A few miles from Stratford lived … the greatest – in a worldly sense – of Shakespeare’s neighbouring poets … who died reputed to be the richest man in England. Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke, who in 1606 succeeded his father as Recorder of Stratford, was an important officer of the Crown, yet ready to help when the leading citizens resisted enclosure by his cousin, Edward Greville, the Lord of the Manor; to arbitrate over problems of leasing out the churchyard for grazing; and to send presents of buck for a town feast.

Shakespeare: The Poet in his World, M. C. Bradbrook (1978), p. 29.

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, Peter Levi (1988) pp. 10-11.

A pleasant break in all this labour is suggested by an invitation on Christmas Eve from Sir Fulke Greville to the Bailiff and his brethren to make merry with him at Beauchamps Court. ‘Sir,’ writes his secretary, Edward Worthington, to Quyny … ‘I must entreat you to accept of these few lines as a message from my Master, showing his desire to see you, and some other his good friends with you, sometime this Christmas that they may see for whom they travailed, and my Master understand who hath so well deserved his love and to acknowledge the same … your assured loving friend.’  

Master Richard Quyny, pp. 189-190, (Misc. Doc. i. II8).

Man of Stratford

       
        During the period of the poems and plays the dominant influence in Stratford-upon-Avon was that of the Greville family. The Greville’s had been associated with Stratford-upon-Avon since at least 1497, when John Greville of Drayton, one of the justices for the gaol-delivery of Warwick, 15 Henry VII, was admitted to the guild of Stratford-upon-Avon, with Joan his wife. His son, Sir Edward Greville of Milcote, was a distinguished military character in the reign of Henry VIII who fought at the Battle of the Spurs and was knighted for his valour at the storming of Tournai. In 1519 this Sir Edward obtained the wardship of Elizabeth Willoughby, de jure Baroness Willoughby de Broke, the greatest heiress then in England, who later married his younger son Fulke.

        Elizabeth Willoughby’s inheritance of thirty-one manors in eight counties, included the manor of Alcester, which was set deep in the Forest of Arden, with lands that extended all through the woodlands to the borders of Stratford-upon-Avon. In a clearing in the forest, on the banks of a river, about eight miles from Stratford, Elizabeth’s ancestors, the Lords Beauchamps of Powke, had built a ‘mansion’, called Beauchamps Court, and after their marriage Fulke and Elizabeth made it their principal seat. They raised a family of three sons and four daughters at the riverside mansion, and their eldest son, Sir Fulke the second, married Lady Anne Nevill, daughter of Ralph Nevill, 4^th Earl of Westmoreland in 1553, and brought her to live with his family in the Forest of Arden. Their only son, Fulke Greville the poet, was born on October 3^rd 1554, and for the following six years there were three generations of Grevilles living together at Beauchamps Court.

        Sir Fulke Greville the second, also the Stratford Recorder, was, according to Edmondson, ‘a gentleman full of affability and courtesy, and much given to hospitality, which got the love of the whole country, for in his time no man did bear a greater sway in the county of Warwick than himself.’ He was twice Sheriff of the county, and he was Recorder of Stratford until his death in 1606. A contemporary reference by Abraham Sturley, the Stratford Chamberlain, calls ‘Sir Fowke’ by the romantic name of ‘the knight of the Woodland, in the Forest of Arden’,

        The old Recorder shunned the Court, preferring the country for the pleasures of ‘hawking, bear baiting’ and ‘entertaining a brave company of gentlemen’. He was a convivial and hearty man who was ‘decisive, often impetuous and even pugnacious’ having been involved in at least two bloody street fights in London when he was a young man. In one fight a man died and he was charged with affray but the charge was later dropped. Even at the age of sixty-six and in ill health the old man had declared that he ‘would require no mans help’ to revenge an insult by the Sheriff of Worcestershire. 

        On his father’s death in 1606, Greville became Recorder of Stratford and he held that office until his own death in 1628. His name appears frequently in the Stratford records and his great affection for the town is evidenced by a letter from him (after he became Lord Brooke), ‘from the Court at Whitehall this 12^th of May 1625’, to the Stratford Corporation to recommend Richard Townsend for the post of steward (Town Clerk), following the death of Thomas Lucas:

He is a man passinge well knowne to manie of yow, a neere neighboure of yours, and beside by his profession everie waie qualified… If therefore yow shall thinke fitt to doe him curtesie in this for my sake, I shalbe readie to acknowledge it to yow all with thankfullnes. And remayne your lovinge friend, F. Broke.