In a measure these two brothers, who were not alone Churchmen but also statesmen, holding in turn the Chancellorship of England, John occupying that high office four times, may be said to have inherited the spirit of benefaction for which they were to be remembered by their native town. Some time during the reign of the first Edward their father had founded a chapel for the famous Guild of the Holy Cross, which in all likelihood was built upon the same site as that occupied by the Guild Chapel now surviving at the corner of Church Street and Chapel Lane. To this chapel Robert de Stratford was appointed the first Master in 1269, on the sanction of Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester. During the next year the Bishop fostered the newly–founded religious community (which was not, however, ecclesiastical) by granting a forty–days’ indulgence to all those who had presented gifts to the Guild. The Register, which exists at the present day, and contains entries from the middle of the fourteenth century, shows that the Guild must have been wealthy, as it possessed property in almost every street of the town. To his brother Robert belongs the credit of local improvement of the town. In his time the streets were little more than rough tracks or paths connecting the different quarters where the inhabitants had erected dwellings along the roads which led to Henley–in–Arden and Alcester. “The ways,” we read, “were of such unevenness that all who traversed them in rainy days came to their end muddied, and many a cart stuck fast even within the town.” Robert de Stratford decided to amend this state of affairs, and to enable him to pave them he, in 1332, obtained leave to tax the produce brought into the town for sale by the farmers and others of the immediate neighbourhood. Thereby he not only conferred a great benefit upon his fellow–townsmen, but also upon those who came to Stratford for business. [Illustration: “HUNGRY” GRAFTON.]