chimneys towards the close of the century. 
 They were added to many of the little tene- 
 ments of Middle Row, and John Shakespeare's 
 house in Henley Street could certainly boast of 
 one of them. A chimney was constructed for the 
 kitchen at the guild chambers, and in 1582 an 
 order was passed by the town council that 
 "Walter Hill, dwelling in Rother Market, and 
 all the other inhabitants of the borough, shall, 
 before St. James's Day, 3Oth April, make suffi- 
 cient chimneys," under pain of a fine of ten 
 shillings. To the absence of chimneys the 
 continual recurrence of severe fires at Stratford 
 in the sixteenth century was mainly due. 
 
 Of the furniture of such a house as that in 
 which the poet was born in Henley Street, 
 
1 3 8 Sir at ford -o)i- A von 
 
 we obtain an adequate account from an in- 
 ventory made in 1592, on the death of Henry 
 Field, tanner, a near neighbour of John Shake- 
 speare. John Shakespeare was his chief ex- 
 ecutor. In the hall there was ''one table upon 
 a joined frame, five small joint stools, a small 
 chair, a wainscot bench, and painted cloths," 
 i.e. hangings of cloth or canvas painted in oil. 
 There was evidently a stove there, doubtless 
 the only one in the house, for andirons, fire 
 shovel, tongs, pothooks, and pothangers are 
 among the furnishings. In the parlour, the 
 sitting-room by day and bedroom apparently 
 by night, was a small table upon a frame, two 
 joint stools, two chairs, a press, a joined bed, 
 and a small plank. " Item, three painted cloths, 
 one feather bed, one flock bed, two bolsters, 
 one pillow, one bed covering of yellow and 
 green, four old blankets, and one old carpet." 
 A long chest in the room contained coarse 
 sheets, coarse table cloths, coarse wipers (i.e. 
 dusters), and table napkins. In a shorter 
 coffer were three pairs of flaxen sheets, one 
 pair of hempen sheets, one flaxen table cloth, 
 another of hemp, half a dozen table napkins 
 of flax and one of hemp, two diaper napkins, 
 
The Gardens 141 
 
 and four pillow-cases of flax. In the buttery 
 were dishes, pewter platters, saucers, porridge 
 dishes, salt cellars, candlesticks, a quart pot, a 
 pint pot, and two flower pots. Of brass there 
 were three pots, a little pan, six skimmers, a 
 basin, one chaffing dish, a frying pan, and a 
 dripping pan. There were also in the buttery 
 four spits, great and small, and a pair of cup- 
 boards. In the chamber next the parlour were 
 a truckle bed which could be rolled up by day, 
 an old coverlet, an old bolster, an old blanket, 
 a little round table, and two old chests. In a 
 little room adjoining were more beds, coffers, 
 and a press of boards with shelves. In the 
 kitchen house were six barrels of beer, five 
 looms, four pails, four forms, three stools, one 
 bolting hutch, two " skips" for taking up yeast, 
 one vat, a table board, two pairs of trestles, and 
 two strikes (i.e. bushel measures), besides an 
 axe, shovels, and spade. In an upper chamber 
 were more beds and bedding, a cheese-crate, 
 malt, malt shovels, a beam with scales, two 
 dozen trenchers, and one dozen pewter spoons. 
 In the yard were bundles of laths, loads of 
 wood, buckets, cord and windlass for the well, 
 and a watchman's bill. 
 
142 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 Another house, the property of a wooldriver, 
 of which John Shakespeare also made an in- 
 ventory, contained a similar array of tables, 
 chairs, beds, bedding, painted cloths, and brass 
 and pewter implements. There were also three 
 green cushions for a window seat, a curtain 
 for the window, and pots of earth and glass. 
 The presence of brewing utensils and looms 
 in both instances show that it was customary 
 to brew ale and weave wool at home. But 
 what gaps suggest themselves in these in- 
 ventories to the modern reader ! Henry 
 Field's wealth of table napkins, which were 
 used freely after the meal was done, emphasise 
 the total absence of knives and forks. Jugs, 
 basins, and towels are conspicuously rare. 
 
 It is noticeable, too, how the furnitures of 
 the sleeping-rooms and sitting-rooms encroached 
 upon one another, and how gradually the 
 modern distinction grew up. The cooking was 
 chiefly done in the hall, upon which the front 
 door opened ; and there the pothooks and 
 hangers were always kept. The tables, as a 
 rule, were made with flaps, to " turn up." 
 Capulet, when he wants room for the dancers 
 in his hall, shouts out to his servants to " turn 
 
The Gardens 143 
 
 the tables up." The painted cloths, or arras, 
 were features prominent in all Elizabethan 
 houses, whether rich or poor. They were nailed 
 on the walls of the guildhall, and even in the 
 smaller cottages they were met with, bearing in 
 in all cases " wise sayings painted upon them," 
 and frequently rough representations of Bible 
 stories, especially of Dives and Lazarus and of 
 "the pamper'd Prodigal." Shakespeare writes 
 of these hangings in " Lucrece " 
 
 Who fears a sentence, or an old man's saw, 
 Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe. 
 
 Orlando taunts Jaques with having studied his 
 cynical questions from " right painted cloth." 
 Despite the scantiness of bedroom furniture, 
 there was some attempt at decoration. The 
 bed coverings, or counterpanes there was one 
 of yellow and green belonging to Henry Field 
 were often richly embroidered, like those in 
 Gremio's city house. The carpet owned by 
 Henry Field was doubtless to cover the table, 
 not to lie beneath it. Grumio, Petruchio's 
 servant, sees " the carpets laid" for supper on 
 the return home of his master and new mistress. 
 The floors were strewn with rushes, or occasion- 
 ally with sweet- smelling herbs. A Dutch 
 
144 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 physician, visiting London in 1560, notes how 
 "the chambers and parlours strewn over with 
 sweet herbs refreshed me." Grumio bids the 
 rushes be strewn in Petruchio's house ; and 
 Romeo bids wantons, light of heart, 
 
 Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels. 
 
 Shakespeare, like his own Gremio, clearly took 
 careful notice of the 
 
 Pewter and brass, and all things that belong 
 To house, or housekeeping. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE TOWN 
 
 SANITARY arrangements within the house were 
 obviously not much heeded. The clay floors, 
 whether or no strewn with rushes, attracted all 
 manner of refuse, and were rarely swept. The 
 well in the garden and the town pump might have 
 formed an adequate water supply ; but the uses 
 of water were not generally known. The mud 
 walls between the gardens were not conducive 
 to cleanliness. Very few of the ordinary laws 
 of health were, in fact, observed by the house- 
 holders ; and the corporation made very feeble 
 attempts to enforce such of them as, when 
 neglected, created very obvious nuisances. 
 Frequent penalties were imposed on those who 
 failed to scour and clean the gutters and ditches 
 before their residences. But the difficulty of 
 disposing of household refuse was very com- 
 
1 4 8 Sir atford-on- Avon 
 
 monly met by "laying it in the streets and 
 lanes/' or in these ditches and gutters. John 
 Shakespeare appears to have been an habitual 
 offender in this respect. His name first appears 
 in any record of the municipality as owing a 
 fine of twelvepence for having made a dirt heap 
 with his neighbours Adrian Quiney and Henry 
 Reynolds in Henley Street. Six years later 
 he " stood amerced" in fourpence for failing to 
 keep his gutter clean. In 1563, and subse- 
 quent years, the exposure of domestic rubbish 
 in the street rendered the offender liable to a 
 forfeit of three shillings and fourpence, and 
 "the tenant that renteth the ground" upon 
 which the " muckhill " stood, to one of ten shill- 
 ings. Six places in the town were appointed 
 for the amassing of the filth in legalised " muck- 
 hills." One stood in Ship Street, another in 
 Scholar's Lane, a third in Henley Street, but 
 the chief was in Chapel Lane. They were, in 
 almost all cases, at the rural end of the smaller 
 streets ; but as they were to be removed only 
 "twice a year that is to say, before the feast 
 of Pentecost, and near about Michaelmas," they 
 were sufficiently near to human habitations 
 to make them a constant source of danger 
 
The Sanitary Condition of the Toiun i 5 i 
 
 to health and life. Butchers, it is true, were 
 forbidden to use them, and were ordered, under 
 a penalty of twenty shillings, to take their 
 garbage out of the town at nine o'clock each 
 evening. 
 
 Chapel Lane, which ran by the side of New 
 Place, was the filthiest part of the town. The 
 small cottagers there habitually neglected the 
 council's orders, and dispersed refuse in the 
 open road, until it often became impassable. 
 John Sadler, a miller, insisted on winnowing 
 his peas there, and leaving the chaff about. 
 But this was a very innocent offence. Most 
 of his neighbours kept pigs, who, in spite of 
 repeatedly published prohibitions, were allowed 
 to wander at their own sweet wills. If a pigs- 
 cote or pigsty was built, it was on the lane's 
 pathway, and fines could not break the house- 
 holders of the practice. John Rogers, the 
 vicar of Stratford, living by the guild chapel, 
 in 1613 was remonstrated with by the council 
 for an offence of this kind, and his irrelevant 
 defence was to the effect that "about my house 
 there is no place of convenience without much 
 annoyance to the chapel," which was next door, 
 and "how far," he proceeded, "the breeding 
 
1 52 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 of such creatures is needful to poor house- 
 keepers, I refer myself to those that can equal 
 my charge," i.e. have as many expenses as I. 
 The town council issued an order in 1611 
 " that no swine be permitted to be in the open 
 street of this town unless they have a keeper 
 with them, and then only while they are in driv- 
 ing within this borough, upon pain for every 
 strayer of fourpence." But this produced little 
 effect. Every time Shakespeare left his house 
 in New Place (for the doorway was in Chapel 
 Lane), he crossed the most noisome thorough- 
 fare in the town ; and Mr. H alii well- PhiUipps's 
 suggestion that his death in 1616, like that of 
 many of his townsmen, was due to the tainted 
 atmosphere of his environment, seems only too 
 probable. And Stratford saw no rapid im- 
 provement in the matter. Garrick described 
 the town in 1769 as "the most dirty, unseemly, 
 ill-pav'd, wretched -looking town in all Britain." 
 Paternal as was the tone of the town council's 
 edicts, it never supplemented the householder's 
 neglect of cleanliness by any really adequate 
 provisions. It delegated the duty of keeping 
 the streets clean to the townsfolk, and as they 
 failed to perform this function the streets re- 
 
The Sanitary Condition of the Town i 5 3 
 
 mained dirty. It alone undertook the cleans- 
 ing of the bridge, the market-place, and the 
 space before the chapel door and guildhall ; 
 but in these days of the glorification of 
 hygiene there is a ludicrous ring about all 
 the details of the arrangements made for this 
 object. For the sweeping of the market-place, 
 in Shakespeare's day, a widow named Baker 
 was employed at a yearly salary of six shillings 
 and eightpence, and she was provided, at the 
 municipal expense, with a shovel, a broomstick, 
 and twigs of trees. The duty of sweeping the 
 bridge was entrusted to a man named Raven, 
 who at times secured the additional services of 
 the widow Baker. The chapel was rarely de- 
 filed by water ; but on the occasion of the 
 repair of its roof in 1604, Anthony Rees and 
 his wife with goodwife Wilson were directed to 
 sweep away the cobwebs and to wash the seats. 
 Fresh rushes were occasionally laid in the 
 council chamber and guildhall ; and the floor 
 of the latter was renewed at intervals with 
 clay. 
 
 There was little pavement about the town. 
 The market-place, in fact, alone was paved. 
 But the bridge and the causeway w r ere kept 
 
1 54 Stratford-on-AvoH 
 
 in fair order by the liberal sprinkling of gravel 
 from the guild pits. In other parts of the town 
 " logs and blocks " lay about the roadways, 
 "to the nuisance of the king's liege people." 
 Arrangements were made for a short time in 
 winter for the lighting of the town. In 1557 it 
 was ordained that every alderman and " capital " 
 burgess, "between I5th December and twenty 
 days after Christmas, from five to eight o'clock 
 in the evening, have a lanthorn hanging in the 
 street before his door, and there a candle burn- 
 ing to give light," under pain to forfeit twelve- 
 pence in default. In 1617 the dates ran from 
 ist November to 2d February. 
 
XV 
 
 PLAGUES, FIRES, FLOODS, AND FAMINES 
 
 THE whole town had to pay heavy penalties 
 of disease for its indifference to sanitary pre- 
 cautions. The plague, a scourge of Christen- 
 dom, whose horrors are barely paralleled by 
 the fatal progresses now made from time to 
 time in Europe by the Asiatic cholera, paid 
 Stratford repeated visits. Few decades passed 
 without its appearance among the townspeople. 
 The infection rapidly passed from house to 
 house, with its burning fevers and icy shiver- 
 ings, its cureless pains and fatal languors. No 
 remedy was known to produce much effect on 
 the course of the disease. Bleedings and 
 draughts of the plague - water were of no 
 avail. Sorrel-water and verjuice, with oranges 
 and lemons, allayed for a time the patient's 
 thirst, and he was advised to take often, and 
 
i 5 6 Sir at ford-on- A von 
 
 in small quantities, light food like rabbit or 
 chicken. 
 
 Cleanliness was enjoined, with rare success, to 
 prevent the spread of the contagion. Windows 
 were to be kept open, and hung with green 
 boughs of oak and willow ; the floors to be 
 strewn with sorrel, lettuce, roses, and oak- 
 leaves, or with vinegar and rose-water ; sandal- 
 wood and musk, aloes, amber, and cinnamon 
 were to burn about the houses six hours a day. 
 The lighting of fires of rosemary and bay was 
 the sole precaution habitually taken in small 
 cottages at these troublous times (see Froude's 
 History, vol. vii. pp. 74, 75). 
 
 The claims of death rarely remained 
 unsatisfied : high and low fell before the 
 pestilence ; and graves in the churchyards 
 stood always open to receive new dwellers, 
 as soon as they had yielded their last breath. 
 The most fearful epidemic that Stratford knew 
 came in the summer of 1564, when William 
 Shakespeare was two or three months old. 
 One-seventh of the inhabitants of Stratford was 
 swept away and consigned to the cemetery on 
 the banks of the Avon. John Shakespeare's 
 house was happily spared, and he did his duty 
 
Plag^les, Fires, Floods, and Famines 159 
 
 to his poor neighbours. The town council 
 feared to meet in their chamber, but frequently 
 assembled in the garden adjoining to discuss 
 measures for the relief of the poor. Many 
 twelvepences John Shakespeare and his fellow- 
 councillors bestowed on " those that be visited " 
 between August and October of the fatal year. 
 Of the terrors of the day one tradition pre- 
 serves a vivid picture. Clopton manor-house 
 was attacked. Charlotte Clopton, a young girl 
 of the family, whose portrait shows fair blue 
 eyes and pale golden hair falling in wavy ring- 
 lets on her neck, sickened of the disease, and, 
 to all appearance, died. The body was hurried 
 into the family tomb beneath Stratford church. 
 Before a week had passed another of the house 
 followed her, and was borne to the same vault. 
 And there the bearers saw by their torches, 
 on the steps leading from the church to the 
 sepulchral chamber, Charlotte Clopton, in her 
 grave-clothes, leaning against the wall. She 
 was dead then, but it was clear that the plague had 
 spared her: after she had been laid in the gloomy 
 vault there had been a terrible struggle for life. 
 Juliet's fears had a very real justification. Char- 
 lotte Clopton had been stifled in the vault, 
 
1 60 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, 
 And there died strangled ere [assistance] came. 
 
 Perhaps she had awoke 
 
 Early what with loathsome smells, 
 And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, 
 That living mortals, hearing them, run mad : 
 
 and had, as Juliet foretold, become distraught, 
 Environed with all these hideous fears. 
 
 Fire was another danger to life and property 
 with which the municipal council failed to deal 
 adequately. Towards the close of the century, 
 in 1598, two severe fires visited the town, and 
 so many houses were reported to be " decayed 
 with fire," that a special exemption from the 
 national subsidies was granted the inhabitants. 
 Barns seemed to have suffered repeatedly. 
 The council, by its order of 1582, bidding all 
 householders to erect chimneys for their houses, 
 attempted to stem the fiery tide. They 
 purchased five hooks as early as 1576 for pull- 
 ing down threatened buildings, and one seems 
 to have always been hung at the entrance to 
 the guildhall. A wise precaution was contained 
 in an edict enjoining on every burgess the 
 necessity of having one leathern bucket, to be 
 
Plagues, Fires, Floods, and Famines 161 
 
 used in case of fire, and on every alderman that 
 of having two. But, none the less, the town 
 continued to suffer, and parts of Henley Street 
 seem often to have been aflame. 
 
