With reference to the Shakespeare marriage-bond, and the other records that are kept in the Edgar Tower at Worcester, it may perhaps justly be said that they are not protected with the scrupulous care to which such treasures are entitled. The Tower,—a gray and venerable relic, an ancient gate of the monastery, dating back to the time of King John,—affords an appropriate receptacle for those documents; but it would not withstand fire, and it does not contain either a fire-proof chamber or a safe. The Shakespeare marriage-bond,—which would be appropriately housed in the Shakespeare Birthplace, at Stratford,—was taken from the floor of a closet, where it had been lying, together with a number of dusty books, and I was kindly permitted to hold it in my hands and to examine it. The frame provided for this priceless relic is such as may be seen on an ordinary school slate. From another dusty closet an attendant extricated a manuscript diary kept by William Lloyd, Bishop of Worcester [1627-1717], and by his man-servant, for several years, about the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne; and in this are many quaint and humorous entries, valuable to the student of history and manners. In still another closet, having the appearance of a rubbish-bin, I saw heaps of old parchment and paper writings,—a mass of antique registry that it would need the labour of five or six years to examine, decipher, and classify. Worcester is especially rich in old records, and it is not impossible that the missing clew to Shakespeare's marriage may yet be found in that old cathedral city.
Worcester is rich also in a superb library, which, by the kindness of Mr. Hooper, the custodian, I was allowed to explore, high up beneath the roof of the lovely cathedral. That collection of books, numbering about five thousand, consists mostly of folios, many of which were printed in France. They keep it in a long, low, oak-timbered room, the triforium of the south aisle of the nave. The approach is by a circular stone staircase. In an anteroom to the library I saw a part of the ancient north door of this church,—a fragment dating back to the time of Bishop Wakefield, 1386,—to which is still affixed a piece of the skin of a human being. The tradition is that a Dane committed sacrilege, by stealing the sanctus bell from the high altar, and was thereupon flayed alive for his crime, and the skin of him was fastened to the cathedral door. In the library are magnificent editions of Aristotle and other classics; the works of the fathers of the church; a beautiful illuminated manuscript of Wickliffe's New Testament, written on vellum in 1381; and several books, in splendid preservation, from the press of Caxton and that of Wynken de Worde. The world moves, but printing is not better done now than it was then. This library, which is for the use of the clergy of the diocese of Worcester, was founded by Bishop Carpenter, in 1461, and originally it was stored in the chapel of the charnel-house.
Reverting to the subject of old documents, a useful word may perhaps be said here about the registers in Trinity church at Stratford,—documents which, in a spirit of disparagement, have sometimes been designated as "copies." That sort of levity in the discussion of Shakespearean subjects is not unnatural in days when "cranks" are allowed freely to besmirch the memory of Shakespeare, in their wildly foolish advocacy of what they call "the Bacon theory" of the authorship of Shakespeare's works. The present writer has often held the Stratford Registers in his hands and explored their quaint pages. Those records are contained in twenty-two volumes. They begin with the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1558, and they end, as to the old parchment form, in 1812. From 1558 to 1600 the entries were made in a paper book, of the quarto form, still occasionally to be found in ancient parish churches of England. In 1599 an order-in-council was made, commanding that those entries should be copied into parchment volumes, for their better preservation. This was done. The parchment volumes,—which were freely shown to me by William Butcher,[22] the parish clerk of Stratford,—date back to 1600. The handwriting of the copied portion, covering the period from 1558 to 1600, is careful and uniform. Each page is certified, as to its accuracy, by the vicar and the churchwardens. After 1600 the handwritings vary. In the register of marriage a new handwriting appears on September 17 that year, and in the registers of Baptism and Burial it appears on September 20. The sequence of marriages is complete until 1756; that of baptisms and burials until 1812; when, in each case, a book of printed forms comes into use, and the expeditious march of the new age begins. The entry of Shakespeare's baptism, April 26, 1564, from which it is inferred that he was born on April 23, is extant as a certified copy from the earlier paper book. The entry of Shakespeare's burial is the original entry, made in the original register.
Some time ago an American writer suggested that Shakespeare's widow,—seven years his senior at the start, and therefore fifty-nine years old when he died,—subsequently contracted another marriage. Mrs. Shakespeare survived her husband seven years, dying on August 6, 1623, at the age of sixty-seven. The entry in the Stratford register of burial contains, against the date of August 8, 1623, the names of "Mrs. Shakespeare" and "Anna uxor Richard James." Those two names, written one above the other, are connected by a bracket on the left side; and this is supposed to be evidence that Shakespeare's widow married again. The use of the bracket could not possibly mislead anybody possessing the faculty of clear vision. When two or more persons were either baptized or buried on the same day, the parish clerk, in making the requisite entry in the register, connected their names with a bracket. Three instances of this practice occur upon a single page of the register, in the same handwriting, close to the page that records the burial, on the same day, of Mrs. Shakespeare, widow, and Anna the wife of Richard James. But folly needs only a slender hook on which to hang itself.
John Baskerville, the famous printer [1706-1775], was born in Worcester, and his remains, the burial-place of which was long unknown, have lately been discovered there. Incledon, the famous singer, died there. Prince Arthur [1486-1502], eldest son of King Henry the Seventh, was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where a beautiful chantry was built over his remains in 1504. Bishop John Gauden [1605-1662], who wrote the Eikon Basiliké, long generally attributed to Charles the First, rests there. The Duke of Hamilton, who died of his wounds, after a Worcester fight, was transferred to that place, from his temporary grave in the Commandery. And in the centre of the sacrarium stands the tomb of that tyrant King John, who died on October 19, 1216, at Newark, and whose remains, when the tomb was opened,[23] July 17, 1797, presented a ghastly spectacle.
CHAPTER VIII
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH
