Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

by Charles G. Harper

CHAPTER VII

Church Street—The “Castle” inn—The Guild Chapel, Guild Hall, and Grammar School—New Place.

Church Street is the most likeable of all the streets of Stratford. There you do not, in point of fact, actually see the church, which is out away beyond the end of it. The features of this quiet and yet not dull thoroughfare are the few and scattered shops in among private houses, and a quaint old inn of unusual design, the “Windmill.” It is illustrated here, and so the effective frontage, with its row of singularly bold dormer windows need not be more particularly described. The interior is almost equally interesting, and has a deep ingle-nook with one of those bacon-cupboards that are so numerously found in the town and district. It is a house that attracts and holds the observant man’s attention, and it has been so greatly admired by an American visitor that a complete set of architectural drawings was made for him and an exact replica built in Chicago a few years ago.

Opposite the “Windmill” inn is a fine Georgian mansion called “Mason Croft,” obviously once occupied by a person of importance, many years since. But the chief feature of Church Street is the long range of half-timbered buildings with its striking row of massive chimney-stacks, ending with the imposing stone tower of the Guild Chapel. It is entirely right that these buildings should bulk so largely to the eye, for in them is centred the greater part of Stratford’s history. They are the timeworn and venerable buildings of that ancient Guild of Holy Cross whose beginnings are in the dim past and have never been definitely fixed. The earliest facts relating to the Guild take the story of it back to 1269, when its first Chapel was begun, and when the semi-religious character of the fraternity was its more important half.

The Guild may be likened to a mutual benefit society of modern times, with the addition of the religious element. It was founded in superstition, but lived that down and became not only an institution of the greatest service, but also the originator of the Grammar School, and an informal town council and local authority, which, strangely enough, in its later and almost wholly secularised character, withstood the exactions of the Bishops of Worcester, the old-time lords of the manor and their stewards, and finally, after being dissolved in 1547, was re-constituted as the town council of the newly incorporated borough in 1553.

The original form of the Guild was that of a subscription society for men and women. Its benefits, unlike those of the Foresters and the Oddfellows of to-day, were chiefly spiritual. It employed priests to look after the religious needs of its members during life and to pray for the health of their souls after death. It secured these then greatly desired benefits at a reduced rate, just as the modern benefit society employs the club doctor. It also in many ways promoted kindliness and good-fellowship, helped the poor, and often found husbands for unappropriated spinsters by the simple process of endowing them. This was all to the good. Somewhat later the Guild espoused the cause of education, and certainly had a grammar school at the close of the fourteenth century, payments to the schoolmaster being the subject of allusion in the Guild’s archives in 1402. Once a year the entire membership went in stately procession to church, and returning to the Guild Hall indulged in one of those gargantuan feasts whose records are the amazement of modern readers. Of the 103 pullets, and of the geese and the beef recorded to have been consumed at one of these feasts in the beginning of the fifteenth century we say nothing, but on the same occasion they drank “34 gallons of good beer,” and “39 gallons of small ale,” perhaps on the well-known old principle that “good eating deserveth good drinking.” The 73 gallons of ale not being enough they sent out and had some more in by the cistern, a method which seems determined and heroic. The account thus includes “1 cestern of penyale,” for which they paid the equivalent of eight shillings, and “2 cesterns of good beer bought from Agnes Iremonger for 3s.”; that is to say, about twenty-four shillings’ worth. They seem to have had enough, “’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all,” and there can be no doubt that the company who on this occasion drank pottle-deep were merry enough.

The Guild also added morality plays to its entertainments; but all these lively proceedings formed but one side to its activities. It fulfilled many of the functions of local government, and strictly too, and its aldermen and proctors were officials not likely to be disregarded. The authority of the Guild was supported by its wealth, contributed by the benefactions of the members, which rendered it in course of time, after the lord of the manor, the largest landowner in and about the town.

It was not so great a change when the old Guild was reconstructed and became the town council. By that time it had ceased its early care for the future of its members’ souls, and had become in some of its developments much more like a Chamber of Commerce. But it had not forgotten to make merry and its love-feasts continued, and its morality plays with them, although they had become a little more after the secular model.

These traditions were continued into the town council, as they could scarcely fail to be, for the members of that body had been also officials of the Guild. John Shakespeare, high Bailiff in 1569, was responsible for inviting a company of actors to perform in the Guild Hall, and others did the like.