The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon.
THE parish church of Stratford-on-Avon is a building larger, more lofty,
and far more stately than most towns of this size can boast. There is
reason for this exceptional importance, first in the patronage of the
Bishops of Worcester, on whose manor it was situated, but chiefly in the
benefactions of John of Stratford, one of three remarkable persons born
here in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. John, Robert, and Ralph,
who took their distinguishing name from the town of their birth, were all
of one family; the first two were brothers, the third was their nephew.
John, born in the closing years of the thirteenth century, became
successively Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of Canterbury, and was,
like most of the great prelates of the age, a statesman as well, filling
the State offices of ambassador to foreign powers and Lord Chancellor of
the realm. He died in 1348. His brother Robert early became rector of
Stratford-on-Avon, in 1319. He it was who first caused the town to be
paved; not, of course, with pavements that would meet the approval of a
modern town council or the inhabitants, but probably with something in
the nature of cobbles roughly laid down in the deep mud in which, up to
that time, the rude carts of the age had foundered. It was this mud that
set a deep gulf between neighbours, and had led indirectly to the
establishment in 1296 of the original Guild Chapel, a small building
which stood on the site of the existing larger structure. It was founded
by Robert, the father of John and Robert, largely for the spiritual
welfare of those old or infirm persons who were not able to attend
service at the parish church, by reason of the distance! Not, we may be
sure, the distance of actual measurement, for the church is at the end of
the not very long street, and a leisurely walk brings you to it in two
minutes; but a distance of miles reckoned in the hindrances and
disabilities provided by the roads of that age. Nothing in the story of
Stratford could more eloquently describe to us the condition of its
streets and the then remoteness of the Old Town district.
But to return to Robert of Stratford, who eventually became Bishop of
Chichester and died in 1362. He it was who supervised his brother John’s
gifts to the church, which was then an incomplete building, languishing
for want of means to complete it. Apparently it had long before been
decided to replace the small original Norman church with a larger and
much more ambitious building, in the Early English style, judging from
traces of both those architectural periods discernable in the tower; but
the Bishops of Worcester would not loosen their purse-strings
sufficiently, and awaited the coming of that benefactor who, they were
morally certain, was sure to appear sooner or later and compound with
Heaven for his evil courses on earth by completing it. They did not,
however, reckon on any of their own cloth doing so, for sheer joy of the
work.
John of Stratford’s works included the widening of the north aisle and
the rebuilding of the south; the remodelling of the central tower and the
addition of a timber spire, which remained until the eighteenth century,
when it was replaced (1764) by the present loftier stone spire, which
rises eighty-three feet above the roof of the tower. In 1332 he founded
the chantry chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr in the church. There five
priests were appointed to sing masses “for ever,” for the good of the
souls of founder and friends. John of Stratford was a great and wise
man, but he did not know that “where the tree falls, there shall it lie”;
nor could he foresee that his “for ever” would be commuted by the
Reformation into a period of two hundred years.
He endowed his chantry chapel with liberality; almost extravagance, and
even purchased the advowson of the church from the Bishop. This
extremely liberal endowment was perhaps necessary, for he had considered
the eternal welfare of a good many people besides himself and his
relations, and included even the sovereigns of England, present and to
be, and all future Bishops of Worcester. The priests, therefore, had
their hands full, and shouldered some heavy responsibilities; for—not to
go into individual cases, or specify some of the shocking examples—it
does not need much imagination to perceive that a tremendous deal of
intercession would be necessary for so unlimited a company as this.
Perhaps, in the circumstances, he could not possibly endow his chantry
too richly.
I do not know how his priests fared for lodgings. He seems to have
omitted that important detail. But his nephew Ralph supplied the
omission, and, in 1351, three years after his uncle’s death, built a
house for them adjoining the churchyard. It was styled then and for
centuries afterwards “the College.” Thus the church of Stratford-on-Avon
became more richly endowed than the usual parish church, and was known as
“collegiate.”
