CHAPTER XI
SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE AND SHAKESPEARE’S TOWN
The history of Stratford–on–Avon, which takes its name from the Saxon stroete or street, in allusion to the highway on the great north road leading from London to Birmingham and Holyhead, and the ford, from the passage of the Avon, which in ancient times ran parallel with the bridge of fourteen arches erected by Sir Hugh Clopton at his own expense in the reign of Henry VII.
The existence of the town can be traced to a date some three centuries prior to the Norman Conquest, but historical details of its early days are scant, although there was in the seventh century a Saxon monastery possessed by Æthelard, one of the subordinate kings of the Wiccians. This foundation was, however, in all probability, dissolved a couple of centuries later. Although doubtless the Celtic invader, the proud legions of Rome, and the Saxon settlers who succeeded the latter, all visited Stratford, which from time immemorial must have been a “sweet and pleasant place of good pasturage and watering,” there exist no records of those long–past days, when the great Forest of Arden covered with an almost impenetrable boscage the whole country which lay between the Avon to the south and Watling Street to the north, to whose depths and fastnesses the original inhabitants retreated in front of the invaders who, afflicting Britain, found their all–conquering way at times even into the heart of England itself.
In the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford are many survivals of Celtic origin in the nomenclature, and there are some authorities who seek to trace some measure of Shakespeare’s poetic genius to a remote and long–forgotten Celtic ancestry.
Anciently the town stood almost on the edge of the Wooland or Woodland district, in contradistinction to the Feldon, which was less thickly afforested. At even so late a period as the times of the poet Camden speaks of the greater part of the district as thickly wooded, although possessing tracts of pasture and land given over to corn. Probably the immediate neighbourhood very closely resembled the more thickly–wooded portions of the New Forest of the present day.
The first record of the existence of a place of any importance is the entry in the Domesday Book where, in 1085, is given a valuation of the manor; that then appears to have consisted of barely 2000 acres, which land was in the occupation of men who were to all intents and purposes villeins. The lord of the manor, at the time of the Survey, was the Bishop of Worcester, to whose see the town belonged, King Ethelred of Mercia having given the monastery in 691 to Egwin, the third bishop of the diocese. This monastery is generally supposed to have been founded by the river side on that exquisite site now occupied by Holy Trinity Church.
Unhappily the history of this monastic foundation, which one may well believe would have been of supreme interest, is almost untraceable. But that it was not an altogether tranquil one may be inferred from the records which state that strife between the succeeding Bishops of Worcester and the Kings of Mercia for its possession and that of the town was not infrequent. Both the town and the monastery undoubtedly in those early times were interdependent, and the first houses, of which there were apparently about two score at the time of the Conquest, were probably near the site of the monastery and river, and were in the neighbourhood of the thoroughfare now known as the Old Town. The manorial mill, at which the inhabitants ground their corn, was situated below the ford, and for this privilege they paid the usual fee taken by the lord of the manor for such convenience. In those early days of Stratford’s existence, before grave and scandalous monastic abuses ate into the heart of the system of religious foundations, the countryfolk looked to their ecclesiastical neighbours for active assistance in their labours and lives. This was undoubtedly the case with the old–time inhabitants of Stratford. Soon the town not only grew within its own borders, but spread its influence into the surrounding district, where clearings were made in the forest, or spaces already open were put under cultivation and homesteads began to spring up.
The first event of any historical importance in connection with “the town of Stratford by Avon,” and one destined to have a great effect upon its ultimate growth and importance, was the granting by Richard I., in the year 1197, of the right to hold a market each Thursday. This privilege was obtained for the inhabitants by the then Bishop of Worcester, who charged the townsfolk the sum of sixteen shillings per annum for it. This market was held on the site of the present Rother Market, and to it the drovers brought their cattle weekly from the pastures round about or from the cleared spaces of the Forest of Arden near by. The word itself serves to preserve a memorial of the nature of the institution, “Rother” being Anglo–Saxon for horned cattle.
The market, however, appears to have declined in importance towards the middle of the thirteenth century, but was reinstituted or recovered its lost popularity in the early years of the fourteenth. In addition to the market, which, as we have already pointed out, must have been largely devoted to cattle, five annual fairs were held, which were doubtless a great attraction to the townsfolk and to dwellers in the immediate neighbourhood. Four of these were, we find, largely patronised by drovers, and a great trade was done at them in cattle. The reason for this circumstance is not far to seek when one takes into consideration the fact that in the immediate vicinity of Stratford there were considerable extents of rich pasture land which, from time immemorial, had been used for herds and flocks. The market frequented by dealers in other goods and by the wandering pedlars of the Middle Ages lay around the High Cross, at the northern end of the High Street, in the space which in those days lay between Rother Market and the ancient timber bridge across the Avon.