To us, however, the most remarkable fact in the history of the Guild is the establishment of the Grammar School for the children of its members. The date of its foundation has been usually given as 1453, but it is now known to have been in existence before that time. Attendance was free, and the master, who was paid ten pounds a year by the Guild, was forbidden to take anything from the pupils. In this school, as we shall see later, William Shakespeare was educated, and we shall become better acquainted with it when we follow the boy thither.
The Guild Chapel, with the exception of the chancel, which had been renovated about 1450, was taken down and rebuilt in the closing years of the century by Sir Hugh Clopton (see [page 34] above), who was a prominent member of the fraternity. The work was not finished until after his death in September, 1496, but the expense of its completion was provided for in his will.
THE STRATFORD CORPORATION.
The Guild was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1547, and its possessions remained as crown property until 1553. For seven years the town had been without any responsible government. Meanwhile the leading citizens—the old officers of the Guild—had petitioned Edward VI. to restore that society as a municipal corporation. He granted their prayer, and by a charter dated June 7, 1553, put the government of the town in the hands of its inhabitants. The estates, revenues, and chattels of the Guild were made over to the corporation, which, as the heir and successor of the venerable fraternity, adopted the main features of its organization. The names and functions of its chief officers were but slightly changed. The warden became the bailiff, and the proctors were called chamberlains, but aldermen, clerk, and beadle resumed their old titles. The common council continued to meet monthly in the Guildhall; but it now included, besides the bailiff and ten aldermen, the ten chief burgesses, and its authority covered the whole town. The fraternal sentiment of the ancient society survived; it being ordered "that none of the aldermen nor none of the capital burgesses, neither in the council chamber nor elsewhere, do revile one another, but brother-like live together, and that after they be entered into the council chamber, that they nor none of them depart not forth but in brotherly love, under the pains of every offender to forfeit and pay for every default, vjs. viijd." When any councillor or his wife died, all were to attend the funeral "in their honest apparel, and bring the corpse to the church, there to continue and abide devoutly until the corpse be buried."
The Grammar School and the chapel and almshouses of the Guild became public institutions. The bailiff became a magistrate who presided at a monthly court for the recovery of small debts, and at the higher semi-annual leets, or court-leets, to which all the inhabitants were summoned to revise and enforce the police regulations. Shakespeare alludes to these leets in The Taming of the Shrew (ind. 2. 89) where the servant tells Kit Sly that he has been talking in his sleep:—
"Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door,
And rail upon the mistress of the house,
And say you would present her at the leet