Many worthy folk followed the precedent set by the founder, and added to
the beauties of the church; chief among them Thomas Balsall, Warden of
the College in the second half of the fifteenth century, who built the
present choir or chancel between the years 1465–1490. The last
beautifier and benefactor was Dean Balsall’s successor, Ralph
Collingwood. His is the north porch of the church, and he undertook and
completed an important alteration in the nave; unroofing it, removing the
low Decorated clerestory, probably of circular windows, and taking down
the walls to the crown of the nave-arcades; then building upon them the
light and lofty clerestory we see at this day. He added choir-boys to
the establishment, and further endowed the College, for their
maintenance. These were the last works in the long history of the
church. In 1547 the Reformation came and swept away John of Stratford’s
chantry and confiscated the endowments. The priests were scattered, and
four years later their College was given by the king to John Dudley, the
newly-created Earl of Warwick and lord of the manor in succession to the
Bishops of Worcester. The College reverted to the Crown, and in 1576 it
was let by Queen Elizabeth to one Richard Coningsby, who in turn let it
to John Combe. It was a fine and picturesque residence, familiar enough
to Shakespeare, who was on intimate terms with Combe, and received from
him a bequest of £5 on his death in 1614. It was demolished in 1799.
The church is approached through the churchyard by a fine avenue of
lime-trees leading up to the north porch, where a verger, or some such
creature, habited in a hermaphrodite kind of garment, which is neither
exactly clerical nor lay, waits for the visitor’s sixpences; for you may
not enter for nothing, unless perhaps at times of divine service, and
even then are allowed but grudgingly by these clerical entrepreneurs, who
suspect you have come not so much for worship as with the idea of
depriving them of a sixpence. I think, however, you would find it
difficult to glimpse the chancel and the Shakespeare monument before the
intention would be suspected and the enterprising person successfully
headed off.
We will first encircle the exterior, where the many gravestones of
departed Stratford worthies lean at every imaginable angle, the oldest of
them, almost, or perhaps absolutely, contemporary with Shakespeare, grown
or growing undecipherable. Some day Stratford will be sorry for
neglecting them and their possible interest in the comparative study of
Shakespeare and his fellow-townsmen. But everything connected, either
intimately or remotely, with him has always been neglected until the
record has almost perished. It is the singular fate of Shakespearean
associations.
The exterior of the fabric, it will soon be noticed, is greatly
weathered; more particularly the Perpendicular chancel, which must at no
distant date be restored. It is surprising, and an excellent tribute to
the security of the foundations of this work, built on the banks of the
river over four hundred years ago, that its walls have not fallen
seriously out of plumb, like that of the north nave-arcade; especially
when the rather daring slightness of the design is considered, consisting
of vast mullioned and transomed windows with but little wall-space
between. The gargoyles leering down from the dripstones are a weird
series of bat-winged creatures of nightmare-land. On the south side,
however, is a very good Bear and Ragged Staff gargoyle, and next it,
going westward, a nondescript Falstaffian monster, his legs amputated by
time and weather.
The churchyard wall goes sheer down into the water of the Avon. The elms
look down upon the stream, the rooks hold noisy parliaments in their
boughs, and the swans float stately by.
Entering by the roomy north porch, where the person with the bisexual
garments will take your sixpence and sell you picture-postcards, it is
noticed that the good Late Perpendicular stone panelling is obscured, and
the effect destroyed, by the extreme licence given in the placing of
monumental tablets on the walls; a practice, judging from the dates upon
them, still in existence. It is quite clear from this that the building
might well be in better hands.
[Picture: Ancient Knocker, Stratford-on-Avon Church]
A very fine brazen knocker with grotesque head holding the ring in its
mouth is a feature of the doorway. Although affixed to late
fifteenth-century wood-work, the knocker would seem really to be nearly
two hundred years earlier. It appears on picture-cards without number as
the “Sanctuary Knocker,” and metal reproductions of it are to be had in
the town; but there is nothing to show that this church was ever one of
those that owned the privilege of sanctuary. In the inexact modern way,
every curious old knocker on church doors is “sanctuary”; but in reality
the ancient privilege was too valuable to be granted with the
indiscriminate freedom this would argue.
Immediately within the church is seen the old register-book in a glass
case, containing the entries recording the baptism and burial of
Shakespeare, with the broken bow of the old font at which he was
baptised. Many years ago it was removed from the church, to make room
for a new, and lay neglected in a garden in the town. It has been
re-lined with lead, and is used for baptisms, on request.
From the west end of the nave, where these relics are placed, the long
view eastward shows this to be a very striking example of those churches
whose chancels are not on the same axis with the rest of the building.
