CJ "?vxTw-co^e/ 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 
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Cbe Ccmptc 
 
THE TEMPLE 
 TOPOGRAPHIES 
 
 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 By HERBERT W. TOMPKINS. 
 With Illustrations by E. H. 
 NEW. 
 
 KNUTSFORD 
 
 By G. A. PAYNE. With Illus- 
 trations by E. H. NEW. 
 
 BROADWAY 
 
 By ALGERNON GISSING. With 
 Illustrations by E. H. NEW. 
 
 Other Volumes are in preparation, 
 
 of which full particulars will 
 
 be announced later. 
 
 Long F'cap 8vo, Cloth Extra, 
 is. 6d. net per vol. 
 
All Rights Reserved 
 
 * 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE TOWN . . . . i 
 
 II. SHAKESPEARE . . . .12 
 
 III. MEMORIALS . . . .32 
 
 IV. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD . . 53 
 
 292062 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Church .... Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Guild Chapel from High Street . . xii 
 
 Bridge Street 8 
 
 The Shakespeare Monument . , . 13 
 
 AlmshouseS) Grammar School, and Guild 
 
 Chapel . . . . . .19 
 
 Anne Hathaivay's Cottage . . .25 
 
 The Memorial Theatre ... . . 33 
 
 Shakespeare f s Birthplace . . .43 
 
 In Rother Street 62 
 
The 
 Guitd 
 
 from 
 
Stratford-on-Avon 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TOWN 
 
 THE town of Stratford-on-Avon lies 
 in the heart of England, in a district 
 once covered by the great forest of Arden, 
 where Touchstone and Audrey talked, as 
 we would fain believe. Even men who 
 have rambled widely, knowing and loving 
 our country as she deserves to be known and 
 loved, find peculiar charms of scenery or 
 association in the town or its immediate 
 neighbourhood. The worthiest men and 
 women of other lands deem it a labour of 
 love, perhaps a pilgrimage of pleasure, to 
 cross continents and seas that they may 
 visit the Warwickshire town which gave 
 to England her greatest master of written 
 speech, her shrewdest observer of the 
 hearts and minds of men. My purpose 
 here is not to tell the story of Stratford, a 
 story often told, nor to write a description 
 of the town as we see it to-day ; but to 
 point out, as concisely as possible, some 
 
 A 
 
features of paramount interest or enduring 
 charm. 
 
 We do not know at what period this 
 town first became known as the street that 
 led towards the ford across the Avon. 
 Neolithic man, bands of Celts, legionaries 
 of Rome, and Saxon settlers were here in 
 turn before 1085, when the Domesday 
 Survey placed on record the first account 
 and valuation of the manor, then compris- 
 ing less than 2000 acres, occupied largely 
 by men who, as Mr. Sidney Lee puts it, 
 were "in virtual serfdom." The lord of 
 the manor was also Bishop of Worcester, 
 to whose see Stretforde had belonged since, 
 in 691, Ethelred of Mercia had bestowed 
 its monastery upon Egwin, third Bishop of 
 the diocese. Thus, when searching out 
 the antiquities of Stratford, we find that 
 here, as in so many neighbourhoods in 
 England, our earliest data bring us in 
 touch with monastic legend or ecclesias- 
 tical chronicle. The monastery, founded 
 thus far back in the twilight of Saxon 
 history, was built, as tradition states, on 
 the spot where the grey tower of Holy 
 Trinity Church looks down upon the 
 waters of the winding Avon, as it did, 
 perhaps, six hundred years ago. 
 
 The history of that monastery is lost in 
 obscurity save for the fact that the Bishops 
 of Worcester only retained it after some 
 strife with successive rulers of Mercia. 
 
THE TOWN 
 
 Monastery and town were probably almost 
 coeval, the one giving rise to the other. 
 The first houses in Stratford would thus be 
 near the river and the monastery, forming, 
 at least approximately, the thoroughfare 
 known to-day as the Old Town. To- 
 wards the close of the eleventh century 
 these dwellers in the vill probably numbered 
 less than two hundred souls, for the Domes- 
 day Survey alluded to twenty-nine men, 
 each the head of a family. For the most 
 part, their life-work was to supply the needs 
 of the monks, and by so doing obtain their 
 own daily bread. They ground their corn 
 at the manor mill below the ford : the 
 Bishop, like non-clerical lords of other 
 manors, was entitled to a fee for its use, 
 often paid by a supply of eels for the table 
 of his Lordship. Thus the monastery was 
 for many years conducive to the growth 
 and prosperity of the town. For we know 
 that the monk laboured as strenuously as 
 he prayed. He felled trees ; he helped 
 the serf with his tillage ; he drove the 
 wolf into the farther forest ; he caused the 
 wilderness and the solitary place to be 
 glad. 
 
 The solitary places around Stratford were 
 soon dotted with industrious homesteads. 
 Oaks, then more abundant, afforded pan- 
 nage (i.e. acorn-feed) for many hogs ; the 
 rich pastures beside the Avon supported 
 large herds of cattle. An important era 
 
 3 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 in the history of the town was reached 
 when, in the days of Richard L, the right 
 to hold a market in Stratford each Thurs- 
 day was obtained by the Bishop of Wor- 
 cester, who charged the townsmen sixteen 
 shillings yearly for the exercise of the 
 privilege. The present Rother Market, 
 near the centre of the town, marks the 
 spot where drovers brought their cattle 
 together to this weekly sale, " Rother " 
 being derived from an Anglo - Saxon 
 word which signifies horned cattle. At 
 this spot stood a large cross of stone. 
 The market, after a while, fell almost 
 into desuetude ; early in the fourteenth 
 century it became again important. 
 Moreover, of five annual fairs which the 
 townsmen enjoyed, four were largely occu- 
 pied with the trade in cattle. This feature 
 in Stratford^ commercial life arose very 
 naturally from the situation of the town 
 near well- watered pastures. As Shakespeare 
 puts it in "Timon of Athens," "the pasture 
 lards the rother's sides." Dealers in corn 
 and other produce of fertile Warwickshire 
 were wont to barter their wares around 
 the High Cross, at the north end of the 
 present High Street, between Rother 
 Market and the bridge across the Avon 
 the " poor bridge of timber " of which 
 John Leland wrote. 
 
 English to the core, the men of Stratford 
 have ever loved their town, and have been 
 4 
 
THE TOWN 
 
 jealous for its prosperity. In the earlier 
 days of its history, generous hearts and 
 willing hands contributed to its improve- 
 ment. Conspicuous among such in the 
 fourteenth century were two brothers, 
 John and Robert de Stratford, and their 
 nephew Ralph. The three men became 
 distinguished prelates ; the two brothers 
 were statesmen also, holding in turn the 
 Chancellorship of England. To this family 
 the town owed many benefactions. A 
 chapel for the Guild of the Holy Cross was 
 founded by Robert, father of these brothers, 
 some time during the reign of Edward I. ; 
 there is, perhaps, no doubt that the chapel 
 stood where the Guild Chapel now stands, 
 as in Mr. New's drawing, at the meeting 
 of Church Street and Chapel Lane. The 
 Guild itself was of immemorial antiquity; its 
 members cared for the souls of the living and 
 the dead, and fostered all manner of spiritual 
 ministrations among themselves ; but its 
 story can only receive passing reference 
 here. The Guild Chapel was sanctioned 
 by Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester, 
 in 1269; Robert de Stratford wasappointed 
 its first Master. In the following year the 
 Bishop granted a forty days' indulgence to 
 all who had presented gifts to the Guild ; 
 the patronage of this religious but non- 
 ecclesiastical community was by such means 
 fostered, and much property was bestowed 
 upon it. The Register, dating from 1353, 
 5 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 is extant ; from its entries we learn that at 
 one time there stood, in almost every street 
 in Stratford, some house belonging to the 
 Guild of the Holy Cross. 
 
 John de Stratford, born in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the town in a late decade of 
 the thirteenth century, went presently to 
 Oxford, where, under the " beautiful tower 
 of Merton," as Mr. Lang calls it, he 
 studied to good purpose. Some time par- 
 son at Stratford, he became Archdeacon 
 of Lincoln in 1319 and Bishop of Win- 
 chester in 1323. Ten years later he was 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his 
 many preferments, he remembered his 
 native town to the last. Shortly before 
 his elevation to the Archiepiscopate he 
 built the south aisle of the church of his 
 kinsfolk, and placed at its east end a chapel 
 to the memory of St. Thomas a Becket. 
 Some years ago, the mensa, or altar slab, of 
 this chapel was unearthed in the south 
 aisle ; it was placed upon the High 
 Altar in the chancel, and thereby, as the 
 Rev. G. Arbuthnot writes, "restored to 
 its sacred use." Moreover, John sub- 
 sequently converted the chapel into a 
 chantry, endowing it with five mass- 
 priests ; and finally, purchasing from the 
 Bishop the patronage of the church, he 
 bestowed it upon the priests of his chantry, 
 who henceforth controlled its organisa- 
 tions. Readers may trace the doings of 
 6 
 
 
THE TOWN 
 
 John de Stratford, in the higher spheres of 
 ecclesiasticism, in the pages of Hook ; and 
 may see his sermons in manuscript in the 
 library of Hereford Cathedral. He died 
 at Mayfield in Sussex in 1348, and sleeps 
 near the High Altar of Canterbury 
 Cathedral. 
 
 Robert de Stratford, who was probably 
 at Merton with John, is remembered in 
 the town annals for his service as rector, 
 in which office he apparently succeeded his 
 brother, and for his efforts to improve the 
 streets. In his day there were already 
 many dwellers on either side of the road 
 towards Henley-in-Arden ; in Greenhill 
 Street, whence men found their way to 
 Aulcester; and in other thoroughfares nearer 
 the church. Hitherto little more than rude 
 tracks, parson Robert resolved to pave 
 them, and in 1332, by obtaining leave to 
 tax the produce brought by farmers into 
 the town, he "defrayed the charge 
 thereof." He could hardly have done a 
 greater service to his fellow-townsmen. 
 Soon after the granting of the toll, Robert 
 quitted Stratford ; " other palms were 
 won"; and he was honoured in 1335 
 with the Chancellorship of the University 
 of Oxford. Two years later, Robert was 
 consecrated Bishop of Chichester by his 
 brother John, and, dying in 1362, was 
 buried in the cathedral of his diocese. 
 Ralph, his nephew (there is, I believe, a 
 
 7 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 doubt as to the relationship), is known to 
 have owned a house in Bridge Street, and 
 to have built " a house of square stone," a 
 little westward from the church, for the 
 mass priests of John's chantry. That 
 
 BRIDGE STREET 
 
 household became the College of Stratford; 
 the church, served and directed by this 
 college of priests, was styled, from the days 
 of Henry V., the Collegiate Church of the 
 Holy Trinity. 
 
