ately above the door there still remain entire three spiral-crowned niches, though the images once within them have been long gone. They doubtless once held sculptuies emblematical of the Holy Trinity, to which the church was dedicated. In connection with the church, it deserves notice that the parish register contains a record that stands like a buoy upon the boundless tide of conjecture, that commentators have so often ruffled and darkened in their vain traverses through the mists of the past. Thus it reads: 1564. April 26, Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere. William, son of John Shakspere, baptized the 26th April, 1564. The day of the bard's birth is unproved -tradition gives it as April 23rd, and it was the practice of that time for christenings to take place very soon after birth. Seldom are registers troubled, except some inheritance is involved in the enquiry—and here the world has a life interest in "the brightest heaven of invention" entailed upon mankind for ever. Births, Marriages, Deaths; how tersely they include the short romance of life, "Turning the accomplishment of many years, Into an hour-glass." STRATFORD COLLEGE. To the west of the church-yard, within the wall there apparent, stood till the beginning of the present century a handsome quadrangular building known as the College, and originally appropriated to the Chantry Priests. of the Collegiate Church of Stratford, who were first appointed in 1332, but the church does not appear to have been recognised as collegiate before the reign of Henry V., when Ralph de Stratford, Bishop of London, here built a mansion, or college, for the Warden and five endowed Priests. Their revenues, and the persons connected with them, after this much increased, till with other similar establishments they were dissolved by authority of parliament in the 37th year of Henry VIII. Their buildings, however, remained intact, and were granted by Edward VI. to John, Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, after whose attainder the site, &c., was leased for a term of years which was completed in 1596, when John Combe, so well known as an usurer, and by his connection with Shakespeare, purchased the same, and here resided. By a strange fatality which has attended most of the buildings which must have met Shakespeare's eye in G 42 STRATFORD, AND THE HAUNTS OF SHAKESPEARE. Stratford, this, another old English feature whose loss we must regret, was levelled with the ground in 1799 and 1800. Mr. Halliwell, in his life of Shakespeare, has preserved an exterior view of the mansion, and an interior view of the fine old hall as seen in 1785. |