 A third danger to Stratford was less pre- 
 ventible. The Avon, as it still continues to do, 
 often flooded its banks, and it did no little 
 injury from time to time to the bridge. Stone 
 to fill a hole in the bridge was a frequent item 
 of expenditure in the town's accounts. In 
 1598 William Shakespeare, probably engaged 
 in restoring New Place, sold for that purpose 
 one load of stone to the corporation for ten- 
 pence. A very disastrous flood visited Strat- 
 ford in 1588, and in the parish register of the 
 neighbouring village of Wei ford a picturesque 
 account may be found of its coming. 
 
 On the 1 8th day of July 1588 (runs the register), in the 
 morning, there happened about eight of the clock, in Avon, 
 such a sudden flood, as carried away all the hay about 
 Avon. Old Father Porter, buried about four years past, 
 being then a hundred and nine years of age, never knew it 
 so high by a yard and a half. Dwelling in the mill-house, 
 he, in former times, knew it under his bed, but this flood 
 was a yard and a half in the house, and came in so suddenly 
 that John Perry's wife was so amazed that she sate still till 
 she was almost drowned, and was wellnigh beside herself, 
 and so far amiss that she did not know her own child when 
 
 M 
 
1 6 2 Stratford-on-A von 
 
 it was brought in to her. It brake down Grange Mill ; the 
 crack thereof was heard at Holditch. It brake up sundry 
 houses in Warwick town, and carried away their bread, beef, 
 cheese, butter, pots, pans, and provisions, and took away u n 
 carts out of one town, and three wains, with the furniture of 
 Mr. Thomas Lucy, and broke both ends of Stratford Bridge. 
 That [flood] drowned three furlongs of corn in Thetford 
 field. It was so high at the height that it unthatched the 
 mill, and stocked up a number of willows and sallows, 
 and did take away one [of] Sales's daughters of Grafton, out 
 of Hillborough meadow, removing of the hay-cock, that she 
 had no shift but to get upon the top of a hay-cock, and was 
 carried thereupon by the water a quarter of a mile wellnigh, till 
 she came to the very last bank of the stream, and there was 
 taken into a boat, and all was like to be drowned, but that 
 another boat coming rescued them soon. Three men going 
 over Stratford Bridge, when they came to the middle of the 
 bridge they could not go forward, and then returning 
 presently, could not get back, for the water was so risen ; it 
 rose a yard every hour from eight to four, that it came into 
 the parsonage of Welford Orchard, and filled the fish-pool, 
 and took away the sign -post at the Bear; it carried away 
 Edward Butler's cart, which was soon beneath Bidford, 
 and it came into the vicarage of Weston, and made Adam 
 Sandars thence remove, and took away half a hundred 
 pounds of hay. 
 
 So quaint a list of disasters well illustrates 
 Shakespeare's own account, in Midsummer 
 Nights Dream, of how the winds- 
 Falling in the land, 
 
 Have every pelting river made so proud, 
 
Plagues, Fires, Floods, and Famines 165 
 
 That they have overborne their continents : 
 The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, 
 The ploughman lost his sweat ; and the green corn 
 Hath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard. . . . 
 
 It was doubtless at Stratford, too, that Shake- 
 speare learnt how in such seasons " the moon, 
 the governess of floods, . . . washes all the 
 
 air, 
 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound. 
 
 Besides the dangers of plagues, fires, and 
 floods, Stratford ran sometimes the risk of 
 starvation. Grain at times was so scarce 
 that the corporation had to distribute corn 
 on its own account, and made an inventory 
 of all to be found in the town. One of the 
 most serious dearths occurred in 1598, and 
 " the note of corn and malt taken " at the 
 time is extant. John Shakespeare appears 
 to have owned none, but his son, at New 
 Place, had as much as ten quarters, a quantity 
 which few of his neighbours exceeded. The 
 laws enforced against grain-dealers, prohibiting 
 them from buying up corn to sell at famine 
 prices in times of dearth, broke undoubtedly 
 the violence of these visitations, but they did 
 not come without forcing many to suffer. 
 
1 66 Stratford-on- Avon 
 
 These details will help us to form a good 
 working conception of the conditions of business 
 life led by Shakespeare's father, and by the 
 majority of the poet's contemporaries and 
 fellow - townsmen. We can picture John 
 Shakespeare of a morning wrapping his gown 
 about him, and cursing the pigs that impede his 
 progress, as he hurries past the market -cross 
 down High Street, when the clock strikes 
 nine, on his way to a meeting of the town 
 council in the guildhall or council chamber, 
 We can watch him on a market day purchas- 
 ing pewter ware in Wood Street or salt in 
 Rother Market, and at the fair driving a brisk 
 trade on his own account in wool, corn, and 
 gloves. Now and then, by means of tallies, 
 he reckons up his gains and losses, and laments 
 the slackness of trade and the perversity of 
 debtors and creditors. He takes an intelligent 
 interest in his garden and orchard, and sees 
 the apples stored in autumn. He visits his 
 namesake in Bridge Street when he is in need 
 of boots, and is on intimate terms with Richard 
 Sponer, the painter, of Chapel Lane, who has 
 been persecuted by the town bully, William 
 Bott. Every night in winter he carefully 
 
Plagues, Fires, Floods, and Famines 167 
 
 hangs a lamp out before his house, and before 
 nine o'clock he and his household are at rest. 
 Sometimes he is summoned later by cries of 
 fire, and has to work his two buckets in behalf 
 of a neighbour's barn or house. He cannot 
 write nor read, but he has a distant respect 
 for book-learning. Nothing indeed that he 
 does or has done, amid his serious and prosaic 
 avocations, seems likely to invest his children 
 with anything akin to the genius of poetry. 
 Nevertheless, while he is still striving with 
 declining success to make a living out of the 
 wool and gloves that he keeps stored in his 
 house in Henley Street, it is his eldest son 
 who becomes the brightest of all lights in 
 the firmament of English poetry. 
 
XVI 
 
 DOMESTIC AND SCHOOL DISCIPLINE 
 
 A STRICT discipline, similar in principle to 
 that enforced by the town council upon the 
 burgesses, was maintained by the sober citizens 
 within their own dwellings over their servants 
 and children. From his earliest infancy we 
 can roughly trace the stern habits of life in 
 which attempts were made to train William 
 Shakespeare. The ''Books of Nurture" fre- 
 quently published in the sixteenth century 
 illustrate the manners which the middle-class 
 father strove to impress upon his sons. The 
 boy was to rise at six o'clock in the morning, 
 carefully to attend to the more necessary 
 portions of his toilet, and to brush his clothes. 
 At meals he had to lay the table and wait 
 on his parents, in whose presence he was not 
 to talk or laugh but in moderation. After his 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 1 7 1 
 
 parents rose from the table, he might say his 
 grace and take his own meal. His modes of 
 eating and drinking were carefully regulated. 
 In the streets he had to take off his cap to 
 his elders. He was to go to bed early, and 
 say prayers morning and evening. The father 
 was not to be sparing in the use of the rod. 
 
 John Shakespeare and his wife Mary Arden, 
 who was related to a good county family, 
 and, perhaps, was herself well educated, were 
 evidently determined to give their eldest son 
 as good an education as Stratford afforded. 
 Doubtless the clerk of the town, like the clerk 
 of Chatham in 2 Henry VI, who is detected 
 by Cade's followers "setting of boys' copies," 
 was capable of teaching the boys the horn- 
 book such writing and reading as enabled 
 them to gain admission to the grammar 
 school. It was probably about 1571 that 
 William proceeded for the first time to the 
 schoolhouse. 
 
 The dissolution of the Stratford guild did 
 not involve, as we have seen, the dissolution 
 of the old school of the guild. On the margin 
 of the report made by the King's Com- 
 missioners in 1548 a royal officer wrote, 
 
1 7 2 Stratford-on-A von 
 
 11 Continuetur schola quousque," and the school 
 entered soon afterwards on a new lease of life. 
 In June 1553 it was created by royal charter, 
 "The King's New School of Stratford-upon- 
 Avon " "a certain free grammar school, to 
 consist of one master and teacher, hereafter 
 for ever to endure." The schoolmaster was 
 to be appointed by the Earl of Warwick, to 
 whom the manor and borough had been 
 granted when the Bishop of Worcester's claim 
 was ignored, and he was to receive twenty 
 pounds a year, which was to be defrayed out of 
 "a gift of certain lands to the value yearly of 
 xlvi/z. lijs. \}d. ob. [^46 : 3 : 2^]," made by 
 the king to the burgesses. This ''school 
 at Stratord," we learn from Strype, " was the 
 last this prince founded." The endowment 
 is not yet exhausted, although the corporation, 
 after the duke's execution, took to itself the 
 government of the school ; and the boys of 
 Stratford still enjoy the advantages of Edward 
 VI's foundation. The schoolhouse stood as 
 it stands to-day with slight alteration, under 
 the shadow of the guild chapel, forming part 
 of the buildings of the old guild in Church 
 Street. The schoolrooms were reached from 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 1 7 3 
 
 an inner yard by an external staircase " roofed 
 with tile," which was demolished about fifty 
 years ago. Above them was a " soller " 
 a still higher story or garret which was 
 taken down in 1568. The fabric of the house, 
 which had seen service in the days of the 
 ancient guild, was old and in need of repair 
 in Shakespeare's boyhood; and in 1568 it 
 underwent several amendments. A few years 
 later the rooms became uninhabitable and 
 underwent further renovation. While they 
 were under repair the master had to take his 
 pupils into the chapel itself. This was pro- 
 bably not an uncommon practice. Shake- 
 speare likened Malvolio to "a pedant that 
 keeps school i' the church." But in 1595 the 
 holding of school in church or chapel was 
 forbidden for the future. 
 
 To this school the children of the Stratford 
 freemen were sent, with rare exceptions. It 
 was one of those " common schools" that 
 received, according to a contemporary account, 
 "all sorts of children to be taught, be their 
 parents never so poor and the boys never so 
 unapt." And from Henley Street, some three 
 hundred yards away, came each morning, from 
 
1 74 Straiford-on-Avon 
 
 1571 onwards, William, the seven-year-old son 
 of John Shakespeare. His description penned 
 thirty years later of 
 
 The whining schoolboy, with his satchel, 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school, 
 
 is doubtless a reminiscence of this daily walk. 
 
 The education supplied at a free day-school in 
 Elizabethan England depended largely on the 
 attainments of the schoolmaster, and these varied 
 very much in quality with times and places. 
 According to many contemporary writers, bad 
 schoolmasters prevailed. " It is a general plague 
 and complaint of the whole land," writes Pea- 
 cham in the seventeenth century, " for, for one 
 discreet and able teacher, you shall find twenty 
 ignorant and careless ; who (among so many 
 fertile and delicate wits as England affordeth), 
 whereas they make one scholar, they mar 
 ten ;" and Roger Ascham had written some years 
 before in the same strain. In many towns the 
 office of schoolmaster was conferred on "an 
 ancient citizen of no great learning." Some- 
 times a quack conjuring doctor, like Pinch, of 
 the Comedy of Errors, held the post. An 
 eccentric master of St. Alban's School in 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 1 7 5 
 
 the middle of the sixteenth century paid so 
 much deference to the parents of his pupils, 
 that "by no entreaty would [he] teach any 
 scholar he had further than his father had 
 learned before them." He argued that they 
 would then prove saucy rogues and control their 
 fathers. From the comparatively small number 
 of burgesses at Stratford who could sign their 
 names in the middle of the sixteenth century, we 
 may infer that William Dalam, the last master 
 appointed by the ancient guild, was no very 
 zealous or capable performer of the duties of the 
 office. But the far smaller average of marks- 
 men in subsequent years proves that Dalam's 
 successors were fairly discreet and able peda- 
 gogues. The burgesses seem to have carefully 
 selected them, and to have taken them on trial 
 for two years at a time, and Walter Roche, 
 appointed in 1570, Thomas Hunt in 1577, 
 and Thomas Jenkins in 1580, apparently 
 satisfied all the burgesses' requirements. 
 
 The scholiasts have waxed warm in contro- 
 versy over the educational equipment bestowed 
 on the poet at Stratford ; and while one has 
 denied him the veriest elementary knowledge of 
 the classics, another has credited him with the 
 
1 76 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 acquirements of a Bentley or a Person. There 
 is every reason to believe that Masters Roche 
 and Hunt gave young Shakespeare and his 
 schoolfellows a firm grasp of Latin at least, and 
 led them from the accidence and Lilly's grammar 
 through conversation books and colloquies, like 
 the Sent entice Pueriles, up to Horace, Seneca, 
 and Plautus, and " the rest of the finest Latin 
 poets," of whom conscientious masters were 
 advised by contemporary writers on education 
 to give their pupils a taste. It is just possible 
 that at the most efficient country schools the 
 more advanced scholars, before the patronage of 
 some neighbouring magnate or the bestowal of 
 a college scholarship enabled them to proceed 
 to the universities, learnt something of the 
 Greek grammar, with the Greek Testament, and 
 I socrates or Demosthenes. But Shakespeare 
 was doubtless withdrawn from school, in con- 
 sequence of his father's pecuniary misfortunes, 
 before he enjoyed these advantages. 
 
 In the pedantic Holofernes of Love 's Labour ' s 
 Lost, Shakespeare has carefully portrayed the 
 best type of the rural schoolmaster, as in Pinch he 
 has portrayed the worst, and the freshness and 
 fulness of detail imparted to the former portrait 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 1 77 
 
 may easily lead to the conclusion that its author 
 was drawing upon his own experience. Holo- 
 fernes does not long appear on the stage before 
 he pompously quotes from Lilly's grammar : 
 " Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur." Other of Holo- 
 fernes's phrases illustrate the practice in vogue 
 of inviting boys to supply English synonyms 
 to Latin words proposed by the master. His 
 words, " sanguis, blood, . . . ccelum, the sky, 
 the welkin, the heaven, . . . terra, the soil, the 
 land, the earth," are veritable extracts from 
 phrase-books like the Sententia Piieriles, which 
 lads had to learn by heart. The formal dialogue 
 in which Holofernes and his friend the curate, 
 Sir Nathaniel, engage 
 
 Hoi. Novi hominem tanquam te : anne intelligis ? 
 Nath. Laus Deo, bene intelligo. 
 Nath. Videsne quis venit ? 
 Hoi. Video et gaudeo. 
 
 is framed on models, to be met with in many 
 popular Elizabethan school-books of familiar 
 dialogues. And Shakespeare elsewhere proves 
 his intimacy with the dialogue in such volumes 
 specially marked for use in a school, when he 
 makes Holofernes allude to their common 
 phrases 
 
 N 
 
i/8 Stratford-OH-Avon 
 
 He speaks false Latin. Diminuit Priscinni capitt. 
 It is barbarous Latin. Olct barbarian 
 
 in the criticism ot^Jfr Nathaniel's Latin as 
 "-Priscian a h'ltf B^teJ^d," and in the remark, 
 4i I smell false LaTin,' on the country clown's 
 burlesque misreading of "ad dunghill " for "ad 
 unguem." The pedagogue's citation of a line 
 and a half from "the good old M^taan " (flR 
 mediaeval poet Mantuanus, whose 4PiPies, often 
 preferred to Virgil's in the sixteenth century, 
 formed the chief study of the fourth form in 
 many grammar schools), his attempts to recall 
 his Horace, his praises of Ovid as the writer 
 whose works were to be studied by Latin verse- 
 makers, may all fairly be interpreted as 
 memories of the instruction given at .Stratford. 
 
 It was usual for a boy to remain at the gram- 
 mar school for seven years at least, from the age 
 of seven to that of fourteen, and unless the 
 master was singularly incapable, and the boys 
 singularly rebellious, it was seldom that a young 
 Elizabethan failed to acquire some useful know- 
 ledge in his schooldays. He rarely left school 
 without being able to " write and read English 
 and congrue Latin." But schoolboy morality 
 was not very high, and by the practice of little 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 1 8 1 
 
 frauds it was possible, we learn from con- 
 temporary sources, for idle pupils to make 
 "shift to escape correction" without making 
 any progress at the schoolhouse. An ingenious 
 device of " prompting" one another was 
 practised by boys, born in the same year as 
 young Shakespeare, at Gloucester Grammar 
 School ; a few pupils would prepare the lesson 
 given them overnight, and " being at the 
 elbows" of their idle companions, would put 
 into their mouths answers to their master's 
 question as he walked up and down by them. 
 One of the boys named Willis has amusingly 
 recounted his own experience of this system. 
 After pursuing it for a long while with complete 
 success, " it fell out on a day that one of the 
 eldest scholars and one of the highest form fell 
 out with me upon occasion of some boys' play 
 abroad," and all help from the prompters was 
 denied him. His companions looked forward 
 to seeing him " fall under the rod," but he 
 gathered all his wits together, began to 
 study for himself, and " so the evil intended 
 to me by my fellow-scholar, turned to my great 
 good." Small frauds of this kind were encour- 
 aged by the severity of the discipline adopted in 
 
1 82 Stratford-on- Avon 
 
 all the rural schools. The birch was in continual 
 request, and was administered with alarming 
 brutality. Roger Ascham has described how 
 recklessly floggings were awarded at Eton, and 
 in the smaller schools the masters were under less 
 intelligent supervision. A repulsive picture of 
 the terrors which the schoolhouse had for a 
 nervous child is drawn in a "pretie and merry 
 new interlude," entitled "The Disobedient Child, 
 compiled by Thomas Ingelend, late student in 
 Cambridge," about 1560. A boy who implores 
 his father not to force him to go to school, 
 tells of his companions' sufferings there how 
 
 Their tender bodies both night and day 
 
 Are whipped and scourged, and beat like a stone, 
 
 That from top to toe the skin is away ; 
 
 and a story is repeated of how a scholar was 
 tormented to death by u his bloody master." 
 Other accounts show that the playwright has 
 not gone far beyond the fact. Peacham de- 
 scribes a schoolmaster with whom he was 
 acquainted, " who in winter would ordinarily, on 
 a cold morning, whip his boys even for no other 
 purpose than to get himself a heat." Neverthe- 
 less, we believe that Masters Roche and Hunt 
 were of a milder disposition. Holofernes, 
 
Domestic and School Discipline 183 
 
 although of a dry humour, seems well disposed 
 towards his pupils, and is invited in the play to 
 dine with the father of one of them. Sir Hugh 
 Evans asks his pupil, William Page, " some 
 questions in his accidence," when he meets him 
 and his mother on a school holiday, with a 
 geniality that makes it probable that his creator 
 knew many of his profession who wielded the 
 rod with discrimination. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE OCCUPATIONS OF STRATFORD LADS 
 
 A FEW lads on leaving school passed on to the 
 universities, or inns of court, to proceed in the 
 study of the common law, divinity, or physic. 
 Rich parents were usually anxious to give 
 their children an opportunity of pursuing an 
 academic career. At both Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge charitable endowments maintained at 
 the same time a large number of poor scholars. 
 Sir Hugh Clopton had, as we have seen, left 
 money for such a purpose. Of the poor 
 university scholars, the majority entered the 
 Church, and a great number of them gained 
 high preferment there. Their wealthier com- 
 panions usually sought their fortunes at the 
 bar, or after living riotously in London, 
 often swelled the band of military adventurers 
 by sea and land. 
 
The Occupations of Stratford Lads 185 
 
 But the larger proportion of the boys of 
 a rural grammar school looked forward to 
 earning a livelihood by trade in their native 
 town. And it was not an infrequent objection 
 urged by practical men against the seven or 
 eight years spent by the lads at school, that the 
 time might have been better occupied in teach- 
 ing them "a mystery or occupation." When a 
 boy's schooldays were over, it was usual for 
 his father to apprentice him to himself if an 
 eldest son, or to a neighbour if a younger one, 
 and seven years were consumed in the process 
 of learning a trade. The restrictions on trad- 
 ing at the time rendered this step incumbent 
 on any parent who valued his son's future 
 prosperity. No man who had not undergone 
 a legally recognised apprenticeship was per- 
 mitted by the municipal laws to open a shop 
 or practise any craft within the borough, or 
 to exercise any of the rights of a freeman. 
 " No person," ran an order issued by the bur- 
 gesses of Stratford on i3th April 1603, " shall 
 set up, occupy, or exercise any trade, mystery, 
 or occupation before he be made free or con- 
 firmed in his freedom of the same trade where- 
 unto he was apprentice." In all towns the 
 
1 8 6 Stratford-on -A von 
 
 apprentices formed the least orderly portion of 
 the population, and the regulations enforced 
 against them at Stratford that they were to 
 be at home before nine o'clock at night, that 
 they were never to wear swords, and that 
 they were not to tipple at the alehouses- 
 prove that the older burgesses had some 
 experience of their irregularities. Many of them 
 spent three days and three nights in the stocks 
 for breaches of the municipal bye-laws. 
 
 Whether or no Shakespeare on quitting 
 school became an ordinary apprentice ("he 
 was formerly in this town," wrote Aubrey, 
 " bound apprentice to a butcher," i.e. appren- 
 tice to his father), there can be little doubt 
 that the apprentices whom he had known at 
 school were his intimate companions in early 
 manhood. The tradition recorded by Aubrey 
 distinctly states that " there was at that time 
 another butcher's son in this town, that was held 
 not at all inferior to him for a natural wit, his 
 acquaintance and coetanean, but died young." 
 
 In September 1585, when the Earl of 
 Leicester sent letters to his friends round 
 Kenilworth to enlist 500 men for the army 
 which he was leading to the Low Countries, 
 
The Occupations of Stratford Lads 187 
 
 some adventurous ne'er-do-weels of Stratford 
 doubtless shouldered a pike beneath their 
 great neighbour's standard. Stratford names 
 like Combe and Arden certainly figure in 
 the muster-lists of Leicester's battalions. 
 
 Shakespeare's intimate knowledge of the 
 technicalities of warfare has led one writer to the 
 inference that Shakespeare himself marched 
 with his young townsmen under Leicester's 
 banner. A vain attempt has indeed been made 
 to identify him with " Will, my Lord of 
 Leicester's jesting player," who (we know on 
 the authority of Sir Philip Sidney) accompanied 
 Leicester to Holland. 
 
 Some of Shakespeare's schoolfellows found 
 more peaceful occupation in the great houses 
 of the country gentlemen in the neighbourhood 
 of Stratford. It was their custom to keep a 
 large retinue of serving-men " comely men, and 
 commonly sons of honest yeomen or farmers of 
 the country " who led a lazy life in the manor- 
 houses, wearing good garments or liveries, aid- 
 ing in their master's sports, and attending him 
 at his meals. They were skilled, as a rule, in 
 wrestling, leaping, running, and dancing ; they 
 could shoot with the long-bow or cross-bow, 
 
1 8 8 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 handle guns well, and entertain their masters 
 with table-talk about hawks, hounds, fishing, 
 and agriculture. Their profession brought 
 them in some forty pounds a year, besides 
 a good livery with a badge upon it, and in 
 their master's absence they were wont to 
 entertain their own guests in his hall. The 
 menial servants the bakers, brewers, cham- 
 berlains, wardrobers, falconers, hunters, horse- 
 keepers, lackeys, fools, cooks, scullions, hog- 
 herds, and the like were far below them in 
 social status. Shakespeare introduces serving- 
 men on the stage as the confidants of their 
 masters in the persons of Tranio and Balthasar ; 
 and Malvolio, Olivia's steward, was of their 
 class. The author of an interesting tract, 
 entitled "The English Courtier and Country 
 Gentleman" (1586), which deals largely with 
 "the superfluity of serving -men" kept in 
 country houses, designates them as so much 
 unprofitable furniture, and points out how 
 they were proud and ill-natured, and wasted 
 their master's substance. 
 
 Of the houses near Stratford into which young 
 townsmen were received, the nearest was doubt- 
 less Clopton House. At Charlecote Sir Thomas 
 
The Occupations of Stratford Lads 1 89 
 
 Lucy, at Milcote Sir Edward Greville, and at 
 Long Compton Lord Compton maintained large 
 establishments ; while at no great distance 
 was the castle of Kenilworth, in the occupa- 
 tion for the greater part of Elizabeth's reign 
 of the Earl of Leicester. At these great 
 buildings Shakespeare in all probability fre- 
 quently visited schoolfellows who had secured 
 places in their owners' retinues. 
 
 But there were young Stratford men who 
 had higher aspirations than life in the town 
 itself or in the immediate neighbourhood could 
 satisfy. Life in London, then as now, was the 
 goal of much youthful ambition, and thither 
 occasionally youths from Stratford made their 
 way to seek fame or fortune, or both. John 
 Sadler was one of these in Shakespeare's time, 
 and an account of his early life is interesting. 
 On quitting Stratford he " joined himself to the 
 carrier, and came to London, where he had 
 never been before, and sold his horse in 
 Smithfield ; and having no acquaintance in 
 London to recommend him or assist him, he 
 went from street to street, and house to house, 
 asking if they wanted an apprentice, and though 
 he met with many discouraging scorns and a 
 
1 90 Sir afford-on- A von 
 
 thousand denials, he went on till he lighted on 
 Mr. Brokesbank, a grocer in Bucklersbury, who, 
 though he long denied him for want of sureties 
 for his fidelity, and because the money he had 
 (but ten pounds) was so disproportionate to 
 what he used to receive with apprentices, yet, 
 upon his discreet account he gave of himself 
 and the motives which put him upon that 
 course, and promise to compensate with diligent 
 and faithful service whatever else was short of 
 his expectation, he ventured to receive him upon 
 trial, in which he so well approved himself that 
 he accepted him into his service, to which he 
 bound him for eight years." 
 
 Another native of Stratford who sought an 
 apprenticeship in London was Richard Field, 
 son of that Henry Field, tanner, of whose 
 property an inventory was made by his friend, 
 John Shakespeare, in 1592. Richard Field 
 was apprenticed to a printer in London in 
 1579, and in 1587 set up in business for 
 himself. It is of interest to note that in 
 1593 he printed his fellow-townsman's " Venus 
 and Adonis," and later his " Rape of Lucrece." 
 
 There is a current tradition that certain 
 actors who acquired Elizabethan fame were 
 
77ie Occupations of Stratford Lads 1 9 1 
 
 natives of Stratford, and sought admission to 
 a company of players on its visit to the town 
 during a provincial tour. Thomas Greene and 
 the two Burbages, James and Richard, have 
 been claimed by the borough's historians as 
 Shakespeare's fellow - townsmen ; but in no 
 case has the evidence proved conclusive. 
 Nevertheless, it is certain that Stratford was 
 visited with sufficient frequency by the London 
 actors to induce some young men there, who 
 were weary of their long apprenticeships 
 to look in the direction of the drama for 
 relief from uncongenial occupations. Of these 
 young men William Shakespeare was prob- 
 ably one. Of his mode of life between 
 1578 and 1585, it may be stated as fairly 
 certain that his father, during that period, 
 endeavoured to secure his services in rehabili- 
 tating his decaying trade ; that William took 
 unkindly to the pursuit of woolstapling in all 
 its manifold branches ; that he believed himself 
 capable of making his way as actor and play- 
 wright ; and that he set out for London to try 
 his fortune in these professions. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE PLAYERS AT STRATFORD 
 
 IF John Shakespeare ever regretted as many 
 a sober citizen of the day might have clone 
 his son's choice of this primrose path, he had 
 only himself to blame. Like all his friends of 
 the town council, he was undoubtedly a lover 
 of plays. While he was bailiff in 1568-69, he 
 granted licenses to play in the town to the 
 Queen's players and the Earl of Worcester's 
 players, two of the chief companies. Nine 
 times between 1573 and 1581 did these or 
 other companies enter the town with drum 
 and trumpet, wearing their noble masters' 
 badge, and give their performances in the 
 guildhall. Very few of the town chamberlains 
 down to the close of the century failed to enter 
 in their annual accounts an item varying very 
 capriciously from nine pounds to twelvepence 
 
The Players at Stratford 193 
 
 paid for dramatic entertainments at the fair 
 time in September. In 1597 payments were 
 made to four companies. Every manner of 
 show could, in fact, reckon on a good reception 
 in Stratford ; and in 1597 the bailiff sent three 
 shillings and fourpence to a man bringing to 
 the town his puppet show of the city of 
 Norwich, a famous show to which the 
 dramatists often made allusion. 
 
 Shakespeare as a child undoubtedly witnessed 
 such performances ; and the circumstantial ac- 
 count given by a Gloucester contemporary 
 named Willis born in the same year as the 
 poet of his father's practice of taking him to 
 the play, may well apply to William Shake- 
 speare. The plays Willis witnessed were 
 interludes brief moralities with the faintest 
 semblance of a plot about them. When the 
 players came to a town, he tells us, they first 
 waited on the mayor or bailiff to inform him 
 u what nobleman's servants they were, and so 
 get license for their public playing." If the 
 mayor liked the players, or wished to show 
 their master respect, he would invite them to 
 play for their first performance in the guild- 
 hall before himself and the aldermen. " That 
 
 o 
 
1 94 Stratford-ou- Avon 
 
 is called the mayor's play, when every one 
 that will comes in without money, the mayor 
 giving the players as he thinks to show re- 
 spect unto them." Afterwards they would 
 perform in the courtyard of an inn, as at the 
 Swan, Bear, or Crown, in Bridge Street, 
 Stratford, and charge for admission. Willis, 
 according to his own account, witnessed the 
 mayor's play, standing between his father's 
 legs, ''while he sat upon one of the benches, 
 and where we saw and heard very well." The 
 interlude performed was the " Cradle of 
 Security," in which the chief characters were 
 the Wicked of the World, Pride, Covetousness, 
 Luxury, the End of the World, and the Last 
 Judgment. " The sight," Willis adds, "took 
 such impression on me that when I came to 
 man's estate, it was as fresh in my memory as if 
 I had seen it newly acted." It is quite possible, 
 moreover, that John Shakespeare occasionally 
 took his son over to Coventry to witness 
 the famous miracles or mysteries on Corpus 
 Christi Day the Thursday after Trinity 
 Sunday. 
 
 The Stratford townsfolk had from an 
 early period been wont to witness these 
 
The Players at Stratford 195 
 
 performances. In The Hundred Merry 
 Tales, first issued in 1526, a popular jest-book 
 of the sixteenth century, whence Beatrice 
 taunts Benedick with having borrowed his 
 wit, there is the story of a Warwickshire 
 village priest, who concluded a sermon on 
 the twelve articles of the creed with the words, 
 "If you believe not me, then for a more surety 
 and sufficient authority, go your way to 
 Coventry, and there ye shall see them all 
 played in Corpus Christi play." There 
 Shakespeare, in all probability, learned how 
 a grotesquely-painted canvas face, through 
 whose open mouth a fire was visible, satis- 
 factorily represented Hell in the popular view. 
 There he doubtless made the acquaintance of 
 the sooty-faced figures that stood for lost souls, 
 of Herod in his many-coloured dress and 
 flaming sword, and of the Devil and his tor- 
 mentor the Vice. That the poet knew these 
 features of the mysteries and something of their 
 machinery, is clear from such references as 
 Falstaffs comparison of the flea on Bardolph's 
 nose to "a black soul burning in hell," or 
 Hamlet's advice to the players to avoid in- 
 explicable dumb -shows and noise that out- 
 
1 96 Sir at ford-on- A von 
 
 herods Herod, or the Clown's description in 
 Twelfth Night of the " old Vice," 
 
 Who, with dagger of lath, 
 In his rage and his wrath, 
 Cries, ah, ha ! to the devil. 
 
 It may be that among the Stratford people 
 themselves, as in other towns and villages, 
 pageants of rudimentary dramatic interest were 
 played by the " bachelry " at Christmas or 
 Whitsuntide. In Loves Labours Lost the 
 show of the " Nine Worthies," presented by the 
 schoolmaster and his companions, has all the 
 features of a rural Christmas comedy, and the 
 " Pyramus and Thisbe " of Midsummer Nights 
 Dream is constructed and presented by " hard- 
 handed men," 
 
 Which never laboured in their minds till now, 
 And now have toiled their unbreathed memories 
 With this same play. 
 
 A similar entertainment is described by Julia 
 in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, another of 
 Shakespeare's earliest comedies, when she, dis- 
 guised as a page, is enlisting Silvia's sympathy 
 in her own behalf. " At Pentecost," she says, 
 
 When all our pageants of delight were play'd, 
 Our youth got me to play the woman's part, 
 
The Players at Stratford 197 
 
 And I was trimm'd in madam Julia's gown ; 
 Which served me as fit, by all men's judgments, 
 As if the garment had been made for me : . . . 
 For I did play a lamentable part : 
 Madam, 'twas Ariadne, passioning 
 For Theseus' perjury, and unjust flight. 
 
