AN OLD SHROPSHIRE OAK.*
THE third volume of the Oak's reminiscences commences with the Reformation under Henry VIII., and it strikes a mourn- ful note quite in sympathy with what must have been the general feeling about the dissolution of the monastic foun- dations. A grievous spectacle it must have been,—the turning out of abbots and monks, and abbesses and nuns, who went away little better off than the wandering good-for-nothings they were wont to entertain so lavishly ; and the destruction of that genial and unquestioning hospitality which, if it did encourage innumerable vagabonds, promoted intercourse and neighbourliness. The first mutterings of the storm were heard at an assemblage of quality at Shrewsbury : the Rector of Hanwood heard from the retainers of some nobleman hints that disquieted him much. In 1536, the smaller monasteries, with less than £200 income, were suppressed, so that the great Abbots had warning, though we can well imagine their inability to grasp the real comprehensiveness of Henry's scheme, to realise that in a few years they themselves would share the same fate. The income of Shrewsbury Abbey, according to the Oak, was £572 15s. 5fd., and the Abbot was pensioned off with £80, from which we may gather that he had given no trouble. We wonder if the dissolution of the houses made any difference to the consumption of beer ; the inns had to take the place of the religious houses, and beer, no doubt, was easier to provide than wine. There was a pre- judice, it appears, against hopped beer, a fine even against the us of hops. Much of the beer of the present day, we are sorry to say, suffers from this prejudice, and only in the • An Ole Shropshire Oak. Vole. III. and IV. By the late John Wood Warter. Edited by Richard Garnett, LL.D. London : Eagan Paul and,
South-East can the beer-drinker be certain of his hop, and see it in his favourite beverage. Ale, the beat ale, was certainly cheaper than it is now ; and wine, if the allowance made to preachers be any guide, an inexpensive luxury. A Franciscan Friar had an allowance of a gallon made him, at the cost of 8d., which in modern value would be about 5s. We learn among other things how gardening had revived after the Wars of the Roses, and how the Rector of Hanwood grew apricots, cherries, and currants, and owed to the to-and-fro journeys of a London merchant many valuable seeds. From wine to water is a far reach, but the monks took as much care to secure good water as they did good wine. Any one wandering about the ruin of a monastic foundation must have noticed the spring of delicious water, the clear pool that marked the situation as a suitable one. From Archdeacon Owen's summary quoted here, we gather how particular the agreement was with certain burgesses of Shrewsbury to have good honest piping ; the first 700 yards to weigh 28 lb. the yard, the second to weigh 22 lb., and the last 16 lb.; the respective bores to be 21 in., 2 in., and in. The labour of the monks in this respect, as in other things, was often utilised. They were often granted streams for their water-supply, though we suspect they valued the fresh water as much for their trout-ponds as for its own sake.
However, those same ponds were often useful again as reservoirs.
The Sidneys were connected with Shrewsbury. (Our notice, to represent the book, must be discursive.) Sir Henry, the father of Sir Philip, was Lord President of the Marches, and as Knight of the Garter held the feast of St. George in 1581 at the old town. The stalls of St. Chad's choir were blazoned with the arms of the knights, and one was even set apart for the Queen, to which Sir Henry made obeisance in passing, as if the last of the Tudors herself sat in it. Sir Henry left his mark upon Ludlow Castle, the seat of the Court of the Marches, as its ruins even now show. Sir Philip was a scholar at Shrewsbury School, and there is in the account much wine and cake put down to him, at his coming with his father to the town. We pass over a dissertation on the works of Sir Philip Sidney, to notice some remarks made on the religious plays. The first play on record performed in Shrewsbury was in the reign of Henry VII., on the occasion of a visit from Ludlow, and was certainly remarkable for the quantity of wine consumed by the King and his retinue. We are not told what the play was. It was performed in a quarry. The Mystery of the Assumption was acted the same year before the King at the Abbeygate of Chester. The very titles of these " mysteries " are sufficient to indicate how much blasphemy and profanity their performance must have en-
tailed. The players placed no limit to their audacity,—the Trinity were represented in one " mystery." The " mysteries "
were succeeded by the " moralities," and in the year 1516 2s. was spent on the Abbot of Shrewsbury and his ser- vants in " wine, apples, wafers, and other new-fashioned dainties." This, the Whitsun play, was The Martyrdom of Feliciana and Sabrina. This was, it is said, the last of the "mysteries." The old Shrewsbury Show seems to have been connected with the great day of Corpus Christi. Coventry and Chester were, of course, famous for their great plays.