The chancel in this instance inclines very markedly to the north. The
symbolism of this feature in ancient churches is still matter for
dispute; and it is really doubtful if it is symbolical and not the
product of inexact planning, or caused by some old local conditions of
the site which do not now appear; or whether it was thought to produce
some acoustical advantages. It is thought that no example can be adduced
of an inclination southwards, and that, therefore, the feature is a
designed one. The favourite interpretation is that it repeats the
inclination of the Saviour’s head upon the Cross.
Advancing up the nave, it will soon be noticed that the north nave-arcade
is greatly out of plumb, and leans outwards; a result, no doubt, of
Collingwood’s alterations and additions placing too heavy a weight upon
it.
At the east end of the north aisle is the former Lady Chapel, now and for
long past known as the Clopton Chapel, from the tombs of that family
placed there. No structural difference, no variation in the plan of the
church, marks the chapel from the rest of the building, from which it is
screened very slightly by a low pierced railing on one side, and on the
south, looking into the nave, by the ornate stone screen erected by Sir
Hugh Clopton, the founder of the family chapel and architect of his own
fortunes. It is a part of the tomb intended for himself, and there can
be no doubt but that he saw it rising to completion with the satisfaction
of a man assured of being not only wealthy, but hoping to live in fame as
the benefactor of his native town, for which he did so much.
The screen is crested with elaborate pierced conventional Tudor foliage,
and fronted with his arms, and with those of the City of London, the
Grocers’ Company, and the Merchants of the Staple. The brass inscribed
plates have long since been torn away, and the tomb is entirely without
inscription or effigy; as perhaps it is well it should be, for, in spite
of all these elaborate preparations, and although directing that he
should lie here, Sir Hugh Clopton was, after all, buried in the City of
London, where he had made his fortune, and of which he was Lord Mayor in
1492, and in which he died in 1496. The church of St. Margaret,
Lothbury, where he was buried, perished in the Great Fire of London, one
hundred and seventy years later.
Sir Hugh Clopton died a bachelor, and the other tombs are those of his
brother’s descendants. That of William Clopton, who died in 1592 and is
described simply as “Esquire,” stands against the north wall of the
Chapel. He was great-nephew of Sir Hugh. He is represented in armour,
and his wife, who followed him four years later, lies beside him in
effigy, both figures with prayerfully raised hands. Above them, on the
wall, quite by themselves, are represented the interesting family of this
worthy pair, seven in all, sculptured and painted in miniature, in the
likeness of so many big-headed Dutch dolls, with the name of each duly
inscribed; Elizabeth, Lodowicke, Joyce, Margaret, William, Anne, and
again William, the first of that name having died an infant, as did also
Elizabeth and Lodowicke. These three are represented as little
mummy-like creatures, swathed tightly in linen folds.
But the most gorgeous of all the Clopton tombs is the next in order of
date. This is the lofty and extremely elaborate and costly monument of
George Carew, Earl of Totnes and Baron Clopton, who married Joyce, eldest
daughter of the already mentioned William Clopton. He died in 1629, and
his wife in 1636. This costly memorial, together with that to her father
and mother, was her handiwork, and she seems to have completely enjoyed
herself in the progress of the commission. The Countess of Totnes and
her husband are represented in full-length, recumbent effigies,
sculptured in alabaster. The Earl is shown in armour and his wife is
seen habited in a white fur robe, coloured red outside. A deep ruff is
round her neck, and she wears a coronet. The Earl of Totnes was Master
of the Ordnance to James the First; hence the symbolical sculptured
implements of war in front of the monument; including two cannon, two
kegs of powder and a pile of shot; one mortar, a gun, some halberds and a
flag.
A later inscription records that Sir John Clopton caused these tombs to
be repaired and beautified in 1714. In 1719 he died, aged 80; and in
course of time his own tomb became a candidate for repair. No Cloptons
then survived to perform that pious office, which was observed by Sir
Arthur Hodgson, the owner of Clopton House, in 1892.
The monument of Sir Edward Walker, who died in 1676, is the memorial of a
man who held some important positions. He was Charles the First’s
Secretary of War, and afterwards Garter King-of-Arms and military editor
of Clarendon’s _History of the Rebellion_. He has some interest for the
students of Shakespeare’s life, for it was he who bought New Place in
1675.
There are some smaller tablets on the walls, including one with a little
effigy of a certain Amy Smith, who was for forty years
“waiting-gentlewoman” to the Countess of Totnes. She is seen devoutly
kneeling at a _prie-Dieu_ chair.