The first event of any historical importance in connection with “the town of Stratford by Avon,” and one destined to have a great effect upon its ultimate growth and importance, was the granting by Richard I., in the year 1197, of the right to hold a market each Thursday. This privilege was obtained for the inhabitants by the then Bishop of Worcester, who charged the townsfolk the sum of sixteen shillings per annum for it. This market was held on the site of the present Rother Market, and to it the drovers brought their cattle weekly from the pastures round about or from the cleared spaces of the Forest of Arden near by. The word itself serves to preserve a memorial of the nature of the institution, “Rother” being Anglo–Saxon for horned cattle. The market, however, appears to have declined in importance towards the middle of the thirteenth century, but was reinstituted or recovered its lost popularity in the early years of the fourteenth. In addition to the market, which, as we have already pointed out, must have been largely devoted to cattle, five annual fairs were held, which were doubtless a great attraction to the townsfolk and to dwellers in the immediate neighbourhood. Four of these were, we find, largely patronised by drovers, and a great trade was done at them in cattle. The reason for this circumstance is not far to seek when one takes into consideration the fact that in the immediate vicinity of Stratford there were considerable extents of rich pasture land which, from time immemorial, had been used for herds and flocks. The market frequented by dealers in other goods and by the wandering pedlars of the Middle Ages lay around the High Cross, at the northern end of the High Street, in the space which in those days lay between Rother Market and the ancient timber bridge across the Avon. To these fairs doubtless came the inhabitants from far and near; from the scattered homesteads amid the forest glades of Arden, and from the manor–houses which began in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to spring up upon the lands granted by successive kings to their vassals for services rendered or for political reasons. Ultimately there came to Stratford fairs merchants of East Anglia and enterprising traders from so far afield as London. Pedlars there had always been from quite early times. From the fourteenth century onwards the town appears to have had no lack of sons interested in her welfare, and amongst the earliest benefactors were two brothers named Robert and John de Stratford, and a nephew. The two brothers were destined to become distinguished ornaments of the Church, the second named being in turn Archdeacon of Lincoln in 1319, Bishop of Winchester in 1323, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1333. Robert being vicar of his native town, then in 1335 Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and two years later he was consecrated Bishop of Chichester. Ralph de Stratford, the nephew, being raised to the see of London in 1339.