Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

gs of Stratf

nor remarkable in warlike story, nor great in affairs of commerce. It was never a strong place, with menacing castle or defensive town walls with gates closed at night. It stood upon a br

ng "on Avon." For there are other Stratfords to be found upon the map of England, as necessarily there must be when we consider the origin of the name, which means merely the ford where the "street"-generally a paved Roman road-crossed a riv

man station of Alauna. Passing over the ford of the Avon, it went to London by way of Ettington, Sunrising Hill, and Banbury. Other Roman roads, the Fo

country as far as the foot of the Cotswold Hills, much less thickly wooded. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the Forest of Arden was great

went the lonely road. The wild things in the forest menaced them, floods obscured the fords, lawless men no less fierce than the animals which roamed the tangled brakes lurked a

e of this monastery was scarcely that of the existing town of Stratford, but was where the present parish church stands, in what is known as "Old Stratford," which is on the extreme southerly limit of the town. It was thus situated at some little distance from the ford, which was of

uthority over the town which gradually arose here. To resist in any way the Church's anointed in matters spiritual or temporal would have been to kick most foolishly against the pricks, for in his one autocratic capaci

ts name alludes to the olden passage of the cattle, for "rother" is the good Anglo-Saxon word "hroeth

grow, slowly, it is true, but substantially. At this period also that Guild arose which was originally a religious and charitable fraternity, but eventually developed into surprising issues, founding a grammar-school a

he population was some 2000. It is now about 8300; a very moderate increase in three hundred and fifty years,

that, Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth did only what others in their place would and must have done. They were certainly sovereigns with convictions of their own, but their attitude of mind was but the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, and they did not so much originate it as be swayed by it. Those statesmen who have been held meanly subservient to them were, after all, men of like convictions. They saw the old order to be outworn and existing institutions ripe for change. It was the age of the Renascence. Everywhere was the new spirit, which was remodelling thought as well as material things. It was the age, above all things, of the new learning. These feelings led th

r development as the town authority, thus provided Stratford with its Grammar School and its first town-hall. In those timbered rooms the scholars received their education,