Country Life And Character In Elizabethan England

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As illustrative of life in a country town let us glance for a moment at the birthplace of Shakespeare. Stratford in early times possessed a famous guild, so famous that people from all parts of England were glad to become members of the Holy Cross. Not Stratford merchants alone, but nobles and even kings, were part and parcel of this time-honoured institution, from whose records we derive much of our information concerning ancient Stratford. If one can dissociate mountains and the sea from one's idea of natural beauty, Warwickshire leaves nothing to be desired. "The heart of England," as Drayton calls it, lies in the centre of the lowlands. It is a flat country, but not monotonously flat, the roads bordered with hedges, and the fields teeming with wildflowers. In the immediate neighbourhood are Warwick with its great castle and its associations pertaining to the King-Maker, and the hospital founded by Leicester; Kenilworth is but a step beyond; and Guy's Cliff, one of the most splendid palaces of country England; and Coventry, which played such an important part in the ancient struggle for civic liberty; not to speak of the numerous Shakespeare associations. Now that the restorations of the Stratford church are complete, it appears much like the church of Shakespeare's day. Before the death of John of Stratford in 1348, the church was a small and incomplete though substantial structure of Norman architecture. John of Stratford provided for the building of several chapels, notably those to the Virgin Mary, and to Saint Thomas a Becket. He remodelled the tower, and probably added the wooden spire that existed in the time of Shakespeare. In 1332, with the permission of the Bishop of Winchester and of Edward III, he formed a chantry out of some of the chapels that he had built, and dedicated it to Saint Thomas the Martyr, and endowed it with some neighbouring lands

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