living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. I think it was Midsummer night that he happened to lie there. Mr. Jos. Howe is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men daily wherever they came. . . . He was wont to go to his native country once a year." The Variorum version gives Crendon (see iii. 213, ed. 1813), and there is a place called Long Crendon in Bucks, not far from Thame; but we follow the reading of Mr. Halliwell Phillipps as more probably sound.* Grendon, or to give it its full style, Grendon Underwood, lies just to the north of the road-the old Akeman Street-from Aylesbury to Bicester, about six miles from the latter town; and so travelling by the Banbury and Aylesbury route, mentioned above, Shakspeare might easily make the worthy constable's acquaintance. At a later time the coaches, it it would seem, did not go by Bicester, but by Buckingham, as may be learnt from Owen's Britannia Depicta, or Ogilby Improv'd, 1749. No doubt the equestrian traveller would perpetually vary his route, for the sake of companionship, or some special flood or other danger, or for mere variety's sake. That Shakspeare then did not always go vid Oxford is probable enough, and has a tradition in its favour; but we seem justified in believing that vid Oxford was certainly his ordinary route; and so to it we will now give attention. IV. For the sake of convenience, we will divide the journey into four stages, two between Stratford and Oxford, two between Oxford and London. A most pleasant (i) From Stratford to Chipping Norton, 20 miles. expedition, now-a-days, over a finely undulating country, up the valley of the Stour, by the side, for some miles at least, of noble parks, which in Shakspeare's time, perhaps, were not enclosed. Probably no English county surpasses Warwickshire in quiet loveliness. Nature does not reveal herself there in her more terrible forms, but in a sweet, tranquil beauty, balm-like to the spirit, and deliciously restful. Scott calls "Caledonia stern and wild"-Caledonia, with its brown heaths and shaggy woods, with its mountains and floods-" meet nurse of the poetic child." But this opinion may be justly doubted. The greatest of all poetic children was nursed amid far other scenes-not amidst excitement and grandeur, but amidst calm and peace. The Avon, no doubt, could and did rise at times, and sweep the labours of men and oxen before its swollen current; but for the most part it flowed on, not chafing and * That Grendon is right is proved-if any proving is wanted-by the fact, known from other sources, that Mr. Jos. Howe was of Grendon, not Crendon. He was born at Grendon Underwood, Bucks, March 29, 1612, and died August 28, 1701, ætat. ninety. See Bishop Pearson's Vind. Ignat.; Hearne's Robert of Gloucester, ed. 1810. 66 mutinying against its restraints, but content and gentle; and Gray, with his fine tact, touches the right chord when he speaks of "lucid Avon" straying. It was amidst sweet silences, which Avon's murmur and Arden's whisperings scarcely broke, that Shakspeare was cradled and nurtured, that the mighty mother did unveil her awful face to her darling." So too it was with the Jewish prophet. "A great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire"after all those tumults and terrors- 66 a still small voice." : "One said no less truly than merrily," writes Fuller of Warwickshire "It is the heart, but not the core of England,' having nothing coarse or choaky therein. The wooded part thereof may want what the fieldon affords; so that Warwickshire is defective in neither. As for the pleasure thereof, an author [Speed] is bold to say, that from Edgehill one may behold it another Eden, as Lot did the Plain of Jordan; but he might have put in: 'It is not altogether so well watered.' Shakspeare would leave Stratford by the Clopton Bridge, and then presently turn his face due southward. Soon the road rises. When it falls slightly again, amidst noble trees, he would lose sight of Trinity spire, and feel that his native town was really left behind. At Alderminster, if the day was bright, he might linger a few minutes by the church, so picturesque and picturesquely situated. And then on, beneath trees that, some of them at least, still lend a grateful shadow, by Newbold to Tredington, little dreaming as he passed by the point where a road strikes off to Lower Eatington, that there some day on a cross would be inscribed doggrel mentioning him : 6 miles to Shakspere's Town whose name Is known throughout the earth To Shipton 4, whose lesser fame Boasts no such poet's birth. What comfort even this feeble quatrain might have ministered to him, could he have seen it that first journey, when he was setting forth to try his fortune in strange fields; when, whatever the confidence with which his genius inspired him, his course was yet dim and uncertain; and who knew whether when "the surly sullen bell," which gave warning to the world that