 Pageants and interludes were played at 
 intervals at the neighbouring great country 
 houses, where, as in the Taming of the Shrew 
 and Hamlet, strolling companies often offered 
 their services ; and there is reason to believe 
 that Shakespeare's father took him when 
 eleven years old to Kenilworth, to witness 
 the elaborate performances arranged to 
 honour the Queens' visit there to Lord 
 Leicester in 1575. Every step that Eliza- 
 beth took on this occasion was celebrated 
 by some quaint semi-dramatic device. As she 
 first approached the castle on Saturday, the 
 9th of July, a Sibyl met her, prophesying 
 prosperity to her government. The porter 
 who opened the gate to her was disguised as 
 Hercules. When she passed a pond in the outer 
 court, female figures personating water nymphs 
 offered her welcome. Next day a display of 
 fireworks took place. Monday was occupied 
 in hunting, ingeniously diversified by a sylvan 
 
1 9 8 Str at ford-on- A von 
 
 masque. In whatever direction the Queen 
 rode in the neighbouring country during the 
 ensuing week, the villagers arranged similar 
 shows for her delight. Reminiscences of these 
 pageants have been detected by the com- 
 mentators on Midsummer Nights Dream, in 
 Oberon's famous description, of the whereabouts 
 of the little western flower, Love-in-idleness. 
 
XIX 
 
 RURAL SPORTS 
 
 THUS we may receive without much misgiving 
 the theory that Shakespeare was encouraged 
 while still a boy at Stratford to honour the 
 drama ; and that it was in accordance with 
 an early ambition that he sought employ- 
 ment in 1585 at a London playhouse. But 
 the drama was not the only amusement in 
 which Shakespeare's plays prove him to have 
 taken part ; there are many indications that, 
 as a youth, he practised all manner of rural 
 sports, and did not always escape censure in 
 pursuit of them. Many of them he doubt- 
 less engaged in far from Stratford, for he had 
 many relatives among the farmers of the dis- 
 trict, and they all encouraged young men in 
 athletic exercises. His grandmother, Agnes 
 Arden, was still living at Wilmecote, and his 
 
200 Stralford-on- 
 
 father's brother, Henry, was still farming at 
 Snitterfield. 
 
 Rustic games for all ages and dispositions 
 arc mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. In 
 his early comedies he refers to the "whip- 
 ping of tops," "hide and seek," " more sacks 
 to the mill," " pushpin," and "nine men's morris." 
 The last, a game played on turf, seems to 
 have resembled "fox and geese," now played 
 with marbles on a wooden board. " Nine-pins " 
 or "ten-pins," "quoits," "hockey," "football," 
 "leap-frog," "country base" or "prisoner's 
 base," "fast and loose," and "flap-dragon," 
 are also among the rural diversions of Eliza- 
 bethan days to which Shakespeare makes 
 allusion. Bowls formed a more solemn urban 
 recreation, and the town council maintained a 
 bowling alley for the free use of the townsmen, 
 while they provided at the public expense at 
 least one top for the boys. At Whitsuntide, 
 or the beginning of May, there were village 
 dances about the may-pole in which young and 
 old took part, "busied with a Whitsun morris- 
 dance." 
 
 Even John Shakespeare, like the franklin 
 described by Sir Thomas Overbury, doubt- 
 
Riiral Sports 201 
 
 less " allowed of honest pastime, and thought 
 not the bones of the dead anything bruised, 
 or the worse for it, though the country lasses 
 danced in the churchyard after evensong." 
 Probably, also, " Rock- Monday, and the wake 
 in summer, Shrovings, the wakeful catches on 
 Christmas eve, the hoky or seed-cake, these he 
 yearly kept, yet held them no relics of Popery." 
 Rock- Monday followed Twelfth Day, and 
 celebrated the resumption of the distaff or rock 
 by the housewives after the twelve days' festivi- 
 ties at Christmas time. Shrove Tuesday, when 
 apprentices made holiday, was chiefly conse- 
 crated to pancakes, cockfights, and cockthrowing. 
 Hock-tide, the Monday and Tuesday after the 
 second Sunday following Easter, was devoted 
 to banquetings and to sports, like wrestling, 
 hurling, and shooting at the butts. At 
 Coventry the Corpus Christi play was often 
 repeated then, or one of rougher merriment 
 performed. Harvest homes were also honoured 
 with like celebration, and especially with 
 " barley-break," a game played by lads and 
 lasses in the cornfields, which seems to have 
 roughly resembled prisoner's base. Then it 
 was that 
 
202 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 Corin sat all day 
 
 Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love 
 To amorous Phillida. 
 
 Bearbaitings occasionally diversified the amuse- 
 ments of the country side, and in morris-dancing 
 the young people often indulged on " the 
 wanton green " of a summer's evening. 
 
 From an early date far-famed athletic 
 meetings took place on the Cots wold Hills, at 
 which Will Squeele, according to Justice 
 Shallow, was a "swinge-buckler." The Cots- 
 wold games were greatly improved by one 
 Captain Dover, of Barton-on-the- Heath, not 
 far from Stratford, early in James I.'s reign; 
 and coursing with greyhounds was pursued 
 there. Shakespeare clearly knew these coursing 
 matches well. He makes Slender ask John 
 Page, " How does your fallow greyhound ? 
 I heard say, he was outrun at Cotsale." 
 
 Of more elaborate country sports with which 
 Shakespeare was clearly well acquainted, al- 
 though he probably in early life witnessed 
 them from afar, hunting and hawking hold the 
 chief place. " An' a man have not skill in the 
 hawking and hunting languages, I'll not give a 
 rush for him," says Master Stephen in Jonson's 
 
I UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 V / 
 
 Rural Sports 203 
 
 Every Man in his Humour ; and there is no 
 lack of evidence that Shakespeare studied them 
 both. He clearly had an ear for the music of 
 the hounds, and often marked 
 
 The musical confusion 
 Of hounds and echo in conjunction. 
 
 Theseus knows what hounds should be : 
 
 My hounds (he says) are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 So flew'd, so sanded : and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls, 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each. A cry more tunable 
 Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn. 
 
 Near Stratford too, Shakespeare doubtless 
 learnt the famous song of the hunt, to which 
 he alludes in Romeo and Juliet : 
 
 The hunt is up, the hunt is up, 
 Sing merrily we, the hunt is up : 
 
 The birds they sing, 
 
 The deer they fling, 
 
 Hey ninny, ninny no. 
 
 " The noble art of venery " was often pursued 
 in enclosed parks by the owners of the great 
 houses, with trains of ladies, foresters, and other 
 retainers. Deer was their chief quarry, and 
 cross-bows seem to have then vied with hounds 
 
204 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 in bringing down the prey. It is this method of 
 hunting that Shakespeare elaborately describes 
 in Loves Labour s Lost, when the Princess and 
 her ladies hunt the deer in the King of 
 Navarre's park. But the stag chase and the 
 boar chase were pursued in the open country. 
 It is over " a poor sequester'd stag that from 
 the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt," that Jaques 
 moralises in well-known lines. In his " Venus 
 and Adonis " Shakespeare especially recom- 
 mends the hunting of the hare, the fox, and 
 the roe ; and in another famous passage of this 
 first poem he describes all the points of a 
 hunter. It is very possible that Shakespeare 
 in youth chased the timorous hare on foot. No 
 more vivid picture of the pursuit of " poor Wat " 
 is found in literature than in Shakespeare's 
 "Venus and Adonis." He shows us there the 
 poor wretch "outrunning the wind," "cranking 
 and crossing with a thousand doubles," eluding 
 the cunning hounds among a flock of sheep or 
 herd of deer, or "where earth-delving conies 
 keep," then far off upon a hill "standing on 
 hinder legs with listening ear " 
 
 To hearken if his foes pursue him still ; 
 Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ; 
 
Riiral Sports 207 
 
 And now his grief may be compared well 
 To one sore sick, that hears the passing bell. 
 
 Hawking "a princely delight," as one con- 
 temporary writer calls it, or "a pleasure for 
 high and mounting spirits," according to another 
 authority was a more elaborate sport than 
 hunting, and was invariably confined to the rich, 
 although the country people delighted to watch 
 its practice of a winter's morning, or to listen 
 by night to the falconers' stories of their hawks' 
 prowess. Similes and metaphors without 
 number has Shakespeare drawn from this 
 recreation, and his continual use of its technical 
 terms, all of which are now obsolete, accounts 
 for the obscurity of many passages in his plays. 
 Hawks went by a variety of names, according 
 to their age and training, and Shakespeare 
 uses them all. There was the wild and in- 
 corrigible haggard, to which Petruchio likens 
 his shrew, Katharine : 
 
 Another way I have to man my haggard, 
 To make her come, and know her keeper's call ; 
 That is, to watch her as we watch these kites, 
 That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient. 
 
 (To bate is to flutter the wings.) There was 
 the eyas-musket, i.e. the hawk in its infancy, and 
 
208 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 the tassel-gentle, the mate of the goss-ha\vk, 
 to both of which frequent allusion is made by 
 the dramatist. Shakespeare knew how the 
 hawks were unhooded and whistled off the fist, 
 to which jesses and lures attached them, or how, 
 when they were incapable of benefiting at the 
 trainer's hands, they were let down the wind. 
 Probably, too, Shakespeare was not unac- 
 quainted with less dignified sport in which 
 birds were the prey. He talks of " bat- 
 fowling," which is a Cotswold expression for 
 taking birds by night in hand -nets, and of 
 " setting springes for woodcocks." "The 
 creeping fowler," at a time when shooting 
 birds was not a legitimate pastime, often 
 succeeded, according to a passage in Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, in doing something 
 more than scatter by his gun's report wild 
 geese or russet-pated choughs. 
 
 The Avon, with its " wind'ring brooks, with 
 their sedg'd crowns and ever harmless nooks," 
 must have also introduced the Elizabethan 
 dwellers to some river sport. The river was 
 not made navigable for even small boats till 
 1635, and rowing as a recreation grew up at a 
 much later date. But fishing has always had its 
 
Rural Sports 209 
 
 English votaries. Few of the mediaeval monas- 
 teries in this country lacked their anglers ; and 
 the literature of the sixteenth century was 
 graced by many tributes of no mean value to 
 " an exercise so much laudable." The incidental 
 references that Shakespeare makes to the 
 angler's art, the poetic fulness of his descriptions 
 of the banks and " fair course" of rivers, and 
 the distinctness with which he occasionally 
 speaks of various freshwater fish, makes it 
 almost certain that he himself, like others of his 
 townsmen, had trolled for pike or luces, and 
 tickled trout for in those days fly-fishing was 
 not in the Warwickshire or Gloucestershire 
 streams. If the Avon then, as now, only 
 harboured fish of the rank of dace and bream, 
 pike and perch, the Elizabethan angler had but 
 to make his way from Stratford to the streams 
 that run from the Cotswolds into the Severn or 
 the sources of the Thames, to enter a paradise 
 where trout seldom failed him. Within a 
 few miles of Stratford lived one of the most 
 enthusiastic anglers of Shakespeare's time a 
 Gloucestershire squire named John Dennis, who 
 gave voice to his passion in a long poem called 
 the " Secrets of Angling," first published in 
 
 p 
 
2 i o Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 1613. In these verses the joys of the angler are 
 extolled above those of any other sportsman, 
 and the author details the pleasures that he had 
 experienced of seeing his " quill and cork down 
 sink, with eager bite of barbel, bleak, or dace." 
 If Shakespeare, who described how 
 
 The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish 
 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, 
 And greedily devour the treacherous bait, 
 
 ever lived in his youth at Dursley, as many 
 writers have urged, he surely helped Dennis 
 to fish his waters, whether with or without his 
 permission. 
 
XX 
 
 CHARLECOTE HOUSE POACHING IN THE PARK 
 
 IF tradition be admitted in evidence, the poet 
 did not on occasion disdain to play the poacher. 
 According to the ancient story, the whole course 
 of his life was altered by his detection in 
 the act of poaching at Charlecote Park. 
 " The frolic of Shakespeare in deer- stealing 
 was the cause of his Hegira," says Landor, and 
 although there is something to be urged 
 against this statement, it probably has some 
 foundation in fact. 
 
 Tourists seldom leave Shakespeare's native 
 place without traversing the four or five miles 
 to the north-east which lie between it and the 
 great park encircling Charlecote House. 1 The 
 winding River Avon skirts the enclosure to the 
 
 1 This chapter is chiefly from two papers which I contributed to 
 the Portfolio for May and July 1888. 
 
2 1 2 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 west. Large herds of deer are now ^llways 
 crouching under the branches of the old oaks and 
 elms within its timber boundaries. The gray-red 
 mansion where the Lucys have lived for more 
 than three centuries stands at the water's edge ; 
 avenues of limes approach it at back and front ; 
 the flower-gardens which immediately surround 
 it are separated from the gently undulating park 
 by a sunken fence. The present century has 
 witnessed many additions to the building, but 
 the Elizabethan portion has not been disfigured 
 by restoration, and from one aspect still seems 
 to the visitor to stand detached from the recent 
 erections. Nowhere is a more finished specimen 
 of Tudor domestic architecture to be met with. 
 The building of the Elizabethan house at 
 Charlecote was begun in 1558 the year 
 of Elizabeth's accession and was probably 
 finished in 1559. Its owner was Thomas 
 Lucy. For more than five centuries his 
 ancestors had owned the Charlecote Manor, 
 which had figured in Domesday Book under 
 the name of Ceorlecote. At first the lords 
 of the manor took their surname from the place, 
 but early in the thirteenth century William de 
 Charlecote, who had fought with the Barons 
 
Charlecote House 2 1 3 
 
 against King John, assumed, for reasons which 
 antiquaries have not determined, the name 
 of Lucy. A manor-house, with a chapel 
 attached, was in existence at Charlecote 
 throughout the Middle Ages, and its owners' 
 prosperity grew, chiefly through intermarriages, 
 with every generation. One Fulk de Lucy, 
 who died in 1303, was "a special lover of good 
 horses," and paid forty marks (i.e. 26 : 13 : 4) 
 for a black horse at a time when an ox cost 
 sixteen shillings. Many of his descendants 
 sat in Parliament as knights of the shire of 
 Warwick, and nearly all of them, for military 
 services rendered to the Crown at home or 
 abroad, received the honour of knighthood. 
 William Lucy became a Knight of the Bath 
 when Henry VII's Queen Elizabeth was 
 crowned at Westminster, and it was Sir 
 William's grandson who built Charlecote as we 
 know it. 
 
 The young man had been carefully brought 
 up. John Foxe, the compiler of the martyr- 
 ology, had come from Oxford to be his tutor, 
 and on 30! February 1547 (it is of interest to 
 note) Foxe, while holding that office, married 
 at the little Charlecote church Agnes Randall, 
 
2 1 4 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 a lady of many virtues, who was, like himself, 
 in the service of the Lucy's. 1 Foxe's pupil was 
 only twenty -six years old when he took the 
 work of rebuilding Charlecote in hand, but six 
 years earlier, in 1552, his father's death had 
 made him master of his family's great War- 
 wickshire estate, which soon included, besides 
 Charlecote, the neighbouring properties of Sher- 
 borne and Hampton Lucy, the former a grant 
 of Edward VI, and the latter of Queen Mary 
 in 1556. Meanwhile his wife, Joyce Acton, 
 had brought him Sutton Park, at Tenbury, 
 Worcestershire. His worldly position was in 
 no wise inferior to that of a nobleman ; and 
 he was wealthy enough to freely indulge the 
 taste for elaborate architecture which charac- 
 terised the aristocracy of his day. 
 