In discoursing of the first Stuart, the Oak takes the oppor- tunity to animadvert on the " roaring boys of Cherbury." A certain Boniface Blazes (!) blew a horn all the way home from his wife's burial, exclaiming that " now he hoped to have a little rest and peace, for it was many years since he had had any." A comparatively modern " Cherbury boy" repeated to a Captain Witte the following epitaph, written on a Puritanical blacksmith :—
" A zealous locksmith died of late, And did arrive at heaven's gate ; He stood without, and would not knock, Because he meant to pick the lock."
The Cherbury boys were evidently a mischievous and lively crew.
In Charles I.'s time, the then Lord of the Marches had the " Mask " performed at Ludlow—doubtless The Mask of Comus —and the same year, 1634, the new tax, " ship-money,"' was imposed, and Shropshire was commanded to furnish a ship of 450 tons. Soon after this a new charter was granted to the " Town," the chief alteration being the substitution of a Mayor
for two bailiffs. Then came the Civil War. Charles stayed at Shrewsbury for some time during the earlier campaigns
and the behaviour of his army was good. Later on we learn that the Royal horse ate up the town hay. Charles borrowed £600 from the school-chest before leaving, which amount does not appear to have been recovered, though sued for. Shrews- bury, being the head-quarters of the West, was loyal ; but the town was eventually betrayed to the Parliamentarians by one Hewson, a minister. A few years later came the Plague year, and the Aldermen and their assistants, three of them, were ordered to watch the wards and gates, " and to give an oath to all strangers to declare from what part they came."
The amusements of the Valley of the Rea, about the end of the seventeenth century were certainly, as the Old Oak said, coarse,—bull and badger-baiting, dog-fighting, and cock- fighting. There was even a great match between London and Shropshire game-cocks, "20 matches at 10 guineas each, and one at 100."
A naval hero, the great Benbow, the son of a Shrewsbury tanner, became a source of justifiable pride to the neighbour- hood. A bitter grief it must have been to those who knew him and his countrymen, that a brave man should have been deserted by his companions, and these companions English- men. The next personage of consequence to disturb the inhabitants of the Valley was Dr. Sacheverel, about whom the Salopians were divided. Some entertained him ; others, notably a Salopian gentleman who wrote a rhymed invective called " The Wolf Stript of the Shepherd's Clothing," reviled him. The Government appear, how- ever, to have directed that the offender should be punished. The death of Queen Anne gives the Oak an opportunity of discussing the progress of literature, in a dissertation which, if it does contain much sensible matter, calls for no special remark. The Hanoverian Succession was most dis- tasteful to Shrewsbury ; a riot took place, and a meeting- house was burnt, and the Mayor evidently had leanings towards the popular feeling. " The whey or sour milk of Whiggism certainly was, in the old country, considered a most unpalatable and nauseous beverage." So says the Oak. One of the last executions arising out of the " Forty-five " took place at Shrewsbury, though the wherefore of the choice of the locality is not known ; perhaps the Salopians required a lesson.
In the fourth volume of An Old Shropshire Oak, the local news becomes so sparsely diffused through many dissertations on alien matters, that we cannot seriously pretend to analyse it. The current incidents of history are often introduced with the apology, " but little was known of these things in the Valley of the R ea ;" but such familiar subjects as Churchill's place among the poets, and the authorship of the Letters of Junius, are discussed critically and at length, without any apology. It would be impossible to convey to any one who has not read this curious production, a definite idea of the extraordinary and heterogeneous nature of the con- tents. Mr. Warter must have set about his task after the fashion of the proverbial individual who concocted " stone- soup." Perhaps we can convey to the intelligent reader an indistinct idea of the method of the author, by asking him to imagine the diary of a modern Methuselah who has lived through a dozen reigns, who has carefully recorded the seasons, the local occurrences, a broad outline of his country's history, with occasionally much detail and quotation, the popular and hackneyed anecdotes of celebrated persons, critical remarks on the literature of various periods, with many quotations therefrom, an original running commentary of his own, the whole thoroughly well leavened with copious quotations from the classics. We have now done our best to explain the peculiarities, weakness, and the faults of re- dundancy and repetition of An Old Shropshire Oak, but also, we hope, some of its charm, its interest, and its value.
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