for the considerable relative importance of Stratford during certain portions of its history, which it does not now maintain. In Anglo-Saxon times, Warwickshire was within the territory of the Mercians, and the name Stratford can be traced as early as the reign of their king Ethelred. It appears that during his reign, St. Egwin, who founded the magnificent Abbey of Evesham, and who was raised to the see of Worcester as third bishop, exchanged with Ethelard, a petty Mercian prince, the monastery of Fladbury, in Worcestershire, for that of Stratford. The charter of exchange is to be found in " Heming's Chartulary." As St. Egwin must have been for some time in the monastery of Stratford before he was elevated to the bishopric of Worcester, we have 693, the date of his elevation, as a fixed point before which the monastery certainly existed. Probably it was founded in the reign of the first Christian king of the Mercians. Little is known regarding the history of the monastery between 693 and the date of its annexation to the bishopric of Worcester. In 845, Berthulf, the nineteenth king of the Mercians, by a charter given at Tamworth, granted the monastery with its adjuncts to Heabert, the tenth bishop of that see. During the same century another notice of it occurs in a deed dated 872, by which Werferth, bishop of Worcester, grants to Eanwulf two farms at Nuthurst in the woodland, for himself and his three next heirs, with a reversion to the monastery of Stratford. The dissolution of the monastery took place probably in the reign of Edward the Martyr, when Elfer, a powerful earl of Mercia, drove the monks from all the monastic institutions in his jurisdiction, and put secular canons in their place. At all events, we hear nothing of it for two centuries between this last mentioned date and the time of William the Conqueror. It is probable that meanwhile the monastery and its revenues had been in the possession of the bishops of Worcester. In the four centuries before the Norman Conquest, during which, as we have seen, a monastery existed, we certainly know nothing of the town Stratford except by inference. No doubt a hamlet had existed all along, which gradually rose in importance. In "Domesday Book," compiled between 1080 and 1086 by order of William the Conqueror, containing a survey of all the lands in England, the bishop of Worcester, then St. Wolstan, is said to hold, and to have held, Stratford. The land is reckoned at fourteen and a half hides,-an uncertain quantity, since a hide is estimated variously from as much as one plough could till to a hundred acres. There was a mill yielding 10s. per annum and a thousand eels. The whole manor, which in King Edward's time had been worth 100s., was now valued at £25,— no inconsiderable sum at that time. After this period the town gradually increased. A charter was granted by Richard I. for a weekly market to be held on Thursday. Other charters were obtained in the reigns of King John and Henry III. for annual fairs, and a patent in that of Edward III. for levying a toll during a number of years towards paving the streets. A regular charter of incorporation, however, was not obtained till the seventh year of Edward VI., 1553, which settled the municipal government of the burgh. The corpora tion, in the time of John Shakespeare, the father of the poet, consisted of a bailiff, fourteen aldermen, and fourteen burgesses. The bailiff, or chief magistrate, annually elected from among the aldermen, held a Court of Record every fortnight for causes not involving above £30. There was a court-leet which appointed aletasters-officers to inspect the measures and quality of ale and beer sold within the burgh-and also four affeerors, who were sworn to assess penalties for offences in cases not fixed by statute. The offices of constable and chamberlain also existed, the former being the executive officer of the town. We learn from the records that John Shakespeare successively filled all these offices till in 1568 he became chief magistrate. The subject of municipal government in Shakespeare's native town becomes an object of interest, when we note that the self-management exhibited in this small burgh is precisely the same quality which, on the larger scale, has developed the British Constitution. The population of Stratford at that time, judging from the average of births and deaths, was about sixteen hundred. The town in appearance was very different from its modern representative. It consisted of low thatched cottages and timber-framed houses, built in a very irregular and scattered fashion, with gardens separated by walls and ditches. Except Shakespeare's birth-place, an old house with the date 1596 on its front in High Street, and the Grammar School, the ancient houses have disappeared. The venerable church and the Guild chapel, however, still remain as they were in Shakespeare's time. Another old structure is the stone bridge on the Avon, built by Sir Hugh Clopton, lord mayor of London, at his own expense, in the reign of Henry VII. Previous to that time, there was only a wooden bridge without a causeway. In the war between Charles I. and the Parliament, one of the arches, apparently the second from the east end, was broken down by Colonel Bridges, to prevent incursions of the enemy. It was rebuilt in 1652. It is by no means surprising that so little of the ancient town remains, considering the materials of which the houses were composed. The roofs of thatch, as well as the timber used in the building, rendered the town liable to fires. In the thirtysixth and thirty-seventh years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, two dreadful fires broke out, which consumed two hundred houses, and destroyed property to the value of £20,000. Another fire occurred during the reign of James I. in 1614, which, in less than two hours, burned to the ground fifty-four dwelling-houses besides barns and stables, and on this occasion the town narrowly escaped destruction. Fire was not the only foe to whose ravages the inhabitants were exposed. The pest which raged in Europe in 1564 visited Stratford. From the end of June to the last day of December, grim death stalked about the streets, and numbered two hundred and thirty-eight victims. The future dramatist was born in April of this year, but happily his family escaped the epidemic. Where more than a seventh part of the population is carried off, we must regard the plague as a fatal one compared with those of our own day. The low, ill-ventilated houses and the stagnant ditches would extremely aggravate the visitation. |