 Of the pre- Elizabethan manor-house at 
 Charlecote no trace remains. The Elizabethan 
 mansion, reared probably on the old site, owes 
 nothing to an earlier epoch. The ground-plan 
 roughly resembles the letter E, an eccentric 
 compliment which great builders of the clay 
 were fond of paying to the reigning sovereign. 
 The original building, with its gently sloping 
 
 1 See Art. " Foxe, John," in Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
Charlecote House 2 1 5 
 
 gables, is flanked at either end by boldly 
 projecting wings, with octagonal angle turrets. 
 The fabric is of red brick ; the window 
 dressings are of stone, but all has grown 
 greyish with age. Near the centre of the 
 facade stands an elaborate porch, which 
 supplies on the ground-plan the E's short 
 middle stroke. There is a striking contrast be- 
 tween this richly worked excrescence and the 
 homely simplicity of the rest of the building. 
 It has been suggested that it was by a different 
 and more fashionable architect, who was ac- 
 quainted with both the Italian and French 
 Renaissance styles, and that it was added 
 after the house was built. John of Padua, 
 alias John Thorpe, the designer of Holland 
 House and the greatest English architect of 
 the time, is credited on uncertain grounds 
 with this admirable specimen of Renaissance 
 architecture. It is in two floors, each supported 
 by pillars, and the whole surmounted by a 
 delicately carved balustrade. The front is 
 of freestone ; the lower pillars are of the 
 Ionic order, the upper of the Composite. Over 
 the doorway, on the ground story, the royal 
 arms, with the letters 'E.R.' are engraved, 
 
2 1 6 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 and in the spandrils are the initial letters 
 ' T.L.,' i.e. Thomas Lucy. 
 
 But the porch is not the only remarkable fea- 
 ture of the exterior of Charlecote. Before the 
 house lies a quadrangular garden court enclosed 
 by low terrace walls, protected from without by 
 the sunken fence. On the side of the enclosure 
 that is farthest from the house rises a massive 
 structure two storeys high, and completely 
 isolated. Through its ground - floor runs a 
 narrow archway, closed at the outward end 
 by iron gates. This structure is the detached 
 gatehouse, of which few examples remain 
 in England. In earlier Tudor times large 
 mansions were usually quadrangular in shape, 
 like the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. 
 In that case the gatehouse invariably sur- 
 mounted the one archway by which the 
 quadrangle could be entered. It was at 
 times battlemented and fortified to resist 
 attack, but more often architects lavished on 
 it their most elaborate schemes of decoration. 
 When the quadrangular form of building was 
 dying out its memory occasionally survived in 
 a forecourt fronted by an isolated building, 
 exactly modelled after the older fashioned 
 
Charlecote Hoitse 2 1 9 
 
 gatehouse ; but now that three sides of the 
 quadrangle were absent, it stood, as here 
 at Charlecote, at some fifty yards' distance 
 from the mansion, looking like a stately 
 lodge. 
 
 In its architecture the gatehouse at Charle- 
 cote exactly resembles the main building. 
 Octagonal turrets adorn its four angles. Its 
 roof is flat, and is surmounted by a balus- 
 trade ; oriel windows project on the second 
 floor above both ends of the archway. In 
 Elizabethan days the porter lived on the 
 ground floor ; the upper formed a large 
 banqueting-room. As a defence against un- 
 welcome intruders the gatehouse still had its 
 uses, but great householders had long ceased 
 to fear very formidable foes in Elizabeth's 
 time ; and it was probably erected by Sir 
 Thomas Lucy merely as an effective archi- 
 tectural ornament. 
 
 Comparatively little within the house to- 
 day recalls the sixteenth century. But in 
 the library stand chairs, couch, and cabinet 
 of coromandel wood, inlaid with ivory, which, 
 tradition says, were presented by Queen 
 Elizabeth to Leicester in 1575, and were 
 
220 St rat ford-on- A von 
 
 brought here from Kenilworth in the seven- 
 teenth century. 1 
 
 The modern bust of the poet in the hall 
 recalls the relationship which tradition has 
 set up between Sir Thomas Lucy, its 
 builder, and the dramatist in his youth. By 
 15.86 or 1587, when the two men are alleged 
 to have become acquainted, Thomas Lucy 
 had grown in dignity. Six years after he 
 had completed the rebuilding of his manor- 
 house, he was knighted (in 1565), and he sub- 
 sequently sat in two parliaments (1571 and 
 1584) as knight of the shire of Warwick. In 
 1586 he was high sheriff of the neighbouring 
 county of Worcestershire, in right of the pro- 
 perty derived from his wife. The town of 
 Stratford-on-Avon knew him well. As a local 
 justice and commissioner of the musters for the 
 county of Warwick, he frequently rode thither, 
 and the Corporation liberally entertained him 
 at the Bear or the Swan, the chief inns of 
 the city. But these performances never made 
 a man famous. Had not tradition credited Sir 
 Thomas Lucy with preserving deer in Charle- 
 
 1 An interesting account of Charlecote appears in Mr. W. Niven's 
 privately printed Old Warwiekshire House (1878). 
 
Charlecote House 2 2 1 
 
 cote Park, and accused the poet Shakespeare 
 of poaching on his preserves, there would have 
 been no reason why his name should have 
 escaped obscurity. It is stated that he 
 entertained Queen Elizabeth on her way to 
 the great entertainment provided for her at 
 Kenilworth by Leicester in 1575. But it .is 
 impossible that the Queen could have slept 
 there, for her authentic route is known, and does 
 not include Charlecote as a resting-place at 
 night. Some urge modestly that she break- 
 fasted there, but this report lacks confirmation. 
 In the seventeenth century it was currently 
 reported in Stratford that Shakespeare as a 
 youth fell into bad company, and "made a 
 frequent practice of deer-stealing . . . more 
 than once . . . robbing a park that belonged 
 to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Strat- 
 ford." On one occasion, according to the 
 version recorded by Rowe, the earliest editor 
 of the plays, he was arrested by Sir Thomas's 
 keeper and severely punished, whereupon " he 
 made a ballad upon " the owner of Charlecote, 
 which was "probably the first essay of his 
 poetry." Further persecution was threatened, 
 and Shakespeare escaped to London to try 
 
222 Stratford'OH-Avon 
 
 his fortune on the stage. The independent 
 testimony of Archdeacon Davies, who was 
 vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire, late in the 
 seventeenth century, is to the effect that 
 Shakespeare "was much given to all un- 
 luckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, 
 particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had 
 him oft whipped, and sometimes imprisoned, 
 and at last made him fly his native county 
 to his great advancement." The soundest 
 scholar among Shakespeare's biographers- 
 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps accepts the outline 
 of this story as incontrovertible fact. The 
 additional details that Queen Elizabeth inter- 
 vened to protect Shakespeare from Sir 
 Thomas's fury, and that the youth stole the 
 buck to celebrate his wedding-day, are obvious 
 fabrications. Nor can the rumour perpetu- 
 ated in a well-known picture that Shake- 
 speare when arrested by the keepers was 
 brought before Sir Thomas in the hall of 
 Charlecote be substantiated. 
 
 It has been urged by disbelievers in the 
 whole tradition that in the sixteenth century 
 no deer-park existed at Charlecote. There 
 was, however, a recognised warren at Charle- 
 
Charlecote Hoiise 225 
 
 cote, and in the view of the law the theft of 
 rabbits from a statutable warren was as serious 
 an offence as deer-stealing, and might easily 
 have been confused with it. According to 
 Coke, a warren might be inhabited by hares 
 and roes as well as by rabbits, and Shakespeare 
 might thus have sought his prey in Lucy's 
 warren without seriously impugning the truth 
 of the tradition. But although Charlecote 
 in Shakespeare's youth cannot be proved to 
 have been a statutable park i.e. an enclosure 
 "closed with wall, pale, or hedge," and "used 
 for the keeping, breeding, and cherishing of 
 deer"- Sir Thomas is known to have been 
 an extensive game - preserver, and to have 
 employed gamekeepers on many of his estates. 
 In March 1585 he introduced a Bill into Parlia- 
 ment for the better preservation of "game 
 and grain." He did not, it is true, make many 
 recorded gifts of venison ; but a German 
 traveller in Elizabeth's reign noted that 
 fallow-deer of various colours were as com- 
 monly met with in England in woods as 
 in enclosed parks, and there seems no doubt 
 that deer lived in Hampton Woods in the im- 
 mediate neighbourhood of Charlecote. When, 
 
 Q 
 
226 St rat ford-on- Avon 
 
 in the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas's suc- 
 cessor acquired Fulbroke Park, which also lies 
 on the boundaries of Charlecote, he is stated 
 on good authority to have immediately stocked 
 it with deer. And as early as 1602 the Lord 
 Keeper, Egerton, received a buck from the 
 Lucy estates, although its preserve is not dis- 
 tinctly named. It is, therefore, difficult to deny 
 that a few herds of deer might have roamed, 
 as at present, about Charlecote House. The 
 law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz. cap. 21) 
 punished deer - stealers with three months' 
 imprisonment and the payment of thrice 
 the amount of the damage done ; but 
 the popular opinion was on the side of 
 the poacher. "Venison is nothing so sweet 
 as when it is stolen," was a contemporary 
 proverb. 
 
 In 1828 Sir Walter Scott was informed by 
 the owner of Charlecote that Shakespeare stole 
 the deer not from Charlecote, but from Ful- 
 broke Park. This version of the exploit was 
 first promulgated about a century ago, and was 
 very well received. The antiquary, Ireland, 
 introduced into his Views on the Warwick- 
 shire Avon (1795) an engraving of an old 
 
Charlecote House 227 
 
 farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where, 
 he asserted, Shakespeare was temporarily im- 
 prisoned after his arrest. An adjoining hovel 
 was also described for some years as Shake- 
 speare's " deer-barn"; but the site of these 
 buildings (now removed) was not Sir Thomas 
 Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and the 
 amended legend is a pure invention. 
 
 The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to 
 have fastened on the park-gates of Charlecote 
 does not survive. An old man, who lived in 
 a village near Stratford and died in 1703 at the 
 age of ninety, is stated to have repeated from 
 memory the following lines, and they are often 
 identified with the libel which irritated Sir 
 Thomas Lucy : 
 
 A Parliament member, a justice of peace, 
 At home a poor scarecrowe, at London an asse ; 
 If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it. 
 
 He thinks himself greate, 
 
 Yet an asse in his state, 
 
 We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate, 
 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it. 
 
 Attempts have been made to prove the 
 genuineness of this worthless effusion. That 
 
228 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 it is some two hundred years old may be 
 admitted ; the author is undoubtedly correct 
 in describing Lucy as "a Parliament member 
 and justice of peace," which may be urged 
 as proof that he was not unacquainted with 
 Lucy's biography, but that the lines are three 
 centuries old, and the work of Shakespeare, 
 may be safely denied. 
 
 Shakespeare undoubtedly took a subtle re- 
 venge. He immortalised Charlecote and its 
 owner in the character of Justice Shallow. 
 According to Davies, of Saperton, "his re- 
 venge was so great that he [i.e. Lucy] is his 
 [i.e. Shakespeare's] Justice Clodpate, and [he] 
 calls him a great man, and that, in allusion 
 to his name, bore three louses rampant for 
 his arms." Justice Shallow came to birth in 
 the second part of Shakespeare's Henry IV. 
 (written about 1597). He is, as all the world 
 knows, a garrulous old gentleman, who is proud 
 to call himself "one of the King's justices 
 of the peace," and ostentatiously parades re- 
 miniscences of his wild days. His house is 
 in Gloucestershire, and in the court before 
 it Falstaff reviews, with the aid of the owner 
 acting as commissioner of the muster, his 
 
C liar lee ote House 229 
 
 far-famed ragged regiment. His hospitality 
 and his officiousness as justice and muster- 
 man tally with all that is known of Lucy, 
 but the identity of the two does not dis- 
 tinctly appear until Shallow's entrance in 
 the opening scene of the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor (probably written early in 1598). 
 There he has come from Gloucestershire to 
 Windsor to "make a Star-chamber matter" 
 of a poaching affray on his estates. Falstaff 
 is the offender. In a rambling and querulous 
 conversation with his cousin Slender, Shallow 
 refers with pride to his ancient lineage, and 
 Slender corroborates him with an allusion to 
 "the dozen white luces" on his "old coat" 
 of arms. This is undoubtedly a blundering 
 jest on the arms of the Charlecote Lucys, 
 described by heralds as " three luces hauriant 
 argent." A luce is in modern English a pike 
 a fact that accounts for Falstaff's comparison 
 elsewhere of Shallow to an "old pike." The 
 three luces, or pikes, are engraved on all the 
 monuments to the Lucys in Charlecote Church, 
 and on one monument a quartering of their 
 arms appears with three fish in each of four 
 divisions. Thus Slender may not be talking 
 
230 Stratford-on-A von 
 
 altogether at random when he speaks of the 
 dozen luces. Shakespeare distinctly emphasises 
 the reference to the Lucy arms. " It is an old 
 coat," says Shallow, in reply to Slender. " The 
 dozen white louses do become an old coat well," 
 is Sir Hugh Evans's punning comment, and the 
 dialogue lingers about the topic. Later in 
 the scene, as soon as Falstaff enters, Shallow 
 abruptly introduces the business which has 
 brought him from Gloucestershire. " Knight, 
 you have beaten my men, killed my deer, 
 and broke open my lodge ! " is his charge ; 
 " But not kissed your keeper's daughter," is 
 Falstaff's humorous rejoinder. 
 
 Shall. Tut, a pin ! this shall be answered. 
 
 Fal. I will answer it straight. I have done all this ; 
 that is now answered. 
 
 Shall. The Council shall know this. 
 
 Fal. Twere better for you if it were known in coun- 
 sel [i.e. if you took good counsel about it] ; you'll be 
 laughed at. 
 
 And there the matter ends. Shallow and 
 Lucy are in identical situations throughout. 
 By many smaller details their identity could 
 be illustrated. Lucy was an enthusiast for 
 archery, according to an extant letter sent 
 
Charlecote House 2 3 i 
 
 by him to Leicester ; so was Justice Shallow. 
 The reiterated mention of Shallow's judicial 
 functions suggests the repeated exercise of 
 Sir Thomas Lucy's legal authority, which is 
 vouched for by the Stratford -on -Avon Cor- 
 poration archives. Justice Shallow is, beyond 
 reasonable doubt, Shakespeare's satiric sketch 
 of the builder of Charlecote. 1 
 
 1 An admirably full and scholarly account or the Shakespearian 
 traditions that have gathered about Charlecote is to be found in the 
 seventh edition of Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life oj 
 Shakespeare, vol. i. pp. 67-76, 157-161 ; and vol. ii. pp. 379-390. 
 
 ARMS OF LUCY. 
 
XXI 
 
 INDOOR AMUSEMENTS 
 
 OF indoor amusements, few were probably in 
 much vogue at Stratford. But cards seem to 
 have been occasionally played. 
 
 In foul weather (says Vincent, a country gentleman, 
 in the Dialogue with an English Courtier, 1586) we send 
 for some honest neighbours, if haply we be with our wives 
 alone at home (as seldom we are) and with them we play 
 at Dice, and Cards, sorting ourselves according to the 
 number of players, and their skill, some to Ticktack, some 
 Lurch, some to Irish game, or Doublets : others sit close to 
 the Cards, at Post, and Pair, at Ruff or Colchester Trump, 
 at Mack or Maw : yea, there are some ever so fresh 
 gamesters, as will bear you company at Novem Quinque, 
 at Faring, Tray trip, or one-and-thirty, for I warrant you, 
 we have right good fellows in the country ; sometimes also 
 (for shift of sports, you know, is delectable) we fall to Slide 
 Thrift, to Penny prick, and in winter nights we use certain 
 Christmas games very proper, and of much agility ; \\v 
 want not also pleasant mad-headed knaves, that be properly 
 learned, and will read in diverse pleasant books and good 
 
u\\ 
 
Indoor A m usements 235 
 
 Authors ; as Sir Guy of Warwick, the Four Sons of Aymon, 
 the Ship of Fools, the Budget of Demands, the Hundred 
 Merry Tales, the Book of Riddles, and many other 
 excellent writers both witty and pleasant. These pretty 
 and pithy matters do sometimes recreate our minds, chiefly 
 after long sitting and loss of money. 
 
 But many preferred to recreate themselves in 
 an alehouse, and play there an elementary form 
 of bagatelle called " shovel-board." The Strat- 
 ford people still tell how Shakespeare often 
 crossed from New Place to the Falcon Tavern, 
 on the opposite side of Chapel Street, and played 
 this game with his neighbours, at the very board 
 now preserved in the house at New Place ; but, 
 unluckily for the tradition, we know very well 
 that the tavern sprang up at a later date, and 
 in Shakespeare's day was a private dwelling- 
 house in the occupation, early in the seven- 
 teenth century, of Mrs. Katharine Temple, and 
 later of Joseph Boles, a friend of John Hall, 
 the poet's son-in-law. 
 