he was fled from it, had ceased tolling, any one would care his "poor name" to rehearse? Just where that cross now stands, he may one day have stood, faint and weary, hesitating, despondent. It is, however, quite as probable that when he reached the bifurcation he was in the highest possible spirits, and punned villanously on the name of the neighbouring hamlets. He might turn a quarter of a mile or so from the high road to look at the fine church at Tredington, with its Norman doorway and its monuments; and, perhaps, gossiping with some native-"he was a handsome, well-shaped man," quoth Aubrey, "very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit"-would hear, and would himself crack some joke about the ever hard-up rector. "I have heard Mr. Trap say," so writes the Rev. John Ward, sometime (1662-1679) vicar of Stratford, "that the parsons of Tredington were always needy. One Dr. Brett, who was parson before Dr. Smith, was to marry one Mr. Hicks; and Mr. Hicks, in a vapour, laid a handful of gold and silver upon the book; and he took it all. [Why should not he? What was it put on the book for?] Whereupon Mr. Hicks went to him, and told him of it that he did not intend to have given him all it was about ten pound. Says he, 'I want, and I will pay thee again;' but never did." : The first place worthy of the name of town he would arrive at would be Shipston-on-Stour, situated on a somewhat bleak upland. A quiet place in these days, but once, as is shown by the inns which still abound, lively enough with coaches and traffic. They gape in vain now, the yard gates, except haply on market-days and at the mop-fair; and the horns that once made the old streets ring are blown, if blown at all, on the banks of the Styx, no longer of the Stour. "In this bleak illcultivated track,' ," writes one who traversed it not quite a century since, "the lower class of labouring poor, who have very little other employment in winter than thrashing out corn, are much distressed for the want of fuel, and think it economy to lie much in bed, to save both firing and provisions." Now on to Long Compton. "The intervening country is open, exposed, and not very rich," says the writer just quoted, and his description may serve for the earlier time. It is deficient in planting, which in course of time would generate warmth to the atmosphere, and convert the various influences of the heavens into a nutritive vegetable mould that would eventually enrich it." The water-shed of the Stour is now reached. Long Comptont lies straggling in a way that justifies its adjective across a valley, from either edge of which are obtainable fine views, those to the north from above Weston House especially so. It is from this place that Burghley writes to the Earl of Shrewsbury, when he dates thus: "From Compton-in-the-Hole (so well called for a deep valley; but surely the entertainment is very good, and here have I wished your lordship), 23rd August, 1572." Crossing the Combe, which gives the village its name, even the most uninterested and uninteresting tourist would, we should suppose, turn a few steps aside to see the antiquarian glory of Oxfordshire, for we are now in Oxfordshire-the Rollrich-stones. They probably show less well now than in Shak * See Tour in England and Scotland in 1785. By Thomas Newton, Esq. + At Barton-on-the-Heath, some two miles from Long Compton, lived Robert Dover, of Cotswold games celebrity. (Merry Wives, I. i. 92.) See Britton's Beauties of England and Wales: Warwickshire. See Drayton's Polyolbion, the 13th Song, and Selden's note. speare's day, for Time and the farmers have been busy. We may certainly imagine him lingering in that mysterious circle, wondering what faith or what sorrow or what triumph it was that had once arranged it, hearing perchance from some old shepherd the stories of the Whispering Knights and of the disappointed King. Here indeed were "sermons in stones." The original language was dark and hidden; yet, for all that, they were rich in significance, in suggestion, in pathos. An old MS., quoted by Hearne in his edition of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, describing the Mirabilia Britannia, ends thus: "Sunt magni lapides in Oxenfordensi pago, manu hominum quasi sub quadam connexione dispositi, set a quo tempore vel a qua gente vel ad quid memorandum vel signandum factum fuerit, ignoratur. Ab incolis autem vocatur locus ille Rolendrych." " Dropping across another valley, we presently reach Chipping Norton, for no longer can one put up at Chapel House at Cold Norton, a wellknown hostelry once- a most excellent inn, and fitted up in the first style of accommodation," says a last century traveller. "The Chapel originally belonged, as we learn from Murray, to an Augustinian priory, founded temp. Henry II. When Shakspeare passed by, this priory had been suppressed only some fifty years; and, probably enough, ruins were yet standing, and the Chapel