“Stephen Sly” alluded to in the play, was a real person who seems to have been what people call “a character.” He was probably a half-witted creature, the butt of Stratford, and occasionally appears in the unimpeachable records of the town as a servant of the Combes of Welcombe, or as a labourer. There also appears in those same chronicles in later years a Joan Sly, who was fined in 1630 for travelling on the Sabbath: an offence not so great in itself, but very reprehensible in the eyes of the Puritan magistrates of that time.
The parent village of Aston Cantlow is two miles from Wilmcote. The site only of the ancient castle of the Cantilupes remains, behind the church, in a tangled moat still sometimes flooded by the little river Alne. The old Court House, a long half-timbered building now divided into three or four cottages, is the chief feature of the village street.
Wootton Wawen, in something less than another three miles, owes the first part of its singular name to its olden situation in the Forest of Arden, and the second part to the Saxon lord of the place, a landowner named Wagen, whose name appears as witness to the foundation charter of the monastery at Coventry founded by Leofric, the husband of Godiva, in 1043. It stands at a junction of roads, where the highway from Stratford through Bearley comes swinging up round a corner from the channels of the Alne, and runs, broad and imposing, on to Henley-in-Arden and Birmingham. The church, occupying a knoll, is a strange but beautiful group, with central tower in the Decorated style, a rather plain south chapel of the same period, and a beautiful nave clerestory of the fifteenth century. A very large Decorated chancel east window has its moulding set with elaborate crockets.
The stranger, attracted by this noble church, tries the door. It is locked, but before he can turn away it will be opened by a girl, who says, “There is a fee of sixpence.” There always is!
You render tribute for sake of seeing the interior, uneasily suspecting that it is another sixpence gone towards some scheme of alteration which would not have your approval; but these things cannot be helped.
The interior discloses some unexpected features, the lower part of the tower being unmistakably Saxon work, with very narrow arches to nave and chancel. Here are two curious enclosed carved oak pews that were perhaps originally chantries, and a fine fifteenth-century oak pulpit. A desk with eight chained books, and an ancient chest with ironwork in the shape of fleurs-de-lis, together with effigies and brasses to the Harewell family, complete an interesting series of antiquities. Here is buried William Somerville, author of The Chase, who died in 1742.
The town of Henley-in-Arden, with its broad and picturesque street and the “White Swan” inn, is much afflicted in these latter days by excessive motor traffic from Birmingham. Beaudesert, a seat of the Marquis of Anglesey, adjoins it, and Preston Bagot, on the east, lies in a once-remote district. The sign of the “Crab Mill” inn, on the way, alludes to a former manufacture of cider here. The old manor-house of Preston Bagot, beside the road, is locally said to have been the first house built in the Forest of Arden, but of that we cannot, obviously, be at all sure. There is a house about four miles onward, at Rowington Green, on the other side of Rowington, which looks, in parts, older. It is the romantic-looking house known as “Shakespeare Hall,” for many years a farmhouse, but now the residence of Mr. J. W. Ryland, F.S.A. It dates back to the early part of the fifteenth century, and had until recently a moat. Traditionally, it was the home of one Thomas Shakespeare, a brother of William Shakespeare’s father; and Shakespeare is further said to have composed As You Like It in the room over the porch. We need not believe that tradition, which has no evidence to warrant it, although the house was once the home of one of the very numerous Shakespeare families in Arden, the poet’s family were relations. The massive horseman’s “upping-block” has been allowed to remain, beside the front-door.
CHAPTER XXIV
Welcombe—Snitterfield—Warwick—Leicester’s Hospital—St. Mary’s Church and the Beauchamp Chapel.