 There is another very persistent tradition 
 at Stratford, to show that Shakespeare fre- 
 quently took his ease in an inn. According 
 to this story, Shakespeare engaged, as a 
 youth, in a famous drinking-match at another 
 tavern called the Falcon, at Bidford, some 
 
236 Stratford-ou- Avon 
 
 five or six miles from his native town. The 
 tale dates, in its most authentic form, from 
 no earlier year than 1 762. A gentleman 
 visiting Stratford was then taken to Bidford, 
 and shown "in the hedge a crab-tree called 
 Shakespeare's Canopy, because under it our 
 poet slept one night ; for he, as well as Ben 
 J orison, loved a glass for the pleasure of society." 
 Shakespeare (the story proceeds) " having heard 
 much of the men of the village as deep drinkers 
 and merry fellows, one day went over to Bidford 
 to take a cup with them. He inquired of a 
 shepherd for the Bidford drinkers, who replied 
 that they were absent, but the sippers were at 
 home, and, * I suppose,' continued the sheep- 
 keeper, ' they will be sufficient for you ; ' and so, 
 indeed, they were ; he was forced to take up 
 his lodgings under that tree for some hours." 
 
 This story has since been elaborated by 
 Stratford writers, who make Shakespeare 
 " extremely fond of drinking hearty draughts of 
 English ale, and glorying in being thought a 
 person of superior eminence in that profession," 
 and assert that, being worsted in a drinking 
 contest with the junior drinking club of the 
 Sippers at Bidford, he, with his companions, 
 
Indoor A musements 237 
 
 slept under a crab-tree for a whole night. 
 Shakespeare and his companions were next 
 day invited to renew the contest, but the 
 poet wisely declined, saying, " I have drank 
 with 
 
 Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, 
 Haunted Hillborough, Hungry Grafton, 
 Dadgeing Exhall, Papist Wixford, 
 Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford "- 
 
 "meaning, by this doggrel, with the bibulous 
 competitors who had arrived from the first- 
 named seven villages, all of which are within a 
 few miles of Bidford," and thus not far from Strat- 
 ford. The rhyme is very halting, and few of 
 the villages are specially noted for the qualities 
 indicated by the epithets. Bidford, although 
 it now strives manfully to deserve the epithet 
 bestowed on it in these lines, was reputed in 
 1605 and 1606, to have its alehouses in good 
 order and its rogues punished. In 1613, however, 
 one John Darlingie was " presented " there for 
 "keeping ill rule in his house on the Sabbath 
 in service time by selling of ale," and later in 
 the century the alehouse-keepers were guilty of 
 many irregularities. The room pointed out at 
 Bidford as forming part of the Falcon Tavern 
 
238 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 where Shakespeare's match took place, and the 
 antique chair at the Stratford birthplace stated 
 to have belonged to the room, are relics of 
 highly doubtful authenticity. Other versions of 
 the tale make the drunken band sleep under the 
 crab-tree " from Saturday night till the following 
 Monday morning, when they were roused by 
 workmen going to their labour." The crab-tree 
 was still standing in the present century, but 
 was removed in a decayed condition in 1824. 
 
 A similar legend represents Shakespeare as 
 a frequenter of another village inn at Wincot, or 
 Wilmecote, his mother's birthplace. This house 
 (we are told) "was resorted to by Shakespeare 
 for the sake of diverting himself with a fool who 
 belonged to a neighbouring mill." " Marian 
 Hackett, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," has been 
 identified with the " genial hostess" of this 
 inn, and Stephen Sly, one of her customers in 
 the Taming of the Shrew, was undoubtedly 
 the name of a resident at Stratford who is some- 
 times described in the records as a labourer and 
 sometimes as servant to William Combe. 
 Perhaps at this tavern, too, old John Naps, 
 Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernell held revelry. 
 The references in the Taming of the Shrew 
 
' 
 
Indoor A m use merits 2 4 1 
 
 to Wincot were well understood locally. Sir 
 Aston Cokain, addressing a poem in 1658 to Mr. 
 Clement Fisher, of Wincot, reminded him how 
 
 Shakespeare your Wincot ale hath much renownd, 
 That foxd a beggar so (by chance was found 
 Sleeping) that there needed not many a word 
 To make him to believe he was a lord. 
 
 The far-famed beggar, Kit Sly, was doubtless a 
 Stratford character; he was probably related 
 to the Stephen Sly to whom reference has just 
 been made, and to Joan Sly, who in 1630 was 
 fined by the Stratford magistrates for breaking 
 the Sabbath by travelling. 
 
 A quart of ale was a dish for a king all over 
 England in Elizabethan days, and there is 
 nothing more probable, although the proof must 
 remain for ever incomplete, than that Shake- 
 speare indulged in alehouse festivities. The 
 sober magistrates of Stratford did the same. 
 They always celebrated the visits of neighbour- 
 ing gentry at quarter sessions by deep potations. 
 Whenever Sir Thomas Lucy visited Stratford, 
 a pottle of wine and a quartern of sugar, or a 
 quart of burnt sack and sugar, were placed at 
 his disposal either at the Swan or the Bear, or 
 at one of the aldermen's private houses. Sir 
 
 R 
 
242 Stratford-on-A von 
 
 Edward Greville, the moat of whose manor-house 
 at Milcote is still visible in the fields there, came 
 very often to the town at the close of the six- 
 teenth century to be entertained at a municipal 
 banquet, and to quaff his quart of sack and 
 gallon of claret. His more famous relative, the 
 poet, Sir Fulk Greville, also came over from 
 Beauchamp's Court by Warwick to take wine, 
 sugar, and cakes with the magistrates. He or Sir 
 Edward or Sir Thomas Lucy would send them 
 a buck or doe to form the substance of their 
 meal together, and would sometimes accept a 
 sugar-loaf or a keg of sturgeon instead of wine. 
 When the itinerant justices visited the town, or 
 the muster of the trained bands of the district 
 was held there, the town council was not sparing 
 in its gifts of sack and claret or Rhenish wine. 
 At one of these entertainments sixteenpence 
 was spent in wine and a penny in bread a 
 collocation of items which reminds one of the 
 monstrous " halfpennyworth of bread to this 
 intolerable deal of sack." None the less, these 
 aldermen and burgesses of Stratford were 
 ready next morning to set a poor artificer in 
 the stocks for three days and three nights on 
 the charge of wasting time in an alehouse. 
 
XXII 
 
 CHRISTENINGS AND MARRIAGES 
 
 OTHER kinds of merrymaking celebrated the 
 happy crises of domestic life. The christening 
 of a child was a time of festival and gift-giving. 
 Apostle-spoons were always bestowed on the 
 infant among the middle classes, as silver and 
 gold cups were bestowed among the upper. 
 After baptism at the church font the child was 
 wrapped in a chrisome, or white chrism-cloth ; 
 and Dame Quickly refers to the practice when 
 she compares Falstaff on his deathbed to "any 
 christom child." Shakespeare must have often 
 seen such ceremonies. His sister Joan, who 
 afterwards married William Hart, of Stratford, 
 was baptized when he was five years old ; his 
 sister Anna, who died at the age of eight, when 
 he was seven ; his brothers Richard and 
 Edmund, when he was ten and sixteen respect- 
 
244 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 ively. His eldest daughter, Susanna, was 
 baptized in the parish church, 26th May 1583, 
 and his twin children, Hamnet and Judith, 
 2d February 1585. Nor does this exhaust the 
 list of christenings which he attended. The 
 nephew of Sir Roger Lestrange vouched for the 
 
 STRATFORD, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. 
 
 story that Shakespeare was godfather to a son 
 of Ben Jonson's, and gave him a dozen good 
 latin (i.e. brass) spoons, for his father, as he 
 said jestingly, to translate. 
 
 But weddings formed the chief events in the 
 
 domestic annals of Elizabethan merriment. 
 
 There were first the espousals to be celebrated 
 
 the public announcement of betrothal. The 
 
Christenings and Marriages 245 
 
 clergyman directed this important ceremony 
 in the house of the bride's parents, and it 
 was often regarded in the country as equi- 
 valent to a marriage. Shakespeare describes 
 its details in Twelfth Night as 
 
 A contract of eternal bond of love, 
 Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, 
 Attested by the holy close of lips, 
 Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings : 
 
 and sealed finally by the testimony of the priest. 
 The lady usually received from her lover a bent 
 sixpence, or gloves, with handkerchiefs and 
 fruit. The marriage ceremony followed at 
 varying intervals. At the simplest weddings 
 the bride was led to church in her best gown, 
 with her hair hanging down her back, by boys 
 " with bride laces and rosemary tied about their 
 silken sleeves." A bride cup filled with wine 
 and decorated with rosemary and silk ribbons 
 was borne before her. Musicians and girls 
 followed her, one of whom carried the bridal 
 cake. The bridal cup appears from the account 
 of Petruchio's wedding in the Taming of the 
 Shrew to have been drunk in the church. 
 
 A full account of a Warwickshire " bride-ale," 
 as the wedding was called, is given in the 
 
246 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 description of the Queen's visit to Kenilworth, 
 when she graced one with her presence. 
 Doubtless, Mary Arden was married to John 
 Shakespeare at Wilmecote in 1557 with such 
 ceremony as this. First came sixteen lusty lads 
 and bold bachelors of the parish on horseback, 
 two by two, with blue buckram bride laces and 
 branches of green broom (because rosemary was 
 scanty) on their left arms, and sticks of elder- 
 tree in their right. Among them was the 
 bridegroom in a tawny worsted jacket, "a fair 
 straw hat with a capital crown, steeplewise 
 upon his head," and a pair of harvest gloves in 
 his hand. After this band came morris dancers 
 and three fair girls. A country bumpkin 
 followed them with the bride cup ; behind 
 him walked the bride between two ancient 
 parishioners, honest men, and she was accom- 
 panied by twenty-four damsels as bridesmaids. 
 
 Shakespeare's own marriage with Anne 
 Hathaway, of Shottery, a mile from Stratford, 
 was probably less ceremonious. Both his and 
 her parents disapproved of it, and there was 
 certainly an awkward disparity of age between 
 them, he being but eighteen and she twenty-six. 
 According to tradition, the marriage took place 
 
Christenings and Marriages 249 
 
 at Luddington, in a church which has now 
 disappeared, and of which the schoolmaster, 
 Thomas Hunt, was curate. The license, or 
 " bond against impediments," preserved in the 
 Worcester registry, is dated 28th November 
 1582. Two respectable husbandmen of Shottery, 
 Falk Sandells and John Richardson, attest it. 
 But espousals had doubtless been quietly 
 solemnised earlier, and Anne Hathaway had 
 then been betrothed to Shakespeare as his 
 wife. Their first child was born in May 1583. 
 
 There is an account extant of the cele- 
 bration of a precontract, under similarly un- 
 prepossessing circumstances, at Alcester in 
 1588, where the contract took the place of a 
 more regular marriage. The lady was present 
 without any friends, and explained their absence 
 by the statement that she thought she could not 
 obtain her mother's goodwill, but nevertheless, 
 quoth she, " I am the same woman that I was 
 before." Her lover merely asked her " whether 
 she was content to betake herself unto him, and 
 she answered, offering her hand, which he also 
 took upon the offer that she was content by her 
 troth, and 'thereto,' said she, 'I give thee my 
 faith and before these witnessess, that I am thy 
 
250 Stratford-on- Avon 
 
 wife,' and then he likewise answered in these 
 words, viz. ' And I give thee my faith and troth, 
 and become thy husband. ' ' This was doubtless 
 the form that Shakespeare's betrothal took, and, 
 although not very irregular for those days, 
 certainly caused many of his youthful em- 
 barrassments. 
 
 Richard Hathaway 's cottage at Shottery, 
 reached from Stratford by open paths across 
 wide meadows, is still standing, and an ancient 
 chair by the chimney corner and bacon 
 cupboard in the parlour is called " Shakespeare's 
 courting chair." The house is encircled by an 
 old-fashioned flower and kitchen garden, and 
 forms a picturesque relic of Elizabethan country 
 life. Attempts have been made, with doubtful 
 success, to detect resemblances to it in Celia's 
 description of the cottage which she and 
 Rosalind occupy in the Forest of Arden. 
 The Hathaway s had been small farmers at 
 Shottery before the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, and there were branches of the family 
 settled at Stratford. In 1580, another Anne 
 Hathaway had married Alderman Wilson there, 
 and a Thomas Hathaway, son of Margaret 
 Hathaway, died at Stratford in 1601. There 
 
-,*- \ .'^ 
 
 "'..'I e;* a V 
 
Christenings and Marriages 253 
 
 is evidence to prove that Richard Hathaway, 
 Anne's father, who died in 1582, in the same 
 year as Anne married, was, early in Elizabeth's 
 reign, on friendly terms with John Shakespeare, 
 and it is probable that the poet met Anne at his 
 father's house for the first time. That he had 
 an affection for her quiet native village is shown 
 by the fact that in 1598 he contemplated the 
 purchase there of ''some odd yard -land." 
 Probably the Richard Hath way, or Hathaway, 
 who takes his place in the lower ranks of the 
 dramatists of London early in the next century, 
 was a near relative of the great dramatist's wife. 
 
 OLD CHURCH OF LUDDINGTON. 
 
XXIII 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD IN LATER LIFE 
 
 IT is no part of my present plan to trace 
 the progressive career of Shakespeare as a 
 dramatist. His life at Stratford as the wool- 
 stapler's son who " went to London very 
 meanly, and came in time to be exceeding 
 wealthy," is alone to be noted here. Nor will 
 it be necessary to follow him in his journeyings 
 to and fro the metropolis. His first journey 
 was doubtless made in the covered waggon of 
 the carrier who made weekly journeys, or on 
 foot, but later he doubtless travelled on horse- 
 back. It was a common practice to hire horses 
 for travelling at twelvepence the first day, and 
 eightpence a day afterwards, until they were 
 returned to the owner ; but Shakespeare could 
 have afforded long before his death to ride a 
 horse of his own. 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 255 
 
 There were two routes between Stratford 
 and London one by Oxford and High 
 Wycombe, through Shipston-on-Stour, Chip- 
 ping Norton, Woodstock, the Chilterns, 
 Beaconsfield, Hillingdon Hill, Hanwell, 
 Acton, and Kensington ; the other by 
 Banbury and Aylesbury. 1 Tradition points to 
 the former route as Shakespeare's favourite 
 road, and signalises the Crown Inn, near 
 Carfax, at Oxford, as one of his resting-places, 
 where he found " witty company " and a fair 
 hostess with whom scandal will have it he 
 made too free. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon, 
 near Oxford, " he happened to take the 
 humour of the constable in Midsummer Night's 
 Dream "-by which he meant, we may suppose, 
 Much Ado about Nothing but there were 
 watchmen of the Dogberry type all over 
 England, and probably at Stratford itself. 
 Lord Burghley, writing to Walsingham in 1586, 
 described how on a long journey he saw the 
 watch at every town's end standing with long 
 staves under alehouse pentices, and how at 
 Enfield they declared they were watching for 
 
 1 For an interesting account of the journey by road from Stratford 
 to London see Professor J. W. Hales's Notes and Essays on S/ia&e- 
 sjeare (iS&4), pp. 1-24. 
 
256 Stratford-OH-Avon 
 
 three young men, whom they would surely 
 know because " one of the parties hath a hooked 
 nose" a statement upon which Burghley 
 makes the prudent comment that " if they be 
 no better instructed but to find three persons 
 by one of them having a hooked nose, they 
 may miss thereof." The inns all along the 
 Elizabethan country roads were famed for their 
 comfort. "The world affords," writes one 
 traveller, Fynes M orison, " not such inns as 
 England hath either for good and cheap enter- 
 tainment after the guests' own pleasure, or for 
 humble attendance on passengers ; yea, even in 
 very poor villages." The host and hostess and 
 the servants zealously attended to the needs 
 of horse and man. What was left over from a 
 guest's supper was carefully preserved for his 
 breakfast, his chamber was kept well cleaned 
 and warmed, and a few pence was all that was 
 expected by the chamberlain and ostler when 
 the traveller left to pursue his journey. Up to 
 the very last years of his life, Shakespeare paid 
 frequent visits to London, and very often must 
 he have hasted to his bed "with travel tired" 
 at an hospitable roadside inn. 
 
