the porch is putting forth its buds and leaves.* The chestnut hangs its white blossoms over the grassy mounds of that resting-place. All is joyous in the spring sunshine. Kind neighbours are smiling upon the happy father; maidens and matrons snatch a kiss of the sleeping boy. There is "a spirit of life in everything" on this 26th of April, 1564. Summer comes, but it brings not joy to Stratford. There is wailing in her streets and woe in her houses. The deathregister tells a fearful history. From the 30th June to the 31st December, two hundred and thirty-eight inhabitants, a sixth of the population, are carried to the grave. The plague is in the fated town; the doors are marked with the red cross, and the terrible inscription, "Lord, have mercy upon us." It is the same epidemic which ravaged Europe in that year; which in the previous year had desolated London, and still continued there; of which sad time Stow pithily says "The poor citizens of London were this year plagued with a threefold plague, pestilence, scarcity of money, and dearth of victuals; the misery whereof were too long here to write: no doubt the poor remember it; the rich by flight into the countries made shift for themselves." Scarcity of money and dearth of victuals are the harbingers and the ministers of pestilence. Despair gathers up itself to die. Labour goes not forth to its accustomed duties. Shops are closed. The market-cross hears no hum of trade. The harvest lies almost ungathered in the fields. At last the destroying angel has gone on his way. The labourers are thinned; there is more demand for labour; "victuals" are not more abundant, but there are fewer left to share the earth's bounty. Then the adult rush into marriage. A year of pestilence is followed by a year of weddings; and such a "strange eventful history" does the Stratford register tell. The Charnel-house-a melancholy-looking appendage to the chancel of Stratford Church, (now removed,) had *It is supposed that such a green avenue was an old appendage to the church, the present trees having taken the place of more ancient ones. † See "Malthus on Population," book ii., chap. 12. then its heaps of unhonoured bones fearfully disturbed: but soon the old tower heard again the wedding-peal. The red cross was probably not on the door of John Shakspere's dwelling. Fortunately for mankind," says Malone, "it did not reach the house where the infant Shakspere lay; for not one of that name appears on the dead list. A poetical enthusiast will find no difficulty in believing that, like Horace, he reposed secure and fearless in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Muses to whom his future life was to be devoted : There were more real dangers around Shakspere than could be averted by the sacred laurel and the myrtle-something more fearful than the serpent and the bear of the Roman poet.* He, by whom may be said, without offence, to have guarded this unconscious child. William Shakspere was to be an instrument, and a great one, in the intellectual advancement of mankind. The guards that He placed around that threshold of Stratford, as secondary ministers, were cleanliness, abundance, free. air, parental watchfulness. The " non sine diis"—the "protected by the Muses,"-rightly considered, must mean the same guardianship. Each is a recognition of something higher than accident and mere physical laws. The parish of Stratford, then, was unquestionably the birth-place of William Shakspere. But in what part of Stratford dwelt his parents in the year 1564? It was ten years after this that his father became the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley Street-houses which still exist-houses which the people of England have agreed to preserve as a precious relic of their greatest brother. William Shakspere, then, might have been born at either of his father's copyhold houses, in Greenhill Street, or in Henley Street; he might have been born at Ingon; or his father might have occupied one of the two freehold houses in Henley Street at the time of the birth of his eldest son. Tradition says, that William Shakspere was born in one of these houses; tradition points out the very room in which he was born. Whether Shakspere were born here, or not, there can be little doubt that this property was the home of his boyhood. It was purchased by John Shakspere, from Edmund Hall and Emma his wife, for forty pounds. In a copy of the chirograph of the fine levied on this occasion (which is now in the possession of Mr. Wheler, of Stratford) the property is described as two messuages, two gardens, and two orchards, with their appurtenances. This document does not define the situation of the property, beyond its being in Stratford-upon-Avon; but in the deed of sale of another property in 1591, that property is described as situate between the houses of Robert Johnson and John Shakspere; and in 1597 