Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/405

 [12 s. vii. OCT. 23, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

333

FRANCIS GASTRELL OF STRATFORD- ON-AVON.

(12 S. vii. 269, 296.)

YOUR correspondent is greatly mistaken, or misled, in describing this iconoclast as "Vicar" of Shakespeare's town. I am aware that Sir S. Lee so describes him on p. 76 of his ' Stratford - on - Avon from the Earliest Times,' 1885, but the assertion is entirely without foundation. Gastrell was Rector of Frodsham, Cheshire, and became the owner of the second house known as New Place, built about 1720 by the second Sir Hugh Clopton. The original dwelling (first called the Great House, and after New Place) in which the builder, Sir Hugh Clopton I., first lived, about 1490, and in which the poet Shakespeare died in 1616, was demo- lished in 1720, by Sir Hugh Clopton II., who died in the fresh New Place in 1751. Shakespeare's house was apparently built of stone ; its successor of 1720, of red brick, with stucco frontage. A view of this later building, destroyed by Gastrell, with details of him, his family, and their friendship with Dr. Samuel Johnson, will be found in Bellew's ' Shakespeare's Home, 1863, 'p. 277, &c. I have a miniature portrait of Gastrell which I propose to reproduce in the forth- coming Supplement to my ' Shakespeare Bibliography. '

Although I hold no brief for Gastrell, a judicial review of the case leaves the impression that he was condemned without a word in defence. Yet the circumstances show that the then town authorities of Stratforcl-on-Avon were quite as much, if not more, to blame for the demolition. Gastrell had already shown, by his removal of the famous mulberry tree, that he was a man of his word. He owned New Place and used it as an annual holiday residence for some weeks during successive years, keeping it occupied by a servant only for the bulk of the year. The Corporation rightly assessed it for rates for the whole year, dues which Gastrell declined to pay, on the ground that he used the house for one-sixth of the year only. Rather than pay what he considered to be an unjust demand, he would destroy the house and Bell the land. That was the psychic

moment. The Corporation should, directly or indirectly, have purchased the property- They have made many worse purchases since. It would have proved a lucrative- investment. In 1847 the poet's birthplace came to the hammer, and was only saved from removal overseas by the energy of Halliwell-Phillipps, Charles Dickens, and a few other enthusiasts for the showman Barnum had journeyed across the Atlantic to buy and re-erect it in New York, as a. showplace. On that occasion there is no-" record of the Stratford Corporation having made any effort to buy or preserve so memorable a building. The fact is that most natives, of Stratford dwell too near the foot of the mountain to perceive its height or significance.

In a lengthy letter to his Stratford friend f. Wm. Hunt, dated Dec. 29, 1768, GastrelD wrote :

" I shall hardly ever entertain any thoughts of returning to a place where I have been so mal- treated. The estate may probably ere long f all- in to hands y* may meet with a more civil reception and be thence encouraged to rebuild, and it? would be pity to tye up their hands "

Further details about rents and other sums due to him show he was much too good a business man to refuse a reasonable ofte? for New Place had one been made. Even- tually Wm. Hunt became the purchaser of the site.

An autograph of his wife " Jane Gastrell,. May 21, 1758," is preserved in a book kept at New Place Museum. This lady and her maiden sister went to reside at Lichfield, and incidents of their friendship with John- son occur in Boswell's biography.

W. JAGGARD, Capt.

There is some confusion here. MB. BAYLEY~ states that Francis Gastrell was Vicar o Frodsham and died in 1768, and that his wife was Jane, sister of Gilbert Walmisley of Lichfield. Now Francis Gastrell, pre- sented to Frodsham in 1740, died on Apr. 5,. 1772, aged 64, his wife Jane died at Lichfield on Oct. 30, 1791, aged 81, and both were buried at Frodsham. Ormerod gives their monumental inscription and states (wrongly) that he was a son of the Bishop of Chester ('Cheshire,' ii. 55, 58). Beamont in his- ' Frodsham ' p. 240, states that Francis Gastrell was son of Peregrine Gastrell of Slapton, and the purchaser of New Place, and that his wife was Jane daughter of Sir Thomas Aston, Bt., to whom he was married at Aston, Cheshire, on May 21, 1752...