Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/160

126 these was "Shakspere's Oxford Hostelry," as the present Crown now claims to be, it is not easy to determine positively. The present landlady of the present Crown, naturally very much interested in her subject, says, without apparent reason, that her Crown is as old as Shakspere's and Davenant's time. That, so far as she can learn, it was always called The Crown. That there is hardly any possibility of a town of Oxford's size having two inns in the same street, bearing the same name, and the same sign. That The Roebuck is unquestionably modern, as it now stands; that the fact that The Crown, as Shakspere knew it, stood on "the left hand side of the road" might mean either side of the road, because "the left hand side of the road " would, of course, be one side of the road, as one travelled from London to Stratford and the other side of the road, as one journeyed from Stratford to London. And upon these facts she bases her claim.

It is as curious as it is perplexing to read the varieties of views contained in the various annals of Oxford as to the actual site of this Crown Inn of the Davenants. Mr. C. J. H. Fletcher, in his somewhat elaborate " History of the Church of St. Martin," placed the inn "on the East Side of Cornmarket Street, opposite the Church." This would point to The Roebuck, although The Roebuck