 The mention of Bridge Street brings me 
 to the last pre-Shakespearean townsman of 
 whom I have space to write in this little 
 book. Sir Hugh Clopton, who took his 
 name from the manor of Clopton, near by 
 8 
 
THE TOWN 
 
 granted to his yeoman-ancestor, Robert, 
 by Peter de Montfort became closely 
 associated with Stratford towards the close 
 of the fifteenth century. About 1483 he 
 built, on the site now occupied by New 
 Place of which more anon a "pretty" 
 house, in which he passed many of his 
 latter days. Now at that time the old 
 bridge over the Avon was in a sorry state. 
 Moreover, as there was no constructed 
 approach to it on either side, it could with 
 difficulty be reached when the river over- 
 flowed its banks, as it does to-day. Sir 
 Hugh resolved to remedy this grievance. 
 He built in its stead the broad bridge of 
 fourteen arches of freestone, much as we 
 see it to-day ; it was, however, widened in 
 1814. Dr. B. C. A. Windle has recently 
 reminded us that the second arch on the 
 eastern side was destroyed by the Parlia- 
 mentarian army in 1645, and rebuilt in 
 1652. Dugdale justly called it a "fair 
 Bridg of Stone over Avon," and from the 
 time of Henry VII. to the present day it 
 has been, on the whole, the most cherished 
 of many gifts bestowed upon the town. 
 
 Many Cloptons sleep in the Clopton 
 Chapel, formerly the Chapel of Our Lady, 
 in the parish church. But Sir Hugh sleeps 
 not among them. In his will he recorded 
 his wish that he might there be buried in the 
 tomb which he had himself prepared, but 
 he died in London in 1496, and was laid 
 9 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 to rest in the church of St. Margaret's, 
 Lothbury, "until the day break and the 
 shadows flee away." In 1804 some 
 frescoes were discovered on the roof and 
 walls of the Guild Chapel ; drawings of 
 them were executed by Thomas Fisher, 
 and are preserved in the Memorial Library. 
 Quaintly conceived, they represent the his- 
 tory of the Holy Cross, the martyrdom of 
 St. Thomas of Canterbury, the combat 
 between St. George and the Dragon, and 
 other subjects. The men of Stratford, in 
 pre-Reformation days, must often have 
 gazed upon these realistic paintings with 
 admiring eyes. They owed them, as they 
 owed their largest bridge, to the liberality 
 of Sir Hugh Clopton, who in part rebuilt 
 the Guild Chapel, so close to his own 
 house, and provided the funds for its 
 artistic adornment. 
 
 Thus, ere the bells in a thousand towers 
 had rung in the " spacious times of great 
 Elizabeth," this village community beside 
 the Avon had grown into a typical mid- 
 English town. Times had changed, and 
 manners had changed with them. While 
 Henry VIII. was on the throne, the author 
 of a book entitled " Surveyinge " com- 
 plained that in his day a free man could 
 become bond ; but Mr. Leadam considers 
 that serfdom entirely disappeared during 
 the reign of Elizabeth. Bacon, in 1600, 
 discussed, at Gray's Inn, the legal status of 
 10 
 
THE TOWN 
 
 villeins ; but villeinage had for many years 
 been a mere shadow of its former self. 
 When we find the bondman and the 
 villein prominent in Tudor history, we 
 must remember, as Mr. Savine recently 
 pointed out to the Royal Historical Society, 
 that in those days the words frequently sig- 
 nified no more than common folk, or pea- 
 santry. Men were already turning from 
 hamlet and village to a life of more varied 
 activity in town or city. During the first 
 half of the sixteenth century there was 
 growing up in Stratford, as in other towns, 
 an increasing body of men who plied an 
 honest trade for their own profit, or took 
 themselves elsewhere for similar purposes 
 when they pleased. 
 
 ii 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ABOUT sixty-four years after the death 
 JTjL of Sir Hugh Clopton, died Richard 
 Shakespeare, who had farmed a parcel of 
 land at Snitterfield, a pleasant village on 
 hilly ground, four miles to the north of 
 Stratford. John Shakespeare, one of his 
 three sons, married, in 1557, with Mary 
 Arden of Asbies, who brought him a 
 considerable property, including the farm 
 which his father had tilled. The farm 
 had been rented by Richard Shakespeare 
 from her father, Robert Arden, who died 
 in 1556, and was buried in the old church 
 of St. John the Baptist, at Aston Cantlow. 
 About four miles to the south of Henley-in- 
 Arden, the village of Aston Cantlow lies 
 in a quiet neighbourhood where you may 
 glean memories of former days. It is 
 probable that Mary Arden was married 
 to John Shakespeare in the church where 
 her father had so lately been laid to rest. 
 With her property she brought to her 
 husband a gentle lineage and an unsullied 
 name. That name is indelibly associated 
 with the neighbouring village of Wilm- 
 12 
 
TTie 
 Shakespeare 
 
 f H-N- 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 cote, where " Mary Arden's Cottage " is 
 still pointed out to wayfarers a house 
 of stout oak timbers, plastered exterior, 
 dormer windows, and steeply sloping roof 
 where pigeons preen their wings in the 
 summer sun. Its garden is bounded by a 
 low wall, built of stones from the adjacent 
 quarry. If uniform tradition is of any 
 worth, we can hardly doubt that this 
 "cottage" was once the home of Mary 
 Arden. 
 
 John Shakespeare had previously left the 
 family at Snitterfield and had moved into 
 Stratford, probably in the year 1551, when 
 the town itself contained less than two thou- 
 sand persons. Between Sir Hugh Clopton's 
 death and John Shakespeare's arrival, Strat- 
 ford had known changes of aspect and 
 fortune ; it was to know many more 
 ere, in 1599, a Harleian MS. described it 
 as a " good markette towne." The Refor- 
 mation had left its mark on church and 
 congregation alike ; in 1 547 its College 
 Chantry was suppressed. A ground-plan 
 of the town, published in the " History 
 of New Place " by Mr. J. O. Halliwell- 
 Phillipps, shows that a large proportion of 
 its streets must have been known to John 
 Shakespeare by their present names. 
 
 In 1552, John Shakespeare lived on the 
 north side of Henley Street, in a com- 
 modious house, such as would then be 
 regarded as no mean residence. It was 
 15 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 built of oak from the forest of Arden, 
 which, as Mr. Salt Brassington remarks, 
 was " tough enough to last a thousand 
 years." He was a woolstapler and a 
 glover ; he traded, as we know, in corn 
 and timber ; he is believed to have also 
 sold meat. In the autumn of 1558 his 
 wife bore him a daughter, whom he 
 named Joan ; four years afterwards was 
 born his daughter Margaret. Both died 
 in infancy. Yet a year and a half, and 
 John and Mary became the parents of 
 William Shakespeare, probably on St. 
 George's Day, April 23, 1564 when 
 Drayton was in his cradle, when Bacon 
 was a toddling child, when Spenser and 
 Sidney and Raleigh were boys at play. 
 Surely the morning stars sang together at 
 his birth. " There is no regiment of 
 highest Dignitaries," wrote Carlyle, "that 
 we would sell him for. He is the grandest 
 thing we have yet done." 
 
 Shakespeare was born in the year of the 
 great frost, when the Thames froze from 
 side to side above London Bridge. The 
 year was memorable in Stratford, too, for 
 the plague broke out in the town, as it 
 had done before ; the angel of death passed 
 from door to door, and one person in every 
 seven perished. But the angel passed over 
 before the doorway of John Shakespeare, 
 whose son was but a few weeks old, even 
 as, so many centuries before, he had spared 
 16 
 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the blood-besprinkled doorways in the land 
 of Egypt. On April 26th the child was 
 baptized in the parish church, in the old 
 font still shown to the curious, battered 
 and broken indeed, but retaining the well- 
 cut quatrefoils in its panels. The event 
 was duly recorded in the Register : " April 
 26th Gulielmus, films Johannes Shakespare" 
 Photographic copies of the leaf upon which 
 that record is inscribed are cherished sou- 
 venirs in homes on both sides of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 The life of John Shakespeare was closely 
 knit with the lives of his fellow- townsmen. 
 As years passed he experienced the uses of 
 adversity, and learned, like the Rosalind 
 of his son's fancy, "how full of briars is 
 this working-day world." The ancient 
 borough of Stratford became a municipal 
 corporation soon after his settlement in 
 Henley Street, and he was early associated 
 with its public life. One of his first 
 offices was that of ale-taster, an office 
 which required him to regulate the price 
 and quality of ale and beer sold in Strat- 
 ford. In 1561 he was chamberlain of the 
 town; in 1565 an alderman; in 1571 
 senior alderman or Magister. But honours 
 brought anxieties in their train, and from 
 1575, when he bought his house in Henley 
 Street from one Edmund Hall for forty 
 pounds, his reverses were many. We 
 know, for instance, that he mortgaged 
 17 B 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 Asbies ; that he sold his interest in lands 
 at Snitterfield ; that he went to law for 
 the recovery of small sums due to himself. 
 But he was a prominent townsman to the 
 last ; and his name figures sixty-six times 
 in the Council books of the Corporation, 
 where it is spelt in sixteen different ways. 
 
 The town of Stratford, at this period, 
 was probably no worse cared for than 
 other towns in England. But at this dis- 
 tance of time we can hardly realise the filthy 
 condition of its streets, or the unseemly 
 doings of its inhabitants. A " muck-hill " 
 was officially permitted at six specified 
 sites ; these were cleared only twice a 
 year, nor did they prevent the intermediate 
 streets being littered with offal and rubbish 
 of all kinds. Pigs wallowed before their 
 owner's doorway, or wandered hither and 
 thither in the open street. Apparently 
 municipal legislation was powerless to re- 
 move such nuisances ; we even read of a 
 vicar who, in 1613, was questioned by the 
 council touching a pigsty which he had 
 erected in the public way. The council, 
 indeed, did what it could for the welfare 
 of the town ; but the townsmen were re- 
 fractory. In the year of John Shakespeare's 
 marriage an order was issued compelling 
 certain classes of the community, in the 
 depth of winter, to hang a lanthorn before 
 their doorway from five to eight in the 
 evening. " Sanitary arrangements within 
 18 
 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 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." In a word, the 
 condition of Stratford was similar to that 
 
 ALMSHOUSES, GRAMMAR SCHOOL, AND GUILD 
 CHAPEL (STRATFORD-ON-AVON) 
 
 of a hundred other English towns in the 
 " good old days." 
 
