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CHAPTER IV  [4]       JOHN, ROBERT, AND RALPH OF STRATFORD

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            IN the fourteenth century the inhabitants were no longer solely dependent for their welfare on the benevolence of the lords of the manor. Villenage gradually disappeared in the reign of Edward III, and all who were not burgesses became free tenants or copyholders, paying definite rents for house and land. And from these classes sprang men capable of stimulating the prosperity of their birthplace by their own exertions. Three fourteenth century prelates, one of whom rose to be Arch­bishop of Canterbury, and the two others to be Bishops respectively of London and Chichester, were natives of Stratford, and in days when the principle of personal nomenclature was still unsettled, borrowed of the town their surnames. John of Stratford, Robert of Stratford,

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and Ralph of Stratford were closely related. The two former were brothers, and Ralph was their nephew,

Robert, the father of the prelates Robert and John, was a well-to-do inhabitant of Stratford, who appears to have set his sons an example in local works of benevolence. He it is to whom to whom had been attributed the foundation, in 1296, of

the chapel of the guild-that is, of the religious fraternity of which we shall speak hereafter-and  of the hospital or almshouses attached to it.

But the benefactions of his sons and his grandson were in many points more remark­able, and are better known to authentic history.

There is little need to pursue their careers in detail here; but they gave so practical an effect "to a more than ordinary affection" for the town, that Stratford must always honour

their memory. It must always be profitable, too, to study their lives as illustrating the rich opportunities of advancement in the political and ecclesiastical worlds open in the middle ages to ability, even when revealing itself in the sons of village farmers- John and Robert were both for a time Chancellors of England, and there is no other instance in English

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history of that high dignity falling to two brothers in succession.

All three were educated at the Universities, and successes there proved stepping stones to preferment in Church and State. Ralph obtained a canonry at St. Paul's, which led to the bishopric of the metropolis. The latter office he held from 1340 to 1354, and during his episcopate he rented a house in "Brug­gestret," or Bridge Street, Stratford.

Robert's first benefice was the living of Strat­ford itself, bestowed on him by 'the Bishop of Worcester in 1319, and in that office he was the earliest of the three relatives to give tangible form to his regard for his birthplace. Long streets were in the course of formation at Strat­ford in the reign of Edward II. One ran from the Holy Trinity Church towards the north­east. Henley Street, whence Henley-in-Arden could be most readily reached, had tenements on both sides of it; and Greenhill Street, afterwards Moor Town's End, had, like Old Town, long been inhabited thoroughfares. Robert resolved to roughly pave these roads.   By obtaining permission in 1332 to impose

,

¹ Corporation Records, vol. i. p. I.

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a toll for four years" on sundry vendible commodities," brought by the agriculturists

a or the neighbourhood into the town, "he defrayed the charge thereof," and the tax was renewed for short periods, at his sugges­tion, in 1335 and 1337, after he had left the city to exercise higher dignities. From the  Archdeaconry of Canterbury he was promoted in 1337 to the see of Chichester. But, like his brother John, he aimed at political advance­ment as well as ecclesiastical, and twice filled the office of Chancellor of England. He survived both his distinguished brother and nephew, dying in 1362.

John of Stratford, the most eminent of the three, made a name at Oxford by his knowledge of civil law, was Bishop of Win­chester 'from 1323 to 1333, and became in the latter year Archbishop of Canterbury. He          played a prominent part in the politics of his time. As Bishop of Winchester, he drew up the Bill of Deposition against Edward II, and Marlowe gives us a glimpse of him in the most pathetic scene in his play of Edward II. He undertook more foreign embassies than any of

¹ See Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury"

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his contemporaries, and could boast of thirty-two journeys made across the Channel in the public service. It  was John of Stratford who, after Edward III left England on his first French expedition in 1338, virtually governed the country, as Lord Chancellor. Twice already had he filled that dignified office, But the king was dissatisfied with the small amount of money that his councillors now managed to collect for his wars, and suddenly returned in 1341 to dismiss all his ministers, charging them with dishonesty in their offices. The archbishop boldly denied Edward's accusa­tion, and bade him remember his father's fate, and the rights of the people of England. The king had at length to yield to John of Stratford, who takes his place in English history as a sturdy defender of the constitu­tion.     End Page 36, End Chapter 4