The spire on the left of the picture is St. Mary’s, and that on the right is St. Alkmond’s. The latter church was originally built by a daughter of King Alfred’s. The carving on the exterior of the houses in this street is as perfect as it was when originally placed in its present position. The entrance from Pride Hill is surrounded by many quaint gabled tenements with carved beams and projecting wood-work.
Henry IV. reached Shrewsbury a few hours before Hotspur on the 19th of July 1403, and burned down the houses on the road as before said. This road was rebuilt shortly after, and many of the houses are still standing which date back to that period: a block of them is here shown. The Haughmond hills rise clearly and sharply above them, and are wooded up to the summits. When the sun rises red over them, and especially if this is accompanied with a noise of wind, it is a certain sign of a stormy day. It is impossible not to remark the exceeding accuracy of Shakespeare in his intensely picturesque description of the battle of Shrewsbury.
Henry IV., speaking to his son Harry in the camp, says—
How bloodily the sun begins to peer
Above yon bosky[1] hill, the day looks pale
At his distemperature.
Prince Henry. The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes;
And by the hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.
Another circumstance may be noticed here, though it hardly belongs to the present work, but it illustrates the ready way in which Shakespeare took advantage of any incidents that met his eye. In the fruitless interview between Earl Worcester and the King, the former says—
Worcester. Hear me, my liege;
For mine own part I could be well content,
To entertain the lag end of my life
With quiet hours: for I do protest
I have not sought the day of this dislike.
King Henry. You have not sought it out, how comes it then?
Falstaff. Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
Prince Henry. Peace, chewet, peace.
It has been supposed by Pope and others, that this should read “peace, chevet, peace.” Chevet being the French for a pillow, and this they supposed alluded to Falstaff’s corpulence. But in an edition published by Longman and others in 1757 good reasons are given for adopting the reading chewet—the common green plover or lapwing. This bird, it is hardly necessary to say, has a habit, when its young are hatched, of suddenly appearing before any one, and uttering a sharp cry. The prince has only bantered Falstaff good-naturedly the moment he is summoned to join the king, and reproves his interruption in this way. It is not noticed in the edition referred to, but it is worthy of remark that the meadow lands leading from Shrewsbury to Battlefield literally swarm with these birds. It is not improbable that the humour of Falstaff’s statement to Henry, “We rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock,” may lie in the fact that the clock of St. Mary’s Church, the one alluded to, has only a single face, and that is turned to the town, having its back to the battlefield. This clock was erected shortly before Shakespeare wrote the play. The noble church of St. Mary contains a tomb of the Leybourne family, to whom the unfortunate Worcester was related. “Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too,” and they were both executed at the high cross immediately after the battle. Now the tomb (published in Architectural Drawing Studies by Dean Howson and myself) is about fifty years older, from its style than the battle, and in opening it some years ago a headless body was found over the original stone coffin, wrapped in leather, and apparently hastily interred, which in all probability was the unfortunate Earl’s.
The last house to be illustrated in Shrewsbury is the one at Wyle Cop, of which a sketch is given. There is nothing to indicate its exact date, but it must be of considerable antiquity, as the Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., slept here on his road to Bosworth field.