 Of William Shakespeare's life at Strat- 
 ford, as a boy, we know hardly anything ; 
 nor have I space to discuss conjectures, or 
 their relative degree of plausibility. He 
 
 1 9 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 was sent to the Grammar School adjoining 
 the Guild Chapel, the last school founded 
 by Edward VI., as we learn from Strype. 
 We know, approximately, the trend of his 
 studies, for he would read those authors 
 usually read in the Grammar Schools of 
 the period. Professor Baynes has given 
 this subject much study, and we can hardly 
 quarrel with his conclusions. Under the 
 successive mastership of Walter Roche and 
 Thomas Hunt, young Shakespeare doubt- 
 less thumbed his Corderius daily ; he ac- 
 quired a colloquial familiarity with Latin ; 
 he construed the Tristia and Metamorphoses 
 of Ovid, the Offices and Epistles of Cicero. 
 According to Rowe, he left school about 
 1578, in which case he was hardly fifteen 
 years of age. But his abilities, I take it, 
 equalled those of other men his contem- 
 poraries, who were graduates at a like 
 age ; and ere he quitted the school he 
 would probably enough taste the choicest 
 classic comedies perhaps even " scurril " 
 Plautus, as Milton calls him and " Attic 
 tragedies of stateliest and most regal argu- 
 ment." The critics "Baconian" and 
 otherwise lay stress upon the " little 
 Latin and less Greek " with which he 
 was credited by Ben Jonson. But Jonson 
 compared him, perhaps, with courtly 
 scholars whom he had known, some of 
 whom were classical pedants, with loads 
 of learned lumber in their heads. 
 
 20 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Means of education, other than scholastic, 
 were not lacking to quick-witted youths 
 who lived in Stratford and its neighbour- 
 hood during the reign of Elizabeth. As 
 Emerson says, we send our children to 
 school, but they educate themselves at the 
 shop windows. In other words, when 
 Shakespeare was " a boy with sunshine on 
 his brow,*" he would learn much from the 
 observation of life's common round in his 
 native town. Writers have searched dili- 
 gently among old records to learn the 
 surroundings of Shakespeare"^ early life. 
 Those records, as I have hinted, throw but 
 little light on the boy, but much has been 
 ascertained concerning his environment. 
 Mr. Sidney Lee, in his chapter on Do- 
 mestic and School Discipline, refers to the 
 sixteenth century " Books of Nurture," 
 and to the manners and customs which 
 they reveal. It was deemed fit and proper 
 in Elizabethan days for lads to rise at six 
 o'clock, to assist in the preparation of meals, 
 to wait on their parents at table, and to be- 
 have with due reverence in their presence. 
 In a subsequent chapter Mr. Lee writes of 
 the occupations of lads in Stratford. The 
 laws relating to apprenticeship were very 
 stringent. The apprentice was to be 
 within doors by nine o'clock at night ; 
 he was forbidden to wear a sword, or to 
 "tipple at the alehouses." Other lads 
 were attached to the homesteads of country 
 21 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 gentlemen : they could hunt, wrestle, 
 dance, or shoot with the bow ; they were 
 practised in the management of hawk and 
 hound. The games which they played 
 are for the most part played to-day : they 
 whipped tops ; they played hide and seek ; 
 they rejoiced in leap-frog ; they were 
 learned in the technicalities of coursing 
 and cock-fighting ; like Gray and his 
 companies in later times, they a urged 
 the flying ball." All these recreations 
 are, I think, alluded to by Shakespeare. 
 Transgressions were severely punished, 
 either at home or elsewhere. Breaches 
 of the bye-laws led to disgrace in the 
 stocks. For offences against paternal or 
 scholastic authority the rod was exercised 
 with a severity hardly equalled, many 
 decades afterwards, by Keate at Eton, or 
 by the terrible " Jimmy Boyer " of Christ's 
 Hospital. 
 
 Aubrey, after repeating the tradition 
 that John Shakespeare was a butcher, 
 states that William, as a boy, assisted his 
 father, and tells how, " when he kill'd a 
 calf, he would doe it in high style, and 
 make a speech ! " At this point even the 
 channels of tradition run almost dry. The 
 year of his admittance to the Grammar 
 School synchronizes very nearly with his 
 father's chief-aldermanship ; the Corpora- 
 tion seem to have gladly patronised the 
 strolling players of the day, as we know 
 
 22 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 by records of money paid to them at 
 several times, and, as Professor Dowden 
 says, the boy " may have been taken to 
 see the entertainment at the Guildhall." 
 He is thought to have witnessed miracle 
 plays at Coventry, and to have watched 
 the players at Kenilworth in 1575 ; but 
 all is conjecture. Nor is the veil lifted on 
 his leaving school. Malone, judging from 
 the legal knowledge so apparent in the 
 plays, thought it probable that Shakespeare 
 laboured awhile in a lawyer's office, of 
 which there were several in Stratford ; 
 Aubrey believed that he taught in a 
 country school. Nor do we touch firmer 
 ground until, some time before 1582, we 
 find Shakespeare mastered by that passion 
 of love which he was afterwards to portray 
 with such inimitable skill. 
 
 In the quiet hamlet of Shottery, about a 
 mile from the town of Stratford, stands 
 the old house known as Anne Hathaway's 
 Cottage. " The air smells wooingly here." 
 You may still see this cottage, which 
 William Winter journeyed from Staten 
 Island to visit, standing on sloping ground 
 beside a willow-shaded brook ; " over its 
 porches, and all along its picturesque, 
 irregular front, and on its thatched roof, 
 the woodbine and the ivy climb, and there 
 are wild roses and the maiden's blush." 
 The present writer cherishes very pleasant 
 memories of this historic home. I saw it 
 23 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 first on a summer morning, having strolled 
 out of Stratford by the footpath across the 
 fields. As I leaned over the little bridge 
 near the cottage a tiny girl offered me a 
 sprig of lavender from Anne Hathaway's 
 garden. I have that lavender still ; I shall 
 keep it to the end. The flagged and 
 cobbled path before the cottage is bordered 
 with box ; a fine net has been closely 
 drawn over the thatched roof to preserve 
 its straws from the birds, who would fain 
 use them in the building of their " pro- 
 creant cradle." The garden is surely 
 haunted by the spirits of Perdita and 
 Ophelia ; for the flowers they loved bloom 
 profusely here. Mrs. Baker, a descendant 
 of the Hathaways, who loved the place so 
 dearly and delighted to display its treasures, 
 died a few years ago. But the interior is 
 still shown, by sanction of the " Trustees 
 and Guardians of Shakespeare's Birthplace" 
 the old chair in the corner, near the 
 " bacon-cupboard," the old Bible, the old 
 bedstead upstairs in " Anne Hathaway's 
 Bedroom." The cottage has been photo- 
 graphed and sketched from every available 
 standpoint. The artist has gone farther : 
 and most of us know that picture which 
 shows us Shakespeare seated near the 
 window of small, leaded panes, with his 
 hand in the hand of Anne Hathaway. 
 
 Our knowledge of Anne Hathaway is 
 meagre indeed. Three families bearing 
 24 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 this surname lived in the neighbourhood 
 in Shakespeare's day. A Richard Hath- 
 away is known to have lived in this 
 cottage, when it was rather a substantial 
 yeoman's home. Three daughters sur- 
 
 ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE 
 
 vived him, the eldest of whom bore the 
 name of Agnes a name, as Dr. Windle 
 puts it, " interchangeable at that period 
 with that of Anne." Tradition, with 
 more than common persistence, tells us 
 that this woman was the Anne Hathaway 
 whom Shakespeare came hither to woo. 
 Moreover, very probably she was related 
 to that " Richard Hathway " who was 
 employed by Henslowe as a collaborating 
 25 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 dramatist, and who acted in 1599 at the 
 Rose Theatre. She was eight years older 
 than her lover. 
 
 On November 28, 1582, two men of 
 Shottery Falk Sandelles and John Rich- 
 ardson attested a licence for the marriage 
 of William Shakespeare and Anne Hath- 
 away, which is now in the Registry at 
 Worcester. Where the wedding was 
 solemnized we do not know : perhaps at 
 Luddington, perhaps at Temple Grafton, 
 perhaps at Billesley. All three are neigh- 
 bouring villages, and much has been 
 written to favour the claims of each. 
 Nor do we know the house to which 
 Shakespeare took his bride, although it was 
 certainly in Stratford or its immediate 
 neighbourhood. A daughter, Susannah, 
 was born in the following May ; in 
 February 1585 were born the twins 
 Hamnet and Judith the Judith Shake- 
 speare of William Black's romance. Their 
 father had not yet attained his majority. 
 
 Rowe, who first penned a narrative of 
 the poet's life, tells us that during this 
 period Shakespeare fell into loose company ; 
 that he and his associates frequently stole 
 deer ; that they robbed a park belonging 
 to " Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote, near 
 Stratford." Perhaps Shakespeare shared 
 Andrew Boorde's opinion that venison is a 
 " lordes dysshe," but doubted their right to 
 its monopoly. The story runs that he was 
 26 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 prosecuted for the trespass ; Archdeacon 
 Davies, Vicar of Sapperton, who died in 
 1708, had heard that he was whipped. 
 The doggerel verses a " rough pasquin- 
 ade," as Washington Irving calls them 
 said to have been fixed on the gate at 
 Charlecote to avenge their author, may 
 be dismissed as spurious. But the story- 
 is of too romantic a flavour to be readily 
 relinquished. Scott, who visited Charle- 
 cote in 1828, was told that the poach- 
 ing was done in a neighbouring park, 
 where Sir Thomas resided at the time of 
 the trespass. " The tradition went," he 
 wrote in his journal, " that they hid the 
 buck in a barn, part of which was standing 
 a few years ago, but now totally destroyed." 
 Artists have been attracted by the story, 
 and one of the best known pictures re- 
 lating to the poet is that by Brooks, 
 entitled " Shakespeare before Sir Thomas 
 Lucy." The picture is now in the 
 Memorial. 
 