 When Shakespeare left Stratford-on-Avon in 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 257 
 
 1585, his wife and three children remained 
 behind, but at no period is it probable that he 
 was long separated from them. His fellow- 
 townsmen at all times knew of his worldly 
 prosperity, and were conscious of a desire on 
 his part to stand well with them. Abraham 
 Sturley, who was once bailiff, writing apparently 
 to a brother early in 1598, says: "This is one 
 special remembrance from our father's motion. 
 It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. 
 Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money 
 upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, 
 or near about us : he thinketh it a very fit pattern 
 to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. 
 By the instructions you can give him thereof, 
 and by the friends he can make therefore, we 
 think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and 
 would do us much good." To Richard Quiney, 
 the father of Thomas Quiney, afterwards 
 Shakespeare's son-in-law, who was staying in 
 1598 at the Bell, in Carter Lane, London, and 
 endeavouring to relieve the town of the 
 payment of a subsidy, Abraham Sturley also 
 wrote, on 4th November 1598, that since the 
 town was wholly unable, in consequence of the 
 terrible dearth of corn (" beyond all other 
 
 s 
 
258 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 countries that I can hear of clear and over 
 dear "), to pay the national taxes, he hoped 
 "that our countryman Mr. Wm. Shak. would 
 procure us money, which I will like of, as I 
 shall hear when, and where, and how." 
 Richard Ouiney was himself harassed by debt, 
 and had just before (25th October) addressed a 
 like request to Shakespeare in his own behalf. 
 11 Loving countryman," the application ran 
 and the manuscript, which is still extant, is 
 the only surviving paper besides his will known 
 to have been pressed by Shakespeare's own 
 hands "Loving countryman, I am bold of 
 you as of a friend, craving your help with 
 xxx/z. . . . You shall friend me much in help- 
 ing me out of all the debts I owe in London, 
 I thank God, and much quiet my mind, which 
 would not be indebted. ..." 
 
 Shakespeare apparently maintained very 
 good relations with his father, and the coat-of- 
 arms granted to John Shakespeare in 1596 was 
 undoubtedly the result of his son's exertions. 
 John's own fortunes had long continued to 
 decline. In 1587 an importunate creditor, 
 Nicholas Lane, had made an attempt to 
 distrain on his goods, but found none on which 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 261 
 
 he could lay hands. John had already in 1579 
 mortgaged his estate of Ashbies at Wilmecote 
 for forty pounds to Edmund Lambert, a family 
 friend, and sold in 1579 some of his property at 
 Snitterfield to Robert Webbe, yeoman, for four 
 pounds. A vexatious lawsuit arose out of the 
 mortgage of Ashbies. John Shakespeare, 
 although hard pressed by other debts, 
 offered in 1580, according to the agree- 
 ment, to pay off the mortgage, but Lambert 
 refused to relinquish the property. On his 
 death in 1597 his son continued in possession, 
 and John Shakespeare endeavoured to deprive 
 him, with what success is not known. In 1592 
 John Shakespeare was in worse plight : he was 
 returned as a " recusant." Commissioners had 
 come to Stratford to enforce the penalty of 
 twenty pounds to which those who did not 
 attend church once a month were liable. The 
 appearance of Shakespeare's name in the list of 
 defaulters has suggested that he was a Roman 
 Catholic. But it was not merely a man's religious 
 opinions that kept him from church. The 
 statute acknowledged the lawfulness of plead- 
 ing in excuse not only "age, sickness, and im- 
 potency of body," but fear of creditors. It was 
 
262 St rat ford-on- A von 
 
 doubtless under the last disability that John 
 Shakespeare suffered. But throughout this 
 troubled time he still lived in the old house in 
 Henley Street ; and although he is said to have 
 let out an adjoining tenement, he never parted 
 with the copyhold of the property. In 1601 he 
 died intestate, and William doubtless followed 
 him to the grave. The poet, as the eldest son, 
 inherited the houses in Henley Street, but his 
 mother continued to live there till her death in 
 September 1608. 
 
 Five years before his father's death, another 
 and a far sadder funeral had brought Shake- 
 speare to Stratford. On nth August 1596 
 there was buried in the parish church his only 
 son, Hamnet, aged eleven. That loss must 
 have tempered the satisfaction with which the 
 creator of Arthur and Mamillius witnessed the 
 triumphant success that attended the pro- 
 duction at the same date of his Romeo and 
 Juliet. It was in the next year (1597) that 
 he made his first purchase of landed property 
 at Stratford, and bought the great house of 
 New Place, with two barns and two gardens. 
 For it he paid sixty pounds to William Under- 
 bill, gentleman, who had succeeded Alderman 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 263 
 
 Bott in 1567 in its ownership. In May 1602 
 the poet purchased one hundred and seven 
 acres of land to the north-east of the town, from 
 the Combes, his wealthy neighbours ; and on 
 28th September following he bought a cottage 
 of one Walter Getley, adjoining his garden in 
 Chapel Lane. In July 1605 he added largely 
 to these properties by buying for ^440, " the 
 unexpired term of a moiety of the interest in a 
 lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of 
 the tithes of Stratford, Bishopston, and Wei- 
 combe, subject to certain annual payments." 
 This was the last of the poet's Stratford 
 purchases of real estate, all of which were 
 completed before he was forty-two years old. 
 
 There is further evidence that he occasion- 
 ally traded in agricultural produce, as his father 
 had done before him. In 1598 few of his neigh- 
 bours owned more grain than he. Between 
 March and May 1604 he sold one pound nine- 
 teen shillings and tenpence worth of malt to 
 one Philip Rogers, and lent him two shillings 
 afterwards : six shillings of the debt were repaid, 
 but Shakespeare had to bring an action in the 
 local court to recover the balance. The records 
 of 1608 and 1609 show Shakespeare engaged 
 
264 St rat ford-on- Aroii 
 
 in recovering another debt of six pounds from 
 John Acldenbroke. Shakespeare gained a 
 verdict, but Addenbroke decamped, and made 
 the success a barren one. But at that period 
 Shakespeare was one of the richest men in the 
 town. 
 
 During these years Shakespeare was 
 frequently passing to and from London, and 
 while at Stratford he does not always seem 
 to have resided at New Place. He rebuilt 
 it, apparently of stone, in 1 598, soon after 
 purchasing it, and planted an orchard in the 
 garden, of which the mulberry tree planted 
 about 1609 was l n g a famous survival. 
 Early in the seventeenth century the town- 
 clerk, Thomas Greene, who claimed to be 
 Shakespeare's cousin, lived in the house, but 
 he removed about 1609. It has been sug- 
 gested that between 1598 and 1607 Shake- 
 speare and his family lived with his mother 
 in the houses in Henley Street, which his 
 father's death in 1601 had placed in his hands. 
 In 1607 his eldest daughter, Susannah, mar- 
 ried John Hall, a rising physician of puritan 
 tendencies, recently settled in Stratford, who 
 purchased a large house in Old Town. And it 
 
r 
 
 ; A A A 
 
 or THE 
 
 Shakespeare at Stratford 265 
 
 _/ -x 
 
 was there, according to some conjectures, that 
 Shakespeare took up a temporary residence 
 between 1607 and 1609. After the latter date, 
 New Place was his permanent home, and he 
 rarely left Stratford in subsequent years. He 
 had many friends there. Old John Combe, of 
 whose suspected usury he laughingly dis- 
 approved, was living at the college. He saw 
 much of the Quineys, his father's and his own 
 acquaintances from youth. The second house 
 from New Place, a very substantial building 
 which is still standing, was inhabited by Julius 
 Shaw, who dealt regularly in wool, corn, and 
 malt, and occasionally in wood and tiles. Shaw 
 was a member of the town council in 1603, a 
 chamberlain in 1609, an alderman in 1613, and 
 bailiff in 1616. Shakespeare knew him well, 
 and called him in just before his death to 
 witness his will. Relatives were also numerous 
 in the neighbourhood. The house in Henley 
 Street Shakespeare appears to have let (after 
 his final removal to New Place) to his sister 
 Joan and her husband, William Hart, who is 
 described as a hatter. (There they brought 
 up their three sons, the poet's nephews : 
 William, born in 1600, Thomas, born in 1605, 
 
266 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 and Michael, born in 1608; and the occupiers 
 of the house in the early years of the present 
 century claimed descent from the Harts.) 
 Shakespeare's brothers, Gilbert, three years 
 his junior, and Richard, ten years his junior, 
 lived at Stratford, and the former assisted 
 him to complete some of his purchases of 
 land. 
 
 Visitors to Stratford doubtless knew the 
 wealthy inhabitant of New Place. Old Sir 
 Thomas Lucy had died at Charlecote, /th July 
 1600, and his son and heir died three years 
 later. But a third Sir Thomas Lucy, grandson 
 of Shakespeare's early enemy, was diligent in 
 the discharge of local judicial functions. In 
 early life he had travelled on the continent with 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and was apparently 
 a man of culture. He was often to be seen 
 riding about Stratford. We know that in 1632 
 he conferred with Shakespeare's son-in-law, 
 John Hall, on local business, and afterwards 
 refreshed himself at the Swan Inn. There 
 is every reason to assume that he and the poet 
 were known to each other. As much may be 
 said of another great neighbour Sir Fulk 
 Greville of Alcester and of Beauchamp's Court, 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 269 
 
 Warwick, a poet, a statesman, and the friend in 
 earlier days of Sir Philip Sidney. A more 
 congenial acquaintance was Michael Drayton, 
 a native of Warwick and an ardent lover of the 
 county of his birth. 
 
 Shakespeare never coveted municipal office ; 
 he was content to be merely Mr. Shakespeare, 
 gentleman, of Stratford, and neither alderman 
 nor bailiff. There is little reason to suspect 
 that the cause of his neglect of this road to 
 local fame is to be ascribed to any contempt on 
 his part for its humble worth. It was due 
 rather to the * puritan atmosphere which was 
 fast settling upon Stratford when he was in 
 a position to avail himself of municipal 
 honours. His father had evinced puritan 
 leanings, with which his son was clearly 
 never in sympathy. As early as 1564, when 
 John Shakespeare was chamberlain, he paid 
 two shillings "for defacing image in chapel." 
 But it was some years before the puritan 
 spirit laid a firm enough hold on the town 
 council to induce them, as they did on two 
 occasions in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century, to consider " the inconvenience of 
 plays." Shakespeare must have felt some 
 
2/o Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 amusement when the news was brought him 
 from the council chamber, opposite New Place, 
 that after very serious consideration the council 
 resolved, on 7th February 1612, that plays 
 were unlawful, and ''the sufferance of them 
 against the orders heretofore made, and against 
 the example of other well - governed cities 
 and boroughs " ; and the council was there- 
 fore "content," the resolution ran, "and they . 
 conclude that the penalty of xs. imposed [on 
 players] be x/z. henceforth." Ten years later 
 the king's players were bribed by the council 
 to leave the city without playing. The 
 drinking of sack and claret by the burgesses 
 did not cease, however, but it, too, was now 
 directed to advance soberer causes than of 
 old. The council began to invite puritan 
 preachers to preach in the town and to take 
 their pottle of wine and quart of sack, at 
 the municipal expense, after the sermon. One 
 of these incongruous entertainments was, 
 singularly enough, celebrated in 1614 at 
 Shakespeare's own house. "One quart of 
 sack and one quart of claret wine given 
 to the preacher at New Place " is an item 
 in the chamberlain's accounts for 1614. It 
 
Shakespeare at Stratford 2 7 1 
 
 was probably John Hall, the poet's son-in-law, 
 who organised that gathering ; or it may be 
 that the preacher was personally attractive, and 
 that the owner of New Place was anxious to 
 make his acquaintance. Shakespeare, it should 
 also be remembered, must have been a regular 
 attendant at the parish church, and may at 
 times have enjoyed a sermon. The pew which 
 the residents at New Place occupied, called 
 from its early owners the Clopton Pew, was 
 near the pulpit, on the south side of the nave. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT COMBED DEATH THE 
 ATTEMPT TO ENCLOSE THE WELCOMES FIELDS 
 
 SOME stirring episodes disturbed Stratford 
 in the dramatist's last days. In 1598 there 
 were riots, owing to the famine; in 1602 
 "rogues were taken at Clifford," amid much 
 unexplained excitement, finally quelled by 
 draughts of sack and Rhenish wine given 
 to the townsmen at the municipal expense. In 
 1605 an d 1606 much consternation was caused 
 in the neighbourhood by the Gunpowder 
 Plot. Some of the leading conspirators lived 
 near Stratford. At Clopton House, then the 
 property of Baron Carew, William Clopton's 
 son-in-law, lived Ambrose Rook wood, a chief 
 abettor of the plot, and he received there many 
 of his associates. Catesby lived near Lap worth. 
 When the plot was discovered, the bailiff of 
 
Combe s Death 275 
 
 Stratford was ordered to make an inventory 
 of Rook wood's goods. He and many burgesses 
 proceeded to Clopton House on 26th February 
 1606, and found much Papist paraphernalia, 
 which they duly seized. 1 
 
 Eight years later, on loth July 1614, old 
 John Combe of the College died, and was buried 
 in the parish church with much ceremony. 
 Some while before his death, he had told Shake- 
 speare, according to a well-known story of little 
 authenticity, that he believed the poet intended 
 to write his epitaph, and begged him to tell 
 him what he would say of him. Shakespeare 
 replied with four lines, the sharpness of 
 whose satire on Combe's 10 per cent loans 
 is said to have brought the friendship of the 
 two to an end- 
 Ten in the hundred lies here engraved, 
 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved. 
 If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb ? 
 Oh ! oh ! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Combe's tomb bore an 
 inscription recording his many charitable be- 
 quests to the poor of Stratford, and by his 
 will he left five pounds to " Mr. William 
 
 1 Cf. Professor Hales's Notes, etc., on Shakespeare, pp. 25-56. 
 
276 
 
 Straiford-on-Avon 
 
 Shackspere." Other bequests prove Combe 
 to have lived on intimate terms with all the 
 
 MEMORIAL OF SIR HENRY RAINFORD IN CLIFFORD CHURCH. 
 
 neighbouring gentry, including Sir Henry 
 Rainford, whose elaborate monument stands 
 still in Clifford Church. 
 
Attempt to Enclose the Welcombe Fields 277 
 
 Combe was a favourable specimen of the 
 new class of country landowners which the 
 development of commerce had made numerous 
 throughout sixteenth century England. His 
 chief object in life was to secure a fortune, but 
 he sought at the same time to stand well with 
 his neighbours, especially with those in high 
 social station. Speculation in land offered a 
 ready means of attaining his two aims of wealth 
 and social dignity. Land (as we have already 
 noted *) was in those days an investment which 
 could ensure a profit, but for this purpose it 
 was necessary to apply it chiefly to grazing 
 uses, and to secure wide areas. The agri- 
 cultural labourer suffered under such masters. 
 Little labour was required, and the agri- 
 cultural population dwindled. A greed for 
 great estates invariably characterised the 
 new class of landowners. Small owners were 
 absorbed by large ones, and lands held in 
 common by municipal corporations were con- 
 stantly threatened with enclosure. If old John 
 Combe did not himself exemplify the worst 
 vices of the new system, he could not avoid 
 inflicting some hardship on his poorer neigh- 
 
 1 See pp. 115-116. 
 
2 7S Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 hours ; and his son and successor, William 
 Combe, had far less consideration than his father 
 for either the tillers of the soil or the townsmen of 
 Stratford as owners of the common fields near 
 his estates. Shakespeare certainly bore in 
 mind the grievances of the South Warwickshire 
 peasants when he made Corin, the shepherd of 
 the Forest of Arden, in his As You Like //, 
 complain- 
 But I am shepherd to another man, 
 And do not shear the fleeces that I graze. 
 My master is of churlish disposition, 
 And little recks to find the way to heaven 
 By doing deeds of hospitality. 
 
 The evil influence of " the greedy gentlemen 
 which are sheepmongers and graziers," and 
 are worse than " the caterpillars and locusts of 
 Egypt," is a commonplace in the charges 
 brought by those who under Elizabeth de- 
 nounced the vices of the age. " They have 
 depopulated and overthrown whole towns, and 
 made thereof sheep pastures nothing profitable 
 to the commonwealth," is the opening phrase 
 of " a petition of the Diggers of Warwickshire " 
 addressed " to all other diggers " in the reign 
 of James I. 
 
