There is no pictorial record of New Place, as it was when Shakespeare resided in it. He was unfortunate in living long before the age of picture-postcards, and never knew the joy of seeing illustrations of his house, “New Place; residence of Mr. William Shakespeare” (with the tell-tale legend “Printed in Germany.” in ruby type on the back), for sale in all the shop windows. Poor devil!
New Place passed by Shakespeare’s will to his daughter Susanna and her husband Dr. Hall. They removed from their house “Hall’s Croft,” Old Stratford, shortly afterwards, Shakespeare’s widow probably living with them until her death in 1623. Dr. Hall died in 1635. In 1643, Mrs. Hall here entertained Queen Henrietta Maria for three weeks, at the beginning of the royalist troubles, when the Queen came to the town with 5000 men. In 1649 she died, two years after her son-in-law, Thomas Nash, whose house is next door. Somewhere about this time all the Shakespeare books and manuscripts would seem to have disappeared. The puritan Dr. Hall disapproved of stage-plays, and his wife, Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna, could neither write nor read; and thus the complete destruction of the dramatist’s records is easily accounted for.
Nash’s widow, Shakespeare’s granddaughter, married again, a John Barnard who was afterwards knighted. Lady Barnard died childless at her husband’s place at Abington, Northamptonshire, and was buried there, leaving New Place to her husband, who died four years later, in 1674. By a strange chance, the house that had been sold out of the Clopton family now came back to it by marriage, Sir Edward Walker who bought the property in 1675, leaving Barbara, an only child, who married Sir John Clopton. His son, Sir Hugh, came into possession of an entirely new-fronted house, for his father, careless of its associations, in 1703 had made great alterations here. Illustrations of this frontage which survived until 1759, show that it was not at all Shakespearean; being instead most distinctly and flagrantly Queen Annean, in the semi-classic taste of that day, with a pediment and other architectural details which we are convinced Shakespeare’s New Place never included.
The ill-tempered Rev. Francis Gastrell who bought New Place in 1753 completed the obliteration of the illustrious owner’s residence. There cannot, happily, be many people so black-tempered as this wealthy absentee vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, who, resident for the greater part of the year in Lichfield, yet found Stratford desirable at some time in the twelve months. His acrid humours were early stirred. He had no sooner moved in than he found numbers of people coming every day to see Shakespeare’s mulberry-tree in the garden, so he promptly had it cut down, to save himself annoyance. Then he objected to the house being assessed for taxes all the year round, although he occupied it only a month or two in the twelve; and when the authorities refused to accept his view, he had the place entirely demolished. Thus perished New Place. The site of it, after passing through several hands, was finally purchased, together with the adjoining Thomas Nash’s house, by public subscription in 1861; and both are now the property of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The site of New Place is open to the view of all who pass along Church Street and Chapel Lane, a dwarf wall with ornamental railing alone dividing it and its gardens from the pavement. Sixpence, which is the key that unlocks many doors in Shakespeare land, admits to the foundations, all that remain of the house, and also to the “New Place Museum,” in the house of Thomas Nash. Strange to say, the Trustees do not charge for admission to the gardens. Is this an oversight, or a kindly wish to leave the stranger an odd sixpence to get home with? Nash’s house, odiously re-fronted about the beginning of the nineteenth century, showed a stuccoed front with pillared portico to the street until recently. This year (1912) the alterations have been completed by which the frontage is restored by the evidence of old prints to its appearance in Nash’s time. The interior remains as of old. Among the relics in the Museum are chairs, tables, a writing-desk, and other articles rather doubtfully said to have belonged to Shakespeare; a trinket-box supposed to have been Anne Hathaway’s, and an old shuffle-board from the “Falcon” inn opposite, on which Shakespeare is said to have played a game with friends at nights, when he felt bored at home. Unfortunately for tradition and the authenticity of this “Shakespearean relic,” the “Falcon” was a private house in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and for long after. It is known to have become an inn only at some time between 1645 and 1668. The sign was chosen probably in allusion to the Shakespeare crest. Reproductions of portraits of Shakespeare’s friends complete the collections in Nash’s House.
CHAPTER VIII
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon.
The parish church of Stratford-on-Avon is a building larger, more lofty, and far more stately than most towns of this size can boast. There is reason for this exceptional importance, first in the patronage of the Bishops of Worcester, on whose manor it was situated, but chiefly in the benefactions of John of Stratford, one of three remarkable persons born here in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. John, Robert, and Ralph, who took their distinguishing name from the town of their birth, were all of one family; the first two were brothers, the third was their nephew. John, born in the closing years of the thirteenth century, became successively Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of Canterbury, and was, like most of the great prelates of the age, a statesman as well, filling the State offices of ambassador to foreign powers and Lord Chancellor of the realm. He died in 1348. His brother Robert early became rector of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1319. He it was who first caused the town to be paved; not, of course, with pavements that would meet the approval of a modern town council or the inhabitants, but probably with something in the nature of cobbles roughly laid down in the deep mud in which, up to that time, the rude carts of the age had foundered. It was this mud that set a deep gulf between neighbours, and had led indirectly to the establishment in 1296 of the original Guild Chapel, a small building which stood on the site of the existing larger structure. It was founded by Robert, the father of John and Robert, largely for the spiritual welfare of those old or infirm persons who were not able to attend service at the parish church, by reason of the distance! Not, we may be sure, the distance of actual measurement, for the church is at the end of the not very long street, and a leisurely walk brings you to it in two minutes; but a distance of miles reckoned in the hindrances and disabilities provided by the roads of that age. Nothing in the story of Stratford could more eloquently describe to us the condition of its streets and the then remoteness of the Old Town district.
But to return to Robert of Stratford, who eventually became Bishop of Chichester and died in 1362. He it was who supervised his brother John’s gifts to the church, which was then an incomplete building, languishing for want of means to complete it. Apparently it had long before been decided to replace the small original Norman church with a larger and much more ambitious building, in the Early English style, judging from traces of both those architectural periods discernable in the tower; but the Bishops of Worcester would not loosen their purse-strings sufficiently, and awaited the coming of that benefactor who, they were morally certain, was sure to appear sooner or later and compound with Heaven for his evil courses on earth by completing it. They did not, however, reckon on any of their own cloth doing so, for sheer joy of the work.
John of Stratford’s works included the widening of the north aisle and the rebuilding of the south; the remodelling of the central tower and the addition of a timber spire, which remained until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced (1764) by the present loftier stone spire, which rises eighty-three feet above the roof of the tower. In 1332 he founded the chantry chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr in the church. There five priests were appointed to sing masses “for ever,” for the good of the souls of founder and friends. John of Stratford was a great and wise man, but he did not know that “where the tree falls, there shall it lie”; nor could he foresee that his “for ever” would be commuted by the Reformation into a period of two hundred years.