 Three prominent companies of actors 
 are known to have visited Stratford in 
 1587. The company under the patronage 
 of Leicester included three Stratford men, 
 Burbage, Greene, and Heminge Greene 
 is remembered for his bitter allusions to 
 Shakespeare in his " Groatsworth of Wit." 
 Apparently these visits of the players were 
 the turning-point in Shakespeare's life, for 
 about this time he quitted Stratford to 
 27 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 become a player and a playwright ; to 
 create Hamlet and Lear and Othello ; to 
 acquire his right, as the greatest among 
 those who " of the past are all that cannot 
 pass away," to the loftiest of all niches in 
 the Temple of Fame. 
 
 Of the life of Shakespeare in London 
 this is no place to write. Even were it 
 otherwise there would be little enough to 
 record. We trace his career by the licens- 
 ing of his plays ; moreover, some of them 
 are named in the Palladh Tamla of Meres 
 (1598); beyond this, and a few such tra- 
 ditions as gather around immortal names, 
 our knowledge is so small that we must 
 say, in the last words of Hamlet, u the rest 
 is silence." It is pleasant to read that he 
 probably visited his home at Stratford every 
 year ; and to think that here he perhaps 
 wrote portions of his plays. In the old 
 Hall at Rowington, hard by, he is believed 
 to have written " As You Like It." We 
 know that he suffered and was strong. 
 The year 1596 was especially one of sor- 
 row, for in August he mourned the loss 
 of his son Hamnet. The death of John 
 Shakespeare is recorded in the burial regis- 
 ter of Stratford, under date September 8, 
 1 60 1 ; seven years later Mary Shakespeare 
 followed her husband to the grave. Soon 
 afterwards, as seems probable, Shakespeare 
 himself retired to Stratford, to rest from 
 his many labours, and, as Lowell puts it, 
 28 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 "lean over his gate to chat and bandy 
 quips with his neighbours." At New Place 
 presently to be mentioned he enter- 
 tained Jonson and Drayton early in April 
 1616; a fever ensued, and he died, as is 
 commonly believed, on the anniversary of 
 his birth. He was fifty-two years of age ; 
 he had crowded an eternity into a span. 
 I shall revert, in the third section of this 
 book, to the properties which he had 
 acquired, and to the many existing memo- 
 rials which perpetuate his connection with 
 Stratford. 
 
 What did Shakespeare owe to Stratford ? 
 Much every way. As Dr. Furnivall puts 
 it, Stratford gave Shakespeare " his out- 
 door woodland life, his clowns' play . . . 
 Puck's fairy lore, the cowslips tall, the red- 
 hipt bumble bees, Oberon's bank." To 
 his childhood, spent in a district that still 
 cherished its old wives' fables, its primitive 
 superstitions, its belief in the reality of 
 unseen things, we owe not only the 
 "Midsummer Night's Dream," but the 
 "Tempest," the "Winter's Tale," and 
 " As You Like It," with all their words of 
 wisdom and imperishable play of fancy. 
 More directly, as some of us love to think, 
 he wrote plays as a man because he had 
 wistfully watched the players as a boy. 
 As Gibbon, just two centuries after Shake- 
 speare's birth, conceived the great work of 
 his lite while watching the bare-footed 
 29 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 friars at vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, 
 so perhaps Shakespeare, when listening to 
 the players at Stratford or Kenilworth, 
 may have dreamed that he would himself 
 write for those who " hold, as 't were, the 
 mirror up to nature," and would do so in 
 such manner as to make men the wiser for 
 his work. 
 
 "Nothing is here for tears." Shake- 
 speare died, as he must surely have wished 
 to die, before the infirmities of age had 
 laid hold upon him, while yet supreme 
 master of every faculty of his wonderful 
 intellect. Men of letters in each succeed- 
 ing generation have revered his name. " I 
 loved the man," wrote Ben Jonson, "and 
 do honour his memory on this side idolatry 
 as much as any." To Milton, he was 
 "my Shakespeare," who had reared to 
 himself a monument which kings might 
 envy ; to Scott, one whose " brogues " he 
 was not worthy to tie ; to Coleridge, " our 
 myriad-minded Shakespeare ; " to Lowell, 
 " at once the greatest of poets, and so un- 
 noticeable a good citizen as to leave no 
 incidents for biography." Surely, as quaint 
 John Earle wrote in a different connection, 
 Shakespeare was " a scholar in this great 
 university, the world ; and the same his 
 book of study. . . . He knit his observa- 
 tions together, and made a ladder of them 
 all to climb to God/'' The greatest of 
 men born within 
 
 30 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 " This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Eng- 
 land, 
 This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land," 
 
 his fellow-countrymen to-day are no in- 
 heritors of unfulfilled renown, but the fol- 
 lowers of one who achieved his full and 
 perfect work, and whose name has gone 
 out unto all the earth. 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING has re- 
 corded how at the Red Horse in 
 Stratford he dreamed, in the night watches, 
 of Shakespeare, the Jubilee, and David 
 Garrick. His was no singular experience ; 
 we are poor indeed if a visit to Stratford 
 evokes no precious memories. Here, if 
 anywhere in central England, we exclaim 
 with Byron, "Where'er we tread 'tis 
 haunted, holy ground." For in Stratford 
 and its neighbourhood stand many memo- 
 rials. If you approach the town from 
 Blisworth, as so many do, the train traverses 
 a long stretch of diversified country, pass- 
 ing near Edge Hill of famous memory, 
 before you see the Philips Obelisk on the 
 hilltop behind Welcombe Lodge a home 
 of the nephew and biographer of Macaulay 
 and presently catch a glimpse of Strat- 
 ford in the hollow towards the south. 
 Then the train crosses the bridge that 
 spans the Avon ; before you is the Church 
 of the Holy Trinity ; beyond, close to the 
 waterside, the tower of the Shakespeare 
 32 
 
 
Theatre 
 * 
 
 afford- on 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 Memorial " stands up and takes the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Ben Jonson, in his lines facing the 
 Droeshout portrait prefixed to the first 
 folio of 1623, advised readers to regard 
 the works rather than the picture of Shake- 
 speare. Milton, in his first published verses, 
 in turn prefixed to the second folio of 
 1632, declared that Shakespeare needed no 
 monument of " piled stones." Nearly three 
 centuries have passed since Shakespeare's 
 death ; monuments to his memory have 
 been reared in other lands than ours ; 
 portraits, more or less conjectural, the 
 " Droeshout," " Felton," " Zoust," Jan- 
 sen," and others, are carefully cherished. 
 The house in which he was born, and that 
 which in part preserves the figure of the 
 house where he died, are visited almost 
 daily by many pilgrims, who visit also his 
 grave in the parish church. Mr. Sidney 
 Lee mentions that in 1896 the birthplace 
 was visited by 27,038 persons, of over forty 
 nationalities. So frequently do Americans 
 come to these Stratford shrines that sepa- 
 rate books are reserved for their signatures. 
 This spirit of reverence is surely "sweet 
 and commendable in our nature " ; the 
 town is small indeed, but in the eyes of 
 good and true lovers of literature it contains 
 " infinite riches in a little room." 
 
 In truth, from the death of Shakespeare, 
 the story of Stratford is largely concerned 
 35 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 with the efforts of her townsmen and others 
 to perpetuate his memory. Three days 
 after his death he was laid to rest in the 
 church of his childhood, just inside the 
 altar rails, in the second grave from the 
 north wall. That grave does not bear his 
 name ; instead, you may still read the four 
 strange lines attributed to his own pen : 
 
 GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE, 
 TO DIG -HE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE : 
 
 E T 
 
 BLESTE BE Y MAN Y SPARES TIES STONES, 
 
 T 
 AND CVRST BE HE Y MOVES MY BONES. 
 
 Those bones, as Washington Irving was 
 assured, have never been moved. Once, 
 when the grave was exposed during some 
 excavations, the sexton watched over it 
 jealously ; he told Irving that he had peered 
 into it, but saw neither coffin nor bones 
 " nothing but dust." At the poet's funeral 
 the great bell of the church was tolled ; 
 rosemary " there's rosemary, that's for 
 remembrance " was strewn upon his 
 grave. Some time before his friends 
 Heminge and Condell issued the first folio 
 edition of his collected plays, there was 
 placed, in a recess in the north wall of the 
 chancel, that bust which still looks down 
 upon his grave. 
 
 According to Dugdale, the bust of 
 
 36 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 Shakespeare was executed by Gerard Jan- 
 sen (Johnson). That it was executed be- 
 fore 1623 i g evident from the lines, by 
 Leonard Digges, prefixed to the First Folio, 
 for there was certainly no other " Stratford 
 monument " to which those lines could 
 have referred : 
 
 " Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes give 
 The world thy workes ; thy works, by which, 
 
 outlive 
 Thy Tombe, thy name must when that stone 
 
 is rent 
 And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment." 
 
 It has been asserted that Johnson modelled 
 the bust from a mask taken after the poet's 
 death ; the assertion is plausible, but there 
 is, I believe, no contemporary evidence to 
 support it. The external appearance of the 
 bust has been often changed. Originally 
 coloured to a life-like resemblance, it was 
 repainted in 1748, money for the pur- 
 pose being provided by the profits from 
 "Othello," acted that year by strolling 
 players at Stratford. In 1 793 it was cleaned 
 and painted white at the instigation of 
 Malone, whose transgression lives for ever 
 in the pages of Lamb. Readers will re- 
 member Lamb's indignant outburst in the 
 London Magazine, July 1822, subsequently 
 reprinted in the " Last Essays of Elia." 
 "The wretched Malone . . . bribed the 
 sexton of Stratford Church to let him 
 whitewash the painted effigy of old Shak- 
 
 37 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 speare, which stood there, in rude but 
 lively fashion depicted, to the very colour 
 of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, 
 the very dress he used to wear the only 
 authentic testimony we had, however im- 
 perfect, of those curious parts and parcels 
 of him. They covered him over with a 
 
 coat of white paint. By , if I had 
 
 been a Justice of Peace for Warwickshire, 
 I would have clapt both commentator and 
 sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of 
 meddling, sacrilegious varlets." Lamb 
 was not the only person who expressed his 
 resentment in writing ; twelve years be- 
 fore, some lines, often quoted, had been 
 written in the visitor's book in Holy 
 Trinity Church : 
 
 " Stranger to whom this Monument is shewn, 
 Invoke the Poet's curse upon Malone, 
 Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays 
 And smears his tombstone as he marr'd his plays." 
 