Attempt to Enclose the Welcombe Fields 279 
 
 The enclosure of the common fields attached 
 to villages and towns was repeatedly attempted 
 by the new landowners in the face of many 
 prohibitory enactments, and often with com- 
 plete success. This pillage of valued rights 
 was always hotly resented, and often violently 
 resisted. In May and June 1607 the peasantry 
 of the midland counties, smarting under many 
 such invasions of their privileges and properties, 
 were involved in something like a rebellion. 
 " People," the proclamation issued to repress 
 the disturbances ran, " 314 assemble themselves 
 in riotous and tumultuous manner, sometimes 
 in the night and sometimes in the day, under 
 pretence of laying open enclosed grounds of 
 late years taken in to their domage, as they 
 say." In Warwickshire and elsewhere, says 
 Stow, u a great number of common persons 
 . . . violently cut and broke down hedges . . . 
 and laid open all such enclosures of commons 
 and other grounds as they found enclosed." ! 
 At Hill's Norton, in Warwickshire, the in- 
 surgents assembled to the number of 3000, 
 armed with spades, shovels, bills, and pikes. 
 The leader, John Reynolds, was called Captain 
 
 1 Stow's Chronicles (1632), p. 890. 
 
280 St rat ford-on- A -con 
 
 Pouch, because he pretended that a pouch 
 which he was in the habit of wearing contained 
 enough to feed any number of rebels. On sub- 
 sequent examination there was only found in 
 the pouch " a piece of green cheese." Reynolds 
 or Pouch asserted that he had authority from 
 the king to overthrow enclosures. But when 
 the agitators declined to disperse on the issue 
 of a proclamation promising an investigation 
 into their grievances, military force was em- 
 ployed, and all the ringleaders were arrested 
 and hanged. James I. expressed himself 
 strongly against the enclosures, and admitted 
 the injury thus wrought on the poor labourers. 
 
 After such disturbances in the peaceful 
 neighbourhood of Stratford, it is surprising to 
 find that William, John Combe's heir, had no 
 sooner succeeded to his father's lands than he 
 attempted to enclose the common fields about 
 his estate at Welcombe, which undoubtedly 
 belonged to the Stratford townsmen. In the 
 autumn the corporation of Stratford first be- 
 came aware of- Combe's intention, and they 
 resolved to offer it the sternest resistance. 
 
 Shakespeare had some personal interest in 
 the matter. He owned some neighbouring 
 
Attempt to Enclose the Welcombe Fields 281 
 
 lands as well as part of the tithes of the 
 threatened fields. But he had small sympathy 
 with popular rights, and when Combe's agent, 
 Replingham, in October 1614 formally drew 
 up a deed engaging that he should suffer no 
 injury by the enclosure, he threw his influence 
 into Combe's scale. 
 
 In November 1614 he was in London, and 
 Thomas Greene, town clerk of Stratford- on - 
 Avon, who calls Shakespeare his cousin, al- 
 though it is improbable that they were relatives, 
 visited him there to discuss the position of 
 affairs. 
 
 On 23d December 1614 the corporation 
 assembled in formal meeting and drew up a 
 letter to Shakespeare imploring him to aid them 
 in the struggle. Greene himself sent to the 
 dramatist "a note of inconveniences [that] would 
 happen by the enclosure." But although an am- 
 biguous entry 1 of a later date (September 1615), 
 
 1 The words are "Sept. Mr. Shakspeare tellyng J. Greene that I 
 was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe." J. Greene is to 
 be distinguished from Thomas Greene the diarist. The entry therefore 
 implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene that the writer of the diary, 
 Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the enclosure. Dr. C. M. 
 Ingleby published in 1885 a careful facsimile of the extant pages of 
 Green's diary (now preserved at Stratford) with a transcript by Mr. E. 
 J. L. Scott of the British Museum. Mr. Scott showed that Greene's 
 writing of this entry can only be read as we give it. Those who wish 
 
282 St rat joni-oii-. I : 'on 
 
 in the few extant pages of Greene's ungram- 
 matical diary has been tortured into an expres- 
 sion of disgust on Shakespeare's part at Combe's 
 conduct, it is quite clear that Shakespeare 
 adhered to his agreement with Combe's agent, 
 and tacitly supported him. Happily Combe 
 failed. The corporation carried their case into 
 the law courts, and the decision was in their 
 favour. It is interesting to note that one of 
 the disputed parcels of land, called then as now 
 44 the Dingles," is still unenclosed and offers the 
 wayfarer an admirable point of view from which 
 to survey Stratford and the neighbouring 
 country. 
 
 to make Shakespeare a champion of popular rights unjustifiably inter- 
 pret the " I " in "I was not able, etc." as "he," in which case 
 Shakespeare would have told Greene that he (i.e. himself) disliked the 
 enclosure. But all the correspondence addressed to Shakespeare on 
 the subject by the council makes it clear that he and they took opposite 
 views throughout. 
 
XXV 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH AND HIS DESCENDANTS 
 
 BUT before this dispute had reached its final 
 settlement, Shakespeare's days came to a 
 sudden close. He had welcomed the birth of 
 his first grandchild, Elizabeth Hall, in 1608, 
 the year of his mother's death. On loth 
 February 1616 there took place the marriage 
 of his second daughter, Judith, who was then 
 thirty -one years old, to the son of Richard 
 Quiney, of High Street, Thomas Quiney, who 
 was four years her junior. The ceremony was 
 performed without a license, and some doubts 
 as to its legality were subsequently raised. On 
 1 7th April the funeral of his brother-in-law, 
 William Hart, the hatter, brought almost all the 
 members of the family to the parish church. 
 But it is doubtful if Shakespeare was present. 
 A few days before, according to an ancient 
 
284 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 tradition, the poet was entertaining at New 
 Place his two friends, Michael Dray ton and Ben 
 Jonson, and in the midst of the festivities was 
 himself taken suddenly ill. Certain it is that on 
 Tuesday, 23d April, six days after Hart's burial, 
 Shakespeare died, at the age of fifty-two. On 
 Thursday, 25th April, he was buried near the 
 northern wall of the chancel, by the door of the 
 charnel-house, where the bones dug up from 
 the churchyard were deposited. The poet, 
 fearful that his bones should suffer this in- 
 dignity, is said to have written for inscription 
 on his tomb- 
 Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
 To dig the dust enclosed heare ; 
 Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
 And curst be he that moves my bones. 
 
 According to the letter of one William Hall, a 
 visitor to Stratford in 1694, recently brought 
 to light, these verses were penned to suit " the 
 capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most 
 part a very ignorant set of people " ; had this 
 curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, they 
 would not have hesitated in course of time to 
 remove Shakespeare's dust to " the bone- 
 house," where waggon - loads of bones were 
 
Shakespeare s DeatJi and his Descendants 287 
 
 allowed to accumulate. The design, says the 
 same authority, did not miss of its effect, for 
 the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and 
 was never opened, even to receive his wife, 
 although she had expressed her desire to be 
 buried with her husband. 
 
 Thus Stratford was deprived of the inhabit- 
 ant to whose " wit " its renown is due. The 
 burgesses of 1616 gave no sign that they were 
 conscious that death was taking from them one 
 who left anything besides a substantial worldly 
 fortune to invite their respect. The great bell 
 of the church was tolled, the bailiff and alder- 
 men joined the funeral procession, rosemary 
 was freely strewn above the grave, and a 
 liberal banquet was provided for the mourners. 
 Every honour was paid by the poet's fellow- 
 townsmen, but none of those who were his daily 
 companions at Stratford guessed that he had 
 already gained an immortal fame for work done 
 outside their parish boundaries. 
 
 Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which 
 was drawn up in the January before his death, 
 and the final draft by his bedside, was proved 
 by Hall, in London, on the 22d of June. To 
 his younger daughter, Judith, besides a portion 
 
288 Strat ford-on- Avon 
 
 of his landed property, he left ^150, of which 
 ^100 was her marriage portion, and another 
 ^150 to be paid to her if alive three years after 
 the date of the will. To his sister, Joan Hart, 
 who had just become a widow, he left, besides 
 a contingent reversionary interest in Judith's 
 legacy, his wearing apparel, 20 in money, a 
 life interest in the Henley Street property, and 
 $ to each of her three sons. To his grand- 
 daughter, Elizabeth Hall, he bequeathed his 
 plate, with the exception of his broad silver and 
 gilt bowl, which was reserved for Judith Ouiney. 
 To the poor of Stratford he gave 10] to Mr. 
 Thomas Combe (apparently a brother of John, 
 of the enclosure controversy) his sword ; and 
 to a number of Stratford friends, and to his 
 " fellows," his partners in his theatrical specula- 
 tions, John Hemyngs, Richard Burbage, and 
 Henry Cundell, xxvj^. viijW. each, with which 
 to buy memorial rings. To Susannah Hall, his 
 elder daughter, he left, with remainder to her 
 issue, New Place, almost all his land, barns, and 
 gardens, and a house at Blackfriars, London. 
 To his wife he gave only his second best bed 
 with its furniture ; all the rest of his household 
 stuff passed to John Hall and his wife Susannah. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 U 
 
Shakespeare s Death and his Descendants 29 1 
 
 The executors were Thomas Russell " esquier," 
 and Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick. 
 That the second best bed should have been 
 bestowed on his wife was, according to contem- 
 porary notions, a mark of esteem, but that it 
 should form the only bequest forms a strong 
 argument in favour of the theory that the 
 dramatist was not happy in his domestic life. 
 His daughter Susannah was, according to his 
 will, to take his wife's position as mistress of 
 New Place. 
 
 Soon after his death, certainly before 1623, 
 an elaborate monument was erected to Shake- 
 speare's memory in the chancel of the parish 
 church. The services of a London sculptor 
 and tomb-maker, Gerard Johnson, son of a 
 native of Amsterdam, with a shop near St. 
 Saviour's Church, Southwark, not far from the 
 Globe Theatre, were called into requisition, 
 and the inscription was apparently written 
 by a London friend of the dramatist. The 
 bust above the inscribed tablet is probably 
 from a cast taken after death, and, though 
 scarcely pleasing, is the most authentic 
 memorial of the poet's features. The words 
 run 
 
292 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 Judicio Fylium, gcnio Socratcm^ arte Maroncm, 
 Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet. 
 
 Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast? 
 Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
 AYithin this monument ; Shakspeare, with whome 
 Quick nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
 Far more then cost ; sith all yt he hath writt 
 Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 
 
 Obiit ano. dot. 1 6 1 6. Aetatis 5 3. Die 2 3 Ap. 
 
 Of Shakespeare's family, his wife died on 
 6th August 1623, and was buried near her 
 husband two days later. The Halls moved to 
 New Place soon after the poet's death. John 
 Hall increased his medical practice largely 
 there, and his patients included the neighbour- 
 ing gentry within a circuit of thirty miles. His 
 puritanism grew more confirmed and precise in 
 later life, and he frequently quarrelled with his 
 neighbours. He was buried in the chancel of 
 the parish church on the 25th November 1635. 
 His only child had been since 1626 the wife of 
 Thomas Nash, and to his son-in-law Hall be- 
 queathed by will ''his study of books." This 
 study, it has been reasonably conjectured, must 
 have formed the library of his father-in-law. 
 The books do not appear to have been quickly 
 
Shakespeare s Death and his Descendants 295 
 
 removed from New Place, as his widow, who 
 was still residing there, showed them in 1642 
 to James Cooke, a doctor professionally engaged 
 at Stratford in the Civil War. He informed 
 her that some manuscripts of her husband were 
 among them, and offered to buy them of her, 
 but this offer she declined, and disputed his 
 opinion as to the authorship of the papers. Is 
 it possible that some of her father's manuscripts 
 were among them, or that she believed them to 
 be ? In any case, the information would have 
 availed her little, for reading was not one of 
 her accomplishments. Unhappily, nothing is 
 known of the later history of the papers. Mis- 
 tress Hall died on nth July 1649, an ^ was 
 buried near her husband. Her tomb bears the 
 epitaph- 
 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 of Him with whom she's now in blisse. 
 Then, Passenger, ha'st ne're a teare 
 
 To weepe with her that wept with all ; 
 That wept, yet set herselfe to chere 
 
 Them up with comforts cordiall ? 
 Her love shall live, her mercy spread, 
 When thou ha'st ne're a teare to shed. 
 
296 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 Judith, Shakespeare's younger daughter, 
 lived on till 9th 1 February 1662. Her husband, 
 soon after their marriage, removed to the house 
 called the Cage, in Bridge Street, and was in 
 business there as a vintner. He was a member 
 of the town council from 1617 till 1630, when 
 he fell into evil habits, and was fined for swear- 
 ing and encouraging tipplers. From that date 
 his fortunes declined. He finally sought 
 employment in London, and died there about 
 1652. Judith's married life was thus not a very 
 happy one. Of her three sons, the eldest, 
 named Shakespeare, died in infancy, and the 
 other two on reaching manhood, and she lived 
 lonely at Stratford till death. The last surviv- 
 ing descendant of Shakespeare was his grand- 
 daughter Elizabeth Hall, whose first husband, 
 Thomas Nash, a resident at Stratford, a student 
 of Lincoln's Inn, died in 1647. She married 
 afterwards Sir John Barnard, a Northampton- 
 shire gentleman, and died, without issue by 
 either marriage, in 1670. With her second 
 husband she lived for some years at New 
 Place, which she inherited from her mother, 
 but she subsequently resided at Sir John's 
 house at Abington, in Northamptonshire, and 
 
Shakespeare's Death and his Descendants 299 
 
 in the church there she was buried. New 
 Place she bequeathed to Sir John Barnard, 
 and soon after his death, in 1674, it was 
 repurchased by the Clopton family. 
 
 It is unnecessary to pursue the history of 
 Stratford beyond these points. Of the final 
 fortunes of New Place, it only remains to tell 
 of its rebuilding by a Hugh Clopton in 1703, 
 before any authentic pictorial representation of 
 its appearance in Shakespeare's day had been 
 made, and of its ultimate demolition in 1759 by 
 Francis Gastrell, Vicar of Stratford, to avoid 
 the pertinacity of sightseers and the payment of 
 local taxes. Of other structural changes that 
 Stratford underwent in the last century, the 
 chief were the destruction of the College and 
 the erection of the Townhall. To the new 
 Townhall the municipal offices were transferred, 
 and the ancient Guildhall was thus left un- 
 tenanted. The general historian treats of the 
 part played by the town in the civil warfare of 
 the seventeenth century, of the story of Queen 
 Henrietta Maria's flying visit to New Place in 
 1643, an d of the quartering of soldiers at the 
 time in Shakespeare's dwelling-place. The legal 
 
3oo Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 antiquary has described the grants of new 
 charters to the town by Charles II, and the 
 reform of the corporation in 1835. Of the 
 jubilees celebrated in the town since the days 
 of Garrick to honour the memory of the poet, 
 many records exist, and their barren history 
 has been often told. The purchase by the 
 nation of the birthplace in Henley Street, 
 and of New Place with its gardens, and the 
 erection of the memorial buildings on the river- 
 bank, are fresh in the memory of literary 
 students, and are no unworthy, although in 
 themselves necessarily inadequate, testimonies 
 of a nation's gratitude to Stratford for having 
 nurtured its king of poets. 
 
 The origin of the town and its development 
 in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries 
 alone afford a profitable study to the lover of 
 Shakespeare. But even while studying them, 
 it is useless to estimate exactly how much the 
 dramatist owed to Stratford. We could point 
 out in the various lists of the town's inhabitants 
 the immortal names of Fluellen and Bardolf, of 
 John Page and Thomas Ford, of Perkes and of 
 Peto, and many more confirmations than appear 
 in the foregoing pages of Aubrey's statement 
 
THE CHANCEL OF STRATFORD CHURCH. 
 
Shakespeare s Death and his Descendants 303 
 
 that "he did gather the humours of men daily 
 wherever he came." We might depict Shake- 
 speare seeking inspiration for the sylvan scenes 
 of As You Like It beneath the trees of the 
 Warwickshire Forest of Arden. We might 
 
 press the theory that makes Lord Carew the 
 lord of Taming of the Shrew and Clopton 
 House the scene of Kit Sly's illusion. But it 
 is wiser to take a larger view, and to be content 
 to marvel how, in the aspect of the town and 
 country, fair as the latter was and is, or how in 
 
304 Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 the petty details of Stratford daily life, his 
 mighty genius found adequate nourishment. 
 It is vain to endeavour to solve this mystery, or 
 to strive to indicate either in " the world of 
 living men," or in " wood, and stream, and 
 field, and hill, and ocean," 
 
 All he had loved and moulded into thought. 
 
 THE END 
 
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