fragmentary records that one is able to gain at least an approximate picture of the ancient town of Stratford in the period just preceding Shakespeare’s birth. Twice during the reign of Elizabeth was the town visited by devastating fires, each of which destroyed some two hundred houses and rendered a large number of the townsfolk homeless and almost destitute. It was the fate that very frequently befell ancient towns, and was repeated again in the year 1614, when upwards of fifty houses, some of them the handsomest in the town, were burned to the ground. Stratford is still rich for a place of its size in architectural survivals of an age when picturesqueness was so marked a feature of domestic buildings, but for these devastating conflagrations what might it not have been? The place has never played any important part in history, but at the outset of the Civil War it took the side of the King, and although the Royalist garrison was in 1642 driven out of the town by a Parliamentarian force under Lord Brooke of Warwick, the townsfolk remained faithful in heart to the cause they had espoused, and in 1643 Queen Henrietta Maria and Prince Rupert with a large body of troops were quartered there. The Queen remained three days, and stayed at New Place, where she was entertained by Mrs. Hall, Shakespeare’s daughter. So far as history making goes, Stratford’s part may be said to have ceased when the Civil War no longer caused it to be the venue of the contending parties. And had it not been for the event which had occurred on April 23, 1564 (old style), when the Bard of Avon entered the world in the Henley Street house to which so many pilgrims flock each year, the claim of the town to special notice and description would be far less easily defined.