 In 1 86 1 the bust was renovated by Simon 
 Collins, who, finding traces of the original 
 colouring, succeeded in partly reproducing 
 it, though he probably brought its faults 
 rather than its merits into strong relief. 
 It has never been disputed that this bust, 
 executed and placed here so soon after the 
 poet's death, has strong claims to be re- 
 garded as an authentic likeness of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Above the bust is the coat-of-arms gran ted 
 to his father in 1596; beneath are those 
 
 38 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 Latin lines which compare his sagacity to 
 that of Nestor, his intellect to that of 
 Socrates, his skill to that of Virgil. The 
 bust was probably executed at the request 
 of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah, and 
 her husband, Dr. John Hall. To Susannah, 
 Shakespeare had bequeathed, inter alia, the 
 house known as New Place ; to his daugh- 
 ter Judith, one hundred pounds as a mar- 
 riage portion ; to the poor of Stratford, ten 
 pounds. 
 
 It has been ascertained, only too surely, 
 that the family of Shakespeare became 
 extinct in 1670. His wife died in 1623, 
 and was buried by his side. His grand- 
 child, Elizabeth Hall, was married first to 
 Thomas Nash of Stratford and afterwards 
 to Mr. Barnard of Abington ; but she died 
 childless. His daughter Judith, who mar- 
 ried Thomas Quiney, lived for thirty-six 
 years in what is now the Shakespeare- 
 Quiney House, at the corner of High 
 Street and Bridge Street, and which still 
 retains some ancient oaken beams. Her 
 three sons died while of tender years ; con- 
 sequently the poet's grandchild at the 
 time of her death was the last of the 
 family. Dr. John Hall, who married 
 Susannah Shakespeare in 1607, lived awhile 
 in the Old Town, probably in the house 
 now called Hall's Croft ; but after June 
 1616, when he proved Shakespeare's will 
 in London, he removed to New Place. 
 
 39 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 There, in 1635, he died, and was buried 
 the next day in the chancel of the parish 
 church, of which he had been sidesman 
 and warden, and to which he had presented 
 a pulpit. At New Place, in 1643, as Dug- 
 dale records, Hall's widow entertained 
 Queen Henrietta Maria, then journeying 
 to meet King Charles at Edge Hill. 
 
 The story of New Place is too long to 
 narrate; but I note in passing some points 
 of interest. Shakespeare, as I have men- 
 tioned, was at New Place when he died ; 
 probably his wife died there also. The 
 old house built by Sir Hugh Clopton was 
 purchased in 1563 by one Bott> a lawyer 
 and alderman of Stratford; Bott in 1567 
 sold it to William Underbill. Thirty 
 years afterwards Shakespeare, a share- 
 holder in the Blackfriars and Globe 
 Theatres, bought the "Great House," as 
 it was then called ; for the house and 
 adjacent barns and gardens he paid sixty 
 pounds. To this property he presently 
 added about one hundred and forty acres 
 of neighbouring land, and his purchase, in 
 1605, of the unexpired lease of tithes in 
 Stratford, Bishopston, and Welcombe, ren- 
 dered him one of the richest men in the 
 town. He found the Great House in 
 ruinous condition, and rebuilt it in the 
 following year, naming it New Place. 
 Apparently it was inhabited for some 
 years by Thomas Greene, who claimed 
 40 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 cousinship with its owner ; but Shake- 
 speare himself lived in it after his retire- 
 ment to Stratford. The old home in 
 Henley Street was probably his occasional 
 residence between his father's death and 
 his own removal to New Place. The 
 present house, purchased by subscription 
 in 1 86 1 for the Trustees and Guardians of 
 Shakespeare's Birthplace, contains a small 
 museum, and an ancient shovel-board, for 
 many years in the adjacent Falcon Tavern. 
 The garden adjoining New Place shows 
 much that is interesting. Here Rogers 
 might have found further inspiration for 
 his "Pleasures of Memory." Some founda- 
 tions of the old house are preserved, fenced 
 off from the footpath ; they can be over- 
 looked from the lawn, or viewed more 
 closely on application at New Place. Here 
 is "Shakespeare's Well" ; here, too, stood 
 the famous mulberry tree, planted, as the 
 tradition runs, by Shakespeare himself. A 
 man of substance when he built New 
 Place, we may well imagine him a hospit- 
 able host, one who loved his friends, and 
 gathered many a convivial company around 
 him here. He would make his garden a 
 very pleasant resort. Fancy pictures him 
 beneath his mulberry tree with Jonson 
 and Drayton, or playing a merry game at 
 bowls, of which he was probably as fond 
 as Drake himself. "Doubtless," says 
 Leigh Hunt, " he divided his time be- 
 41 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 tween his books, his bowling-green, and 
 his daughter Susannah." The destruction 
 of the mulberry tree by the Rev. Francis 
 Gastrell has been related with contradic- 
 tory details. It appears, however, that it 
 was certainly cut down by his orders be- 
 cause so many persons came to see it. 
 This was about 1757 ; soon afterwards he 
 demolished the house itself and sold the 
 materials. The fallen mulberry tree was 
 bought by one Thomas Sharp, who 
 fashioned many curios from its timbers, 
 which were eagerly purchased. A second 
 tree was planted on the same site, and was 
 followed in turn by a third, which still 
 puts forth leaves in its season. 
 
 Here, as he himself records, came 
 William Winter when the streets of Strat- 
 ford were "deserted and silent under the 
 star-lit sky " ; and here he remained long 
 in meditation, gazing into the enclosed 
 garden. The grounds are now carefully 
 tended ; here are multitudes of pansies 
 " for thoughts," and of other flowers named 
 in the plays of Shakespeare. Its walks are 
 shaded by fir, pine, yew, cupressus, and 
 African cedar. I have lingered in this 
 garden as the afternoon waned, at that 
 hour when, as William Watson sings, 
 
 " the westering daylight reels aghast, 
 In conflagrations of red overthrow ; " 
 
 and " smale foules," as Chaucer calls them, 
 
 are busy with their evening hymns. At 
 
 42 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 the far end of the grounds is a column, 
 once part of "the first Town Hall in 
 Stratford-upon-Avon." It stands close to 
 the Memorial and the riverside. From 
 here, as one writer puts it, " the funeral 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE 
 
 train of Shakespeare, on that dark day 
 when it moved ... to Stratford Church, 
 had but a little way to go. 1 ' 
 
 We grope among dim traditions and 
 fragmentary records in our endeavours 
 to trace the cherishing of Shakespeare's 
 memory in his native town. Many 
 decades passed before Stratford folk quite 
 realised the full stature of the poet who 
 
 43 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 had lived and moved among their sires. 
 The house in Henley Street was long 
 neglected. Engravings of that tenement 
 are before me as I write ; they record its 
 external appearance in 1769, 1788, 1807, 
 1824, 1856, and 1864; its aspect to-day 
 is shown in Mr. New's drawing. The 
 earliest of these engravings is from a 
 sketch sent to the Gentleman's Magaxtne 
 by a townsman of Stratford, in view of 
 the Jubilee then soon to be celebrated. 
 The sender described it as an " exact 
 drawing," by his friend Mr. Greene, of 
 the house which, according to " undoubted 
 tradition," saw the nativity of Shakespeare. 
 That house, in mere configuration and in 
 the disposition of its larger timbers, still 
 stands; but even in 1769 it must have 
 known many minor alterations since, in 
 1552, John Shakespeare was fined for per- 
 mitting a dunghill (sterquinariuni) to ac- 
 cumulate before his doorway. We know 
 that in 1556 he purchased the house ad- 
 joining his own ; this, for purposes of dis- 
 tinction, has been called the Wool-shop. 
 Soon after his death it became an inn, 
 known as the " Maidenhead " ; subse- 
 quently its sign was altered to the "Swan 
 and Maidenhead " ; early last century the 
 word "Swan" was again omitted. The 
 adjoining tenement, the birthplace itself, 
 was bequeathed by the poet to his sister 
 Joan : " Item, ... I doe will and devise 
 44 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 unto her the house with the appurten- 
 aunces in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, 
 
 for her naturall lief " at the yearly 
 
 rent of twelve pence ! Many times it 
 changed owners ere, as the old prints 
 testify, it became a butcher's shop. Late 
 in the eighteenth century, its occupant 
 announced, on a board above his shop 
 window, that his house was the birthplace 
 of William Shakespeare; later, the inscrip- 
 tion ran "The immortal Shakespeare was 
 born in this house." At length, in 1847, 
 the entire tenement was advertised for 
 sale. By the formation of Committees in 
 Stratford and London, and by a careful 
 fostering of the Homeric custom of pre- 
 senting gifts, the property was eventually 
 purchased as a national memorial for the 
 sum of three thousand pounds. 
 
 In this house, in a room upstairs, thou- 
 sands of signatures have been scribbled by 
 visitors to the birthplace of Shakespeare. 
 Some who bore those names, which you 
 can still decipher, were themselves no 
 mean competitors in what Mr. Swinburne 
 has called " the race for the first seat 
 beneath Shakespeare's." Walton, Byron, 
 and Scott ; Thackeray, Carlyle, Dickens ; 
 Tennyson, Kean, Helen Faucit, and many 
 others have stood here, surely with thoughts 
 that lay too deep for tears. As is very 
 meet and right, no effort has been made to 
 garnish the room with ancient or modern 
 45 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 trumpery ; there are two or three carved 
 chairs and, upon a low table, a bust of 
 Shakespeare. The adjoining apartment, 
 converted into a library, and the museum 
 below, are to some of still greater in- 
 terest. Here is the Ely Palace portrait ; 
 a fine copy of the first folio ; Richard 
 Quiney's famous letter to his " Loveinge 
 good Ffrend and Contreymann Mr. 
 Wm. Shackespere," written from the 
 " Bell in Carter Lane," on October 25, 
 1598 ; many choice engravings and rare 
 documents ; and, of value far above 
 rubies, several " first quartos " and sump- 
 tuous editions of single or collected 
 plays : 
 
 "... how fair the bindings shine ; 
 Prose cannot tell them what I feel 
 The books that never can be mine ! " 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in the town, some of 
 the most interesting documents and en- 
 gravings are those relating to the Shake- 
 peare Jubilee of 1769. 
 
