To these fairs doubtless came the inhabitants from far and near; from the scattered homesteads amid the forest glades of Arden, and from the manor–houses which began in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to spring up upon the lands granted by successive kings to their vassals for services rendered or for political reasons. Ultimately there came to Stratford fairs merchants of East Anglia and enterprising traders from so far afield as London. Pedlars there had always been from quite early times.
From the fourteenth century onwards the town appears to have had no lack of sons interested in her welfare, and amongst the earliest benefactors were two brothers named Robert and John de Stratford, and a nephew. The two brothers were destined to become distinguished ornaments of the Church, the second named being in turn Archdeacon of Lincoln in 1319, Bishop of Winchester in 1323, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1333. Robert being vicar of his native town, then in 1335 Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and two years later he was consecrated Bishop of Chichester. Ralph de Stratford, the nephew, being raised to the see of London in 1339.
In a measure these two brothers, who were not alone Churchmen but also statesmen, holding in turn the Chancellorship of England, John occupying that high office four times, may be said to have inherited the spirit of benefaction for which they were to be remembered by their native town. Some time during the reign of the first Edward their father had founded a chapel for the famous Guild of the Holy Cross, which in all likelihood was built upon the same site as that occupied by the Guild Chapel now surviving at the corner of Church Street and Chapel Lane. To this chapel Robert de Stratford was appointed the first Master in 1269, on the sanction of Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester. During the next year the Bishop fostered the newly–founded religious community (which was not, however, ecclesiastical) by granting a forty–days’ indulgence to all those who had presented gifts to the Guild. The Register, which exists at the present day, and contains entries from the middle of the fourteenth century, shows that the Guild must have been wealthy, as it possessed property in almost every street of the town.
To his brother Robert belongs the credit of local improvement of the town. In his time the streets were little more than rough tracks or paths connecting the different quarters where the inhabitants had erected dwellings along the roads which led to Henley–in–Arden and Alcester. “The ways,” we read, “were of such unevenness that all who traversed them in rainy days came to their end muddied, and many a cart stuck fast even within the town.” Robert de Stratford decided to amend this state of affairs, and to enable him to pave them he, in 1332, obtained leave to tax the produce brought into the town for sale by the farmers and others of the immediate neighbourhood. Thereby he not only conferred a great benefit upon his fellow–townsmen, but also upon those who came to Stratford for business.
“HUNGRY” GRAFTON.
The history of the town subsequent to this date until the reign of Edward VI. is very obscure. Indeed, although it is more than probable that it saw something of the Wars of the Roses, and in a measure played its part in the history of the county at large, the records of its progress and the doings of its inhabitants are scanty indeed. The name of one family, however, which became indissolubly connected with Stratford towards the close of the fifteenth century, calls for at least a passing mention. In 1483 Sir Hugh Clopton, of the manor of Clopton, which lies about a mile to the north of Stratford, came to the town and built himself a fine house (as houses were so considered in those days) on the site now occupied by New Place. It was he that, seeing the old bridge of wood which then spanned the Avon was in a “sorry state,” erected the stone structure which, since the days of Henry VII. till the present day, has spanned the river with its fourteen arches, except for a short period from 1645–52, when there was at most a temporary passage across, owing to the destruction of the second arch of the end farthest from the town by the Parliamentarians. During the reign of the Virgin Queen, Stratford, which had by then become a country town of some little importance and size, made some progress. But in even the spacious days of Elizabeth there was still something of mediæval ways and manners clinging to the life and habits of towns such as Stratford. It is difficult for us, who dwell in the twentieth century, with its almost fanatical cleanliness and idolisation of everything which can be described as progress, to realise the conditions prevailing in places like Stratford, which was probably not worse governed or overseen than other towns of similar size. In a contemporary record one reads with astonishment that a “muck heap” was permitted in no less than six places, the removal of which unsavoury deposits was only suffered twice a year! The streets were, notwithstanding the official refuse heap, often almost impassable for filth, “fine gentlemen and dames passing with difficulty without the soiling of their garments along them.” Even a vicar of the town was interrogated by the Council regarding a pig–stye he had erected in the open street, to the obstruction of the common way! The Town Council (Stratford had been granted a Charter of Incorporation in 1553 by Edward VI.) seem to have attempted some control of the inhabitants, but, if one may believe the evidence afforded by contemporary documents, with but scant and qualified success. Rushes were still strewn on the clay floors of even the best houses, and, what is of greater importance, were not removed too frequently. And although a mandate was issued by the Town Council in the year before Elizabeth ascended the throne for the inhabitants in the winter to hang out a lantern before their doors between the hours of five and eight in the evening, this order was frequently disregarded. It is from these fragmentary records that one is able to gain at least an approximate picture of the ancient town of Stratford in the period just preceding Shakespeare’s birth.
Twice during the reign of Elizabeth was the town visited by devastating fires, each of which destroyed some two hundred houses and rendered a large number of the townsfolk homeless and almost destitute. It was the fate that very frequently befell ancient towns, and was repeated again in the year 1614, when upwards of fifty houses, some of them the handsomest in the town, were burned to the ground. Stratford is still rich for a place of its size in architectural survivals of an age when picturesqueness was so marked a feature of domestic buildings, but for these devastating conflagrations what might it not have been?