looked not altogether unlike itself. At Chipping Norton he would find accommodation in abundance; for it must have been then, as it had been long before (so its name shows) an important market town, and as it was long afterwards, an important station for travellers. When, in 1749, a coach was started to run from Birmingham to London, vid Oxford, "It breakfasts," writes Lady Luxborough to Shenstone, whom she wishes to avail himself of it, "at Henley [in Arden], and lies at Chipping Norton." The town consists mainly of one long street, which it would seem consisted mainly of inns. The church, not much changed probably since the sixteenth century, with its picturesque site, its double north aisle, its hexagonal south porch, and its old monuments, is well worth a visit. (ii) From Chipping Norton to Oxford, 20 miles.- Regaining the high road, Shakspeare would, as far as Woodstock, follow the course of the Glyme, which flows into the Evenlode, which flows into the Isis. The first village encountered is Neat Enstone, half a mile south of Enstone. He might turn aside to see Enstone church, and smile over the legend of the murdered Kenelm, son of Kenulphus, to whom it is dedicated, having, perhaps, Latin enough to interpret the old leoninesalways provided he came across them :— In Clene sub spina jacet in convalle bovina At least let us think of him visiting the Hoarstone, as it is called, the (A. S. Ent. = giants) Giant's stone, that is said to give the village its name, for it would lie but a few yards out of his way. We say "it," but in fact there are four other stones, the Hoarstone alone surviving upright. They formed once, it may be believed, a rude tomb with four cumbrous sides and a cumbrous roof, with earth heaped all round them or over them. How long might a giant lie i' the earth ere he rot? He must, surely, have an extra allowance of years. Passing now on through the hamlet of Over Kiddington, with its ruined cross-at Nether Kiddington, a mile on the left, is a church said to be worth seeing, but we cannot see everything-by Ditchley Park,* home of the Lees, who were destined to be celebrated hereafter by a brother-genius; then, after perhaps a slight detour, to Glympton, and passing on the right the road to Cornbury Hall (only five miles off), where Leicester, Elizabeth's Leicester, perished by the poison prepared, it is said, for his wife; keeping by the old wall of Woodstock Park-it is said to have been the first park enclosed with a wall-our poet would arrive at Woodstock town. For him, obvious associations here would be the Fair Rosamond and the poet Chaucer. The story of the former has been shown to be much mixed with fable; the connection of the latter with Woodstock is now wholly doubted, though, after all, we may disbelieve that Thomas Chaucer was the son of the poet without disbelieving that the poet, who was connected with the court and with princes of the 'blood, visited a palace so famous in his time and so much frequented. Shakspeare would enjoy the Chaucer memory, at least, with no allaying scepticism; and as he strolled through that glorious park, might have a vision of Theseus, to be portrayed by himself some day, "to the laund riding him full right," or of Palamon and Arcite madly fighting-fighting "breem, as it were boares two." Or, perhaps, in a realistic vein, he drew a grotesque picture to himself of the royal lover losing the thread and finding himself involved in his own labyrinth, with his Rosamond close by, yet inaccessible, so near and yet so far, while the queen sat fuming and frowning outside, unable to discover the aperture through which her truant spouse had disappeared. Woodstock would have also associations with his own time. The palace had been one of the places of the queen's confinement during her Hence we went to "Hence [from Cornbury] we went to see the famous wells, natural and artificial grotts and fountains, called Bushell's Wells, at Enstone. This Bushell had been secretary to my Lord Verulam. It is an extraordinary solitude. There he had two mummies; a grott where he lay in a hammock like an Indian. Dichley, an ancient seat of the Lees, now Sir Hen. Lee's; it is a low, ancient timberhouse, with a pretty bowling-green. My lady gave us an extraordinary dinner. This gentleman's mother was Countess of Rochester, who was also there, and Sir Walter Saint John. There were some pictures of their ancestors not ill-painted; the greatgrandfather had been Knight of the Garter; there was the picture of a Pope, and our Saviour's head. So we returned to Cornbury."-Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 20, 1664. This Sir Henry Lee would be, so far as date goes- Bevis belonged to the grandfatherScott's hero. It would have pleased the author of Woodstock to know, that the Will whom his hero is for ever quoting, must often have passed close by Ditchley Park, and might have patted the head, or pinched the car, of his admirer when a boy. |