 The year 1769 famous in history for 
 the births of Wellington, Napoleon, and 
 Cuvier was long remembered in Stratford. 
 The Town Hall had just been rebuilt, at 
 the corner of Chapel Street and Sheep 
 Street, and Garrick had accepted the 
 freedom of the town. He presented to 
 the Corporation that masterpiece, his por- 
 trait by Gainsborough, and undertook to 
 46 
 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 direct a public festival in honour of Shake- 
 speare. A pavilion was erected on the 
 Bank-Croft, near where the Memorial 
 now stands ; " almost every man of emi- 
 nence in the literary world," as Boswell 
 assures us, " was happy to partake in this 
 festival of genius. 1 '* On September 6, 7, 
 and 8 all Stratford kept holiday. Early in 
 the morning of the first day there was 
 masquerading and firing of cannon ; the 
 Corporation breakfasted together, and pre- 
 sently Arne^s Oratorio of " Judith" was 
 rendered in the church by the orchestra 
 from Drury Lane. On the following 
 day the " Dedication Ode," written by 
 Garrick and set to music by Arne, was 
 listened to in the pavilion ; and there was 
 a masquerade of Shakespearean characters 
 in the Town Hall. Next evening the 
 Jubilee concluded with a ball, when Mrs. 
 Garrick, " the best of women and wives,'* 
 danced a minuet. 
 
 Boswell, who had just published his 
 book on Corsica, came to Stratford on this 
 occasion " in honour of Shakespeare." As 
 Macaulay puts it, " he exhibited himself to 
 all the crowd that filled Stratford-on-Avon 
 with a placard around his hat bearing the 
 inscription of Corsica Boswell." Johnson, 
 much to BoswelPs regret, was at Bright- 
 helmstone with the Thrales, but was 
 ludicrously quoted at the Jubilee. A 
 haberdasher of the town, who sold " Shake- 
 
 47 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 spearean ribands," of many colours, adver- 
 tised his wares with a line from Johnson's 
 prologue at the opening of Drury Lane 
 Theatre 
 
 " Each change of many -coloured life he drew." 
 
 Even a haberdasher can quote poetry for 
 his purpose. 
 
 Garrick thought Stratford a dirty town ; 
 as well he might, for during his visit the 
 rains descended, the Avon overflowed its 
 banks, and the neighbourhood of the pavi- 
 lion became a quagmire. Indeed, the 
 weather was so unpropitious that local 
 worthies who, as Miranda or Mistress 
 Quickly, as Lear or Macbeth, were to 
 have strutted their hour in masquerade 
 before Shakespeare's birthplace, had to re- 
 linquish their project. Garrick seems to 
 have visited at the old inn, so quaint and 
 homely, that now bears his name ; it stands 
 in the High Street, adjoining the Harvard 
 House. We know, however, that he lodged 
 at the Red Horse in Bridge Street im- 
 mortalised by Washington Irving in his 
 "Sketch Book." After such rambles as 
 will live whilst memory lasts, I have at 
 times retired to the Garrick Inn to think 
 upon what I have seen. In the morning 
 I have lingered at the open window to 
 breathe the sweet air of the Avon valley, 
 to watch the life of the High Street, and 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 to note where the statue of Shakespeare, 
 the gift of Garrick, looks dowri upon Sheep 
 Street from a niche on the Town Hall. 
 At such moments I have wondered whether 
 in the archives of some old home, perhaps 
 in Warwickshire itself, there may yet lie, 
 unknown to its owners, some manuscript 
 narrative of Shakespeare's life at Stratford. 
 " Thereby hangs a tale." Disraeli records 
 that Oldys, the antiquary, who lay long 
 in the Fleet Prison, promised to furnish 
 Walker, a bookseller in the Strand, with 
 an account of Shakespeare"^ life during ten 
 years years of which previous biographers 
 had recorded nothing. Oldys, however, 
 died without performing his promise ; pro- 
 bably no man will ever perform it in his 
 stead. 
 
 I have mentioned the Harvard House. 
 A quaint structure, with curiously carved 
 barge-boards and corbels, it was built in 
 1596 by an alderman of Stratford, named 
 Thomas Rogers. In 1605 ms daughter 
 Katherine was wedded to Robert Harvard 
 of Southwark ; their son John, born in 
 1607, graduated at Cambridge. He mar- 
 ried with the daughter of a Sussex parson, 
 sailed presently to New England, and 
 founded that university which bears his 
 name, and whose sons have never lacked 
 scholarly appreciation of the plays and 
 poems of Shakespeare, or wanted a warm 
 welcome in the old home although, as 
 
 49 D 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 Lowell once wrote, their ancestors did 
 their best to make them strangers by seek- 
 ing a new home in New England two 
 hundred and fifty years ago. 
 
 " Return we to our story." During 
 the season following the Jubilee at least 
 twelve of Shakespeare's plays were per- 
 formed in London, either at the Theatre 
 Royal in Drury Lane or at Covent Garden. 
 In fact, since Betterton had personated 
 Hamlet and Gibber had altered Richard 
 the Third to his fancy, Shakespeare had 
 been acted in London with increasing 
 frequency. But no permanent theatre was 
 built in Stratford before 1827. In that 
 year a theatre, standing off Chapel Lane, 
 in the garden of New Place, was opened 
 with a performance of " Hamlet." Gar- 
 rick, as is well known, suggested that a 
 school of dramatic art should be established 
 at Stratford ; the closing of New Place 
 Theatre more than a century afterwards 
 was one of the first steps towards the 
 approximate realisation of Garrick's wish. 
 We learn from an old playbill that as far 
 back as 1820 such a project was seriously 
 entertained ; it was indeed laid before the 
 audience after a performance at the tem- 
 porary theatre in Stratford. But nothing 
 was done for many years. In 1864 the 
 Tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth was 
 celebrated : a huge pavilion was erected ; 
 the voice of Sims Reeves was heard in the 
 50 
 
MEMORIALS 
 
 "Messiah," and Trench preached in the 
 parish church. Some years later, by the 
 generosity of Mr. C. E. Flower, a fund 
 was started for the erection of a permanent 
 monument, and on April 23, 1877, three 
 hundred and thirteen years after the poet's 
 birth, was laid the foundation-stone of the 
 Shakespeare Memorial. 
 
 To describe that Memorial its theatre, 
 its library, its picture-gallery would be to 
 compile a catalogue of treasures rich and 
 rare a catalogue which you may purchase 
 for twopence in the building. No aspect 
 of the poet's genius has been overlooked 
 "tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral . . . 
 scene individable, or poem unlimited " are 
 remembered, as they have been since those 
 early days when most of the plays were 
 acted here. But a year or two back Mr. 
 F. R. Benson superintended the performing 
 of the historical plays in due sequence : 
 the long line of English statesmen and 
 kings, of English prelates and fair women 
 passed before us in something more than 
 inexplicable dumb show, and " all the burial 
 places of the memory gave up their dead." 
 Here are some ten thousand volumes, mostly 
 concerned with the life, works, or critics 
 of Shakespeare : here such pictures as 
 Fuseli's Witches, Fradelle's Othello, and 
 Herrick's Rosalind show how deeply the 
 artist may enter into the spirit of the dra- 
 matist whom he desires to illustrate. To 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 me, at least, the crowning triumph of the 
 whole is the statuary in the adjacent gar- 
 dens, wrought in bronze at the direction of 
 Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower. It shows 
 us the figures of Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, 
 Prince Hal, and Falstaff embodiments of 
 tragedy, philosophy, history, and comedy ; 
 above, Shakespeare is seated with pen in 
 hand and thought upon his brow, looking 
 down upon that world in which, perhaps 
 unconsciously, he had sought out, with 
 many inventions, "a path to perpetuity of 
 fame." 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 THE town of Stratford contains so 
 many shrines, so much of old-world 
 charm in nook and corner, that one feels 
 at times loath to wander farther afield. 
 But neighbouring villages should be visited ; 
 there we taste the large air of the old 
 forests of Feldon and Arden, and overlook 
 what Speed described as another Eden. If 
 we feel no interest in the church that has 
 looked down upon the village for so many 
 centuries, or in the thatched cottages that 
 flank the winding road, we have at least 
 leisure for a little retrospect : we may 
 learn, as Mr. Henry James learned near 
 Dijon, how the vision of things we have 
 enjoyed may become more distinct. 
 
 Visitors to Stratford, in the early autumn, 
 may watch the pea-pickers at work in the 
 surrounding fields. Many acres of peas 
 are cultivated in the neighbourhood, and 
 the harvesting of them affords employment 
 to men, women, and children alike, who 
 pick and bag the peas for the London 
 market. Many of these toilers of the field, 
 like the hop-pickers, work for the same 
 53 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 employer year after year ; but others are 
 wayside waifs and strays wreckage strewn 
 hither and thither on the shores of life. 
 They ramble from village to village, pass- 
 ing much of their time in enforced idleness, 
 for their many employments only afford 
 labour at certain seasons. Often enough, 
 after the heat and burden of the day, they 
 sleep under the nearest hedge, or squander 
 their scant earnings in the wayside inn. 
 Often, too, you may see a group of them 
 lying asleep on the bank, even in the hottest 
 sunshine ; indeed, exposure in the wind and 
 rain and sun has tanned them a deep brown. 
 They have not yet ceased to wonder when 
 they see that modern miracle, the motor-car; 
 you see them stand up and, shading their 
 eyes, watch its progress till it is lost in the 
 distance. If you speak to them of aught 
 that lies outside their experience they 
 appear greatly astonished ; their gestures 
 reminding one of that habit of Flaubert's, 
 who, when anything unusual occurred, 
 was wont to spread his hands dramatically 
 and exclaim, " It is immense ! " 
 
 It is best to ramble among the sur- 
 rounding villages at random, as inclination 
 prompts. You need not tell them all "ac- 
 cording to the scrip," as Peter Quince named 
 the " rude mechanicals " in his house near 
 Athens ; but may ignore the guide-books, 
 and follow where the sweet Warwickshire 
 lanes and bypaths lead you. Thus shall you 
 54 
 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 often tread in the footsteps of Shakespeare, 
 and wander into villages which he must 
 certainly have known. In springtime, 
 and throughout the summer, the waysides 
 around Stratford are bright with a hundred 
 flowers that Shakespeare knew, and vocal 
 with the songs of birds which he loved as 
 perhaps no English poet, except Chaucer, 
 had loved them before. 
 
 Somervile, in the first canto of his 
 " Hobbinol, or the Rural Games," refers 
 to the wealth of flowers hereabouts : 
 
 " Avona pours 
 
 Her kindly Torrent on the thirsty Glebe, 
 And pillages the Hills t'enrich the Plains; 
 On whose luxuriant banks Flowers of all hues 
 Start up spontaneous ; and the teeming Soil 
 With hasty shoots prevents its Owner's Pray'r." 
 