John Shakspere himself sells a "toft, or parcel of land," in Henley Street, to the purchaser of the property in 1591. The properties can be traced, and leave no doubt of this house in Henley Street being the residence of John Shakspere. He retained the property during his life; and it descended, as his heir-at-law, to his son William. In the last testament of the poet is this bequest to his "sister Joan: "-"I do will and devise unto her the house, with the appurtenances, in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." His sister Joan, whose name by mar *Hor. lib. iii., car. iv. riage was Hart, was residing there in 1639, and she probably continued to reside there till her death in 1646. The one house in which Mrs. Hart resided was doubtless the half of the building now forming the butcher's shop and the tenement adjoining; for the other house was known as the Maidenhead Inn, in 1642. In another part of Shakspere's will he bequeaths, amongst the bulk of his property, to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, with remainder to her male issue, "two messuages or tenements, with the appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley Street, within the borough of Stratford." There are existing settlements of this very property in the family of Shakspere's eldest daughter and grand-daughter; and this grand-daughter, Elizabeth Nash, who was married a second time to Sir John Barnard, left both houses,—namely, "the inn, called the Maidenhead, and the adjoining house and barn,”—to her kinsmen Thomas and George Hart, the grandsons of her grandfather's "sister Joan." These persons left descendants, with whom this property remained until the beginning of the present century. But it was gradually diminished. The orchards and gardens were originally extensive: a century ago tenements had been built upon them, and they were alienated by the Hart then in possession. The Maidenhead Inn became the Swan Inn, and is now the Swan and Maidenhead. The White Lion, on the other side of the property, was extended, so as to include the remaining orchards and gardens. The house in which Mrs. Hart had lived so long became divided into two tenements; and at the end of the last century the lower part of one was a butcher's shop. The engraving (page 21) exhibits John Shakspere's houses in Henley Street under three different aspects. No. 1 (the top) is from an original drawing made by Colonel Delamotte in 1788. The houses, it will be observed, then presented one uniform front; and there were dormer windows connected with rooms in the roof. We have a plan before us, accompanying Mr. Wheler's account of these premises, which shows that they occupied a frontage of thirty-one feet. No. 2 is from an original drawing made by Mr. Pyne, after a sketch by Mr. Edridge in 1807. We now see that the dormer windows are removed, as also the gable at the east end of the front. The house has been shorn of much of its external importance. No. 3 is from a lithograph engraving in Mr. Wheler's account, published in 1824. The premises, we now see, have been pretty equally divided. The Swan and Maidenhead half has had its windows modernized, and the continuation of the timber-frame has been obliterated by a brick casing. In 1807, we observe that the western half had been divided into two tenements;—the fourth of the whole premises, that is the butcher's shop, the kitchen behind, and the two rooms over, being the portion commonly shown as Shakspere's House. Some years ago, upon a frontage in continuation of the tenement at the west, three small cottages were built. The whole of this portion of the property has been purchased for the nation, as well as the two tenements. Was William Shakspere, then, born in the house in Henley Street which has been purchased by the nation? For ourselves, we frankly confess that the want of absolute certainty that Shakspere was there born, produces a state of mind that is something higher and pleasanter than the conviction that depends upon positive evidence. We are content to follow the popular faith undoubtingly. The traditionary belief is sanctified by long usage and universal acceptation. The merely curious look in reverent silence upon that mean room, with its massive joists and plastered walls, firm with ribs of oak, where they are told the poet of the human race was born. Eyes now closed on the world, but who have left that behind which the world "will not willingly let die," have glistened under this humble roof, and there have been thoughts unutterable-solemn, confiding, grateful, humble-clustering round their hearts in that hour. The autographs of Byron and Scott are amongst hundreds of perishable inscriptions. Disturb not the belief that William Shakspere first saw the light in this venerated room. "The victor Time has stood on Avon's side Prologue for the Shakspere Night, Dec. 7, 1847, by C. Knight. |