 This feature of the district is brought to 
 the notice of visitors in the town itself. 
 From those windows in Shakespeare's 
 Birthplace that look towards the north, 
 you may overlook a carefully stocked 
 flower-garden, very pleasing to the eye. 
 It can show, indeed, an infinite variety 
 of plants, displaying, as far as possible, all 
 the flowers mentioned by Shakespeare. 
 Botanists have pointed out how large a 
 number of those flowers are found in 
 Warwickshire. To the rich flora in the 
 Avon valley we owe some of the sweetest 
 passages in Shakespeare's plays. Who can 
 doubt that the pleasant places the lanes, 
 55 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 the fields, the cottage gardens of his 
 youth, so bright with blossom, were in his 
 mind's eye when he wrote, for instance, 
 the fourth act of " The Winter's Tale " ? 
 There, on a lawn before a shepherd's 
 cottage, Perdita, 
 
 "no shepherdess, but Flora, 
 Peering in April's front," 
 
 takes rosemary and rue from Dorcas, and 
 presently talks of carnations, and " streak'd 
 gillevors"; of lavender, mint, savory, mar- 
 joram ; of marigolds and daffodils ; of 
 violets 
 
 '* sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; " 
 
 of primroses, oxlips, and the crown-imperial; 
 of "lilies of all kinds." And why does 
 Perdita say that with such flowers in her 
 hands she feels like a player in a Whitsun- 
 pastoral ? Because at Stratford, as else- 
 where, Whitsuntide dances and floral 
 games and pageants, in which both sexes 
 took part, were held around the May-pole, 
 and on such occasions, probably enough, 
 the creator of Perdita had often " made 
 himself a motley to the view.'* 
 
 Some of these Warwickshire villages 
 are associated in the annals of literature 
 with bards whose verses are now seldom 
 read. And yet their lives are not with- 
 out interest. As we take down from an 
 upper shelf our Shenstone or Somervile, 
 56 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 and once again glance at " The School- 
 mistress " or " The Chace," the love of 
 old rhyme waxes strong within us ; we 
 renew the old enthusiasms ; we go back 
 in thought to the days when, like 
 Thoreau, we essayed to read Chalmer's 
 English Poets without skipping. Snitter- 
 field, already mentioned in these pages, had 
 its own parson-poet, who fraternized with 
 poets of greater repute, whose lives were 
 chronicled by Johnson. Richard Jago 
 (1715-1781) was ordained curate of Snit- 
 terfield in 1737, and preached for many 
 years in the church where Shakespeare's 
 grandsire must have worshipped. A War- 
 wickshire man, born at Beaudesert near 
 Henley-in-Arden, he was at school with 
 Shenstone at Solihul, near by ; Somervile, 
 too, was a common friend. The friend- 
 ship of Shenstone and Jago was sincere 
 and life-long. They exchanged visits ; 
 they corrected each other's verses ; they 
 scribbled together in Dodsley's Miscellany. 
 One of Jago's most successful efforts was 
 an elegy, entitled " The Blackbirds," which 
 appeared in Hawksworth's " Adventurer." 
 " Your Blackbird," wrote Shenstone, " ex- 
 cels any singing bird I ever heard, and I 
 beseech you to convey it to the Leasowes 
 by the next opportunity, that he may 
 acquire fame near other rills, and in other 
 valleys, than those in which he was pro- 
 duced." At the Leasowes, at Hales Owen 
 
 57 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 near Birmingham, where Shenstone laid 
 out his grounds in fantastic fashion, Jago, 
 like Thomson, was a visitor ; the three 
 poets being devoted worshippers of Priapus, 
 the God of Gardens. Shenstone wrote 
 frequently to Jago and other literary 
 friends. From his letters, which Dodsley 
 published, we learn that when in London 
 he saw Quin as Falstaff in 1740; that 
 he saw Gibber as Parolles ; that he wit- 
 nessed " The Merry Wives of Windsor," 
 and that the very " black-shoe boys cried 
 up the Genius of Shakespeare." Such 
 letters must have afforded pleasant reading 
 in the neighbourhood of Stratford. The 
 vicarage where Jago dwelt, and the 
 church near by, are beautifully situated 
 on a wooded hill. Jago did much to 
 render his home " more beautiful than 
 beauty's self"; his daughters planted birch 
 trees on the lawn : these were long known 
 as The Three Ladies, but were recently 
 blown down. The house has been re- 
 built ; but the church, shaded by limes, 
 is still unmarred, and a slab to Jago's 
 memory is preserved in the vestry. He 
 lies in the vault which he himself pre- 
 pared, beneath the central aisle. Hundreds 
 who never before heard his name have 
 read his verses in New Place Gardens, 
 inscribed on an iron plate and fastened to 
 a large stone from the house where Shake- 
 speare died. 
 
 58 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 One poem of Jago's transfers our 
 thoughts to the memory of sterner issues. 
 " My friend Jago," wrote Shenstone to 
 Graves, " has written another Poem, . . . 
 which he calls Edge-hill. It is descriptive 
 chiefly of the prospect but admits an 
 account of the fight there." From Snit- 
 terfield we ramble towards the south-east 
 to Kineton, and thence to Edge Hill. It 
 suffices here to remark that the battle was 
 fought on October 23, 1642 ; its details, so 
 far as they are known, are well summarised 
 in Dr. Windle's " Shakespeare's Country." 
 Dr. Windle, however, repeats Denzil's 
 assertion that Cromwell failed to take 
 part in the engagement, but does not 
 mention that this is flatly contradicted by 
 Carlyle. " Captain Cromwell was present, 
 and did his duty, let angry Denzil say 
 what he will." Victory was claimed on 
 both sides ; so Richard Baxter's hope that 
 one battle would suffice was not realised. 
 Charles unfurled his standard at a spot 
 now marked by Radway Tower, near a 
 brook of the same name ; the fight, 
 though undecided, was fierce, and as the 
 king drew off his forces at sunset the 
 bells were announcing evensong from the 
 tower of Radway Church. The story 
 runs, plausibly enough, that some of the 
 wounded were carried to die in Stratford. 
 
 Reference to the " Shakespeare villages " 
 can hardly be omitted here, although the 
 
 59 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 story told concerning them comes to us in 
 " questionable shape." Some time in 1 762, 
 as the legend runs, a traveller visited the 
 White Lion Inn in Henley Street. Very 
 naturally, traveller and host chatted to- 
 gether of Shakespeare. Now the poet, as 
 mine host had heard, loved a glass in com- 
 pany, and it chanced that the men of Bid- 
 ford, like Falstaff, were mighty in their 
 cups. One Saturday Shakespeare strolled 
 into their village. He found the " Bidford 
 Drinkers " absent, but passed some hours 
 very agreeably among the " Sippers." They 
 taught him to drink deep ere he departed 
 in fact he was unable to proceed far on 
 his road home, so he presently lay down 
 under a crab-tree by the wayside and fell 
 asleep. When he awoke some men were 
 ploughing in an adjacent field : he asked 
 why they ploughed on Sunday, and learned 
 that Sunday was past and gone. Shake- 
 speare resolved to drink no more in certain 
 villages, and recorded their names in verse 
 
 " Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, 
 Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton, 
 Dadgeing Exhall, papist Wixford, 
 Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford." 
 
 The crab-tree under which the poet slept 
 was long pointed out, less than a mile from 
 Bidrord, on the Stratford road : it was cut 
 down in 1824, and fragments are still 
 treasured relics in the neighbourhood. The 
 60 
 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 carouse, as tradition states, took place in 
 an old gabled house of stone, then called the 
 Falcon Inn, near Bidford Churchyard, and 
 kept by a man named Norton. The writer, 
 like others, has been shown at the birth- 
 place the sign of the Falcon Inn, once sold 
 to a wheelwright at " beggarly Broom," 
 and bought from him for the museum. 
 The story, thus told to a chance wayfarer 
 in Stratford, spread abroad as stories are 
 wont to do ; it was narrated in the Gentle- 
 man s Magazine ; it was repeated byMalone. 
 Mr. Salt Brassington assures us it is " very 
 ancient," having passed from man to man 
 long before it was printed. True or false, 
 it is typical of village life three centuries 
 ago. Folk who regard it with repugnance 
 perhaps love a Shakespeare and a Warwick- 
 shire of their own creating. "Shake- 
 speare," says Stevenson very justly, " might 
 begin the day upon a quart of ale, and yet 
 enjoy the sunrise to the full as much as 
 Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment 
 in vastly better verses." Thoreau, I may 
 explain, drank only water. 
 
 Naturally as I may remark in passing 
 many of Shakespeare's most fervent 
 admirers have searched his plays zealously 
 for words of protest against the immoderate 
 use of strong drink. One is hardly sur- 
 prised, when viewing the Memorial Foun- 
 tain in Rother Street, presented to the 
 town by Mr. G. W. Childs, of Philadelphia, 
 61 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 in 1887, to read, in one of its recessed 
 arches, Shakespeare's commendation of 
 "honest water which never left man i* 
 th' mire." The Fountain, standing fifty 
 
 IN ROTHER STREET 
 
 Mr. 
 is, 
 
 J. A. 
 as Mr. 
 
 handsome 
 
 feet high, was designed by 
 Cossins of Birmingham ; it 
 Ribton-Turner remarks, " '< 
 and imposing structure." 
 
 The village of Bidford lies in a pleasant 
 
 valley, at a spot where the Roman Icknield 
 
 Way crossed the Avon, near its junction 
 
 with the river Arrow. Here, in 1482, 
 
 62 
 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 the monks of Alcester built a bridge of 
 stone, of seven arches, in place of the 
 ancient ford across the Avon. Their work 
 still stands ; and on the near slope, by the 
 waterside, stands the church, which con- 
 tains no monuments of enduring interest. 
 You are shown, however, some silver plate, 
 said to be graven by Spanish hands the 
 gift of Alicia Leigh, one of the Dudley 
 family, whose castle, near Birmingham, 
 was visited by Jago and Shenstone. Broom, 
 a neighbouring hamlet, consists of a few 
 thatched cottages near the Arrow. 
 
 " Dancing Marston," the Long Marston 
 of modern maps, lies midway between 
 Stratford and Evesham. Fun waxed " fast 
 and furious " here in the good old days ; 
 the morris-dance, then so familiar in the 
 district, perhaps accounts for the word 
 " dancing " in the doggerel verse. There 
 were morris-dancers at Bidford ; indeed, as 
 Mr. Salt Brassington tells us, the pastime 
 still lives, and a troupe is maintained in 
 that village. In old documents Long 
 Marston is referred to as Marston Sicca : 
 we read that the name perhaps had refer- 
 ence to the lack of springs in the district. 
 Hence, as we may suppose, when Shake- 
 speare wished to describe the effects of 
 wind and flood, he remembered the morris 
 dances of Bidford and Marston, and we 
 find Titania telling Oberon that " the nine 
 men's morris is filled up with mud." 
 
 63 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 More familiar is the story of Charles the 
 Second, who passed some perilous hours at 
 Long Marston after the battle of Wor- 
 cester. Mr. Allan Fea has recently, with 
 diligence and skill, brought together many 
 scattered fragments of history, and has 
 thrown much light upon this episode in 
 his interesting volume " The Flight of the 
 King." On the night of September 9, 
 1651, Charles slept at Bentley Hall near 
 Walsall, where arrangements were made 
 for his escape to Bristol. In the morning, 
 his host dressed him in a " suit and cloak 
 of country grey-cloth," put twenty pounds 
 in his pocket and sent him, in charge of 
 several staunch friends, towards Stratford- 
 on-Avon. Passing through Bromsgrove, 
 they rode south-east to Wootton-Wawen. 
 Presently, as the party proceeded in the 
 direction of Snitterfield, by the thorough- 
 fare long known as the King's Lane, they 
 saw in the distance a troop of Crom well's 
 soldiers. They made a ddtour in order to 
 avoid them, but later in the day, when 
 fording the Avon below Stratford, they 
 encountered them again, but the king 
 escaped recognition. On reaching Long 
 Marston, Charles was sheltered by Mr. 
 John Tomes, in a fine old house near the 
 main road. Here, as the story runs, the 
 king disguised himself as a menial, and, as 
 " Will Jackson," assisted awkwardly in the 
 kitchen, where he was soundly rated by a 
 64 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 maid for his clumsiness when handling the 
 roasting-jack. Some narratives state that 
 soldiers actually searched the house whilst 
 Charles was in the kitchen, and that the 
 cook struck " Jackson " on the back with 
 a gravy spoon, thereby diverting their sus- 
 picions. The house has been much altered, 
 but it still stands ; an old woman told Mr. 
 Fea that she remembered being shown the 
 room in which the king slept. "The 
 original staircase has now disappeared ; 
 plate-glass is inserted in place of the dia- 
 mond-paned windows, and the old kitchen 
 is converted into a modern sitting-room." 
 The jack, as Mr. Fea records, was taken 
 to London in 1889 and was shown at the 
 Stuart Exhibition, but is now again at 
 Long Marston, carefully preserved in a 
 glass case. For his loyalty on this occa- 
 sion, Mr. John Tomes was in part deprived 
 of his property, and compelled to seek a 
 home elsewhere ; but his family was not 
 forgotten when the king came into his 
 own again. At Long Marston, this famous 
 house is still called " Old King Charles," 
 and the wife of its present owner is de- 
 scended from that stout-hearted English- 
 man who cared for the Royal fugitive so 
 long ago. But monuments to the Tomes 
 family are sought in vain in Long Marston 
 church, all traces of them having disap- 
 peared. There, however, many of that 
 family sleep ; " the trampling of ever new 
 65 E 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 generations passes over them, and they 
 hear it not any more for ever." 
 
 In a score of other villages near Strat- 
 ford we find much of interest. Some of 
 them, like Zion of old, are beautiful for 
 situation dotted irregularly over the hill- 
 side, or lying, a tiny cluster of habitations, 
 in the leafy valley. The neighbourhood 
 of Shottery has unfailing charm ; you ap- 
 proach it from Stratford by meadow path- 
 ways, noticing, as you near the village, 
 some ancient cottages that face a tiny, 
 triangular green. The road twists and 
 turns sharply as you approach the bridge 
 near Anne Hathaway ''s Cottage, and patches 
 of garden hereabouts are bright with blos- 
 som. From Shottery, crossing the Alcester 
 road, you may ramble towards Wilmcote, 
 following a lane that crosses high, rolling 
 country, where the marbled-white butterfly 
 flits erratically from flower to flower. Over- 
 head skylarks sing uninterruptedly in the 
 unclouded blue ; below, looking towards 
 the south-east, you catch glimpses of 
 Stratford, and of many miles of undulating 
 pastures in the Avon valley. From Wilm- 
 cote you may pursue your ramble to 
 Wootton-Wawen, once a town in the 
 woods, where Somervile, who loved War- 
 wickshire so dearly, lies beneath a plain 
 slab in the parish church. 
 
 These villages lie in the old forest of 
 Arden. There is much of interest in the 
 66 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 whole neighbourhood. From essays bio- 
 graphical and topographical, and from re- 
 cords dusty and dim, we find that every 
 village and every church has incidents 
 in its story which are worth repeating. 
 When at the grave of Somervile we have 
 only to turn to the churchyard to find an 
 inscription to Somervile's huntsman, one 
 John Hoitt. We can now hardly decipher 
 the words of the tombstone itself, but they 
 have been copied and placed inside the 
 church : 
 
 *' Here Hoitt, all his sports and labours past, 
 Joins his loved Master, Somervile, at last ; 
 Together went they echoing fields to try, 
 Together now in silent dust they lie. 
 Servant and Lord, when once we yield our breath 
 Huntsman and poet are alike in death. 
 Life's motley drama calls for powers and men, 
 Of different casts to fill each changeful scene ; 
 But all the merit that we falsely prize, 
 Not in the part, but in the acting lies : 
 And as the lyre, so may the Huntsman's horn 
 Fame's trumpet rival, and his name adorn." 
 
 Evidently John Saches, sometime Vicar of 
 Wootton-Wawen, who penned these lines, 
 was no mean hand at the rhyming couplet, 
 so much in vogue in his day. The church 
 in which he preached can still show some 
 old books in chains, monuments of solid, 
 Calvinistic divinity, seldom looked into 
 unless to satisfy a momentary curiosity. 
 From Wootton-Wawen Church a short 
 ramble leads to Edstone Hall, associated 
 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 with a dark chapter in the history of 
 the Somerviles. The present house is a 
 modern structure, but the grounds wear 
 much the same aspect as when the poet 
 himself lived in an older Edstone Hall. 
 His ancestor, John Somervile, whose wife 
 Margaret was a near relative of Robert 
 Arden of Wilmcote, determined to kill 
 Queen Elizabeth. He had political and 
 personal grievances, but it was a mad re- 
 solution ; moreover, with too little method 
 in his madness, he talked of his intentions 
 at an inn near Oxford. Arrested and 
 thrown into prison, he was found strangled 
 before the day of his trial. Others were 
 implicated in his misfortunes ; his father- 
 in-law, Edward Arden, was charged with 
 complicity in Somervile's treason, and 
 suffered death about 1584. Biographers 
 have pointed out that this was soon after 
 Shakespeare's marriage, and have suggested 
 that these troubles in the Arden family 
 may have influenced Shakespeare when he 
 determined to try his fortunes in London. 
 We Englishmen justly boast that the 
 shores of romance reach even to our door- 
 ways. For we are an old nation : the story 
 of two thousand years " lives in our annals 
 and looks green in song." The lessons of 
 history may be taken deeply to heart in 
 the neighbourhood of Stratford, which has 
 contributed so largely to its pages. If our 
 literature, as Macaulay thought, is the 
 68 
 
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 most durable of the many glories of Eng- 
 land, this town beside the Avon is surely 
 the roof and crown of things historical, for 
 it gave to our history its greatest name. 
 No memories are so fragrant as those of 
 poesy, nor so potent to restore our lost 
 youth. Here, beside the Avon, where 
 Shakespeare 
 
 Went maying in that ancient May 
 Whose fallen flowers are fragrant yet, 
 
 we may be boys or girls again in heart, or 
 we have read to little purpose in the plays 
 and poems of him who sleeps so near the 
 river side. But no attempt has been made 
 in this little book to claim for Stratford 
 a monopoly of interest. I can promise 
 readers a rich harvest if they will study 
 the story of their own homeland. As Mr. 
 Lang so beautifully puts it, " You need 
 not follow Ponce de Leon to the Western 
 Wilderness, when, in any river you knew 
 of yore, you can find the Fountain of 
 Youth." 
 
 THE END 
 
 anted by BALLANTYNE, HANSON <5r Co. 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPLE. 
 
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 KING RICHARD II. 
 
 KING HENRY IV., Part I. 
 
 KING HENRY IV., Part II. 
 
 KING HENRY VI., Part I. 
 
 KING HENRY VI., Part II. 
 
 KING HENRY VI., Part III. 
 
 KING HENRY V." 
 
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 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
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 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS 
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 TWELFTH NIGHT. 
 
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 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 JULIUS CESAR. 
 
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 HAMLET. 
 
 KING LEAR. 
 
 OTHELLO. 
 
 ANTONY AND CLEOPA- 
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 CYMBELINE. 
 
 PERICLES. 
 
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 trat'wns by various artists. Sectional Plans accompany- 
 ing the Itineraries, and a County Map. Fcap. %vo 
 (convenient for the pocket} , cloth gilt, tinted edges, ^.s. 6d. 
 net per volume. 
 
 HAMPSHIRE 
 
 WITH THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 
 By G. A. B. DEWAR and others. 
 
 Athenaeum: "After a wide and practical experi- 
 ence of guide-books for nearly forty years, we 
 have no hesitation in saying that it is the best of 
 its size (350 pp.) that we have as yet seen. It is 
 a book that the general antiquary or lover of 
 Nature as well as the country resident will delight 
 to have on their shelves." 
 
 THE LAKE COUNTIES. 
 
 By W. G. COLLINGWOOD and others. 
 
 Dally Neivs : " Mr. Collingwood's must be ad- 
 mitted to be the ideal pocket guide to Lakeland." 
 
 SURREY. 
 
 By WALTER JERROLD and others. 
 
 Field: " Something more than a guide-book, 
 though in that direction it would be hard to beat, 
 for while the author is an enthusiast, and writes 
 very pleasantly, he is far from unmindful of those 
 details which, though they may be commonplace, 
 are very valuable." 
 
 NORFOLK. 
 
 By WILLIAM A. DUTT and others. 
 
 Academy : " As near a model guide-book as may 
 be; the itineraries are ample and well arranged, 
 the maps good, and he discourses pleasantly by the 
 way of matters interesting to more than the mere 
 tourist." 
 
 ALDINE HOUSE: J. M. DENT & CO., LONDON, W.C. 
 
UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 OCT 21 1916 
 
 1PR 3 1919 
 
 30,. 
 
292062 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY